His nose is straight and rather handsome,
his mouth expressive of sensibility and emotion. He is tall and erect,
with an air free, brave, and manly. When conversing, he is full of
gesture and force, and loses himself in his subject. There is no grace
nor polish. Once in a while, his animation gives place to a singularly
quiet expression, out of these eyes to which I have objected; an
indrawn, dim look, but which at the same time makes you feel that he
is at that instant taking deepest note of what is before him. It is a
strange, lazy glance, but with a power in it quite unique. It does not
seem to penetrate through you, but to take you into himself. I saw him
look at Una so, yesterday, several times. He says it is Mr. Mathews
who is writing in "The Literary World" the visit to Berkshire. Mr.
Mathews calls Mr. Hawthorne "Mr. Noble Melancholy," in the next number
of the paper. You know, what you read was the introduction only. It is
singular how many people insist that Mr. Hawthorne is gloomy, since he
is not. He is pensive, perhaps, as all contemplative persons must be;
especially when, as in him, "a great heart is the household fire of a
grand intellect" (to quote his own words), because he sees and
sympathizes with all human suffering. He has always seemed to me, in
his remote moods, like a stray Seraph, who had experienced in his own
life no evil, but by the intention of a divine intellect, saw and
sorrowed over all evil.
[Among my mother's early letters to my father, this poem, written in
her fine, delicate hand upon old-fashioned fancy note paper, was
evidently her expression of this feeling.
Pages:
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141