The situation in itself,--the indeterminateness
and repression of it, and the denial of any satisfaction to his warm and
various sympathies, and his capacity for affection and responsibility,--
must be allowed to have been intensely wearing. Hawthorne believed
himself to possess a strongly social nature, which was cramped, chilled,
and to some extent permanently restrained by this long seclusion at the
beginning of his career. This alone might furnish just cause for
bitterness against the fate that chained him. It was not a matter of
option; for he knew that his battle must be fought through as he had
begun it, and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into action
presented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy of isolation
which is the lot of every artist in America still, though greatly
mitigated by the devotion of our first generation of national writers.
If he had quitted his post sooner, and had tried by force to mould his
genius according to theory, he might have utterly distorted or stunted
its growth. All that he could as yet do for himself was to preserve a
certain repose and harmony in the midst of uncertainty and delay; and
for this he formed four wise precepts: "To break off customs; to shake
off spirits ill disposed; to meditate on youth; to do nothing against
one's genius." [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. I.] Thus he kept
himself fresh and flexible, hopeful, ready for emergency. But that
I have not exaggerated the severity and import of his long vigil, let
this revery of his show, written at Liverpool, in 1855: "I think I have
been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own fireside, and
with my wife and children about me; more content to enjoy what I have,
less anxious for anything beyond it in this life.
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