Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) (801 page)

The nurse to whom I have just referred has said that when Julian was about four, sometimes he would annoy her while she was sewing; and if his father was in the room, she would tell Julian to go to him and ask him to read about Robbie, who was Robinson Crusoe. He would sit quietly all the time his father read to him, no matter for how long. But her master finally told Dora not to send Julian to him in this way to hear “Robinson Crusoe,” because he was “tired of reading it to him.” The nurse was a bit of a genius herself, in her way, and not to be easily suppressed, and when her charge became fidgety, and she was in a hurry, she made one more experiment with Robbie. Her master turned round in his chair, and for the first time in four years she saw an angry look on his face, and he commanded her “never to do it again.” At three years of age Julian played pranks upon his father without trepidation. There was a “boudoir” in the house which had a large, pleasant window, and was therefore thought to be agreeable enough to be used as a prison-house for Una and Julian when they were naughty. Julian conveyed his father into the boudoir, and shut the door on him adroitly. It had no handle on the inner side, purposely, and the astonished parent was caged. “You cannot come out,” said Julian, “until you have promised to be a good boy.” Through the persistent dignity with which Hawthorne behaved, and with which he was always treated by the household, Julian had felt the down of playful love.

Here are letters written to me while I was in Portugal with my mother, in 1856: —

MY DEAR LITTLE ROSEBUD, — I have put a kiss for you in this nice, clean piece of paper. I shall fold it up carefully, and I hope it will not drop out before it gets to Lisbon. If you cannot find it, you must ask Mamma to look for it. Perhaps you will find it on her lips. Give my best regards to your Uncle John and Aunt Sue, and to all your kind friends, not forgetting your Nurse. Your affectionate father,

N. H.

MY DEAR LITTLE ROSEBUD, — It is a great while since I wrote to you; and I am afraid this letter will be a great while in reaching you. I hope you are a very good little girl; and I am sure you never get into a passion, and never scream, and never scratch and strike your dear Nurse or your dear sister Una. Oh no! my little Rosebud would never do such naughty things as those. It would grieve me very much if I were to hear of her doing such things. When you come back to England, I shall ask Mamma whether you have been a good little girl; and Mamma (I hope) will say: “Yes; our little Rosebud has been the best and sweetest little girl I ever knew in my life. She has never screamed nor uttered any but the softest and sweetest sounds. She has never struck Nurse nor Una nor dear Mamma with her little fist, nor scratched them with her sharp little nails; and if ever there was a little angel on earth, it is our dear little Rosebud!” And when Papa hears this, he will be very glad, and will take Rosebud up in his arms and kiss her over and over again. But if he were to hear that she had been naughty, Papa would feel it his duty to eat little Rosebud up! Would not that be very terrible?

Julian is quite well, and sends you his love. I have put a kiss for you in this letter; and if you do not find it, you may be sure that some naughty person has got it. Tell Nurse I want to see her very much. Kiss Una for me.

Your loving PAPA.

The next letter is of later date, having been written while the rest of the family were in Manchester: —

MY DEAR LITTLE PESSIMA, — I am very glad that Mamma is going to take you to see “Tom Thump;” and I think it is much better to call him Thump than Thumb, and I always mean to call him so from this time forward. It is a very nice name, is Tom Thump. I hope you will call him Tom Thump to his face when you see him, and thump him well if he finds fault with it. Do you still thump dear Mamma, and Fanny, and Una, and Julian, as you did when I saw you last? If you do, I shall call you little Rose Thump; and then people will think that you are Tom Thump's wife. And now I shall stop thumping on this subject.

Your friend little Frank Hallet is at Mrs. Blodget's. Do you remember how you used to play with him at Southport, and how he sometimes beat you? He seems to be a better little boy than he was then, but still he is not so good as he might be. This morning he had some very nice breakfast in his plate, but he would not eat it because his mamma refused to give him something that was not good for him; and so, all breakfast-time, this foolish little boy refused to eat a mouthful, though I could see that he was very hungry, and would have eaten it all up if he could have got it into his mouth without anybody seeing. Was not he a silly child? Little Pessima never behaved so, — oh no!

