Books: Memories of Hawthorne

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In maturer years I believed that his smile brought refreshment,
encouragement, and waves of virtue to those who saw it. To be sure, it
was a sort of questioning; sometimes even quizzical; sometimes only a
safeguard; but it was eminently kind, and no one else could do it. His
manner was patronizing, in spite of its suavity; but it grew finer
every spring, until it had become as exquisitely courteous as Sir
Philip Sidney's must have been. The arch of his dark eyebrows
sometimes seemed almost angry, being quickly lifted, and then bent in
a scowl of earnestness; but as age advanced this sternness of brow
grew to be, unchangeably, a calm sweep of infinite kindness.

It was never so well understood at The Wayside that its owner had
retiring habits as when Alcott was reported to be approaching along
the Larch Path, which stretched in feathery bowers between our house
and his. Yet I was not aware that the seer failed at any hour to gain
admittance,--one cause, perhaps, of the awe in which his visits were
held. I remember that my observation was attracted to him curiously
from the fact that my mother's eyes changed to a darker gray at his
advents, as they did only when she was silently sacrificing herself. I
clearly understood that Mr. Alcott was admirable; but he sometimes
brought manuscript poetry with him, the dear child of his own Muse,
and a guest more unwelcome than the enfant terrible of the
drawing-room. There was one particularly long poem which he had read
aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which
they never recovered. Out of the mentions made of this effusion I
gathered that it was like a moonlit expanse, quiet, somnolent, cool,
and flat as a month of prairies. Rapture, conviction, tenderness,
often glowed upon Alcott's features and trembled in his voice. I
believe he was never once startled from the dream of illusive joy
which pictured to him all high aims as possible of realization through
talk. Often he was so happy that he could have danced like a child;
and he laughed merrily like one; and the quick, upward lift of his
head, which his great height induced him to hold, as a rule, slightly
bent forward,--this rapid, playful lift, and the glance, bright and
eager though not deep, which sparkled upon you, were sweet and good to
see. Yet I have noticed his condition as pale and dolorous enough,
before the event of his noble daughter's splendid success. But such
was not his character; circumstances had enslaved him, and he appeared
thin and forlorn by incongruous accident, like a lamb in chains. He
might have been taken for a centenarian when I beheld him one day
slowly and pathetically constructing a pretty rustic fence before his
gabled brown house, as if at the unreasonable command of some
latter-day Pharaoh. Ten years afterward he was, on the contrary, a
Titan: gay, silvery-locked, elegant, ready to begin his life over
again.

Alcott represented to me a fairy element in the up-country region in
which I so often saw him. I heard that he walked the woods for the
purpose of finding odd coils of tree-roots and branches, which would
on the instant suggest to him an ingenious use in his art of rustic
building. It was rumored that nobody's outlying curios in this line
were safe under his eye, and that if you possessed an eccentric tree
for a time, it was fated to close its existence in the keeping of
Alcott. I imagined his slightly stooping, yet tall and well-grown
figure, clothed in black, and with a picturesque straw hat, twining
itself in and out of forest aisles, or craftily returning home with
gargoyle-like stems over his shoulders. The magic of his pursuit was
emphasized by the notorious fact that his handiwork fell together in
the middle, faded like shadows from bronze to hoary pallor; its
longevity was a protracted death. In short, his arbors broke under the
weight of a purpose, as poems become doggerel in the service of a
theorist. Truly, Alcott was completely at the beck of illusion; and he
was always safer alone with it than near the hard uses of adverse
reality. I well remember my astonishment when I was told that he had
set forth to go into the jaws of the Rebellion after Louisa, his
daughter, who had succumbed to typhus fever while nursing the
soldiers. His object was to bring her home; but it was difficult to
believe that he would be successful in entering the field of misery
and uproar. I never expected to see him again. Almost the only point
at which he normally met this world was in his worship of apple-trees.
Here, in his orchard, he was an all-admirable human being and lovely
to observe. As he looked upon the undulating arms or piled the
excellent apples, red and russet, which seemed to shine at his glance,
his figure became supple, his countenance beamed with a ruby and gold
akin to the fruit. In his orchard by the highroad, with its trees
rising to a great height from a basin-shaped side lawn (which may
originally have been marshy ground), he seemed to me a perfect soul.
We all enjoyed greatly seeing him there, as we wended to and from our
little town. No doubt the garden of children at the beginning of his
career inspired him likewise; and in it he must have shown the same
tender solicitude and benevolence, and beamed upon his young scholars
with a love which exquisitely tempered his fantastical suppositions.

