§ 23. The Transcendentalists

Before the year 1840 had arrived, a remarkable group of writers of New England ancestry and birth had begun their work. They were fortunate in more than one way. They had the inspiration of knowing that good literature had already been written in America; and they had the stimulus arising from a movement, or manner of thought, known as transcendentalism. This movement began in Germany, was felt first in England and then in America, introduced by the works of Carlyle and Coleridge. Three of its "notes" were: (1) There are ideas in the human mind that were "born there" and were not acquired by experience; (2) Thought is the only reality; (3) Every one must do his own thinking. The Transcendental Club was formed, and the new movement had its literary organ, The Dial, whose first editor was the brilliant Margaret Fuller. It had also its representatives in the pulpit, for the persuasive charm of William Ellery Channing and the impassioned eloquence of Theodore Parker were employed to proclaim the new gospel. Another advocate was Amos Bronson Alcott, gentle, visionary, and immovable, who is so well pictured in the opening chapters of his daughter's Little Women.

The first thrill of all new movements leads to extremes, and transcendentalism was no exception. Freedom! Reform! was the war-cry; and to those who were inclined to act first and think afterwards, the new impulse was merely an incitement to tear down the fences. There were wild projects and fantastic schemes innumerable. A sense of humor would have guided and controlled much of this unbalanced enthusiasm; but it is only great men like Lincoln who can see any fellowship between humor and earnestness. The very people who were to profit by this movement were the loudest laughers at these dreamers who gazed in rapture upon the planets and sometimes stubbed their toes against the pebbles. Nevertheless, the ripened fruits of transcendentalism were in their degree like those of the Renaissance; it widened the horizon and it inspired men with courage to think for themselves and to live their own lives. This atmosphere of freedom had a noble effect upon literature. Two of the authors of the New England group, the poet-philosopher Emerson and the poet-naturalist Thoreau, were so imbued with its spirit that in literary classifications they are usually ranked as the transcendentalists; and Hawthorne is often classed with them, partly by virtue of a few months' connection with a transcendental scheme, and even more because in his romances the thought and the spirit are so much more real than the deeds by which they are manifested and symbolized.

§ 24. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–1882

The poet-philosopher was one of five boys who lived with their widowed mother in Boston. They were poor, for clergymen do not amass fortunes, and their father had been no exception to the rule. The famous First Church, however, of which he had been in charge, did not forget the family of their beloved minister. Now and then other kind friends gave a bit of help. Once a cow was lent them, and every morning the boys drove her down Beacon Hill to pasture. In spite of their poverty it never entered the mind of any member of the family that the children could grow up without an education. Four of the boys graduated at Harvard. The oldest son, who was then a sedate gentleman of twenty, opened a school for young ladies; and his brother Ralph, two years younger, became his assistant. The evenings were free, and the young man of eighteen was even then jotting down the thoughts that he was to use many years later in his essay, Compensation. He was a descendant of eight generations of ministers, and there seems to have been in his mind hardly a thought of entering any other profession than the ministry. A minister he became; but a few years later he told his congregation frankly that his belief differed on one or two points from theirs and it seemed to him best to resign. They urged him to remain with them, but he did not think it wise to do so.

A year later he went to Europe for his health. He wanted to see three or four men rather than places, he said. He met Coleridge and Wordsworth; and then he sought out the lonely little farm of Craigenputtock, the home of Carlyle. His coming was "like the visit of an angel," said the Scotch philosopher to Longfellow. The two men became friends, and the friendship lasted as long as their lives.

When Emerson came back to America, he made his home in Concord, Massachusetts, but for a long while he was almost as much at home on railroad trains and in stages. Those were the times when people were eager to hear from the lecture platform what the best thinkers of the day could tell them. In 1837 Emerson delivered at Harvard his Phi Beta Kappa address entitled The American Scholar; and then for the first time the American people were told seriously and with dignity that they must no longer listen to "the courtly muses of Europe." "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds," said Emerson. These last words were the keynote of his message to the world. Whoever listens may hear the voice of God, he declared; and for that reason each person's individuality was sacred to him. Therefore it was that he met every man with a gently expectant deference that was far above the ordinary courtesy of society. A humble working woman once said that she did not understand his lectures, but she liked to go to them and see him look as if he thought everybody else just as good as he. On the lecture platform Emerson's manner was that of one who was trying to interpret what had been told to him, of one who was striving to put his thoughts into a language which had no words to express them fully.

Some parts of Emerson's writings are simple enough for a little child to understand; other parts perhaps no one but their author has fully comprehended. It is not easy to make an outline of his essays. Every sentence, instead of opening the gate for the next, as in Macaulay's prose, seems to stand alone. Emerson said with truth, "I build my house of boulders." The connection is not in the words, but in a subtle undercurrent of thought. The best way to enjoy his writings is to turn the pages of some one of his simpler essays, Compensation, for instance, that he planned when a young man of eighteen, and read whatever strikes the eye. When one has read: " 'What will you have?' quoth God; 'pay for it and take it,' "—"The borrower runs in his own debt,"—"The thief steals from himself,"—"A great man is always willing to be little;"—when one has read a few such sentences, he cannot help wishing to begin at the beginning to see how they come in. Then let him take from each essay that he reads the part that belongs to him, and leave the rest until its day and moment have fully come.

