Chapter VIII: Part 8

There have been published within a few years a great number of the love-letters written by Bulwer to Miss Wheeler about this time. His son publishes none of them in the late biography, and it is safe to say that in all the range of literature there are no other letters filled with such drivelling idiocy as these. Had they been written by some Cockney coachman to some sentimental housemaid, they should stand as the finest specimens of that grade of literature extant; but that they should have been written by one of the foremost literary men of his time is a marvel, and seems to show to what extremes of imbecility love may reduce even wise men. As for Lady Lytton herself, one cares to know little more than that she could have married a man who habitually addressed her as his "sugar-plum," his "tootsy-wootsy," and his "sweety-weety." A woman clothed and in her right mind, who could deliberately accept such a personage for a life-long companion, calls for small sympathy from a matter-of-fact world, unless, indeed, it be that we bestow our sympathy simply upon the grounds of her feeble-mindedness.

In less than three years began the vulgar quarrels which finally ended the marriage. Bulwer is described by a visitor to the house about this time as appearing "like a man who has been flayed and is sore all over." His temperament was by nature extremely sensitive and irritable. And the combined Bulwer and Lytton blood was hot, turbulent, and at times quite uncontrollable. There are records of scenes of absolute personal violence against his wife, and one instance is given where at dinner, during the momentary absence of the servant, he bit her cheek till the blood flowed freely. After marriage, his income being cut off by his mother, he for a time wrote for his bread; and the work, close and confining as it was, told very much upon his health.

"His feelings became morbidly acute, and all the petty household
worries were to his exasperated brain what frictions and jostlings
are to highly inflamed flesh. His wife had little of his society.
He was nearly always writing or making preparation for writing, and
when they were together his nervous irritability vented itself at
every unwelcome circumstance in complaints, or taunts, or fits of
anger. To harsh words and unjust reproaches his wife returned meek
replies. Any distress his conduct occasioned her she concealed from
him. She was studious to please him, and endeavored to anticipate
every want and wish. Her gentleness and forbearance increased his
gratitude and devotion to her, and whenever he perceived that she
was wounded he was full of remorse."

So says her son, and continues:--

"The mischief was aggravated by the unfortunate occurrence that my
mother being unable to suckle her first-born child, it had been
nursed out of the house. Her maternal instinct, thus thwarted in
its origin, never revived. The care of children was ever after
distasteful to her. Losing this satisfaction to her affections,
unless she had company in the house she was lonely. As it was,
neither of them saw the issue to which the divided life was
tending."

That issue, as all the world knows, was a separation of the husband and wife, and a life-long quarrel of almost unimagined bitterness. No wonder that Bulwer's hand faltered when be tried to write of it, and that, having brought his autobiography up to this point, he laid it by, not daring to go on. He always cherished the intention of resuming it, but could never bring himself to the point of doing so. He could not tell the story; but Lady Lytton could, and did, continuing to do so till her dying day. The picture of her which her son has given does not seem like that of a woman who would do all the things which she notoriously did. But doubtless she had her amiable and engaging side, and was half maddened by her wrongs. Justin McCarthy says:--

"I do not know whether I ought to call it a quarrel. Can that be
called a quarrel, piteously asks the man in 'Juvenal,' where my
enemy only beats and I am beaten? Can that be called a quarrel in
which, so far as the public could judge, the wife did all the
denunciation, and the husband made no reply? Lady Lytton wrote
novels for the purpose of satirizing her husband and his
friends,--his parasites, she called them. Lady Lytton attributed to
her husband the most odious meannesses, vices, and cruelties; but
the public, with all its love of scandal, seems to have steadfastly
refused to take her ladyship's word for these accusations. Dickens
she denounced and vilified as a mere parasite and sycophant of her
husband. Disraeli she caricatured under the title of Jericho
Jabber. This sort of thing she kept always going on. Sometimes she
issued pamphlets to the women of England, calling on them to take
up her quarrel, which, somehow, they never did. Once, when Sir
Edward was on the hustings addressing his constituents at a county
election, her ladyship suddenly appeared, mounted the platform, and
'went' for him. I do not know anything of the merits of the
quarrel, but have always thought that something like insanity must
have been the explanation of much of her conduct. But it is beyond
doubt that her husband's conduct was remarkable for its quiet,
indomitable patience and dignity."

