Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
power over others likewise. Sooner or later he will begin to doubt
either his own sanity or that of all the rest of the world.” Melville
was never to know any such repose and happiness.
Within the sanctities of the Red House, and among the solitudes of
the surrounding country, Hawthorne enjoyed all the companionship he
desired. In 1842, Mrs. Hawthorne had written to her mother: “Mr.
Hawthorne’s abomination of visiting still holds strong, be it to see
no matter what angel;” and in 1850, Hawthorne was no more eager for
alliances even with celestials. Not, indeed, that he was indifferent to
his fellowmen: that, his literary vocation would not permit. In _Sights
from a Steeple_ he states: “The most desirable mode of existence might
be that of a spiritualised Paul Pry, hovering invisible round men and
women, witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing
brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and
retaining no emotion peculiar to himself.” Hawthorne’s son writes:
“Now Hawthorne, both by nature and by training, was of a disposition
to throw himself imaginatively into the shoes (as the phrase is) of
whatever person happened to his companion. For the time being, he
would seem to take their point of view and to speak their language;
it was the result partly of a subtle sympathy and partly of a cold
intellectual insight, which led him half consciously to reflect what
he so clearly perceived. Thus, if he chatted with a group of rude
sea-captains in the smoking-room of Mrs. Blodgett’s boarding-house,
or joined a knot of boon companions in a Boston bar-room, or talked
metaphysics with Herman Melville on the hills of Berkshire, he would
aim to appear in each instance a man like as they were; he would have
the air of being interested in their interests and viewing life by
their standards. Of course, this was only apparent; the real man stood
aloof and observant.” “Seeing his congenial aspect towards their little
round of habits and beliefs, they would leap to the conclusion that he
was no more and no less than one of themselves; whereas they formed
but a tiny arc in the great circle of his comprehension.” Yet even
when not in the rôle of unimpassioned spectator, Hawthorne was not
the man to sit in pharisaical judgment upon his fellows. In _Fancy’s
Show-Box_ he wrote: “Man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even
with the guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart has
surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of iniquity.” Emerson
once said that there was no crime he could not commit: an amiable
vanity he shared with many a more prosaic fellow. Hawthorne studied
his own pure heart and learned that “men often over-estimate their
capacity for evil.” “I used to think,” he wrote, “that I could imagine
all feelings, all passions, and states of the heart and mind.” Again:
“Living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept
the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart. Had I sooner made
my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been
covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by
rude encounters with the multitude.” G. P. Lathrop, in his _Study of
Hawthorne_, says: “The visible pageant is only of value to him as it
suggests the viewless host of heavenly shapes that hang above it like
an idealising mirage.” Yet never for a second did he lose himself among
these heavenly visitations. He was eminently a man of sound sense: as
W. C. Brownell has pointed out, he was “distinctly the most hard-headed
of our men of genius.” His son said of him: “He was the slave of no
theory and no emotion; he always knew, so to speak, where he was and
what he was about.” His nature clearly was self-sustaining. He never
felt the need of the support that in the realm of the affections is the
reward of self-surrender. “He had no doubt an ideal family life,” W. C.
Brownell points out--“that is to say, ideal in a peculiar way, for he
had it on rather peculiar terms, one suspects. These were, in brief,
his own terms. He was worshipped, idolised, canonised, and on his side
it probably required small effort worthily to fill the rôle a more
ardent nature would have either merited less or found more irksome. He
responded at any rate with absolute devotion. His domestic periphery
bounded his vital interests.”
J. E. A. Smith, however, who knew Hawthorne in the flesh, undertakes
to portray Hawthorne in less austere outline. In his book _Taghconic:
The Romance and Beauty of the Hills_ (Boston, 1879) J. E. A. Smith,
writing under the pseudonym “Godfrey Greylock,” says: “But that Mr.
Hawthorne’s heart was warm and tender, I am well assured by more than
one circumstance, which I do not know that I am at liberty to recall
here. But there can be no wrong in mentioning the origin, as I have
heard it, of the brotherly friendship between him and Herman Melville.
As the story was told me, Mr. Hawthorne was aware that Melville was
the author of a very appreciative review of the _Scarlet Letter_ which
appeared in the _Literary World_, edited by their common friends, the
Duyckincks; but this very knowledge, perhaps, kept two very sensitive
men shy of each other, although thrown into company. But one day it
chanced that when they were out on a picnic excursion, the two were
compelled by a thunder-shower to take shelter in a narrow recess of the
rocks of Monument Mountain. Two hours of enforced intercourse settled
the matter. They learned so much of each other’s character, and found
that they held so much of thought, feeling and opinion in common, that
the most intimate friendship for the future was inevitable.”
