Part 13

More able critics than one have pronounced “The Blithedale Romance” the most perfect of Hawthorne’s stories. Although he wrote to George William Curtis that the story had essentially nothing to do with Brook Farm, it is certain that the community formed more than a background for the story, and furnished some of its incidents and the traits of some of the characters. Thus the romance may be said to approach more closely to real life than any other of the greater works. The characters are drawn with great distinctness of outline: Hollingsworth the reformer, earnest, stern, engrossed in his reform undertaking to the point of selfishness; Miles Coverdale, the dreamer, who bears the ear-marks of his artist creator, always a spectator of, rather than a participant in, the life at Blithedale; Priscilla, the timid maid who seemed to have dropped down from the clouds and sought protection in this retreat; Zenobia with her splendid beauty, her refinement, her ardour, her despair when disillusionment comes--all these are highly individualised. It has been complained, and with justice, that neither Zenobia nor Priscilla is a typical New England girl; but something may perhaps be conceded to the romantic atmosphere of the tale; the author did not promise a transcript from prosaic real life. The plot halts now and then, and does not move steadily and convincingly to its climax. The inserted story of “The Veiled Lady” does not materially further the plot. Yet as a whole the romance is a searching and remarkable presentment of Hawthorne’s views of reform. He was never a reformer; he distrusted the excess of zeal, the narrowness of vision too often characteristic of the more ardent reformers of his day; and with great skill he has here set forth the illusory hopes, the discouragement, the sense of impotence and defeat that must attend the outcome of radical schemes for human improvement which are not grounded on sound and wide knowledge of man’s nature.

Probably the most popular, as it was the most ambitious, of all the romances, has been “The Marble Faun.” With consummate skill the author maintains the mystery necessary for the romantic atmosphere and at the same time draws in clear outlines the four characters in the little drama--this miniature world-tragedy, this “story of the fall of man repeated,” as Miriam says. As Mr. Lathrop has pointed out, moreover, with the main theme, itself of abiding interest, is joined a study of the psychology of Beatrice Cenci’s story; but, without stopping where Shelley stopped, Hawthorne went on to show how Miriam and Donatello might “work out their purification.” Thus while the romance may, as one critic avers, “begin in mystery and end in mist,” the end is nevertheless full of hope.

Hawthorne has never been, and doubtless never will be, a popular novelist. His stories are for the few, the thoughtful readers who are willing to read old favourites over and over again. But there will always be such persons, haply in increasing numbers; and for them Hawthorne will continue to be a unique personality, the “high untrammelled thinker,” the interpreter of spiritual mysteries.

_Charles Sealsfield._--Although not mentioned by most historians of American literature, the Austrian novelist Carl Postl (“Charles Sealsfield,” 1793-1864) deserves to be recalled here from the fact that his works deal chiefly with American life and in their English form enjoyed considerable popularity in America. Born in Poppitz, Moravia, he became at first a priest of the order of the Kreuzherren von Pöltenberg; but, having broken with Catholic dogma, he fled from the cloister and arrived in New York in 1823 as Charles Sealsfield. He remained in America until 1832, travelling extensively and making close studies of life and character. His first novel, “Tokeah, or The White Rose; an Indian Tale” (Philadelphia, 1828), was republished at Zurich in 1833 as “Der Legitime und die Republikaner”; while never a popular story in America, it seems, as Professor Faust has discovered,[9] to have furnished Mrs. Jackson with some hints for her “Ramona” and Charles F. Hoffman with a _motif_ for his “Vigil of Faith.” After his return to Europe Sealsfield published, among other things, “Transatlantische Reiseskizzen” (1833), translated as “Life in the New World, or Sketches of American Society” (1844), which originally appeared in _The New York Mirror_ in 1827-8 and which furnished Simms with some scenes for “Guy Rivers”; “Nathan der Squatter Regulator” (1837), translated as “Life in Texas” (1845); “Der Virey und die Aristokraten, oder Mexiko im Jahre 1812” (1834); “Morton, oder Die grosse Tour” (1835); “Das Cajütenbuch, oder Nationale Charakteristiken” (1841), translated as “The Cabin Book” (1844), which furnished Mayne Reid with the last ten chapters of his “Wild Life” without change; and “Süden und Norden” (1842-3), translated as “North and South, or Scenes and Adventures in Mexico” (1844). In his vigorous delineations of the crude American life of the twenties and thirties, Sealsfield exhibited great enthusiasm, a wide range of observation which overlooked nothing and which measured impartially, and a comprehension of the true inwardness of our young institutions such as no native American of his day possessed. If his exaggerating brush failed of the touch of an artist, he created some characters, such as Morton and Nathan Strong, who deserve immortality as typical Americans, and described with inimitable fidelity “the dauntless squatter and sturdy pioneer, the Southern planter and patriarchal slave-holder, the grasping millionaire and his emissaries, the New York dandy and the society belle, the taciturn Yankee sea-captain and the hot-blooded Kentuckian, the utilitarian alcalde and the reformed desperado.”

