THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.-INTRODUCTORY TO “THE SCARLET LETTER.”

t is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined
to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs
at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an
autobiographical impulse should twice in my life
have taken possession of me, in addressing the
public. The first time was three or four years
since, when I favored the reader—inexcusably, and for no
earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive
author could imagine—with a description of my way of life in
the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And now—because, beyond
my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two
on the former occasion—I again seize the public by the button,
and talk of my three years’ experience in a Custom-House. The
example of the famous “P. P., Clerk of this Parish,” was never
more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, however, that,
when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses,
not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never
take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than
most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do
far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential
depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and
exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as
if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were
certain to find out the divided segment of the writer’s own
nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him
into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to
speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts
are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in
some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to
imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the
closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve
being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate
of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself,
but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent,
and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical,
without violating either the reader’s rights or his
own.tIt will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has
a certain propriety, of a kind always recognized in literature, as
explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into
my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a
narrative therein contained. This, in fact,—a desire to put
myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the
most prolix among the tales that make up my volume,—this,
and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation
with the public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has
appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation
of a mode of life not heretofore described, together
with some of the characters that move in it, among whom the
author happened to make one.In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century
ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf,—but
which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses,
and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except,
perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length,
discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner,
pitching out her cargo of firewood,—at the head, I say, of this
dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along
which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the
track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty
grass,—here, with a view from its front windows adown this
not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbor, stands
a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof,
during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats
or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but
with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally,
and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military post of Uncle
Sam’s government is here established. Its front is ornamented
with a portico of half a dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony,
beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends
towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen
of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield
before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled
thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With
the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy
fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the
general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful
of their safety, against intruding on the premises which she
overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks,
many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves
under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume,
that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an
eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in
her best of moods, and, sooner or later,—oftener soon than
late,—is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of her
claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed
arrows.The pavement round about the above-described edifice—which
we may as well name at once as the Custom-House of the port—has
grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not,
of late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business.
In some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon
when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions
might remind the elderly citizen of that period before the
last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not
scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners,
who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin, while their ventures
go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of
commerce at New York or Boston. On some such morning,
when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once,—usually
from Africa or South America,—or to be on the verge
of their departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet,
passing briskly up and down the granite steps. Here, before his
own wife has greeted him, you may greet the sea-flushed shipmaster,
just in port, with his vessel’s papers under his arm, in
a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful or
sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of
the now accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise
that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a
bulk of incommodities, such as nobody will care to rid him of.
Here, likewise,—the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded,
care-worn merchant,—we have the smart young clerk, who gets
the taste of traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends
adventures in his master’s ships, when he had better be sailing
mimic-boats upon a mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is
the outward-bound sailor in quest of a protection; or the recently
arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the
hospital. Nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little
schooners that bring firewood from the British provinces; a
rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the
Yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no slight importance
to our decaying trade.Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were,
with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for
the time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More
frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern—in
the entry, if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms,
if wintry or inclement weather—a row of venerable figures, sitting
in old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind
legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but
occasionally might be heard talking together, in voices between
speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes
the occupants of almshouses, and all other human beings
who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labor,
or anything else, but their own independent exertions. These
old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew, at the receipt of customs,
but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic
errands—were Custom-House officers.Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is
a certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty
height; with two of its arched windows commanding a view of
the aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a
narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three
give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers,
and ship-chandlers; around the doors of which are generally to
be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such
other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport. The room
itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn
with gray sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long
disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness
of the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind,
with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent
access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with
a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged
stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly
decrepit and infirm; and—not to forget the library—on some
shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and
a bulky Digest of the Revenue Laws. A tin pipe ascends through
the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with
other parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago,—pacing
from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged
stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up
and down the columns of the morning newspaper,—you might
have recognized, honored reader, the same individual who welcomed
you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered
so pleasantly through the willow branches, on the western
side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek
him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor. The
besom of reform has swept him out of office; and a worthier
successor wears his dignity, and pockets his emoluments.This old town of Salem—my native place, though I have
dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and maturer years—possesses,
or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force
of which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence
here. Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned,
with its flat, unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses,
few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty,—its
irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only
tame,—its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through
the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New
Guinea at one end, and a view of the almshouse at the other,—such
being the features of my native town, it would be quite
as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged
checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere,
there is within me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a
better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment
is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which
my family has struck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries
and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant
of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered
settlement, which has since become a city. And here
his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their
earthy substance with the soil; until no small portion of it must
necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little
while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachment
which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for
dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as
frequent transplantation is perhaps better for the stock, need
they consider it desirable to know.But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure
of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim
and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination, as
far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces
a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in
reference to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a
stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave,
bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor,—who
came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the
unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a
figure, as a man of war and peace,—a stronger claim than for
myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known.