There are two or three very nice little girls at Mrs. Blodget's, and also a nice large dog, who is very kind and gentle, and never bites anybody; and also a tabby cat, who very often comes to me and mews for something to eat. So you see we have a very pleasant family; but, for all that, I would rather be at home.

And now I have written you such a long letter that my head is quite tired out; and so I shall leave off, and amuse myself with looking at some pages of figures.

Be a good little girl, and do not tease Mamma, nor trouble Fanny, nor quarrel with Una and Julian; and when I come home I shall call you little Pessima (because I am very sure you will deserve that name), and shall kiss you more than once. N. H.

If he said a few kind words to me, my father gave me a sense of having a strong ally among the great ones of life; and if I were ill, I was roused by his standing beside me to defy the illness. When I was seriously indisposed, at the age of three, he brought me a black doll, which I heard my mother say she thought would alarm me, as it was very ugly, and I had never seen a negro. I remember the much-knowing smile with which my father's face was indefinitely lighted up as he stood looking at me, while I, half unconscious to most of the things of this world, was nevertheless clutching his gift gladly to my heart. The hideous darky was soon converted by my nurse Fanny (my mother called her Fancy, because of her rare skill with the needle and her rich decorations of all sorts of things) into a beautifully dressed footman, who was a very large item in my existence for years. I thought my father an intensely clever man to have hit upon Pompey, and to have understood so well that he would make an angel. All his presents to us Old People, as he called us, were either unusual or of exquisite workmanship. The fairy quality was indispensable before he chose them. We children have clung to them even to our real old age. The fairies were always just round the corner of the point of sight, with me, and in recognition of my keen delight of confidence in the small fry my father gave me little objects that were adapted to them: delicate bureaus with tiny mirrors that had reflected fairy faces a moment before, and little tops that opened by unscrewing them in an unthought-of way and held minute silver spoons. Once he brought home to Julian a china donkey's head in a tall gray hat such as negroes and politicians elect to wear, and its brains were composed entirely of borrowed brilliancy in the shape of matches. We love the donkey still, and it always occupies a place of honor. He brought me a little Bacchus in Parian marble, wearing a wreath of grapes, and holding a mug on his knee, and greeting his jolly stomach with one outspread hand, as if he were inwardly smiling as he is outwardly. This is a vase for flowers, and the white smile of the god has gleamed through countless of my sweetest bouquets.

My father's enjoyment of frolicking fun was as hilarious as that accorded by some of us to wildest comic opera. He had a delicate way of throwing himself into the scrimmage of laughter, and I do not for an instant attempt to explain how he managed it. I can say that he lowered his eye-lids when he laughed hardest, and drew in his breath half a dozen times with dulcet sounds and a murmur of mirth between. Before and after this performance he would look at you straight from under his black brows, and his eyes seemed dazzling. I think the hilarity was revealed in them, although his cheeks rounded in ecstasy. I was a little roguish child, but he was the youngest and merriest person in the room when he was amused. Yet he was never far removed from his companion, — a sort of Virgil, — his knowledge of sin and tragedy at our very hearthstones. It was with such a memory in the centre of home joys that the Pilgrim Fathers turned towards the door, ever and anon, to guard it from creeping Indian forms.

On Sundays, at sundown, when the winter rain had very likely dulled everybody's sense of more moderate humor, the blue law of quietness was lifted from the atmosphere; and between five and six o'clock we spread butterfly wings again, and had blind man's buff. We ran around the large centre-table, and made this gambol most tempestuously merry. If anything had been left upon the table before we began, it was removed with rapidity before we finished. There was a distinct understanding that our blindfolded father must not be permitted to touch any of us, or else we should be reduced forthwith to our original dust. The pulsing grasp of his great hands and heavy fingers, soft and springing in their manipulation of one's shoulders as the touch of a wild thing, was amusingly harmless, considering the howls with which his onslaught was evaded as long as our flying legs were loyal to us. My father's gentle laughter and happy-looking lips were a revelation during these bouts. I remember with what awe I once tied the blinding handkerchief round his head, feeling the fine crispness of his silky hair, full of electricity, as some people's is only on frosty days; yet without any of that crinkly resistance of most hair that is full of energy. But there were times when I used to stand at a distance and gaze at his peaceful aspect, and wonder if he would ever open the floodgates of fun in a game of romp on any rainy Sunday of the future. If a traveler caught the Sphinx humming to herself, would he not be inclined to sit down and watch her till she did it again?

