“But not now; not yet!” she murmured to herself. “To-night, at least, there shall be no remorse!”
Wandering without a purpose, it so chanced that they turned into a street, at one extremity of which stood Hilda’s tower. There was a light in her high chamber; a light, too, at the Virgin’s shrine; and the glimmer of these two was the loftiest light beneath the stars. Miriam drew Donatello’s arm, to make him stop; and while they stood at some distance, looking at Hilda’s window, they beheld her approach and throw it open. She leaned far forth, and extended her clasped hands towards the sky.
“The good, pure child! She is praying, Donatello!”—said Miriam, with a kind of simple joy at witnessing the devoutness of her friend. Then her own sin rushed upon her, and she shouted, with the rich strength of her voice, “Pray for us, Hilda! We need it!”
Whether Hilda heard and recognized the voice, we cannot tell. The window was immediately closed, and her form disappeared from behind the snowy curtain. Miriam felt this to be a token that the cry of her condemned spirit was shut out of Heaven.
IV
THE EUROPEAN JOURNALS 1853-1860
EDITOR’S NOTE
From the day he arrived in England with his family to take up the duties of U.S. consul in Liverpool until he returned home, seven years later, Hawthorne published nothing new; but neither did he stop writing. Alongside an early draft of a never-completed “English romance” and the whole of The Marble Faun, he churned out a string of journals comprising some half-million words, about the length of five Scarlet Letters. Covering the four and a half years he spent working and sightseeing in England, eighteen months of travel and residence on the Continent, and (very spottily, owing to his work on The Marble Faun) a final year back in England, these fifteen manuscript volumes describe in some detail every notable site he visited, some of them over and over, and every social engagement he could not avoid, all in entries ranging in length from a paragraph to thousands of words, the size of a publishable sketch.
Except in bearing Hawthorne’s unmistakable signature, these European journals differ, in one way or another, from anything he had written before. Although composed entirely in the “style of a man of society,” and thus unlike his fiction after Fanshawe and before The House of the Seven Gables, they differ as well from his other writings in this style. Unlike the romances, they involve no imagined (or borrowed) characters or events. Unlike the prefaces, they lack a clear, consistent audience and purpose. And unlike his early sketches, they show little effort on the writer’s part to lend them artistic “finish.” Even the notebooks he kept in America resemble these later journals only in appearance. At least until 1850, when he completed The Scarlet Letter, the former are true notebooks, filled for the most part with ideas and materials for tales and sketches. Despite a reference, here and there, to a “romance” or two in the works, however, the European journals seem far less often notes for writing to come than writings in themselves.
And wonderful writing it is: keenly observant, candid, at once elegant and freshly colloquial, utterly unaffected, and often mordantly funny—enough so in each respect to keep even a casual reader unwearyingly absorbed throughout nearly fifteen hundred printed pages. If Hawthorne’s flight from the emblematic style after The Scarlet Letter crippled his ability to write fiction, the liberation of his public style from the need to produce salable romances, or to please anyone but himself, allowed it to flourish as never before. Obliged to mean no more than it says, this journalistic prose cannot approach the poetic style of The Scarlet Letter. But what it withholds in the way of semantic depth and richness is at least partially repaid in the coin of graceful, unpretentious clarity. Nothing here might be, or be made, “emblematic of something.” Even things that would once have set his allegorical wheels a-spinning—golden threads in a scarlet tapestry, the modern facades of houses “antique at heart”—slip by unnoticed by the writer, without a hint of their former semantic buzz. This “man of society” seems never even to have overheard the “secluded man” conversing “with his own mind and heart.”
As if writing for an audience more interested in vicarious sightseeing than in news about the sightseer, even one as famous as Hawthorne was rapidly becoming, he reveals very little about himself in these pages that would not have been apparent to the most casual acquaintance: his concern with foreign manners, including the niceties of tipping; his tastes in food and scenery; his reluctance to speak in public; his quickness to render judgments, social, moral, and aesthetic. Except for one or two brief outbursts of loneliness during Sophia’s months away in Portugal and Madeira—and, it must be said, his care to avoid any hint of “fine writing”—the Hawthorne on view here seems, on the whole, a rather typical American travel writer of his day, as he wanders about Europe, looking at things from the outside. Of Hawthorne as an individual, we learn from these pages little more than that he is a man alert to feminine beauty (and its absence), fond of his glass, and of two minds about virtually everything else.
This reluctance to reveal much about himself, combined with his disinclination to wring meanings from his observations, lends his descriptions of the places he visits, even of the people he meets, an air of detachment, as if everything were seen from a distance by a curious, indeed somewhat obsessive, but otherwise uninvolved spectator, nothing like the longtime resident who often fancied settling in Europe and never going home. Shocked as he is by English beggardom, he exhibits no curiosity about its possible causes. He regularly mentions the Crimean War and the vexed relations between England and America that threaten to erupt in open warfare. But the policies at issue in these conflicts seem to interest him not at all. He is, for the most part, a very sharp pair of eyes, focused on a world of ready appearances. Although ostensibly a “man of society,” he seems little more at home in the world than was the “secluded man” who spoke only to himself.
