The Gray Champion

The Gray Champion

This story reminds me of Endicott and the Red Cross (I commented briefly here) another of Hawthorne's snatches of colonial history that demonstrate a recurring theme of imperial tyranny and colonial insurrection.

This time the Catholic (or as Hawthorne is wont to say "popish") King James II has dispatched a new governor who imposes harsh laws and taxes on the colonists. When the locals begin to assert their disrespect for the new authority, Governor Edward Andros marches his troops to town to intimidate them. Just in time an original settler of the colony (a ghost?) shows up to face down the governor and announce the abdication of James (which of course will not be known for some time in Boston). The gray champion's proclamation is believed and causes the overthrow of the governor.

Hawthorne reminds his New England readers that at their heart they are folk who bristle at being told what to do by Great Britain and the pope. I am intrigued with this nationalism and revolutionary theme that recurs not only in The Gray Champion and Endicott and the Red Cross but also in the Legends of the Province House series.

What's it all about?

What are my goals with this blog?

First and foremost, I intend to hold myself accountable to continue reading my way through all of Hawthorne's work instead of reading the same bits over and over again. When I have read all his published work I will read it again and again, as well as seeking out his journals and correspondence.

Why do all that reading? Because I want to know Hawthorne more completely. I want to hear his voice in my head. I want to write about him and I want to encourage others to write about him.

Second, I want to raise Hawthorne's visibility because I think he does not receive the recognition he should. Oh yes, most Americans meet him briefly in the classroom, but there is this perfect love story between Nat and Sophia Peabody, it has all the ingredients the right screenwriter could mold into a blockbuster romance, and yet almost no one knows the story. I would like to tell that story in a great big blockbuster movie culminating with the wedding July 9, 1842.

And then I imagine Hawthorne's entire life story would lend itself well to a three part mini series. So perhaps a synchronous producer would make that mini series.

And then I think the whole thing would snowball and there could be a series about the lives of authors in the early 19th century who were helping America forge a literature of her own. Hawthorne, yes, but also Irving, Poe, Melville. Maybe Cooper.

And I imagine another biographical series about other famous people of the time spiraling out from Hawthorne, to Elizabeth Peabody, Emerson, Thoreau, Horace Mann, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller.

And of course, there is the whole body of Hawthorne fiction that could be brought to the screen. I want to see a flowering of media about Hawthorne and his friends and his stories and his novels.

I know, these are wild and crazy, grandiose thoughts. But I think there's enough material there. I think certain historical periods are in fashion from time to time, and now it's time to consider the early antebellum, the birth of transcendentalism, the Manifest Destiny generation. I consider how America fawned over Jane Austen in 2008, we watched all her movies on PBS, and paid to see The Jane Austen Book Club and Becoming Jane in the theaters. Is it farfetched to believe we might become thus enamored of Nathaniel Hawthorne someday?

So I am sending a little ripple out to see if I can infect the world with a Hawthorne meme.

Happy New Year.

Help with The Threefold Destiny

Someone asked.

Summary - local boy circles the globe in search of the grand flourishes he has imagined will reveal his even grander destinies for romance, treasure, and public influence. Upon his return, a man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering, and heavy with disappointed hopes, Ralph Cranfield encounters all three signs right there in his hometown. In fact, two of the signs he placed himself. So he went all the way around the world looking for what he had left behind.

This "Faery Legend" was first published in 1838, when Hawthorne was wooing Sophia Peabody. It could be Hawthorne was congratulating himself on finding his mate so close to home. Or perhaps he was exploring his response to pressure to go out and find his fortune. I find so many of these early stories wrestle with questions of marriage, destiny, and making one's way in the world.

But about the story...Why did Ralph leave? When struggling with Hawthorne, I always go back to the words. He begins describing the signs and destinies as, The first of these fatalities... Fatalities, of course, these things are fated to happen. But Connotations 101 reminds us to hear the finality of death in that phrase. Ostensibly Cranfield went in search of his destiny when in fact he was dodging it. Later we will learn he knew Faith was his beloved even before her faith was proven.

I do not like Ralph Cranfield, I wonder if I am not meant to. He arrogantly ignores his beloved when he meets her in the street, though I am sure every mother reading the story agrees he was right to present himself to his mother before anyone else. I would wish he lost something in the leaving, were my wishes of anyone's concern here.

I wonder about the whole "Hail the Conquering Hero" bit. What did Cranfield do to merit the local authorities' trust? How fortunate to have been away so long and then succeed in being in the right place at the right time, which is why it is a fairy tale I suppose. But still, Hawthorne worked in a bit of reality to soothe the skeptics on the other two aspects: Cranfield carved EFFODE in the tree and fashioned the brooch on Faith's bosom, planting his own seeds for the mystical deja vu later on. But this bit where he comes home and then next morning the town fathers knock on his door and hand him a job of some importance without any effort on his part, I do not understand how that fits.

