The kernel of "The Marble Faun" is _original sin_. It is a story of the fall of man, told again in the light of modern science. It is a wonderful coincidence that almost in the same months that Hawthorne was writing this romance, Charles Darwin was also finishing his work on the "Origin of Species;" for one is the moral counterpart of the other.
Hawthorne did not read scientific and philosophical books, but he may have heard something of Darwin"s undertaking in England, as well as Napoleon"s prophetic statement at St. Helena, that all the animals form an ascending series, leading up to man. [Footnote: Dr. O"Meara"s "A Voice from St. Helena."] The skeleton of a prehistoric man discovered in the Neanderthal cave, which was supposed to have proved the Darwinian theory, does not suggest a figure similar to the "Faun" of Praxiteles, but the followers of Darwin have frequently adverted to the h.e.l.lenic traditions of fauns and satyrs in support of their theory. Hawthorne, however, has made a long stride beyond Darwin, for he has endeavored to reconcile this view of creation with the Mosaic cosmogony; and it must be admitted that he has been fairly successful. The lesson that Hawthorne teaches is, that evil does not reside in error, but in neglecting to be instructed by our errors. It is this which makes the difference between a St. Paul and a Nero. The fall of man was only apparent; it was really a rise in life. The Garden of Eden prefigures the childhood of the human race. Do we not all go through this idyllic moral condition in childhood, learning through our errors that the only true happiness consists in self-control? Do not all judicious parents protect their children from a knowledge of the world"s wickedness, so long as it is possible to prevent it,--and yet not too long, for then they would become unfitted for their struggle with the world, and in order to avoid the pitfalls of mature life they must know where the pitfalls are. It is no longer essential for the individual to pa.s.s through the Cain and Abel experience--that has been accomplished by the race as a whole; but it is quite possible to imagine an incipient condition of society in which the distinction of justifiable homicide in self-defence (which is really the justification of war between nations) has not yet obtained.
Hawthorne"s Donatello is supposed to belong, in theory at least, to that primitive era; but it is not necessary to go back further than the feudal period to look for a man who never has known a will above his own. Donatello seizes Miriam"s tormentor and casts him down the Tarpeian Rock,--from the same instinct, or clairvoyant perception, that a hound springs at the throat of his master"s enemy. When the deed is done he recognizes that the punishment is out of all proportion to the offence,--which is in itself the primary recognition of a penal code,--and more especially that the judgment of man is against him. He realizes for the first time the fearful possibilities of his nature, and begins to reflect. He is a changed person; and if not changed for the better yet with a possibility of great improvement in the future. His act was at least an unselfish one, and it might serve as the argument for a debate, whether Donatello did not do society a service in ridding the earth of such a human monstrosity. Hawthorne has adjusted the moral balance of his case so nicely, that a single scruple would turn the scales.
The tradition among the Greeks and Romans, of a Golden Age, corresponds in a manner to the Garden of Eden of Semitic belief. There may be some truth in it. Captain Speke, while exploring the sources of the Nile, discovered in central Africa a negro tribe uncontaminated by European traders, and as innocent of guile as the antelopes upon their own plains; and this suggests to us that all families and races of men may have pa.s.sed through the Donatello stage of existence.
Hawthorne"s master-stroke in the romance is his description or a.n.a.lysis of the effect produced by this homicide on the different members of the group to which he has introduced us. The experienced and worldly-wise Kenyon is not informed of the deed until his engagement to Hilda, but he has sufficient reason to suspect something of the kind from the simultaneous disappearance of Donatello and the model, as well as from the sudden change in Miriam"s behavior. Yet he does not treat Donatello with any lack of confidence. He visits him at his castle of Monte Beni, which is simply the Villa Manteuto somewhat idealized and removed into the recesses of the Apennines; he consoles him in his melancholy humor; tries to divert him from gloomy thoughts; and meanwhile watches with a keen eye and friendly solicitude for the _denouement_ of this mysterious drama. If he had seen what Hilda saw, he would probably have left Rome as quickly as possible, never to return; and Donatello"s fate might have been different.
