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But, after all, it seemed rather aperception, or a sympathy, than a sentiment belonging to himself as anindividual. He read Phœbe as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened toher as if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of hisbleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him, to warblethrough the house. She was not an actual fact for him, but the interpretationof all that he lacked on earth brought warmly home to his conception; so thatthis mere symbol, or life-like picture, had almost the comfort of reality.
The House Of Seven Gables Becomes A National Historic Landmark - Antiques and the Arts Online
The House Of Seven Gables Becomes A National Historic Landmark.
Posted: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT [source]
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Phoebe insists that Uncle Venner come live in the cottage on the judge's property. Clifford seconds the invitation and when the foursome prepare to depart, Uncle Venner is to follow them a few days later. Children gather around the carriage, and Hepzibah notices Ned Higgins, to whom she gives some money. Leaving the house, Uncle Venner fancies he hears Alice Pyncheon playing her harpsichord as she ascends to heaven. In addition to taking Clifford to the garden, Phoebe often brings him to sit in front of the window that faces the street.
VI: Maule's Well
He had been startled into manhood and intellectual vigor; or, atleast, into a condition that resembled them, though it might be both diseasedand transitory. But, what with the shade of branches across thewindows, and the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the dark oak-panelling of thewalls, there was hardly so much daylight in the room that Hepzibah’simperfect sight could accurately distinguish the Judge’s figure. She wascertain, however, that she saw him sitting in the ancestral arm-chair, near thecentre of the floor, with his face somewhat averted, and looking towards awindow. So firm and quiet is the nervous system of such men as Judge Pyncheon,that he had perhaps stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in thehard composure of his temperament, retained the position into which accidenthad thrown him.
XVIII: Governor Pyncheon
As one of its effects, it bestowed on his countenance aquicker mobility than the old Englishman’s had possessed, and keenervivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier something, on which these acuteendowments seemed to act like dissolving acids. This process, for aught weknow, may belong to the great system of human progress, which, with everyascending footstep, as it diminishes the necessity for animal force, may bedestined gradually to spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser attributesof body. If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure a century or two more of suchrefinement as well as most other men.
But, in so long a period of concealment, the machinery had been eatenthrough with rust; so that at Holgrave’s pressure, the portrait, frameand all, tumbled suddenly from its position, and lay face downward on thefloor. A recess in the wall was thus brought to light, in which lay an objectso covered with a century’s dust that it could not immediately berecognized as a folded sheet of parchment. Holgrave opened it, and displayed anancient deed, signed with the hieroglyphics of several Indian sagamores, andconveying to Colonel Pyncheon and his heirs, forever, a vast extent ofterritory at the Eastward.
After that, the property passes into the hands of the respectable Judge Pyncheon, who lives on a country estate a few miles outside of town. That brings the story to the present generation of Pyncheons, of whom there are only a few left—besides the Judge and his son, there is Clifford (who was imprisoned for Uncle Jaffrey’s murder), Clifford’s impoverished sister, Hepzibah, and a 17-year-old country cousin, Phoebe. Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that undertook so to accountfor these circumstances as to exclude the idea of Clifford’s agency.
Maule’s Well
The displaced Maule uttered a curse upon being ousted from his property, a curse passing from generation to generation and ending only with the union between descendants of the original disputants—Holgrave, the Maule descendant, and Phoebe Pyncheon. Appearing under the imprint of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, with Fields crediting himself with having prompted Hawthorne to enlarge his draft of a tale about Hester to the length of a romance, The Scarlet Letter won instant praise but failed to bring in funds sufficient for the Hawthornes to remain in Salem. They found more economical quarters in the Berkshires, at Stockbridge, near Lenox.
XV: The Scowl and the Smile
She knocked, however; andimmediately, as if the application had been expected, the door was drawn open,by a considerable exertion of some unseen person’s strength, not wide,but far enough to afford her a sidelong entrance. As Hepzibah, in order not toexpose herself to inspection from without, invariably opened a door in thismanner, Phœbe necessarily concluded that it was her cousin who now admittedher. It did not yield to her hand; and the whitecurtain, drawn across the window which formed the upper section of the door,struck her quick perceptive faculty as something unusual.
Brief Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Shetook from the window some specimen or other of natural history,—her eyesbeing too dim with moisture to inform her accurately whether it was a rabbit ora hippopotamus,—put it into the child’s hand as a parting gift, andwent her way. The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phœbe something of hishistory. Young as he was, and had his career terminated at the point alreadyattained, there had been enough of incident to fill, very creditably, anautobiographic volume. A romance on the plan of Gil Blas, adapted to Americansociety and manners, would cease to be a romance. The experience of manyindividuals among us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal thevicissitudes of the Spaniard’s earlier life; while their ultimatesuccess, or the point whither they tend, may be incomparably higher than anythat a novelist would imagine for his hero.