He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church;
he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was
likewise a bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have
remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his
hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last
longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds,
although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting
spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom
of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have
left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old
dry bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain
it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not
whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent,
and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they
are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them, in
another state of being. At all events, I, the present writer,
as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their
sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them—as I have
heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the
race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist—may
be now and henceforth removed.Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed
Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for
his sins, that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of
the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should
have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No
aim, that I have ever cherished, would they recognize as laudable;
no success of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic
scope, had ever been brightened by success—would they deem
otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. “What
is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers to the
other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a business
in life—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to
mankind in his day and generation—may that be? Why, the
degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!” Such
are the compliments bandied between my great-grandsires and
myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let them scorn me
as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves
with mine.Planted deep, in the town’s earliest infancy and childhood,
by these two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since
subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as
I have known, disgraced by a single unworthy member; but
seldom or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations,
performing any memorable deed, or so much as putting
forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk
almost out of sight; as old houses, here and there about the
streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the accumulation
of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years,
they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each generation,
retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while
a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast,
confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered
against his sire and grandsire. The boy, also, in due time,
passed from the forecastle to the cabin, spent a tempestuous
manhood, and returned from his world-wanderings, to grow old,
and die, and mingle his dust with the natal earth. This long
connection of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and
burial, creates a kindred between the human being and the
locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral
circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but instinct.
The new inhabitant—who came himself from a foreign land,
or whose father or grandfather came—has little claim to be
called a Salemite; he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity
with which an old settler, over whom his third century is
creeping, clings to the spot where his successive generations have
been imbedded. It is no matter that the place is joyless for
him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and
dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the chill east wind,
and the chillest of social atmospheres;—all these, and whatever
faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the
purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the
natal spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case.
I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that
the mould of features and cast of character which had all along
been familiar here,—ever, as one representative of the race lay
down in his grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march
along the main street,—might still in my little day be
seen and recognized in the old town. Nevertheless, this very
sentiment is an evidence that the connection, which has become
an unhealthy one, should at last be severed. Human nature
will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and
replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out
soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far
as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth.On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange,
indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town, that brought
me to fill a place in Uncle Sam’s brick edifice, when I might
as well, or better, have gone somewhere else. My doom was
on me. It was not the first time, nor the second, that I had
gone away,—as it seemed, permanently,—but yet returned,
like the bad half-penny; or as if Salem were for me the inevitable
centre of the universe. So, one fine morning, I ascended
the flight of granite steps, with the President’s commission in
my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who
were to aid me in my weighty responsibility, as chief executive
officer of the Custom-House.I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt at all—whether
any public functionary of the United States, either in the civil
or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans
under his orders as myself. The whereabouts of the
Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled, when I looked at them.
For upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent
position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House
out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the
tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier,—New England’s
most distinguished soldier,—he stood firmly on the pedestal of
his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality
of the successive administrations through which he had held
office, he had been the safety of his subordinates in many an
hour of danger and heart-quake. General Miller was radically
conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no
slight influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, and
with difficulty moved to change, even when change might have
brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge
of my department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient
sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost on
every sea, and standing up sturdily against life’s tempestuous
blasts, had finally drifted into this quiet nook; where, with
little to disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential
election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence.
