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"THE Old Manse," writes Hawthorne, in his charming introduction to
the quaint stories, "Mosses from an Old Manse," "had never been profaned by a
lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home.
A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men from
time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambers had grown up to
assume the priestly character. It is awful to reflect how many sermons must have
been written here!
.
.
.
Here it was,
too, that Emerson wrote 'Nature;' for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse,
and used to watch the Assyrian dawn and Paphian sunset and moonrise from the
summit of our eastern hill."
OLD MANSE, CONCORD, MASS.
Emerson's
residence in the Old Manse is to be accounted for by the fact that his
grandfather was its first inhabitant. And it was while living there with his
mother and kindred, before his second marriage in 1835, that he produced
"Nature."
It is to the parson,
the Reverend William Emerson, that we owe one of the most valuable Revolutionary
documents that have come down to us. Soon after the young minister came to the
old Manse (which was then the New Manse), he had occasion to make in his almanac
this stirring entry:
"This morning,
between one and two o'clock, we were alarmed by the ringing of the, bell, and
upon examination found that the troops, to the number of eight hundred, had
stole their march from Boston, in boats and barges, from the bottom of the
Common over to a point in Cambridge, near to Inman's farm, and were at Lexington
meeting-house half an hour before sunrise, where they fired upon a body of our
men, and (as we afterward heard) had killed several. This intelligence was
brought us first by Doctor Samuel Prescott, who narrowly escaped the guard that
were sent before on horses, purposely to prevent all posts and messengers from
giving us timely information. He, by the help of a very fleet horse, crossing
several walks and fences, arrived at Concord, at the time above mentioned; when
several pasts were immediately dispatched that, returning, confirmed the account
of the regulars' arrival at Lexington and that they were on their way to
Concord. Upon this, a number of our minute-men belonging to this town, and
Acton, and Lincoln, with several others that were in readiness, marched out to
meet them; while the alarm company was preparing to receive, them in the town.
Captain Minot, who commanded them, thought it proper to take possession of the
hill above the meeting-house, as the most advantageous situation. No sooner had
our men gained it, than we were met by the companies that were sent out to meet
the troops, who informed us that they were just upon us, and that we must
retreat, as their number was more than treble ours. We then retreated from the
hill near the Liberty Pole, and took a new post back of the town upon an
eminence, where we formed into two battalions, and waited the arrival of the
enemy.
"Scarcely had we
farmed before we saw the British troops at the distance of a quarter of a mile,
glittering in arms, advancing toward us with the greatest celerity. Some were
for making a stand, notwithstanding the superiority of their numbers, but
others, more prudent, thought best to retreat till our strength should be equal
to the enemy's by recruits from the neighbouring towns, that were continually
coming in to our assistance. Accordingly we retreated over the bridge; when the
troops came into the town, set fire to several carriages for the artillery,
destroyed sixty barrels flour, rifled several houses, took possession of the
town-house, destroyed five hundred pounds of balls, set a guard of one hundred
men at the North Bridge, and sent a party to the house of Colonel Bar-rett,
where they, were in the expectation of finding a quantity of warlike stores. But
these were happily secured just before their arrival, by transportation into the
woods
and other by-places.
"In the meantime the
guard sent by the enemy to secure the pass at the North Bridge were alarmed by
the approach of our people; who had retreated as before mentioned, and were now
advancing, with special orders not to fire upon the troops unless fired upon.
These orders were so punctually observed. that we received the fire of the enemy
in three several and separate discharges of their pieces before it was returned
by our commanding officer; the firing then became general for several minutes;
in which skirmish two were killed on each side, and several of the enemy
wounded. (It may here be observed, by the way, that we were the more cautious to
prevent beginning a rupture with the king's troops, as we were then uncertain
what had happened at Lexington, and knew not that they had begun the quarrel
there by first firing upon our people, and killing eight men upon the spot.) The
three companies of troops soon quitted
their post at the bridge, and retreated in the greatest disorder and
confusion to the main body, who were soon upon their march to meet them.
"For half an hour
the enemy, by their marches and contre-marches discovered great fickleness and
inconstancy of mind, – sometimes advancing, sometimes returning to their former
posts; till at length they quitted the town and retreated by the way they came.
In the meantime, a party of our men
(one hundred and fifty), took the
back way through the Great Fields, into the Fast Quarter, and had placed
themselves to advantage, lying in ambush behind walls, fences, and
buildings, ready to fire upon the enemy on their retreat." 1
Here ends the
important chronicle, the best first-hand account we have of the battle of
Concord. But for this alone the first resident of the Old Manse deserves our
memory and thanks.
Mr. Emerson was
succeeded at the Manse by a certain Doctor Ripley, a venerable scholar who left
behind him a
reputation
for learning and sanctity which was reproduced in one of the ladies of his
family, long the most learned woman in the little Concord circle which Hawthorne
soon after his marriage came to join.
Few New England villages have retained
so much of the charm and peacefulness of country life as has Concord, and
few dwellings in Concord have to-day so nearly the aspect they presented
fifty years ago as does the Manse, where Hawthorne passed three of the happiest
years of his life.