The effect on the sensitive and inexperienced Hilda was like a horrible nightmare. She cannot believe her senses, and yet she has to believe them. It seems to her as if the fiery pit has yawned between her and the rest of the human race. Her position is much like that of Hamlet, and the effect on her is somewhat similar. She thrusts Miriam from her with bitterness; yet forms no definite resolutions, and does she knows not what; until, overburdened by the consciousness of her fatal secret, she discloses the affair to an unknown priest in the church of St.
Peter. Neither does she seem to be aware at any time of the serious consequences of this action.
Miriam, more experienced even than Kenyon, is not affected by the death of her tormentor so much directly as she is by its influence on Donatello. Hitherto she had been indifferently pleased by his admiration for her; now the tables are turned and she conceives the very strongest attachment for him. She follows him to his castle in disguise, dogs his footsteps on the excursion which he and Kenyon make together, shadows his presence again in Rome, and is with him at the moment of his arrest.
This is all that we know of her from the time of her last unhappy interview with Hilda. Her crime consisted merely in a look,--the expression of her eyes,--and the whole world is free to her; but her heart is imprisoned in the same cell with Donatello. There is not a more powerful ethical effect in Dante or Sophocles.
A certain French writer [Footnote: Name forgotten, but the fact is indelible.] blames Hilda severely for her betrayal of Miriam (who was at least her best friend in Rome), and furthermore designates her as an immoral character. This, we may suppose, is intended for a hit at New England Puritanism; and from the French stand-point, it is not unfair.
Hilda represents Puritanism in its weakness and in its strength. It is true, what Hamlet says, that "conscience makes cowards of us all," but only true under conditions like those of Hamlet,--desperate emergencies, which require exceptional expedients. On the contrary, in carrying out a great reform like the abolition of slavery, the education of the blind, or the foundation of national unity, a man"s conscience becomes a tower of strength to him. As already intimated, what Hilda ought to have done was, to leave Rome at once, and forever; but she is no more capable of forming such a resolution, than Hamlet was of organizing a conspiracy against his usurping uncle. When, however, the priest steps out from the confessional-box and attempts to make a convert of Hilda,--for which indeed she has given him a fair opening,--she a.s.serts herself and her New England training, with true feminine dignity, and in fact has decidedly the best of the argument. It is a trying situation, in which she develops unexpected resources. Hawthorne"s genius never shone forth more brilliantly than in this scene at St. Peter"s. It is Shakespearian.
Much dissatisfaction was expressed when "The Marble Faun" was first published, at the general vagueness of its conclusion. Hawthorne"s admirers wished especially for some clearer explanation of Miriam"s earlier life, and of her relation to the strange apparition of the catacombs. He answered these interrogatories in a supplementary chapter which practically left the subject where it was before--an additional piece of mystification. In a letter to Henry Bright he admitted that he had no very definite scheme in his mind in regard to Miriam"s previous history, and this is probably the reason why his readers feel this vague sense of dissatisfaction with the plot. I have myself often tried to think out a prelude to the story, but without any definite result.
Miriam"s persecuting model was evidently a husband who had been forced upon her by her parents, and would not that be sufficient to account for her moods of gloom and despondency? Yet Hawthorne repeatedly intimates that there was something more than this. Let us not think of it. If the tale was not framed in mystery, Donatello would not seem so real to us.
Do not the characters in "Don Quixote" and "Wilhelm Meister" spring up as it were out of the ground? They come we know not whence, and they go we know not whither. It is with these that "The Marble Faun" should be cla.s.sed and compared, and not with "Middle-march," "Henry Esmond," or "The Heart of Midlothian."
[Ill.u.s.tration: TORRE MEDIAVALLE DELLA SCIMMIA (HILDA"S TOWER), OF THE VIA PORTOGHESE AT ROME, WHERE HAWTHORNE REPRESENTS HILDA TO HAVE LIVED AND TENDED THE LAMP AT THE VIRGIN"S SHRINE ON THE TOP OF THE TOWER]
Goethe said, while looking at the group of the "Laoc.o.o.n," "I think that young fellow on the right will escape the serpents." This was not according to the story Virgil tells, but it is true to natural history.
