Dark Tales (With Original Illustrations). Nathaniel Hawthorne

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СКАЧАТЬ would find not only milder air, but also friends in the minister and his wife. She sailed with her daughters in October, 1855, and returned in the following June.

      Wearisome as the details of his office duty were to him, Hawthorne gave them more than a perfunctory attention. He became greatly aroused by the wrongs and cruelties endured by sailors on the high seas, and sent a long despatch on that subject to the Secretary of State, suggesting action for their relief. He even investigated such minutiæ as the candles used in the British navy, and sent samples of them to Bridge, thinking that it might be desirable to compare them with those in use on American war-ships. Opportunities, however, had occurred for several trips in various directions, to Wales, Furness Abbey, and the Lakes. London was visited just before Mrs. Hawthorne sailed; and during her absence he again went to the capital, and made a tour which included Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Newcastle, and Salisbury. A few days before her expected return, he said in a letter to Bridge that unless she should prove to be perfectly free from the cough which had troubled her, "I shall make arrangements to give up the consulate in the latter part of autumn, and we will be off for Italy. I wish I were a little richer; but when I compare my situation with what it was before I wrote 'The Scarlet Letter,' I have reason to be satisfied with my run of luck. And, to say the truth, I had rather not be too prosperous: it may be a superstition, but it seems to me that the bitter is very apt to come with the sweet, and bright sunshine casts a dark shadow; so I content myself with a moderate portion of sugar, and about as much sunshine as that of an English summer's day. In this view of the matter, I am disposed to thank God for the gloom and chill of my early life, in the hope that my share of adversity came then, when I bore it alone; and that therefore it need not come now, when the cloud would involve those whom I love.

      "I make my plans to return to America in about two years from this time. For my own part, I should be willing to stay abroad much longer, and perhaps even to settle in Italy; but the children must not be kept away so long as to lose their American characteristics; otherwise they will be exiles and outcasts through life."

      The presidential convention of the democratic party was held early in the summer of 1856, and Buchanan, then minister at the Court of St. James, became the candidate. Pierce had also been in the field, but was defeated, and concerning this circumstance Hawthorne wrote, characteristically: "I am sorry Frank has not the nomination, if he wished it. Otherwise, I am glad he is out of the scrape."

      During the earlier part of his consulship, Hawthorne leased a pleasant dwelling at Rock Ferry, on the opposite side of the Mersey from Liverpool, where he was able to live without going much into society; and while Mrs. Hawthorne was in Portugal, he occupied simple quarters at a boarding-house. Afterwards he settled at Southport for a number of months, in a furnished house. He formed but one intimate friendship, that which attached him to Mr. Henry Bright, a gentleman engaged in business, but gifted with a quick and sympathetic mind and a taste for literature. In London his chief friend was Mr. Francis Bennoch, also a merchant, who consorted much with people of creative genius, and delighted to gather them at his table, where they were entertained with a cordial and charming hospitality. Mr. Bright and Mr. Bennoch have each published a book since then; but although Hawthorne met many persons eminent in literature, and enjoyed meeting them, it was not with any of their number that he formed the closest ties.

      With relief he heard in April, 1857, that his resignation had been accepted. "Dear Bridge," he wrote, "I have received your letter, and the not unwelcome intelligence that there is another Liverpool consul now in existence.... I am going to Paris in a day or two, with my wife and children, and shall leave them there while I return here to await my successor." He then thanked Bridge for a newspaper paragraph which the latter had caused to be printed, explaining Hawthorne's position in resigning. "I was somewhat apprehensive that my resignation would have been misunderstood," he proceeded, "in consequence of a letter of General Cass to Lord Napier, in which he intimated that any consul found delinquent in certain matters should be compelled to retire.... But for your paragraph, I should have thought it necessary to enlighten the public on the true state of the case as regards the treatment of seamen on our merchant vessels, and I do not know but I may do it yet; in which case I shall prove that General Cass made a most deplorable mistake in the above-mentioned letter to Lord Napier. I shall send the despatch to Ticknor, at any rate, for publication if necessary. I expect great pleasure during my stay on the Continent, and shall come home at last somewhat reluctantly. Your pledge on my behalf of a book shall be honored in good time, if God pleases."

      The intention of taking his family at once to Paris was given up, and instead Hawthorne went with them to Manchester, the Lakes, and Scotland, and made a pilgrimage to Warwick and Coventry, besides visiting many other places. The new consul, however, postponed his coming until near the end of 1857. Not before January, 1858, did Hawthorne break away from the fascinations of England and cross to the Continent. When, after spending more than a year and a half in Italy, he again set foot in England, it was to establish himself at Redcar, a sea-side town in Yorkshire, where he finished "The Marble Faun" in October, 1859; and thence he betook himself to Leamington, which had greatly pleased him on a previous visit. Here his old friend, Mr. Hillard, called upon him; and in an article printed in the "Atlantic Monthly," in 1870, he says: "The writer of this notice, who confesses to an insatiable passion for the possession of books, and an omnivorous appetite for their contents, was invited by him into his study, the invitation being accompanied with one of his peculiar and indescribable smiles, in which there lurked a consciousness of his (the writer's) weakness. The study was a small square room, with a table and chair, but absolutely not a single book. He liked writing better than reading." Mr. Hillard's implication, however, is a misleading one. "Hawthorne," says Mr. Fields, "was a hearty devourer of books, and in certain moods of mind it made very little difference what the volume before him happened to be.... He once told me that he found such delight in old advertisements in the newspaper files at the Boston Athenæum, that he had passed delicious hours among them. At other times he was very fastidious, and threw aside book after book, until he found the right one. De Quincey was a favorite with him, and the sermons of Laurence Sterne he once commended to me as the best sermons ever written." His correspondence was not "literary," to be sure; but in his letters to Mr. Fields, who had to do so especially with books, occasional references to literature escape him, which did not ordinarily find their way into his letters to other people. From England, in 1854, he wrote to that gentleman: "I thank you for the books you sent me, and more especially for Mrs. Mowatt's 'Autobiography,' which seems to me an admirable book. Of all things I delight in autobiographies; and I hardly ever read one that interested me so much." He did not read for erudition or for criticism, but he certainly read much, and books were companions to him. I have seen several catalogues of libraries which Hawthorne had marked carefully, proving that, although he made no annotations, he had studied the titles with a natural reader's loving fondness. His stay at Leamington was but a brief one, and for that reason he may well have been without books in his study at the moment; he never crowded them about himself, in the rooms where he worked, but his tower-study at The Wayside always contained a few volumes, and a few small pictures and ornaments—enough to relieve his eye or suggest a refreshment to his mind, without distracting him from composition or weakening the absorbed intensity of his thought.

      The only approach to literary exertion made at Liverpool seems to have been the revision of the "Mosses from an Old Manse," for a reissue at the hands of Ticknor & Fields; employment which led to some reflections upon his own earlier works.

      "I am very glad that the 'Mosses' have come into the hands of our firm; and I return the copy sent me, after a careful revision. When I wrote those dreamy sketches, I little thought I should ever preface an edition for the press amid the bustling life of a Liverpool consulate. Upon my honor, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning, in some of those blasted allegories; but I remember that I always had a meaning, or at least thought I had. I am a good deal changed since those times; and, to tell you the truth, my past self is not very much to my taste, as I see myself in this book. Yet certainly there is more in it than the public generally gave me credit for at the time it was written.

      "But I don't think myself worthy of very much more credit than СКАЧАТЬ