In the "American
Note-Book," there is a charming description of the pleasure the romancer and his
young wife experienced in renovating and refurnishing the old parsonage which,
at the time of their going into it, was "given up to ghosts and cobwebs." Some
of these ghosts have been shiveringly described by Hawthorne himself in the
marvellous paragraph of the introduction already referred to: "Our [clerical]
ghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlour, and
sometimes rustle paper, as if he were turning over a sermon in the long upper
entry – where, nevertheless, he was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine
that fell through the eastern window. Not improbably he wished me to edit and
publish a selection from a chest full of manuscript discourses that stood in the
garret.
"Once while Hillard
and other friends sat talking with us in the twilight, there came a rustling
noise as of a minister's silk gown sweeping through the very midst of the
company,
so closely as
almost to brush against the chairs. Still there was nothing visible.
"A yet stranger
business was that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen
at deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing, –performing, in short,
all kinds of domestic labour; although no traces of anything accomplished could
be detected the next morning. Some neglected duty of her servitude – some
ill-starched ministerial band – disturbed the poor damsel in her grave, and kept
her at work without wages."
The little
drawing-room once remodelled, however, and the kitchen given over to the
Hawthorne pots and pans – in which the great Hawthorne himself used often to
have a stake, according to the testimony of his wife, who once wrote in this
connection, "Imagine those magnificent eyes fixed anxiously upon potatoes
cooking in an iron kettle!" – the ghosts came no more. Of the great people who
in the flesh passed pleasant hours in the little parlour, Thoreau, Ellery
Channing, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller are names known by everybody as
intimately connected with the Concord circle.
Hawthorne himself
cared little for society. Often he would go to the village and back without
speaking to a single soul, he tells us, and once when his wife was
absent he resolved to pass the whole term of her visit to relatives
without saying a word to any human being. With Thoreau, however, he got on very
well. This odd genius was as shy and ungregarious as was the dark-eyed "teller
of tales," but the two appear to have been socially disposed toward each other,
and there are delightful bits in the preface to the "Mosses" in regard to the
hours they spent together boating on the large, quiet Concord River. Thoreau was
a great voyager in a canoe which he had constructed himself (and which he
eventually made over to Hawthorne), as expert indeed in the use of his paddle as
the redman who had once haunted the same silent stream.
Of the beauties of
the Concord River Hawthorne has written. a few sentences that will live while
the silver stream continues to flow: "It comes creeping softly
through the mid-most privacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers
it to be quiet, while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as
if river and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along
its course and dreams of the sky
and the clustering foliage. . . ."
Concerning the
visitors attracted to Concord by the great original thinker who
was Hawthorne's near neighbour, the romancer speaks with less delicate
sympathy: "Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety
of queer, strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom look upon
themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet are, simply bores
of a very intense character." A bit further on Hawthorne speaks of these
pilgrims as "hobgoblins of flesh and blood," people, he humourously comments,
who had lighted on a new thought or a thought they fancied new, and "came to
Emerson as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its
quality and value." with Emerson himself Hawthorne was on terms of easy
intimacy. "Being happy," as he says, and feeling, therefore, "as if there were
no question to be put," he was not in any sense desirous of metaphysical
intercourse with the great philosopher.
It was while on the
way home from his friend Emerson's one day that Hawthorne had that encounter
with Margaret Fuller about which it is so pleasant to read because it serves to
take away the taste of other less complimentary allusions to this lady to be
found in Hawthorne's works:
"After leaving Mr.
Emerson's I returned through the woods, and entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived
a lady reclining near the path which bends along its verge. It was Margaret
herself. She had been there the whole afternoon, meditating or reading, for she
had a book in her hand with some strange title which I did not understand and
have forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just
giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited Sleepy
Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred precincts. Most of
them followed a path which led them away from us; but an old man passed near us,
and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the ground and me standing by her side.
He made some remark upon the beauty of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into
the shadow of the wood. Then we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of
being lost in the woods, and about the crows whose voices Margaret had heard;
and about the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the
character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the sight of
mountains from a distance, and the view
from their summits; and about other matters of high and low philosophy."
Nothing that
Hawthorne has ever written of Concord is more to be cherished to-day than this
description of a happy afternoon passed by
him in Sleepy
Hollow talking with Margaret Fuller of "matters of high and low philosophy." For
there are few parts of Concord to which visitors go more religiously than to the
still old cemetery, where on the hill by Ridge Path Hawthorne himself now sleeps
quietly, with the grave of Thoreau just behind him, and the grave of Emerson,
his philosopher friend, on the opposite side of the way. A great pine stands at
the head of Hawthorne's last resting-place, and a huge
unhewn block
of pink marble is his formal monument.
Yet the Old Manse
will, so long as it stands, be the romancer's most intimate relic, for it was
here that he lived as a happy bridegroom, and here that his first child was
born. And from this ancient dwelling it was that he drew the inspiration for
what is perhaps the most curious book of tales in all American literature, a
book of which another American master of prose 2 has said, "Hawthorne
here did for our past what Walter Scott did for the past of the mother-country;
another Wizard of the North, he breathed the breath of life into the dry and
dusty materials of history, and summoned the great dead again to live and move
among us."
1
"Historic Towns of New England." G. P. Putnam's Sons.
2
Henry James.
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