Unless, the job is not a blessing. Is the charge of the local schoolchildren a role the selectmen were at a loss to fill, and was this unemployed prodigal son an answer to their prayers? Did they fulfill his dream or did he fulfill theirs?

I stray too far from the story I fear. In the end, I consider what I know of going away and coming home and believe we are to understand this story must be a fairy tale because you will never return to find things just as you left them, only better.

The Threefold Destiny

The Threefold Destiny

Remember that awkward speech Dorothy gives about "your own backyard" right before she clicks her heels in the original movie, The Wizard of Oz? I suppose none of us are surprised Hawthorne better articulated the concept, though his story is hardly more believable than Baum's.

Endicott and the Red Cross

Endicott and the Red Cross

Notable for introducing the "A" on which Hawthorne would later base his masterpiece, this story has a nice twist at the end when the narrator recognizes the roots of the American revolution in an early act against the crown. Hawthorne displays a begrudging respect for Endicott despite his distaste with the Puritan fathers' intolerance.

The Seven Vagabonds

Read The Seven Vagabonds here.

From the first Hawthorne draws us in with his merry in the spring of my life and the summer of the year...

He seems to experiment with word choice and cadence much as musician plays with notes and tempo to create at most times a merry mood in this piece, but at others a more subdued air.

Again the author is just laying his hopes out there for all the world to see. I had none of that foolish wisdom which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting, with a cheerful eye, the desirable circumstances of each. I chuckle at that and then think of the frustration he presented to the adults around him. I love his assertion: his faculty is not better, nor does he possess it in greater quantity, but he possesses it more perfectly. Ah, the self-assurance of youth.

This was a pleasant story to read, merry at times, exuberant and young until the author turns somber at the end.

I learned a new word: bibliopolist.

The White Old Maid

The White Old Maid

Similar to The Minister's Black Veil, this story leaves much unsaid and unexplained. I wonder if Hawthorne was experimenting with how much to reveal in a ghost story. As filmmakers have found that what isn't shown, what is only hinted at, can be more frightening and impressive than full revelation, so too I think Hawthorne was testing how much the reader needed to see and understand in order to appreciate this supernatural story.

I like the way we are shown the speculation and various testimony of the witnesses. Like so many ghost stories and legends, this story will never be completely understood and the reader will ultimately have to decide for herself what is believable. In this way, this little supernatural tale became very true to life for me.

The Sister Years

The Sister Years

Brian informs me today is Rosh Hashanah, which makes it rather fitting that I read a New Year story.

New Year comes tripping down the road and meets a world weary Old Year in Salem, MA in the final hour of December 31, 1838.

I enjoyed this, but I enjoy most everything Hawthorne.

Old Year reflects on all the busy tasks we are involved with that never seem to make the world a better place. "There has indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border, where blood has streamed in the names of Liberty and Patriotism; but it must remain for some future, perhaps far distant, Year, to tell whether or no those holy names have been rightfully invoked. Nothing so much depresses me, in my view of mortal affairs, as to see high energies wasted, and human life and happiness thrown away, for ends that appear oftentimes unwise; and still oftener remain unaccomplished."

I went looking for information about the skirmish in Canada in 1838 and found naught but a brief reference to a conflict over the New Brunswick/Maine border. Tragically, 1838 is the year the US forcibly relocated the Cherokee tribe in the Trail of Tears.

Old Year also takes credit for opening the railroad in Salem, "and half a dozen times a day, you will hear the bell (which once summoned the Monks of a Spanish Convent to their devotions) announcing the arrival or departure of the cars. Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when I first beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a time."

I would like to read the Salem Gazette Old Year clutches in her hands. Next year, perhaps.

The Ambitious Guest

The Ambitious Guest

Spoiler alert: you will read the ending here. It's a quick read...3280 words.

I hear this story as a teleplay, as I have heard other stories of Hawthorne's that way in my recent reading. Particularly in the last paragraph of this story, like that of Wakefield, I hear the cadences of spoken word. I expect I encounter the narrator's voice more on television than in modern short stories. Is it that stories in the past were written to be read aloud to a degree that they are not today, though teleplays are, and perhaps that is what I hear?

Whose was the agony of that death moment? Strange last line. Why whose?

More like WHAT was the agony at that death moment? We are to think it wasn't so much the agony of death, that he could bear. But dying unknown, perhaps unidentified, oh what tragedy for the youth and his ambitions.

I suppose "Whose was the agony..." is the author's sly wink and acknowledgment of his own ambitions.

