|
|
| Author |
Message |
md
|
|
Mystery Book Review
| 
Jan 25 14:34 UTC 1993 |
This mystery quote consists of excerpts from one of my all-time
favorite book reviews. The book and author being reviewed become
apparent right away. The astonishing last paragraph in the excerpt
below contains a judgment which must have shocked the readers of
140 years ago, but it has held true to this day, imho. Can you
guess who the reviewer was?
A papered chamber in a fine old farm-house - a mile from
any other dwelling, and dipped to the eaves in foliage -
surrounded by mountains, old woods, and Indian ponds, -
this, surely, is the place to write of Hawthorne. Some
charm is in this northern air, for love and duty seem both
impelling to the task. A man of deep and noble nature has
seized me in this seclusion. His wild, witch voice rings
through me; or, in softer cadences, I seem to hear it in
the songs of the hill-side birds, that sing in the larch
trees at my window...
[Hawthorne's _Mosses from and Old Manse_] has been
written now four years, but I never read it till a day or
two since... At breakfast the other day, a mountain girl,
a cousin of mine, who for the last two weeks has every
morning helped me to strawberries and raspberries...says to
me - "I see you spend your mornings in the hay-mow; and
yesterday I found there 'Dwight's Travels in New England'.
Now I have something far better than that, - something more
congenial to our summer in these hills. Take these
raspberries, and then I will give you some moss." - "Moss!"
said I. - "Yes, and you must take it to the barn with you,
and good-bye to 'Dwight'".
With that she left me, and soon returned with a volume,
verdantly bound, and garnished with a curious frontispiece
in green, - nothing less, than a fragment of real moss
cunningly pressed to a fly-leaf. - "Why this," said I
spilling my raspberries, "this is the 'Mosses from an Old
Manse.'" "Yes" said cousin Cherry "yes, it is that flowery
Hawthorne." - "Hawthorne and Mosses" said I "no more; it is
morning; it is July in the country; and I am off for the
barn".
Stretched on that new mown clover, the hill-side breeze
blowing over me through the wide barn door, and soothed by
the hum of the bees in the meadows around, how magically
stole over me this Mossy Man! and how amply, how
bountifully, did he redeem that delicious promise to his
guests in the Old Manse...
The soft ravishments of the man spun me round about in a
web of dreams, and when the book was closed, when the spell
was over, this wizard "Dismissed me with but misty
reminiscences, as if I had been dreaming of him"...
Now, I do not say that Nathaniel of Salem is greater than
William of Avon, or as great. But the difference between
the two men is by no means immeasurable. Not a very great
deal more, and Nathaniel were verily William.
|
| 19 responses total. |
rcurl
|
|
response 1 of 19:
|
Jan 27 01:18 UTC 1993 |
I'll guess Henry David Thoreau. A friend could do not fairer.
|
keats
|
|
response 2 of 19:
|
Jan 27 04:04 UTC 1993 |
heh. this quote is no mystery, but it's a delight all the same.
|
md
|
|
response 3 of 19:
|
Jan 27 13:54 UTC 1993 |
Thoreau is a good guess, but he's not the reviewer. Thoreau
undoubtedly mentions Hawthorne somewhere in his Journals - They
were both residents of Concord at one point (the Old Manse is
located there), but I don't recall any specific refernces.
Hawthorne mentions Thoreau in one of his letters, but only to
say how eccentric he was. Hawthorne misspelled Thoreau's name
"Therrow", which gives a clue as to how the name was pronounced
back then, and also implies that Hawthorne hadn't seen Thoreau's
name in print.
I'm not surprised keats recognizes the quote, and am very grateful
to him for keeping the reviewer's identity under his hat for now.
|
md
|
|
response 4 of 19:
|
Jan 27 14:04 UTC 1993 |
[btw, if you're ever in Concord you should go up to Sleepy Hollow
Cemetary. Buried there, within a few feet of each other, are
Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the entire Alcott family, among
others. Talk about hallowed ground. But the author of the above
review is buried elsewhere. In fact, as the review strongly implies,
the reviewer wasn't a native New Englander.]
|
md
|
|
response 5 of 19:
|
Jan 27 14:05 UTC 1993 |
[...and, although the reviewer and Hawthorne eventually did meet
and strike up a friendship, they hadn't yet met when this review
was written.]
