The Christmas Banquet (From Mosses From An Old Manse)
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> The Christmas Banquet (From Mosses From An Old Manse)
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MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET
[FROM THE UNPUBLISHED "_ALLEGORIES OF THE HEART_."]
"I have here attempted," said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets of
manuscript, as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the summer-
house,--"I have attempted to seize hold of a personage who glides
past me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My former sad
experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight
into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I have
wandered like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast
flickering to extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a
hopeless puzzle."
"Well, but propound him," said the sculptor. "Let us have an idea
of hint, to begin with."
"Why, indeed," replied Roderick, "he is such a being as I could
conceive you to carve out of marble, and some yet unrealized
perfection of human science to endow with an exquisite mockery of
intellect; but still there lacks the last inestimable touch of a
divine Creator. He looks like a man; and, perchance, like a better
specimen of man than you ordinarily meet. You might esteem him
wise; he is capable of cultivation and refinement, and has at least
an external conscience; but the demands that spirit makes upon
spirit are precisely those to which he cannot respond. When at last
you come close to him you find him chill and unsubstantial,--a mere
vapor."
"I believe," said Rosina, "I have a glimmering idea of what you
mean."
"Then be thankful," answered her husband, smiling; "but do not
anticipate any further illumination from what I am about to read. I
have here imagined such a man to be--what, probably, he never is--
conscious of the deficiency in his spiritual organization. Methinks
the result would be a sense of cold unreality wherewith he would go
shivering through the world, longing to exchange his load of ice for
any burden of real grief that fate could fling upon a human being."
Contenting himself with this preface, Roderick began to read.
In a certain old gentleman's last will and testament there appeared
a bequest, which, as his final thought and deed, was singularly in
keeping with a long life of melancholy eccentricity. He devised a
considerable sum for establishing a fund, the interest of which was
to be expended, annually forever, in preparing a Christmas Banquet
for ten of the most miserable persons that could be found. It
seemed not to be the testator's purpose to make these half a score
of sad hearts merry, but to provide that the stern or fierce
expression of human discontent should not be drowned, even for that
one holy and joyful day, amid the acclamations of festal gratitude
which all Christendom sends up. And he desired, likewise, to
perpetuate his own remonstrance against the earthly course of
Providence, and his sad and sour dissent from those systems of
religion or philosophy which either find sunshine in the world or
draw it down from heaven.
The task of inviting the guests, or of selecting among such as might
advance their claims to partake of this dismal hospitality, was
confided to the two trustees or stewards of the fund. These
gentlemen, like their deceased friend, were sombre humorists, who
made it their principal occupation to number the sable threads in
the web of human life, and drop all the golden ones out of the
reckoning. They performed their present office with integrity and
judgment. The aspect of the assembled company, on the day of the
first festival, might not, it is true, have satisfied every beholder
that these were especially the individuals, chosen forth from all
the world, whose griefs were worthy to stand as indicators of the
mass of human suffering. Yet, after due consideration, it could not
be disputed that here was a variety of hopeless discomfort, which,
if it sometimes arose from causes apparently inadequate, was thereby
only the shrewder imputation against the nature and mechanism of
life.
The arrangements and decorations of the banquet were probably
intended to signify that death in life which had been the testator's
definition of existence. The hall, illuminated by torches, was hung
round with curtains of deep and dusky purple, and adorned with
branches of cypress and wreaths of artificial flowers, imitative of
such as used to be strewn over the dead. A sprig of parsley was
laid by every plate. The main reservoir of wine, was a sepulchral
urn of silver, whence the liquor was distributed around the table in
small vases, accurately copied from those that held the tears of
ancient mourners. Neither had the stewards--if it were their taste
that arranged these details--forgotten the fantasy of the old
Egyptians, who seated a skeleton at every festive board, and mocked
their own merriment with the imperturbable grin of a death's-head.