There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the catastrophe of all its inmates.

Circumstances? Like bones?

The Village Uncle

Read The Village Uncle here.

I loved this story. I kept reading it over and over this week. I love the cadences of so many sentences, I cannot begin to choose a representative passage. I want to read the whole story aloud.

What a brave story to have written and published. In light of Hawthorne's reticence in person, I am amazed at how much he spilled in this story. Imagine a thirty year old man admitting he spends hours staring at the fire fantasizing about his future spouse and children like a schoolgirl. I imagine him jumping up, For I am a patriarch! And then sheepishly coming to his senses.

I love it. What more can I say? Read it. This is the truest thing I have read this week.

I can see why Longfellow felt Hawthorne very in touch with his feminine side. I think I also understand why Elizabeth Peabody was all a flutter over Nathaniel when she learned he was the author of such a revealing and poignant confession of longing for wife and family.

Legends of the Province House - Howe's Masquerade

I. Howe's Masquerade

Hawthorne writes of conjuring the memory of this tavern's heyday amid the bustle and decay of "modern" Boston.

I had a similar experience a few weeks ago in Plymouth, MA when I visited the Mayflower II. Actors in period clothes and strange accents tried to help tourists imagine life on the ship nearly 400 years ago. I guess this is the challenge we all face when visiting historical sites. We strain to see the ghosts of the past gliding through the old buildings. We try to imagine the splendor of the old days when the finishes were vibrant and new. And then we step back into the everyday.

I also visited the Pilgrim Hall Museum while in Plymouth. Huge stained glass windows hung over the lobby. The docent explained that all the stained glass had recently been cleaned and restored. She pointed out details in the leaves that no one knew were there; the glass had appeared solid black for years. Someone removed all the bits of glass, cleaned them, releaded the windows and now they are restored to their original glory.

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

I can't think of much to comment on this story. Brain dead tonight.

Widow Wycherly, rather obvious. I hope named more for her ability to bewitch suitors in her day than for her age in this story.

Fancy's Show Box

Read Fancy's Show Box here

A bit of a story, more of an essay. I might have shared this piece with my father. I remember in my childhood reading Little House on the Prairie and feeling compelled to discuss the scene where Laura nearly unties Jack, the dog, against her father's orders. Indians came to her home in Papa's absence, Jack was excited, and Laura thought that maybe she should release Jack on the uninvited, perhaps life-threatening guests. Somehow the visit turned non-threatening and the scene ended safely with Jack secured. Later when Laura confessed her almost sin, her father told her that thinking about sinning is as bad as actually committing the deed.

Whoa, ho, ho. My dad disagreed. He had apparently wrestled this topic with priests, even Jesuits. He came down firmly in the camp of an earthly judge. "If you go to a police station and try to turn yourself in because you thought about killing someone but did not, they will not arrest you because no crime has been committed. And if you keep on insisting you're guilty, they'll think you're crazy. If there is no act, there is no crime." He was an agnostic at the time.

In Fancy's Show Box, Hawthorne wrestles with this question of guilt in thought but not deed. He provides a fanciful scene with three apparitions and a victim paying for his sinful thoughts. Then he switches to essay format and dismisses this absurd possibility. He finishes with a sermon that none are guiltless and worthy of heaven.

I would have liked to discuss this story with my father, because he and Hawthorne and Wilder had different visions to illustrate this question of conscience, and because I think this is an example of moral dilemma we must each wrestle and settle for ourselves. The wisest parents, teachers, and counselors encourage us to seek our own answers for questions of faith and conscience. The best authors give us new ways of looking at old questions.

My take? Certainly nothing as eloquent as Hawthorne or even Wilder. I would argue that humans have the ability to imagine the future and consider the impact of their actions in advance. Our technology, our culture, all our creations and progress depend upon this ability. And as responsible, thinking beings, we must each be able to contemplate actions and their possible repercussions without retribution so that we can stop ourselves before we embark on an undesired path.

That said, I also don't think it is helpful to spend a lot of time imagining yourself committing crimes against others. I believe my quality of life and that of everyone around me are improved when I focus on positive solutions than when I stew about unpleasant confrontations and violent behaviors.

A footnote for anyone curious when Dickens wrote his famous tale of three apparitions and conscience: Wikipedia shows A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, Fancy's Show Box in 1837.

The Hollow of the Three Hills

The Hollow of the Three Hills

This story, even shorter than the last, packs a powerful punch. My first reading impressed me with the vivid dreamscapes Hawthorne creates with such an economy of words. With 1749 words he conjures not only the setting of the story, but also three other fantastic scenes.