Let the veil drop over the blighted lives, knowing as we do that the human heart is so dark and intricate a labyrinth that we cannot claim to understand it by half knowledge, and that however we might judge these two with any light which we can possibly have in our day, we should be in danger of doing each a grievous wrong.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

It is related by Miss Thackeray that the grandfather of Alfred Tennyson, when that poet was young, asked him to write an elegy on his grandmother, who had recently died, and when it was written gave him ten shillings, with the remark, "There, that is the first money you have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word for it, it will be the last." How little he foresaw at that time the fame and fortune which the youth's poetry was to bring him, and the lasting honor he was to bestow upon the family name! That name was already an honorable one, for the Tennysons were an old family, and had good blood in their veins. The home was the old rectory of Somersby, where George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., held sway in the old-time priestly fashion for a lifetime. He is described as a man of strong character and high principle, full of accomplishments, and gifted withal; a strikingly handsome man, with impressive manners. Twelve children were given to his hands, of whom Alfred was the third. The eldest, Frederick, and the second, Charles, were both poets, and not without merit,--especially Charles, who published a volume of sonnets, which gave great pleasure to so good a judge as Coleridge; and the Laureate is himself very fond of his brother's work.

The children led a very free and unconstrained life in that beautiful part of Lincolnshire, and had a few friends to whom they attached themselves for life. Arthur Hallam was Alfred's intimate, and later on he became engaged to one of his sisters. Young Hallam's early death was the first shadow upon their lives. But who would not willingly die at twenty-three to be immortalized in such a poem as "In Memoriam"?

Of Arthur Hallam's own quality as a poet we get a pleasant glimpse in the sonnet addressed to his betrothed when he began to teach her Italian:--

"Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome,
Ringing with echoes of Italian song;
Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong,
And all the pleasant place is like a home.
Hark, on the right, with full piano tone,
Old Dante's voice encircles all the air;
Hark yet again, like flute-tones mingling rare
Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca's moan.
Pass thou the lintel freely; without fear
Feast on the music. I do better know thee
Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me
Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear."

After Tennyson had made his first literary successes, and after the family life at Somersby was broken up, we next hear of him through a warm and life-long friend. Away back in 1844 Carlyle in one of his letters to Emerson gives the following description of the then young and rising poet. It is an authentic glimpse of the real man, as he then appeared to one of the shrewdest and most critical of the men of that day.

"Tennyson is now in town, and means to come and see me. Of this
latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred is one of the few
British or Foreign Figures (a not increasing number I think) who
are and remain beautiful to me,--a true human soul, or some
approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say, Brother!
However, I doubt he will not come; he often skips me, in these
brief visits to Town; skips everybody indeed, being a man solitary
and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of
gloom,--carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is
manufacturing into Cosmos!

"Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think;
indeed, you see in his verses that he is a native of 'moated
granges,' and green fat pastures, not of mountains and their
torrents and storms. He had his breeding at Cambridge, as if for
the Law or Church; being master of a small annuity, on his Father's
decease, he preferred clubbing, with his mother and some sisters,
to live unpromoted and write Poems. In this way he lives still, now
here, now there; the family always within reach of London, never in
it; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old
comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much under it.
One of the finest looking men in the world. A great shock of rough
dusty-dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline
face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion,
almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;
smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,--fit for
loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between;
speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet in these
decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow
to. He is often unwell; very chaotic--his way is through Chaos and
the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out many miles
upon."

To this graphic description little need be added of the Tennyson of that time. He was in the midst of his greatest literary successes, and just beginning to reap some of the rewards of his labors. His fame increased rapidly from that time forward, and his fortune with his fame. For many years he has been a rich man, being a sharp and shrewd manager of his worldly affairs. His investments have always proved to be paying ones; and for a long time he has had whatever prices he named for his poems. He has a beautiful place at Farringford, Isle of Wight, and another country seat at Aldworth, in Surrey. He also owns a house in London, although he spends very little time there. He kept up his visits to the Carlyles during his occasional stays in the metropolis, until the death of his old friends. He was very fond of Mrs. Carlyle, her sharp wit amusing him, and her appreciation of his own work flattering him. She gives occasional pleasant mention of him in her letters. Over his later work Carlyle was not enthusiastic, although he retained his friendship for the man. In 1867, after the death of his wife, he gives us his last glimpse of the poet, which is as characteristic as the other:--

"We read at first Tennyson's 'Idyls,' with profound recognition of
the finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward perfection
of vacancy--and, to say truth, with considerable impatience at
being treated so very like infants though the lollipops were so
superlative. We gladly changed for one Emerson's 'English Traits;'
and read that with increasing and ever increasing satisfaction
every evening; blessing heaven that there were still books for
grown-up people too."

According to Carlyle, what Tennyson needed was a Task; and wanting that, he almost lost his way among the will-o'-wisps. High art, in the eyes of Carlyle, was but a poor "task" for a man like Tennyson. Upon this point the world will not be likely to agree with him, nor in his judgment of the wonderful "Idyls of the King." Although Tennyson, like Carlyle himself, has written too far into the shadows of age, he will not be judged by the labors of his old age, but by the matchless products of his prime. These are surely a priceless possession for the readers of the future, as well as for the men of his own time.