Such a fearful guest, shrouded in a black mantle, sat now at the
head of the table. It was whispered, I know not with what truth,
that the testator himself had once walked the visible world with the
machinery of that sane skeleton, and that it was one of the
stipulations of his will, that he should thus be permitted to sit,
from year to year, at the banquet which he had instituted. If so, it
was perhaps covertly implied that he had cherished no hopes of bliss
beyond the grave to compensate for the evils which he felt or
imagined here. And if, in their bewildered conjectures as to the
purpose of earthly existence, the banqueters should throw aside the
veil, and cast an inquiring glance at this figure of death, as
seeking thence the solution otherwise unattainable, the only reply
would be a stare of the vacant eye-caverns and a grin of the
skeleton jaws. Such was the response that the dead man had fancied
himself to receive when he asked of Death to solve the riddle of his
life; and it was his desire to repeat it when the guests of his
dismal hospitality should find themselves perplexed with the same
question.
"What means that wreath?" asked several of the company, while
viewing the decorations of the table.
They alluded to a wreath of cypress, which was held on high by a
skeleton arm, protruding from within the black mantle.
"It is a crown," said one of the stewards, "not for the worthiest,
but for the wofulest, when he shall prove his claim to it."
The guest earliest bidden to the festival was a man of soft and
gentle character, who had not energy to struggle against the heavy
despondency to which his temperament rendered him liable; and
therefore with nothing outwardly to excuse him from happiness, he
had spent a life of quiet misery that made his blood torpid, and
weighed upon his breath, and sat like a ponderous night-fiend upon
every throb of his unresisting heart. His wretchedness seemed as
deep as his original nature, if not identical with it. It was the
misfortune of a second guest to cherish within his bosom a diseased
heart, which had become so wretchedly sore that the continual and
unavoidable rubs of the world, the blow of an enemy, the careless
jostle of a stranger, and even the faithful and loving touch of a
friend, alike made ulcers in it. As is the habit of people thus
afflicted, he found his chief employment in exhibiting these
miserable sores to any who would give themselves the pain of viewing
them. A third guest was a hypochondriac, whose imagination wrought
necromancy in his outward and inward world, and caused him to see
monstrous faces in the household fire, and dragons in the clouds of
sunset, and fiends in the guise of beautiful women, and something
ugly or wicked beneath all the pleasant surfaces of nature. His
neighbor at table was one who, in his early youth, had trusted
mankind too much, and hoped too highly in their behalf, and, in
meeting with many disappointments, had become desperately soured.
For several years back this misanthrope bad employed himself in
accumulating motives for hating and despising his race,--such as
murder, lust, treachery, ingratitude, faithlessness of trusted
friends, instinctive vices of children, impurity of women, hidden
guilt in men of saint-like aspect,--and, in short, all manner of
black realities that sought to decorate themselves with outward
grace or glory. But at every atrocious fact that was added to his
catalogue, at every increase of the sad knowledge which he spent his
life to collect, the native impulses of the poor man's loving and
confiding heart made him groan with anguish. Next, with his heavy
brow bent downward, there stole into the hall a man naturally
earnest and impassioned, who, from his immemorial infancy, had felt
the consciousness of a high message to the world; but, essaying to
deliver it, had found either no voice or form of speech, or else no
ears to listen. Therefore his whole life was a bitter questioning
of himself: "Why have not men acknowledged my mission? Am I not a
self-deluding fool? What business have I on earth? Where is my
grave?" Throughout the festival, he quaffed frequent draughts from
the sepulchral urn of wine, hoping thus to quench the celestial fire
that tortured his own breast and could not benefit his race.
Then there entered, having flung away a ticket for a ball, a gay
gallant of yesterday, who had found four or five wrinkles in his
brow, and more gray hairs than he could well number on his head.
Endowed with sense and feeling, he had nevertheless spent his youth
in folly, but had reached at last that dreary point in life where
Folly quits us of her own accord, leaving us to make friends with
Wisdom if we can. Thus, cold and desolate, he had come to seek
Wisdom at the banquet, and wondered if the skeleton were she. To
eke out the company, the stewards had invited a distressed poet from
his home in the almshouse, and a melancholy idiot from the street-
corner. The latter had just the glimmering of sense that was
sufficient to make him conscious of a vacancy, which the poor
fellow, all his life long, had mistily sought to fill up with
intelligence, wandering up and down the streets, and groaning
miserably because his attempts were ineffectual. The only lady in
the hall was one who had fallen short of absolute and perfect
beauty, merely by the trifling defect of a slight cast in her left
eye. But this blemish, minute as it was, so shocked the pure ideal
of her soul, rather than her vanity, that she passed her life in
solitude, and veiled her countenance even from her own gaze. So the
skeleton sat shrouded at one end of the table, and this poor lady at
the other,
One other guest remains to be described. He was a young man of
smooth brow, fair cheek, and fashionable mien. So far as his
exterior developed him, he might much more suitably have found a
place at some merry Christmas table, than have been numbered among
the blighted, fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set of ill-starred
banqueters. Murmurs arose among the guests as they noted, the
glance of general scrutiny which the intruder threw over his
companions. What had he to do among them? Why did not the skeleton
of the dead founder of the feast unbend its rattling joints, arise,
and motion the unwelcome stranger from the board?
