The House of the Dead: Hawthorne's Custom House and The Scarlet Letter Author(s): Frank MacShane Source:

The New England Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1962), pp. 93-101 Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/363727 Accessed: 11/11/2010 04:28
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MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS

THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

HAWTHORNE'S CUSTOMHOUSE AND The Scarlet Letter
FRANK MAC SHANE

THE connection between Hawthorne's introductory essay, "The has freCustom House" and his novel, The Scarlet

Letter, quently puzzled readers, and a number of critics believe that it so detracts from the artistic unity of the volume that it should be omitted. There are, of course, obvious reasons for its presence in the book. Hawthorne himself states that his "true reason" for including the sketch was that it explained the source of the "most prolix among the tales that make up my volume."' This reason may be discounted as fiction, but since it was Hawthorne's original intention to publish a collection of stories rather than The Scarlet Letter by itself, a general preface was quite understandable. Furthermore, the essay serves as a means of introducing the reader to a subject of some antiquity: from the Salem of the nineteenth century he is gradually taken back to the Boston of the seventeenth century. The need for such a device is emphasized in Hawthorne's regret that he was unable, at least at the time, to write a novel about contemporary life. "The wiser effort," he said, "would have been to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day ... ," but he was unable to handle the material that lay at his doorstep.2 He was still too involved in it himself, and had to wait until he went to Lenox before he could write The House of the Seven Gables. These then are the obvious reasons for the inclusion of "The Custom House" with The Scarlet Letter. But to dismiss the essay on these grounds alone is, I think, to overlook a number of subtler reasons for its presence in the volume. There are many thematic connections between the two pieces as well as similarities in point of view. The principal reason for this resemblance is probably that they were both written at approximately the same time and there1 Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Custom House," The Scarlet Letter (New York, 1950), 6. 2 "The Custom House," 45-

93

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fore reflect the events that affected Hawthorne's life in the latter part of 1849. During that year Hawthorne received two severe shocks: the first occurred on June 7, 1849, when he was removed from his government post as Surveyor of Customs in Salem. This action was soon followed by a general discussion of his case in the press and the publication of correspondence concerning the charge of corruption that was levelled at him by the Whig politician, the Rev. C. W. Upham, whom Hawthorne was eventually to pillory as Colonel Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables. The other event which affected him deeply was the death of his mother less than two months later. Two days before her death, Hawthorne had stood by Mrs. Hawthorne's bedside and, after looking out of the window at his daughter, "little Una of the golden locks," who was playing with such gaiety in the garden below that she seemed "life itself," he glanced at his dying mother, "and seemed to see the whole of human existence at once, standing in the dusty midst of it." 3 In these circumstances, Hawthorne was forced once again to take up his pen so that he could pay the bills. What to write, however, was a problem for a man who had been virtually silent for three years. That he had the sense, or intuition, to turn to a subject remote from his own time for his major work is a mark of his literary acumen, for he could be objective about seventeenth-century Boston in a way that he could not be about nineteenth-century Salem. Much of the unity of effect he was able to achieve in The Scarlet Letter is doubtless due, therefore, to the aloofness he was able to assume towards his subject, whereas "The Custom House" sketch reveals the difficulty he had in taking an impersonal attitude towards his immediate circumstances. The essay lacks uniformity of tone and cohesiveness: it is a curious combination of facetiousness, satire, straight narrative and somber philosophizing. For all of this, "The Custom House" still has a direct thematic connection with the problems and ideas that continually recur in Hawthorne's writings, many of them, indeed, in The Scarlet Letter. The major themes of isolation, guilt, decadence and the sinister power that one person or institution can exercise over another all appear in this short piece. In addition, what is possibly the most
3 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks, edited by Randall Stewart (New Haven, 1932), 210o.