In the autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor we have this glimpse of the poet, in a letter from Mrs. Cameron to that gentleman:--

"Alfred has grown, he says, much fonder of you since your last
visit here. He says he feels now he is beginning to know you and
not to feel afraid of you; and that he is beginning to get over
your extreme insolence to him when he was young and you were in
your meridian splendor and glory. So one reads your simplicity. He
was very violent with the girls on the subject of the rage for
autographs. He said he believed every crime and every vice in the
world was connected with the passion for autographs and anecdotes
and records; that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the
lives of great men was treating them like pigs, to be ripped open
for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like
a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul
that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of
Shakspeare but his writings."

All of which sounds not unlike what Carlyle himself might have said in those days; and yet what personal revelations he made to the world before his death!

The news that Lord Tennyson is writing his autobiography may be sent by cable almost any day now, and the world will not receive it with any great surprise, but with very great interest and pleasure. This dislike of being lionized and overrun by celebrity hunters is probably one great reason why the poet prefers the solitude of the country to a residence in London. His servants and family guard him very securely from unwelcome visitors in his country home. The injunctions against disturbing him while at his work are so strong, that one day during the life of Prince Albert that distinguished _attache_ of royalty was refused admittance at the door. The poet formed a friendship with the Prince, however, later in life, and is now an occasional visitor to the Queen at Windsor. He is also a favorite with the Princess of Wales and other members of the royal family. But even such august friends as these do not draw him often from his solitude. Mr. Gladstone begs him in vain for a visit, and his invitations to the houses of the great lords are of course many and importunate; but of late he refuses them all. He says he will never again voluntarily pass a week in London, and he is not more fond of visits to country houses than to the city. Nor can we wonder much at this. He has never been a society man, and now that he is old, and growing somewhat feeble, the effort to conform to the demands of a conventional life is harder than ever. He tried taking a house in London and spending the season there, not many years ago, but wearied of it very quickly, and gave up the idea forever. While in London at that time he always appeared in public in the picturesque wide-awake hat of the Italian bandit, and always, even in warm weather, wore a cloak. The costume is very becoming, and the poet can afford to indulge his individual tastes in the matter of dress; so everybody said how poetical he looked, and, on the whole, his eccentricity was a success. He has always had a great contempt for the conventionalities of dress, and many laughable anecdotes have been told concerning his appearance at the Isle of Wight. When young he was really handsome, though he always wore his hair long, and looked as if he would be the better for a barber; but now he is very gray and wizened, stoops badly, and shows that he has smoked, as Carlyle said, infinite tobacco. Tennyson has always exercised a judicious hospitality, but never overburdened himself with company. His favorite time for guests is from Saturday until Monday, and those who are so fortunate as to be invited enjoy very greatly the distinction. Among his favorite guests is Henry Irving. A few years before his death Garibaldi paid the poet a visit, which was much enjoyed by both. Years ago, when the poet was more in London than now, a little knot of literary friends had a standing engagement to dine together once a month, and the parties were almost the ideal of unconventional friendliness. Among the number were Carlyle, Cunningham, Mill, Thackeray, Forster, Stirling, Landor, and Macready. Here the conversation was of the best, Carlyle always coming out strong, and all the rest content to listen. However, Carlyle, unlike many great conversers, never monopolized the conversation. It was always dialogue and not monologue with Carlyle in any mixed company, though he would discourse at length to one or two visitors. Tennyson, like many men of letters, loves to talk about his own work, and is very fond of reading his poems to his friends. This is, of course, very delightful to those friends, if the reading be not too prolonged, although he is said to chant them in rather a disagreeable manner. He is a great egotist, and does not like to listen to other people when they talk about themselves. We are told that Charles Sumner once paid him a visit, and bored him very much by a long talk upon American affairs in which Tennyson took no interest. When Sumner finally made a sufficient pause, Tennyson changed the subject by inquiring if his visitor had ever read "The Princess." Sumner replied that it was one of his favorite poems, whereupon Tennyson handed him the book and asked him to read. Sumner began, but was soon stopped by Tennyson, who wished to show him how a passage should be read. He went on reading aloud in his high nasal voice, until Sumner grew very weary, but did not dare to move for fear of being thought unappreciative. On and on read the poet, page after page, never making a moment's pause or giving Sumner any chance to escape, until he had read the whole poem. It is said that Sumner never dared pay him another visit. Being a decided egotist himself, it was painfully hard for the distinguished American to subordinate himself for so long a time, and his friends amused themselves very much at the idea.

Tennyson undoubtedly has a high opinion of his work; but he does not go quite to the length of Wordsworth in such self-admiration, as Wordsworth would read no poetry but his own, while Tennyson is a generous admirer of the work of fellow-poets.

Tennyson's married life has been one of the happiest on record. He addresses his wife in these lines:--

"Dear, near, and true--no truer Time himself
Can prove you, though he make you evermore
Dearer and nearer."

