Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) (747 page)

This would seem to have been also Hawthorne's position in regard to religious faith. What do we know of the religious belief of Michel Angelo, of Shakespeare, or of Beethoven? We cannot doubt that they were sincerely and purely religious men; but neither of them made any confession of their faith. Vittoria Colonna may have known something of Michel Angelo's belief, but Vasari does not mention it; and Beethoven confessed it was a subject that he did not like to talk about. The deeper a man's sense of the awe and mystery which underlies Nature, the less he feels inclined to expose it to the public gaze. Hawthorne's own family did not know what his religious opinions were — only that he was religious. One may imagine that the reticent man would be more reticent on this subject than on any other; but we can feel confident that at least he was not a sceptic, for the confirmed sceptic inevitably becomes a chatterer. He walks to Walden Pond with Hillard and Emerson on Sunday, and confesses his doubts as to the utility of the Church (in its condition at that time), for spiritual enlightenment; but in regard to the great omnipresent fact of spirituality he has no doubt. In “The Snow Image” he makes a statue come to life, and says in conclusion that if a new miracle is ever wrought in this world it will be in some such simple manner as he has described.

To the poetic mind, which is after all the highest form of intellect, the grand fact of existence is a sufficient miracle. The rising of the sun, the changes of the seasons, the blooming of flowers and the ripening of the grain, were all miracles to Hawthorne, and none the less so because they are continually being repeated. The scientists tell us that all these happen according to natural laws: perfectly true, but WHO was it that made those laws? WHO is it that keeps the universe running? Laws made for the regulation of human affairs by the wisest of men often prove ineffective, and inadequate to the purpose for which they were intended; but the laws of Nature work with unfailing accuracy. The boy solves his problem in algebra, finding out the unknown quantity by those values which are given him; and can we not also infer something of the
unknown
from the great panorama that passes unceasingly before us? The one thing that Hawthorne could not have understood was, how gifted minds like Lucretius and Auguste Comte could recognize only the evidence of their senses, and deliberately blind themselves to the evidence of their intellects. He who denies the existence of mind as a reality resembles a person looking for his spectacles when they are on his nose; but it is the imagination of the poet that leads civilization onward to its goal.

College life is rather generally followed by a period of scepticism, partly owing in former times to the enforced attendance at morning prayers, and still more perhaps to the study of Greek and Latin authors. During what might be called Hawthorne's period of despair, he could not very well have obtained consolation from the traditional forms of divine worship; at least, such has been the experience of all those who have passed through the Wertherian stage, so far as we know of them. It is a time when every man has to strike the fountain of spiritual life out of the hard rock of his own existence; and those are fortunate who, like Moses and Hawthorne, strike forcibly enough to accomplish this. It is the “new birth from above,” in the light of which religious forms seem of least importance.

One effect of matrimony is commonly a deepening of religious feeling, but it is not surprising that Hawthorne should not have attended church after his marriage. His wife had not been accustomed to church-going, on account of the uncertainty of her health; the Old Manse was a long distance from the Concord tabernacle; Hawthorne's associates in Concord, with the exception of Judge Keyes, were not in the habit of going to church; and the officiating minister, both at that time and during his later sojourn, was not a person who could have been intellectually attractive to him. Somewhat similar reasons may have interfered with his attendance after his return to Salem; and during the last fifteen years of his life, he was too much of a wanderer to take a serious interest in the local affairs of the various places he inhabited; but he was desirous that his children should go to church and should be brought up in honest Christian ways.

Little more need to be said concerning Hawthorne's character as a man. It was not so perfect as Longfellow's, to whom all other American authors should bow the head in this respect — the Washington of poets; and yet it was a rare example of purity, refinement, and patient endurance. His faults were insignificant in comparison with his virtues, and the most conspicuous of them, his tendency to revenge himself for real or fancied injuries, is but a part of the natural instinct in us to return the blows we receive in self-defence. Wantonly, and of his own accord, he never injured human being. His domestic life was as pure and innocent as that which appeared before the world; and Mrs. Hawthorne once said of him in my presence that she did not believe he ever committed an act that could properly be considered wrong. It was like his writing, and his “wells of English undefiled” were but as a synonym for the clear current of his daily existence.