Similarly, it is pleasant to think that the Pope"s mercy may ultimately have been extended to Donatello. We can imagine an aged couple living a serious, retired life in the castle of Monte Beni, childless, and to a certain extent joyless, but taking comfort in their mutual affection, and in acts of kindness to their fellow-mortals.
In order to see Hilda"s tower in Rome, go straight down from the Spanish Steps to the Corso, turn to the right, and you will soon come to the Via Portoghese (on the opposite side), where you will easily recognize the tower on the right hand. The tower is five stories in height, set in the front of the palace, and would seem to be older than the building about it; the relic, perhaps, of some distinguished mediaeval structure. The odd little shrine to the Virgin, a toy-like affair, still surmounts it; but its lamp is no longer burning. It was fine imagination to place Hilda in this lofty abode.
CHAPTER XVII
HOMEWARD BOUND: 1860-1862
There is no portion of Hawthorne"s life concerning which we know less than the four years after his return from England to his native land. He was so celebrated that every eye was upon him; boys stopped their games to see him pa.s.s by, and farmers stood still in the road to stare at him.
He was Hawthorne the famous, and every movement he made was remembered, every word spoken by him was recorded or related, and yet altogether it amounts to little enough. Letters have been preserved in number,--many of his own and others from his English friends, and those from his wife to her relatives; but they do not add much to the picture we have already formed in our minds of the man. As he said somewhere, fame had come too late to be a satisfaction to him, but on the contrary more of an annoyance. Hawthorne left Leamington the last of March, and transferred his family to Bath, which he soon discovered to be the pleasantest English city he had lived in yet,--symmetrically laid out, like a Continental city, and built for the most part of a yellowish sandstone; not unlike in appearance the travertine of which St. Peter"s at Rome is built. The older portion of the city lies in a hollow among the hills, like an amphitheatre, and the more recent additions rise upon the hill-sides above it to a considerable height. This is the last note of enthusiasm in his writings; and in the next entry in his diary, which was written at Lothrop Motley"s house, Hertford Street, London, May 16, he makes this ominous confession: "I would gladly journalize some of my proceedings, and describe things and people, but I find the same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to England."
It is only too evident that from this time literary composition, which had been the chief recreation of his youth, and in which he had always found satisfaction until now, was no longer a pleasure to him. It is the last entry in his journal, at least for more than two years, and whatever writing he accomplished in the mean time was done for the sake of his wife and children. d.i.c.kens had a similar experience the last year of his life. Clearly, Hawthorne"s nervous force was waning.
On May 15, Hawthorne and Motley were invited to dine by Earl Dufferin, that admirable diplomat and one of the pleasantest of men. In fact, if there was a person living who could make Hawthorne feel perfectly at his ease, it was Dufferin. Motley provided some entertainment or other for his guest every day, and Hawthorne confessed that the stir and activity of London life were doing him "a wonderful deal of good." What he seems to have needed at this time was a vigorous, objective employment that would give his circulation a start in the right direction; but how was he to obtain that?
He enjoyed one last stroll with Henry Bright through Hyde Park and along the Strand, and found time to say a long farewell to Francis Bennoch: the last time he was to meet either of them on this side of eternity.
He returned to Bath the 1st of June, and ten days later they all embarked for Boston,--as it happened, by a pleasant coincidence, with the same captain with whom they had left America seven years before.
Mrs. Hawthorne"s sister, Mrs. Horace Mann, prepared their house at Concord for their reception, and there they arrived at the summer solstice.
The good people of Concord had been mightily stirred up that spring, by an attempt to arrest Frank B. Sanborn and carry him forcibly to Washington,--contrary to law, as the Supreme Court of the State decided the following day. The marshal who arrested him certainly proceeded more after the manner of a burglar than of a civil officer, hiding himself with his _posse comitatus_ in a barn close to Sanborn"s school-house, watching his proceedings through the cracks in the boards, and finally arresting him at night, just as he was going to bed; but the alarm was quickly sounded, and the whole male population of the place, including Emerson, turned out like a swarm of angry hornets, and the marshal and his posse were soon thankful to escape with their bones in a normal condition. A few nights later, the barn, which was owned by a prominent official in the Boston Custom House, was burned to the ground (the fire-company a.s.sisting), as a sacrifice on the altar of personal liberty.