One cannot think, when he witnesses the devotion of the poet to his wife, that he ever regrets the "Amy shallow-hearted," the "Amy mine no more," of his youth; and the reader certainly cannot regret her, if it is really to her that we owe "Locksley Hall." Mrs. Tennyson has been something of an invalid, and the poet and his sons, Hallam and Lionel, may often be seen wheeling her on the lawn at Farringford. Of the house at Farringford Miss Thackeray, who is an old friend of the family, as was her father before her, tells us:--

"The house itself seemed like a charmed palace, with green walls
without and speaking walls within. There hung Dante with his solemn
nose and wreath; Italy gleamed over the doorways; friends' faces
lined the way; books filled the shelves, and a glow of crimson was
everywhere; the great oriel window in the drawing-room was full of
green and golden leaves, of the sound of birds, and of the distant
sea."

She continues:--

"I first knew the place in the autumn, but perhaps it is even more
beautiful in spring-time, when all day the lark trills high
overhead, and then when the lark has flown out of our hearing the
thrushes begin, and the air is sweet with scents from the many
fragrant shrubs. The woods are full of anemones and primroses;
narcissus grows wild in the lower fields; a lovely creamy stream of
flowers flows along the lanes, and lies hidden in the levels;
hyacinth-pools of blue shine in the woods; and then with a later
burst of glory comes the gorse, lighting up the country round
about, and blazing round about the beacon hill. The beacon hill
stands behind Farringford. If you follow the little wood of
nightingales and thrushes, and follow the lane where the blackthorn
hedges shine in spring-time (lovely dials that illuminate to show
the hour), you come to the downs, and climbing their smooth steps
you reach 'Mr. Tennyson's Down,' where the beacon-staff stands firm
upon the mound. Then following the line of the coast you come at
last to the Needles, and may look down upon the ridge of rocks that
rises crisp, sharp, shining, out of the blue wash of fierce
delirious waters."

Since Tennyson's elevation to the peerage there has been an infinite amount of squibbing at his expense, and some very good parodies upon his poems have been circulated. The "Pall Mall Gazette" parodies "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" thus:--

"Baron Alfred Vere de Vere,
Of me you win no new renown:
You thought to daze the country-folk
And cockneys when you came to town.
See Wordsworth, Shelley, Cowper, Burns,
Withdraw in scorn, and sit retired;
The last of some six hundred earls
Is not a place to be desired.

"Baron Alfred Vere de Vere,
We thought you proud to bear your name;
Your pride is yet no mate for ours,
Too proud to think a title fame.
We had the genius--not the lord;
We love the poet's truer charms,
A simple singer with his dreams
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms."

And so on to the close:--

"Alfred, Alfred Vere de Vere,
If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no toilers in our streets,
Nor any poor in all these lands?
Oh, teach the weak to strive and hope;
Oh, teach the great to help the low;
Pray Heaven for a noble heart,
And let the foolish title go."

There was undoubtedly much disappointment that Tennyson did not refuse the title bestowed upon him, as he had previously declined to be knighted, and was looked upon as something of a liberal. He probably was this when young, judging by some things in his writings; but he is now looked upon as a tory of the tories.

Tennyson has probably received higher prices for his poems than any other poet. When he was paid ten pounds a line for "Sea Dreams," it was considered a fabulous price; but he has received much more than that since.

During his long literary life--for he has been writing over fifty years--he has of course written a great deal; yet he is very slow and laborious in composition, and spends much time in rewriting and polishing. The garden song in "Maud" was rewritten fifty times, and almost as great labor has been given to other famous bits of writing. He was seventeen years in writing "In Memoriam," and he brought it almost to perfection of finish; but he has spent laborious years upon poems which are comparative failures. After the inspiration has waned, or if the inspiration is wanting in the first place, the pains taken in revision go for little in the making of a poem which will live. Given the inspiration, and the labor usually, though not always, adds to its chances for immortality. Tennyson, with all his fastidious delicacy in writing, is a robust, manly man,--strong, healthy, active, fond of out-of-door life, and not greatly given to study. He spends whole days in the open air, and has all an Englishman's fondness for walking. He is martial in spirit, too, and rejoices in the heroic deeds of his countrymen. He can write a spirited war song, as he proved a few years ago when he thrilled all England with the lyric:--

"Form, form, riflemen, form;
Ready, be ready to meet the storm."

On the whole, Tennyson must be said to have had a very prosperous and well-ordered life. He has enjoyed more of the blessings of this world than almost any one of his famous contemporaries; and his name is likely to live after that of most of the others shall have passed away. He has had the appreciation and the applause of all of the great men of his time, and the friendship of such as he desired; and his old age is full of honor, and ministered unto by loving and faithful hands. May it still be long before an admiring world shall read at the end of his life's story the words, "IN MEMORIAM, ALFRED TENNYSON."

