The Blithedale Romance

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The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Table of Contents

I. OLD MOODIE
II. BLITHEDALE
III. A KNOT OF DREAMERS
IV. THE SUPPER-TABLE
V. UNTIL BEDTIME
VI. COVERDALE'S SICK CHAMBER
VII. THE CONVALESCENT
VIII. A MODERN ARCADIA
IX. HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA
X. A VISITOR FROM TOWN
XI. THE WOOD-PATH
XII. COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE
XIII. ZENOBIA'S LEGEND
XIV. ELIOT'S PULPIT
XV. A CRISIS
XVI. LEAVE-TAKINGS
XVII. THE HOTEL
XVIII. THE BOARDING-HOUSE
XIX. ZENOBIA'S DRAWING-ROOM
XX. THEY VANISH
XXI. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
XXII. FAUNTLEROY
XXIII. A VILLAGE HALL
XXIV. THE MASQUERADERS
XXV. THE THREE TOGETHER
XXVI. ZENOBIA AND COVERDALE
XXVII. MIDNIGHT
XXVIII. BLITHEDALE PASTURE
XXIX. MILES COVERDALE'S CONFESSION

The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I. OLD MOODIE

The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my
bachelor apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the
Veiled Lady, when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me
in an obscure part of the street.

"Mr. Coverdale," said he softly, "can I speak with you a moment?"

As I have casually alluded to the Veiled Lady, it may not be amiss to
mention, for the benefit of such of my readers as are unacquainted
with her now forgotten celebrity, that she was a phenomenon in the
mesmeric line; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a
new science, or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times her
sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract much individual notice;
nor, in fact, has any one of them come before the public under such
skilfully contrived circumstances of stage effect as those which at
once mystified and illuminated the remarkable performances of the
lady in question. Nowadays, in the management of his "subject,"
"clairvoyant," or "medium," the exhibitor affects the simplicity and
openness of scientific experiment; and even if he profess to tread a
step or two across the boundaries of the spiritual world, yet carries
with him the laws of our actual life and extends them over his
preternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the
contrary, all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of picturesque
disposition, and artistically contrasted light and shade, were made
available, in order to set the apparent miracle in the strongest
attitude of opposition to ordinary facts. In the case of the Veiled
Lady, moreover, the interest of the spectator was further wrought up
by the enigma of her identity, and an absurd rumor (probably set
afloat by the exhibitor, and at one time very prevalent) that a
beautiful young lady, of family and fortune, was enshrouded within
the misty drapery of the veil. It was white, with somewhat of a
subdued silver sheen, like the sunny side of a cloud; and, falling
over the wearer from head to foot, was supposed to insulate her from
the material world, from time and space, and to endow her with many
of the privileges of a disembodied spirit.

Her pretensions, however, whether miraculous or otherwise, have
little to do with the present narrative--except, indeed, that I had
propounded, for the Veiled Lady's prophetic solution, a query as to
the success of our Blithedale enterprise. The response, by the bye,
was of the true Sibylline stamp,--nonsensical in its first aspect,
yet on closer study unfolding a variety of interpretations, one of
which has certainly accorded with the event. I was turning over this
riddle in my mind, and trying to catch its slippery purport by the
tail, when the old man above mentioned interrupted me.

"Mr. Coverdale!--Mr. Coverdale!" said he, repeating my name twice, in
order to make up for the hesitating and ineffectual way in which he
uttered it. "I ask your pardon, sir, but I hear you are going to
Blithedale tomorrow."

I knew the pale, elderly face, with the red-tipt nose, and the patch
over one eye; and likewise saw something characteristic in the old
fellow's way of standing under the arch of a gate, only revealing
enough of himself to make me recognize him as an acquaintance. He
was a very shy personage, this Mr. Moodie; and the trait was the more
singular, as his mode of getting his bread necessarily brought him
into the stir and hubbub of the world more than the generality of men.

"Yes, Mr. Moodie," I answered, wondering what interest he could take
in the fact, "it is my intention to go to Blithedale to-morrow. Can
I be of any service to you before my departure?"

"If you pleased, Mr. Coverdale," said he, "you might do me a very
great favor."