The excitement of this event had not yet subsided when the arrival of the Hawthorne family produced a milder and more amiable, but no less profound, sensation in the old settlement; and this was considerably increased by the fact that for the first month nothing was seen of them, except a st.u.r.dy-looking boy fishing from a rock in Concord River, opposite the spot where his father and Channing had discovered the unfortunate school-mistress. Old friends made their calls and were cordially received, but Hawthorne himself did not appear in public places; and it was soon noticed that he did not take the long walks which formerly carried him to the outer limits of the town. He was sometimes met on the way to Walden Pond, either alone or in company with his son; but Bronson Alcott more frequently noticed him gliding along in a ghost-like manner by the rustic fence which separated their two estates, or on the way to Sleepy Hollow. When the weather became cooler he formed a habit of walking back and forth on the hill-side above his house, where the bank descends sharply like a railroad-cut, with dwarf pines and shrub oaks on the further side of it. He wore a path there, which is described in "Septimius Felton," and it is quite possible that the first inception of that story entered his mind while looking down upon the Lexington road beneath him, and imagining how it appeared while filled with marching British soldiers.
About July 10, 1860, the scholars of Mr. Sanborn"s school, male and female, gave an entertainment in the Town Hall, not unlike Harvard Cla.s.s Day. Mrs. Hawthorne and her eldest daughter appeared among the guests, and attracted much attention from the quiet grace and dignity of their manners; but there was an expression of weariness on Miss Una"s face, which contrasted strangely with the happy, blithesome looks of the school-girls. Some idea of the occasion may be derived from a pa.s.sing remark of Mrs. Hawthorne to a Harvard student present: "My daughter will be happy to dance with you, sir, if I can only find her."
In September Hawthorne wrote to James T. Fields: [Footnote: Mrs. J. T.
Fields, 118.]
"We are in great trouble on account of our poor Una, in whom the bitter dregs of that Roman fever are still rankling, and have now developed themselves in a way which the physicians foreboded. I do not like to write about it, but will tell you when we meet. Say nothing."
Miss Una was evidently far from well, and her father"s anxiety for her sensibly affected his mental tone.
He was invited at once to join the Sat.u.r.day Club, popularly known at that time as the Atlantic Club, because its most conspicuous members were contributors to that periodical. Hawthorne did not return in season to take part in the Club"s expedition to the Adirondack Mountains, concerning which Doctor Holmes remarked that, considering the number of rifles they carried, it was fortunate that they all returned alive. The meetings of the Club came but once a month, and as the last train to Concord was not a very late one, Judge h.o.a.r had his carryall taken down to Waltham on such occasions, and thence he, with Hawthorne and Emerson, drove back to Concord through the woods in the darkness or moonlight; and Hawthorne may have enjoyed this as much as any portion of the entertainment.
A club whose membership is based upon celebrity reminds one rather of a congregation of stags, all with antlers of seven tines. There was every shade of opinion, political, philosophical and religious, represented in the Sat.u.r.day Club, and if they never fought over such subjects it was certainly much to their credit. Very little has been divulged of what took place at their meetings; but it is generally known that in the winter of 1861 Longfellow was obliged to warn his a.s.sociates that if they persisted in abusing Sumner he should be obliged to leave their company; Sumner being looked upon by the Democrats and more timid Republicans as the chief obstacle to pacification; as if any one man could prop a house up when it was about to fall. After the War began, this naturally came to an end, and Sumner was afterwards invited to join the Club, with what satisfaction to h.o.a.r, Lowell, and Holmes it might be considering rather curiously to inquire. We can at least feel confident that Hawthorne had no share in this. He did not believe in fighting shadows, and he at least respected Sumner for his frankness and disinterestedness.
