Hawthorne At Home And Abroad
THESE volumes are intended, it appears, to supersede American Mel of Letters, the standard set much read a generation ago but now out of print in this country. The excrescence upon the original title of the word " series "—ascribable to the American editors, who are professors of English—is a dubious improvement. So is the new latitude of the phrase " men -of letters." It is now to embrace anybody who (in writing) has " contributed to the development of American thought." One shudders at the apparition of an assembly. line a thousand strong.
Of the old biographies now being done by new hands, Mr. Van Doren's Hawthorne is atnong the first published. All of the recent and important American scholarship on this subject, some of it not yet in print, was placed at his disposal, and he can fairly be said to have written a revaluation. The old values remain, The Scarlet Letter as the chef d'oeuvre and The House of the Seven Gables a runner-up, although the latter by reason of its extraordinary powa in characterisation (roughly a mere half-dozen characters in a full. length novel) perhaps comes nearer the top than Mr. Van Dorea admits. But it is with the later works and fragments—on which much contemporary research has been done—that the author makes his most telling contribution: The Ancestral Pootsteps, Dr. Grim shawe's Secret, Septithius Felton and The Dolliver Romance all yield biographical sidelights even more absorbing than the stories themselves. Study of the actual manuscripts And of Hawthorne's frenzied notes upon them has revealed, as Mr. Van Doren says, a great talent which at the end of its course " tortured itself in the, tower." The question is, however, whether some degree of torture, was not with this lonely man a life-long thing. Probably the wo that oftenest comes to mind in reading him is sombre.
On the other hand, the author truly notes that Hawthorne, like his most gifted American friend Melville, had in- him the genius comedy entwined with that of 'tragedy. The influence of Scott a of _Cervantes upon. Hawthorne is obvious. What is pore prising—a point thit Mr. Van Doren overlooks—is the interest th the American novelist took in George Farquhar. Hawthorne whe he visited Shrewsbury sought out not only the inn, but the ye room in which Farquhar had written The Recruiting Officer, an pondered it welt It was a bitter disappointment to Hawthorne that the seven yea which he passed in this country and in Italy inspired him to nothi of greater consequence than The Marble Faun. Aloof in h consulate in Liverpool, aloof in London, or wandering in Florent museums, he met no literary folk of importance except the Brow ings. " I do not see hoir Mr. Browning can suppose that he has • earthly wife. . . . She is a good and kind fairy, however. . I was not sensible ivhat a slender pipe she has. It is as if a gr hopper should-speak." Hawthorne, who-idolised Andrew Jackso uttered in Rome one of the oddest associations of names ever made " I wish it had been possible," he exclaimed, " for Raphael to pai General Jackson! " He sickened of nudity in painting,. and co eluded on the whole that the Dutch masters were the most satisfyi because they painted people with clothes on. Mr. Van Doren skit fully weaves in these intimate touches of character.
While his criticism of both novels and notebooks is‘always ill minating, the author at no time lets these portions crowd out essential biography. The family life of Hawthorne, as faithfu told as it was faithfully lived, was nothing extraordinary. Mr. Van Doren rightly says that Herman Melville's "brief bl of friendship with Hawthorne was one of the major events in litera. history." It blazed, both in . midnight conversations and in Ion. letters, just as Hawthorne had finished his masterpiece and Mel\ ilk was writing his own, Moby Dick. An important book on this sub ject alone -has yet to -bewritten. Nor was Hawthorne himself leg i with i interesting-On his meetng wth Lncoln: " A great deal of native sense ; no bookish cultivation, no refine. ment ; honest at -heart . . . and yet, in some sort, sly—at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft.. His manner towards us was wholly without pretence, but yet had a kind of natural dignity, quite sufficient to keep the forwardestof us from clappink him on the back and asking him for a story."
When Hawthorne at the too early age of sixty died frorn.no knoWS what ailment, his two greatest compeers, Melville and Whit man, were unable to attend his funeral. But Emerson, Longfellow Holmes, Whittier and Lowell stood in the burial-ground with thei
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