Though by no means less liable than their fellow-men
to age and infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other
that kept death at bay. Two or three of their number, as I
was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bedridden,
never dreamed of making their appearance at the Custom-House,
during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid winter,
would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go
lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure
and convenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must plead
guilty to the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more
than one of these venerable servants of the republic. They were
allowed, on my representation, to rest from their arduous labors,
and soon afterwards—as if their sole principle of life had been
zeal for their country’s service, as I verily believe it was—withdrew
to a better world. It is a pious consolation to me,
that, through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed
them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into which,
as a matter of course, every Custom-House officer must be supposed
to fall. Neither the front nor the back entrance of the
Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for
their venerable brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a
politician, and though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither
received nor held his office with any reference to political services.
Had it been otherwise,—had an active politician been put into
this influential post, to assume the easy task of making head
against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities withheld him from
the personal administration of his office,—hardly a man of the
old corps would have drawn the breath of official life, within a
month after the exterminating angel had come up the Custom-House
steps. According to the received code in such matters,
it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, to
bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine.
It was plain enough to discern, that the old fellows
dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at
the same time amused me, to behold the terrors that attended
my advent; to see a furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a
century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an
individual as myself; to detect, as one or another addressed me,
the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past days, had been wont
to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten
Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent old persons,
that, by all established rule,—and, as regarded some of them,
weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business,—they ought
to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics,
and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common Uncle.
I knew it too, but could never quite find in my heart to act
upon the knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit,
therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my official conscience,
they continued, during my incumbency, to creep about
the wharves, and loiter up and down the Custom-House steps.
They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their accustomed
corners, with their chairs tilted back against the wall; awaking,
however, once or twice in a forenoon, to bore one another with
the several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories, and mouldy
jokes, that had grown to be passwords and countersigns among
them.The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor
had no great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts,
and the happy consciousness of being usefully employed,—in
their own behalf, at least, if not for our beloved country,—these
good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of
office. Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into
the holds of vessels! Mighty was their fuss about little matters,
and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater
ones to slip between their fingers! Whenever such a mischance
occurred,—when a wagon-load of valuable merchandise had
been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath
their unsuspicious noses,—nothing could exceed the vigilance
and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock,
and secure with tape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of the
delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous
negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on
their praiseworthy caution, after the mischief had happened; a
grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal, the moment
that there was no longer any remedy.Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my
foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part
of my companion’s character, if it have a better part, is that
which usually comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the
type whereby I recognize the man. As most of these old Custom-House
officers had good traits, and as my position in reference
to them, being paternal and protective, was favorable to
the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them
all. It was pleasant, in the summer forenoons,—when the fervent
heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family,
merely communicated a genial warmth to their half-torpid systems,—it
was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry,
a row of them all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the
frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came
bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity
of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children;
the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humor, has little
to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon
the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the
green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In one case, however,
it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent
all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the
first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were
men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability
and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent
mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then,
moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be
the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as
respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no
wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome
old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation
from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung
away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had
enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully
to have stored their memories with the husks. They spoke with
far more interest and unction of their morning’s breakfast, or
yesterday’s, to-day’s, or to-morrow’s dinner, than of the shipwreck
of forty or fifty years ago, and all the world’s wonders
which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.The father of the Custom-House—the patriarch, not only of
this little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable
body of tide-waiters all over the United States—was a
certain permanent Inspector. He might truly be termed a legitimate
son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or, rather,
born in the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and
formerly collector of the port, had created an office for him, and
appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which few
living men can now remember. This Inspector, when I first
knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and
certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green
that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime’s search. With
his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned
blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale
and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but
a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape
of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His
voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House,
had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of
an old man’s utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs,
like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at
him merely as an animal,—and there was very little else to
look at,—he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough
healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity,
at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which
he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The careless security of
his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but
slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt
contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original
and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of
his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the
very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these
latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep
the old gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no
power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities;
nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which,
aided by the cheerful temper that grew inevitably out of his
physical well-being, did duty very respectably, and to general
acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband of
three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children,
most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise
returned to dust. Here, one would suppose, might have
been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition, through
and through, with a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector!
