The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE
INTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER"
It is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined
to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs
at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an
autobiographical impulse should twice in my
life have taken possession of me, in addressing
the public. The first time was three or four
years since, when I favoured the reader—inexcusably,
and for no earthly reason that either the
indulgent reader or the intrusive author could
imagine—with a description of my way of
life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse.
And now—because, beyond my deserts, I was
happy enough to find a listener or two on
the former occasion—I again seize the public
by the button, and talk of my three years'
experience in a Custom-House. The example
of the famous "P. P., Clerk of this Parish,"
was never more faithfully followed. The truth
seems to be, however, that when he casts his
leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses,
not the many who will fling aside his volume,
or never take it up, but the few who will
understand him better than most of his schoolmates
or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far
more than this, and indulge themselves in
such confidential depths of revelation as
could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively
to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy;
as if the printed book, thrown at large on
the wide world, were certain to find out the
divided segment of the writer's own nature,
and complete his circle of existence by bringing
him into communion with it. It is scarcely
decorous, however, to speak all, even where
we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are
frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the
speaker stand in some true relation with his
audience, it may be pardonable to imagine
that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though
not the closest friend, is listening to our
talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed
by this genial consciousness, we may prate
of the circumstances that lie around us, and
even of ourself, but still keep the inmost
Me behind its veil. To this extent, and within
these limits, an author, methinks, may be
autobiographical, without violating either
the reader's rights or his own.
It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House
sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind
always recognised in literature, as explaining
how a large portion of the following pages
came into my possession, and as offering proofs
of the authenticity of a narrative therein
contained. This, in fact—a desire to put
myself in my true position as editor, or very
little more, of the most prolix among the
tales that make up my volume—this, and no
other, is my true reason for assuming a personal
relation with the public. In accomplishing
the main purpose, it has appeared allowable,
by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation
of a mode of life not heretofore described,
together with some of the characters that
move in it, among whom the author happened
to make one.
In my native town of Salem, at the head of
what, half a century ago, in the days of old
King Derby, was a bustling wharf—but which
is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses,
and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial
life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way
down its melancholy length, discharging hides;
or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner,
pitching out her cargo of firewood—at the
head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which
the tide often overflows, and along which,
at the base and in the rear of the row of
buildings, the track of many languid years
is seen in a border of unthrifty grass—here,
with a view from its front windows adown this
not very enlivening prospect, and thence across
the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of
brick. From the loftiest point of its roof,
during precisely three and a half hours of
each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze
or calm, the banner of the republic; but with
the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead
of horizontally, and thus indicating that
a civil, and not a military, post of Uncle
Sam's government is here established. Its
front is ornamented with a portico of half-a-dozen
wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath
which a flight of wide granite steps descends
towards the street. Over the entrance hovers
an enormous specimen of the American eagle,
with outspread wings, a shield before her
breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch
of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows
in each claw. With the customary infirmity
of temper that characterizes this unhappy
fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her
beak and eye, and the general truculency of
her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community; and especially to warn
all citizens careful of their safety against
intruding on the premises which she overshadows
with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she
looks, many people are seeking at this very
moment to shelter themselves under the wing
of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume,
that her bosom has all the softness and snugness
of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great
tenderness even in her best of moods, and,
sooner or later—oftener soon than late—is
apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch
of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling
wound from her barbed arrows.
The pavement round about the above-described
edifice—which we may as well name at once
as the Custom-House of the port—has grass
enough growing in its chinks to show that
it has not, of late days, been worn by any
multitudinous resort of business. In some
months of the year, however, there often chances
a forenoon when affairs move onward with a
livelier tread. Such occasions might remind
the elderly citizen of that period, before
the last war with England, when Salem was
a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now,
by her own merchants and ship-owners, who
permit her wharves to crumble to ruin while
their ventures go to swell, needlessly and
imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce
at New York or Boston. On some such morning,
when three or four vessels happen to have
arrived at once usually from Africa or South
America—or to be on the verge of their departure
thitherward, there is a sound of frequent
feet passing briskly up and down the granite
steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted
him, you may greet the sea-flushed ship-master,
just in port, with his vessel's papers under
his arm in a tarnished tin box. Here, too,
comes his owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious
or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme
of the now accomplished voyage has been realized
in merchandise that will readily be turned
to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of
incommodities such as nobody will care to
rid him of. Here, likewise—the germ of the
wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, careworn
merchant—we have the smart young clerk,
who gets the taste of traffic as a wolf-cub
does of blood, and already sends adventures
in his master's ships, when he had better
be sailing mimic boats upon a mill-pond. Another
figure in the scene is the outward-bound sailor,
in quest of a protection; or the recently
arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport
to the hospital. Nor must we forget the captains
of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood
from the British provinces; a rough-looking
set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of
the Yankee aspect, but contributing an item
of no slight importance to our decaying trade.
Cluster all these individuals together, as
they sometimes were, with other miscellaneous
ones to diversify the group, and, for the
time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring
scene. More frequently, however, on ascending
the steps, you would discern— in the entry
if it were summer time, or in their appropriate
rooms if wintry or inclement weathers—a
row of venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned
chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs
back against the wall. Oftentimes they were
asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking
together, in voices between a speech and a
snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes
the occupants of alms-houses, and all other
human beings who depend for subsistence on
charity, on monopolized labour, or anything
else but their own independent exertions.
These old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew
at the receipt of custom, but not very liable
to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic
errands—were Custom-House officers.
Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter
the front door, is a certain room or office,
about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty
height, with two of its arched windows commanding
a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wharf,
and the third looking across a narrow lane,
and along a portion of Derby Street. All three
give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers,
slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers, around the
doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing
and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and
such other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping
of a seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed,
and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn
with grey sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere
fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to
conclude, from the general slovenliness of
the place, that this is a sanctuary into which
womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom
and mop, has very infrequent access. In the
way of furniture, there is a stove with a
voluminous funnel; an old pine desk with a
three-legged stool beside it; two or three
wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit
and infirm; and—not to forget the library—on
some shelves, a score or two of volumes of
the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of
the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through
the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication
with other parts of the edifice. And here,
some six months ago—pacing from corner to
corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool,
with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering
up and down the columns of the morning newspaper—you
might have recognised, honoured reader, the
same individual who welcomed you into his
cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered
so pleasantly through the willow branches
on the western side of the Old Manse. But
now, should you go thither to seek him, you
would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor.
The besom of reform hath swept him out of
office, and a worthier successor wears his
dignity and pockets his emoluments.
This old town of Salem—my native place,
though I have dwelt much away from it both
in boyhood and maturer years—possesses,
or did possess, a hold on my affection, the
force of which I have never realized during
my seasons of actual residence here. Indeed,
so far as its physical aspect is concerned,
with its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly
with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend
to architectural beauty—its irregularity,
which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but
only tame—its long and lazy street, lounging
wearisomely through the whole extent of the
peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea
at one end, and a view of the alms-house at
the other—such being the features of my
native town, it would be quite as reasonable
to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged
checker-board. And yet, though invariably
happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling
for Old Salem, which, in lack of a better
phrase, I must be content to call affection.