He often spoke humbly, but he never let people think he was humble.
His foibles appeared to me ridiculous, and provoked me exceedingly,--
the brave cat of the proverb must be my excuse,--but I awakened
to the eternal verity that some such husks are rather natural to
persons of purely distinctive minds, perhaps shielding them. And I
think one comes to value a bent blessed with earnest unconsciousness;
a not too clever Argus vision; a childlike gullibility and
spontaneity. This untarnished gullibility and gentle confidence, for
all his self-laudations, Alcott had, and when he did not emerge either
from his apple orchard or his inspirations he was essentially
wholesome, full of an ardent simplicity, and a happy faith in the
capacities given him by his Creator. So that his outline is one of
much dignity, in spite of the somewhat capricious coloring of his
character; the latter being not unlike the efforts of a nursery artist
upon a print of "The Father of His Country," for whom, as he stands
proudly upon the page, a green coat and purple pantaloons were not
intended, and are only minor incidents of destiny.

Mr. Ellery Channing was, I am sure, the townsman who was most gladly
welcome. My parents felt great admiration and friendliness for him,
and it would be a sacrifice on my own part not to mention this
companion of theirs, although I must beg his pardon for doing so.
There is no doubt that Concord would have hung with several added
pounds of weight upon our imaginations if it had not been for him.
Over his tender-heartedness, as I saw him in the old days, played
delicious eccentricities, phosphorescent, fitful, touch-me-not antics
of feeling. I was glad to meet the long glance of his gray, dazzling
eyes, lowered gracefully at last. The gaze seemed to pass through me
to the wall, and beyond even that barrier to the sky at the horizon
line. It did not disturb me; it had been too kindly to criticise, or
so I thought. No doubt Mr. Channing had made his little regretful,
uncomplimentary notes in passing, but it was characteristic of his
exquisite comradeship towards all that we did not fear his eyes. I say
comradeship, although the power which I believed touched him with its
wand so mischievously had induced him to drop (as a boy loses
successively all his marbles) all his devoted friends, without a word
of explanation, because without a shadow of reason; the only thing to
be said about it being that the loss was entirely voluntary on the
part of this charming boy. He would cease to bow, as he passed. Then
he found the marbles again, pocketed them as if nothing had happened,
smiled, called, and hob-nobbed. A man's high-water mark is his
calibre; and at high-water mark Mr. Channing's sea was to us buoyant,
rich-tinted, sunlit; a great force, darkening and dazzling with
beautiful emotions. He was in those days devoted to the outer air,
and to the wonders of the nature we do not often understand, even when
we trap it and classify it. He always invited his favorites to walk
with him, and I once had the honor of climbing a very high hill by his
side, in time to look at a Concord sunset, which I myself realized was
the finest in the world.

Another peculiar spirit now and then haunted us, usually sad as a
pine-tree--Thoreau. His enormous eyes, tame with religious intellect
and wild with the loose rein, making a steady flash in this strange
unison of forces, frightened me dreadfully at first. The unanswerable
argument which he unwittingly made to soften my heart towards him was
to fall desperately ill. During his long illness my mother lent him
our sweet old music-box, to which she had danced as it warbled at the
Old Manse, in the first year of her marriage, and which now softly
dreamed forth its tunes in a time-mellowed tone. When he died, it
seemed as if an anemone, more lovely than any other, had been carried
from the borders of a wood into its silent depths, and dropped, in
solitude and shadow, among the recluse ferns and mosses which are so
seldom disturbed by passing feet. Son of freedom and opportunity that
he was, he touched the heart by going to nature's peacefulness like
the saints, and girding upon his American sovereignty the hair-shirt
of service to self-denial. He was happy in his intense discipline of
the flesh, as all men are when they have once tasted power--if it is
the power which awakens perception of the highest concerns. His
countenance had an April pensiveness about it; you would never have
guessed that he could write of owls so jocosely. His manner was such
as to suggest that he could mope and weep with them. I never crossed
an airy hill or broad field in Concord, without thinking of him who
had been the companion of space as well as of delicacy; the lover of
the wood-thrush, as well as of the Indian. Walden woods rustled the
name of Thoreau whenever we walked in them.

When we drove from the station to The Wayside, in arriving from
Europe, on a hot summer day, I distinctly remember the ugliness of the
un-English landscape and the forlornness of the little cottage which
was to be our home. Melancholy and stupid days immediately followed
(at least they were so in my estimation). I marveled at the amount of
sand in the flower-borders and at the horrifying delinquencies of our
single servant.