One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these
dismal reminiscences. The next moment, he was as ready for
sport as any unbreeched infant; far readier than the Collector’s
junior clerk, who, at nineteen years, was much the elder and
graver man of the two.I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I
think, livelier curiosity, than any other form of humanity there
presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon;
so perfect, in one point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable,
such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion
was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I
have already said, but instincts: and yet, withal, so cunningly
had the few materials of his character been put together, that
there was no painful perception of deficiency, but, on my part,
an entire contentment with what I found in him. It might
be difficult—and it was so—to conceive how he should exist
hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his
existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his last
breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral
responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger
scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity
from the dreariness and duskiness of age.One point, in which he had vastly the advantage over his
four-footed brethren, was his ability to recollect the good dinners
which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his
life to eat. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and
to hear him talk of roast-meat was as appetizing as a pickle or
an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither
sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all
his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit
of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to hear him
expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher’s meat, and the most
eligible methods of preparing them for the table. His reminiscences
of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet,
seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one’s
very nostrils. There were flavors on his palate that had lingered
there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently
as fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just
devoured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips
over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been
food for worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts
of bygone meals were continually rising up before him; not in
anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former appreciation
and seeking to resuscitate an endless series of enjoyment, at
once shadowy and sensual. A tender-loin of beef, a hind-quarter
of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably
praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board
in the days of the elder Adams, would be remembered; while
all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the events that
brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him
with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief
tragic event of the old man’s life, so far as I could judge, was
his mishap with a certain goose which lived and died some
twenty or forty years ago; a goose of most promising figure,
but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough that the carving-knife
would make no impression on its carcass, and it could
only be divided with an axe and handsaw.But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I
should be glad to dwell at considerably more length because, of
all men whom I have ever known, this individual was fittest to
be a Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing to causes which
I may not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from
this peculiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable of
it, and, were he to continue in office to the end of time, would
be just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just
as good an appetite.There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-House
portraits would be strangely incomplete; but which my
comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to
sketch only in the merest outline. It is that of the Collector,
our gallant old General, who, after his brilliant military service,
subsequently to which he had ruled over a wild Western territory,
had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the decline
of his varied and honorable life. The brave soldier had already
numbered, nearly or quite, his threescore years and ten, and was
pursuing the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with infirmities
which even the martial music of his own spirit-stirring
recollections could do little towards lightening. The step was
palsied now that had been foremost in the charge. It was only
with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily
on the iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend
the Custom-House steps, and, with a toilsome progress across
the floor, attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. There
he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect
at the figures that came and went; amid the rustle of papers,
the administering of oaths, the discussion of business, and the
casual talk of the office; all which sounds and circumstances
seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make
their way into his inner sphere of contemplation. His countenance,
in this repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice was
sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon
his features; proving that there was light within him, and that
it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that
obstructed the rays in their passage. The closer you penetrated
to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When
no longer called upon to speak, or listen, either of which operations
cost him an evident effort, his face would briefly subside
into its former not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to
behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of
decaying age. The framework of his nature, originally strong
and massive, was not yet crumbled into ruin.To observe and define his character, however, under such disadvantages,
was as difficult a task as to trace out and build up
anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from
a view of its gray and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance,
the walls may remain almost complete, but elsewhere
may be only a shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength,
and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect, with
grass and alien weeds.Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection,—for,
slight as was the communication between us, my feeling towards
him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him,
might not improperly be termed so,—I could discern the main
points of his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic
qualities which showed it to be not by a mere accident,
but of good right, that he had won a distinguished name. His
spirit could never, I conceive, have been characterized by an
uneasy activity; it must, at any period of his life, have required
an impulse to set him in motion; but, once stirred up, with
obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained,
it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had
formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct,
was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but,
rather, a deep, red glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight,
solidity, firmness; this was the expression of his repose, even
in such decay as had crept untimely over him, at the period
of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that, under
some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness,—roused
by a trumpet-peal, loud enough to awaken all his
energies that were not dead, but only slumbering,—he was
yet capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man’s gown,
dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting
up once more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his
demeanor would have still been calm. Such an exhibition, however,
was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated,
nor desired. What I saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible
ramparts of Old Ticonderoga already cited as the most
appropriate simile—were the features of stubborn and ponderous
endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy
in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other
endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy mass, and was just as
unmalleable and unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of
benevolence, which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa
or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp
as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of the
age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I know,—certainly,
they had fallen, like blades of grass at the sweep
of the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit imparted its
triumphant energy;—but, be that as it might, there was never
in his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down
off a butterfly’s wing. I have not known the man to whose
innate kindliness I would more confidently make an appeal.Many characteristics—and those, too, which contribute not
the least forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch—must have
vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All
merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor
does Nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty,
that have their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks
and crevices of decay, as she sows wall-flowers over the ruined
fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and
beauty, there were points well worth noting. A ray of humor,
now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim
obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of
native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after
childhood or early youth, was shown in the General’s fondness
for the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might
be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but
here was one who seemed to have a young girl’s appreciation
of the floral tribe.There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit;
while the Surveyor—though seldom, when it could be avoided,
taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in conversation—was
fond of standing at a distance, and watching
his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away
from us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote,
though we passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though
we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own.
