Chapter III: The Period of Conflict (1840-1876) (4)

Thus far our analysis has been largely negative, and Hawthorne was a very positive character. He had the feeling of an artist for beauty; and he was one of the few romancers who combine a strong sense of art with a puritanic devotion to conscience and the moral law. Hence his stories all aim to be both artistic and ethical, to satisfy our sense of beauty and our sense of right. In his constant moralizing he was like George Eliot; or rather, to give the figure its proper sequence, George Eliot was so exclusively a moralist after the Hawthornesque manner that one suspects she must have been familiar with his work when she began to write. Both novelists worked on the assumption that the moral law is the basis of human life and that every sin brings its inevitable retribution. The chief difference was that Hawthorne started with a moral principle and invented characters to match it, while George Eliot started with a human character in whose experience she revealed the unfolding of a moral principle.

[Sidenote: A SOLITARY GENIUS]

The individuality of Hawthorne becomes apparent when we attempt to classify him,--a vain attempt, since there is no other like him in literature. In dealing with almost any other novelist we can name his models, or at least point out the story-tellers whose methods influenced his work; but Hawthorne seems to have had no predecessor. Subject, style and method were all his own, developed during his long seclusion at Salem, and from them he never varied. From his _Twice-Told Tales_ to his unfinished _Dolliver Romance_ he held steadily to the purpose of portraying the moral law against a background of Puritan history.

Such a field would have seemed very narrow to other American writers, who then, as now, were busy with things too many or things too new; but to Hawthorne it was a world in itself, a world that lured him as the Indies lured Columbus. In imagination he dwelt in that somber Puritan world, eating at its long-vanished tables or warming himself at its burnt-out fires, until the impulse came to reproduce it in literature. And he did reproduce it, powerfully, single-heartedly, as only genius could have done it. That his portrayal was inaccurate is perhaps a minor consideration; for one writer must depict life as he meets it on the street or in books, while another is confined to what Ezekiel calls "the chambers of imagery." Hawthorne's liberties with the facts may be pardoned on the ground that he was not an historian but an artist. The historian tells what life has accomplished, the artist what life means.

* * * * *

SECONDARY WRITERS OF PROSE OR VERSE

THE POETS. Among the fifty or more poets of the period of conflict Henry Timrod, Paul Hamilton Hayne and Abram J. Ryan are notable for this reason, that their fame, once local, seems to widen with the years. They are commonly grouped as southern poets because of the war lyrics in which they voiced the passionate devotion of the South to its leaders; but what makes them now interesting to a larger circle of readers are their poems of an entirely different kind,--poems that reflect in a tender and beautiful way the common emotions of men in all places and in all ages. Two other prominent singers of the southern school are Theodore O'Hara and James Ryder Randall.

In another group are such varied singers as Richard Henry Stoddard, George H. Boker, Henry Howard Brownell, Thomas B. Read, John G. Saxe, J. G. Holland and Bayard Taylor. These were all famous poets in their own day, and some of them were prolific writers, Holland and Taylor especially. The latter produced thirty volumes of poems, essays, novels and sketches of travel; but, with the exception of his fine translation of Goethe's _Faust_ and a few of his original lyrics, the works which he sent forth so abundantly are now neglected. He is typical of a hundred writers who answer the appeal of to-day and win its applause, and who are forgotten when to-morrow comes with its new interests and its new favorites.

FICTION WRITERS. Comparatively few novels were written during this period, perhaps because the terrible shadow of war was over the country and readers were in no mood for fiction. The most popular romance of the age, and one of the most widely read books that America has ever produced, was _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ (1852), which has been translated and dramatized into so many tongues that it is known all over the earth. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), wrote several other stories, all characterized by humor, kindness and intense moral earnestness. Some of these, such as _Oldtown Folks_, _The Minister's Wooing_, _The Pearl of Orr's Island_ and _Oldtown Fireside Stories_ have decidedly more literary charm than her famous story of slavery.

[Sidenote: TALES OF THE SEA]

The mid-century produced some very good sea stories, and in these we see the influence of Cooper, who was the first to use the ocean successfully as a scene of romantic interest. Dana's _Two Years before the Mast_ (1840) was immensely popular when our fathers were boys. It contained, moreover, such realistic pictures of sailor life that it was studied by aspirants for the British and American navies in the days when the flag rippled proudly over the beautiful old sailing ships. This excellent book is largely a record of personal experience; but in the tales of Herman Melville (1819-1891) we have the added elements of imagination and adventure. _Typee_, _White Jacket_, _Moby Dick_,--these are capital tales of the deep, the last-named especially.