For some years I was eager to use all the eloquence I could muster in
my epistles to girl friends, in England or anywhere, as to the paucity
of life in Concord. Perhaps the following extracts from two letters,
one written at Bath, England, and the other at Concord, and never
sent, but kept by my mother from the flames with many more of my
expressions in correspondence, may convey the feelings of the whole
family:--

31 CHARLES STREET, BATH, ENGLAND.

DEAR HANNAH [Redcar Hannah],--When I go home I think that I shall
never have such a nice time as when I go home; for I shall have such a
big garden, and I shall have little and big girls to come and see me.
Never on earth shall I have such a nice time as when I am at home.

After the transition:--

CONCORD, MASS.

I am in Concord now, and long to see you again, but I suppose that it
is useless to think of it. I am going out, after I have done my
lessons, to have a good time.--A very good time indeed, to be sure,
for there was nothing but frozen ground, and I had to be doing
something to keep myself warm, and I had to come back after a little
while. I do not know how to keep myself warm. Happy are you who keep
warm all the time in England. The frost has made thick leaves on our
windows everywhere, and you can hardly see through them.

I tried to bring the stimulus of great events into the Concord life by
writing stories, of which I would report the progress to my one or two
confidantes. My father overheard some vainglorious boasts from my
lips, one afternoon, when the windows of the little library where he
sat were open; and the small girl who listened to me, wide-eyed, and I
myself, proud and glad to have reached a thrilling denouement, were
standing beside the sweet-clover bed, not dreaming of anything more
severe than its white bloom. A few minutes afterwards, my father hung
over me, dark as a prophetic flight of birds. "Never let me hear of
your writing stories!" he exclaimed, with as near an approach to anger
as I had ever seen in him. "I forbid you to write them!" But I believe
this command only added a new attraction to authorship, agreeably
haunting me as I beckoned imaginary scenes and souls out of chaos. An
oasis bloomed at remote seasons, when we went to visit Mr. and Mrs.
Fields in Boston. My mother writes of my reviving, and even becoming
radiant, as soon as a visit of this fragrant nature breathed upon me.
I joyously begin a letter of my mother's with the following greeting:
"As soon as we got to Boston. My dear, dear Papa. We will write to
you very promptly indeed. We have got here safely, and are also very
glad to get here. We had some rich cake and sherry as soon as we got
here.--[My mother proceeds:] Annie glided in upon us, looking
excellently lovely. Heart's-Ease [Mr. Fields] appeared just before
dinner. He declares that the 'Consular Experiences' is superb.--I
write in the deep green shade of this wood of a library. We all went
to church through the hot sunshine. Mr. Fields walked on the sunny
side, and when Mrs. Fields [Mrs. Meadows was the playful name by
which we called her] asked him why, he said, 'Because it makes us grow
so. Oh, I am growing so fast I can scarcely get along!' Mr. Fields
said it made him very sleepy to go to church, and he thought it was
because of the deacons.--He says the world is wild with rapture over
your 'Leamington Spa.' He did not know how to express his appreciation
of it.--We met Mr. Tom Appleton at the gallery, and he was very
edifying. There is a good portrait by Hunt. Mr. Appleton called it
'big art,' which took my fancy, it being so refreshing after hearing
so much said about 'high art.' There is a portrait of Hunt by himself,
which has a line about the brow that is Michelangelic; 'the bars of
Michelangelo.' A head of Fremont was handsome, but showing a man
incapable of large combinations. He looks eagle-like and loyal and
brilliant, but not wise. We felt quite glorious with the war news, and
were surprised to see so few flags flying. To breakfast we had Mr.
Dysie. It was pleasant to hear his English brogue--a slight excess of
Henry Bright's Lancashire accent. To tea we had Mr. and Mrs. Bartol,
and Mr. Fields was so infinitely witty that we all died at the
tea-table. Mr. Bartol, in gasps, assured him that he had contrived a
way to save the food by keeping us in convulsions during the ceremony
of eating, and killing us off at the end. Annie had on a scarlet
coronet that made her look enchanting, and Mr. Fields declared she was
Moses in the burning bush. Oh, do delay the acacia blossoms till I
come! Give a sky full of love to Una and Julian."

My father also tasted the piquant flavors of merriment and luxury in
this exquisite domicile of Heart's-Ease and Mrs. Meadows.