It might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts,
than amid the unappropriate environment of the Collector’s office.
The evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish
of old, heroic music, heard thirty years before;—such scenes
and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense.
Meanwhile, the merchants and shipmasters, the spruce clerks
and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of this
commercial and custom-house life kept up its little murmur
round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs
did the General appear to sustain the most distant relation. He
was as much out of place as an old sword—now rusty, but
which had flashed once in the battle’s front, and showed still
a bright gleam along its blade—would have been, among the
inkstands, paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, on the Deputy
Collector’s desk.There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and
re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier,—the
man of true and simple energy. It was the recollection of those
memorable words of his,—“I’ll try, Sir!”—spoken on the
very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing
the soul and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending
all perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, valor were
rewarded by heraldic honor, this phrase—which it seems so
easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger
and glory before him, has ever spoken—would be the best and
fittest of all mottoes for the General’s shield of arms.It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual
health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals
unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose
sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
The accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage,
but never with more fulness and variety than during my continuance
in office. There was one man, especially, the observation
of whose character gave me a new idea of talent. His
gifts were emphatically those of a man of business; prompt,
acute, clear-minded; with an eye that saw through all perplexities,
and a faculty of arrangement that made them vanish, as
by the waving of an enchanter’s wand. Bred up from boyhood
in the Custom-House, it was his proper field of activity; and
the many intricacies of business, so harassing to the interloper,
presented themselves before him with the regularity of a perfectly
comprehended system. In my contemplation, he stood
as the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the Custom-House
in himself; or, at all events, the main-spring that kept its variously
revolving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like
this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit
and convenience, and seldom with a leading reference to their
fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce seek
elsewhere the dexterity which is not in them. Thus, by an
inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our
man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody
met with. With an easy condescension, and kind forbearance
towards our stupidity,—which, to his order of mind, must have
seemed little short of crime,—would he forthwith, by the merest
touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as daylight.
The merchants valued him not less than we, his esoteric
friends. His integrity was perfect: it was a law of nature with
him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it be otherwise
than the main condition of an intellect so remarkably
clear and accurate as his, to be honest and regular in the administration
of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to anything
that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble
such a man very much in the same way, though to a far
greater degree, that an error in the balance of an account or
an ink-blot on the fair page of a book of record. Here, in a
word,—and it is a rare instance in my life,—I had met with
a person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held.Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself
connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence,
that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past
habits, and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit
was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable
schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; after living
for three years within the subtile influence of an intellect like
Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulging
fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with
Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau about pine-trees
and Indian relics, in his hermitage at Walden; after growing
fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard’s
culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow’s
hearthstone;—it was time, at length, that I should
exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with
food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. Even the old
Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had
known Alcott. I look upon it as an evidence, in some measure,
of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of
a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember,
I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities,
and never murmur at the change.Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment
in my regard. I cared not, at this period, for books;
they were apart from me. Nature,—except it were human
nature,—the nature that is developed in earth and sky, was, in
one sense, hidden from me; and all the imaginative delight,
wherewith it had been spiritualized, passed away out of my
mind. A gift, a faculty if it had not departed, was suspended
and inanimate within me. There would have been something
sad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had I not been conscious
that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in
the past. It might be true, indeed, that this was a life which
could not with impunity be lived too long; else, it might have
made me permanently other than I had been without transforming
me into any shape which it would be worth my while to
take. But I never considered it as other than a transitory life.