The sentiment is probably assignable to the
deep and aged roots which my family has stuck
into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries
and a quarter since the original Briton, the
earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance
in the wild and forest-bordered settlement
which has since become a city. And here his
descendants have been born and died, and have
mingled their earthly substance with the soil,
until no small portion of it must necessarily
be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for
a little while, I walk the streets. In part,
therefore, the attachment which I speak of
is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for
dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it
is; nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps
better for the stock, need they consider it
desirable to know.
But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality.
The figure of that first ancestor, invested
by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur,
was present to my boyish imagination as far
back as I can remember. It still haunts me,
and induces a sort of home-feeling with the
past, which I scarcely claim in reference
to the present phase of the town. I seem to
have a stronger claim to a residence here
on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked,
and steeple-crowned progenitor—who came
so early, with his Bible and his sword, and
trode the unworn street with such a stately
port, and made so large a figure, as a man
of war and peace—a stronger claim than for
myself, whose name is seldom heard and my
face hardly known. He was a soldier, legislator,
judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had
all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil.
He was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness
the Quakers, who have remembered him in their
histories, and relate an incident of his hard
severity towards a woman of their sect, which
will last longer, it is to be feared, than
any record of his better deeds, although these
were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting
spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in
the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood
may fairly be said to have left a stain upon
him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his dry
old bones, in the Charter-street burial-ground,
must still retain it, if they have not crumbled
utterly to dust! I know not whether these
ancestors of mine bethought themselves to
repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for their
cruelties; or whether they are now groaning
under the heavy consequences of them in another
state of being. At all events, I, the present
writer, as their representative, hereby take
shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray
that any curse incurred by them—as I have
heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous
condition of the race, for many a long year
back, would argue to exist—may be now and
henceforth removed.
Doubtless, however, either of these stern
and black-browed Puritans would have thought
it quite a sufficient retribution for his
sins that, after so long a lapse of years,
the old trunk of the family tree, with so
much venerable moss upon it, should have borne,
as its topmost bough, an idler like myself.
No aim that I have ever cherished would they
recognise as laudable; no success of mine—if
my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever
been brightened by success—would they deem
otherwise than worthless, if not positively
disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs one grey
shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A
writer of story books! What kind of business
in life—what mode of glorifying God, or
being serviceable to mankind in his day and
generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate
fellow might as well have been a fiddler!"
Such are the compliments bandied between my
great grandsires and myself, across the gulf
of time! And yet, let them scorn me as they
will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined
themselves with mine.
Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy
and childhood, by these two earnest and energetic
men, the race has ever since subsisted here;
always, too, in respectability; never, so
far as I have known, disgraced by a single
unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the
other hand, after the first two generations,
performing any memorable deed, or so much
as putting forward a claim to public notice.
Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight;
as old houses, here and there about the streets,
get covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation
of new soil. From father to son, for above
a hundred years, they followed the sea; a
grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation,
retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead,
while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary
place before the mast, confronting the salt
spray and the gale which had blustered against
his sire and grandsire. The boy, also in due
time, passed from the forecastle to the cabin,
spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned
from his world-wanderings, to grow old, and
die, and mingle his dust with the natal earth.
This long connexion of a family with one spot,
as its place of birth and burial, creates
a kindred between the human being and the
locality, quite independent of any charm in
the scenery or moral circumstances that surround
him. It is not love but instinct. The new
inhabitant—who came himself from a foreign
land, or whose father or grandfather came—has
little claim to be called a Salemite; he has
no conception of the oyster-like tenacity
with which an old settler, over whom his third
century is creeping, clings to the spot where
his successive generations have been embedded.
It is no matter that the place is joyless
for him; that he is weary of the old wooden
houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of
site and sentiment, the chill east wind, and
the chillest of social atmospheres;—all
these, and whatever faults besides he may
see or imagine, are nothing to the purpose.
The spell survives, and just as powerfully
as if the natal spot were an earthly paradise.
So has it been in my case. I felt it almost
as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that
the mould of features and cast of character
which had all along been familiar here—ever,
as one representative of the race lay down
in the grave, another assuming, as it were,
his sentry-march along the main street—might
still in my little day be seen and recognised
in the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment
is an evidence that the connexion, which has
become an unhealthy one, should at last be
severed. Human nature will not flourish, any
more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted,
for too long a series of generations, in the
same worn-out soil. My children have had other
birth-places, and, so far as their fortunes
may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth.
On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly
this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment
for my native town that brought me to fill
a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when
I might as well, or better, have gone somewhere
else. My doom was on me. It was not the first
time, nor the second, that I had gone away—as
it seemed, permanently—but yet returned,
like the bad halfpenny, or as if Salem were
for me the inevitable centre of the universe.
So, one fine morning I ascended the flight
of granite steps, with the President's commission
in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps
of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty
responsibility as chief executive officer
of the Custom-House.
I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt
at all—whether any public functionary of
the United States, either in the civil or
military line, has ever had such a patriarchal
body of veterans under his orders as myself.
The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was
at once settled when I looked at them. For
upwards of twenty years before this epoch,
the independent position of the Collector
had kept the Salem Custom-House out of the
whirlpool of political vicissitude, which
makes the tenure of office generally so fragile.
A soldier—New England's most distinguished
soldier—he stood firmly on the pedestal
of his gallant services; and, himself secure
in the wise liberality of the successive administrations
through which he had held office, he had been
the safety of his subordinates in many an
hour of danger and heart-quake. General Miller
was radically conservative; a man over whose
kindly nature habit had no slight influence;
attaching himself strongly to familiar faces,
and with difficulty moved to change, even
when change might have brought unquestionable
improvement. Thus, on taking charge of my
department, I found few but aged men. They
were ancient sea-captains, for the most part,
who, after being tossed on every sea, and
standing up sturdily against life's tempestuous
blast, had finally drifted into this quiet
nook, where, with little to disturb them,
except the periodical terrors of a Presidential
election, they one and all acquired a new
lease of existence. Though by no means less
liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity,
they had evidently some talisman or other
that kept death at bay. Two or three of their
number, as I was assured, being gouty and
rheumatic, or perhaps bed-ridden, never dreamed
of making their appearance at the Custom-House
during a large part of the year; but, after
a torpid winter, would creep out into the
warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about
what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure
and convenience, betake themselves to bed
again. I must plead guilty to the charge of
abbreviating the official breath of more than
one of these venerable servants of the republic.
They were allowed, on my representation, to
rest from their arduous labours, and soon
afterwards—as if their sole principle of
life had been zeal for their country's service—as
I verily believe it was—withdrew to a better
world. It is a pious consolation to me that,
through my interference, a sufficient space
was allowed them for repentance of the evil
and corrupt practices into which, as a matter
of course, every Custom-House officer must
be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor
the back entrance of the Custom-House opens
on the road to Paradise.
The greater part of my officers were Whigs.
It was well for their venerable brotherhood
that the new Surveyor was not a politician,
and though a faithful Democrat in principle,
neither received nor held his office with
any reference to political services. Had it
been otherwise—had an active politician
been put into this influential post, to assume
the easy task of making head against a Whig
Collector, whose infirmities withheld him
from the personal administration of his office—hardly
a man of the old corps would have drawn the
breath of official life within a month after
the exterminating angel had come up the Custom-House
steps. According to the received code in such
matters, it would have been nothing short
of duty, in a politician, to bring every one
of those white heads under the axe of the
guillotine. It was plain enough to discern
that the old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy
at my hands. It pained, and at the same time
amused me, to behold the terrors that attended
my advent, to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten
by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale
at the glance of so harmless an individual
as myself; to detect, as one or another addressed
me, the tremor of a voice which, in long-past
days, had been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet,
hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself
to silence. They knew, these excellent old
persons, that, by all established rule—and,
as regarded some of them, weighed by their
own lack of efficiency for business—they
ought to have given place to younger men,
more orthodox in politics, and altogether
fitter than themselves to serve our common
Uncle. I knew it, too, but could never quite
find in my heart to act upon the knowledge.
Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore,
and considerably to the detriment of my official
conscience, they continued, during my incumbency,
to creep about the wharves, and loiter up
and down the Custom-House steps. They spent
a good deal of time, also, asleep in their
accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted
back against the walls; awaking, however,
once or twice in the forenoon, to bore one
another with the several thousandth repetition
of old sea-stories and mouldy jokes, that
had grown to be passwords and countersigns
among them.
The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that
the new Surveyor had no great harm in him.
So, with lightsome hearts and the happy consciousness
of being usefully employed—in their own
behalf at least, if not for our beloved country—these
good old gentlemen went through the various
formalities of office. Sagaciously under their
spectacles, did they peep into the holds of
vessels. Mighty was their fuss about little
matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness
that allowed greater ones to slip between
their fingers Whenever such a mischance occurred—when
a waggon-load of valuable merchandise had
been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps,
and directly beneath their unsuspicious noses—nothing
could exceed the vigilance and alacrity with
which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock,
and secure with tape and sealing-wax, all
the avenues of the delinquent vessel. Instead
of a reprimand for their previous negligence,
the case seemed rather to require an eulogium
on their praiseworthy caution after the mischief
had happened; a grateful recognition of the
promptitude of their zeal the moment that
there was no longer any remedy.
Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable,
it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness
for them. The better part of my companion's
character, if it have a better part, is that
which usually comes uppermost in my regard,
and forms the type whereby I recognise the
man. As most of these old Custom-House officers
had good traits, and as my position in reference
to them, being paternal and protective, was
favourable to the growth of friendly sentiments,
I soon grew to like them all. It was pleasant
in the summer forenoons—when the fervent
heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the
human family, merely communicated a genial
warmth to their half torpid systems—it was
pleasant to hear them chatting in the back
entry, a row of them all tipped against the
wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms
of past generations were thawed out, and came
bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally,
the jollity of aged men has much in common
with the mirth of children; the intellect,
any more than a deep sense of humour, has
little to do with the matter; it is, with
both, a gleam that plays upon the surface,
and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike
to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk.
In one case, however, it is real sunshine;
in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent
glow of decaying wood.
It would be sad injustice, the reader must
understand, to represent all my excellent
old friends as in their dotage. In the first
place, my coadjutors were not invariably old;
there were men among them in their strength
and prime, of marked ability and energy, and
altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent
mode of life on which their evil stars had
cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks
of age were sometimes found to be the thatch
of an intellectual tenement in good repair.
But, as respects the majority of my corps
of veterans, there will be no wrong done if
I characterize them generally as a set of
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing
worth preservation from their varied experience
of life. They seemed to have flung away all
the golden grain of practical wisdom, which
they had enjoyed so many opportunities of
harvesting, and most carefully to have stored
their memory with the husks. They spoke with
far more interest and unction of their morning's
breakfast, or yesterday's, to-day's, or tomorrow's
dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or
fifty years ago, and all the world's wonders
which they had witnessed with their youthful
eyes.
The father of the Custom-House—the patriarch,
not only of this little squad of officials,
but, I am bold to say, of the respectable
body of tide-waiters all over the United States—was
a certain permanent Inspector. He might truly
be termed a legitimate son of the revenue
system, dyed in the wool, or rather born in
the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary
colonel, and formerly collector of the port,
had created an office for him, and appointed
him to fill it, at a period of the early ages
which few living men can now remember. This
Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man
of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly
one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green
that you would be likely to discover in a
lifetime's search. With his florid cheek,
his compact figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned
blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and
his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he
seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of
new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape
of man, whom age and infirmity had no business
to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually
re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing
of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old
man's utterance; they came strutting out of
his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the
blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely
as an animal—and there was very little else
to look at—he was a most satisfactory object,
from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness
of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme
age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights
which he had ever aimed at or conceived of.
The careless security of his life in the Custom-House,
on a regular income, and with but slight and
infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no
doubt contributed to make time pass lightly
over him. The original and more potent causes,
however, lay in the rare perfection of his
animal nature, the moderate proportion of
intellect, and the very trifling admixture
of moral and spiritual ingredients; these
latter qualities, indeed, being in barely
enough measure to keep the old gentleman from
walking on all-fours. He possessed no power
of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome
sensibilities: nothing, in short, but a few
commonplace instincts, which, aided by the
cheerful temper which grew inevitably out
of his physical well-being, did duty very
respectably, and to general acceptance, in
lieu of a heart. He had been the husband of
three wives, all long since dead; the father
of twenty children, most of whom, at every
age of childhood or maturity, had likewise
returned to dust. Here, one would suppose,
might have been sorrow enough to imbue the
sunniest disposition through and through with
a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector.
One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire
burden of these dismal reminiscences. The
next moment he was as ready for sport as any
unbreeched infant: far readier than the Collector's
junior clerk, who at nineteen years was much
the elder and graver man of the two.
I used to watch and study this patriarchal
personage with, I think, livelier curiosity
than any other form of humanity there presented
to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon;
so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow,
so delusive, so impalpable such an absolute
nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was
that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing,
as I have already said, but instincts; and
yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials
of his character been put together that there
was no painful perception of deficiency, but,
on my part, an entire contentment with what
I found in him. It might be difficult—and
it was so—to conceive how he should exist
hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he
seem; but surely his existence here, admitting
that it was to terminate with his last breath,
had been not unkindly given; with no higher
moral responsibilities than the beasts of
the field, but with a larger scope of enjoyment
than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity
from the dreariness and duskiness of age.
One point in which he had vastly the advantage
over his four-footed brethren was his ability
to recollect the good dinners which it had
made no small portion of the happiness of
his life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly
agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast
meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster.
As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment
by devoting all his energies and ingenuities
to subserve the delight and profit of his
maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to
hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's
meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing
them for the table. His reminiscences of good
cheer, however ancient the date of the actual
banquet, seemed to bring the savour of pig
or turkey under one's very nostrils. There
were flavours on his palate that had lingered
there not less than sixty or seventy years,
and were still apparently as fresh as that
of the mutton chop which he had just devoured
for his breakfast. I have heard him smack
his lips over dinners, every guest at which,
except himself, had long been food for worms.
It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts
of bygone meals were continually rising up
before him—not in anger or retribution,
but as if grateful for his former appreciation,
and seeking to reduplicate an endless series
of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual:
a tenderloin of beef, a hind-quarter of veal,
a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken,
or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which
had perhaps adorned his board in the days
of the elder Adams, would be remembered; while
all the subsequent experience of our race,
and all the events that brightened or darkened
his individual career, had gone over him with
as little permanent effect as the passing
breeze. The chief tragic event of the old
man's life, so far as I could judge, was his
mishap with a certain goose, which lived and
died some twenty or forty years ago: a goose
of most promising figure, but which, at table,
proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife
would make no impression on its carcase, and
it could only be divided with an axe and handsaw.
