Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) (742 page)

There is actually more of the real George Eliot in this summary than in the three volumes of her biography by Mr. Cross.

Thorwaldsen's well-known simile in regard to the three stages of sculpture, the life, the death and the resurrection, also has its application to literature. The manuscript is the birth of an author's work, and its revision always seems like taking the life out of it; but when the proof comes, it is like a new birth, and he sees his design for the first time in its true proportions. Then he goes over it as the sculptor does his newly-cast bronze, smoothing the rough places and giving it those final touches which serve to make its expression clearer. Hawthorne was never more to be envied than while correcting the proof of “The Marble Faun” at Leamington. The book was given to the public at Easter-time; and there seems to have been only one person in England that appreciated it, even as a work of art — John Lothrop Motley. The most distinguished reviewers wholly failed to catch the significance of it; and even Henry Bright, while warmly admiring the story, expressed a dissatisfaction at the conclusion of it, — although he could have found a notable precedent for that in Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister.” The
Saturday Review
, a publication similar in tone to the New York
Nation
, said of “Transformation:”

[Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 250.]

“A mystery is set before us to unriddle; at the end the author turns round and asks us what is the good of solving it. That the impression of emptiness and un-meaningness thus produced is in itself a blemish to the work no one can deny. Mr. Hawthorne really trades upon the honesty of other writers. We feel a sort of interest in the story, slightly and sketchily as it is told, because our experience of other novels leads us to assume that, when an author pretends to have a plot, he has one.”

The
Art Journal
said of it: [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 249.]

“We are not to accept this book as a story; in that respect it is grievously deficient. The characters are utterly untrue to nature and to fact; they speak, all and always, the sentiments of the author; their words also are his; there is no one of them for which the world has furnished a model.”

And the London
Athenaeum
said: [Footnote: Ibid., ii. 244.]

“To Mr. Hawthorne truth always seems to arrive through the medium of the imagination…. His hero, the Count of Monte Beni, would never have lived had not the Faun of Praxiteles stirred the author's admiration…. The other characters, Mr. Hawthorne must bear to be told, are not new to a tale of his. Miriam, the mysterious, with her hideous tormentor, was indicated in the Zenobia of 'The Blithedale Romance.' Hilda, the pure and innocent, is own cousin to Phoebe in 'The House of the Seven Gables'.”

If the reviewer is to be reviewed, it is not too much to designate these criticisms as miserable failures. They are not even well written. Henry Bright seemed to be thankful that they were no worse, for he wrote to Hawthorne: “I am glad that sulky
Athenaeum
was so civil; for they are equally powerful and unprincipled.” The writer in the
Athenaeum
evidently belonged to that class of domineering critics who have no literary standing, but who, like bankers' clerks, arrogate to themselves all the importance of the establishment with which they are connected. Fortunately, there are few such in America. No keen-witted reader would ever confound the active, rosy, domestic Phoebe Pyncheon with the dreamy, sensitive, and strongly subjective Hilda of “The Marble Faun;” and Hawthorne might have sent a communication to the
Athenaeum
to refresh the reviewer's memory, for it was not Zenobia in “The Blithedale Romance” who was dogged by a mysterious persecutor, but her half-sister — Priscilla. Shakespeare's Beatrice and his Rosalind are more alike (for Brandes supposes them to have been taken from the same model) than Zenobia and Miriam; and the difference between the persecutors of Priscilla and Miriam, as well as their respective methods, is world-wide; but there are none so blind as those who are enveloped in the turbid medium of their self-conceit.

The pure-hearted, chivalrous Motley read these reviews, and wrote to Hawthorne a vindication of his work, which must have seemed to him like a broad belt of New England sunshine in the midst of the London fog. In reference to its disparagement by so-called authorities, Motley said: [Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 408.]

“I have said a dozen times that nobody can write English but you. With regard to the story which has been slightingly criticised, I can only say that to me it is quite satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, Hawthornesque shapes flitting through the golden gloom which is the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way in which the story is indicated rather than revealed. The outlines are quite definite enough, from the beginning to the end, to those who have imagination enough to follow you in your airy flights; and to those who complain — -

“I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile figures of your romance to the level of an everyday novel. It is exactly the romantic atmosphere of the book in which I revel.”

The calm face of Motley, with his classic features, rises before us as we read this, illumined as it were by “the mild radiance of a hidden sun.” He also had known what it was to be disparaged by English periodicals; and if it had not been for Froude's spirited assertion in his behalf, his history of the Dutch Republic might not have met with the celebrity it deserved. He was aware of the difference between a Hawthorne and a Reade or a Trollope, and knew how unfair it would be to judge Hawthorne even by the same standard as Thackeray. He does not touch in this letter on the philosophical character of the work, although that must have been evident to him, for he had said enough without it; but one could wish that he had printed the above statement over his own name, in some English journal.

American reviewers were equally puzzled by “The Marble Faun,” and, although it was generally praised here, the literary critics treated it in rather a cautious manner, as if it contained material of a dangerous nature. The
North American
, which should have devoted five or six pages to it, gave it less than one; praising it in a conventional and rather unsympathetic tone. Longfellow read it, and wrote in his diary, “A wonderful book; but with the old, dull pain in it that runs through all Hawthorne's writings.” There was always something of this dull pain in the expression of Hawthorne's face.

