Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1864-07-30
.QBlo, Statesman,
rr. ~, PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY
The Ohio Statesman Company
SATURDAY MORNING, : : JULY 80.
An English sketch Of Hawthorne.


Mr.. Edward Dicey, young Englishman
who Travelled in this country two or three
years ago. and made the acquaintance of
many of our literary men, writes some in
teresting "reminiscences of Hawthorne. His
acquaintance with the deceased was not
long, extending over period of about three
months, a part OF which time was spent at
his house in Concord, where he says ''the
shyness which often rendered it difficult to
get on with him seemed to fall away. He
was not brilliant talker, but If | were to
explain the attraction of Hawthorne's talk
should say it lay in the odd combination
of clear, hard-headed sense and dreamy
fancy. Cynical he was not; his mind was
too large for anything small or mean but
he was tolerant of everything to the last
degree catholic in all his judgments; skep-
tical because he saw any question from so
many points of view. He was utterly un-
American in look-unlike, that is, the nor
NAL Yankee type as we picture it to our
selves. How he ever came to be borne in
that bustling New World became from the
first moment | knew him an increasing
mystery to me. He belonged indeed to
that scattered Shandean family who are
never in their right places wherever they
happen to be born--to that race of Hamlets to
whom the world is always out of joint any
where" OF Hawthorne's opinions and feel
ings in regard to the present civil war, Mr.Di-
cey says-"Loving the North, but not hating
the South, he felt himself altogether out of
harmony with the passion of the hour
Moreover, his whole nature shrank from
the rough wear and tear inseparable from
great popular movements of any kind.
His keen observant intellect seemed to show
him the weakness and vanities and vulgar
tiles of the whole class of reformers. He
recognized that their work was good he
admired the thoroughness he could not i'm
itate; but somehow the details of popular
agitation were strangely offensive to him.
The impression made upon him by the per-
sonal manner and behavior of President
Lincoln was so inconsistent with his own
ideas of dignity that he longed, know, to
describe him as he really appeared, and
only failed to do so in his Sketches of the
War; in consequence of the representations
of his friends" 'As you have seen Lin
coln,' he said, 81 wish you could have seen
Pierce too; you would have seen areal gen
tleman." Thus, about the whole question
of the war, HawthOrne's mind was always
lowering between two views. He sympa-
thiZed with the war in principle; but its
inevitable accessOries-the bloOdshed, the
hustle, and above all, perhaps, the bunkum
which accompanied it-were to him abso-
lutely hateful. "Here, in England, think.
people accused Hawthorne,a las think unfair
ly, for the criticisms contained in his last
book upon our national habits and charac-
ter. The abuse was exaggerated, after our
wont, but | admit freely that there were
things in the old Home which | think It's
author would not have written if his mind
had not been embittered by the harsh and
unsparing attacks that, ever since the out
break of the war, have been poured upon
everything and everybody in the North.-
With all his senstiveness, and all his re-
finement, and all his world culture Haw-
thorne was still a Yankee in heart. He saw
the defects of his countrymen only too
clearly; he was willing enough to speak of
them unsparlngly; but when others abused
his country then the native New England
blood was reused within that thoughtful
nature" ION the last evening that 1pass-
ed at his house." says Mr.. Dicey, tive were
speaking of the Spiritualist creed, that ex-
istence recommences, under another form,
the moment after DEATH" 'Ah,' said Haw-
thorne, half-laughing, half-seriously, Il
hope there will be break. A couple of
thousand years or so of sleep is the least |
can do with before begin life again." An
interesting portion of Mr.. Dicey's arti-
Gle is that where he speaks of the universal
conviction amongst the American people of
thejustice ofthe war. "A man less like Haw-
thorne than his friend and companion Tick
nor cannot well be conceived. A shrewd,
kindly, man of business, with little senti-
ment in his disposition, he valued and was
valued by Hawthorne, exactly because each
possessed the qualities in which the other
was deficient. In different way and on
different grounds, he was, perhaps, natural
ly more averse to the war than even Haw-
thorne himself. Ticknor, as | knew him,
always seemed to me man who took life
very pleasantly-eminently not a reformer;
ready enough, after a kindly fashion, to
think that everything was for the best i'm
the best possible of worlds; and well in
clined toward Southerners, with whom he
had had business and personal relations of
old standing date. remember one night
that passed at his house, his telling me as
we sat alone up stairs smoking, after the
family had gone to bed, that often and Of
ten he could not get to sleep because he felt
so wretched when he thought of the war
then raging in the land he had known so
peaceful and so prosperous. And yet he
also had, as far as l could learn, no question
whatever that the war he deplored SO much
was righteous and ineVitahlen r.. .. ..r...