Dark Tales (With Original Illustrations). Nathaniel Hawthorne

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СКАЧАТЬ the joyful thing is that Julian is too young. He drills constantly with a company of lads, and means to enlist as soon as he reaches the minimum age. But I trust we shall either be victorious or vanquished by that time. Meantime, though I approve the war as much as any man, I don't quite see what we are fighting for or what definite result can be expected. If we pommel the South ever so hard, they will love us none the better for it; and even if we subjugate them, our next step should be to cut them adrift, if we are fighting for the annihilation of slavery. To be sure, it may be a wise object, and offers a tangible result and the only one which is consistent with a future union between North and South. A continuance of the war would soon make this plain to us, and we should see the expediency of preparing our black brethren for future citizenship, by allowing them to fight for their own liberties and educating them through heroic influences. Whatever happens next, I must say that I rejoice that the old Union is smashed. We never were one people, and never really had a country since the Constitution was formed."

      Thus, then, Hawthorne, who had been brought up politically within the democratic party and thrice held office under its régime, had reached the conclusion, four years in advance of the event, that it was time for the North to "make a stand"; and now, while muskets rattled their grim prelude to a long and deadly conflict, he planted himself firmly on the side of the government—was among the first, moreover, to resolve upon that policy of arming the negroes, which was so bitterly opposed and so slow of adoption among even progressive reformers at the North. In his solitude, out of the current of affairs, trying to pursue his own peaceful, artistic calling, and little used to making utterances on public questions, it was not incumbent upon him nor proper to his character to blazon his beliefs where every one could see them. But, these private expressions being unknown, his silence was construed against him. One more reference to the war, occurring in a letter of October 12, 1861, to Lieutenant Bridge, should be recorded in this place:—

      "I am glad you take such a hopeful view of our national prospects, so far as regards the war.... For my part, I don't hope (nor indeed wish) to see the Union restored as it was; amputation seems to me much the better plan, and all we ought to fight for is the liberty of selecting the point where our diseased members shall be lopped off. I would fight to the death for the Northern Slave-States, and let the rest go.... I have not found it possible to occupy my mind with its usual trash and nonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances, I find myself sitting down to my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper, as of yore. Very likely I may have something ready for the public long before the public is ready to receive it."

      It will be seen that he was not hopeful as to the restoration of the entire Union, adhered to his first view indeed, that the scission of a part would be preferable. In declining a cordial invitation from Bridge to come to Washington, in February, 1862, he gave renewed emphasis to this opinion. "I am not very well," he said, "being mentally and physically languid; but I suppose there is an even chance that the trip and change of scene might supply the energy which I lack." He announced that he had begun a new romance, and then turning to the questions of the day, remarked that he "should not much regret an ultimate separation," and that soon; adding that if a strong Union sentiment should not set in at the South, we ought to resolve ourselves into two nations at once. He was evidently growing despondent; a fact which may have been due in part to the physical and mental languor of which he told his friend. Misfortune had once more entered his household; for one of his children was suffering from a peculiarly distressing malady, which imposed a heavy strain upon his nerves and troubled his heart. More than this, he mourned over the multitude of private griefs which he saw or apprehended on every side—griefs resulting from the slaughter that was going on at the seat of war—as acutely as if they had been his own losses. He could not shut out, by any wall of patriotic fire, the terrible shapes of fierce passion and the pathetic apparitions of those whose lives had been blasted by the tragedies of the field. His health, we have already noticed, had begun to falter while he was still abroad. Neither was he free from pecuniary anxieties. He had laid up a modest accumulation from his earnings in the consulate; but the additions to his house, unambitious though they were, had cost a sum which was large in proportion to his resources; the expense of living was increased by the war, and his pen was for the time being not productive. His income from his books was always scanty. He was too scrupulous to be willing to draw upon the principal which had been invested for the future support of his family; and there were times when he was harassed by the need of money. All these causes conspired to reduce his strength; but the omnipresent misery of the war, and the destruction of the Union, which he believed to be inevitable, were perhaps the chief adverse factors in the case. "Hawthorne's life," Mr. Lowell has said to me, "was shortened by the war."

      The romance mentioned as having been begun during this winter of 1861-62, was probably "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret," the first scheme of which appears as "The Ancestral Footstep;" and it was afterwards merged in "Septimius Felton." Hawthorne, however, did not make satisfactory progress with this work; and throughout the summer of 1862 he seems to have given such energies as he could command to the preparation of the chapters of travel subsequently collected under the title, "Our Old Home." The latter volume appeared at a time of fervid, nay, violent public excitement, caused by the critical state of military matters, the unpopularity of the draft, the increasing boldness of the democratic party at the North in opposing the war and demanding its cessation. To Hawthorne it appeared no more than just that he should dedicate his book to the friend whose public act, in sending him abroad in the government service, had made it possible for him to gather the materials he had embodied in these reminiscences. But his publisher, Mr. Fields, knowing that ex-President Pierce was very generally held to be culpable for his deference towards Southern leaders who had done much to bring on the war, and that he was ranked among the men who were ready to vote against continuing the attempt to conquer the Confederacy, foresaw the clamor which would be raised against Hawthorne if, at such a moment, he linked his name publicly with that of Pierce. He remonstrated upon the proposed dedication. But Hawthorne was not to be turned aside from his purpose by any dread of an outcry which he considered unjust. "I find," he replied, "that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory letter, ... and if he [Pierce] is so exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the volume, there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by him. I cannot, merely on account of pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go back from what I have deliberately felt and thought it right to do; and if I were to tear out the dedication, I should never look at the volume again without remorse and shame.... If the public of the North see fit to ostracize me for this, I can only say that I would gladly sacrifice a thousand or two of dollars rather than retain the good-will of such a herd of dolts and mean-spirited scoundrels." The language did not lack vigor and warmth; but Dr. Loring has stated that he spoke of the matter to the same effect, "not in the heat of passion, but with a calm and generous courage." The dedicatory letter was printed, of course, and drew down upon Hawthorne abundant condemnation; but he had maintained his integrity.

      The shock of such an accident was by no means the right sort of tonic for a man of Hawthorne's sensitive disposition when he was already feeble and almost ill. In April, 1862, he had been to Washington, and the things that impressed him there were noted down in an "Atlantic Monthly" paper, entitled "Chiefly About War Matters." At Washington, also, Leutze painted a portrait of him for General Pierce. In July, he took a brief trip with his son to the Maine coast, and began a new journal. There were no other changes of scene for him; the monotony of his life at The Wayside was seldom broken. That this period was for him one of unmitigated gloom cannot truthfully be predicated; he enjoyed his home, he had the society of his wife and children; he had many small and quiet pleasures. But there was likewise much to make him sorrowful, and the tide of vitality was steadily ebbing away. In May, 1863, James Russell Lowell invited him to Elmwood, and Hawthorne agreed to go, but he was finally prevented from doing so by a troublesome cold. The slow and mysterious disease, which was to prove fatal within a year, continued to make inroads upon his constitution. After the publication of "Our Old Home," in the autumn of 1863, there is no certain record of his condition or his proceedings, beyond this, that he went on declining, and that—having abandoned the two preceding phases of his new fiction—he attempted to write the resultant form of it, which was to have been brought out as "The Dolliver Romance."

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