_William Leggett_ (1802-39), after spending some time at Georgetown College, accompanied his family in 1819 to make a settlement on the prairies of Illinois. He spent the years 1822-26 as a midshipman in the navy. His experiences of pioneer and sea life were graphically portrayed in “The Rifle,” published in 1828 in _The Atlantic Souvenir_, and in “Tales by a Country Schoolmaster” (1835). For the remainder of his life he was engaged in journalism, from 1829 till 1836 as one of the editors of _The Evening Post_.

_Southern Novelists._--Thus far we have considered no native Southern writer of fiction. The novel ripened late in the South; indeed, only one writer of fiction of the first rank was produced by the South before the Civil War. Yet in the varied and picturesque life of the aristocratic planters, the frontiersmen, the “poor whites,” and the negroes there were rich materials for the artist and the story-teller, who in due time began to avail themselves of their opportunity. “The Valley of the Shenandoah” (1824) by George Tucker (1775-1861), though reprinted in England and translated into German, possesses slight worth, and little more can be said of his “Voyage to the Moon” (1827), a satirical romance; yet these works gave promise of better things from the South. William A. Carruthers (1806-72), a voluminous contributor to magazines, wrote two novels, “The Cavaliers of Virginia” (1832) and “The Knights of the Horseshoe” (1845), which, in spite of serious defects, deal with colonial days in Virginia in a genial, vigorous, and unhackneyed manner.

“Davy” Crockett (1786-1836), crude, unlettered hunter, backwoodsman, and Congressman, published, in his “Autobiography” (1834), a collection of thrilling narratives of adventure remarkable for directness, vividness, and virility. The “Georgia Scenes, Characters, and Incidents” (1835) of Augustus B. Longstreet (1790-1870), who was for many years a college president, revealed the curious traits of the poor whites or “Crackers” of Georgia. “The Partisan Leader” (1836) by Nathaniel Beverley Tucker (1784-1851) dealt with the encroachments of the Federal Government upon the rights of the States, and prophesied with startling and accurate logic the terrible disruption which occurred a quarter of a century later. If artistically imperfect, it is a stirring tale, intense in its action, and of heroic strain. But it can scarcely be said that any of these works now survive. They are mainly important as illustrating the evolution of Southern fiction. With Kennedy and Simms, however, the South takes a high place in the fiction of America.

