IN September of the year during the February of which
Hawthorne had completed "The Scarlet Letter," he began "The House
of the Seven Gables." Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to
Lenox, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied with
his family a small red wooden house, still standing at the date of
this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl.
"I sha'n't have the new story ready by November," he
explained to his publisher, on the 1st of October, "for I am never
good for anything in the literary way till after the first autumnal
frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my imagination that it
does on the foliage here about me-multiplying and brightening its
hues." But by vigorous application he was able to complete the new
work about the middle of the January following.
Since research has disclosed the manner in which the romance
is interwoven with incidents from the history of the Hawthorne
family, "The House of the Seven Gables" has acquired an interest
apart from that by which it first appealed to the public. John
Hathorne (as the name was then spelled), the great-grandfather of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, was a magistrate at Salem in the latter part
of the seventeenth century, and officiated at the famous trials for
witchcraft held there. It is of record that he used peculiar
severity towards a certain woman who was among the accused; and the
husband of this woman prophesied that God would take revenge upon
his wife's persecutors. This circumstance doubtless furnished a
hint for that piece of tradition in the book which represents a
Pyncheon of a former generation as having persecuted one Maule, who
declared that God would give his enemy "blood to drink." It became
a conviction with the Hawthorne family that a curse had been
pronounced upon its members, which continued in force in the time
of the romancer; a conviction perhaps derived from the recorded
prophecy of the injured woman's husband, just mentioned; and, here
again, we have a correspondence with Maule's malediction in the
story. Furthermore, there occurs in the "American Note-Books"
(August 27, 1837), a reminiscence of the author's family, to the
following effect. Philip English, a character well-known in early
Salem annals, was among those who suffered from John Hathorne's
magisterial harshness, and he maintained in consequence a lasting
feud with the old Puritan official. But at his death English left
daughters, one of whom is said to have married the son of Justice
John Hathorne, whom English had declared he would never forgive. It
is scarcely necessary to point out how clearly this foreshadows the
final union of those hereditary foes, the Pyncheons and Maules,
through the marriage of Phoebe and Holgrave. The romance, however,
describes the Maules as possessing some of the traits known to have
been characteristic of the Hawthornes: for example, "so long as any
of the race were to be found, they had been marked out from other
men—not strikingly, nor as with a sharp line, but with an effect
that was felt rather than spoken of—by an hereditary characteristic
of reserve." Thus, while the general suggestion of the Hawthorne
line and its fortunes was followed in the romance, the Pyncheons
taking the place of the author's family, certain distinguishing
marks of the Hawthornes were assigned to the imaginary Maule
posterity.
There are one or two other points which indicate Hawthorne's
method of basing his compositions, the result in the main of pure
invention, on the solid ground of particular facts. Allusion is
made, in the first chapter of the "Seven Gables," to a grant of
lands in Waldo County, Maine, owned by the Pyncheon family. In the
"American Note-Books" there is an entry, dated August 12, 1837,
which speaks of the Revolutionary general, Knox, and his land-grant
in Waldo County, by virtue of which the owner had hoped to
establish an estate on the English plan, with a tenantry to make it
profitable for him. An incident of much greater importance in the
story is the supposed murder of one of the Pyncheons by his nephew,
to whom we are introduced as Clifford Pyncheon. In all probability
Hawthorne connected with this, in his mind, the murder of Mr.
White, a wealthy gentleman of Salem, killed by a man whom his
nephew had hired. This took place a few years after Hawthorne's
graduation from college, and was one of the celebrated cases of the
day, Daniel Webster taking part prominently in the trial. But it
should be observed here that such resemblances as these between
sundry elements in the work of Hawthorne's fancy and details of
reality are only fragmentary, and are rearranged to suit the
author's purposes.
In the same way he has made his description of Hepzibah
Pyncheon's seven-gabled mansion conform so nearly to several old
dwellings formerly or still extant in Salem, that strenuous efforts
have been made to fix upon some one of them as the veritable
edifice of the romance. A paragraph in the opening chapter has
perhaps assisted this delusion that there must have been a single
original House of the Seven Gables, framed by flesh-and-blood
carpenters; for it runs thus:—
"Familiar as it stands in the writer's recollection—for it
has been an object of curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a
specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of a long-past
epoch, and as the scene of events more full of interest perhaps
than those of a gray feudal castle—familiar as it stands, in its
rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficult to imagine
the bright novelty with which it first caught the
sunshine."
Hundreds of pilgrims annually visit a house in Salem,
belonging to one branch of the Ingersoll family of that place,
which is stoutly maintained to have been the model for Hawthorne's
visionary dwelling. Others have supposed that the now vanished
house of the identical Philip English, whose blood, as we have
already noticed, became mingled with that of the Hawthornes,
supplied the pattern; and still a third building, known as the
Curwen mansion, has been declared the only genuine establishment.