And at The Wayside, too, we had delightful pleasures, in the teeth and
front of simplicity and seclusion, sandy flower-borders, rioting
weeds, and intense heats. Concord itself could gleam occasionally,
even outside of its perfect Junes and Octobers, as we can see here in
the merry geniality of Louisa Alcott, who no more failed to make
people laugh than she failed to live one of the bravest and best of
lives. In return for a package of birthday gifts she sent us a poem,
from which I take these verses:--

"The Hawthorne is a gracious tree
From latest twig to parent root,
For when all others leafless stand
It gayly blossoms and bears fruit.
On certain days a friendly wind
Wafts from its spreading boughs a store
Of canny gifts that flutter in
Like snowflakes at a neighbor's door.

"The spinster who has just been blessed
Finds solemn thirty much improved,
By proofs that such a crabbed soul
Is still remembered and beloved.
Kind wishes 'ancient Lu' has stored
In the 'best chamber' of her heart,
And every gift on Fancy's stage
Already plays its little part.

"Long may it stand, the friendly tree,
That blooms in autumn and in spring,
Beneath whose shade the humblest bird
May safely sit, may gratefully sing.
Time will give it an evergreen name,
Axe cannot harm it, frost cannot kill;
With Emerson's pine and Thoreau's oak
Will the Hawthorne be loved and honored still!"

My mother's records, moreover, in letters to her husband, refer to the
humble labors that almost filled up her devoted year (her daughters
tried to imitate her example), and these references indicate the
difference we felt between Europe and home:--

Rose raised all the echoes of the county by screaming with joy over
her blooming crocuses, which she found in her garden. The spring
intoxicates her with "remembering wine." She hugs and kisses me almost
to a mummy, with her raptures. Little spots of green grass choke her
with unutterable ecstasy.

September 9, 1860. Julian illuminated till tea-time; and after tea I
read to both him and Rose a chapter of Matthew, and told them about
Paul.--Rosebud has been drawing wonderfully on the blackboard
recognizable portraits of Mr. Bennoch, her beloved Charlotte Marston,
and Julian. Ben Mann appeared with a letter from dear Nona [Una]; and
with one from Bentley, England, modestly asking of thee a book, to
publish!--The weeds in the garden now exceed belief. There is not a
trace to be seen of the melon or cucumber vines, or squashes, or of
the beans towards the lane. All are completely overtopped by gigantic
plants, like the Anakins overrunning the Israelites. Such riot of
uninvited guests I never imagined. I shall try to do something, but I
fear my puny might will not effect much against such hordes. The wet
and heat together produce such growths as I never saw except in Cuba.
There is a real forest at the back door, between the house and the
terraces. The greenness is truly English and Irish.--I picked forty
ears of corn to-day.--We all met at the Alcotts' at tea-time. It was
a clear, frosty air that bit me as I went in through the sunset. We
had a delightful visit. Mr. Alcott was sweet and benign as possible,
and Mrs. Alcott looked like Jupiter Olympus.--General Hitchcock has
been gone about an hour. Baby had got me some exquisite roses from
Mr. Bull's, of various shades from deep crimson to light pink, and I
arranged a flat glass dish full on the Roman mosaic table, and a tall
glass on the white marble table, and a glass on the Hawthorne
tea-table, while the illuminated crocus [a vase] was splendid with
dahlias and tiger-lilies beneath the Transfiguration. So the
drawing-room looked lovelily, and a fine rose-odor was diffused. All
the blinds were open and the shades up, and a glory of greenness
refreshed the eyes outside on the plumy, bowery hill and lawn. In this
charming apartment I received my General. The most beautiful light of
life beamed from his face at my recognition of his ideas, and at any
expression of mine which showed a unity with his; or rather with
truth. His quiet eyes have gathered innumerable harvests, and his
observations are invaluable because impersonal. [He had made a study
of the alchemists, and all mystical philosophy.]--Elizabeth Hoar spent
the whole of yesterday morning with me. We talked Roman and Florentine
talk. She thought our house the most fascinating of mansions. She is
always full of St. Paul's charity. On the Roman table was a glass
dish of exquisite pond-lilies, which Una brought from the river this
morning; and out of the centre of the lilies rose a tall glass of
superb cardinal-flowers. On the white table was a glass dish of
balsams of every shade of red, from deep crimson through scarlet to
pale pink, over to purple and up to white.--Una returned to-day from
Boston. She has had a nice visit, and seen many persons, all of whom
expressed to her unbounded adoration of you. "Why mamma, how everybody
loves, adores him!" said she. Of course.--I had a call from the
dancing-master, a most debonair individual, all smile and bow and
curvets. I wish you could have seen the man. It was the broad
caricature of elegant manners. How funny things are! I can hear you
say, "Natur' is cur'ous."--I looked in upon Edith Emerson's party, and
she had a large table spread with flowers, cake, and sugar-plums,
beneath the trees, and a dozen children were running and laughing
round a "pretty Poll," who scolded at them all. Mrs. Emerson was
flitting like the spirit of a Lady Abbess in and out, in winged lace
headdress and black silk. Your letter was a bomb of joy to me last
evening.--I have taken heaps of your clothes to mend. What a rag-fair
your closet was--and you did not tell me! Mrs. Alcott brought me some
beer made of spruce only, and it was nice. Thou shalt have thy own
beer, when you come home.--Bab went to see Mrs. Alcott, and I resumed
weeding. At seven I heard thirteen cannon-shots, and did not
understand it. Then I possessed The Wayside all alone till near eight
of the evening. Not a sound but birds' last notes was to be heard. It
was strange and sweet. I thought of you in a sea-breeze with felicity.
At about eight I heard little feet racing along the Larch Path, and
Baby came to view. She read aloud to me some of your "Virtuoso's
Collection," and then to bed, celestial.--A letter came from Mr.
Bennoch. He wails like Jeremiah over our war, and longs for a letter
from you. He sends cartes de visite of himself and his wife. He looks
uncommonly dumpy, with a pair of winged whiskers of astounding effect,
and the expression of his face is blandly seraphic.

