ARTICLE III.—THE “DR. GRIMSHAWE" MSS.

ANNOUNCEMENT was made last fall of a new romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Opening chapters of the "Dolliver Romance" were printed in the Atlantic Monthly some time after the author's death. Another "scene" and "fragment" of this unfinished romance, described as "hitherto unpublished," appear in James R. Osgood & Co's edition of his works issued in 1880. But when "Septimius Felton" was given to the public in 1872 it was understood to be the last of this writer's posthumous stories. In the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1872, is an article by his son-in-law, George P. Lathrop, entitled "The History of Hawthorne's Last Romance," in which the "Dolliver Romance" is alluded to as a sort of sequel to "Septimius Felton," and the latter book is reviewed in detail as being the last which Hawthorne lived to bring anywhere near completion. The recent announcement, therefore, of the publishers was not left unchallenged. The critics called upon Mr. Julian Hawthorne, under whose auspices the book was advertised to appear, for a history of the MSS. Happily some ungracious suggestions concerning their paternity were effectively silenced. Testimony was ob tained from Mrs. Lathrop, who was acquainted with the manuscripts left by her father, that a work corresponding in description to the one advertised had been examined soon. after his death. Afterwards a very rich and unexpected fund of materials used by Nathaniel Hawthorne in preparation for this story, entitled "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret," were published simultaneously by Mr. Julian Hawthorne and Mr. and Mrs. Lathrop. These auxiliary documents, as so far given to the public, consist of three articles of about fifteen pages each, published in the December number of the Atlantic Monthly for 1882, and the two succeeding numbers, under the title of "The Ancestral Footstep;" and a rather shorter article, printed in the current January number of the Century magazine, under the head of "A Look into Hawthorne's Workshop." An

acquaintance with these documents is essential to an intelligent reading of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret," and a thorough comprehension of their contents throws a flood of light across many dark places in a study of the author's mental peculiarities and his habits of work.

From a reading of these papers and from certain passages in the "English Note Books" it appears that as early as 1855 Hawthorne was pondering in his mind the motives for a romance, part of whose scenes should be laid in England. The preface to "The Marble Faun" explains why his inclinations leaned so strongly to the old world. "No author, without a trial," he wrote, "can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a common-place prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers need ruin to make them grow." April 5th, 1855, Mr. Hawthorne visited Bolton le Moors, Lancashire, in quest of this information and set down his first account of the Smithell's Hall, or Bloody Footstep, legend, which is subsequently so fully used in "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." It took a strong hold upon his fancy, for he confidently alludes to the legend as a good one, worthy of elaboration. And the first reference made by the author that he seriously contemplated or had begun such a work is found as early as April 12, 1855, in the "English Note Books." "In my romance the original emigrant to America may have carried away with him the family secret, whereby it was in his power, had he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret he transmitted to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited throughout all the intervening generations. At last the hero of the romance comes to England and finds that by means of this secret he still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family. It would be something similar to the story of Meleager who depended on the fire brand that his mother had snatched from the flames." This certainly is the germ of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." During the intervening three years in which it lay fallow Hawthorne had left the Liverpool consulate and taken

up his residence in Rome. The idea was finally developed with extraordinary fluency in the form of a journal of almost daily and rapid work, between April and June, 1858. One of the authorities in whose keeping this manuscript remained for several years, says not a single correction occurs throughout its entire length-quite a feat for any writer of manuscript which makes nearly fifty pages of printed matter, and especially noticeable in the case of Hawthorne, who bears the reputation, on the authority of his wife, of usually having measured his words with the utmost nicety. This sketch is the one just printed in the Atlantic Monthly under the title of "The Ancestral Footstep," and which was put into print by Mr. and Mrs. Lathrop-immediately it may be borne in mind on Julian Hawthorne's announcement of the publication of a new novel by his father. Mr. Lathrop says of this sketch, in his rather cursory prefatory note, "it possesses a freshness and spontaneity recalling the peculiar fascination of those chalk or pencil outlines with which great masters in the graphic art have been wont to arrest their fleeting glimpses of a com. position still unwrought."