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important of all of Hawthorne's themes here receives a full treatment. This concept, the most ambiguous of all of those dealt with by Hawthorne, may be expressed in Thoreau's words as the desire "to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life ... and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived."4 This ambition, which was Ethan Brand's and Hester Prynne's, was also Hawthorne's. "For the last ten years," he wrote sadly to Longfellow in 1837, "I have not lived but only dreamed about living." 5 That this desire to face life is a dangerous one is easily enough seen in the stories of the lime-burner and the wearer of the scarlet letter. For to moralize and to say only that Brand was a sinner because he "violated the human heart," or to say that Hester was able to gain spiritual renewal only because she publicly displayed her guilt, is to destroy all that is most valuable in Hawthorne and to reduce him to a tedious purveyor of homilies. Surely, as much as Conrad's Marlowe admired Kurtz because he dared look into the heart of darkness, Hawthorne admired Brand and Hester and all men who, like Melville's Ahab, have the courage to take up arms against their fate. Like most men, Hawthorne had a number of difficulties of his own concerning the problem of living. He needed money to support his family, he wanted fame, and he wanted to write. His plight was the familiar one of the artist who would like to support himself by his writings yet never be forced to write for money alone. For such men, few opportunities existed in America during the middle of the nineteenth century. Virtually all that was available were the public offices that the "spoils system" had provided for loyal party members since the presidency of Andrew Jackson. In 1839 Hawthorne had made use of this arrangement by accepting a position in the Boston Custom House; then, after an interlude in Concord, he was appointed by President Polk to be Surveyor of the Custom House in Salem. This office he received only after the most assiduous politicking with the Democratic regime and only after turning down a number of offers in other towns. He was commissioned on April 3, 1846, and took office a few days later. In every way, the appointment seemed appropriate. As he observed in "The Custom House," the Hawthornes had long lived
4 Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York, 1946), 1o4. 5 Nathaniel Hawthorne to H. W. Longfellow, letter June 4, 1837; quoted in Introduction by Randall Stewart, American Notebooks, lxviii.

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in Salem and had at one time been prominent citizens of the place. In subsequent generations, they had been less notable, however, and half-facetiously Hawthorne notes that his occupation as a writer was "sufficient retribution" for the sins of his ancestors.6 Yet for Hawthorne, the new position had deeper consequences: as he remarked in the Custom House sketch, he experienced both an attraction and a repulsion towards the town; he therefore "felt it almost as a destiny" to make Salem his home.' Coupled with this observation is his comment that the Hawthornes had always lived in Salem "in respectability; never, so far as I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member ... ." Certainly the Surveyorship was respectable and befitting a man of Hawthorne's family position and reputation. Yet as one sensitive to social nuance, he must have been aware that he had not risen to the position but that he had been able to ascend "the flight of granite steps"9 only because he had the President's commission in his pocket. He was not so much a native son who had "made good" as one who had been foisted on his own town by an outside force. Thus there is heavy irony in his position as supervisor of the "patriarchal body of veterans" which included old sea captains and the famous General Miller.1o Perhaps too much can be made of this interpretation, but it seems pertinent to remember Hawthorne's own admission in the Custom House essay that it had always "been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance" in the eyes of his townspeople and "to win myself a pleasant memory in this abode and burial-place of so many of my forefathers. ..." 11 While there is no evidence that Hawthorne felt guilty about his r61e in the Custom House, there are so many parallels between his account of his stay there and the novel about guilt for which it serves as a preface, that it is possible that Hawthorne unconsciously projected his own feelings into his account of the trials of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. To be sure, the two pieces are hardly parallel in an exact sense, for The Scarlet Letter is a tale of
6 Hawthorne, "The Custom House," 13. 7 "The Custom House," 15. 8 "The Custom House," 13-14. 9 "The Custom House," 15. 10 "The Custom House," 15-16. 11 "The Custom House," 53.

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results or effects: it contains nothing of the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale prior to the public proclamation of their sin, and it has little to do with the earlier relationship between Hester and Chillingworth. The Custom House sketch, on the other hand, has no dramatic evolution: it was merely the preparatory material for a romance; in Hawthorne's own words, it was merely an account of "the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters" which he had come to know so well.12 This material was still too immediate for him to cope with it artistically: "The page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import."18 If one then takes "The Custom House" as a preface to The Scarlet Letter, not in the literal publishing sense, but in the sense that it parallels the actions of Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, and Hester Prynne in the weeks and months that preceded, with their "petty and wearisome incidents" the actual beginning of the novel, then I think a certain perspective and more fruitful parallel can be perceived between the two works. Certainly there are similarities in character studies: like Hawthorne, both Dimmesdale and Hester were artists of sorts, Hester with the needle, Dimmesdale with the pen. All three had ambivalent feelings towards their locale: Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale both wished to escape from Boston, but like Hawthorne in the sketch, they are somehow doomed to stay. All three are isolated from their communities: if the Custom House may be taken as a microcosm of society comparable to Boston with its puritanical customs and its patriarchal magistrates who supervise and search out immorality as the Inspectors of Salem search for contraband, then the element of isolation may seem more understandable. For it will be remembered that no one in the government office had any idea that Hawthorne was a writer; that is, they knew nothing of his true nature. As to the hypothesis of guilt, this is a more complex and to a
certain extent more suppositious matter. Yet evidence for its ex-