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

"Come to Concord," wrote Ellery Channing to Hawthorne once upon a time; "Emerson is away, and nobody here to bore you;"--which sentence contains a gentle hint to the posterity of the two most distinguished men of letters America has produced that even the mystic and the seer sometimes palled upon the appetites of his personal friends. If any man could be supposed to be a hero to his valet, that man was surely Emerson; but his gifted neighbor seems not to have had any strong relish for his society. Neither did Hawthorne really enjoy Thoreau, who would seem to have been a sufficiently original person to have interested him, merely as a study of character. But it does not appear that Hawthorne was ever particularly fond of the society of men of letters, even though they were also men of genius. He refused to go to the Saturday Club of Authors, but would play cards with sea-captains in the smoking-room of his boarding-house in Liverpool, evening after evening. Indeed, he liked the piquant flavor of what is commonly called low society, when he required any society outside his home, better than that which would have seemed more adapted to his taste. We mean simply by this the society of back-woodsmen, sailors, laborers, and old hard-headed farmers of New England stock, with their strong provincial dialect.

Mr. Emerson himself liked the raciness of the conversation of such men, and, indeed, we think almost all men of genius have something of the same taste. When we read what Mrs. Hawthorne says of the manner of conversation between her husband and Emerson, it can scarcely be considered remarkable that Hawthorne should not have cared to confine himself to the society of the sage. She says, speaking of Hawthorne:--

"Mr. Emerson delights in him; he talks to him all the time, and Mr.
Hawthorne looks answers. He seems to fascinate Emerson. Whenever he
comes to see him he takes him away, so that no one may interrupt
him in his close and dead-set attack upon his ear."

There is a one-sidedness to a conversation of this nature which might well weary a person in the body; and only a disembodied spirit, it may be surmised, could thoroughly enjoy it. A fine thing to do would be to put two of those great conversationalists against each other, as was sometimes done with Sydney Smith and Macaulay. It is said that the two would sit glaring at each other and maintain perfect silence; whereas either one of them apart from the other would discourse for three hours without taking breath. Imagine the horrible agony of those among the auditors who were not interested in the subject of the oration!--and there must always have been some among the number so situated.

One remembers how Shelley got rid of the old woman down in Conway, and wonders why the ruse was never tried upon Macaulay by some of his victims. Shelley, it is said, was once riding in a stage in that region, and the only passenger beside himself was an old woman with two huge baskets filled with onions and cabbage respectively. She was huge herself and much incumbered with fat, and the day was excessively warm. Shelley was one of those delicate mortals who have been known to "die of a rose in aromatic pains," and after a while the presence of the old woman nearly drove him to distraction. He pretended that it had quite done so, and suddenly throwing himself into the bottom of the stage he glared at the old woman and shouted:--

"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,--
ALL MURDERED."

Before the last two words--which he rendered with more than an actor's effect--were fairly out of his mouth, the old woman by her shrieks had summoned the guard, and was released from the company of the madman. Shelley was often induced by his friends to show them how he got rid of the old woman, and the exhibition always called for uproarious applause. There is a hint in it for any well-bred company who may be bored to the point of extinction by a distinguished member. The only wonder is that in some cases the sudden madness is not real rather than assumed.

Hawthorne was eminently capable of being bored to this point of desperation, and his mother and elder sister saved themselves from any danger of this kind by voluntarily living the lives of recluses. Julian Hawthorne tells us:--

"His mother, a woman of fine gifts but extreme sensibility lost her
husband in her twenty-eighth year; and from an exaggerated, almost
Hindoo-like, construction of the law of seclusion which the public
taste of that day imposed upon widows, she withdrew entirely from
society and permitted the habit of solitude to grow upon her to
such a degree that she actually remained a strict hermit to the end
of her long life, or for more than forty years after Captain
Hawthorne's death. Such behavior on the mother's part could not
fail to have its effect upon the children. They had no opportunity
to know what social intercourse meant; their peculiarities and
eccentricities were at least negatively encouraged; they grew to
regard themselves as something apart from the general world. It is
saying much for the sanity and healthfulness of the minds of these
three children, that their loneliness distorted their
judgment--their perception of the relation of things--as little as
it did."

The sister is described as having in many respects an intellect as commanding and penetrating as that of her brother, and yet she followed in the way of her mother and passed her life in almost complete seclusion, caring for nothing but the reading of books and the taking of long walks, sleeping always until noon, and sitting up until two or three o'clock in the morning in perfect solitude. She boarded for many years after her mother's death at a farm-house on the seashore, and could not be induced to come out, even to attend the funeral of her brother at Concord, although he was her pride and idol throughout life.