Notwithstanding persistent popular belief, the authenticity of all
these must positively be denied; although it is possible that
isolated reminiscences of all three may have blended with the ideal
image in the mind of Hawthorne. He, it will be seen, remarks in the
Preface, alluding to himself in the third person, that he trusts
not to be condemned for "laying out a street that infringes upon
nobody's private rights... and building a house of materials long
in use for constructing castles in the air." More than this, he
stated to persons still living that the house of the romance was
not copied from any actual edifice, but was simply a general
reproduction of a style of architecture belonging to colonial days,
examples of which survived into the period of his youth, but have
since been radically modified or destroyed. Here, as elsewhere, he
exercised the liberty of a creative mind to heighten the
probability of his pictures without confining himself to a literal
description of something he had seen.
While Hawthorne remained at Lenox, and during the composition
of this romance, various other literary personages settled or
stayed for a time in the vicinity; among them, Herman Melville,
whose intercourse Hawthorne greatly enjoyed, Henry James, Sr.,
Doctor Holmes, J. T. Headley, James Russell Lowell, Edwin P.
Whipple, Frederika Bremer, and J. T. Fields; so that there was no
lack of intellectual society in the midst of the beautiful and
inspiring mountain scenery of the place. "In the afternoons,
nowadays," he records, shortly before beginning the work, "this
valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with golden
Sunshine as with wine;" and, happy in the companionship of his wife
and their three children, he led a simple, refined, idyllic life,
despite the restrictions of a scanty and uncertain income. A letter
written by Mrs. Hawthorne, at this time, to a member of her family,
gives incidentally a glimpse of the scene, which may properly find
a place here. She says: "I delight to think that you also can look
forth, as I do now, upon a broad valley and a fine amphitheater of
hills, and are about to watch the stately ceremony of the sunset
from your piazza. But you have not this lovely lake, nor, I
suppose, the delicate purple mist which folds these slumbering
mountains in airy veils. Mr. Hawthorne has been lying down in the
sun shine, slightly fleckered with the shadows of a tree, and Una
and Julian have been making him look like the mighty Pan, by
covering his chin and breast with long grass-blades, that looked
like a verdant and venerable beard." The pleasantness and peace of
his surroundings and of his modest home, in Lenox, may be taken
into account as harmonizing with the mellow serenity of the romance
then produced. Of the work, when it appeared in the early spring of
1851, he wrote to Horatio Bridge these words, now published for the
first time:—
"'The House of the Seven Gables' in my opinion, is better
than 'The Scarlet Letter:' but I should not wonder if I had refined
upon the principal character a little too much for popular
appreciation, nor if the romance of the book should be somewhat at
odds with the humble and familiar scenery in which I invest it. But
I feel that portions of it are as good as anything I can hope to
write, and the publisher speaks encouragingly of its
success."
From England, especially, came many warm expressions of
praise,—a fact which Mrs. Hawthorne, in a private letter, commented
on as the fulfillment of a possibility which Hawthorne, writing in
boyhood to his mother, had looked forward to. He had asked her if
she would not like him to become an author and have his books read
in England.
G. P. L.
WHEN a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be
observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its
fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled
to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form
of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not
merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of
man's experience. The former—while, as a work of art, it must
rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so
far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart—has
fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a
great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think
fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring
out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the
picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of
the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the
Marvelous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than
as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the
public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime
even if he disregard this caution.
In the present work, the author has proposed to himself—but
with what success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge—to keep
undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in which
this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt
to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting
away from us. It is a legend prolonging itself, from an epoch now
gray in the distance, down into our own broad daylight, and
bringing along with it some of its legendary mist, which the
reader, according to his pleasure, may either disregard, or allow
it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters and events
for the sake of a picturesque effect. The narrative, it may be, is
woven of so humble a texture as to require this advantage, and, at
the same time, to render it the more difficult of
attainment.
Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral
purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be
deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with
a moral,—the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation
lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every
temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief;
and he would feel it a singular gratification if this romance might
effectually convince mankind—or, indeed, any one man—of the folly
of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate,
on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush
them, until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its
original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently
imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this
kind. When romances do really teach anything, or produce any
effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtile
process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it
hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story
with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, rather, as by sticking a
pin through a butterfly,—thus at once depriving it of life, and
causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high
truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out,
brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a
work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer,
and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the
first.
The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual locality to
the imaginary events of this narrative. If permitted by the
historical connection,—which, though slight, was essential to his
plan,—the author would very willingly have avoided anything of this
nature. Not to speak of other objections, it exposes the romance to
an inflexible and exceedingly dangerous species of criticism, by
bringing his fancy-pictures almost into positive contact with the
realities of the moment. It has been no part of his object,
however, to describe local manners, nor in any way to meddle with
the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a proper
respect and a natural regard. He trusts not to be considered as
unpardonably offending by laying out a street that infringes upon
nobody's private rights, and appropriating a lot of land which had
no visible owner, and building a house of materials long in use for
constructing castles in the air. The personages of the tale—though
they give themselves out to be of ancient stability and
considerable prominence—are really of the author's own making, or
at all events, of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no lustre,
nor their defects redound, in the remotest degree, to the discredit
of the venerable town of which they profess to be inhabitants. He
would be glad, therefore, if-especially in the quarter to which he
alludes-the book may be read strictly as a Romance, having a great
deal more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion of
the actual soil of the County of Essex.