istence in Hawthorne's mind may be seen in the violent attitude he took towards the Custom House and towards politicians in general. Understandably, Hawthorne was irritated at his dismissal from the Custom House and especially annoyed at the manner of his removal and the public furore that accompanied it. In a letter
12 13

"The Custom House," 45. "The Custom House," 45.

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to Longfellow written two days before his dismissal, he threatens to "immolate one or two" of his political enemies. "I may perhaps select a victim, and let fall one little drop of venom on his heart, that shall make him writhe before the grin of the multitude for a considerable time to come ... I cannot help smiling in anticipation of the astonishment of some of these local magnates here, who suppose themselves quite out of reach of any retribution on my part."14 In time, such violence usually diminishes, but five years later, with his vengeance long since completed in the form of The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne was still bitter. "It turns my stomach to think of that Salem Custom-House," he wrote to his friend William Pike. "I wish I could blot out from my mind all memory of the years I spent there."15 Clearly underlying these and other remarks like them was something more than mere irritation at having been summarily relieved of a decently paying job. Quite possibly his feelings about the place were motivated by an underlying sense of guilt. This guilt may be conjectured as falling into two parts: the lesser was the simple fact that he had been chucked out of his job in disgrace. Although the charge of corruption was never proved, and although his own defense of his actions as recounted in a letter to his lawyer friend George Hillard certainly rings true, he was nevertheless finished in the eyes of respectable Salem, which is probably one of the reasons he rapidly moved away to Lenox. The deeper sense of guilt-this one more akin to Dimmesdale's-is hinted at in the Custom House sketch, and concerns his attempt to serve both his literary genius and his pocketbook. He had doubtless thought that he could manage to please both, but he deceived himself and failed. "I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all." 16 The fault lay, of course, in his position of dependency on "the mighty arm of the Republic" which allowed him to exist in material comfort despite the prickings of his conscience."' Like Dimmes14 Nathaniel Hawthorne to H. W. Longfellow, letter June 5, 1849; quoted in Notes, American Notebooks, 297-298. 15 Nathaniel Hawthorne to William B. Pike, letter January 6, 1854; quoted in Notes, American Notebooks, 3o3. 16 Hawthorne, "The Custom House," 45. 17 "The Custom House," 46.

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dale, whose public life was that of a virtuous parson, Hawthorne wished to remain as a virtuous public official. At the same time, again like Dimmesdale, he realized the hypocrisy of his position. "I endeavored to calculate how much longer I could stay in the Custom-House, and yet go forth a man," he noted in the sketch.'8 Once more, like Dimmesdale, he had become famous for the wrong reason: as Dimmesdale was known as Boston's most noted preacher, Hawthorne was known all over the country because his name appeared as part of the Custom House imprint on all the merchandise that passed through Salem. This instance was probably one of many that reminded Hawthorne that in essence he had sold out, that, as he noted in an imaginary conversation with the characters of The Scarlet Letter, he had bartered his literary talent "for a pittance of the public gold." 19 His much-publicized dismissal therefore provided him with much the same feeling of relief that Dimmesdale experienced upon his final public confession of guilt. It took him some time to realize it, but the lightness with which he refers to himself in "The Custom House" as one officially guillotined is a sign of the release his Puritan conscience felt at being freed from the cloying atmosphere of the Custom House which had stultified his genius for three whole years. That it was his enemies who engineered this release, and that Hawthorne fought hard to retain his position of enthrallment, is a typical Hawthornian irony, worthy of the author of The Marble Faun. What had probably most contributed to his malaise in the Custom House was the perpetual atmosphere of decay and near death that he breathed. In the Custom House essay, Salem is first introduced by way of its "decayed wooden warehouses,"'20 and the sketch proceeds to mention the wharves that "crumble into ruin" 21 and the "row of venerable figures" who are usually asleep, but who occasionally talk with "that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of alms-houses ...."2 Inside, the office is "cob-webbed, and dingy with old paint."23 This feeling of decadence-a theme
is "The Custom House," 47.
19 "The Custom
20 21

House," 42.