Had Hawthorne himself been less fortunate in his marriage, there is little doubt that his own peculiarities would have become exaggerated, perhaps even to the extent of those of his sister. But he married a woman who both understood and appreciated him, and whom he idolized. From this union grew all the happiness and success of his life. His son says:--

"To attempt to explain and describe his career without taking this
event into consideration would be like trying to imagine a sun
without heat or a day without a sun. Nothing seems less likely than
that he should have accomplished his work in literature
independently of her sympathy and companionship. Not that she
afforded him any direct and literal assistance in the composition
of his books and stories: her gifts were wholly unsuited to such
employment, and no one apprehended more keenly than she the
solitariness and uniqueness of his genius, insomuch that she would
have deemed it something not far removed from profanation to have
offered to advise or sway him in regard to his literary
productions. She believed in his inspiration, and her office was to
promote, as far as in her lay, the favorableness of the conditions
under which it should manifest itself."

It was to this that she devoted her life,--to comfort, to cheer, to soothe, to inspire, to guard from all outward annoyances, the poetical and sensitive man who believed in her so implicitly and leaned upon her so confidently. They led a very quiet and secluded life during the most of his literary career, and seemed almost to resent any intrusion of the outside world upon them, not only as regarded persons, but even as regarded agitating questions and pressing ideas.

They took very slight interest in the questions which stirred New England life in their day, and held entirely aloof from the reforms which shook the social life around them from centre to foundation-stone. Indeed, he had a deep-seated dislike to the genus Reformer, and presented his picture of the whole race in "Hollingsworth." Perhaps he had known some individual reformer of that odious type, and out of this grew his dislike of the whole species. At any rate, the men--of whom New England was full at that time--who

"Blew the fiery breath of storm
Through the hoarse trumpet of Reform"

never received much aid or sympathy from Nathaniel Hawthorne or his wife. Nor will they, apparently, from his son, who says of his father, "He was not a teetotaler any more than he was an abolitionist or a Thug."

But if their sympathies did not go out very widely to the outside world, there was the most perfect sympathy and companionship in the home life, and no more beautiful record of a perfect marriage has ever been made than this life of the Hawthornes presents. Yes, it was a happy life they led, these two in their married isolation, despite poverty and obscurity and a lack of appreciation in the early time, and of trial, from ill-health and other causes, in later years. He lived like Carlyle, a good deal in the shadows of his famous books, and was sometimes for months in the possession of the demon of composition. While composing "The Marble Faun" he thus writes in a letter:

"I sternly shut myself up, and come to close grips with the romance
which I am trying to tear from my brain."

He was always discouraged about his work, and needed a deal of cheering regarding it. He says in one place:

"My own individual taste is for an altogether different class of
books from what I write. If I were to meet with such books as mine
by another writer, I do not believe I should be able to get through
with them."

And again:--

"I will try to write a more genial book, but the Devil himself
always gets into my inkstand, and I can only get him out by
penfuls."

Still again:--

"Heaven sees fit to visit me with the unshakable conviction that
all this series of articles is good for nothing. I don't think that
the public will bear with much more of this sort of thing."

His letters are often full of this moody discouragement, though lighted up always by some gleams of his humor. For instance, he writes to Fields:--

"Do make some inquiries about Portugal,--in what part of the world
it lies, and whether it is a Kingdom, an Empire, or a Republic.
Also the expenses of living there, and whether the Minister would
be much pestered with his own countrymen."

And later, when he was in Rome:--

"I bitterly detest this Rome, and shall rejoice to bid it adieu
forever; and I fully acquiesce in all the mischief and ruin that
has ever happened to it from Nero's conflagration downward. In
fact, I wish the very site of it had been obliterated before I ever
saw it."

His complaints about his pens are really very amusing to those people--and their name is legion--who have had a like difficulty in pleasing themselves. He writes to Fields:--

"If you want me to write you a good novel, send me a good pen; not
a gold one, but one which will not get stiff and rheumatic the
moment I get attached to it. I never met with a good pen in my
life."

To this last sentiment we think that a great multitude which no man can number will respond Amen. He says of them again:--

"Nobody ever suffered more from pens than I have, and I am glad
that my labor with the abominable little tool is drawing to a
close."

In private conversation he enlivened his more serious thoughts often with vivid surprises of expression; and he had a mild way of making a severe remark, which reminded Charlotte Cushman of a man she once saw making such a disturbance in the gallery of a theatre that the play could hardly proceed. Cries of "Throw him over!" arose from all parts of the house, and the noise became furious. All was tumultuous chaos until a sweet and gentle female voice was heard in the pit, when all grew silent to hear:--

"No, I pray you, my friends, don't throw him over. I beg that you
will not throw him over, but--kill him where he is!"

It was only in the company of intimate personal friends, from whom all restraint was removed, that Hawthorne ever indulged in his natural buoyancy of spirits. Among them he occasionally condescended to uproarious fun. But he was like Dr. Johnson, who, when indulging in a scene of wild hilarity, suddenly exclaimed to his friends, as Beau Brummel approached, "Let us be grave; here comes a fool." If there was the slightest suspicion of there being a fool in the company Hawthorne always wore his armor. The pretentious and transcendental fools he hated worst of all; and the young man who had no taste for the finite, but thought the infinite was the thing for him, always left him with a feeling as of asphyxia.