"A very great one?" repeated I, in a tone that must have expressed
but little alacrity of beneficence, although I was ready to do the
old man any amount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself.
"A very great favor, do you say? My time is brief, Mr. Moodie, and
I have a good many preparations to make. But be good enough to tell
me what you wish."

"Ah, sir," replied Old Moodie, "I don't quite like to do that; and,
on further thoughts, Mr. Coverdale, perhaps I had better apply to
some older gentleman, or to some lady, if you would have the kindness
to make me known to one, who may happen to be going to Blithedale.
You are a young man, sir!"

"Does that fact lessen my availability for your purpose?" asked I.
"However, if an older man will suit you better, there is Mr.
Hollingsworth, who has three or four years the advantage of me in age,
and is a much more solid character, and a philanthropist to boot. I
am only a poet, and, so the critics tell me, no great affair at that!
But what can this business be, Mr. Moodie? It begins to interest me;
especially since your hint that a lady's influence might be found
desirable. Come, I am really anxious to be of service to you."

But the old fellow, in his civil and demure manner, was both freakish
and obstinate; and he had now taken some notion or other into his
head that made him hesitate in his former design.

"I wonder, sir," said he, "whether you know a lady whom they call
Zenobia?"

"Not personally," I answered, "although I expect that pleasure
to-morrow, as she has got the start of the rest of us, and is already
a resident at Blithedale. But have you a literary turn, Mr. Moodie?
or have you taken up the advocacy of women's rights? or what else can
have interested you in this lady? Zenobia, by the bye, as I suppose
you know, is merely her public name; a sort of mask in which she
comes before the world, retaining all the privileges of privacy,--a
contrivance, in short, like the white drapery of the Veiled Lady,
only a little more transparent. But it is late. Will you tell me
what I can do for you?"

"Please to excuse me to-night, Mr. Coverdale," said Moodie. "You are
very kind; but I am afraid I have troubled you, when, after all,
there may be no need. Perhaps, with your good leave, I will come to
your lodgings to-morrow morning, before you set out for Blithedale.
I wish you a good-night, sir, and beg pardon for stopping you."

And so he slipt away; and, as he did not show himself the next
morning, it was only through subsequent events that I ever arrived at
a plausible conjecture as to what his business could have been.
Arriving at my room, I threw a lump of cannel coal upon the grate,
lighted a cigar, and spent an hour in musings of every hue, from the
brightest to the most sombre; being, in truth, not so very confident
as at some former periods that this final step, which would mix me up
irrevocably with the Blithedale affair, was the wisest that could
possibly be taken. It was nothing short of midnight when I went to
bed, after drinking a glass of particularly fine sherry on which I
used to pride myself in those days. It was the very last bottle; and
I finished it, with a friend, the next forenoon, before setting out
for Blithedale.

II. BLITHEDALE

There can hardly remain for me (who am really getting to be a frosty
bachelor, with another white hair, every week or so, in my mustache),
there can hardly flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth,
as that which I remember, the next day, at Blithedale. It was a wood
fire, in the parlor of an old farmhouse, on an April afternoon, but
with the fitful gusts of a wintry snowstorm roaring in the chimney.
Vividly does that fireside re-create itself, as I rake away the ashes
from the embers in my memory, and blow them up with a sigh, for lack
of more inspiring breath. Vividly for an instant, but anon, with the
dimmest gleam, and with just as little fervency for my heart as for
my finger-ends! The staunch oaken logs were long ago burnt out.
Their genial glow must be represented, if at all, by the merest
phosphoric glimmer, like that which exudes, rather than shines, from
damp fragments of decayed trees, deluding the benighted wanderer
through a forest. Around such chill mockery of a fire some few of us
might sit on the withered leaves, spreading out each a palm towards
the imaginary warmth, and talk over our exploded scheme for beginning
the life of Paradise anew.

Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, I am bold to
affirm--nobody, at least, in our bleak little world of New England,--
had dreamed of Paradise that day except as the pole suggests the
tropic. Nor, with such materials as were at hand, could the most
skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of Eve's
bower than might be seen in the snow hut of an Esquimaux. But we
made a summer of it, in spite of the wild drifts.