22
23

"The Custom House," 6. "The Custom House," 8. "The Custom House," 9.

"The Custom House,"
1o.

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much emphasized in Hawthorne's later writings-is stressed here mostly in terms of two of the inspectors to whom Hawthorne devotes a full sketch. The first of these is the gourmand, a man of great antiquity, but one who possessed "no power of thought, no ."24 Healthy depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities he was like an animal who simply went ... living in the on enough, security of his government cheque. Since he had buried three wives and twenty children, he might have been expected to have had some sense of human sorrow, but his only felt tragedy was to have been unable to carve a huge goose that looked tender but proved to be tough. Hawthorne concludes his portrait of the old
inspector with this telling remark: "... officer." 25 of all men whom I have

ever known, this individual was the fittest to be a Custom-House Contrasted with this figure is the Old General whose face, though equally ancient, "had not the imbecility of decaying age."26Unlike the other men, the General had lived fully and had reflected on the results of his actions. When he had acted, he had done so with energy and integrity, so that there was some purpose to his life. Moreover, he was a man of "innate kindliness" equipped with a "ray of humor," a "trait of native elegance," and "fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers."27 The point of these two sketches is surely that while the gourmand inspector represents the institution, customs en masse, and is, as a consequence, a dehumanized individual reduced to the level of animal existence, the General represents the human element-that understanding of the human heart that Hawthorne himself told Longfellow he wished to have, since "no fate in this world [is] so horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows."28 Thus the danger to Hawthorne was, that if he stayed in

the "dusty midst" of the Custom House, he ran the risk of becoming like the gourmand. Such, in general, was the threat of contamination with political life. Hawthorne had known this danger for some time-six years, in fact, before he took his commission in
24

"The Custom House,"

House," Custom House,"

21.

25 "The Custom
26 "The

24. 25.

27 "The Custom House," 27-28.

28 Nathaniel Hawthorne to H. W. Longfellow, letter June 4, 1837; quoted in Introduction by Randall Stewart, American Notebooks, 1xviii.

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the Salem Custom House. "I do detest all offices," he wrote to his future wife Sophia Peabody, "all at least that are held on a political tenure. And I want nothing to do with politicians-they are not men; they cease to be men, in becoming politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies."29 The connection between the old inspector and The Scarlet Letter also seems to be clear: for since Puritan society, as represented, say, by the chorus of old women who appear at the prison door in the opening chapter, have no "innate kindliness," they and their magistrates impose their inhuman punishment on those who have dared to live-which means, in Hawthorne's world, who have dared to sin. Like the gourmand inspector, they care very little about human tragedy and sorrow: they merely go on existing in a mechanical, animalistic fashion. Yet what his experience in the Custom House taught him was that it was these same old women and same old customs inspectors and politicians, these half-people, who make possible the ultimate salvation of both Hester Prynne and Nathaniel Hawthorne. As Hester is given the opportunity to reconcile herself with God and to embark on a period of spiritual renewal because Society has judged her a sinner, so Hawthorne is "saved" by being dismissed from the Custom House. Both Hawthorne and Hester were to make this discovery in isolation, when they were thrown on their own resources and no longer dependent on either the strong arm of the Republic or the Puritan church. Thus it would probably amuse Hawthorne to know that in Salem today visitors want to know where the Custom House is: they wouldn't care about the Custom House had it not been for Hawthorne; yet Hawthorne would not have been the author of The Scarlet Letter had he not been dismissed from the Custom House.
29 Nathaniel Hawthorne to Sophia Peabody, letter March 15, 1840; quoted in Randall Stewart, "Hawthorne and Politics, Unpublished Letters to William B. Pike," THE NEw ENGLANDQUARTERLY, V, 240 (April 1932).