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It is a heavy annoyance to a writer, who endeavorsto represent nature, its various attitudes and circumstances, in a reasonablycorrect outline and true coloring, that so much of the mean and ludicrousshould be hopelessly mixed up with the purest pathos which life anywheresupplies to him. What tragic dignity, for example, can be wrought into a scenelike this! It is redeemed from insignificance onlyby the contraction of her eyebrows into a near-sighted scowl.
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Jaffrey, knowing Clifford is innocent, nonetheless accuses him of murder. Clifford is convicted and imprisoned, but renews "Maule's curse" upon Jaffrey before being led away. Gerald's will gives all three children sizeable yearly incomes, but leaves the house to Hepzibah. Hepzibah throws Jaffrey out of the house and seals all the doors and windows so that no light can be admitted. But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door,—evenbefore they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview hadpassed,—they heard footsteps in the farther passage. The door, therefore,which they supposed to be securely locked,—which Holgrave, indeed, hadseen to be so, and at which Phœbe had vainly tried to enter,—must havebeen opened from without.
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It was the Eden of athunder-smitten Adam, who had fled for refuge thither out of the same drearyand perilous wilderness into which the original Adam was expelled. No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly white, and, staggeringtowards Phœbe, let her head fall on the young girl’s shoulder. But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,—thefrequent recurrence of which, in a direct line, is truly unaccountable, when weconsider how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man at thedistance of one or two centuries. Whether the Judge in any degree resembled him, the further progress ofour narrative may show.
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Instead ofdiscussing her claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regardPhœbe as the example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a stateof society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it shouldbe woman’s office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to gildthem all, the very homeliest,—were it even the scouring of pots andkettles,—with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy. This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women,in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With hernear-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible anddelicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty yearsgone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamentalneedlework. A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and,at one time, she had begun a review of her early studies in the New EnglandPrimer, with a view to prepare herself for the office of instructress. But thelove of children had never been quickened in Hepzibah’s heart, and wasnow torpid, if not extinct; she watched the little people of the neighborhoodfrom her chamber-window, and doubted whether she could tolerate a more intimateacquaintance with them.
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Our story must therefore awaitMiss Hepzibah at the threshold of her chamber; only presuming, meanwhile, tonote some of the heavy sighs that labored from her bosom, with little restraintas to their lugubrious depth and volume of sound, inasmuch as they could beaudible to nobody save a disembodied listener like ourself. Alone, except for a certain respectable and orderlyyoung man, an artist in the daguerreotype line, who, for about three monthsback, had been a lodger in a remote gable,—quite a house by itself,indeed,—with locks, bolts, and oaken bars on all the intervening doors.Inaudible, consequently, were poor Miss Hepzibah’s gusty sighs. Inaudiblethe creaking joints of her stiffened knees, as she knelt down by the bedside.And inaudible, too, by mortal ear, but heard with all-comprehending love andpity in the farthest heaven, that almost agony of prayer—now whispered,now a groan, now a struggling silence—wherewith she besought the Divineassistance through the day! Evidently, this is to be a day of more thanordinary trial to Miss Hepzibah, who, for above a quarter of a century gone by,has dwelt in strict seclusion, taking no part in the business of life, and justas little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with such fervor prays thetorpid recluse, looking forward to the cold, sunless, stagnant calm of a daythat is to be like innumerable yesterdays. The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual locality to the imaginaryevents of this narrative.
At that instant, however, the blast of a fish-dealer’s conchwas heard, announcing his approach along the street. With energetic raps at theshop-window, Hepzibah summoned the man in, and made purchase of what hewarranted as the finest mackerel in his cart, and as fat a one as ever he feltwith his finger so early in the season. Requesting Phœbe to roast somecoffee,—which she casually observed was the real Mocha, and so long keptthat each of the small berries ought to be worth its weight in gold,—themaiden lady heaped fuel into the vast receptacle of the ancient fireplace insuch quantity as soon to drive the lingering dusk out of the kitchen. Thecountry-girl, willing to give her utmost assistance, proposed to make an Indiancake, after her mother’s peculiar method, of easy manufacture, and whichshe could vouch for as possessing a richness, and, if rightly prepared, adelicacy, unequalled by any other mode of breakfast-cake. Hepzibah gladlyassenting, the kitchen was soon the scene of savory preparation.
A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wroughtout, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work offiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any moreevident, at the last page than at the first. Hundreds of pilgrims annually visit a house in Salem, belonging to one branchof the Ingersoll family of that place, which is stoutly maintained to have beenthe model for Hawthorne’s visionary dwelling. Others have supposed thatthe now vanished house of the identical Philip English, whose blood, as we havealready noticed, became mingled with that of the Hawthornes, supplied thepattern; and still a third building, known as the Curwen mansion, has beendeclared the only genuine establishment. Notwithstanding persistent popularbelief, the authenticity of all these must positively be denied; although it ispossible that isolated reminiscences of all three may have blended with theideal image in the mind of Hawthorne.
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Two more properties added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Posted: Fri, 07 Feb 2020 08:00:00 GMT [source]
The vapor of thebroiled fish arose like incense from the shrine of a barbarian idol, while thefragrance of the Mocha might have gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, orwhatever power has scope over a modern breakfast-table. Phœbe’s Indiancakes were the sweetest offering of all,—in their hue befitting therustic altars of the innocent and golden age,—or, so brightly yellow werethey, resembling some of the bread which was changed to glistening gold whenMidas tried to eat it. The butter must not be forgotten,—butter whichPhœbe herself had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her cousinas a propitiatory gift,—smelling of clover-blossoms, and diffusing thecharm of pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled parlor. After this incident, Hepzibah retreated to the back parlor, where she at firstcaught up a half-finished stocking, and began knitting at it with nervous andirregular jerks; but quickly finding herself at odds with the stitches, shethrew it aside, and walked hurriedly about the room. At length she pausedbefore the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her ancestor, and the founder ofthe house.
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But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed to hear the murmur of anunknown voice. It was strangely indistinct, however, and less like articulatewords than an unshaped sound, such as would be the utterance of feeling andsympathy, rather than of the intellect. So vague was it, that its impression orecho in Phœbe’s mind was that of unreality. She concluded that she musthave mistaken some other sound for that of the human voice; or else that it wasaltogether in her fancy.
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His duties allperformed,—the highest prosperity attained,—his race and futuregenerations fixed on a stable basis, and with a stately roof to shelter themfor centuries to come,—what other upward step remained for this good manto take, save the final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven! The piousclergyman surely would not have uttered words like these had he in the leastsuspected that the Colonel had been thrust into the other world with the clutchof violence upon his throat. But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man to be turned aside fromhis well-considered scheme, either by dread of the wizard’s ghost, or byflimsy sentimentalities of any kind, however specious.
Even such we find it now; andany old woman of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive ofintestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there. There are one or two other points which indicate Hawthorne’s method ofbasing his compositions, the result in the main of pure invention, on the solidground of particular facts. Allusion is made, in the first chapter of the“Seven Gables,” to a grant of lands in Waldo County, Maine, ownedby the Pyncheon family. In the “American Note-Books” there is anentry, 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 toestablish an estate on the English plan, with a tenantry to make it profitablefor him. An incident of much greater importance in the story is the supposedmurder of one of the Pyncheons by his nephew, to whom we are introduced asClifford Pyncheon. In all probability Hawthorne connected with this, in hismind, the murder of Mr. White, a wealthy gentleman of Salem, killed by a manwhom his nephew had hired.
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