Newspaper Page Text
Iwf U o 11 pH v T1 >/ H M iff
11/ II ®m fl 111 M 11/ II n K
XX uHL fj XX UXVI\-
□ILw Ir v 'WWWWi lWw\.Mw i’®F nl» W wwVwwai*
T. L. MITCHELL. Publisher.
Vol, 6—No, 10.
For Woman’s Work.
WrN the preceding paper allusion has been
-A- made to the little community at Brook
X Farm. It is interesting to note what
i Hawthorne himself says of his life
there. Under date of April 14th, 1841:
“I have not yet taken my first lesson in
agriculture, except that I went to see our
cows foddered yesterday afternoon. We
have eight of our own, and the number is
now increased by a transcendental heifer
belonging to Miss Margaret Fuller. She
is very fractious, I believe, and apt to
kick over the milk-pail.”
By degrees our young Brook Farmer
learned to milk, chop wood, turn the
grind-stone, and cut fodder for the cattle.
Though in his transforming
mind cabbage and squashes
took on poetic shapes, and it
was “one of the most bewitch
ing sights in the world to ob
serve a hill of beans thrusting
aside the soil, or a row of early
peas just peeping forth suffi
ciently to trace a line of deli
cate green,” his life at Brook
Farm soon grew so distasteful
to him that he resolved to
break away from it. Under
date of the 12th. of August
he wrote: “Even my cus
tom-house experience was not
such a thralldom and weari
ness; my mind and heart were
free. Oh, labor is the curse
of the world, and nobody can
meddle with it without becom
ing proportionately brutified I
“Is it a praiseworthy matter
that I have spent five golden
months in providing food for
cows and horses? It is not
so.” And again, on Septem
ber 3rd., he writes: “It al
ready looks like a dream be
hind me. The real me was
never an associate of the com
munity; there has been a spec
tral appearance there, sound
ing the horn at day-break,
and milking the cows, and
hoeing potatoes and raking
hay, toiling in the sun, and
doing me the honor to assume my name;
but this spectre was not myself.”
Accordingly, Hawthorne returned to
Boston. Two purposes drew him thither;
one was the publication of the second vol
ume of Twice-Told-Tales, the other, and
by far the more important, was his mar
riage with Miss Sophia Peabody, which
was solemnized in July, 1842.
Hawthorne’s personal appearance was
anything but suggestive of that natural
timidity which, even in his best days, it was
hard for him to overcome, so that “talking
with him was almost like love-making,
and his shy, beautiful soul had to be wooed
from its bashful pudency, like an un
schooled maiden.” He was tall, broad
shouldered, deep chested; a massive head,
luxuriant black hair, and large, dark
eyes. Wherever he went he attracted at
tention by his imposing presence. He
looked like an athlete, or the stroke-oar in
a university boat.
But, on the other hand, history does not
record a man who had more of the femi
nine element than he. He was endowed
with a fineness of perception, a keenness of
insight, a delicate shyness and reserve, a
susceptibility to beauty, entirely feminine.
It was this rare combination of masculine
and feminine qualities that enabled him to
understand woman so completely, and to
paint with so exquisiteand ethereal a pen
cil, the spotless Hilda among the doves in
the tower, and with equal power the
noble hard-bestead Miriam. His shyness
was so great, that the thought of making
a social call would keep him awake in his
bed. “At breakfast he could not lay a
{>iece of butter on a lady’s plate without a
ittle trembling of the hand.” Among his
friends he was very diffident, being less
easy in the presence of two than of only
one. In view of this quality of his, it has
always been a matter of much interest to
us to know how this great timid, shrink'-
A WOMAN’S WORK—AH, HOW MANY LIFE HISTORIES MAY BE INFLUENCED BY IT;
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Second Paper.
gli' he Uiißlffll lt
ATHENS, GEORGIA, OCTOBER, 1893.
ing man found courage to propose to his
lady-love. That he did so, and was ac
cepted, was the most fortunate occurrence
of his life, for it brought into his hitherto
one-sided and solitary life, a companion at
once charming and helpful. She was his
first audience. It was her kindly sympa
thy that aroused his dormant powers, and
encouraged him to produce some of his
best works.