"Shameful!" said the morbid man, while a new ulcer broke out in his
heart. "He comes to mock us! we shall be the jest of his tavern
friends I--he will make a farce of our miseries, and bring it out
upon the stage!"
"O, never mind him!" said the hypochondriac, smiling sourly. "He
shall feast from yonder tureen of viper-soup; and if there is a
fricassee of scorpions on the table, pray let him have his share of
it. For the dessert, he shall taste the apples of Sodom, then, if
he like our Christmas fare, let him return again next year!"
"Trouble him not," murmured the melancholy man, with gentleness.
"What matters it whether the consciousness of misery come a few
years sooner or later? If this youth deem himself happy now, yet
let him sit with us for the sake of the wretchedness to come."
The poor idiot approached the young man with that mournful aspect of
vacant inquiry which his face continually wore, and which caused
people to say that he was always in search of his missing wits.
After no little examination he touched the stranger's hand, but
immediately drew back his own, shaking his head and shivering,
"Cold, cold, cold!" muttered the idiot.
The young man shivered too, and smiled.
"Gentlemen, and you, madam," said one of the stewards of the
festival, "do not conceive so ill either of our caution or judgment,
as to imagine that we have admitted this young stranger--Gervayse
Hastings by name--without a full investigation and thoughtful
balance of his claims. Trust me, not a guest at the table is better
entitled to his seat."
The steward's guaranty was perforce satisfactory. The company,
therefore, took their places, and addressed themselves to the
serious business of the feast, but were soon disturbed by the
hypochondriac, who thrust back his chair, complaining that a dish of
stewed toads and vipers was set before him, and that there was green
ditchwater in his cup of wine. This mistake being amended, he
quietly resumed his seat. The wine, as it flowed freely from the
sepulchral urn, seemed to come imbued with all gloomy inspirations;
so that its influence was not to cheer, but either to sink the
revellers into a deeper melancholy, or elevate their spirits to an
enthusiasm of wretchedness. The conversation was various. They
told sad stories about people who might have been Worthy guests at
such a festival as the present. They talked of grisly incidents in
human history; of strange crimes, which, if truly considered, were
but convulsions of agony; of some lives that had been altogether
wretched, and of others, which, wearing a general semblance of
happiness, had yet been deformed, sooner or later, by misfortune, as
by the intrusion of a grim face at a banquet; of death-bed scenes,
and what dark intimations might be gathered from the words of dying
men; of suicide, and whether the more eligible mode were by halter,
knife, poison, drowning, gradual starvation, or the fumes of
charcoal. The majority of the guests, as is the custom with people
thoroughly and profoundly sick at heart, were anxious to make their
own woes the theme of discussion, and prove themselves most
excellent in anguish. The misanthropist went deep into the
philosophy of evil, and wandered about in the darkness, with now and
then a gleam of discolored light hovering on ghastly shapes and
horrid scenery. Many a miserable thought, such as men have stumbled
upon from age to age, did he now rake up again, and gloat over it as
an inestimable gem, a diamond, a treasure far preferable to those
bright, spiritual revelations of a better world, which are like
precious stones from heaven's pavement. And then, amid his lore of
wretchedness he hid his face and wept.
It was a festival at which the woful man of Uz might suitably have
been a guest, together with all, in each succeeding age, who have
tasted deepest of the bitterness of life. And be it said, too, that
every son or daughter of woman, however favored with happy fortune,
might, at one sad moment or another, have claimed the privilege of a
stricken heart, to sit down at this table. But, throughout the
feast, it was remarked that the young stranger, Gervayse Hastings,
was unsuccessful in his attempts to catch its pervading spirit. At
any deep, strong thought that found utterance, and which was torn
out, as it were, from the saddest recesses of human consciousness,
he looked mystified and bewildered; even more than the poor idiot,
who seemed to grasp at such things with his earnest heart, and thus
occasionally to comprehend them. The young man's conversation was
of a colder and lighter kind, often brilliant, but lacking the
powerful characteristics of a nature that had been developed by
suffering.