I have referred to his large hand. I shall never see a more reassuring one than his. It was broad, generous, supple. It had the little depressions and the smoothness to be noticed in the hands of truest charity; yet it had the ample outlines of the vigorously imaginative temperament, so different from the hard plumpness of coarseness or brutality. At the point where the fingers joined the back of the hand were the roundings-in that are reminiscent of childhood's simplicity, and are to be found in many philanthropic persons. His way of using his fingers was slow, well thought out, and gentle, though never lagging, that most unpleasant fault indicative of self-absorbed natures. When he did anything with his hands he seemed very active, because thoroughly in earnest. He delighted me by the way in which he took hold of any material thing, for it proved his self-mastery. Strength of will joined to self-restraint is a combination always enjoyable to the onlooker; but it is also evidence of discomfort and effort enough in the heroic character that has won the state which we contemplate with so much approval. I remember his standing once by the fire, leaning upon the mantelpiece, when a vase on the shelf toppled over in some way. It was a cheap, lodging-house article, and yet my father tried to save it from falling to the floor as earnestly as he did anything which he set out to do. His hand almost seized the vase, but it rebounded; and three times he half caught it. The fourth time he rescued it as it was near the floor, having become flushed and sparkling with the effort of will and deftness. For years that moment came back to me, because his determination had been so valiantly intense, and I was led to carry out determinations of all sorts from witnessing his self-respect and his success in so small a matter. People of power care all the time. It is their life-blood to succeed; they must encourage their precision of eye and thought by repeated triumphs, which so soothe and rejoice the nerves.

He was very kind in amusing me by aid of my slate. That sort of pastime suited my hours of silence, which became less and less broken by the talkative vein. His forefinger rubbed away defects in the aspect of faces or animals with a lion-like suppleness of sweep that seemed to me to wipe out the world. We also had a delicious game of a labyrinth of lines, which it was necessary to traverse with the pencil without touching the hedges, as I called the winding marks. We wandered in and around without a murmur, and I reveled in delight because he was near.

Walking was always a great resource in the family, and it was a half-hearted matter for us unless we were at his side. His gait was one of long, easy steps which were leisurely and not rapid, and he cast an occasional look around, stopping if anything more lovely than usual was to be seen in sky or landscape. It is the people who love their race even better than themselves who can take into their thought an outdoor scene. In England the outdoor life had many enchantments of velvet sward upon broad hills and flowers innumerable and fragrant. A little letter of Una's not long after we arrived in Rockferry alludes to this element in our happiness: —

“We went to take a walk to-day, and I do not think I ever had such a beautiful walk before in all my life. Julian and I got some very pretty flowers, such as do not grow wild in America. I found some exquisite harebells by the roadside, and some very delicate little pink flowers. And I got some wild holly, which is very pretty indeed; it has very glossy and prickery leaves. I have seen a great many hedges made of it since I have been here; for nothing can get over it or get through it, for it is almost as prickery as the Hawthorne [the bush and the family name were always the same thing to us children], of which almost all the hedges in Liverpool, and everywhere I have been, are made; and there it grows up into high trees, so that nothing in the world can look through it, or climb over it, or crawl through it; and I am afraid our poor hedge in Concord will never look so well, because the earth round it is so sandy and dry, and here it is so very moist and rich. It ought to be moist, at any rate, for it rains enough.” But later she writes on “the eighteenth day of perfect weather,” and where can the weather seem so perfect as in England?