It was an April day, as already hinted, and well towards the middle
of the month. When morning dawned upon me, in town, its temperature
was mild enough to be pronounced even balmy, by a lodger, like myself,
in one of the midmost houses of a brick block,--each house partaking
of the warmth of all the rest, besides the sultriness of its
individual furnace--heat. But towards noon there had come snow,
driven along the street by a northeasterly blast, and whitening the
roofs and sidewalks with a business-like perseverance that would have
done credit to our severest January tempest. It set about its task
apparently as much in earnest as if it had been guaranteed from a
thaw for months to come. The greater, surely, was my heroism, when,
puffing out a final whiff of cigar-smoke, I quitted my cosey pair of
bachelor-rooms,--with a good fire burning in the grate, and a closet
right at hand, where there was still a bottle or two in the champagne
basket and a residuum of claret in a box,--quitted, I say, these
comfortable quarters, and plunged into the heart of the pitiless
snowstorm, in quest of a better life.

The better life! Possibly, it would hardly look so now; it is enough
if it looked so then. The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the
doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the
truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to
know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.

Yet, after all, let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious,
to follow out one's daydream to its natural consummation, although,
if the vision have been worth the having, it is certain never to be
consummated otherwise than by a failure. And what of that? Its
airiest fragments, impalpable as they may be, will possess a value
that lurks not in the most ponderous realities of any practicable
scheme. They are not the rubbish of the mind. Whatever else I may
repent of, therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor
follies that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes
of the world's destiny--yes!--and to do what in me lay for their
accomplishment; even to the extent of quitting a warm fireside,
flinging away a freshly lighted cigar, and travelling far beyond the
strike of city clocks, through a drifting snowstorm.

There were four of us who rode together through the storm; and
Hollingsworth, who had agreed to be of the number, was accidentally
delayed, and set forth at a later hour alone. As we threaded the
streets, I remember how the buildings on either side seemed to press
too closely upon us, insomuch that our mighty hearts found barely
room enough to throb between them. The snowfall, too, looked
inexpressibly dreary (I had almost called it dingy), coming down
through an atmosphere of city smoke, and alighting on the sidewalk
only to be moulded into the impress of somebody's patched boot or
overshoe. Thus the track of an old conventionalism was visible on
what was freshest from the sky. But when we left the pavements, and
our muffled hoof-tramps beat upon a desolate extent of country road,
and were effaced by the unfettered blast as soon as stamped, then
there was better air to breathe. Air that had not been breathed once
and again! air that had not been spoken into words of falsehood,
formality, and error, like all the air of the dusky city!

"How pleasant it is!" remarked I, while the snowflakes flew into my
mouth the moment it was opened. "How very mild and balmy is this
country air!"

"Ah, Coverdale, don't laugh at what little enthusiasm you have left!"
said one of my companions. "I maintain that this nitrous atmosphere
is really exhilarating; and, at any rate, we can never call ourselves
regenerated men till a February northeaster shall be as grateful to
us as the softest breeze of June!"

So we all of us took courage, riding fleetly and merrily along, by
stone fences that were half buried in the wave-like drifts; and
through patches of woodland, where the tree-trunks opposed a
snow-incrusted side towards the northeast; and within ken of deserted
villas, with no footprints in their avenues; and passed scattered
dwellings, whence puffed the smoke of country fires, strongly
impregnated with the pungent aroma of burning peat. Sometimes,
encountering a traveller, we shouted a friendly greeting; and he,
unmuffling his ears to the bluster and the snow-spray, and listening
eagerly, appeared to think our courtesy worth less than the trouble
which it cost him. The churl! He understood the shrill whistle of
the blast, but had no intelligence for our blithe tones of
brotherhood. This lack of faith in our cordial sympathy, on the
traveller's part, was one among the innumerable tokens how difficult
a task we had in hand for the reformation of the world. We rode on,
however, with still unflagging spirits, and made such good
companionship with the tempest that, at our journey's end, we
professed ourselves almost loath to bid the rude blusterer good-by.
But, to own the truth, I was little better than an icicle, and began
to be suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold.