But it is time to quit this sketch; on which,
however, I should be glad to dwell at considerably
more length, because of all men whom I have
ever known, this individual was fittest to
be a Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing
to causes which I may not have space to hint
at, suffer moral detriment from this peculiar
mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable
of it; and, were he to continue in office
to the end of time, would be just as good
as he was then, and sit down to dinner with
just as good an appetite.
There is one likeness, without which my gallery
of Custom-House portraits would be strangely
incomplete, but which my comparatively few
opportunities for observation enable me to
sketch only in the merest outline. It is that
of the Collector, our gallant old General,
who, after his brilliant military service,
subsequently to which he had ruled over a
wild Western territory, had come hither, twenty
years before, to spend the decline of his
varied and honourable life.
The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly
or quite, his three-score years and ten, and
was pursuing the remainder of his earthly
march, burdened with infirmities which even
the martial music of his own spirit-stirring
recollections could do little towards lightening.
The step was palsied now, that had been foremost
in the charge. It was only with the assistance
of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily
on the iron balustrade, that he could slowly
and painfully ascend the Custom-House steps,
and, with a toilsome progress across the floor,
attain his customary chair beside the fireplace.
There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat
dim serenity of aspect at the figures that
came and went, amid the rustle of papers,
the administering of oaths, the discussion
of business, and the casual talk of the office;
all which sounds and circumstances seemed
but indistinctly to impress his senses, and
hardly to make their way into his inner sphere
of contemplation. His countenance, in this
repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice
was sought, an expression of courtesy and
interest gleamed out upon his features, proving
that there was light within him, and that
it was only the outward medium of the intellectual
lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage.
The closer you penetrated to the substance
of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When
no longer called upon to speak or listen—either
of which operations cost him an evident effort—his
face would briefly subside into its former
not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful
to behold this look; for, though dim, it had
not the imbecility of decaying age. The framework
of his nature, originally strong and massive,
was not yet crumpled into ruin.
To observe and define his character, however,
under such disadvantages, was as difficult
a task as to trace out and build up anew,
in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga,
from a view of its grey and broken ruins.
Here and there, perchance, the walls may remain
almost complete; but elsewhere may be only
a shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very
strength, and overgrown, through long years
of peace and neglect, with grass and alien
weeds.
Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with
affection—for, slight as was the communication
between us, my feeling towards him, like that
of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him,
might not improperly be termed so,—I could
discern the main points of his portrait. It
was marked with the noble and heroic qualities
which showed it to be not a mere accident,
but of good right, that he had won a distinguished
name. His spirit could never, I conceive,
have been characterized by an uneasy activity;
it must, at any period of his life, have required
an impulse to set him in motion; but once
stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and
an adequate object to be attained, it was
not in the man to give out or fail. The heat
that had formerly pervaded his nature, and
which was not yet extinct, was never of the
kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze;
but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in
a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness—this
was the expression of his repose, even in
such decay as had crept untimely over him
at the period of which I speak. But I could
imagine, even then, that, under some excitement
which should go deeply into his consciousness—roused
by a trumpet's peal, loud enough to awaken
all of his energies that were not dead, but
only slumbering—he was yet capable of flinging
off his infirmities like a sick man's gown,
dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword,
and starting up once more a warrior. And,
in so intense a moment his demeanour would
have still been calm. Such an exhibition,
however, was but to be pictured in fancy;
not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I
saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible
ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already cited
as the most appropriate simile—was the features
of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which
might well have amounted to obstinacy in his
earlier days; of integrity, that, like most
of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat
heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable or
unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of
benevolence which, fiercely as he led the
bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take
to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what
actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists
of the age. He had slain men with his own
hand, for aught I know—certainly, they had
fallen like blades of grass at the sweep of
the scythe before the charge to which his
spirit imparted its triumphant energy—but,
be that as it might, there was never in his
heart so much cruelty as would have brushed
the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not
known the man to whose innate kindliness I
would more confidently make an appeal.
Many characteristics—and those, too, which
contribute not the least forcibly to impart
resemblance in a sketch—must have vanished,
or been obscured, before I met the General.
All merely graceful attributes are usually
the most evanescent; nor does nature adorn
the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty,
that have their roots and proper nutriment
only in the chinks and crevices of decay,
as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined fortress
of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of
grace and beauty, there were points well worth
noting. A ray of humour, now and then, would
make its way through the veil of dim obstruction,
and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait
of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine
character after childhood or early youth,
was shown in the General's fondness for the
sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier
might be supposed to prize only the bloody
laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed
to have a young girl's appreciation of the
floral tribe.
There, beside the fireplace, the brave old
General used to sit; while the Surveyor—though
seldom, when it could be avoided, taking upon
himself the difficult task of engaging him
in conversation—was fond of standing at
a distance, and watching his quiet and almost
slumberous countenance. He seemed away from
us, although we saw him but a few yards off;
remote, though we passed close beside his
chair; unattainable, though we might have
stretched forth our hands and touched his
own. It might be that he lived a more real
life within his thoughts than amid the unappropriate
environment of the Collector's office. The
evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the
battle; the flourish of old heroic music,
heard thirty years before—such scenes and
sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his
intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants
and ship-masters, the spruce clerks and uncouth
sailors, entered and departed; the bustle
of his commercial and Custom-House life kept
up its little murmur round about him; and
neither with the men nor their affairs did
the General appear to sustain the most distant
relation. He was as much out of place as an
old sword—now rusty, but which had flashed
once in the battle's front, and showed still
a bright gleam along its blade—would have
been among the inkstands, paper-folders, and
mahogany rulers on the Deputy Collector's
desk.
There was one thing that much aided me in
renewing and re-creating the stalwart soldier
of the Niagara frontier—the man of true
and simple energy. It was the recollection
of those memorable words of his—"I'll try,
Sir"—spoken on the very verge of a desperate
and heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul
and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending
all perils, and encountering all. If, in our
country, valour were rewarded by heraldic
honour, this phrase—which it seems so easy
to speak, but which only he, with such a task
of danger and glory before him, has ever spoken—would
be the best and fittest of all mottoes for
the General's shield of arms.
It contributes greatly towards a man's moral
and intellectual health to be brought into
habits of companionship with individuals unlike
himself, who care little for his pursuits,
and whose sphere and abilities he must go
out of himself to appreciate. The accidents
of my life have often afforded me this advantage,
but never with more fulness and variety than
during my continuance in office. There was
one man, especially, the observation of whose
character gave me a new idea of talent. His
gifts were emphatically those of a man of
business; prompt, acute, clear-minded; with
an eye that saw through all perplexities,
and a faculty of arrangement that made them
vanish as by the waving of an enchanter's
wand. Bred up from boyhood in the Custom-House,
it was his proper field of activity; and the
many intricacies of business, so harassing
to the interloper, presented themselves before
him with the regularity of a perfectly comprehended
system. In my contemplation, he stood as the
ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House
in himself; or, at all events, the mainspring
that kept its variously revolving wheels in
motion; for, in an institution like this,
where its officers are appointed to subserve
their own profit and convenience, and seldom
with a leading reference to their fitness
for the duty to be performed, they must perforce
seek elsewhere the dexterity which is not
in them. Thus, by an inevitable necessity,
as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did
our man of business draw to himself the difficulties
which everybody met with. With an easy condescension,
and kind forbearance towards our stupidity—which,
to his order of mind, must have seemed little
short of crime—would he forth-with, by the
merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible
as clear as daylight. The merchants valued
him not less than we, his esoteric friends.