_John Pendleton Kennedy._--For John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870), literature was never more than a pastime, a fact much to be regretted. Kennedy belonged to a prominent and wealthy family. He was born in Baltimore, was graduated from Baltimore College in 1812, and studied law. Entering political life, he employed his pen effectively in the defence of his political principles, but occasionally amused himself with ventures in lighter forms of literature. His first work of importance, “Swallow Barn” (1832), was distinctly declared not to be a novel; and indeed the action is of slight importance. His main purpose in writing it was to give, in connection with a slender plot, a picture of manners and customs in Virginia toward the end of the eighteenth century. Here is no subtle characterisation; the persons of the narrative are drawn broadly and naturally and the story moves easily, if a little slowly, to its end. The local scenery and institutions are delineated with the utmost fidelity. Frank Meriwether, the prosperous country gentleman and magistrate, has been called a Virginia Sir Roger de Coverley; and there is throughout observed the same quiet good humour, the same cheerful atmosphere, the same genial optimism that one finds in the pages of Addison. “Horse-Shoe Robinson, a Tale of the Tory Ascendency” (1835), was a story of early Tory days in South Carolina, and is now generally considered the best novel written in the South before the Civil War. The action centres about the battle of King’s Mountain (1780), which is vividly and accurately described. The intrepid valour of the backwoods patriot, the bitterness and horror of civil war, the relieving and characteristic humour of primitive frontier life, are well portrayed. The blacksmith Galbraith Robinson is a typical American, worthy to rank with Cooper’s Leatherstocking, and possibly truer to nature than Cooper’s more famous creation. In 1838 appeared Kennedy’s third novel, “Rob of the Bowl: a Legend of St. Inigoes,” a story of Colonial Maryland and the struggles of the Catholic settlers, with which are interwoven traditions of the piratical “Brethren of the Coast.” Nor must we fail to mention the humorous chronicle entitled “Quodlibet: Containing some Annals thereof, by Solomon Secondthought, Schoolmaster” (1840), in which are described the vagaries and absurdities of an early Presidential election. Had Kennedy made literature the serious business of life he would have won more lasting fame. As it is, he deserves to be more widely read than he is.[10]

_William Gilmore Simms._--One of the most prolific of American novelists was William Gilmore Simms. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, April 17, 1806, he was early left, by the death of his mother and the removal of his father to Tennessee, to the care of his grandmother, from whom he learned many a weird tale of peril and adventure. From the poor schools of his time he gained little, though he became an omnivorous reader. Apprenticed to a druggist, at eighteen he turned to the study of law. A long visit to his father in the South-west gave him a good opportunity to study the primitive life of the backwoodsmen, a life which he afterward described inimitably. At twenty he married and in another year he was admitted to the bar. Successful from the first, he resolutely turned, however, from the practice of law to a literary life. He had become well known as a poet when his first prose tale, “Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal,” appeared in 1833, revealing the influence of William Godwin and Brockden Brown, but also independent skill in the construction of an interesting narrative. In “Guy Rivers” (1834), a description of Georgia in the turbulent days of the gold fever, Simms began a series of border romances which, though marred by a slipshod style and by roughness of construction, are nevertheless in the main readable on account of the rapidity and energy of the narrative. In “The Yemassee” (1835), a story of the strife between South Carolina and the Indians in 1715, Simms is perhaps at his best, and his stirring narrative strongly reminds one of, though it does not rival, the work of Cooper. Then came a trilogy, “The Partisan” (1835), “Mellichampe: a Legend of the Santee” (1836), and “Katharine Walton, or The Rebel of Dorchester” (1851), in which he portrays every phase of social life in Charleston during the Revolutionary War, and delineates the military careers of Marion, Pickens, Moultrie, Sumter, and Hayne. Between 1836 and 1859 he published some twenty-five other novels and stories, generally in two volumes each, the best of which are “The Kinsmen” (1841), afterwards known as “The Scout,” (1854), “The Sword and the Distaff,” now known as “Woodcraft” (1852), “The Forayers, or The Raid of the Dog-Days” (1855), its sequel, “Eutaw” (1856), and “The Cassique of Kiawah” (1859). He also wrote numerous short stories for various periodicals; one of these, “Grayling, or Murder Will Out,” published in _The Gift_ for 1842, was pronounced by Poe the best ghost story he had ever read. A collection of thirteen of Simms’ best stories was published in 1845-46 under the title of “The Wigwam and the Cabin.” Notwithstanding his immense popularity before the Civil War, Simms is now well-nigh forgotten. Although a conscientious workman, he wrote much too rapidly to produce permanent literature, and his faulty style and his excessive fondness for portraying in detail scenes of carnage and crime strongly repel the reader of to-day. After the Civil War, which Simms did much to bring on and from which he suffered severe losses, his popularity rapidly waned, and he tried in vain to make good his losses. He died in his native city on June 11, 1870, having composed this epitaph for himself: “Here lies one who, after a reasonably long life, distinguished chiefly by unceasing labours, has left all his better works undone.”