[From my mother's diary.] January 1, 1862. Letter and wine from
General Pierce. I heard Mr. Emerson's lecture on War. Furious
wind--There is a lovely new moon; a golden boat.--Papa read "The Heart
of Mid-Lothian" aloud in the evening.--I wish I knew whether the lines
of my hand are like those of Sir Thomas Browne's.

--My husband has made an anagram of my name: "A hope while in a storm,
aha!"--General Pierce arrived at noon. I went to the Town Hall to hear
the Quintette Club play the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. Mrs. Alcott
came with us. Bright moonlight at midnight. General Pierce remained
all night.--My husband made an anagram of the General's name,
"Princelie Frank."

--My husband read aloud to me "Sir Launcelot Greaves." Papa read "Anne
of Geierstein."--I prepared Julian for acting Bluebeard; and Ellen
Emerson lent me the gear. We worked hard all day.--We received the
photographs of Una and myself. Mine of course uncomely.--Mr. Ticknor
came to dine; and Mr. Burchmore [son of Stephen Burchmore, whose tales
at the Custom House were so inimitable] also came.--My husband is not
well. I have been very anxious about him; but he is better this
evening, thank God.--My right hand is so bad that I have to bathe it
in arnica all the time, for I have worn it out by making shoes [and
other ornamented articles for a masquerade to which her children were
to go].

[The letters to my father continue.] Ellen and Edith Emerson took tea
with Una, and they went home early, at about eight. At ten I heard a
man's step and a ring at the door-bell. I went to the door, and not
opening it, in a voice of command asked, "Who is it?" No reply. I
again fiercely inquired, "WHO IS IT?" "Is Ellen here?" pleaded the
surprised, quiet voice of Mr. Emerson! I immediately unlocked my
portcullis, and in the lowest tone of woman begged the Sage to excuse
my peremptory challenge.--The Masquerade was worth the great trouble
taken in preparing for it. Una was quite gorgeous with her glittering
embroideries of silver and gold, and her exquisite turban gleaming
with precious stones and pearls. The most delicate roses bloomed in
her cheeks, and her eyes were like two large radiant stars. She
danced with Sir Kenneth of Scotland, personated admirably by Edward
Emerson, in armor of black and gold, severe and simple.--[My sister
adds her own delighted reference to my mother's.] "Oh, father! I did
have the most awfully jolly time at the Masquerade that ever anybody
had. It was the most perfectly Arabian Nights' scene, and the Princess
Scheherezade [herself] at last saw in very fact one of the scenes that
her glowing fancy had painted; but being now freed from the fear of
death, her mind had lost its terrific stimulus and returned to its
normal condition, or perhaps was a little duller than usual from being
so long overtaxed; at all events, she did not compose a new story on
the occasion, as might have been expected. A great many people spoke
to me of the splendor of my dress. Mamma was so delighted with the
becomingness of my black velvet jacket, that she has bought me a
splendid dress of the same, and has sent for a bushel of seed-pearls
to trim it with. The little bill for these items is awaiting you on
your desk. I shall set up for a queen for the rest of my life, and if
you are still going to call me Onion, you must find out the Persian
for it."

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