_Typee_ (a story well known to Stevenson, evidently) is remarkable for its graphic pictures of sailor life afloat and ashore in the Marquesas Islands, a new field in those days. The narrative is continued in _White Jacket_, which tells of the return from the South Pacific aboard a man-of-war. In _Moby Dick_ we have the real experience of a sailorman and whaler (Melville himself) and the fictitious wanderings of a stout captain, a primeval kind of person, who is at times an interesting lunatic and again a ranting philosopher. In the latter we have an echo of Carlyle, who was making a stir in America in 1850, and who affected Melville so strongly that the latter soon lost his bluff, hearty, sailor fashion of writing, which everybody liked, and assumed a crotchety style that nobody cared to read.

[Sidenote: FROM ROMANCE TO REALISM]

A few other novels of the period are interesting as showing the sudden change from romance to realism, a change for which the war was partly responsible, and which will be examined more closely in the following chapter. John Esten Cooke (1830-1886) may serve as a concrete example of the two types of fiction. In his earlier romances, notably in _Leather Stocking and Silk_ and _The Virginia Comedians_ (1854), he aimed to do for the Cavalier society of the South what Hawthorne was doing for the old Puritan régime in New England; but his later stories, such as _Surrey of Eagle's Nest_, are chiefly notable for their realistic pictures of the great war.

The change from romance to realism is more openly apparent in Theodore Winthrop and Edward Eggleston, whose novels deal frankly with pioneers of the Middle West; not such pioneers as Cooper had imagined in _The Prairie_, but such plain men and women as one might meet anywhere beyond the Alleghenies in 1850. Winthrop's _John Brent_ (1862) and Eggleston's _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ and _The Circuit Rider_ (1874) are so true to a real phase of American life that a thoughtful reader must wonder why they are not better known. They are certainly refreshing to one who tires of our present so-called realism with its abnormal or degenerate characters.

More widely read than any of the novelists just mentioned are certain others who appeared in answer to the increasing demand of young people for a good story. It is doubtful if any American writer great or small has given more pleasure to young readers than Louisa M. Alcott with her _Little Women_ (1868) and other stories for girls, or John T. Trowbridge, author of _Cudjo's Cave_, _Jack Hazard_, _A Chance for Himself_ and several other juveniles that once numbered their boy readers by tens of thousands.

THOREAU. Among the many secondary writers of the period the most original and most neglected was Henry D. Thoreau (1817-1862), a man who differed greatly from other mortals in almost every respect, but chiefly in this, that he never was known to "go with the crowd," not even on the rare occasions when he believed the crowd to be right. He was one of the few persons who select their own way through life and follow it without the slightest regard for the world's opinion.

Numerous examples of Thoreau's oddity might be given, but we note here only his strange determination to view life with his own eyes. This may appear a simple matter until we reflect that most men measure life by what others have said or written concerning life's values. They accept the standards of their ancestors or their neighbors; they conform themselves to a world in which governments and other long-established institutions claim their allegiance; they are trained to win success in such a world by doing one thing well, and to measure their success by the fame or money or office or social position which they achieve by a lifetime of labor and self-denial.

[Sidenote: HIS ORIGINALITY]

Thoreau sharply challenged this whole conception of life, which, he said, was more a matter of habit than of reason or conviction. He saw in our social institutions as much of harm as of benefit to the individual. He looked with distrust on all traditions, saying that he had listened for thirty years without hearing one word of sound advice from his elders. He was a good workman and learned to do several things passing well; but he saw no reason why a free man should repeat himself daily in a world of infinite opportunities. Also he was a scholar, versed in classical lore and widely read in oriental literature; but unlike his friend Emerson he seldom quoted the ancients, being more concerned with his own thoughts of life than by the words of philosophers, and more fascinated by the wild birds that ate crumbs from his table than by all the fabled gods of mythology. As for success, the fame or money for which other men toiled seemed to him but empty bubbles; the only wealth he prized was his soul's increase in love and understanding: "If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like sweet-scented herbs--is more elastic, starry and immortal--that is your success."