And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farmhouse,
the same fire that glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences at the
beginning of this chapter. There we sat, with the snow melting out
of our hair and beards, and our faces all ablaze, what with the past
inclemency and present warmth. It was, indeed, a right good fire
that we found awaiting us, built up of great, rough logs, and knotty
limbs, and splintered fragments of an oak-tree, such as farmers are
wont to keep for their own hearths, since these crooked and
unmanageable boughs could never be measured into merchantable cords
for the market. A family of the old Pilgrims might have swung their
kettle over precisely such a fire as this, only, no doubt, a bigger
one; and, contrasting it with my coal-grate, I felt so much the more
that we had transported ourselves a world-wide distance from the
system of society that shackled us at breakfast-time.

Good, comfortable Mrs. Foster (the wife of stout Silas Foster, who
was to manage the farm at a fair stipend, and be our tutor in the art
of husbandry) bade us a hearty welcome. At her back--a back of
generous breadth--appeared two young women, smiling most hospitably,
but looking rather awkward withal, as not well knowing what was to be
their position in our new arrangement of the world. We shook hands
affectionately all round, and congratulated ourselves that the
blessed state of brotherhood and sisterhood, at which we aimed, might
fairly be dated from this moment. Our greetings were hardly
concluded when the door opened, and Zenobia--whom I had never before
seen, important as was her place in our enterprise--Zenobia entered
the parlor.

This (as the reader, if at all acquainted with our literary biography,
need scarcely be told) was not her real name. She had assumed it,
in the first instance, as her magazine signature; and, as it accorded
well with something imperial which her friends attributed to this
lady's figure and deportment, they half-laughingly adopted it in
their familiar intercourse with her. She took the appellation in
good part, and even encouraged its constant use; which, in fact, was
thus far appropriate, that our Zenobia, however humble looked her new
philosophy, had as much native pride as any queen would have known
what to do with.

III. A KNOT OF DREAMERS

Zenobia bade us welcome, in a fine, frank, mellow voice, and gave
each of us her hand, which was very soft and warm. She had something
appropriate, I recollect, to say to every individual; and what she
said to myself was this:--"I have long wished to know you, Mr.
Coverdale, and to thank you for your beautiful poetry, some of which
I have learned by heart; or rather it has stolen into my memory,
without my exercising any choice or volition about the matter. Of
course--permit me to say you do not think of relinquishing an
occupation in which you have done yourself so much credit. I would
almost rather give you up as an associate, than that the world should
lose one of its true poets!"

"Ah, no; there will not be the slightest danger of that, especially
after this inestimable praise from Zenobia," said I, smiling, and
blushing, no doubt, with excess of pleasure. "I hope, on the
contrary, now to produce something that shall really deserve to be
called poetry,--true, strong, natural, and sweet, as is the life
which we are going to lead,--something that shall have the notes of
wild birds twittering through it, or a strain like the wind anthems
in the woods, as the case may be."

"Is it irksome to you to hear your own verses sung?" asked Zenobia,
with a gracious smile. "If so, I am very sorry, for you will
certainly hear me singing them sometimes, in the summer evenings."

"Of all things," answered I, "that is what will delight me most."

While this passed, and while she spoke to my companions, I was taking
note of Zenobia's aspect; and it impressed itself on me so distinctly,
that I can now summon her up, like a ghost, a little wanner than the
life but otherwise identical with it. She was dressed as simply as
possible, in an American print (I think the dry-goods people call it
so), but with a silken kerchief, between which and her gown there was
one glimpse of a white shoulder. It struck me as a great piece of
good fortune that there should be just that glimpse. Her hair, which
was dark, glossy, and of singular abundance, was put up rather
soberly and primly--without curls, or other ornament, except a single
flower. It was an exotic of rare beauty, and as fresh as if the
hothouse gardener had just clipt it from the stem. That flower has
struck deep root into my memory. I can both see it and smell it, at
this moment. So brilliant, so rare, so costly as it must have been,
and yet enduring only for a day, it was more indicative of the pride
and pomp which had a luxuriant growth in Zenobia's character than if
a great diamond had sparkled among her hair.