|
rcurl
|
|
response 6 of 19:
|
Jan 28 06:52 UTC 1993 |
I have a special fondness for Concord, though I much preferred the wood
bridge that arches the flood that I first canoed beneath to the current
concrete edifice (no, it weasn't the *original* ! ;->). So the
circumstances bring back pleasant memories. On the other hand, however,
I am now aware that keats knows and is watching, unnerving me to the core,
as I venture to put forward this or that semi random guess. Nevertheless,
I've enjoyed the quote and trying to match it to my inventory, and the
next best match that comes to mind is that very unautocratic Autocrat,
and his mountain in the Taconics - but he was also a native New Englander,
and therein lies the rub.
|
md
|
|
response 7 of 19:
|
Jan 28 14:49 UTC 1993 |
No, not the Autocrat. The mountains referred to in the quote
are Green, but that doesn't tell much. The reviewer happened
to be vacationing there.
You Canoed under the rude bridge! Envy, envy. You were within
a stone's throw of the Manse, then. Thoreau tried to teach Hawthorne
how to row a boat right around that spot. I love to imagine the two
of them out on the river, Hawthorne swerving clumsily this way and
that despite all of Thoreau's patient instruction. Thoreau told
Hawthorne to *will* the boat to go in the direction he wanted and
it would obey. Hawthorne took Thoreau seriously, and ended up in
the cattails. Then Thoreau took the oars and, lo and behold, the
boat became suddenly tame, which seemed to prove what Thoreau had said.
Hawthorne eventually bought the boat from Thoreau and changed its
name from Musketaquid to Pond Lily. Two more unkindred spirits
there never were, but I love them both.
Here's a hint: The reviewer later moved to a kind of informal
artist's colony in the Berkshires (didn't the Autocrat have a
place there, too?). There he met Hawthorne for the first time
and established a close friendship with him. While he was there,
the reviewer wrote a novel. A major one.
|
keats
|
|
response 8 of 19:
|
Jan 28 15:31 UTC 1993 |
i have another good hint, but i'm afraid it'll give away the game.
i'll mail it to you, md.
|
rcurl
|
|
response 9 of 19:
|
Jan 29 04:10 UTC 1993 |
Well blow me over and call me Ishmael! Is it possible? All the clues fit,
especially "the reviewer wrote a novel. A major one", like *the* Great
American Novel, huh? And they both resorted in Pittsfield (along with
a few other noteworthy colleagues). But I had always assumed that the
author I have in mind was like his main protagonist (!) - very unfair,
but I had never read anything he had written about himself. OK. Enough
beating around the bush. Herman Melville.
Yes, I wandered over to the Manse, but it was closed to the public that
day. What is the citation for the rowing lesson for Hawthorne? I sail
the way Thoreau tried to teach rowing - *will* the boat to respond as
you wish, but it hasn't worked when I've tried to teach others. By
the way, I called the mountains the Taconics, though they are better known
(in the vicinity of Pittsfield) as the Berkshires (it is Berkshire county)
because they are the Taconics, a product of the Taconic orogeny. That
covers from the Green mts down to the Hudson highlands.
|
md
|
|
response 10 of 19:
|
Jan 29 14:43 UTC 1993 |
Herman Melville is right. I never shoulda mentioned that major novel.
I almost said "a major novel, which he dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne."
I read about the rowing lesson in Henry Beetle Hough's biography of
Thoreau. I forget the title.
According to Edmund Wilson's introduction to Melville's essay in his
anthology _The Shock of Recognition", which I should've read before
I entered this item, Melville was already in Pittsfield with Hawthorne
when he wrote the review. He published it anonymously as "Hawthorne
and His Mosses," and subtitled it something like "by a Virginian
vacationing in Vermont." Melville was a New Yorker and was living
in Massachusetts at the time. Also, Wilson tries to make the point
that Melville's remarks about Shakespeare are more a reflection of his
sense of his own genius than of any real understanding of Hawthorne.
keats's giveaway clue would've been a good one. Care to enter it after
the fact, Dan?
|
rcurl
|
|
response 11 of 19:
|
Jan 29 15:09 UTC 1993 |
Melville apparently was willing to give Hawthorne a lot of credit. The
inscription in Moby Dick expresses "My admiration for his genius". I had
not put all of these folk together in Pittsfield before, not having read
(that I recall) any one autobiography, but, good grief, Hawthorne,
Melville, Holmes, Longfellow ... is the resort they stayed at still there
(and perhaps a museum)?