Thinking on this, I realized that Hawthorne didn't include any personal details. He achieves his economy by telling us only what we need to know about the characters and no more. We see an old crone, but we see nothing that would distinguish this crone from any other. We are presented with the torment of a cuckold, but beyond the husband's solemn voice...a manly and melodious voice it might once have been, we have no description of this man. No "red riding hood" or "goldie locks", this story has no physical detail we can fix on to visualize these people; the author leaves them wholly to our imagination. And somehow he gives all we need to see the story, to imagine the characters and feel their despair.

But it's only half a story. Hawthorne doesn't offer us anything but the wife's remorse. We don't know what might have prompted the anguished situation. Hawthorne seems to have no sympathy for the mother who had sinned against natural affection. Do I detect abandonment issues? His mother lived as a virtual recluse, was she emotionally unavailable to him?

Another possibility is that this isn't the wife/mother's story. Perhaps this is the story of the crone and her sweet hour's sport, in which case the younger woman's agony matters most and any excuses she might have offered in the past were not part of the present scene.

This phrase resonated for me: there were revilings and anathemas. Reminds me of Paul Simon's phrase, hints and allegations.

The Prophetic Pictures

The Prophetic Pictures

Great story. This is the third Hawthorne story of the six I have read recently that features newlyweds. Marriage weighed heavy on the author's mind, eh?

So, what did I like? I liked that maybe this couple did not live happily ever after. I would say I wish this artist had painted my portrait before I married in haste, but perhaps Hawthorne is correct that my passionate desires would have swept me along despite prophetic pictures.

The Great Carbuncle

Read The Great Carbuncle here

I looked up carbuncle before I read because I thought it would be helpful to understand a carbuncle. Boy, I was wrong. I went with the first definition on Wikipedia, which turned out to be more confusing than just reading the story and letting Hawthorne explain. For the record, there is not a party of adventurers searching for an oversized boil that is oozing pus in the White Mountains. This carbuncle is not a staph infection in an episode of TNT's new series, Hawthorne. I don't think I'm spoiling anyone's enjoyment of the story when I point out that the carbuncle in this story is a red gemstone.

Have you read the story? If not, go read. I'll be here when you come back.

I'm still smiling about the Cynic's fate. You might as well be blind if you won't see the beauty around you. Believing is seeing.

The Great Carbuncle. I suppose I should go look for it too.

The Gentle Boy

The Gentle Boy

I procrastinated with this story and spread the reading over a couple of weeks. I'm always sorry to see the poor child persecuted. I do not enjoy contemplating the way people will abuse others in the name of the Lord.

One passage interests me. Hawthorne is describing a Quaker: In person he was tall and dignified, and, which alone would have made him hateful to the Puritans, his gray locks fell from beneath the broad-brimmed hat, and and rested on his shoulders.

Quakers were hippies too?

Groovy.

The Maypole of Merry Mount

The Maypole of Merry Mount

Merry Mount is the original name of Quincy, MA. There's a bit of trivia I feel I ought to retain.

Who were these folk at Merry Mount? They sound like a bunch of hippies, born 240 years early on the wrong coast. Peter Palfrey asks whether they should cut the hair of the Lord of May. Absolutely, and let's get rid of all this gayety while we're at it.

I love the paragraph of backstory that begins "Two hundred years ago, or more..." Sounds like we almost had San Francisco next door to South Boston but for the intrepid intervention of Endicott and his bunch. I wonder did they ship all the green warriors off to Vermont?

Faced with their protestations of love and sacrifice, Endicott relents and shows mercy on the newlyweds (certain they will raise their children in the faith). I don't know about that. Maybe in moment of his own twisted mirth, the venerable puritan decided marriage was punishment enough.

Hawthorne disagrees. Although they never experienced the gay life again, the couple "never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of Merry Mount."

Wakefield

Read Wakefield here

I like this story if only for the soothing W throughout. This line resonates with me, "when she had been more years a widow than a wife..." I feel like I approach that day myself.

Of course, in the story it's all a cruel caprice and Wakefield's wife is no more a widow than I am. Wicked man, that Wakefield. Worst sort of procrastinator he turned out to be. What did he do all that time? That's what I wonder whenever I read this story. How did he earn his bread? What sort of credentials did he provide his new landlady?

Hawthorne would have us believe Wakefield set off on a tangent and could not find his way back for twenty years. And if I knew where he went to work, maybe I could believe that.

The ending caught my attention this time around. I feel Rod Serling's cadence and can well imagine him speculating about Wakefield becoming, as it were, a denizen of the Twilight Zone. Can you hear it too?

Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another, and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, an Outcast of the Universe.

I imagine Hawthorne in an attic more years than miles from where I sit trying to wrest a living from his writing. Oh, what teleplays he might have written.