"Sir," said the misanthropist, bluntly, in reply to some observation
by Gervayse Hastings, "pray do not address me again. We have no
right to talk together. Our minds have nothing in common. By what
claim you appear at this banquet I cannot guess; but methinks, to a
man who could say what you have just now said, my companions and
myself must seem no more than shadows flickering on the wall. And
precisely such a shadow are you to us."
The young man smiled and bowed, but, drawing himself back in his
chair, he buttoned his coat over his breast, as if the banqueting-
Ball were growing chill. Again the idiot fixed his melancholy stare
upon the youth, and murmured, "Cold! cold! cold!"
The banquet drew to its conclusion, and the guests departed.
Scarcely had they stepped across the threshold of the hall, when the
scene that had there passed seemed like the vision of a sick fancy,
or an exhalation from a stagnant heart. Now and then, however,
during the year that ensued, these melancholy people caught glimpses
of one another, transient, indeed, but enough to prove that they
walked the earth with the ordinary allotment of reality. Sometimes
a pair of them came face to face, while stealing through the evening
twilight, enveloped in their sable cloaks. Sometimes they casually
met in churchyards. Once, also, it happened that two of the dismal
banqueters mutually started at recognizing each other in the noonday
sunshine of a crowded street, stalking there like ghosts astray.
Doubtless they wondered why the skeleton did not come abroad at
noonday too.
But whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled these
Christmas guests into the bustling world, they were sure to
encounter the young man who had so unaccountably been admitted to
the festival. They saw him among the gay and fortunate; they caught
the sunny sparkle of his eye; they heard the light and careless
tones of his voice, and muttered to themselves with such indignation
as only the aristocracy of wretchedness could kindle, "The traitor!
The vile impostor! Providence, in its own good time, may give him a
right to feast among us!" But the young man's unabashed eye dwelt
upon their gloomy figures as they passed him, seeming to say,
perchance with somewhat of a sneer, "First, know my secret then,
measure your claims with mine!"
The step of Time stole onward, and soon brought merry Christmas
round again, with glad and solemn worship in the churches, and
sports, games, festivals, and everywhere the bright face of Joy
beside the household fire. Again likewise the hall, with its
curtains of dusky purple, was illuminated by the death-torches
gleaming on the sepulchral decorations of the banquet. The veiled,
skeleton sat in state, lifting the cypress-wreath above its head, as
the guerdon of some guest illustrious in the qualifications which
there claimed precedence. As the stewards deemed the world
inexhaustible in misery, and were desirous of recognizing it in all
its forms, they had not seen fit to reassemble the company of the
former year. New faces now threw their gloom across the table.
There was a man of nice conscience, who bore a blood-stain in his
heart--the death of a fellow-creature--which, for his more
exquisite torture, had chanced with such a peculiarity of
circumstances, that he could not absolutely determine whether his
will had entered into the deed or not. Therefore, his whole life
was spent in the agony of an inward trial for murder, with a
continual sifting of the details of his terrible calamity, until his
mind had no longer any thought, nor his soul any emotion,
disconnected with it, There was a mother, too,--a mother once, but a
desolation now,--who, many years before, had gone out on a pleasure-
party, and, returning, found her infant smothered in its little bed.
And ever since she has been tortured with the fantasy that her
buried baby lay smothering in its coffin. Then there was an aged
lady, who had lived from time immemorial with a constant tremor
quivering through her-frame. It was terrible to discern her dark
shadow tremulous upon the wall; her lips, likewise, were tremulous;
and the expression of her eye seemed to indicate that her soul was
trembling too. Owing to the bewilderment and confusion which made
almost a chaos of her intellect, it was impossible to discover what
dire misfortune had thus shaken her nature to its depths; so that
the stewards had admitted her to the table, not from any
acquaintance with her history, but on the safe testimony of her
miserable aspect. Some surprise was expressed at the presence of a
bluff, red-faced gentleman, a certain Mr. Smith, who had evidently
the fat of many a rich feast within him, and the habitual twinkle of
whose eye betrayed a disposition to break forth into uproarious
laughter for little cause or none. It turned out, however, that,
with the best possible flow of spirits, our poor friend was
afflicted with a physical disease of the heart, which threatened
instant death on the slightest cachinnatory indulgence, or even that
titillation of the bodily frame produced by merry thoughts. In this
dilemma he had sought admittance to the banquet, on the ostensible
plea of his irksome and miserable state, but, in reality, with the
hope of imbibing a life-preserving melancholy.