Such differences of opinion, however, are not conducive to freedom of discussion. Henry James, Sr., lifts the veil for a moment in a letter to Emerson, written about this time, [Footnote: Memoir of Bronson Alcott; also the "Hawthorne Centenary."] and affords us a picture of Hawthorne at the Sat.u.r.day Club, which might bear the designation of a highly-flavored caricature. According to Mr. James, John M. Forbes, the Canton millionaire, preserved the balance at one end of the table, while Hawthorne, an oasis in a desert, served as the nearest approach to a human being, at the other. "How he buried his eyes in his plate and ate with such a voracity! that no one should dare to ask him a question."
We do not realize the caricaturist in Henry James, Jr., so readily, on account of his elastic power of expression; but the relationship is plain and apparent. Both father and son ought to have been baptized in the Castalian Fount. There are those who have been at table with both Hawthorne and the elder James, and without the slightest reflection on Mr. James, have confessed their preference for the quiet composure and simple dignity of Hawthorne. In truth Hawthorne"s manners were above those of the polished courtier or the accomplished man of fashion: they were poetic manners, and in this respect Longfellow most nearly resembled him of all members of the Club; although Emerson also had admirable manners and they were largely the cause of his success. It would have done no harm if Emerson had burned this letter after its first perusal, but since it is out of the bag we must even consider it as it deserves.
Hawthorne must have enjoyed the meetings of the Club or he would not have attended them so regularly. He wrote an account of the first occasion on which he was present, giving an accurate description of the dinner itself and enclosing a diagram of the manner in which the guests were seated, but without any commentary on the proceedings of the day.
It was, after all, one of the nerve-centres of the great world, and an agreeable change from the domestic monotony of the Wayside. Thackeray would have descried rich material for his pen in it, but Hawthorne"s studies lay in another direction. Great men were not his line in literature.
Meanwhile Mrs. Hawthorne and her daughter were transforming their Concord home into a small repository of the fine arts. Without much that would pa.s.s by the t.i.tle of elegance, they succeeded in giving it an unpretentious air of refinement, and one could not enter it without realizing that the materials of a world-wide culture had been brought together there. Hawthorne soon found the dimensions of the house too narrow for the enlarged views which he had brought with him from abroad, and he designed a tower to be constructed at one corner of it, similar to, if not so lofty as that of the Villa Manteuto. This occupied him and the dilatory Concord carpenter for nearly half a year; and meanwhile chaos and confusion reigned supreme. There was no one whose ears could be more severely offended by the music of the carpenter"s box and the mason"s trowel than Hawthorne, and he knew not whether to fly his home or remain in it. Not until all this was over could he think seriously of a new romance.
He made his study in the upper room of the tower; a room exactly twenty feet square, with a square vaulted ceiling and five windows,--too many, one would suppose, to produce a pleasant effect of light,--and walls papered light yellow. There he could be as quiet and retired as in the attic of his Uncle Robert Manning"s house in Salem. Conway states that he wrote at a high desk, like Longfellow, and walked back and forth in the room while thinking out what he was going to say. The view from his windows extended across the meadows to Walden woods and the Fitchburg railroad track, and it also commanded the Alcott house and the road to Concord village. It was in this work-shop that he prepared "Our Old Home" for the press and wrote the greater part of "Septimius Felton" and "The Dolliver Romance."
The War was a new source of distraction. It broke out before the tower was finished, stimulating Hawthorne"s nerves, but disturbing that delicate mental equilibrium upon which satisfactory procedure of his writing depended. On May 26, 1861, he wrote to Horatio Bridge:
"The war, strange to say, has had a beneficial effect upon my spirits, which were flagging wofully before it broke out. But it was delightful to share in the heroic sentiment of the time, and to feel that I had a country,--a consciousness which seemed to make me young again. One thing as regards this matter I regret, and one thing I am glad of. The regrettable thing is that I am too old to shoulder a musket myself, and the joyful thing is that Julian is too young." [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 276.]
Hawthorne"s patriotism was genuine and deep-seated. He was not the only American whom the bombardment of Fort Sumter had awakened to the fact that he had a country. What we have always enjoyed, we do not think of until there is danger of losing it. In the same letter, he confesses that he does not quite understand "what we are fighting for, or what definite result can be expected. If we pummel 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."