The young couple went to Concord to
live in the parsonage, which Hawthorne
has rendered famous as Old Manse. This
house is sought by all tourists, not only
by reason of its picturesque and historic
surroundings, but also for the antiquity of
Ker Woman’s Work.
I’d ask but one home—O would I could sing
Os events most sweet its mem’ry would bring!
Ot joys safe embalmed within my heart’s home.
From childhood’s brief path to wifehood’s wide
roam.
The fairest life-scene, the truest life-tie
About the old home unceasingly lie,
No grief half so mild, no pleasure so great,
As viewing old home in permanent state.
Could now I behold the pink myrtle’s sway,
And breathe its mild essence while daily at play;
Or cull the dianthus, painted so bright.
Or the scarlet verbena’s umbels of light!
Ah! How I should love those soft lilac tints,
The beauty of which Dame Nature ne’er stints;
Note swift humming birds and droll bumble bees,
Sip sweet pollen cups from Flora-lade trees!
the house itself. Never before had it been
occupied by a layman. “A priest had
built it, a priest had succeeded to it, other
priestly men from time to time had dwelt
in it, and children born in its chambers
had grown up to assume the priestly
character. It was awful to reflect how
many sermons- must have been written
there. * * * * I took shame to my
self for having been so long a writer of
idle stories, and ventured to hope that
wisdom would descend upon me with the
falling leaves of the avenue, and that I
should light upon an intellectual treasure
in the Old Manse, well worth those hoards
of long-hidden gold which people seek for
in moss-grown houses.”
Hawthorne took great delight in the lit
tle nook he called his study. Here Emer
son had written “Nature” some years be
fore. The two little windows on the
western side peeped through willow
branches into the orchard, with here and
I’D ASK BUT ONE HOME.
there flashes of the river beyond; the
window facing northward commanded a
broader view of the sluggish Concord and
the field
“Where onee the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
When Hawthorne first saw the room, its
walls were black and grimy with the
smoke of unnumbered years, and made still
more so by the grim prints of stern old
Puritan Ministers hung here and there.
He brightened it up with a cheerful coat
of paint and golden-tinted paper, replacing
the grim prints by the sweet and lovely
head of one of Raphael’s Madonnas,
and two pretty little views of the
Lake of Como. The only other decora
tions were a pair of vases containing
flowers and ferns. Here Hawthorne
dreamed and wrote, and here his friends
came to rest themselves in the seclusion
and quiet of the Old Manse. “In one re
spect,” he writes, “our precincts were like
The pink apple blooms, the orchard gra c s green.
White drooping racemes from plum trees there
seen,
Commingled with peach, quince, cherry and
pear—
Enchantment’s retreat—naught seemethso rare.
The same old wood walls with pencilings queer,
The deep fingermarks, tho’ soiled, would bedear;
Each cut and each gash by mischievous hands,
Would cast beamy rays o’er Time’s clouded
strands.
Around my hearthstone the same cheerful fire,
Os hick’ry and oak my muse would inspire:
The green cedar boughs I’d twine just the same,
And powder with white for Kris Kringle’s game.
The old cushioned lounge, the black mantel
shelf,
The high, gilded clock, the framed flower elf.
The big “lumber-room,” the tree-swing
Ah! How I should love them now, were they but
here! Zula B. Cook.
the Enchanted Ground through which the
pilgrim traveled on his way to the Celes
tial City. The guests, each and all, felt a
slumbrous influence upon them; they fell
asleep in chairs, or took a more deliberate
siesta on the sofa, or were seen stretched
among the shadows of the orchard, looking
up dreamily through the boughs.’’
