Hawthorne
presently arriving, and seeing a bevy of admirers where he had
expected but three or four, fell into a state of agitation, which is
vividly described by his biographer. He "stood perfectly motionless,
but with the look of a sylvan creature on the point of fleeing
away.... He was stricken with dismay; his face lost colour and took
on a warm paleness ... his agitation was-very great; he stood by a
table and, taking up some small object that lay upon it, he found his
hand trembling so that he was obliged to lay it down." It was
desirable, certainly, that something should occur to break the spell
of a diffidence that might justly be called morbid. There is another
little sentence dropped by Mr. Lathrop in relation to this period of
Hawthorne's life, which appears to me worth quoting, though I am by no
means sure that it will seem so to the reader. It has a very simple
and innocent air, but to a person not without an impression of the
early days of "culture" in New England, it will be pregnant with
historic meaning. The elder Miss Peabody, who afterwards was
Hawthorne's sister-in-law and who acquired later in life a very
honourable American fame as a woman of benevolence, of learning, and
of literary accomplishment, had invited the Miss Hathornes to come to
her house for the evening, and to bring with them their brother, whom
she wished to thank for his beautiful tales. "Entirely to her
surprise," says Mr. Lathrop, completing thereby his picture of the
attitude of this remarkable family toward society--"entirely to her
surprise they came. She herself opened the door, and there, before
her, between his sisters, stood a splendidly handsome youth, tall and
strong, with no appearance whatever of timidity, but instead, an
almost fierce determination making his face stern. This was his
resource for carrying off the extreme inward tremor which he really
felt. His hostess brought out Flaxman's designs for Dante, just
received from Professor Felton, of Harvard, and the party made an
evening's entertainment out of them." This last sentence is the one I
allude to; and were it not for fear of appearing too fanciful I
should say that these few words were, to the initiated mind, an
unconscious expression of the lonely frigidity which characterised
most attempts at social recreation in the New England world some forty
years ago. There was at that time a great desire for culture, a great
interest in knowledge, in art, in aesthetic