George William Curtis

“ As a study of the solitary human soul involved in sin and struggling with its own weakness and sophistry, seeking in the darkness of concealment the succor that could be found only in the full light of penitence, the romance is a remarkable addition to imaginative literature, and distinctively characteristic of Hawthorne's genius. ”

“ His profound conviction, supreme conscientiousness, indomitable will, affluent resources, and inability to compromise, his legal training, serious temper, and untiring energy, were indispensable in the final stages of the slavery controversy, and he had them all in the highest degree. “There is no other side,” he said to a friend with fervor, and Cromwell's Ironsides did not ride into the fight more absolutely persuaded that they were doing the will of God than Charles Sumner. ”

“ Longfellow was very sensible of Hawthorne's generosity, and the warm friendship of the two authors and neighbors was never disturbed. Six or seven hundred copies of "Twice-told Tales" were sold, and the book was favorably noticed, though the quality of the author's genius was not perceived. It was generally treated as a mere pleasant talent. But those tales reveal a power of imagination, a spiritual insight and knowledge of the obscurer motives of human nature, and they are told with a felicity and repose of manner that have not been surpassed in our literature. ”

“ But, as Hawthorne said, it must not be read “as if it had anything to do with Brook Farm, which, essentially, it has not, but merely for its own story and character.” It is, as Mr. Lathrop says, the story of a man dominated by a theory, and, by blind abandonment to it, ruining himself and those who trust him. But upon this simple motive the author plays with his familiar and marvellous skill. ”

“ The later differences with his party were forgotten when Sumner died, and only his great service to the country in the most perilous hour, and his uncompromising devotion to the enslaved race, were proudly and enthusiastically remembered. Among American statesmen his life especially illustrates the truth he early expressed, that politics is but the application of moral principles to public affairs. Throughout his public career he was the distinctive representative of the moral conviction and political purpose of New England. ”

“ But Washington only deepened his love for the law and his aversion to politics. In September, 1834, he was admitted to the bar. During the month that he passed in Washington, Sumner described his first impression of the unfortunate race to whose welfare his life was to be devoted: “For the first time I saw slaves [on the journey through Maryland] , and my worst preconception of their appearance and ignorance did not fall as low as their actual stupidity. They appear to be nothing more than moving masses of flesh, unendowed with anything of intelligence above the brutes. ”

“ There are more figures, and they are more finely elaborated, and there is a cheerful play of humor and sunshine. Phoebe, Hepzibah, Judge Pyncheon, and Clifford are masterly delineations, like portraits of Titian and Rembrandt and Raphael which do not fade with time. ”

“ In 1835 his interest in the slavery question deepened. The first newspaper for which he subscribed was “The Liberator,” and he writes to Dr. Francis Lieber, then professor in the college at Columbia, S. C.: “What think you of it? [slavery] Should it longer exist? Is not emancipation practicable? We are becoming Abolitionists, at the north, fast.” The next year, 1836, his “blood boils” at an indignity offered by a slavemaster to the Boston counsel of a fugitive slave. Sumner now saw much of Channing, by whose wisdom and devotion to freedom he was deeply influenced. ”

“ He lived habitually within himself, and seemed, as his son Julian said, to find no better society. His dress was dark and plain. He walked rapidly, but with no air of effort, and his frame, well-knit and sturdy, gave his movement an easy swing, which implied great endurance. The photograph known as the Bennoch portrait (because it was procured by Francis Bennoch, a friend in England) is one of the most satisfactory likenesses of Hawthorne. ”

“ But to Hawthorne, as his "American Note-Book" shows, the sylvan poem was very prosaic. "I went to live in Arcady," he said to a friend, "and found myself up to the chin in a barn-yard." There was indeed no stouter manual worker than he. He toiled sometimes for sixteen hours a day, and he invested $1,000, his savings from the custom-house, in the enterprise at Brook Farm, hoping to be married and to find a home there. His modesty and sincerity, and an indefinable manliness of nature, fascinated his associates. But the very genius of the place was social, and he always carried solitude with him. ”

“ This first speech had all the characteristics of the last important speech he ever made. It was brief, but sternly bold, uncompromising, aggressive, and placed Sumner at once in the van of the political anti-slavery movement. He was not an Abolitionist in the Garrisonian sense. He held that slavery was sectional, not national; that the constitution was meant to be a bond of national liberty as well as union, and nowhere countenanced the theory that there could be property in men ”

“ The agitation of the question of slavery had already begun. “The Liberator” was established by Mr. Garrison in Boston on 1 Jan.. 1831. The “nullification movement” in South Carolina occurred while Sumner was at the Law-school. He praised President Jackson's proclamation, and saw civil war impending; but he wrote to a friend in 1832: “Politics I begin to loathe; they are for a day, but the law is for all time.” He entered the law-office of Benjamin Rand, in Boston, in January, 1834, wrote copiously for the “Jurist.” and went to Washington for the first time in April. ”

“ His genius was early matured, and his sinewy, simple, lucid style was never youthful in the sense of crudity, rhetorical excess, or restlessness. But his imagination was richer and his insight deeper. In a letter to Longfellow in 1837, after the publication of the “Twice-told Tales,” he says that he lies under the disadvantage of lack of material from the narrow conditions of his life and want of experience. But the custom-house, Brook Farm, Concord, and marriage had brought him out of the old Salem routine, and he was in the ripeness of his power when the “Mosses” were published. ”

“ His ample learning and various accomplishments were rivalled among American public men only by those of John Quincy Adams, and during all the fury of political passion in which he lived there was never a whisper or suspicion of his political honesty or his personal integrity. ”