Now what I want to know is, where have all the other mystery quote fans
been? I thought of being coy too, like keats, but then, who else was
playing?
|
md
|
|
response 12 of 19:
|
Jan 29 16:25 UTC 1993 |
I dunno about Pittsfield. I grew up just down the Pike in Springfield,
and was an usher at Tanglewood in Lenox for several years, but I don't
recall seeing anything about that crew. No doubt there's a museum
somewhere, and a Hawthorne tablet at Tanglewood.
It occurs to me that if Wilson was right (I really ought to read
more biographies) then Melville's review is not only dishonest but
also an outrageous example of log-rolling.
Some things never change. One of Hawthorne's lesser-known works
was a campaign biography of his Bowdoin classmate Franklin Pierce,
for which he was rewarded with an appointment of some sort in
England. While he was in England, Hawthorne tried to get the Brits
interested in Thoreau's _Walden_. When Thoreau was in New York
trying to get _A Week_ (I think) published, he stayed with the
family of Henry James, Sr. Thoreau made a special trip to visit
Walt Whitman and wrote letters home raving about him. Emerson, of
course, to his subsequent regret, greeted Whitman at the beginning
of a great career, which must have yet have had etc. etc.
Whitman's next edition featured a preface addressed to the
"master," Emerson. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a warm appreciation of
Hawthorne (as did Henry James, Jr., eventually). In fact, my
crystal ball shows me a dissertation written a century from now
exposing the electronic correspondence between those three
celebrated fin-de-siecle writers, Rane Curl, Daniel Napolitano and
Michael Delizia, who went on to write such glowing reviews of each
other's books.
btw, can anyone other than rcurl, keats or myself identify "the
Autocrat" metioned above? (Assuming anyone other than rcurl, keats
and myself is reading this.)
|
keats
|
|
response 13 of 19:
|
Jan 29 21:10 UTC 1993 |
i'll enter the clue and pass on the autocrat because i _am_ feeling
clueful 'bout that, too:
my clue was that hawthorne returned the favor of this review in prob-
ably the most famous lost piece of american literature. you see,
hawthorne wrote a letter to melville reviewing _moby dick_ and giving
an allegorical reading of it. although the letter is lost, references
to it survive. probably the only more famous lost piece of literature,
or more lusted after, anyway, is shakespeare's _cardenio_, a late
romance based on cervantes' _don quixote_ and possibly coauthored with
fletcher.
i might add that an excellent underknown novel also came out of
hawthorne's stay in the berkshires: _the blithedale romance_. it is,
if i recall correctly, the first major work of american literature
employing the unreliable first-person narrator (which henry james
would later use to such good effect in several major works). it's
a think book, and i recommend it to anybody who hasn't read it.
|
md
|
|
response 14 of 19:
|
Jan 29 22:31 UTC 1993 |
I also read somewhere that Melville claimed not to have realized
there was any allegory in Moby-Dick until it waspointed out to him.
|
davel
|
|
response 15 of 19:
|
Jan 30 02:07 UTC 1993 |
I would have thought that *everyone* has at least encountered the Autocrat.
(I might have come to Melville if I'd guessed long enough, FWIW.)
The Autocrat inspires in me the same reaction as does Wylie - his one subject
is himself with emphasis on his rather puerile views on everything whether
he knows anything about it or not. (I'll stop before someone says that
sounds like me.)
|
rcurl
|
|
response 16 of 19:
|
Jan 30 04:53 UTC 1993 |
I have a hard time imagining that cabel making whoopee in the bar of a
Pittsfield dude ranch. Melville, a past prisoner of south pacific
natives; Hawthorne, a New England recluse; Thoreau, a hippy.....
Longfellow probably sat on the piano spinning naughty verse. And the
Autocrat offering witty analyses of his comrades - and everyone scheming
on how they would inflate each others' reputations. It is therefore not too
far fetched to describe my earliest association with Pittsfield, which
has been swishing through my mind as all of this was transpiiring...