There was always a prophetic instinct, a low whisper in my ear,
that, within no long period, and whenever a new change of custom
should be essential to my good, a change would come.Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue, and, so
far as I have been able to understand, as good a Surveyor as
need be. A man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten
times the Surveyor’s proportion of those qualities) may, at any
time, be a man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself
the trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains
with whom my official duties brought me into any manner
of connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew
me in no other character. None of them, I presume, had ever
read a page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the more
for me, if they had read them all; nor would it have mended
the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been
written with a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of
whom was a custom-house officer in his day, as well as I. It
is a good lesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a
man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself
a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to
step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized,
and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond
that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know
not that I especially needed the lesson, either in the way of
warning or rebuke; but, at any rate, I learned it thoroughly:
nor, it gives me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came
home to my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be
thrown off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true,
the Naval Officer—an excellent fellow, who came into office
with me and went out only a little later—would often engage
me in a discussion about one or the other of his favorite topics,
Napoleon or Shakespeare. The Collector’s junior clerk, too—a
young gentleman who, it was whispered, occasionally covered
a sheet of Uncle Sam’s letter-paper with what (at the distance
of a few yards) looked very much like poetry—used now and
then to speak to me of books, as matters with which I might
possibly be conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse;
and it was quite sufficient for my necessities.No longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blazoned
abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it had now
another kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker imprinted it,
with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of
anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise,
in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost,
and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such
queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a
name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before,
and, I hope, will never go again.But the past was not dead. Once in a great while the
thoughts that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been
put to rest so quietly, revived again. One of the most remarkable
occasions, when the habit of bygone days awoke in me,
was that which brings it within the law of literary propriety to
offer the public the sketch which I am now writing.In the second story of the Custom-House there is a large
room, in which the brick-work and naked rafters have never
been covered with panelling and plaster. The edifice—originally
projected on a scale adapted to the old commercial enterprise
of the port, and with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined
never to be realized—contains far more space than its
occupants know what to do with. This airy hall, therefore, over
the Collector’s apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and,
in spite of the aged cobwebs that festoon its dusky beams, appears
still to await the labor of the carpenter and mason. At
one end of the room, in a recess, were a number of barrels, piled
one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. Large
quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was
sorrowful to think how many days and weeks and months and
years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were
now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in
this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes.
But, then, what reams of other manuscripts—filled not with the
dulness of official formalities, but with the thought of inventive
brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts—had gone equally to
oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose in their
day, as these heaped-up papers had, and—saddest of all—without
purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood which
the clerks of the Custom-House had gained by these worthless
scratchings of the pen! Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps,
as materials of local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the
former commerce of Salem might be discovered, and memorials
of her princely merchants,—old King Derby, old Billy Gray,
old Simon Forrester, and many another magnate in his day;
whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before
his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of
the greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy
of Salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure
beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to
the Revolution, upward to what their children look upon as
long-established rank.Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the
earlier documents and archives of the Custom-House having,
probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all the King’s officials
accompanied the British army in its flight from Boston. It has
often been a matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps,
to the days of the Protectorate, those papers must have contained
many references to forgotten or remembered men, and to
antique customs, which would have affected me with the same
pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian arrow-heads in the
field near the Old Manse.But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery
of some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the
heaped-up rubbish in the corner; unfolding one and another
document, and reading the names of vessels that had long ago
foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants,
never heard of now on ’Change, nor very readily decipherable
on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters with
the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest which we bestow on
the corpse of dead activity,—and exerting my fancy, sluggish
with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of
the old town’s brighter aspect, when India was a new region,
and only Salem knew the way thither,—I chanced to lay my
hand on a small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient
yellow parchment. This envelope had the air of an official
record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their
stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than
at present. There was something about it that quickened an
instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape, that
tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here
be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment
cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal
of Governor Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor
of his Majesty’s Customs for the port of Salem, in the Province
of Massachusetts Bay. I remember to have read (probably in
Felt’s Annals) a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue,
about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent
times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little
graveyard of St. Peter’s Church, during the renewal of that
edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my
respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some fragments
of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle; which, unlike
the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory preservation.
But, on examining the papers which the parchment commission
served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue’s
mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the
frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private
nature, or at least written in his private capacity, and apparently
with his own hand. I could account for their being included
in the heap of Custom-House lumber only by the fact
that Mr. Pue’s death had happened suddenly; and that these
papers, which he probably kept in his official desk, had never
come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate
to the business of the revenue. On the transfer of the archives
to Halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern,
was left behind, and had remained ever since unopened.The ancient Surveyor—being little molested, I suppose, at
that early day, with business pertaining to his office—seems
to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches
as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature.
These supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would
otherwise have been eaten up with rust. A portion of his facts,
by the by, did me good service in the preparation of the article
entitled “Main Street,” included in the present volume. The
remainder may perhaps be applied to purposes equally valuable,
hereafter; or not impossibly may be worked up, so far as
they go, into a regular history of Salem, should my veneration
for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task. Meanwhile,
they shall be at the command of any gentleman, inclined, and
competent, to take the unprofitable labor off my hands. As a
final disposition, I contemplate depositing them with the Essex
Historical Society.Main StreetBut the object that most drew my attention, in the mysterious
package, was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and
faded. There were traces about it of gold embroidery, which,
however, was greatly frayed and defaced; so that none, or very
little, of the glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy
to perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch
(as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives
evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be recovered even by
the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet
cloth,—for time and wear and a sacrilegious moth had reduced
it to little other than a rag,—on careful examination, assumed
the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By an accurate
measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inches
and a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be
no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to
be worn, or what rank, honor, and dignity, in by-past times,
were signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the
fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of
solving. And yet it strangely interested me. My eyes fastened
themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned
aside. Certainly, there was some deep meaning in it, most worthy
of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from
the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities,
but evading the analysis of my mind.While thus perplexed,—and cogitating, among other hypotheses,
whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations
which the white men used to contrive, in order to take
the eyes of Indians,—I happened to place it on my breast.
It seemed to me,—the reader may smile, but must not doubt
my word,—it seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation
not altogether physical, yet almost so, of burning heat;
and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I
shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had
hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around
which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the
satisfaction to find, recorded by the old Surveyor’s pen, a reasonably
complete explanation of the whole affair. There were
several foolscap sheets containing many particulars respecting the
life and conversation of one Hester Prynne, who appeared to have
been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our ancestors.
She had flourished during the period between the early
days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century.
Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from
whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered
her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of
a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an
almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of
voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good she
might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters,
especially those of the heart; by which means, as a person
of such propensities inevitably must, she gained from many people
the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine, was
looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying
further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings
and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the
reader is referred to the story entitled “The Scarlet Letter”;
and it should be borne carefully in mind, that the main facts
of that story are authorized and authenticated by the document
of Mr. Surveyor Pue. The original papers, together with the
scarlet letter itself,—a most curious relic,—are still in my possession,
and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced
by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a sight of
them. I must not be understood as affirming, that, in the dressing
up of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of
passion that influenced the characters who figure in it, I have
invariably confined myself within the limits of the old Surveyor’s
half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have allowed
myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as much license
as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. What
I contend for is the authenticity of the outline.The Scarlet LetterThis incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old
track. There seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. It
impressed me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred
years gone by, and wearing his immortal wig,—which
was buried with him, but did not perish in the grave,—had
met me in the deserted chamber of the Custom-House. In his
port was the dignity of one who had borne his Majesty’s commission,
and who was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendor
that shone so dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike,
alas! the hang-dog look of a republican official, who, as the
servant of the people, feels himself less than the least, and below
the lowest, of his masters. With his own ghostly hand, the
obscurely seen but majestic figure had imparted to me the scarlet
symbol, and the little roll of explanatory manuscript. With
his own ghostly voice, he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration
of my filial duty and reverence towards him,—who
might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor,—to
bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public.
“Do this,” said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically
nodding the head that looked so imposing within its memorable
wig,—“do this, and the profit shall be all your own!
You will shortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was
in mine, when a man’s office was a life-lease, and oftentimes
an heirloom. But, I charge you, in this matter of old Mistress
Prynne, give to your predecessor’s memory the credit which will
be rightfully due!” And I said to the ghost of Mr. Surveyor
Pue, “I will!”On Hester Prynne’s story, therefore, I bestowed much thought.
It was the subject of my meditations for many an hour, while
pacing to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundred-fold
repetition, the long extent from the front-door of the
Custom-House to the side-entrance, and back again. Great were
the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers
and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the unmercifully
lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps.