Among Emerson's poems, Each and All, The Rhodora, The Humble-Bee, The Snow-Storm, Forbearance, Woodnotes, Fable  ("The mountain and the squirrel"), Concord Hymn, and Boston Hymn are all easy and all well worth knowing by heart. He who has learned this handful of poems has met their author face to face, and can hardly fail to have gained a friendliness for him that will serve as his best interpreter.

§ 25. Henry David Thoreau, 1817–1882

In that same village of Concord was a young man named Thoreau who was a great puzzle to his neighbors. He had graduated at Harvard, but he did not become clergyman, lawyer, or physician. He taught for a while, he wrote and sometimes he lectured; he read many books; and he spent a great deal of time out of doors. His father was maker of lead pencils, and the son also learned the trade. Before long he made them better than the father; then he made them equal to the best that were imported. "There is a fortune for you in those pencils," declared his friends; but the young man made no more. "Why should I?" he queried. "I would not do again what I have done once."

Thoreau loved his family, little children, and a few good friends; but not a straw did he care about people in the mass. Emerson said of him that his soul was made for the noblest society; but when he was about twenty-eight, he built himself a tiny cottage on the shore of Walden Pond, and there he lived for the greater part of two years and a half. He kept a journal, and in this he noted when the first bluebird appeared, how the little twigs changed in color at the coming of the spring, and many other "common sights." He knew every nook and cranny of the rocks, every bend of the stream, every curve of the shore. The little wild creatures had no fear of him; the red squirrels played about his feet as he wrote; the flowers seemed to hasten their blooming to meet the dates of his last year's diary. He told Emerson that if he waked up from a trance in his favorite swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of year it was within two days. He could find his way through the woods at night by the feeling of the ground to his feet. He saw everything around him. "Where can arrowheads be found?" he was asked. "Here," was his reply, as he stooped and picked one up. It is no wonder that he felt small patience with the blindness of other folk. "I have never yet met a man who was quite awake," he declared. He loved trees, and once, when the woodchoppers had done their worst, he exclaimed devoutly, "Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds."

He found so much to enjoy that he could not bear to give his time to any profession. To be free, to read, and to live with nature,—that was happiness. "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone," declared this philosopher of the wilderness. The few things that he could not "let alone," he supplied easily by the work of his hands. Emerson said that he himself could split a shingle four ways with one nail; but Thoreau could make a bookcase or a chest or a table or almost anything else. He knew more about gardening than any of the farmers around him. Six weeks of work as carpenter or surveyor supplied his needs for the rest of the year; then he was free.

In 1839 he made a boat, and in it he and his brother took a voyage on the Concord and Merrimac rivers. He was keeping a journal as usual, and he wrote in it an account of the trip. This, as published, is more than a guide-book, for on one page is a disquisition on the habits of the pickerel; on another a discourse on friendship or Chaucer or the ruins of Egypt, as it may chance. Occasionally there is a poem, sometimes with such a fine bit of description as this, written of the effect of the clear light of sunset:—

Mountains and trees Stand as they were on air graven.

Of a churlish man whom he met in the mountains he wrote serenely, "I suffered him to pass for what he was,— for why should I quarrel with nature?—and was even pleased at the discovery of such a singular natural phenomenon." Thoreau is always interesting. What he says has ever the charm of the straightforward thought of a wise, honest, widely read, and keenly observant man; but he is most delightful when his knowledge of nature and his tender, sympathetic humor are combined; as, for instance, in his little talk about the shad, that, "armed only with innocence and a just cause," are ever finding a "corporation with its dam" blocking the way to their old haunts. "Keep a stiff fin," he says cheerily, "and stem all the tides thou mayst meet."

These quotations are from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, his journal of the little voyage with many later additions. He prepared it for the press, and offered it to publisher after publisher; but no one was willing to run the financial risk of putting it into print. At last he published one thousand copies at his own expense. Four years later, 706 unsold volumes were returned to him. He wrote in his journal, "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself." Then he calmly went to work at surveying to finish paying the printer's bills.

Only one other volume of Thoreau's writings, Walden, was published during his life; but critics discovered, one by one, that his wide reading, his minute knowledge of nature, his warm sympathy with every living creature, and his ability to put his knowledge and his thoughts on paper, were a rare combination of gifts. His thirty-nine volumes of manuscript journals were carefully read, and they were finally published; but not until Thoreau had been dead for many years.

§ 26. Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804–1864

The connection of Hawthorne with the transcendentalists came about through his joining what was known as the Brook Farm project. A company of "dreamers" united in buying this farm in the expectation that it could be carried on with profit if they all worked a few hours each day. The rest of the time they were to have for social enjoyment and intellectual pursuits. Hawthorne was engaged to a brilliant, charming woman, and he hoped to be able to make a home for them at Brook Farm. The project failed, but he married and went to live at the Old Manse in Concord, to find perfect happiness in his home, and to work his way toward literary fame.

