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House of the Seven Gables
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTORY NOTE AUTHOR'S PREFACE I. THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY
II. THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW III. THE FIRST CUSTOMER IV. A
DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER V. MAY AND NOVEMBER VI. MAULE'S WELL
VII. THE GUEST VIII. THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY IX. CLIFFORD
AND PHOEBE X. THE PYNCHEON GARDEN XI. THE ARCHED WINDOW
XII. THE DAGUERREOTYPIST XIII. ALICE PYNCHEON XIV. PHOEBE'S
GOOD-BY XV. THE SCOWL AND SMILE XVI. CLIFFORD'S CHAMBER XVII.
THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS XVIII. GOVERNOR PYNCHEON XIX. ALICE'S
POSIES XX. THE FLOWER OF EDEN XXI. THE DEPARTURE
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES.
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 gradation 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.
PREFACE.
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.
LENOX, January 27, 1851.
THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES by Nathaniel Hawthorne