His integrity was perfect; it was a law of
nature with him, rather than a choice or a
principle; nor can it be otherwise than the
main condition of an intellect so remarkably
clear and accurate as his to be honest and
regular in the administration of affairs.
A stain on his conscience, as to anything
that came within the range of his vocation,
would trouble such a man very much in the
same way, though to a far greater degree,
than an error in the balance of an account,
or an ink-blot on the fair page of a book
of record. Here, in a word—and it is a rare
instance in my life—I had met with a person
thoroughly adapted to the situation which
he held.
Such were some of the people with whom I now
found myself connected. I took it in good
part, at the hands of Providence, that I was
thrown into a position so little akin to my
past habits; and set myself seriously to gather
from it whatever profit was to be had. After
my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes
with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; after
living for three years within the subtle influence
of an intellect like Emerson's; after those
wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulging
fantastic speculations, beside our fire of
fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after
talking with Thoreau about pine-trees and
Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden;
after growing fastidious by sympathy with
the classic refinement of Hillard's culture;
after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment
at Longfellow's hearthstone—it was time,
at length, that I should exercise other faculties
of my nature, and nourish myself with food
for which I had hitherto had little appetite.
Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a
change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott.
I looked upon it as an evidence, in some measure,
of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking
no essential part of a thorough organization,
that, with such associates to remember, I
could mingle at once with men of altogether
different qualities, and never murmur at the
change.
Literature, its exertions and objects, were
now of little moment in my regard. I cared
not at this period for books; they were apart
from me. Nature—except it were human nature—the
nature that is developed in earth and sky,
was, in one sense, hidden from me; and all
the imaginative delight wherewith it had been
spiritualized passed away out of my mind.
A gift, a faculty, if it had not been departed,
was suspended and inanimate within me. There
would have been something sad, unutterably
dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious
that it lay at my own option to recall whatever
was valuable in the past. It might be true,
indeed, that this was a life which could not,
with impunity, be lived too long; else, it
might make me permanently other than I had
been, without transforming me into any shape
which it would be worth my while to take.
But I never considered it as other than a
transitory life. There was always a prophetic
instinct, a low whisper in my ear, that within
no long period, and whenever a new change
of custom should be essential to my good,
change would come.
Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the
Revenue and, so far as I have been able to
understand, as good a Surveyor as need be.
A man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had
he ten times the Surveyor's proportion of
those qualities), may, at any time, be a man
of affairs, if he will only choose to give
himself the trouble. My fellow-officers, and
the merchants and sea-captains with whom my
official duties brought me into any manner
of connection, viewed me in no other light,
and probably knew me in no other character.
None of them, I presume, had ever read a page
of my inditing, or would have cared a fig
the more for me if they had read them all;
nor would it have mended the matter, in the
least, had those same unprofitable pages been
written with a pen like that of Burns or of
Chaucer, each of whom was a Custom-House officer
in his day, as well as I. It is a good lesson—though
it may often be a hard one—for a man who
has dreamed of literary fame, and of making
for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries
by such means, to step aside out of the narrow
circle in which his claims are recognized
and to find how utterly devoid of significance,
beyond that circle, is all that he achieves,
and all he aims at. I know not that I especially
needed the lesson, either in the way of warning
or rebuke; but at any rate, I learned it thoroughly:
nor, it gives me pleasure to reflect, did
the truth, as it came home to my perception,
ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown
off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk,
it is true, the Naval Officer—an excellent
fellow, who came into the office with me,
and went out only a little later—would often
engage me in a discussion about one or the
other of his favourite topics, Napoleon or
Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk,
too a young gentleman who, it was whispered
occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's
letter paper with what (at the distance of
a few yards) looked very much like poetry—used
now and then to speak to me of books, as matters
with which I might possibly be conversant.
This was my all of lettered intercourse; and
it was quite sufficient for my necessities.
No longer seeking nor caring that my name
should be blasoned abroad on title-pages,
I smiled to think that it had now another
kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker imprinted
it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags,
and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and
bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise,
in testimony that these commodities had paid
the impost, and gone regularly through the
office. Borne on such queer vehicle of fame,
a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name
conveys it, was carried where it had never
been before, and, I hope, will never go again.
But the past was not dead. Once in a great
while, the thoughts that had seemed so vital
and so active, yet had been put to rest so
quietly, revived again. One of the most remarkable
occasions, when the habit of bygone days awoke
in me, was that which brings it within the
law of literary propriety to offer the public
the sketch which I am now writing.
In the second storey of the Custom-House there
is a large room, in which the brick-work and
naked rafters have never been covered with
panelling and plaster. The edifice—originally
projected on a scale adapted to the old commercial
enterprise of the port, and with an idea of
subsequent prosperity destined never to be
realized—contains far more space than its
occupants know what to do with. This airy
hall, therefore, over the Collector's apartments,
remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite
of the aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky
beams, appears still to await the labour of
the carpenter and mason. At one end of the
room, in a recess, were a number of barrels
piled one upon another, containing bundles
of official documents. Large quantities of
similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It
was sorrowful to think how many days, and
weeks, and months, and years of toil had been
wasted on these musty papers, which were now
only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden
away in this forgotten corner, never more
to be glanced at by human eyes. But then,
what reams of other manuscripts—filled,
not with the dulness of official formalities,
but with the thought of inventive brains and
the rich effusion of deep hearts—had gone
equally to oblivion; and that, moreover, without
serving a purpose in their day, as these heaped-up
papers had, and—saddest of all—without
purchasing for their writers the comfortable
livelihood which the clerks of the Custom-House
had gained by these worthless scratchings
of the pen. Yet not altogether worthless,
perhaps, as materials of local history. Here,
no doubt, statistics of the former commerce
of Salem might be discovered, and memorials
of her princely merchants—old King Derby—old
Billy Gray—old Simon Forrester—and many
another magnate in his day, whose powdered
head, however, was scarcely in the tomb before
his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle.
The founders of the greater part of the families
which now compose the aristocracy of Salem
might here be traced, from the petty and obscure
beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally
much posterior to the Revolution, upward to
what their children look upon as long-established
rank.
Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth
of records; the earlier documents and archives
of the Custom-House having, probably, been
carried off to Halifax, when all the king's
officials accompanied the British army in
its flight from Boston. It has often been
a matter of regret with me; for, going back,
perhaps, to the days of the Protectorate,
those papers must have contained many references
to forgotten or remembered men, and to antique
customs, which would have affected me with
the same pleasure as when I used to pick up
Indian arrow-heads in the field near the Old
Manse.
But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune
to make a discovery of some little interest.
Poking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish
in the corner, unfolding one and another document,
and reading the names of vessels that had
long ago foundered at sea or rotted at the
wharves, and those of merchants never heard
of now on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable
on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such
matters with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant
interest which we bestow on the corpse of
dead activity—and exerting my fancy, sluggish
with little use, to raise up from these dry
bones an image of the old town's brighter
aspect, when India was a new region, and only
Salem knew the way thither—I chanced to
lay my hand on a small package, carefully
done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment.
This envelope had the air of an official record
of some period long past, when clerks engrossed
their stiff and formal chirography on more
substantial materials than at present. There
was something about it that quickened an instinctive
curiosity, and made me undo the faded red
tape that tied up the package, with the sense
that a treasure would here be brought to light.
Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment
cover, I found it to be a commission, under
the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in
favour of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of
His Majesty's Customs for the Port of Salem,
in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. I remembered
to have read (probably in Felt's "Annals")
a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue,
about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in
a newspaper of recent times, an account of
the digging up of his remains in the little
graveyard of St. Peter's Church, during the
renewal of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly
call to mind, was left of my respected predecessor,
save an imperfect skeleton, and some fragments
of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle,
which, unlike the head that it once adorned,
was in very satisfactory preservation. But,
on examining the papers which the parchment
commission served to envelop, I found more
traces of Mr. Pue's mental part, and the internal
operations of his head, than the frizzled
wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.
They were documents, in short, not official,
but of a private nature, or, at least, written
in his private capacity, and apparently with
his own hand. I could account for their being
included in the heap of Custom-House lumber
only by the fact that Mr. Pue's death had
happened suddenly, and that these papers,
which he probably kept in his official desk,
had never come to the knowledge of his heirs,
or were supposed to relate to the business
of the revenue. On the transfer of the archives
to Halifax, this package, proving to be of
no public concern, was left behind, and had
remained ever since unopened.
The ancient Surveyor—being little molested,
I suppose, at that early day with business
pertaining to his office—seems to have devoted
some of his many leisure hours to researches
as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions
of a similar nature. These supplied material
for petty activity to a mind that would otherwise
have been eaten up with rust.
A portion of his facts, by-the-by, did me
good service in the preparation of the article
entitled "MAIN STREET," included in the present
volume. The remainder may perhaps be applied
to purposes equally valuable hereafter, or
not impossibly may be worked up, so far as
they go, into a regular history of Salem,
should my veneration for the natal soil ever
impel me to so pious a task. Meanwhile, they
shall be at the command of any gentleman,
inclined and competent, to take the unprofitable
labour off my hands. As a final disposition
I contemplate depositing them with the Essex
Historical Society. But the object that most
drew my attention to the mysterious package
was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much
worn and faded, There were traces about it
of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly
frayed and defaced, so that none, or very
little, of the glitter was left. It had been
wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderful
skill of needlework; and the stitch (as I
am assured by ladies conversant with such
mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten
art, not to be discovered even by the process
of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet
cloth—for time, and wear, and a sacrilegious
moth had reduced it to little other than a
rag—on careful examination, assumed the
shape of a letter.
It was the capital letter A. By an accurate
measurement, each limb proved to be precisely
three inches and a quarter in length. It had
been intended, there could be no doubt, as
an ornamental article of dress; but how it
was to be worn, or what rank, honour, and
dignity, in by-past times, were signified
by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are
the fashions of the world in these particulars)
I saw little hope of solving. And yet it strangely
interested me. My eyes fastened themselves
upon the old scarlet letter, and would not
be turned aside. Certainly there was some
deep meaning in it most worthy of interpretation,
and which, as it were, streamed forth from
the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself
to my sensibilities, but evading the analysis
of my mind.
When thus perplexed—and cogitating, among
other hypotheses, whether the letter might
not have been one of those decorations which
the white men used to contrive in order to
take the eyes of Indians—I happened to place
it on my breast. It seemed to me—the reader
may smile, but must not doubt my word—it
seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation
not altogether physical, yet almost so, as
of burning heat, and as if the letter were
not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered,
and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.
In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet
letter, I had hitherto neglected to examine
a small roll of dingy paper, around which
it had been twisted. This I now opened, and
had the satisfaction to find recorded by the
old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete
explanation of the whole affair. There were
several foolscap sheets, containing many particulars
respecting the life and conversation of one
Hester Prynne, who appeared to have been rather
a noteworthy personage in the view of our
ancestors. She had flourished during the period
between the early days of Massachusetts and
the close of the seventeenth century. Aged
persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor
Pue, and from whose oral testimony he had
made up his narrative, remembered her, in
their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit
woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It
had been her habit, from an almost immemorial
date, to go about the country as a kind of
voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous
good she might; taking upon herself, likewise,
to give advice in all matters, especially
those of the heart, by which means—as a
person of such propensities inevitably must—she
gained from many people the reverence due
to an angel, but, I should imagine, was looked
upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance.
Prying further into the manuscript, I found
the record of other doings and sufferings
of this singular woman, for most of which
the reader is referred to the story entitled
"THE SCARLET LETTER"; and it should be borne
carefully in mind that the main facts of that
story are authorized and authenticated by
the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue. The original
papers, together with the scarlet letter itself—a
most curious relic—are still in my possession,
and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever,
induced by the great interest of the narrative,
may desire a sight of them. I must not be
understood affirming that, in the dressing
up of the tale, and imagining the motives
and modes of passion that influenced the characters
who figure in it, I have invariably confined
myself within the limits of the old Surveyor's
half-a-dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary,
I have allowed myself, as to such points,
nearly, or altogether, as much license as
if the facts had been entirely of my own invention.
What I contend for is the authenticity of
the outline.
This incident recalled my mind, in some degree,
to its old track. There seemed to be here
the groundwork of a tale. It impressed me
as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of
a hundred years gone by, and wearing his immortal
wig—which was buried with him, but did not
perish in the grave—had met me in the deserted
chamber of the Custom-House. In his port was
the dignity of one who had borne His Majesty's
commission, and who was therefore illuminated
by a ray of the splendour that shone so dazzlingly
about the throne. How unlike alas the hangdog
look of a republican official, who, as the
servant of the people, feels himself less
than the least, and below the lowest of his
masters. With his own ghostly hand, the obscurely
seen, but majestic, figure had imparted to
me the scarlet symbol and the little roll
of explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly
voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration
of my filial duty and reverence towards him—who
might reasonably regard himself as my official
ancestor—to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten
lucubrations before the public. "Do this,"
said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically
nodding the head that looked so imposing within
its memorable wig; "do this, and the profit
shall be all your own. You will shortly need
it; for it is not in your days as it was in
mine, when a man's office was a life-lease,
and oftentimes an heirloom. But I charge you,
in this matter of old Mistress Prynne, give
to your predecessor's memory the credit which
will be rightfully due" And I said to the
ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue—"I will".
On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed
much thought. It was the subject of my meditations
for many an hour, while pacing to and fro
across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold
repetition, the long extent from the front
door of the Custom-House to the side entrance,
and back again. Great were the weariness and
annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers
and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed
by the unmercifully lengthened tramp of my
passing and returning footsteps. Remembering
their own former habits, they used to say
that the Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck.
They probably fancied that my sole object—and,
indeed, the sole object for which a sane man
could ever put himself into voluntary motion—was
to get an appetite for dinner. And, to say
the truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east
wind that generally blew along the passage,
was the only valuable result of so much indefatigable
exercise. So little adapted is the atmosphere
of a Custom-house to the delicate harvest
of fancy and sensibility, that, had I remained
there through ten Presidencies yet to come,
I doubt whether the tale of "The Scarlet Letter"
would ever have been brought before the public
eye. My imagination was a tarnished mirror.
It would not reflect, or only with miserable
dimness, the figures with which I did my best
to people it. The characters of the narrative
would not be warmed and rendered malleable
by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual
forge. They would take neither the glow of
passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but
retained all the rigidity of dead corpses,
and stared me in the face with a fixed and
ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. "What
have you to do with us?" that expression seemed
to say. "The little power you might have once
possessed over the tribe of unrealities is
gone! You have bartered it for a pittance
of the public gold. Go then, and earn your
wages!" In short, the almost torpid creatures
of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility,
and not without fair occasion.
