Chapter II: HAWTHORNE’s CHARACTER

‘I am a man, and between man and man there is always an insuperable gulf,’ said Kenyon in _The Marble Faun_.

Hawthorne might have been speaking through Kenyon’s lips, so accurately does the saying voice his private thought. He lived in a world apart. No experience of custom-house, consulate, or farm could bring him quite out of his world into the common world of men. Hawthorne had more reason than Emerson to complain of the wall between him and his fellow-mortals. When glib talkers were displaying no end of conversational change, Hawthorne kept his hands in his pockets. He had no mind to indulge in that form of matching pennies known as small talk.

Observers have voiced their impressions of him in different ways; their testimony is not discordant. The romantically inclined described Hawthorne as mysterious. Plain people thought him queer. Even his brother authors found him odd. Longfellow described Hawthorne as ‘a strange owl, a very peculiar individual, with a dash of originality about him very pleasant to behold.’ Yet Hawthorne was without a grain of affectation, and took keen interest in the homely facts of life. His books everywhere betray this interest. He who wrote that description of his kitchen garden in _The Old Manse_ would seem to be just the man to lean over the fence and talk cabbages and squashes with some neighborhood farmer. And perhaps he did.

He was not fond of men of letters as a class--which is not surprising. The friends who stood close to him were not literary. Bridge was a naval officer. Pierce was a politician, representative of a type for which Hawthorne had contempt. Hillard was a lawyer, a man of the world.

Hawthorne was not without his share of ‘human nature,’ as we say. He had his prejudices, and they were sometimes deeply rooted. When smarting under a sense of injustice he could wield a caustic pen. He was a good hater, but not narrow-minded. He hated spirit-rapping, table-tipping, and all the vulgar machinery and manifestations of a vulgar delusion. He hated noise, brawling, and dissension. He loved his home. His letters to his wife reveal a nature of exquisite delicacy. He loved children, Nature, and he was chivalrous in his attitude towards the animal creation.

A trait of Hawthorne’s character comes out in the following incident. He proposed to dedicate _Our Old Home_ to Franklin Pierce. This was in 1863. The publishers, it is said, were filled with ‘consternation and distress.’ The ex-president’s name was not one to conjure with. Hawthorne explained his position: ‘I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory letter.... If 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.... As for the literary public, it must accept my book precisely as I see fit to give it, or let it alone.’

Friendship sometimes has in it an element of perversity, and has been known to delight in petty martyrdom. There was nothing of this in Hawthorne. All he notes is that friendship is not a commodity.