There were many in those times who thought and felt as Hawthorne did.
Douglas said in the Senate, "Even if you coerce the Southern States and bring them back by force, it will not be the same Union." A _people_ does not necessarily mean a _nation_; for the idea of nationality is of slow growth, and is in a manner opposed to the idea of democracy; for if the right of government depends on the consent of the governed, the primary right of the governed must be to abrogate that government whenever they choose to do so. Hawthorne was simply a consistent democrat; but time has proved the fallacy of Douglas"s statement, and that a forcible restoration of the Union was entirely compatible with friendliness and mutal good-will between the different sections of the country,--after slavery, which was the real obstacle to this, had been eliminated. If the States east of the Alleghanies should attempt to separate from the rest of the nation, it would inevitably produce a war similar to that of 1861.
Hawthorne even went to the length at this time of proposing to arm the negroes, and preparing them "for future citizenship by allowing them to fight for their own liberties, and educating them through heroic influences." [Footnote: The "Hawthorne Centenary," 197.] When George L. Stearns was organizing the colored regiments in Tennessee in 1863 he wrote concerning his work, in almost exactly these terms; and the inference is plain that Hawthorne might have been more of a humanitarian if his early a.s.sociations had been different.
Such an original character as Bronson Alcott for a next-door neighbor could not long escape Hawthorne"s penetrating glance. Alcott was an interesting personality, perfectly genuine, frank, kindly and imperturbably good-humored. He had a benevolent aspect, and in general appearance so much resembled the portraits of Benjamin Franklin that his ingenious daughters made use of him in charades and theatricals for that purpose. Hawthorne had known him many years earlier, and had spoken very pleasantly of him in his first publication of "The Hall of Fantasy." He even said, "So calm and gentle was he, so quiet in the utterance of what his soul brooded upon, that one might readily conceive his Orphic Sayings to well up from a fountain in his breast, which communicated with the infinite abyss of thought,"--rather an optimistic view for Hawthorne. Alcott"s philosophy had the decided merit, which Herbert Spencer"s has not, of a strong affirmation of a Great First Cause, and our direct responsibility thereto: but it was chiefly the philosophy of Plotinus; and his constant reiteration of a "lapse" in human nature from divine perfection (which was simply the Donatello phase expressed in logic), with the various corollaries deduced from it, finally became as wearisome as the harp with a single string. Whether he troubled Hawthorne in that way, is rather doubtful, for even as a hobby-rider, Alcott was a man of Yankee shrewdness and considerable tact. Rose Hawthorne says that "he once brought a particularly long poem to read, aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing from which they never recovered." What poem this could have been I have no idea, but in his later years Alcott wrote some excellent poetry, and those who ought to know do not think that he bored Hawthorne very severely. They frequently went to walk together, taking Julian for a make-weight, and Hawthorne could easily have avoided this if he had chosen. There are times for all of us when our next-door neighbors prove a burden; and it cannot be doubted that in most instances this is reciprocal. [Footnote: Rose Hawthorne, however, writes charmingly of the Alcotts. Take this swift sketch, among others: "I imagine his slightly stooping, yet tall and well-grown figure, clothed in black, and with a picturesque straw hat, twining itself in and out of forest aisles, or craftily returning home with gargoyle-like stems over his shoulders."]
Alcott was a romance character of exceptional value, and Hawthorne recognized this, but did not succeed in inventing a plot that would suit the subject. The only one of Hawthorne"s preparatory sketches given to the public--in which we see his genius in the "midmost heat of composition"--supposes a household in which an old man keeps a crab-spider for a pet, a deadly poisonous creature; and in the same family there is a boy whose fortunes will be mysteriously affected in some manner by this dangerous insect. He did not proceed sufficiently to indicate for us how this would turn out, but he closes the sketch with the significant remark, "In person and figure Mr. Alcott"; from which it may be inferred that the crab-spider was intended to symbolize Alcott"s philosophy, and the catastrophe of the romance would naturally result from the unhealthy mental atmosphere in which the boy grew up,--a catastrophe which in Alcott"s family was averted by the practical sagacity of his daughters. The idea, however, became modified in its application.