Hawthorne's atmosphere was really unhealthy for transcendentalists. No doubt his dislike of Margaret Fuller arose from this feeling of his that she was always acting a part, always straining after an effect. He loved simple, natural, unaffected people, and the part of a sibyl was very distasteful to him. He suspected the inspiration of green tea in much that Margaret said, and very ungallantly pronounced her a humbug. But as he did this only upon the paper of his own private diary, with no thought of it ever being paraded before a critical and captious world, we should not blame him too severely. And if he was mistaken in what he wrote concerning her husband and her life in Rome, as seems to be the fact, no doubt he was deceived by gossip-loving friends in Rome concerning the matter. One does not write gratuitous falsehoods upon the pages of one's private notebook about acquaintances, as a general rule. If he had desired to injure Margaret he would have put his supposed facts in a different place, no doubt, and not merely written them in a moment of spleen where he never expected them to be seen.

The publication of such comment as this, and Carlyle's mention of Charles Lamb and others, seems to be due entirely to the total depravity of literary executors. As George Eliot says, it is like uncovering the dead Byron's club-foot, when he had been so sensitive about it through life, as his friend Trelawny boasts that he did. Margaret Fuller was a large-brained, big-hearted woman, but that she and Hawthorne could not thoroughly fraternize is not a strange thing. We see another instance of such lack of appreciation of each other's qualities in Henry James and the Bostonians of the present time. Even the admirers of the Boston type get a little quiet amusement from his delicious satire, although their admiration of the reformers may remain unshaken. That the world has got a little weary of the mutual admiration of the Boston coterie is an open secret. We have had a trifle too much of it from the day of Fields, who apparently invented Hawthorne, and would have put a patent upon him if possible, down to the present era of worship of that real hero, Emerson who, if he survives the laudations of his present army of admirers, may well hope for immortality.

The wife of Hawthorne was so different a person from the noble army of literary and artistic women who are so numerous to-day, but who in his time had just begun to assert themselves, that, believing her to be the perfect flower of womanhood, as he did, he could scarcely be expected to appreciate the Zenobias of that or of the present time.

Mrs. Hawthorne's sister, Elizabeth Peabody, was one of the women of the new era, and has spent her entire life in noble efforts to improve the world into which she was born; and who shall say whether Mrs. Hawthorne or Miss Peabody was the higher type of woman?

If we were obliged to compare Mrs. Hawthorne with the caricatures of the strong-minded woman in which novelists so delight,--those "housekeepers by the wrath of God,"--like Mrs. Jellaby and similar monstrosities, then the answer would not be hard. We could all cry, Mrs. Hawthorne, now and forever! But when we compare her to the strong-minded women like George Eliot, perfect wives, perfect home-makers, perfectly sympathetic and loyal comrades of their husbands, and lacking nothing of womanly softness or tenderness with all their strength, then the answer is not so simple. But doubtless the fact that God created both types may be accepted as evidence that He saw uses for both, and that even the women whom He made "fools to match the men" are not without their purpose in the economy of the universe.

Such thoughts as the following in regard to her husband, written by Mrs. Hawthorne after eight years of marriage, sound not unlike the rhapsodies of George Eliot concerning Mr. Lewes:--

"He has perfect dominion over himself in every respect, so that to
do the highest, wisest, loveliest thing is not the least effort to
him, any more than it is for a baby to be innocent. It is his
spontaneous act, and a baby is not more unconscious of its
innocence. I never knew such loftiness so simply borne. I have
never known him to stoop from it in the most trivial household
matter any more than in the larger or more public ones. If the
Hours make out to reach him in his high sphere their wings are very
strong. Happy, happiest is the wife who can bear such and so
sincere testimony to her husband after eight years' intimate union.
Such a person can never lose the prestige which commands and
fascinates. I cannot possibly conceive of my happiness, but in a
kind of blissful confusion live on. If I can only be so great, so
high, so noble, so sweet as he, in any phase of my being, I shall
be glad. I am not deluded nor mistaken, as the angels know now, and
as all my friends will know in open vision."

We will quote but this one passage from her letters about him, though the Life is filled with similar ones, and will give but one of his love-letters to her, and that not entire. He says:--

"Sometimes during my solitary life in our old Salem house it seemed
to me as if I had only life enough to know that I was not alive,
for I had no wife then to keep my heart warm. But at length you
were revealed to me in the shadow of a seclusion as deep as my own.
I drew nearer and nearer to you, and opened my heart to you, and
you came to me, and will remain forever, keeping my heart warm, and
renewing my life with your own. You only have taught me that I have
a heart; you only have thrown a light deep downward and upward into
my soul. You only have revealed me to myself, for without your aid
my best knowledge of myself would have been merely to know my own
shadow--to watch it flickering on the wall, and mistake its
fantasies for my own real actions. . . . If the whole world stood
between us we must have met; if we had been born in different ages
we could not have been sundered!"