The ideality in Hawthorne's face was so conspicuous that it is recognizable in every portrait of him. It was not the cold visionary expression of the abstract thinker, but a human poetic intelligence, which resolved all things into a spiritual alembic of its own. It is this which elevates him above all writers who only deal with the outer world as they find it, and add nothing to it from their own natures.

George Brandes, the Danish critic and essayist, speaks of Hawthorne somewhere as “the baby poet;” but we suspect that if he had ever met the living Hawthorne, he would have stood very much in awe of him. It would not have been like meeting Ernest Rénan or John Stuart Mill. Although Hawthorne was not splenetic or rash, there was an occasional look in his eye which a prudent person might beware of. He was emphatically a man of courage.

The wide and liberal interest which German scholars and writers have so long taken in the literature of other nations, has resulted in founding an informal literary tribunal in Germany, to which the rest of the world is accustomed to appeal. A. E. Schönbach, one of the most recent German writers on universal literature, gives his impression of Hawthorne in the following statement:

“I find the distinguishing excellence of Hawthorne's imaginative writings in the union of profound, keen, psychological development of characters and problems with the most lucid objectivity and a joyous modern realism. Occasionally there appears a light and delicate humor, sometimes hidden in a mere adjective, or little phrase which lights up the gloomiest situation with a gentle ray of hope. Far from unimportant do I rate the charm of his language, its purity, its melody, its graceful flexibility, the wealth of vocabulary, the polish which rarely betrays the touch of the file. After, or with George Eliot, Hawthorne is the first English prose writer of our century. At the same time he sacrifices nothing of his peculiar American quality. Not only does he penetrate into the most secret inner movements of the old colonial life, as no one else has done, and reproduces the spirit of his forefathers with a power of intuition which no historical work could equal; but in all his other works, from the biography of General Pierce, to the 'Marble Faun,' Hawthorne shows the freshness and keenness, the precision and lucidity, and other qualities not easy to describe, which belong to American literature. He is its chief representative.” [Footnote: “Gesammelte Aufsatze zur neueren Litteratur,” p. 346.]

Hawthorne has always been accorded a high position in literature, and as time goes on I believe this will be increased rather than diminished. In beauty of diction he is the first of American writers, and there are few that equal him in this respect in other languages. It is a pleasure to read him, simply for his form of expression, and apart from the meaning which he conveys in his sentences. It is like the grace of the Latin races, — like Dante and Chateaubriand; and the adaptation of his words is so perfect that we never have to think twice for his meaning. In those editions called the Elzevirs, which are so much prized by book collectors, the clearness and legibility of the type result from such a fine proportion of space and line that no other printer has succeeded in imitating it; and there is something similar to this in the construction of Hawthorne's sentences.

He is the romance writer of the English language; and there is no form of literature which the human race prizes more. How many translations there have been of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and of “The Sorrows of Werther”! The latter is not one of Goethe's best, and yet it made him famous at the age of twenty-eight. The novel deals with what is new and surprising; the romance with what is old and universal. In “The Vicar of Wakefield” we have the old story of virtue outwitted by evil, which is in its turn outwitted by wisdom. There is nothing new in it except the charming exposition which Goldsmith's genius has given to the subject. Thackeray ridiculed “The Sorrows of Werther,” and in the light of matured judgment the tale appears ridiculous; but it strikes home to the heart, because we all learn wisdom through such experiences, of which young Werther's is an extreme instance. It was only another example of the close relation that subsists between comedy and tragedy.