It is with regret that we do not allot a larger s.p.a.ce to this important sketch, for it is clearly an original study (like an artist"s drawing) of the unfinished romance which was published in 1883 under the t.i.tle of "Doctor Grimshawe"s Secret." Long lost sight of in the ma.s.s of Hawthorne"s ma.n.u.scripts, this last of his posthumous works was reviewed by the critics with some incredulity, and Lathrop had the hardihood to publicly a.s.sert that no such romance by Hawthorne"s pen existed, thereby casting a gratuitous slander on his own brother-in-law. We may have our doubts in regard to the authorship of Shakespeare"s plays, for we have no absolute standard by which to judge of Shakespeare"s style, but the "style, the matter, and the drift" of "Doctor Grimshawe"s Secret" are so essentially Hawthornish that a person experienced in judging of such matters should not hesitate long in deciding that it belongs in the same category with "Fanshawe" and "The Dolliver Romance." It is even possible to determine, from certain peculiarities in its style, the exact period at which it was written; which must have been shortly after Hawthorne"s return from Europe. In addition to this, if further evidence were required, its close relationship to the aforementioned sketch is a fact which no sophistry can reason away. [Footnote: This sketch was published in the _Century_, January, 1883.]
The b.l.o.o.d.y footstep suggested to Hawthorne by the antediluvian print in the stone step at Smith.e.l.l"s Hall, in Lancashire, serves as the key-note of this romance; but the eccentric recluse, the big crab-spider, the orphaned grandchild, and even Bronson Alcott also appear in it. Alcott, however,--and his ident.i.ty cannot be mistaken,--does not play the leading part in the piece, but comes in at the fifth chapter, only to disappear mysteriously in the eighth; the orphan boy is companioned by a girl of equal age, and these two bright spirits, mutually sustaining each other, cast a radiance over the old Doctor in his dusty, frowsy, cobwebby study, which brings out the external appearance and internal peculiarities of the man, in the most vivid manner. The dispositions and appearances of the two children are also contrasted, as Raphael might have drawn and contrasted them, if he had painted a picture on a similar subject.
The crab-spider is one of the most horrible of Nature"s creations.
Hawthorne saw one in the British Museum and it seems to have haunted his imagination ever afterward. Why the creature should have been introduced into this romance is not very clear, for it plays no part in the development of the plot. The spider hangs suspended over the old Doctor"s head like the sword of Damocles, and one would expect it to descend at the proper moment in the narrative, and make an end of him with its nippers; but Doctor Grimshawe dies a comparatively natural death, and the desiccated body of the spider is found still clinging to the web above him. The man and the insect were too closely akin in the modes and purposes of their lives for either to outlast the other. There is nothing abnormal in the fact of Doctor Grimshawe"s possessing this dangerous pet; for all kinds of poisonous creatures have a well-known fascination for the medical profession. Doctor Holmes amused himself with a rattlesnake.
In spite of its unpleasant a.s.sociations with spiders and blood-stains, "Doctor Grimshawe"s Secret" is one of the most interesting of Hawthorne"s works, containing much of his finest thought and most characteristic description. The portrait of the grouty old Doctor himself has a solidity of impast like Shakespeare"s Falstaff, and the grave-digger, who has survived from colonial times, carries us back involuntarily to the burial scene in "Hamlet." Alcott, whose name is changed to Colcord, is not treated realistically, but rather idealized in such kindly sympathetic manner as might prevent all possibility of offence at the artistic theft of his personality. The plot, too, is a most ingenious one, turning and winding like a hare, and even diving out of sight for a time; but only to reappear again, as the school-master Colcord does, with a full and satisfactory explanation of its mysterious course. To judge from the appearance of the ma.n.u.script, this romance was written very rapidly, and there are places in the text which intimate this; but it vies in power with "The Scarlet Letter," and why Hawthorne should have become dissatisfied with it,--why he should have failed to complete, revise, and publish it--can only be accounted for by the mental or nervous depression which was now fastening itself upon him.