[Sidenote: WALDEN]

There are other interesting matters in Thoreau's philosophy, but these will appear plainly enough to one who reads his own record. His best-known work is _Walden_ (1854), a journal in which he recorded what he saw or thought or felt during the two years when he abandoned society to live in a hut on the shore of Walden Pond, near his native village of Concord. If there be any definite lesson in the book, it is the proof of Thoreau's theory that simplicity is needed for happiness, that men would be better off with fewer possessions, and that earning one's living should be a matter of pleasure rather than of endless toil and anxiety. What makes _Walden_ valuable, however, is not its theories but its revelation of an original mind fronting the facts of life, its gleams of poetry and philosophy, its startling paradoxes, its first-hand impressions of the world, its nuggets of sense or humor, and especially its intimate observation of the little wild neighbors in feathers or fur who shared Thoreau's solitude. It is one of the few books in American literature that successive generations have read with profit to themselves and with increasing respect for the original genius who wrote it.

THE HISTORIANS. The honored names of Bancroft, Sparks, Prescott, Motley and Parkman are indicative of the importance attached to history-writing in America ever since Colonial days, and of the remarkably fine and sometimes heroic quality of American historians. Another matter suggested by these names is the changing standard or ideal of historical writing. In an earlier time history was a dry chronicle of important events, or of such events as seemed important to the chronicler; at the present day it threatens to degenerate into an equally dry chronicle of economic forces; and between these thirsty extremes are various highly colored records glorifying kings or conquerors or political parties as the chief things of history.

[Sidenote: THE EPIC OF HISTORY]

These American historians had a different standard. They first consulted all available records to be sure of the facts or events. Then they closely examined the scene in which the event had come to pass, knowing that environment is always a factor in human history. Finally they studied historical personages, not as others had described them but as they revealed themselves in letters, diaries, speeches,--personal records revealing human motives that all men understand, because man is everywhere the same. From such a combination of event, scene and characters our historians wrote a dramatic narrative, giving it the heroic cast without which history, the prose epic of liberty, is little better than a dull catalogue. Another very important matter was that they cultivated their style as well as their knowledge; they were literary men no less than historians, and in the conviction that the first object of literature is to give pleasure they produced works that have charmed as well as instructed a multitude of readers. There are chapters in Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_ and _Conquest of Peru_ over which one must sit up late, as over a novel of Scott; in Motley's _Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and _History of the United Netherlands_ there are scores of glowing passages dealing with great characters or great events which stir the reader like a tale of gallant adventure.

Prescott deals with force in action, and the action at times seems to be an exaltation of violence and cruelty. Motley also delights in action; but he is at heart an apostle of liberty, or perhaps we should say, of the American ideal of liberty, and his narrative often assumes the character of a partisan chant of freedom.

[Sidenote: PARKMAN]

To the native, at least, Francis Parkman (1823-1893) is probably the most interesting of our historians, partly because of his lucid style and partly because of his American theme. Early in life he selected his subject (the Old French Wars) and spent the best part of forty years in making himself familiar not only with what occurred during the struggle between France and England for possession of the New World, but also with the primeval scene and all the motley characters of the fateful drama. It is doubtful if any other historian ever had a more minute knowledge of his subject; and the astonishing, the heroic part of the matter is that he attained this vast knowledge in spite of the handicap of almost constant suffering and blindness. In a dozen volumes he tells his story, volumes crowded with action or adventure, and written in such a vividly convincing style that one has the impression that Parkman must have been an eye-witness of the events which he describes.

Among these volumes the second part of _Pioneers of France in the New World_ and _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_ are recommended to the beginner. The former deals with the career of Champlain, who opened the way for future settlements in the North; the latter with one of the most adventurous, lion-hearted men that ever cheerfully faced toil and endless danger. Standing apart from Parkman's main theme is a single volume, _The California and Oregon Trail_ (1849), which recounts the picturesque incidents of the author's trip through the Northwest, then an unknown country, with a tribe of unspoiled Indians. Those who like a tale of adventure need not go to fiction to find it, for it is here in Parkman's narrative,--a tale of care-free wandering amid plains or mountains and, what is historically more important, a picture of a vanished life that will never be seen here again.

