The House of the Seven Gables
In the present work, the author has proposed to himself—but with what
success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge—to keep undeviatingly
within his immunities. The point of view in which this tale comes under
the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time
with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend
prolonging itself, from an epoch now gray in the distance, down into
our own broad daylight, and bringing along with it some of its
legendary mist, which the reader, according to his pleasure, may either
disregard, or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the
characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect. The
narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture as to require
this advantage, and, at the same time, to render it the more difficult
of attainment.
Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at
which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this
particular, the author has provided himself with a moral,—the truth,
namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the
successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage,
becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would feel it a
singular gratification if this romance might effectually convince
mankind—or, indeed, any one man—of the folly of tumbling down an
avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads of an
unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them, until the
accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In
good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter
himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really
teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually
through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. The author
has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to
impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, rather, as by
sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at once depriving it of life,
and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high
truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening
at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction,
may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more
evident, at the last page than at the first.
The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual locality to the
imaginary events of this narrative. If permitted by the historical
connection,—which, though slight, was essential to his plan,—the author
would very willingly have avoided anything of this nature. Not to speak
of other objections, it exposes the romance to an inflexible and
exceedingly dangerous species of criticism, by bringing his
fancy-pictures almost into positive contact with the realities of the
moment. It has been no part of his object, however, to describe local
manners, nor in any way to meddle with the characteristics of a
community for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a natural regard.
He trusts not to be considered as unpardonably offending by laying out
a street that infringes upon nobody’s private rights, and appropriating
a lot of land which had no visible owner, and building a house of
materials long in use for constructing castles in the air. The
personages of the tale—though they give themselves out to be of ancient
stability and considerable prominence—are really of the author’s own
making, or at all events, of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no
lustre, nor their defects redound, in the remotest degree, to the
discredit of the venerable town of which they profess to be
inhabitants. He would be glad, therefore, if—especially in the quarter
to which he alludes—the book may be read strictly as a Romance, having
a great deal more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion
of the actual soil of the County of Essex.
LENOX, January 27, 1851.
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
I.
The Old Pyncheon Family
Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty
wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various
points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The
street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an
elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to
every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my
occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down
Pyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these
two antiquities,—the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice.
The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human
countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and
sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and
accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be
worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest
and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity,
which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement. But the
story would include a chain of events extending over the better part of
two centuries, and, written out with reasonable amplitude, would fill a
bigger folio volume, or a longer series of duodecimos, than could
prudently be appropriated to the annals of all New England during a
similar period. It consequently becomes imperative to make short work
with most of the traditionary lore of which the old Pyncheon House,
otherwise known as the House of the Seven Gables, has been the theme.
With a brief sketch, therefore, of the circumstances amid which the
foundation of the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse at its quaint
exterior, as it grew black in the prevalent east wind,—pointing, too,
here and there, at some spot of more verdant mossiness on its roof and
walls,—we shall commence the real action of our tale at an epoch not
very remote from the present day. Still, there will be a connection
with the long past—a reference to forgotten events and personages, and
to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete—which, if
adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much
of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life.
Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-regarded
truth, that the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and
must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together
with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term
expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth,
which may darkly overshadow their posterity.
The House of the Seven Gables, antique as it now looks, was not the
first habitation erected by civilized man on precisely the same spot of
ground. Pyncheon Street formerly bore the humbler appellation of
Maule’s Lane, from the name of the original occupant of the soil,
before whose cottage-door it was a cow-path. A natural spring of soft
and pleasant water—a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the
Puritan settlement was made—had early induced Matthew Maule to build a
hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote
from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of the
town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by
this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a
prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to the
proprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land, on the
strength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pyncheon, the
claimant, as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, was
characterized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on the other
hand, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what he
considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded in
protecting the acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he had
hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his garden ground and homestead.
No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence. Our
acquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition.
It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to venture a decisive
opinion as to its merits; although it appears to have been at least a
matter of doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon’s claim were not unduly
stretched, in order to make it cover the small metes and bounds of
Matthew Maule. What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is the fact
that this controversy between two ill-matched antagonists—at a period,
moreover, laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more
weight than now—remained for years undecided, and came to a close only
with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The mode of
his death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day, from what it
did a century and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange
horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem
almost a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of his
habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from among men.
Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft.
He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach
us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who
take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to
all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.
Clergymen, judges, statesmen,—the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of
their day stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to
applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably
deceived. If any one part of their proceedings can be said to deserve
less blame than another, it was the singular indiscrimination with
which they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged, as in former
judicial massacres, but people of all ranks; their own equals,
brethren, and wives. Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is not
strange that a man of inconsiderable note, like Maule, should have
trodden the martyr’s path to the hill of execution almost unremarked in
the throng of his fellow sufferers. But, in after days, when the frenzy
of that hideous epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly
Colonel Pyncheon had joined in the general cry, to purge the land from
witchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered, that there was an
invidious acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought the
condemnation of Matthew Maule. It was well known that the victim had
recognized the bitterness of personal enmity in his persecutor’s
conduct towards him, and that he declared himself hunted to death for
his spoil. At the moment of execution—with the halter about his neck,
and while Colonel Pyncheon sat on horseback, grimly gazing at the scene
Maule had addressed him from the scaffold, and uttered a prophecy, of
which history, as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the very
words. “God,” said the dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly
look, at the undismayed countenance of his enemy,—“God will give him
blood to drink!”
After the reputed wizard’s death, his humble homestead had fallen an
easy spoil into Colonel Pyncheon’s grasp. When it was understood,
however, that the Colonel intended to erect a family mansion—spacious,
ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated to endure for many
generations of his posterity over the spot first covered by the
log-built hut of Matthew Maule, there was much shaking of the head
among the village gossips. Without absolutely expressing a doubt
whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience and
integrity throughout the proceedings which have been sketched, they,