ANALYSIS OF “THE MARBLE FAUN”

It is like a picture, or a succession of pictures, painted in what the Italians call the
sfumato
, or “smoky” manner. The book is pervaded with the spirit of a dreamy pathos, such as constitutes the mental atmosphere of modern Rome; not unlike the haze of an Indian summer day, which we only half enjoy from a foreboding of the approach of winter. All outlines are softened and partially blurred in it, as time and decay have softened the outlines of the old Roman ruins. We recognize the same style with which we are familiar in “The Scarlet Letter,” but influenced by a change in Hawthorne's external impressions.

It is a rare opportunity when the work of a great writer can be traced back to its first nebulous conception, as we trace the design of a pictorial artist to the first drawing that he made for his subject. Although we cannot witness the development of the plot of this romance in Hawthorne's mind, it is much to see in what manner the different elements of which it is composed, first presented themselves to him, and how he adapted them to his purpose.

The first of these in order of time was the beautiful Jewess, whom he met at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London; who attracted him by her
tout ensemble
, but at the same time repelled him by an indefinable impression, a mysterious something, that he could not analyze. There would seem, however, to have been another Jewess connected with the character of Miriam; for I once heard Mrs. Hawthorne narrating a story in which she stated that she and her husband were driving through London in a cab, and passing close to the sidewalk in a crowded street they saw a beautiful woman, with black hair and a ruddy complexion, walking with the most ill- favored and disagreeable looking Jew that could be imagined; and on the woman's face there was an expression of such deep-seated unhappiness that Hawthorne and his wife turned to each other, and he said, “I think that woman's face will always haunt me.” I did not hear the beginning of Mrs. Hawthorne's tale, but I always supposed that it related to “The Marble Faun,” and it would seem as if the character of Miriam was a composite of these two daughters of Israel, uniting the enigmatical quality of one with the unfortunate companionship of the other, and the beauty of both.

As previously noticed, the portrait of Beatrice Cenci excited a deeply penetrating interest in Hawthorne, and his reflections on it day after day would naturally lead him to a similar design in regard to the romance which he was contemplating. The attribution of a catastrophe like Beatrice's to either of the two Jewesses, would of course be adventitious, and should be considered in the light of an artistic privilege.

The “Faun” of Praxiteles in the museum of the Capitol next attracted his attention. This is but a poor copy of the original; but he penetrated the motive of the sculptor with those deep-seeing eyes of his, and there is no analysis of an ancient statue by Brunn or Furtwängler that equals Hawthorne's description of this one. It seems as if he must have looked backward across the centuries into the very mind of Praxiteles, and he was, in fact, the first critic to appreciate its high value. The perfect ease and simple beauty of the figure belong to a higher grade of art than the Apollo Belvedere, and Hawthorne discovered what Winckelmann had overlooked. He immediately conceived the idea of bringing the faun to life, and seeing how he would behave and comport himself in the modern world — in brief, to use the design of Praxiteles as the mainspring of a romance. In the evening of April 22, 1858, he wrote in his journal:

[Illustration: STATUE OF PRAXITELES' RESTING FAUN, WHICH HAWTHORNE HAS
DESCRIBED AND BROUGHT TO LIFE IN THE CHARACTER OF DONATELLO]

“I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. It seems to me that a story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the idea of their species having become intermingled with the human race; a family with the faun blood in them, having prolonged itself from the classic era till our own days. The tail might have disappeared, by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals; but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally reappear in members of the family; and the moral instincts and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the human interest of the story.”

This statue served to concentrate the various speculative objects which had been hovering before Hawthorne's imagination during the past winter, and when he reached Florence six weeks later, the chief details of the plot were already developed in his mind.

Hilda and Kenyon are, of course, subordinate characters, like the first walking lady and the first walking gentleman on the stage. They are the sympathetic friends who watch the progress of the drama, continually hoping to be of service, but still finding themselves powerless to prevent the catastrophe. It was perhaps their unselfish interest in their mutual friends that at length taught them to know each other's worth, so that they finally became more than friends to one another. True love, to be firmly based, requires such a mutual interest or common ground on which the parties can meet, — something in addition to the usual attraction of the sexes. Mrs. Hawthorne has been supposed by some to have been the original of Hilda; and by others her daughter Una.

Conway holds an exceptional opinion, that Hilda was the feminine counterpart of Hawthorne himself; but Hilda is only too transparent a character, while Hawthorne always was, and still remains, impenetrable; and there was enough of her father in Miss Una, to render the same objection applicable in her case. Hilda seems to me very much like Mrs. Hawthorne, as one may imagine her in her younger days; like her in her mental purity, her conscientiousness, her devotion to her art, — which we trust afterwards was transformed into a devotion to her husband, — her tendency to self-seclusion, her sensitiveness and her lack of decisive resolution. She is essentially what they call on the stage an
ingenue
character; that is, one that remains inexperienced in the midst of experience; and it is in this character that she contributes to the catastrophe of the drama.

If Hawthorne appears anywhere in his own fiction, it is not in “The Blithedale Romance,” but in the rôle of Kenyon. Although Kenyon's profession is that of a sculptor, he is not to be confounded with the gay and versatile Story. Neither is he statuesque, as the English reviewer criticised him. He is rather a shadowy character, as Hawthorne himself was shadowy, and as an author always must be shadowy to his readers; but Kenyon is to Hawthorne what Prospero is to Shakespeare, and if he does not make use of magic arts, it is because they no longer serve their purpose in human affairs. He is a wise, all-seeing, sympathetic mind, and his active influence in the play is less conspicuous because it is always so quiet, and so correct.