“ The three years of his Salem surveyorship have no record in the “American Note-Books.” But during this time he wrote the first draft of “The Scarlet Letter,” a longer tale than any of the earlier works, which proved to be so sombre that he thought it wiser to publish with it some sketches afterward issued with the “Snow Image.” But his friend, James T. Fields, the publisher, on reading the manuscript, was so profoundly impressed by it that Hawthorne took heart, completed the work, and in the spring of 1850 the romance was published. The first edition of 5,000 copies was sold in two weeks. ”

“ In 1835 the notices in the London "Athenaeum" of his tales published in the "Token" were so encouraging that he began to think of issuing them in a volume. His faithful friend Bridge warmly urged the publication, and assumed the pecuniary risk, and early in 1837 the first series of "Twice-told Tales " was published by the American stationers' company in Boston. Hawthorne sent a copy to Longfellow, whose "Outre Mer " had charmed him, regretting that they had not been more intimate in college, and Longfellow reviewed the book with enthusiasm in the "North American Review." ”

“ In December, 1871, he refused again to serve as chairman of the committee on privileges and elections. Early in 1872 he introduced a supplementary civil-rights bill, which, since January, 1870, he had vainly sought to bring before the senate. It was intended to secure complete equality for colored citizens in every relation that law could effect; but it was thought to be unwise and impracticable by other Republican senators, and as drawn by Sumner it was not supported by them. ”

“ In the election of members of the legislature the Free-soilers and Democrats united, and at a caucus of members of the Free-soil party Sumner was unanimously selected as their candidate for U. S. senator. He was more acceptable to the Democrats because he had never been an extreme Whig, and the Democratic caucus, with almost equal unanimity, made him its candidate. ”

“ But in 1841 the assertion by Great Britain, of a right to stop any suspected slaver to ascertain her right to carry the American flag, produced great excitement. Sumner at once showed his concern for freedom and his interest in great questions of law by maintaining in two elaborate articles, published in a Boston newspaper early in 1843, the right and the justice of such an inquiry. Kent, Story, Choate, and Theodore Sedgwick approved his position. This was his first appearance in the anti-slavery controversy. ”

“ But Sumner declined to serve upon any committee, and did not attend the Republican caucus. On the first day of the session he introduced a bill forbidding the names of battles with fellow-citizens to be continued in the army register or placed on the regimental colors of the United States. From this time he took no party part and made no political speech, pleading only for equality of civil rights for colored citizens. At the next session, 1 Dec., 1873, he was placed on several committees, not as chairman, but as one of the minority, and he did not refuse to serve, but attended no meetings. ”

“ The failure probably affected him deeply, for he had the generous thirst for fame which belongs to genius. He was not, however, wholly disheartened, and a little later he completed a series of " Seven Tales of My Native Land," some relating to witchcraft and some to piracy and the sea. He found a publisher with difficulty, and there were such delays in publishing that Hawthorne withdrew the manuscript and burned it. But, however sobered by sharp experience, his good genius would not suffer him to abandon her. ”

“ In 1810 he married Relief Jacob, of Hanover, N. H., and they had nine children, of whom Charles and Matilda were the eldest and twins. Matilda died in 1832. Sheriff Sumner was an upright, grave, formal man, of the old Puritan type, fond of literature and public life. His anti-slavery convictions were very strong, and he foretold a violent end to slavery in this country. In his family he was austere, and, as his income was small, strict economy was indispensable. ”

“ It is a series of admirable sketches for children of New England history which always pleased his imagination. In April of this year, also, he joined the company of Boston scholars and educated men and women who began at Brook Farm, an estate of two hundred acres in West Roxbury, the experiment of an Arcadia, in which every member should do his share of the necessary manual labor and so secure to all the desirable mental leisure. ”

“ Sumner was long incapacitated for public service. On 3 Nov., 1856, he returned to Boston to vote, and was received with acclamation by the people and with the highest honor by the state and city authorities. On 13 Jan., 1857, he was re-elected senator, receiving all but ten votes, and on 7 March, 1857, he sailed for Europe, where he submitted to the severest medical treatment. With characteristic energy and industry, in the intervals of suffering, he devoted himself to a thorough study of the art and history of engraving. ”

“ In this introduction he speaks of himself and others with a freedom that might seem to be remarkable in a man so shy. But happily, in writing, his genius had full play without the constraint arising from a sense of the personal presence of others. This introduction is a delightful fragment of autobiography, but the candor with which he spoke of Salem and of his official associates was warmly resented. It was evidently thought to be a little parricidal in a son of Salem to speak so plainly of the town and the townspeople. ”

“ Of few men could it be said more truly than of him that he never lost a day. He knew most of the famous men and women of his time, and he was familiar with the contemporaneous political, literary, and artistic movement in every country. In public life he was often accounted a man of one idea ”

“ The book is a series of shrewd and delightful descriptive sketches, with some frank criticisms upon English life, which were not altogether relished in England. The first part of “The Dolliver Romance” was published in the “Atlantic Monthly,” in July, 1864, but the author had died more than a month before, and some unrevised parts were found among his papers. The motive of the tale is earthly immortality, which was always attractive to Hawthorne. It appears in “Dr. Heidegger's Experiment,” in “Twice-told Tales,” and there is a hint of it in the “Virtuoso's Collection.” ”

“ He was still compelled, as he wrote in 1844, “to work hard for small gains.” But the publishers were on the scent. In October, 1845, he was urged by Wiley and Putnam, of New York, to give them a volume of tales for their “Library of American Books,” and also a history of witchcraft, which had been suggested to him as a promising subject. This work, however, he did not attempt. But in 1846 Wiley and Putnam published, in two volumes, as the seventeenth number of their pretty paper-covered series, “Mosses from an Old Manse.” ”