He had led a singular life. When he was four years old, his father, a sea-captain, died in South America. His mother shut herself away from the outside world and almost from her own family. The little boy was sent to school; but soon a football injury confined him to the silent house for two years. There was little to do but read; and he read from morning till night. Froissart, Pilgrim's Progress, and Spenser carried him away to the realms of the imagination, and made the long days a delight. At last he was well again; and then came one glorious year by Sebago Lake, where he wandered at his will in the grand old forests of Maine. He graduated at Bowdoin College in the famous class of 1825. There were names among those college boys that their bearers were afterwards to make famous: Henry W. Longfellow, J. S. C. Abbott, George B. Cheever, and Horatio Bridge; and in the preceding class was Franklin Pierce. The last two became Hawthorne's warmest friends.

Graduation separated him from his college companions; indeed, for twelve years he was isolated from almost every one. He had returned to his home in Salem. His older sister had become nearly as much of a recluse as her mother. Interruptions were almost unknown, and the young man wrote and read by day and by night. He published a novel which he was afterwards glad did not sell. He wrote many short stories. Most of them he burned; some he sent to various publishers. At the end of the twelve years, Bridge urged him to publish his stories in a volume, and offered to be responsible for the expense. This book was the Twice-Told Tales. Soon after his marriage he published the second series of Tales, and a few years later, Mosses from an Old Manse. Most people who read these stories were pleased with them, but few recognized in their author the promise of a great romancer, Meanwhile, the romancer needed an income, and he was glad to retain the Custom House position in Boston that George Bancroft had secured for him. After a while he was transferred to the Salem Custom House. Then came a change in political power, and one day he had to tell his wife that he had been thrown out of his position. "I am glad," she said, "for now you can write your book." She produced a sum of money which she had been quietly saving for some such emergency, and her husband took up his pen with all good cheer. Not many months later, "a big man with brown beard and shining eyes, who bubbled over with enthusiasm and fun," knocked at the door. He was James T. Fields, the publisher. He had read the manuscript, and he had come to tell its author what a magnificent piece of work it was. "It is the greatest book of the age," he declared. Even Fields, however, did not know what appreciation it would meet, and he did not stereotype it. The result was that, two weeks after its publication, the type had to be reset, for the whole edition had been sold. This book was The Scarlet Letter, that marvellous picture of the stern old Puritan days, softened and illumined by the touch of a genius. One need not fear to say that it is still the greatest American book.

Hawthorne had now come to the atmosphere of appreciation that inspired him to do his best work. Within three short years he wrote The House of the Seven Gables, a book of weird, pathetic humor and flashes of everyday sunshine. Then came The Wonder-Book, the little volume that is so dear to the hearts of children. The Blithedale Romance followed, whose suggestion arose from the months at Brook Farm. The life of his dear friend, Franklin Pierce, and Tanglewood Tales came next,—a glorious record for less than three years.

Franklin Pierce had become President, and he appointed his old friend consul at Liverpool. Four years of the consulship and three years of travel resulted in the Note-Books and The Marble Faun, the fourth of his great romances. Four years after its publication, Hawthorne died.

It is as difficult to compare Hawthorne's romances with the novels of other writers of fiction as to compare a strain of music with a painting, for their aims are entirely different. Novelists strive to make their characters lifelike, to surround them with difficulties, and to keep the reader in suspense as to the outcome of the struggle. Hawthorne's characters are clearly outlined, but they seem to belong to a different world. We could talk freely with Rip Van Winkle, but we should hardly know what to say to Clifford or Hepzibah, or even to Phebe. Nor are the endings of Hawthorne's books of supreme interest. The fact that four people in The House of the Seven Gables finally come to their own is not the most impressive fact of the story.

Hawthorne's power lies primarily in his knowledge of the human heart and in his ability to trace step by step the effect upon it of a single action. His charm comes from a humor so delicate that sometimes we hardly realize its presence; from a style so artistic that it is almost without flaw; from a manner of treating the supernatural that is purely his own. He has no clumsy ventriloquistic trickery like Brown; he gives the suggestive hint that sets our own fancy to work, then with a half smile he quietly offers us the choice of a matter-of-fact explanation,—which, of course, we refuse to accept. But the magic that removes Hawthorne's stories farthest from everyday life is the different atmosphere in which they seem to exist. The characters are real people, but they are seen through the thought of the romancer. In The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne ponders on how "the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones;" and everything is seen through the medium of that thought. No other American author has shown such profound knowledge of the human heart or has put that knowledge into words with so accurate and delicate a touch. No one else has treated the supernatural in so fascinating a manner or has mingled so gracefully the prosaic and the ideal. No one else has manifested such perfection of literary style. Longfellow has well said:—

Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower Unfinished must remain!