The Blithedale Romance
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
The
Blithedale Romance is the third of the
major novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Much of the action of the novel is set at
Blithedale, a utopian socialist community that is founded upon anti-capitalist
ideals, yet is destroyed by the self-interested behavior of its members.
Source: Hawthorne, N. (1852) The Blithedale Romance Concord : Ticknor
and Fields
Preface
IN THE BLITHEDALE of this volume, many readers will
probably suspect a faint and not very faithful shadowing of BROOK FARM, in
Roxbury, which (now a little more than ten years ago) was occupied and
cultivated by a company of socialists. The Author does not wish to deny, that
he had this Community in his mind, and that (having had the good fortune, for a
time, to be personally connected with it) he has occasionally availed himself
of his actual reminiscences, in the hope of giving a more lifelike tint to the
fancy-sketch in the following pages. He begs it to be understood, however, that
he has considered the Institution itself as not less fairly the subject of
fictitious handling, than the imaginary personages whom he has introduced
there. His whole treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main
purpose of the Romance; nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions to
illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in respect
to Socialism.
In short, his present concern with the Socialist
Community is merely to establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway
of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their
phantasmagorical antics, without exposing them to too close a comparison with
the actual events of real lives. In the old countries, with which Fiction has
long been conversant, a certain conventional privilege seems to be awarded to
the romancer; his work is not put exactly side by side with nature; and he is
allowed a license with regard to every-day Probability, in view of the improved
effects which he is bound to produce thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary,
there is as yet no such Faery Land, so like the real world, that, in a suitable
remoteness, one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of
strange enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants have a propriety of
their own. This atmosphere is what the American romancer needs. In its absence,
the beings of imagination are compelled to show themselves in the same category
as actually living mortals; a necessity that generally renders the paint and
pasteboard of their composition but too painfully discernible. With the idea of
partially obviating this difficulty, (the sense of which has always pressed
very heavily upon him,) the Author has ventured to make free with his old, and
affectionately remembered home, at BROOK FARM, as being, certainly, the most
romantic episode of his own life–essentially a daydream, and yet a fact–and
thus offering an available foothold between fiction and reality. Furthermore,
the scene was in good keeping with the personages whom he desired to introduce.
These characters, he feels it right to say, are
entirely fictitious. It would, indeed, (considering how few amiable qualities
he distributes among his imaginary progeny,) be a most grievous wrong to his
former excellent associates, were the Author to allow it to be supposed that he
has been sketching any of their likenesses. Had he attempted it, they would at
least have recognized the touches of a friendly pencil. But he has done nothing
of the kind. The self-concentrated Philanthropist; the high-spirited Woman,
bruising herself against the narrow limitations of her sex; the weakly Maiden,
whose tremulous nerves endow her with Sibylline attributes; the Minor Poet,
beginning life with strenuous aspirations, which die out with his youthful
fervor–all these might have been looked for, at BROOK FARM, but, by some
accident, never made their appearance there.
The Author cannot close his reference to this subject,
without expressing a most earnest wish that some one of the many cultivated and
philosophic minds, which took an interest in that enterprise, might now give
the world its history. Ripley, with whom rests the honorable paternity of the
Institution, Dana, Dwight, Channing, Burton, Parker, for instance–with others,
whom he dares not name, because they veil themselves from the public eye–among
these is the ability to convey both the outward narrative and the inner truth
and spirit of the whole affair, together with the lessons which those years of
thought and toil must have elaborated, for the behoof of future
experimentalists. Even the brilliant Howadji might find as rich a theme in his
youthful reminiscenses of BROOK FARM, and a more novel one–close at hand as it
lies–than those which he has since made so distant a pilgrimage to seek, in
Syria, and along the current of the Nile.
CONCORD (Mass.), May, 1852.
Chapter 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 ever come before the public under such skillfully contrived
circumstances of stage-effect, as those which at once mystified and illuminated
the remarkable performances of the lady in question. Now-a-days, 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-by, 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 tomorrow.
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 tomorrow, 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-by, 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 tomorrow-morning, before you set out for Blithedale. I wish you a
good-night, sir, and beg pardon for stopping you.”
And so he slips 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.
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