It was not merely during the three hours and
a half which Uncle Sam claimed as his share
of my daily life that this wretched numbness
held possession of me. It went with me on
my sea-shore walks and rambles into the country,
whenever—which was seldom and reluctantly—I
bestirred myself to seek that invigorating
charm of Nature which used to give me such
freshness and activity of thought, the moment
that I stepped across the threshold of the
Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the
capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied
me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber
which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor
did it quit me when, late at night, I sat
in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the
glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving
to picture forth imaginary scenes, which,
the next day, might flow out on the brightening
page in many-hued description.
If the imaginative faculty refused to act
at such an hour, it might well be deemed a
hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar room,
falling so white upon the carpet, and showing
all its figures so distinctly—making every
object so minutely visible, yet so unlike
a morning or noontide visibility—is a medium
the most suitable for a romance-writer to
get acquainted with his illusive guests. There
is the little domestic scenery of the well-known
apartment; the chairs, with each its separate
individuality; the centre-table, sustaining
a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished
lamp; the sofa; the book-case; the picture
on the wall—all these details, so completely
seen, are so spiritualised by the unusual
light, that they seem to lose their actual
substance, and become things of intellect.
Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo
this change, and acquire dignity thereby.
A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little
wicker carriage; the hobby-horse—whatever,
in a word, has been used or played with during
the day is now invested with a quality of
strangeness and remoteness, though still almost
as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore,
the floor of our familiar room has become
a neutral territory, somewhere between the
real world and fairy-land, where the Actual
and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue
itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts
might enter here without affrighting us. It
would be too much in keeping with the scene
to excite surprise, were we to look about
us and discover a form, beloved, but gone
hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of
this magic moonshine, with an aspect that
would make us doubt whether it had returned
from afar, or had never once stirred from
our fireside.
The somewhat dim coal fire has an essential
Influence in producing the effect which I
would describe. It throws its unobtrusive
tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness
upon the walls and ceiling, and a reflected
gleam upon the polish of the furniture. This
warmer light mingles itself with the cold
spirituality of the moon-beams, and communicates,
as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human
tenderness to the forms which fancy summons
up. It converts them from snow-images into
men and women. Glancing at the looking-glass,
we behold—deep within its haunted verge—the
smouldering glow of the half-extinguished
anthracite, the white moon-beams on the floor,
and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow
of the picture, with one remove further from
the actual, and nearer to the imaginative.
Then, at such an hour, and with this scene
before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot
dream strange things, and make them look like
truth, he need never try to write romances.
But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House
experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the
glow of firelight, were just alike in my regard;
and neither of them was of one whit more avail
than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire
class of susceptibilities, and a gift connected
with them—of no great richness or value,
but the best I had—was gone from me.
It is my belief, however, that had I attempted
a different order of composition, my faculties
would not have been found so pointless and
inefficacious. I might, for instance, have
contented myself with writing out the narratives
of a veteran shipmaster, one of the Inspectors,
whom I should be most ungrateful not to mention,
since scarcely a day passed that he did not
stir me to laughter and admiration by his
marvelous gifts as a story-teller. Could I
have preserved the picturesque force of his
style, and the humourous colouring which nature
taught him how to throw over his descriptions,
the result, I honestly believe, would have
been something new in literature. Or I might
readily have found a more serious task. It
was a folly, with the materiality of this
daily life pressing so intrusively upon me,
to attempt to fling myself back into another
age, or to insist on creating the semblance
of a world out of airy matter, when, at every
moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble
was broken by the rude contact of some actual
circumstance. The wiser effort would have
been to diffuse thought and imagination through
the opaque substance of to-day, and thus to
make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise
the burden that began to weigh so heavily;
to seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible
value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome
incidents, and ordinary characters with which
I was now conversant. The fault was mine.
The page of life that was spread out before
me seemed dull and commonplace only because
I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better
book than I shall ever write was there; leaf
after leaf presenting itself to me, just as
it was written out by the reality of the flitting
hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only
because my brain wanted the insight, and my
hand the cunning, to transcribe it. At some
future day, it may be, I shall remember a
few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs,
and write them down, and find the letters
turn to gold upon the page.
These perceptions had come too late. At the
Instant, I was only conscious that what would
have been a pleasure once was now a hopeless
toil. There was no occasion to make much moan
about this state of affairs. I had ceased
to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and
essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor
of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless,
it is anything but agreeable to be haunted
by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling
away, or exhaling, without your consciousness,
like ether out of a phial; so that, at every
glance, you find a smaller and less volatile
residuum. Of the fact there could be no doubt
and, examining myself and others, I was led
to conclusions, in reference to the effect
of public office on the character, not very
favourable to the mode of life in question.
In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter
develop these effects. Suffice it here to
say that a Custom-House officer of long continuance
can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable
personage, for many reasons; one of them,
the tenure by which he holds his situation,
and another, the very nature of his business,
which—though, I trust, an honest one—is
of such a sort that he does not share in the
united effort of mankind.
An effect—which I believe to be observable,
more or less, in every individual who has
occupied the position—is, that while he
leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his
own proper strength departs from him. He loses,
in an extent proportioned to the weakness
or force of his original nature, the capability
of self-support. If he possesses an unusual
share of native energy, or the enervating
magic of place do not operate too long upon
him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable.
The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly
shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle
amid a struggling world—may return to himself,
and become all that he has ever been. But
this seldom happens. He usually keeps his
ground just long enough for his own ruin,
and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung,
to totter along the difficult footpath of
life as he best may. Conscious of his own
infirmity—that his tempered steel and elasticity
are lost—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully
about him in quest of support external to
himself. His pervading and continual hope—a
hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement,
and making light of impossibilities, haunts
him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the
convulsive throes of the cholera, torments
him for a brief space after death—is, that
finally, and in no long time, by some happy
coincidence of circumstances, he shall be
restored to office. This faith, more than
anything else, steals the pith and availability
out of whatever enterprise he may dream of
undertaking. Why should he toil and moil,
and be at so much trouble to pick himself
up out of the mud, when, in a little while
hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise
and support him? Why should he work for his
living here, or go to dig gold in California,
when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly
intervals, with a little pile of glittering
coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly
curious to observe how slight a taste of office
suffices to infect a poor fellow with this
singular disease. Uncle Sam's gold—meaning
no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has,
in this respect, a quality of enchantment
like that of the devil's wages. Whoever touches
it should look well to himself, or he may
find the bargain to go hard against him, involving,
if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes;
its sturdy force, its courage and constancy,
its truth, its self-reliance, and all that
gives the emphasis to manly character.
Here was a fine prospect in the distance.
Not that the Surveyor brought the lesson home
to himself, or admitted that he could be so
utterly undone, either by continuance in office
or ejectment. Yet my reflections were not
the most comfortable. I began to grow melancholy
and restless; continually prying into my mind,
to discover which of its poor properties were
gone, and what degree of detriment had already
accrued to the remainder. I endeavoured to
calculate how much longer I could stay in
the Custom-House, and yet go forth a man.
To confess the truth, it was my greatest apprehension—as
it would never be a measure of policy to turn
out so quiet an individual as myself; and
it being hardly in the nature of a public
officer to resign—it was my chief trouble,
therefore, that I was likely to grow grey
and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become
much such another animal as the old Inspector.
Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official
life that lay before me, finally be with me
as it was with this venerable friend—to
make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the day,
and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog
spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the
shade? A dreary look-forward, this, for a
man who felt it to be the best definition
of happiness to live throughout the whole
range of his faculties and sensibilities.
But, all this while, I was giving myself very
unnecessary alarm. Providence had meditated
better things for me than I could possibly
imagine for myself.
A remarkable event of the third year of my
Surveyorship—to adopt the tone of "P. P.
"—was the election of General Taylor to
the Presidency. It is essential, in order
to form a complete estimate of the advantages
of official life, to view the incumbent at
the in-coming of a hostile administration.
His position is then one of the most singularly
irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable,
that a wretched mortal can possibly occupy;
with seldom an alternative of good on either
hand, although what presents itself to him
as the worst event may very probably be the
best. But it is a strange experience, to a
man of pride and sensibility, to know that
his interests are within the control of individuals
who neither love nor understand him, and by
whom, since one or the other must needs happen,
he would rather be injured than obliged. Strange,
too, for one who has kept his calmness throughout
the contest, to observe the bloodthirstiness
that is developed in the hour of triumph,
and to be conscious that he is himself among
its objects! There are few uglier traits of
human nature than this tendency—which I
now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours—to
grow cruel, merely because they possessed
the power of inflicting harm. If the guillotine,
as applied to office-holders, were a literal
fact, instead of one of the most apt of metaphors,
it is my sincere belief that the active members
of the victorious party were sufficiently
excited to have chopped off all our heads,
and have thanked Heaven for the opportunity!
It appears to me—who have been a calm and
curious observer, as well in victory as defeat—that
this fierce and bitter spirit of malice and
revenge has never distinguished the many triumphs
of my own party as it now did that of the
Whigs. The Democrats take the offices, as
a general rule, because they need them, and
because the practice of many years has made
it the law of political warfare, which unless
a different system be proclaimed, it was weakness
and cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit
of victory has made them generous. They know
how to spare when they see occasion; and when
they strike, the axe may be sharp indeed,
but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will;
nor is it their custom ignominiously to kick
the head which they have just struck off.
In short, unpleasant as was my predicament,
at best, I saw much reason to congratulate
myself that I was on the losing side rather
than the triumphant one. If, heretofore, I
had been none of the warmest of partisans
I began now, at this season of peril and adversity,
to be pretty acutely sensible with which party
my predilections lay; nor was it without something
like regret and shame that, according to a
reasonable calculation of chances, I saw my
own prospect of retaining office to be better
than those of my democratic brethren. But
who can see an inch into futurity beyond his
nose? My own head was the first that fell.
The moment when a man's head drops off is
seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely
the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless,
like the greater part of our misfortunes,
even so serious a contingency brings its remedy
and consolation with it, if the sufferer will
but make the best rather than the worst, of
the accident which has befallen him. In my
particular case the consolatory topics were
close at hand, and, indeed, had suggested
themselves to my meditations a considerable
time before it was requisite to use them.
In view of my previous weariness of office,
and vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune
somewhat resembled that of a person who should
entertain an idea of committing suicide, and
although beyond his hopes, meet with the good
hap to be murdered. In the Custom-House, as
before in the Old Manse, I had spent three
years—a term long enough to rest a weary
brain: long enough to break off old intellectual
habits, and make room for new ones: long enough,
and too long, to have lived in an unnatural
state, doing what was really of no advantage
nor delight to any human being, and withholding
myself from toil that would, at least, have
stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then, moreover,
as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the
late Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased
to be recognised by the Whigs as an enemy;
since his inactivity in political affairs—his
tendency to roam, at will, in that broad and
quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather
than confine himself to those narrow paths
where brethren of the same household must
diverge from one another—had sometimes made
it questionable with his brother Democrats
whether he was a friend. Now, after he had
won the crown of martyrdom (though with no
longer a head to wear it on), the point might
be looked upon as settled. Finally, little
heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous
to be overthrown in the downfall of the party
with which he had been content to stand than
to remain a forlorn survivor, when so many
worthier men were falling: and at last, after
subsisting for four years on the mercy of
a hostile administration, to be compelled
then to define his position anew, and claim
the yet more humiliating mercy of a friendly
one.
Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair,
and kept me for a week or two careering through
the public prints, in my decapitated state,
like Irving's Headless Horseman, ghastly and
grim, and longing to be buried, as a political
dead man ought. So much for my figurative
self. The real human being all this time,
with his head safely on his shoulders, had
brought himself to the comfortable conclusion
that everything was for the best; and making
an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens,
had opened his long-disused writing desk,
and was again a literary man.
Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient
predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play.
Rusty through long idleness, some little space
was requisite before my intellectual machinery
could be brought to work upon the tale with
an effect in any degree satisfactory. Even
yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much
absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye,
a stern and sombre aspect: too much ungladdened
by genial sunshine; too little relieved by
the tender and familiar influences which soften
almost every scene of nature and real life,
and undoubtedly should soften every picture
of them. This uncaptivating effect is perhaps
due to the period of hardly accomplished revolution,
and still seething turmoil, in which the story
shaped itself. It is no indication, however,
of a lack of cheerfulness in the writer's
mind: for he was happier while straying through
the gloom of these sunless fantasies than
at any time since he had quitted the Old Manse.
Some of the briefer articles, which contribute
to make up the volume, have likewise been
written since my involuntary withdrawal from
the toils and honours of public life, and
the remainder are gleaned from annuals and
magazines, of such antique date, that they
have gone round the circle, and come back
to novelty again. Keeping up the metaphor
of the political guillotine, the whole may
be considered as the POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF
A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR: and the sketch which
I am now bringing to a close, if too autobiographical
for a modest person to publish in his lifetime,
will readily be excused in a gentleman who
writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with
all the world! My blessing on my friends!
My forgiveness to my enemies! For I am in
the realm of quiet!
The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream
behind me. The old Inspector—who, by-the-bye,
I regret to say, was overthrown and killed
by a horse some time ago, else he would certainly
have lived for ever—he, and all those other
venerable personages who sat with him at the
receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view:
white-headed and wrinkled images, which my
fancy used to sport with, and has now flung
aside for ever. The merchants—Pingree, Phillips,
Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt—these
and many other names, which had such classic
familiarity for my ear six months ago,—these
men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so important
a position in the world—how little time
has it required to disconnect me from them
all, not merely in act, but recollection!
It is with an effort that I recall the figures
and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise,
my old native town will loom upon me through
the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and
around it; as if it were no portion of the
real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land,
with only imaginary inhabitants to people
its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes,
and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main
street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality
of my life; I am a citizen of somewhere else.
My good townspeople will not much regret me,
for—though it has been as dear an object
as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some
importance in their eyes, and to win myself
a pleasant memory in this abode and burial-place
of so many of my forefathers—there has never
been, for me, the genial atmosphere which
a literary man requires in order to ripen
the best harvest of his mind. I shall do better
amongst other faces; and these familiar ones,
it need hardly be said, will do just as well
without me.
It may be, however—oh, transporting and
triumphant thought—that the great-grandchildren
of the present race may sometimes think kindly
of the scribbler of bygone days, when the
antiquary of days to come, among the sites
memorable in the town's history, shall point
out the locality of THE TOWN PUMP.