What was poverty and obscurity and isolation unto these two souls, so complete in each other that nothing else was desired? How deep a lesson might the young of these later days, who hesitate to take each other unless all things else may be added unto them, learn from this perfect marriage! How much, too, could they learn from the dignity and the refinement and the charm of that early home, where all was so simple, so humble, and yet so rich and satisfying! Would that we had more such homes of royal poverty in these days of vulgar pretence and showy unreality. More homes where there is no shamefacedness over the want of the luxuries of their neighbors, but a simple content with what it is possible to have honorably; where plain living is a religion, and where there is no insatiable longing for the unattainable. The worship of wealth, the feeling that there is no other good than money, is one of the most degrading features of our modern life. It is a falsehood, too. There is everything good in the world, and the most of the things which are best in life can be had with but a little money. No man is poor unless he feels poor. If a family are willing to live their own noble life, pitched in a high key, and with little regard for what their neighbors may say and think, it is still possible to be happy in this goodly world, though the bank account may be small, or there be no bank account in the case. The Ways and Means Committee of which Mrs. Hawthorne was chairman in her day could impart a world of wisdom to the fretful and ambitious wives of a generation of young men now upon the stage of action, who strive so hard to live like the people who have wealth at their command that they spoil the beautiful homes they might enjoy by an unceasing strife to appear to live better than they can afford to do.

When Fortune began to smile upon the Hawthornes, after the immortal "Scarlet Letter" had been written and "The Blithedale Romance" had been added to it, they received her favors with thankful hearts, and knew how to spend wisely and well what came to them. But, as so often happens, it does not appear that they were any happier in their easier circumstances than in their poverty; probably not as happy, for the glamour of youth was gone, and the first zest of being had become dulled. Ill health, too, had come upon him, once so strong and perfect in body; and their home was measurably broken up after they first went abroad. The days at the Old Manse comprised the idyl of their lives.

Here is what Hawthorne himself says of this time:--

"My wife is in the strictest sense my sole companion, and I need no
other; there is no vacancy in my mind any more than in my heart. In
truth, I have spent so many years in total seclusion from all human
society that it is no wonder if now I feel all my desires satisfied
by this sole intercourse. But she has come to me from the midst of
many friends and acquaintances; yet she lives from day to day in
this solitude, seeing nobody but myself and our Molly, while the
snow of our avenue is untrodden for weeks by any footstep save
mine. Yet she is always cheerful. Thank God that I suffice for her
boundless heart."

And, again, to her he writes:--

"DEAR LITTLE WIFE,--After finishing my record in the journal, I sat
a long time in grandmother's chair thinking of many things; but the
thought of thee, the great thought of thee, was among all other
thoughts, like the pervading sunshine falling through the boughs
and branches of a tree and tinging every separate leaf. And surely
thou shouldst not have deserted me without manufacturing a
sufficient quantity of sunshine to last till thy return. Art thou
not ashamed?"

Concord was never the same to them after their return from Rome. The shadow of the coming separation was already around them. He writes, after the appearance of Longfellow's poem: "I, too, am weary, and look forward to the Wayside Inn." And, spite of the most loving ministrations of family and friends, he was soon brought to the rest which awaited him there. None could really regret that he had found the peace he sought; but the world seemed more thinly populated when it was known that the hand which had written "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Marble Faun" would write no more. "We carried him," said Fields, "through the blossoming orchards of Concord, and laid him down under a group of pines on a hill-side overlooking historic fields; the unfinished romance which had cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin." And there, upon that Concord height which he has rendered world-famous, made a Delphian vale or a Mecca to so many pilgrims from his own land and from over sea, he sleeps well. There the sweet spring flowers of dear old New England bloom for him; there the Mayflower pierces the melting snow, and the shy, sweet violet gems the earliest green; there the dandelion glows in golden splendor, and the snowy daisies star the grass, and all the sweet succession of summer flowers troop in orderly array, until Autumn waves her torch, and the sumach and the goldenrod blaze out in wild magnificence, and the blue-fringed gentian hides in secret coverts. These are the fitting decorations of that grave. Piled marble or towering granite would lie too heavy on the heart of this child of Nature. And as the years shall pass, still will the humble grave continue to be visited. "Forgotten" will never be written upon the tombstone of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Still through the clear brilliance of New England winter nights will the stars look down tenderly upon it. Arcturus will stand guard over it, golden-belted Orion will send down quivering lances of light to illumine it, the pomp of blazing Jupiter shall envelop it, and the first radiance of the dawn shall silver its sacred slopes forever.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.