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The period of conflict has no definite limits on either
side, but for convenience we may think of it as included between
the years 1840 and 1876. Its earlier years were filled with an
ever-increasing agitation of the questions of slavery and state
rights; its center was the Civil War; its close was the Centennial
Exposition at Philadelphia, which we have selected as an outward
symbol of a reunited country.

The most noticeable feature of the age, apart from the great war,
was its ceaseless political turmoil. Of deeper significance to the
student of literature was the profound mental unrest which showed
itself in reform movements, in various communistic societies like
Brook Farm, in an eager interest in the poetry of other nations, in
the establishment of college professorships of foreign literatures,
in the philosophical doctrine of transcendentalism, and in many
other efforts of mid-century Americans to enlarge their mental
horizon.

A host of minor writings of the period reflect the sectional
passions or interests that stirred our people deeply at the time,
but that are now almost forgotten. The comparatively small body of
major literature was concerned with the permanent ideals of America
or with the simple human feelings that have no age or nationality.
In general, it was a time of poetry rather than of prose, being
distinguished above all other periods of American literature by the
number and quality of its poets.

Our detailed study of the age includes: (1) The major or so-called
elder poets, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Lanier and
Whitman. (2) The life and work of Emerson, who was both poet and
prose writer. (3) The career of Hawthorne, the novelist of
Puritanism, who is commonly ranked at the head of American
fiction-writers. (4) A brief review of the secondary writers of
prose and verse. (5) An examination of the work of Thoreau, the
most individualistic writer in an age of individualism, and of
Parkman, whom we have selected as representative of the American
historians.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Typical selections from minor writers of
the period in Calhoun and MacAlarney, Readings from American
Literature; Stedman and Hutchinson, Library of American Literature,
and various other collections. Important works of all major writers
are published in inexpensive editions for school use, a few of
which are named below. Longfellow's short poems, Evangeline, parts
of Hiawatha and of Tales of a Wayside Inn, in Riverside Literature;
selections from the narrative poems in Lake English Classics;
selected poems in various other school series.

Whittier's Snow Bound and selected short poems, in Riverside
Literature, Maynard's English Classics, etc.

Lowell's Sir Launfal, selected short poems and selected essays, in
Riverside Literature, Maynard's English Classics.

Holmes's poems, selected, in Maynard's English Classics; The
Autocrat, in Everyman's Library; selected prose and verse, in
Riverside Literature.

Lanier's poems, with selections from Timrod and Hayne, in Pocket
Classics, Maynard's English Classics, etc.

Whitman's poems, brief selections, in Maynard's English Classics;
Triggs, Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Walt Whitman.

Emerson's poems, in Riverside Literature; Representative Men and
selected essays, in Pocket Classics; Nature and various essays, in
Everyman's Library.

Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables and selected short stories,
in Pocket Classics; Twice-Told Tales and other selections, in
Riverside Literature.

Thoreau's Walden, in Everyman's Library; Walden and selections from
other works, in Riverside Literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For extended works covering the field of American
history and literature see the General Bibliography. The following
works are useful in a special study of the period of conflict.

_HISTORY_. Rhodes, History of the United States 1850-1877, 7
vols.; Wilson, Division and Reunion; Stephens, War between the
States; Paxson, the Civil War; Rhodes, Lectures on the Civil War;
Hart, Romance of the Civil War (supplementary reading for young
people). Lives of notable characters in American Statesmen, Great
Commanders and other series. Grant, Personal Memoirs; Gordon,
Reminiscences of the Civil War; Alexander Stephens, Recollections;
Hoar, Autobiography; Blaine, Twenty Years in Congress; Greeley,
Recollections; Booker Washington, Up from Slavery.

_LITERATURE,_. The great period of American letters is still
awaiting its historian. Brief chapters are found in Richardson,
Trent, Cairns, Wendell and other general histories of our
literature. Good essays on individual authors of the period in
Stedman, Poets of America; Brownell, American Prose Masters;
Erskine, Leading American Novelists; Vincent, American Literary
Masters; Burton, Literary Leaders of America.