If there is anything hidden in these journals, it is the motive that kept them going for so long, even past the point of admitted weariness with cathedrals, picture galleries, natural wonders, and attempts at reproducing them in words. True enough, journalizing had always been associated in Hawthorne’s mind with trips away from home, fiction with the inward exploration of caves, dungeons, and closed-up ancestral mansions. The American notebooks begin to look like journals only in the 1850s, when he made a number of tours around New England. The entries he wrote at Brook Farm, in 1841, deal mainly with his journeys away from the settlement; not until The Blithedale Romance, written more than a decade later, is the place itself described. His only domestic journal is the one he and Sophia kept together, at the Old Manse, following their marriage; and even it gives way, rather soon, to a flurry of tales and sketches written for publication. Travel, he maintained, left him no time for imagining stories. As the journals indicate, however, it left him plenty of time to write. The question is, did he journalize because he was away from home, or did he keep on the run in order to quiet the imagination that had produced The Scarlet Letter and failed him thereafter?
He suggests, at times, that he is keeping his journals in order to store up material for future romances; but that won’t explain their length or the care obviously given to them. In the American notebooks, journalistic passages meant for future use often make do with sentence fragments. Even readers familiar with The Marble Faun will have trouble seeing that romance foreshadowed in the Italian journals, mainly because the journal entries that do reappear there have so little connection with the story, which arises far less from the journals than from the formulaic plots and dramatis personae of the two preceding romances.
At other times, Hawthorne contemplates publishing passages from the journals themselves, which may explain why they are so much more detailed than comparable entries in the American notebooks, as well as his repeatedly expressed concern with their adequacy and originality. And, of course, sections of the English journals did eventually make their way into print.
But these evidences are no m
ore conclusive. Early on in these pages, he refers to Sophia as “my wife,” which may imply an external audience; but then, later, as “Sophia,” which seems addressed to himself; and occasionally as “Mama,” which appears to address his family. Given all these signs of differing intentions, about all one can say is that whatever drove the journals on, page after page, whether some plan to use them in future romances or an idea of publishing them someday, they strongly suggest an equation in Hawthorne’s mind of living with writing, a link forged in a lifetime on the job.
Library copies of the American notebooks are always well thumbed, presumably because they lie so close to Hawthorne’s fiction, not just that written at the time they were but the romances he struggled over at the very end of his life. Copies of the European journals, in contrast, are rarely checked out, let alone marked up, in part because so little of them found its way into The Marble Faun, and that small portion to so little fictive purpose, and in part because, known primarily as the elusive shape-shifting presence half hidden, half revealed in his fiction, the writer called “Hawthorne” can hardly be seen here. This one, however, is no less a “Hawthorne” worthy of the name, and far more apt to give pleasure, than the bemused author seen floundering about in the romances. The fiction that follows The Scarlet Letter is read, when it is, mainly because Hawthorne wrote it. These journals would be worth reading if he had written nothing else—much as would A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers had Thoreau never written Walden. Anyone who does read them with the care they deserve will come away a better writer simply for having done so.
Aimed at illustrating the variety of subjects and tones to be found in Hawthorne’s European journals, the following excerpts extend from the summer of 1853, soon after his arrival in England; through January of 1858, when the Hawthornes departed for France and Italy; up to the summer of 1859, when they all went back to England for a year, before returning to America.
FROM THE ENGLISH, FRENCH, AND ITALIAN JOURNALS
Liverpool, August 1853
On Friday, at 7 P.M. I went to dine with the Mayor. It was a dinner given to the Judges and the Grand Jury. The Judges of England, during the time of holding an Assize, are the persons first in rank in the Kingdom. They take precedence of everybody else—of the highest military officers—of the Lord Lieutenants—of the Archbishops—of the Prince of Wales—of all except the Sovereign; whose authority and dignity they represent. In case of a royal dinner, the Judge would lead the Queen to the table.
The dinner was at the Town-Hall; and the rooms, and the whole affair, were all in the most splendid style. Nothing struck me more than the footmen in the city-livery; they really looked more magnificent, in their gold-lace, and breeches, and white silk stockings, than any officers of state whom I have ever seen. The rooms were beautiful; gorgeously painted and gilded, gorgeously lighted, gorgeously hung with paintings, gorgeously illuminated—the plate gorgeous, the dinner gorgeous, in the English fashion. As to the company, they had a kind of roughness, that seems to be the characteristic of all Englishmen so far as I have yet seen them;—elderly John Bulls—and there is hardly a less beautiful object than the elderly John Bull, with his large body, protruding paunch, short legs, and mottled, double-chinned, irregular-featured aspect. They are men of the world, at home in society, easy in their manners, but without refinement; nor are they especially what one thinks of, under the appelation of gentleman.