When the vehicle had disappeared, she allowedherself still another loitering moment; for the patched figure of good UncleVenner was now visible, coming slowly from the head of the street downward,with a rheumatic limp, because the east wind had got into his joints. Hepzibahwished that he would pass yet more slowly, and befriend her shivering solitudea little longer. Anything that would take her out of the grievous present, andinterpose human beings betwixt herself and what was nearest toher,—whatever would defer for an instant the inevitable errand on whichshe was bound,—all such impediments were welcome. The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like the cheery expressionof comfortable activity in the human countenance. You could see, at once, thatthere was the stir of a large family within it. A huge load of oak-wood waspassing through the gateway, towards the outbuildings in the rear; the fatcook—or probably it might be the housekeeper—stood at the sidedoor, bargaining for some turkeys and poultry which a countryman had broughtfor sale.
The street is PyncheonStreet; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of widecircumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child bythe title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, Iseldom failed to turn down Pyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through theshadow of these two antiquities,—the great elm-tree and theweather-beaten edifice. Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm.
House of the Seven Gables Resumes Tours April 2 - Northshore Magazine
House of the Seven Gables Resumes Tours April 2.
Posted: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]
She is, in Hawthorne's words, stepping "down from her pedestal of imaginary rank." Hepzibah's life is changing in more ways than she can imagine. One of those major adjustments will come to her in the person of Phoebe Pyncheon, a character who is as bright as Hepzibah is dull. To emphasize this contrast, Hawthorne portrays Hepzibah's first encounter with Phoebe by having Hepzibah stand in a darkened hallway, staring through a "dusty" window to see Phoebe, who is standing outside in the light. Beginning with the maiden lady, Hepzibah Pyncheon, Hawthorne introduces this main character and then describes an old dresser whose drawers Hepzibah has to struggle to open.
There, after a glass of brandy and water, anda mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinnerand supper all in one, he had better spend the evening by the fireside. He musttoast his slippers a long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness whichthe air of this vile old house has sent curdling through his veins. He caught thecolor of what was passing about him, and threw it back more vividly than hereceived it, but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid and portentous hue.Hepzibah, on the other hand, felt herself more apart from human kind than evenin the seclusion which she had just quitted. At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything that theworld acted or enjoyed, they had been drawn into the great current of humanlife, and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fate itself. As they proceeded on their strange expedition, she now and then cast a looksidelong at Clifford, and could not but observe that he was possessed andswayed by a powerful excitement.
One of them,in truth,—it was he with the blood-stain on his band,—seemed,unless his gestures were misunderstood, to hold the parchment in his immediatekeeping, but was prevented by his two partners in the mystery from disburdeninghimself of the trust. Uponthis, the two meanly dressed figures mocked and jeered at the much-abashed olddignitary, and pointed their fingers at the stain. He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, one of the early settlers of thetown, and who had been a famous and terrible wizard in his day.
She cries as she readies herself for the day and notices how cross she looks as a result of the scowl caused by her near-sightedness. Despite her almost permanent scowl, Hepzibah is said to have a "heart that never frowned. It was naturally tender, [and] sensitive." Hepzibah faces the day in low spirits as she sets up the shop that she intends to open. Opening the shop is mortifying for her because she is an aristocrat by birth; however, she has no choice and must commence a business of her own in order to save herself from starvation. When she finally opens the shop door, she immediately runs inside the house to cry. As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the doorstep a card, whichhad been covered, all the morning, by the newspaper that the carrier had flungupon it, but was now shuffled into sight.
Towards noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentleman, large and portly, and ofremarkably dignified demeanor, passing slowly along on the opposite side of thewhite and dusty street. On coming within the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, hestopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe the perspiration from hisbrow) seemed to scrutinize, with especial interest, the dilapidated andrusty-visaged House of the Seven Gables. He himself, in a very different style,was as well worth looking at as the house. No better model need be sought, norcould have been found, of a very high order of respectability, which, by someindescribable magic, not merely expressed itself in his looks and gestures, buteven governed the fashion of his garments, and rendered them all proper andessential to the man. Without appearing to differ, in any tangible way, fromother people’s clothes, there was yet a wide and rich gravity about themthat must have been a characteristic of the wearer, since it could not bedefined as pertaining either to the cut or material.
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