His remarkable achievement in the pioneer days of American letters, on the whole, entitles him to be remembered with gratitude; and the verdict of Poe, who ranked Simms, as a novelist, just below Cooper and Brockden Brown, has not been impugned.[11]

_Edgar Allan Poe._--No American writer is more difficult to judge than Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), whether as a man or as a writer; and perhaps no other writer has received more attention from critics, not only in America but also in Europe. Poe was born in Boston of Southern parents, in the year which saw the birth of Tennyson, Darwin, Gladstone, and Holmes. His mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, was an actress, who died in 1811 of consumption; his father, David Poe, Jr., for a time a strolling player, was a man of little force; tradition represents him as dying young, a victim of consumption and alcoholism. Adopted after his mother’s death by John Allan of Richmond, Virginia, the boy Edgar Poe was wondered at and spoiled by his foster-parents, who were people of means and position. When they went abroad in 1815, Poe was entered at the Manor House School, Stoke Newington, near London; here he remained five years, imbibing the influences of a half-rural scene whose ancient buildings and historical associations have since been swallowed up by the metropolis. From 1820 to 1825 he was at school in Richmond. As a child, Poe was beautiful and clever; as a youth he was superior rather than abnormal. He learned quickly though not accurately; for the inaccuracy his teachers were in part to blame. He was lithe, swift of foot, an excellent swimmer, and, though proud and self-centred, could play the leader among his fellows. By the time he was ready for college, he showed the effects of indulgence on the part of the Allans, being imperious and wilful, unduly sensitive as to his state of orphanage, and squandering his too abundant pocket-money. During his brief residence at the University of Virginia (1826), Poe maintained high scholarship in Latin and French, but lived the life of his companions, drinking (though apparently not to excess) and incurring gambling debts which his guardian repudiated. Set to work in the counting-room of Mr. Allan, the young man rebelled and ran away to Boston, probably under an assumed name, and without capital save a sheaf of immature poems. He soon enlisted as a private in the army, made his peace with his guardian, and was sent to West Point. Here again he proved a clever student; but, purposely neglecting the routine, in 1831 he was discharged.