After the removal of the cloth, the Mayor gave various toasts, prefacing each with some remarks—the first of course, the Sovereign, after which “God Save the Queen” was sung; and there was something rather ludicrous in seeing the company stand up and join in the chorus, their ample faces glowing with wine, enthusiasm, perspiration, and loyalty. There certainly is a vein of the ridiculous running through these people; nor does it take away from their respectability. Afterwards the Bar, and various other dignities and institutions were toasted; and by-and-by came a toast to the United States and me as their representative. Hereupon, either “Hail Columbia” or “Yankee Doodle,” or some other of our national tunes (but Heaven knows which) was played; and at the conclusion—being cornered, and with no alternative—I got upon my legs and made a response. They received me and listened to my nonsense with a good deal of rapping; and my speech seemed to give great satisfaction. My chief difficulty lay in not knowing how to pitch my voice to the size of the room; as for the matter, it is not of the slightest consequence. Any body may make an after-dinner speech, who will be content to talk onward without saying anything. My speech was not more than two or three inches long;—and considering that I did not know a soul there, except the Mayor himself, and that I am wholly unpractised in all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing to say, it was quite successful. I hardly thought it was in me; but being once on my legs, I felt no embarrassment, and went through it as coolly as if I were going to be hanged.
Liverpool, December 1853
The other day, there came to me, with an introduction from Governor Crosby of Maine, a Mr. John A. Knight, who had come across the Atlantic in attendance on two ladies, claimants of the Booth estate in Cheshire. His information on the subject seems to be of a very vague character; and, no doubt, the claim is wholly untenable. The ladies assume to be of royal blood, and are apprehensive that the English lawyers will be the less willing to allow their pretensions from a disinclination to admit new members into the royal kin. I think I recorded the visit, a short time ago, of the lady who claims the most valuable part of Liverpool, including the Exchange and Docks.
Liverpool, March 1854
A woman’s chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that there is no such nucleus, and that Chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one, which you supposed would introduce you to the hidden pearl.
Liverpool, October 1854
My ancestor left England in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had been absent these two hundred and eighteen years—leaving England just emerging from the feudal system, and finding it on the verge of Republicanism. It brings the two far separated points of time very closely together, to view the matter thus.
Liverpool, February 1855
On Saturday, I rode with Mr. Bright to Otter-pool and to Larkhill, to see the skaters on the private pieces of water at those two seats of gentlemen; and it is a wonder to behold—and it is always a new wonder to me—how comfortable Englishmen know how to make themselves—locating their dwellings far within private grounds, with secure gateways and porter’s lodges, and the smoothest roads, and trimmest paths, and shaven lawns, and clumps of trees, and every bit of the ground, every hill and dell, made the most of for convenience and beauty, and so well kept that even winter cannot disarray it;—and all this appropriated to the same family for generation after generation; so that I suppose they come to think it created exclusively and on purpose for them. And really the result seems to be good and beautiful—it is a home—an institution which we Americans have not—but then I doubt whether anybody is entitled to a home, in so full a sense, in this world.
Liverpool, April 1855
In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have carried away with him a family-secret, whereby it was in his power (had he so chosen) to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret he transmits to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited throughout all the intervening generations. At last, the hero of the Romance comes to England, and finds that, by means of this secret, he still has it in his power to procure the downfal of the family. It would be something similar to the story of Meleager, whose fate depended on the firebrand that his mother had snatched out of the flames.
The Lake District, July 1855
We rod
e down the valley, and gazed at the vast slope of Helvellyn, and at Thirlmere beneath it, and at Eagle’s Crag, and Raven’s Crag, which beheld themselves in it; and we cast many a look behind, at Blencathra, and that noble brotherhood of mountains, out of the midst of which we came. But, to say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery; and it seemed to me that I had eaten a score of mountains, and quaffed down as many lakes, all in the space of two or three days;—and the natural consequence was a surfeit. There was scarcely a single place in all our tour, where I should not have been glad to spend a month; but, by flitting so quickly from one point to another, I lost all the more recondite beauties, and had come away without retaining even the surface of much that I had seen. I am slow to feel—slow, I suppose, to comprehend; and, like the anaconda, I need to lubricate any object a great deal, before I can swallow it and actually make it my own. Yet I shall always be glad of this tour, and shall wonder the more at England, which comprehends so much, such a rich variety, within its little bounds. If England were all the world, it still would have been worth while for the Creator to have made it; and mankind would have had no cause to find fault with their abode—except that there is not room enough for so many as might be happy here.
The Portable Hawthorne (Penguin Classics) Page 41