It cannot be questioned that “The Scarlet Letter” ranks above “The Sorrows of Werther;” nor is it less evident that “The Marble Faun” falls short of “Wilhelm Meister” and “Don Quixote.” [Footnote: See “Cervantes” in
North American Review
, May, 1905] Hawthorne's position, therefore, lies between these two — nearer perhaps to “Werther” than to “Wilhelm Meister.” In certain respects he is surpassed by the great English novelists: Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens and Marian Evans; but he in turn surpasses them all in the perfection and poetic quality of his art. There is much poetry in Scott and Dickens, a little also in Thackeray and Miss Evans, but Hawthorne's poetic vein has a more penetrating tone, and appeals more deeply than Scott's verses. If power and versatility of characterization were to be the test of imaginative writing, Dickens would push closely on to Shakespeare; but we do not go to Shakespeare to read about Hamlet or Falstaff, or for the sake of the story, or even for his wisdom, but for the
tout ensemble
— to read Shakespeare. Raphael painted a dozen or more pictures on the same subject, but they are all original, interesting and valuable, because Raphael painted them. If it were not for the odd characters and variety of incident in Dickens's novels they would hardly be worth reading. Hawthorne's
dramatis personæ
is not a long one, for his plots do not admit of it, but his characters are finely drawn, and the fact that they have not become popular types is rather in their favor. There are Dombeys and Shylocks in plenty, but who has ever met a Hamlet or a Rosalind in real life?

A certain English writer promulgated a list of the hundred superior authors of all times and countries. There were no Americans in his catalogue, but he admitted that if the number was increased to one hundred and eighteen Hawthorne and Emerson might be included in it. Doubtless he had not heard of Webster or Alexander Hamilton, and many of his countrymen would be inclined to place Longfellow before Emerson.

I have myself frequently counted over the great writers of all times and languages, weighing their respective values carefully in my mind, but I have never been able to discover more than thirty-five authors who seem to me decidedly superior to Hawthorne, nor above forty others who might be placed on an equality with him. [Footnote: Appendix C.] This, of course, is only an individual opinion, and should be accepted for what it is worth; but there are many ancient writers, like Hesiod, Xenophon, and Catullus, whose chief value resides in their antiquity, and a much larger number of modern authors, such as Balzac, Victor Hugo, Freytag, and Ruskin, who have been over-estimated in their own time. Petrarch, and the author of “Gil Bias,” might be placed on a level with Hawthorne, but certainly not above him. Those whom he most closely resembles in style and subject matter are Goldsmith, Manzoni, and Auerbach.

Yet Hawthorne is essentially a domestic writer, — a poetizer of the hearth-stone. Social life is always the proper subject for works of fiction, and political life should never enter into them, except as a subordinate element; but there is a border-land between the two, in which politics and society act and react on each other, and it is from this field that the great subjects for epic and dramatic poetry have always been reaped. Hawthorne only knew of this by hearsay. Of the strenuous conflict that continually goes on in political centres like London and New York, a struggle for wealth, for honor, and precedence; of plots and counterplots, of foiled ambition and ruined reputations, — with all this Hawthorne had but slight acquaintance. We miss in him the masculine vigor of Fielding, the humanity of Dickens, and the trenchant criticism of Thackeray; but he knew that the true poetry of life (at the present time) was to be found in quiet nooks and in places far off from the turbulent maelstrom of humanity, and in his own line he remains unrivalled.

PORTRAITS OF HAWTHORNE

Hawthorne had no more vanity in his nature than is requisite to preserve a good appearance in public, but he always sat for his portrait when asked to do so, and this was undoubtedly the most sensible way. He was first painted by Charles Osgood in 1840, a portrait which has at least the merit of a fine poetic expression. He was afterward painted by Thompson, Healy, and Emanuel Leutze, and drawn in crayon by Rowse and Eastman Johnson. Frances Osborne also painted a portrait of him from photographs in 1893, an excellent likeness, and notable especially for its far-off gaze. Of all these, Rowse's portrait is the finest work of art, for Rowse was a man of genius, but there is a slight tendency to exaggeration in it, and it does not afford so clear an idea of Hawthorne as he was, as the Osborne portrait. Healy was not very successful with Hawthorne, and Miss Lander's bust has no merit whatever. The following list contains most of the portraits and photographs of Hawthorne now known to exist, with their respective ownerships and locations.