Obliged henceforth to depend on his own resources, Poe now approached almost to the point of starvation, when by his “Manuscript Found in a Bottle” (1833) he gained a prize of one hundred dollars offered by the Baltimore _Saturday Visiter_, and through John P. Kennedy, whom Poe called “the first true friend I ever had,” obtained temporary relief for his wants and help in getting literary work. He now became a contributor to, and soon the literary editor of, _The Southern Literary Messenger_. His numerous stories and criticisms did much to make the magazine successful and famous. In 1836 Poe married his beautiful cousin Virginia Clemm, who lacked three months of being fourteen years of age; but family ties could not prevent his morally weak nature from occasional indulgence in drugs and intoxicants, and his irregularities in January, 1837, brought about his dismissal from the editorial chair of the _Messenger_, for which, however, he continued to write. For a time the Poes now lived in New York, practically supported by Mrs. Clemm, who conducted a boarding-house. Here he completed and published his longest story, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” (1838), a tale of an Antarctic cruise as far south as the 84th parallel, based on Benjamin Morell’s “Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Seas and Pacific” (1832) with frequent dashes of Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner,” but full of such situations of blood-curdling horror and such highly imaginative landscape-painting as only the genius of Poe could produce. The years 1838-44 Poe spent in Philadelphia. In 1839 he collected and published his “Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque.” He wrote constantly for _Graham’s Magazine_, of which he was editor from 1840 till 1843; critiques, essays, and tales flowed from his pen. In imaginative story-telling, this was the period of his best work. His occasional lapses into intoxication are partly explained by the fits of insanity brought on by anxiety over the precarious condition of his wife, who in 1841 ruptured a blood-vessel while singing and who hovered between life and death for six years. The year 1844 found him back in New York, associated first with N. P. Willis on _The Evening Mirror_ and later with Charles F. Briggs on _The Broadway Journal_. The publication of “The Raven” in the _Mirror_ (January 29, 1845) and of his “Tales” (1845) greatly increased his reputation; but with curious and fatal perversity he proceeded to make enemies by trying to palm off upon the Boston Lyceum (October 16, 1845) a juvenile poem, “Al Aaraaf,” as a new work and by sharply castigating his literary contemporaries in “The Literati of New York.” The next year he removed his family to Fordham, a suburb of New York. Here his young wife died in 1847, of consumption; and he never really recovered from the shock. He conceived various literary enterprises; but he had become virtually a physical and moral wreck, unable to work except at long intervals. Toward the end of 1848 he proposed marriage to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, a Providence poet, and was accepted; but the match was broken off in consequence of Poe’s drinking to excess. He now determined to go South to lecture and procure funds with which to publish a magazine to be called _The Stylus_. At Philadelphia he had an attack of delirium tremens. Recovering, he went on to Richmond, where he spent the summer of 1849. He proposed marriage to an old flame, Mrs. Sarah Elmira Shelton, then a widow, who gave him some encouragement. About this time he signed a pledge to abstain from all intoxicating drinks, and made a new start in life. A lecture at the Exchange Hotel brought him some $1500; and with this in his pocket he started for New York to close up some business and take Mrs. Clemm back with him; but stopping in Baltimore _en route_ he was induced to drink some wine, went on a debauch, and a few days later (October 7th) died in a hospital of brain fever. There is ground for believing that he had been drugged by political toughs on election day (October 3d) and carried to various polls to vote for the Whig candidates.

Such was the pathetic and tragic career of one of the most brilliant of American literary men. Few lives have been the subjects of so much controversy. In estimating his character, justice must be tempered with mercy; and this is the easier now that it is seen that, during at least the latter part of his life, his mental condition was abnormal if not pathological.[12] He inherited tendencies which he was unable to control, and with which his environment wholly unfitted him to cope. When sober and sane, he was a quiet, well-bred, and refined gentleman, who could talk fascinatingly and in whom women found “a peculiar and irresistible charm”; he was capable, moreover, of working hard and efficiently. When under the influence of opium or intoxicating liquors, he was a wholly different man, with whom, fortunately, we are not here concerned. With the two exceptions of his wife and mother-in-law, he formed no close and lasting attachments. He was always deeply self-centred and found it impossible to enter sympathetically into the lives, sorrows, and aspirations of others. Thus his sensitive temperament more and more withdrew into itself and found its kindred in the phantasms of his powerful imagination.

Poe’s genius is probably best expressed in his tales. They are not bulky in extent; in the Putnam edition they fill five octavo volumes. Many of them are marred by journalistic looseness and mannerisms--too much use of the parenthesis, the too constant recurrence of favourite words and phrases. Occasionally he misses good opportunities for telling dramatic effects and contrasts; and in general it may be admitted that the element of human passion, “save in its minor chords of sorrow and despair,” is notably absent from his works. A passionate lover himself, his artistic genius was not concerned with the ordinary love-story. His lack of a sense of humour, too, has been remarked. His attempts to be humorous cannot be pronounced successful. Finally, some of his tales, “Arthur Gordon Pym” for example, contain matter so repulsive that the wonder is that any person could endure reading them, much less writing them.