I was packed in a second-hand hearse, coming back in the wee hours of
Monday morning, from caving in the Helderbergs, passing through those
shuttered villages of Pittsfield and Springfield, with someone playing
a banjo and the rest of us singing our heads off, and those natives still
up and about turning their heads at the sight and sound. I hardly suspected
then what ghosts were also watching...and probably laughing. Sadly to say,
though, these vignettes are unlikely bases for any substantial narrative.
Undoubtedly the cabel strung together equally isolated memories in writing
their books, but they had a talent for inventing the fill, which I lack.
But I will offer ringing praise for the works of keats and md (who should
change his sobriquet, if he expects to be on many tongues), if they would
only give me a list.
|
md
|
|
response 17 of 19:
|
Feb 10 17:07 UTC 1993 |
My latest opus is in the current issue of an exceedingly technical
journal of finance and economics - one of those publications you
pay $500 for a one-year subscription - and you're right, they
misspelled my name twice. Any suggestions for a pen name for me?
Your travels in western Massachusetts sound wonderful, and I bet
you *could* work up something publishable. Ever read Berkshire
magazine?
Re the Concord boating lesson, I looked it up over the weekend: It
took place in 1842. The boat was the one Henry and his brother
John had built three years earlier for their celebrated excursion
on the Concord and Merrimac rivers. Henry Beetle Hough describes
it in his book _Thoreau of Walden, the Man and His Eventful Life_,
(Simon and Schuster, 1956).
"After having Henry to dinner at the Old Manse one
early September day, Hawthorne walked with him to the
river bank and they went in Henry's boat up-river...
Before the trip was ended, [Hawthorne] had agreed to
buy the Musketaquid for seven dollars and wished he
might also acquire the aquatic skill of Henry himself.
"The next day Henry delivered the boat and provided a
lesson in its management. Hawthorne recorded his
impressions. 'Mr. Thoreau had assured me that it was
only necessary to will the boat to go in any particular
direction, and she would immediately take that course,
as if imbued with the spirit of the steersman. It may
be so with him, but it is certainly not so with me.
The boat seemed to be bewitched, and turned its head to
every point of the compass except the right one. He
then took the paddle himself, and, though I could
observe nothing peculiar in his management of it, the
Musketaquid immediately became as docile as a trained
steed.'
"Hawthorne changed the craft's name to Pond Lily..."
"Musketaquid" was the Indian name for the Concord River. Hough
records many of Hawthorne's impressions of Thoreau. He seems to
have been rather captivated by him. For Thoreau's part, when he
met Hawthorne again in 1860 he wrote that the author of _The
Scarlet Letter_ was "as simple and childlike as ever."
I don't know about anyone else, but I find it incredibly strange to
think that the boat immortalized in Henry David Thoreau's _A Week
on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers_ was bought three years later by
Nathaniel Hawthorne for seven dollars.
Wasn't the Autocrat, along with Longfellow and Whittier, one of the
three writers Mark Twain depicted as vagabonds at a California
mining camp, in his speech at Whittier's seventieth birthday
celebration in Boston? The audience of Brahmins were not amused
and Twain left the room in disgrace. William Dean Howells wrote
about the excruciating event in his book about Twain.
|
keats
|
|
response 18 of 19:
|
Feb 14 03:19 UTC 1993 |
yep, he was, and the funny thing is that twain's story is a real
stitch. if you can't easily find a reprint i suppose i could post
it somewhere (maybe on the lit conference on the other bbs).
twain also wrote afterwards about that incident, and uncharacteristic-
ally, was very penitent over it. that has always surprised me. of all
the things that irreverent wit might venerate enough to rue transgres-
sing it, choosing the new england writers is quirkier than twain's
sense of satire.
|
md
|
|
response 19 of 19:
|
Feb 15 19:40 UTC 1993 |
I think Howells' concluded that Twain wasn't ashamed of the piece
itself, which I've read and agree is a stitch and a half. He was
just pissed off at himself for imagining that an audience of Boston
Brahmins would find it amusing, especially with the three venerated
ones present in the room at the time. He had a rare (for him) turkey
on his hands, in other words.
|