Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-19
A CONSULATE SHRINE.
Wakeman, the Wanderer, at Haw-
thorne's Haunts in Liverpool.
HIS GRATEFUL ENGLISH GUIDE.
Few Traces of the Great Novelist Remain
Across the Water.
THE OLD OFFICES ARE FOUND AT LAST
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE DISPATCH. J

heaven, L am sovereign again, ana no
longer a servant" So wrote Nathaniel
Hawthorne in this city, under date of Janu-
ary 8, 1853, after having called at the Ameri-
can Embassy to arrange for his passport to
Italy.
His unfaltering loyalty to his college and
lifelong friend, Franklin Pierce, had been
rewarded by appointment to the Liverpool
Consulate, then the most valuable, in point
of fees and the most onerous and unpleasant
to man of Hawthorne's fiber, in point of
residence, within the gift of our Govern
ment.
He had passed through the four years
ordeal with credit; had saved considerable
money; but had accomplished no more than
batch of vagarous English notes of travel,
and possibly sketched a few misty outlines
of romances; and was now, after his long
and irksome slavery at Liverpool, full of
the elation of deliverance and the joyful en-
thusiasm growing out of preparations for
the long vacation in dreamful Italy-Italy
the eternal inspirer of dreams until Italy is
known.
IN MoLDY BOROUGH.
CHANGED upon these exultant words of
Hawthorne, the other day, in 2O-year-old
volume, owned by an SO-year-old man, in
his 1OO-year-old home, beneath the shadows
of a 400-year-old church, in the !, ,000- year.
old town of Ormskirk, Lancashire.
While the moldy burgh is interesting
enough on its own account, the old man in
the old home by the old church became pos
itively lovable to me, because he loved with
a sort of idolatry the romancist whose MEM
| ory we all treasure so previously. The old
church looming above the red tiles of his
cottage roof is curiously surmounted by
detached tower and steeple; the pile so gray,
mellow and ivy-massed as to involuntarily
suggest gigantic tree Topped off in its
lower trunk, where the huge battlemented
tower stops, out of whose edge, where the
steeple rises, has sprouted a second slender
tree. The tradition goes that two caprici-
GUS maiden sisters, desirous of raising some
sacred memorial agreed upon erecting upon
Orms-kirk tower and steeple, yet, disagree
ing as to uniting and connecting their work,
they finally expended all their wealth and
energies upon both, each independent of the
other
1 had come to Ormskirk attracted by the
antiquity of the town and the unique
character of this most venerable church;
and, curiously enough, while wandering
about the antique pile encountered the
same man whom Hawthorne had encoun-
tered nearly 40 years before.
HAwTHoRNE's HUMBLE ENGLISH GUIDE,
The old man had in former times been
simply waiter in the little Ormskirk tav-
ern where Hawthorne had once supped. 1t
was fair day, he remembered, when he
came. The latter could readily understand
scarcely word of the broad Lancashire di-
alect of the "portly and ruddy women" and
''yeomen with small clothes and broad
brimmed hats and could secure nobody's
attention on account of the crowds. He was
about to leave Ormskirk in a sort of despair
at the fruitless outcome of long foot jour-
ney, when the attendant, who had felt
drawn to him from his kindly and superior
personality, eontrived to escape his duties
loug enough to secure Hawthorne admis-
sion to the ancient church.
On departing, the novelist had gratefully
given his guide half sovereign, and had
also said to him in his kind, quiet way:
"Save your earnings, my good man, and be-
come independent for your old days" The
old man still treasures that gold-piece with
tender delight. He has all of Hawthorne's
works. They are as moldy and musty as
the old town ITSELF But the man who
wrote them, the books themselves, the tiny
bit of gold which is one of the most priced
things in England, and the hours COM
panionship which could not but envy him,
had made this one humble Englishman
conscious of new world about him.
THE WALK FROM SOUTHPORT.
I took the road over which Hawthorne
had come from Southport. Fourteen miles
he walked, but the pleasure of it all made
the distance seem but an hours tramp to
me. There was, first, the pleasant hilly
country, and then the low-lying lands by
fine gateway and lodge; the old bridge
where he lounged on the parapet; the aged
stone houses, "built merely for respectable
occupants;" the canal with its lazy boats;
the little girls, now as then, watching the
COWS lest they should go astray; the May
pole inn at the little village where Haw-
thorne asked for some cold meat and ale,"'
and got instead royal diuner with home
brewed ale, "not very mighty, but good to
quench thirst, - to wash it down with; and,
all the way, the harvesters gathering their
crops-were just as his eyes had seen them,
until roofs of the gay watering place showed
above the sand-dunes and verdure of merry
Southport
Here the wrath I had followed from
Omskirk, seemed obscured for a little in
the modern brightness of the pretty and
populous resort. Once before during the
year, when lettering at Southport, the
former presence of the man seemed to in
voluntarily crowd into every picture of the
place which came through eyes and heart to
the pencil for shaping
SHOWING MERCY TO A BURGLAR.
No one here had ever known him person.
ally. The nearest was one venerable PEN
sioner, an old>time myrmidon of the law,
who had aided in bringing to justice two
stripping burglars that had ransacked the
Hawthorne apartments, and, being dis
turbed, had gotten away with a few articles
of no great value, including Hawthorne's
boots and top coat; said pensioner regarding
the novelist as "proper soft for his evident
secret desire that the depredators should es-
cape punishment.
But all OF these kindly old voices had
broken bar or two to sing for the man whose
mere retired few months presence had left
more responsive chords than could all of
some great and vigorous mems lives
This and much else made me impatient
to arrive at the American Consulate, at 26
Chapel street, Liverpool. Here, / sur
missed, would be found veritable store of
"reminiscences. From this, one could reach
out in all directions, and gather, feast and
enjoy. 1t is a very fine and stately place,
our Liverpool Consulate, as BELTS the
agency of our Government in one of the
greatest of foreign ports 1t has in profusion
plate glass, ground glass and stained glass,
nickel furnishing, brass knobs, soft-toned
silver call bells, fine old furniture, wise
faces, frilled shirts, gray hairs, and an unc-
tious cathedral air of cautious and trained
repose, about it.
NO MEMENTos AT THE CONSULATE.
The transcendent luster of Hawthorne's |
personal Identification with the Liverpool |