Frothingham's Transcendentalism in New England will throw light on
the so-called Concord school. Howells's Literary Friends and
Acquaintance is a fine appreciation of the Cambridge writers.
Wauchope's Writers of South Carolina contains excellent studies of
Timrod, Hayne, Simms and other writers of the Palmetto state.
Moses' Literature of the South and Henneman's Literary and
Intellectual Life of the South are among the best works devoted to
southern authors exclusively.

_Longfellow._ Life, by Higginson, in American Men of Letters;
by Carpenter (brief), in Beacon Biographies; by Robertson, in Great
Writers; by S. Longfellow, 3 vols. (the standard biography). Essays
by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Mrs. Fields, in Authors and
Friends; by Curtis, in Literary and Social Essays; by Higginson, in
Old Cambridge; by Howells, in Literary Friends and Acquaintance.

_Whittier._ Life, by Pickard, 2 vols.; by Carpenter, in
American Men of Letters; by Higginson, in English Men of Letters;
by Burton (brief), in Beacon Biographies; by Perry, by Underwood.
Mrs. Claflin, Personal Recollections of Whittier; Hawkins, the Mind
of Whittier; Fowler, Whittier: Prophet, Seer and Man; Pickard,
Whittier Land. Essays, by Woodberry, in Makers of Literature; by
Stedman, in Poets of America; by Higginson, in Contemporaries; by
Hazeltine, in Chats about Books; by Mrs. Fields, in Authors and
Friends.

_Lowell._ Life, by Greenslet; by Scudder, 2 vols.; by Hale
(brief), in Beacon Biographies; by Underwood. Edward Everett Hale,
James Russell Lowell and his Friends. Essays, by Higginson, in Old
Cambridge; by Woodberry, in Makers of Literature; by Stedman, in
Poets of America.

_Holmes._ Life, by Morse, 2 vols.; by Crothers, in American
Men of Letters. Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Haweis,
in American Humorists; by Noble, in Impressions and Memories; by
Stearns, in Cambridge Sketches; by L. Stephen, in Studies of a
Biographer.

_Lanier._ Life, by Mims, in American Men of Letters; by West;
by Ward, in Preface to Lanier's Poems (1884). Essays, by
Baskerville, in Southern Writers; by Higginson, in Contemporaries;
by Gilman, in South Atlantic Quarterly (1905); by Ward, in Century
Magazine (1888); by Northrup, in Lippincott's (1905).

_Whitman._ Life, by Perry; by Carpenter, in English Men of
Letters; by Platt (brief), in Beacon Biographies; by Binns, by
Bucke. Essays, by Stedman, in Poets of America; by Stevenson, in
Familiar Studies of Men and Books; by Dowden, in Studies in
Literature; by Santayana, in Interpretations of Poetry and
Religion.

_Emerson._ Life, by Woodberry; by Cabot (Memoir of Emerson, 2
vols.); by O. W. Holmes, in American Men of Letters; by Garnett, in
Great Writers; by Sanborn (brief), in Beacon Biographies. E. W.
Emerson, Emerson in Concord; Conway, Emerson at Home. Essays, by
Stedman, in Poets of America; by Mrs. Fields, in Authors and
Friends; by Lowell, in Literary Essays; by Stearns, in Sketches
from Concord and Appledore; by Everett, in Essays Theological and
Literary; by Beers, in Points at Issue; by Chapman, in Emerson and
Other Essays.

_Hawthorne._ Life, by Woodberry, in American Men of Letters;
by Henry James, in English Men of Letters; by Fields (brief), in
Beacon Biographies; by Conway, in Great Writers. A more intimate
but doubtful biography is Julian Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne
and his Wife. Bridge, Personal Recollections of Hawthorne. Essays,
by Brownell, in American Prose Masters; by Perry, in A Study of
Prose Fiction; by Gates, in Studies and Appreciations; by L.
Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Higginson, in Short Studies of
American Authors.

_Thoreau_. Life, by Salt, in Great Writers; by Sanborn, in
American Men of Letters. Page, Thoreau: his Life and Aims. Essays
by Higginson, in Short Studies of American Authors; by Stevenson,
in Familiar Studies of Men and Books; by Lowell, in Literary
Essays.

_Parkman_. Life, by Fiske; by Farnham; by Sedgwick. Essays, by
Fiske, in introduction to Parkman's works and in A Century of
Science and Other Essays; by Vedder, in American Writers of To-day;
by Whipple, in Recollections of Eminent Men.