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The Peabodys of Salem then invited the author to their home, where he met the artistic Miss Sophia Peabody,
who made an illustration for his fine historical story, The Gentle Boy. Of her he wrote, "She is a flower to be
worn in no man's bosom, but was lent from Heaven to show the possibilities of the human soul." We find that
not long after he wrote in his _American Note-Books_:--
"All that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream,--till the heart be touched. That
touch creates us,--then we begin to be,--thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity."
He was thinking of Sophia Peabody's creative touch, for he had become engaged to her.
[Illustration: 'THE OLD MANSE,' HAWTHORNE'S FIRST CONCORD HOME]
Fired with the ambition of making enough money to enable him to marry, he secured a subordinate position in
the Boston customhouse, from which the spoils system was soon responsible for his discharge. He then
invested in Brook Farm a thousand dollars which he had saved, thinking that this would prove a home to
which he could bring his future wife and combine work and writing in an ideal way. A year's trial of this life
convinced him of his mistake. He was then thirty eight, and much poorer for his last experiment; but he
withdrew and in a few months married Miss Peabody and took her to live in the famous Old Manse at
Concord. The first entry in his _American Note-Books_ after this transforming event is:--
CHAPTER IV 88
"And what is there to write about? Happiness has no succession of events, because it is a part of eternity, and
we have been living in eternity ever since we came to this old manse. Like Enoch we seem to have been
translated to the other state of being, without having passed through death."
The history of American literature can record no happier marriage and no more idyllic life than this couple
lived for nearly four years in the Old Manse. While residing here, Hawthorne wrote another volume, known as
Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). The only serpent to enter that Eden was poverty. Hawthorne's pen could
not support his family. He found himself in debt before he had finished his fourth year in Concord. Moncure
D. Conway, writing Hawthorne's Life in 1890, the year before American authors were protected by
international copyright, says, "In no case has literature, pure and simple, ever supported an American author,
unless, possibly, if he were a bachelor." Hawthorne's college friends, Bridge and Pierce, came to his
assistance, and used their influence with President Polk to secure for Hawthorne the position of surveyor of
customs at Salem, with a yearly salary of twelve hundred dollars.
HIS PRIME AND LATER YEARS.--He kept his position as head customs officer at Salem for three years.
Soon after President Taylor was inaugurated in 1849, the spoils system again secured Hawthorne's removal.
When he came home dejected with this news, his wife smiled and said, "Oh, then you can write your book!"
The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, was the result. The publisher printed five thousand copies, all that he
had ever expected to sell, and then ordered the type to be distributed at once. Finding in ten days, however,
that every copy had been sold, he gave the order to have the type reset and permanent plates made. Hawthorne
had at last, at the age of forty-six, become one of the greatest writers of English prose romance. From this
time he wrote but few short tales.
He left Salem in the year of the publication of The Scarlet Letter, never again to return to it as a place of
residence, although his pen continued to help immortalize his birthplace.
In 1852 he bought of Bronson Alcott in Concord a house since known as the "Wayside." This was to be
Hawthorne's American home during his remaining years. Here he had a tower room so constructed as to be
well-nigh inaccessible to visitors, and he also had a romantic study bower built in the pine trees on a hill back
of his house.
[Illustration: HAWTHORNE'S PINE STUDY, CONCORD]
His college friend, Pierce, was inaugurated President of the United States in 1853, and he appointed
Hawthorne consul at Liverpool. This consulship then netted the holder between $5000 and $7000 a year. After
nearly four years' service in this position, he resigned and traveled in Europe with his family. They lived in
Rome sufficiently long for him to absorb the local color for his romance of The Marble Faun. He remained
abroad for seven years. The record of his travels and impressions may be found in his _English Note-Books_
and in his _French and Italian Note-Books_. Our Old Home, a volume based on his _English Note-Books_,
is a more finished account of his thoughts and experiences in England.
In 1860 he returned quietly to his Concord home. His health was failing, but he promised to write for the
Atlantic Monthly another romance, called The Dolliver Romance. This, however, was never finished, and The
Marble Faun remains the last of his great romances. His health continued to fail, and in May, 1864, Pierce,
thinking that a trip might prove beneficial, started with him on a journey to the White Mountains. Hawthorne
retired for the night at the hotel in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and the next morning Pierce found that
Hawthorne's wish of dying unawares in his sleep had been gratified. He had passed away before the
completion of his fifty-ninth year. He was buried underneath the pines in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery at
Concord. His classmate, Longfellow, wrote:--
"There in seclusion and remote from men, The wizard hand lies cold."
CHAPTER IV 89
"TWICE TOLD TALES" AND "MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE."--Many do not realize that these two
volumes contain eighty-two tales or sketches and that they represent the most of Hawthorne's surviving
literary work for the first forty-five years of his life. The title for _Twice-Told Tales_ (1837) was probably
suggested by the line from Shakespeare's _King John:_ "Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale." The second
volume, Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), took its name from Hawthorne's first Concord home. His last
collection is called _The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales_ (1851). Each one of these volumes
contains some of his short-story masterpieces, although, taken as a whole, the collection in Mosses from an
Old Manse shows the greatest power and artistic finish.
The so-called tales in these volumes are of several different types. (1) There is the story which presents
chiefly allegorical or symbolic truth, such as _Rappacini's Daughter, The Great Stone Face, The Birthmark,
The Artist of the Beautiful, and The Snow Image._ The last story, one of the greatest of this class, relates how
two children make a companion out of a snow image, how Jack Frost and the pure west wind endow this
image with life and give them a little "snow sister." She grows more vigorous with every life-giving breath
inhaled from the west wind. She extends her hands to the snow-birds, and they joyously flock to her. The
father of these children is a deadly literal man. No tale of fairy, no story of dryad, of Aladdin's lamp, or of
winged sandal had ever carried magical meaning to his unimaginative literal mind, and he proceeds to
disenchant the children. Like Nathan the prophet, Hawthorne wished to say, "Thou art the man," to some tens
of thousands of stupid destroyers of those ideals which bring something of Eden back to our everyday lives.
This story, like so many of the others, was written with a moral purpose. There are to-day people who
measure their acquaintances by their estimates of this allegorical story.
(2) Another type of Hawthorne's stories illustrates the history of New England. Such are The Gentle Boy, The [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