His orchard and kitchen garden em
ployed him a few hours each day, and
when wearied with literary labors, it is
pleasant to think of him as wandering
through the orchard, like the old minister
before him, picking up here and there the
wealth of golden fruit which nature in her
infinite generosity provides, or in his gar
den, standing in deep contemplation over
some of his vegetable progeny.
When the sulky rain drenched the out
side world for days at a time, he would
betake himself to the mouldy o ] d garret to
burrow among its dreary trash “in search
of any living truth which should burn like
KATE GARLAND, Ed<trkss.
50 Cts. per Year,
a coal of fire, or glow like an in-extinguish
able gem beneath the dead trumpery that
had long hidden it.”
When some friend—perhaps Emerson
to-day, to-morrow Channing, or Lowell,
or Thoreau—visited him, they were off
for a walk, or would float lazily down the
mildly flowing Concord at the rear of the
Manse. This was the happiest period of
Hawthorne’s life, and how he revelled in
home and home-life is beautifully told in
the first of the “Mosses.” The Haw
thornes, now three in number—for a
daughter, Una by name, had been born to
them—passed three happy years in the
Old Manse, when hints came to their ears
that the owner was pining for his native
air. Carpenters appeared, strewing the
green grass with pine-shavings, clearing
away all the old mosses, and there were
horrible whispers about brushing up the
external walls with a coat of paint, “In
fine,” Hawthorne says, “we gathered up
our household goods, drank a
farewell cup of tea in our pleas
ant little breakfast-room—del
icately fragrant tea, an unpur
chasable luxury, one of the
many angel gifts that had fal
len like dew upon us—and
passed forth between the tall
stone gate posts, as uncer
tain as tho wandering Arabs
where our tent might next
be pitched. Providence took
me by the hand, and—an
oddity of dispensation which,
I trust, there is no irreverence
in smiling at—has led me, as
the newspapers announce
while I am writing, from the
O!d Manse into a custom
hou-e. As a story-teller, A.
have often contrived strange
vicissitudes forf my imaginary
personages, but none like this.”
And so they went reluctantly
forth, this “New Adam and
Eve.”
Though Hawthorne neglect
ed his Note Books, from 1846
to 1849, the period of his
Salem custom-house expe
rience, yet he has preserved to
us in that matchless piece of
autobiographic writing, the
Prologue to the “Scarlet Let
ter,” all that was best in it.
Little did those wearisome
old souls, the surveyor’s
officers, think that an eye, like a
blind man’s finger, was continusl ! y upon
them, or that at the hands of this dark
browed man they were to enjoy an anony
mous immortality!
The next presidential election decapita
ted our Democratic Surveyor; this was a
most happy circumstance for him, for it
gave him a release from duties which were
always irksome to him. He says: “In
view of my previous weariness of office and
vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune
somewhat resembled that of a person who
should entertain an idea of committing
suicide, and although beyond his hopes,
meet with the good hap to be murdered.”
It was fortunate for us in that it gave us
the “Scarlet Letter,” which was published
in 1850, and secured forever the fame
which had been so long withheld from
him. Yet it was only upon the most ear
nest solicitation of his friend and publish
er, James T. Fields, that theauther finally
consented to give his story to the world.
Os all his works, this is entitled to first
place in point of creative power and tragic
grandeur. Here his genius for searching
and analyzing dark bosoms finds its high
est expression; and so painful is the im
pression left by a perusal of the work, that
one scarce can read it a second time.
Released from office, Hawthorne cast
about for a home, and finally settled at
Lenox, in the western part of Massachu
setts. The unqualified success of the
‘ Scarlet Letter” imparted new zest to his
literary labors, took the numbness out ot
his fingers, as it were, and be felt j rstifl°d
in devoting himself to literature—here 0
fore the pleasure, not the business, of his
life.
We find this the most productive period
of his life. “The House of the Seven
Gable?,’’ published in 1851, was so warm’y
received by the public that he set about
writing another at once; this time it was