A married couple had been invited from a motive of bitter humor, it
being well understood that they rendered each other unutterably
miserable whenever they chanced to meet, and therefore must
necessarily be fit associates at the festival. In contrast with
these was another couple still unmarried, who had interchanged their
hearts in early life, but had been divided by circumstances as
impalpable as morning mist, and kept apart so long that their
spirits now found it impossible to meet, Therefore, yearning for
communion, yet shrinking from one another and choosing none beside,
they felt themselves companionless in life, and looked upon eternity
as a boundless desert. Next to the skeleton sat a mere son of
earth,--a hunter of the Exchange,--a gatherer of shining dust,--a
man whose life's record was in his ledger, and whose soul's prison-
house the vaults of the bank where he kept his deposits. This
person had been greatly perplexed at his invitation, deeming himself
one of the most fortunate men in the city; but the stewards
persisted in demanding his presence, assuring him that he had no
conception how miserable he was.
And now appeared a figure which we must acknowledge as our
acquaintance of the former festival. It was Gervayse Hastings,
whose presence had then caused so much question and criticism, and
who now took his place with the composure of one whose claims were
satisfactory to himself and must needs be allowed by others. Yet his
easy and unruffled face betrayed no sorrow.
The well-skilled beholders gazed a moment into his eyes and shook
their heads, to miss the unuttered sympathy--the countersign never
to be falsified--of those whose hearts are cavern-mouths through
which they descend into a region of illimitable woe and recognize
other wanderers there.
"Who is this youth?" asked the man with a bloodstain on his
conscience. "Surely he has never gone down into the depths! I know
all the aspects of those who have passed through the dark valley.
By what right is he among us?"
"Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither without a sorrow," murmured
the aged lady, in accents that partook of the eternal tremor which
pervaded her whole being "Depart, young man! Your soul has never
been shaken, and, therefore, I tremble so much the more to look at
you."
"His soul shaken! No; I'll answer for it," said bluff Mr. Smith,
pressing his hand upon his heart and making himself as melancholy as
he could, for fear of a fatal explosion of laughter. "I know the
lad well; he has as fair prospects as any young man about town, and
has no more right among us miserable creatures than the child
unborn. He never was miserable and probably never will be!"
"Our honored guests," interposed the stewards, "pray have patience
with us, and believe, at least, that our deep veneration for the
sacredness of this solemnity would preclude any wilful violation of
it. Receive this young man to your table. It may not be too much
to say, that no guest here would exchange his own heart for the one
that beats within that youthful bosom!"
"I'd call it a bargain, and gladly, too," muttered Mr. Smith, with a
perplexing mixture of sadness and mirthful conceit. "A plague upon
their nonsense! My own heart is the only really miserable one in
the company; it will certainly be the death of me at last!"
Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the judgment of the
stewards being without appeal, the company sat down. The obnoxious
guest made no more attempt to obtrude his conversation on those
about him, but appeared to listen to the table-talk with peculiar
assiduity, as if some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his
reach, might be conveyed in a casual word. And in truth, to those
who could understand and value it, there was rich matter in the
upgushings and outpourings of these initiated souls to whom sorrow
had been a talisman, admitting them into spiritual depths which no
other spell can open. Sometimes out of the midst of densest gloom
there flashed a momentary radiance, pure as crystal, bright as the
flame of stars, and shedding such a glow upon the mysteries of life,
that the guests were ready to exclaim, "Surely the riddle is on the
point of being solved!" At such illuminated intervals the saddest
mourners felt it to be revealed that mortal griefs are but shadowy
and external; no more than the sable robes voluminously shrouding a
certain divine reality, and thus indicating what might otherwise be
altogether invisible to mortal eye.