Her hand, though very soft, was larger than most women would like to
have, or than they could afford to have, though not a whit too large
in proportion with the spacious plan of Zenobia's entire development.
It did one good to see a fine intellect (as hers really was,
although its natural tendency lay in another direction than towards
literature) so fitly cased. She was, indeed, an admirable figure of
a woman, just on the hither verge of her richest maturity, with a
combination of features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful,
even if some fastidious persons might pronounce them a little
deficient in softness and delicacy. But we find enough of those
attributes everywhere. Preferable--by way of variety, at least--was
Zenobia's bloom, health, and vigor, which she possessed in such
overflow that a man might well have fallen in love with her for their
sake only. In her quiet moods, she seemed rather indolent; but when
really in earnest, particularly if there were a spice of bitter
feeling, she grew all alive to her finger-tips.

"I am the first comer," Zenobia went on to say, while her smile
beamed warmth upon us all; "so I take the part of hostess for to-day,
and welcome you as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests,
too, at supper. Tomorrow, if you please, we will be brethren and
sisters, and begin our new life from daybreak."

"Have we our various parts assigned?" asked some one.

"Oh, we of the softer sex," responded Zenobia, with her mellow,
almost broad laugh,--most delectable to hear, but not in the least
like an ordinary woman's laugh,--"we women (there are four of us here
already) will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as a
matter of course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew,--to
wash, and iron, and scrub, and sweep,--and, at our idler intervals,
to repose ourselves on knitting and sewing,--these, I suppose, must
be feminine occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when
our individual adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be
that some of us who wear the petticoat will go afield, and leave the
weaker brethren to take our places in the kitchen."

"What a pity," I remarked, "that the kitchen, and the housework
generally, cannot be left out of our system altogether! It is odd
enough that the kind of labor which falls to the lot of women is just
that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life--the life of
degenerated mortals--from the life of Paradise. Eve had no
dinner-pot, and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day."

"I am afraid," said Zenobia, with mirth gleaming out of her eyes, "we
shall find some difficulty in adopting the paradisiacal system for at
least a month to come. Look at that snowdrift sweeping past the
window! Are there any figs ripe, do you think? Have the pineapples
been gathered to-day? Would you like a bread-fruit, or a cocoanut?
Shall I run out and pluck you some roses? No, no, Mr. Coverdale; the
only flower hereabouts is the one in my hair, which I got out of a
greenhouse this morning. As for the garb of Eden," added she,
shivering playfully, "I shall not assume it till after May-day!"

Assuredly Zenobia could not have intended it,--the fault must have
been entirely in my imagination. But these last words, together with
something in her manner, irresistibly brought up a picture of that
fine, perfectly developed figure, in Eve's earliest garment. Her
free, careless, generous modes of expression often had this effect of
creating images which, though pure, are hardly felt to be quite
decorous when born of a thought that passes between man and woman. I
imputed it, at that time, to Zenobia's noble courage, conscious of no
harm, and scorning the petty restraints which take the life and color
out of other women's conversation. There was another peculiarity
about her. We seldom meet with women nowadays, and in this country,
who impress us as being women at all,--their sex fades away and goes
for nothing, in ordinary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One felt
an influence breathing out of her such as we might suppose to come
from Eve, when she was just made, and her Creator brought her to Adam,
saying, "Behold! here is a woman!" Not that I would convey the idea
of especial gentleness, grace, modesty, and shyness, but of a certain
warm and rich characteristic, which seems, for the most part, to have
been refined away out of the feminine system.

"And now," continued Zenobia, "I must go and help get supper. Do you
think you can be content, instead of figs, pineapples, and all the
other delicacies of Adam's supper-table, with tea and toast, and a
certain modest supply of ham and tongue, which, with the instinct of
a housewife, I brought hither in a basket? And there shall be bread
and milk, too, if the innocence of your taste demands it."

The whole sisterhood now went about their domestic avocations,
utterly declining our offers to assist, further than by bringing wood
for the kitchen fire from a huge pile in the back yard. After
heaping up more than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the
sitting-room, drew our chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk
over our prospects. Soon, with a tremendous stamping in the entry,
appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth, and grizzly-bearded.
He came from foddering the cattle in the barn, and from the field,
where he had been ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it
impossible to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pretty much the same
tone as if he were speaking to his oxen, took a quid from his iron
tobacco-box, pulled off his wet cowhide boots, and sat down before
the fire in his stocking-feet. The steam arose from his soaked
garments, so that the stout yeoman looked vaporous and spectre-like.

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