But there are grave objections to accepting this quite unstinted praise. It is much more truthfully a "romance in embryo," to quote another of the same writer's phrases. All of its characters are dimly drawn; they are blurred in places; so much so that they occasionally lose their identity altogether and reappear under changed names and condi tions. The unsuspecting reader is led into many a cul de sac, from which he is left to extricate himself as best he can. Much of the perspective is rather ludicrously astray, details sometimes being magnified to a wearisome length, and at other times critical points in the story being slurred over or condensed into a few lines. Even the conversations are tediously dull and extended, and lack altogether that conciseness, vigor, and felicity of expression characteristic of the author's average work in this department. Notwithstanding the proba bility that Hawthorne had spent a very considerable time in maturing the plot before he put pen to paper, this sketch makes slow progress and finally degenerates into a sort of soliloquy in which the writer strives to clear his mind of un

certainties which haunt him. Its sole substantial merit is the pure and charming diction, synonymous with the author, and which we now know, from this otherwise uncouth sketch, he used as unconsciously as the bird sings. All this is mentioned not in censure of Mr. Hawthorne for having written this sketch, which was not intended for publication and which he could not possibly foresee would be published, but to protest against the apparent attempt to bolster up before the public this composition, with expressions of admiration, as if it really was a fair specimen of that faithful art by which, as well as by genius, their author won fame from obscurity. Circumstances may have warranted the publication of "The Ancestral Footstep," but judged by their intrinsic merit these pages had far better never have seen the light. As if to confirm the conclusion that Hawthorne regarded this sketch as wholly unsatisfactory, even for the modest purpose for which it was intended, he is found lamenting specifically at least once in this narrative that he has not yet been able to write one scene in the true vein; "that done," he adds, "all the rest of the romance would readily arrange itself around that nucleus.”

The remaining manuscripts, however, those published in the Century magazine-are of a very different character and value. We have here, in the space of only ten magazine pages, a remarkable revelation of the author's mind. It would be difficult to find a precisely similar case anywhere in literature. Doubtless such preliminary sketches are often made by conscientious writers, but they are as invariably destroyed as soon as the book is printed. It is only posthumously that such a sketch has any chance of finding its way to the public. For these pages refute at a glance the suggestion that they had been written by the author with the contingency of publication in mind. Still farther are they removed from that sometimes interesting, but always unreliable, class of books bearing on their surface marks of apparent unconsciousness or carelessness, but which have in reality been adjusted with the most artistic nicety to await the literary post-mortem. As the editor of the Century says of this sketch: "It is as if the modern process of instantaneous photography had been at that time fully perfected and brought to bear upon the very brain of the

great romancer while it was in its most rapid, and at times even most furious action. It is a record of everything that was passing through his mind at the instant-of deepest thoughts, of thoughts most trivial and superficial. His most serious and his lightest moods are chronicled with the same exact fidelity." If this praise is justly bestowed, it is the more to be regretted that the editor of the Century did not, instead of printing half, print the whole of this sketch, as seems to have been at his option. Such regret is deepened by Mr. Lathrop's statement in the preface to the Atlantic sketch before alluded to, that, so far as he is aware, this and the Century sketch are "the only fragments of imaginative composition by Mr. Hawthorne hitherto unpublished." The most striking characteristic of the latter manuscript is, then, its utter informality. The author is really talking to himself-musing, questioning, chiding and, occasionally, we venture to add, losing his temper. "How?why?-what sense?" "Hold on to this!" "Here I come to a stand-still." "The life is not yet breathed into this plot after all my galvanic efforts." "The Devil may know-I don't." "Try back again," he adds with renewed courage and indomitable perseverance, "take him at his death hour and work backward from that." There is no attempt at sustained narrative-only this strange gallery of roughly handled character studies, proving the profound earnestness and marvelous resources of the artist. It would have been strange if Hawthorne had failed after such intense thought to reach definite results. But in some instances the ordeal must have been

painfully trying to him. In striving to establish the character

of the "Lord of Braithwaite Hall," who afterwards is found as a comparatively minor personage in "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret," the author made no less than fifty distinct trials for a motive to build upon. Upon the genealogy of the family of the Bloody Footstep he bestows almost as much care of details as if he were a lawyer making good a title. As Mr. Lathrop has finely remarked in another connection: "It is no wonder that the author's creations should appear as real beings; if he could create a whole ancestry, as it were, for each person in preliminary attempts after this manner, surely the veins of each would throb with actual inherited blood." Such reverence as this for