Mr. Julian Hawthorne reports that Herman Melville--or Omoo, as they
called him,--soon became familiar and welcome at the Red House. In
a letter dated September 4, 1850, Mrs. Hawthorne reported to her
mother: “To-day, Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Melville have gone to dine
at Pittsfield.” It is in this letter that Mrs. Hawthorne wrote the
characterisation of Melville quoted in Chapter I.
Hawthorne finished _The House of the Seven Gables_ on January 27, 1851.
The four months following Hawthorne gave over to a vacation. “He had
recovered his health,” his son says, “he had done his work, he was
famous, and the region in which he dwelt was beautiful and inspiriting.
At all events, he made those spring days memorable to his children. He
made them boats to sail on the lake, and kites to fly in the air; he
took them fishing and flower-gathering, and tried (unsuccessfully for
the present) to teach them swimming. Mr. Melville used to ride or drive
up, in the evenings, with his great dog, and the children used to ride
on the dog’s back.”... “It was with Herman Melville that Hawthorne
held the most familiar intercourse at this time, both personally and
by letter.” Hawthorne’s son quotes “characteristic disquisitions”
by Melville; “but Hawthorne’s answers, if he wrote any,” Mr. Julian
Hawthorne goes on to say, entertaining a philosophical doubt in the
face of Melville’s specific mention of letters from Hawthorne, “were
unfortunately destroyed by fire.”
What would appear to be the earliest of the surviving letters of
Melville to Hawthorne follows:
“PITTSFIELD, Wednesday morning.
“MY DEAR HAWTHORNE,--
“Concerning the young gentleman’s shoes, I desire to say that a
pair to fit him, of the desired pattern, cannot be had in all
Pittsfield,--a fact which sadly impairs that metropolitan pride I
formerly took in the capital of Berkshire. Henceforth Pittsfield must
hide its head. However, if a pair of _bootees_ will at all answer,
Pittsfield will be very happy to provide them. Pray mention all this
to Mrs. Hawthorne, and command me.
“‘_The House of the Seven Gables_: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.
One vol. 16mo, pp. 344.’ The contents of this book do not belie
its rich, clustering, romantic title. With great enjoyment we
spent almost an hour in each separate gable. This book is like a
fine old chamber, abundantly, but still judiciously, furnished
with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnish it.
There are rich hangings, wherein are braided scenes from tragedies!
There is old china with rare devices, set out on the carved buffet;
there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there
is an admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands;
there is a smell as of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one
corner, there is a dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps,
entitled _Hawthorne: A Problem_. It has delighted us; it has piqued
a re-perusal; it has robbed us of a day, and made us a present of
a whole year of thoughtfulness; it has bred great exhilaration and
exultation with the remembrance that the architect of the Gables
resides only six miles off, and not three thousand miles away,
in England, say. We think the book, for pleasantness of running
interest, surpasses the other works of the author. The curtains are
more drawn; the sun comes in more; genialities peep out more. Were
we to particularise what most struck us in the deeper passages, we
would point out the scene where Clifford, for a moment, would fain
throw himself forth from the window to join the procession; or the
scene where the judge is left seated in his ancestral chair. Clifford
is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in the finest,
truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is Clifford. And here we
would say that, did circumstances permit, we should like nothing
better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full
consideration and analysis of the purport and significance of what
so strongly characterises all of this author’s writings. There is a
certain tragic phase of humanity which, in our opinion, was never
more powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne. We mean the tragedies of
human thought in its own unbiassed, native, and profounder workings.
We think that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the
usable truth ever entered more deeply than into this man’s. By
usable truth, we mean the apprehension of the absolute condition of
present things as they strike the eye of the man who fears them not,
though they do their worst to him,--the man who, like Russia or the
British Empire, declares himself a sovereign nature (in himself)
amid the powers of heaven, hell, and earth. He may perish; but so
long as he exists he insists upon treating with all Powers upon an
equal basis. If any of those other Powers choose to withhold certain
secrets, let them; that does not impair my sovereignty in myself;
that does not make me tributary. And perhaps, after all, there is
_no_ secret. We incline to think that the Problem of the Universe
is like the Freemason’s mighty secret, so terrible to all children.
It turns out, at last, to consist in a triangle, a mallet, and an
apron,--nothing more! We incline to think that God cannot explain His
own secrets, and that He would like a little information upon certain
points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He us. But it is
this _Being_ of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke
ourselves. As soon as you say _Me_, a _God_, a _Nature_, so soon you
jump off from your stool and hang from the beam. Yes, that word is
the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary, and you would have Him
in the street.
“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in
thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say _yes_. For all men
who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,--why, they are in the happy