Remembering their own former habits, they used to say that
the Surveyor was walking the quarter-deck. They probably
fancied that my sole object—and, indeed, the sole object for
which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary
motion—was, to get an appetite for dinner. And to say the
truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east wind that generally
blew along the passage, was the only valuable result of so much
indefatigable exercise. So little adapted is the atmosphere of
a custom-house to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility,
that, had I remained there through ten Presidencies yet to
come, I doubt whether the tale of “The Scarlet Letter” would
ever have been brought before the public eye. My imagination
was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or only with miserable
dimness, the figures with which I did my best to people
it. The characters of the narrative would not be warmed and
rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual
forge. They would take neither the glow of passion nor
the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead
corpses, and stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin
of contemptuous defiance. “What have you to do with us?”
that expression seemed to say. “The little power you might
once have possessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! You
have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go, then,
and earn your wages!” In short, the almost torpid creatures
of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without
fair occasion.It was not merely during the three hours and a half which
Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life, that this
wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with me
on my sea-shore walks, and rambles into the country, whenever—which
was seldom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself
to seek that invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give
me such freshness and activity of thought the moment that I
stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor,
as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied
me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most
absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me, when, late
at night, I sat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by the
glimmering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth
imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out on the
brightening page in many-hued description.If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it
might well be deemed a hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar
room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures
so distinctly,—making every object so minutely visible, yet so
unlike a morning or noontide visibility,—is a medium the most
suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive
guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known
apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the
centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an
extinguished lamp; the sofa; the bookcase; the picture on the
wall;—all these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualized
by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance,
and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or
too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby.
A child’s shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage;
the hobby-horse;—whatever, in a word, has been used or played
with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of strangeness
and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as
by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has
become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world
and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet,
and each imbue itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts might
enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too much in
keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about
us and discover a form beloved, but gone hence, now sitting
quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that
would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar, or had
never once stirred from our fireside.The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influence in producing
the effect which I would describe. It throws its unobtrusive
tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon
the walls and ceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish of the
furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality
of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart
and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms which fancy
summons up. It converts them from snow-images into men and
women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we behold—deep within
its haunted verge—the smouldering glow of the half-extinguished
anthracite, the white moonbeams on the floor, and a repetition
of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with one remove
further from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. Then,
at such an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting
all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like
truth, he need never try to write romances.But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House experience,
moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of firelight, were
just alike in my regard; and neither of them was of one whit
more avail than the twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class
of susceptibilities, and a gift connected with them,—of no great
richness or value, but the best I had,—was gone from me.It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a different order
of composition, my faculties would not have been found so pointless
and inefficacious. I might, for instance, have contented myself
with writing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one
of the Inspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not to mention,
since scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter
and admiration by his marvellous gifts as a story-teller.
Could I have preserved the picturesque force of his style, and
the humorous coloring which nature taught him how to throw
over his descriptions, the result, I honestly believe, would have
been something new in literature. Or I might readily have found
a more serious task. It was a folly, with the materiality of this
daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling
myself back into another age; or to insist on creating the semblance
of a world out of airy matter, when, at every moment,
the impalpable beauty of my soap-bubble was broken by the
rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort would
have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque
substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright transparency;
to spiritualize the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to
seek, resolutely, the true and indestructible value that lay hidden
in the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters,
with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The
page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace,
only because I had not fathomed its deeper import.
A better book than I shall ever write was there; leaf after leaf
presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality
of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because
my brain wanted the insight and my hand the cunning to transcribe
it. At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a
few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them
down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page.These perceptions have come too late. At the instant, I was
only conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was
now a hopeless toil. There was no occasion to make much moan
about this state of affairs. 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. But, nevertheless, it
is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that
one’s intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness,
like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you
find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact there
could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was
led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on
the character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question.
In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these
effects. Suffice it here to say, that a Custom-House officer, of
long continuance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable
personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by
which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his
business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is of such a
sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind.An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in
every individual who has occupied the position—is, that, while
he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper
strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned
to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of
self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native energy,
or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon
him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate
in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes,
to struggle amid a struggling world—may return to himself,
and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens.
He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin,
and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along
the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his
own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he
forever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support
external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a
hallucination which, in the face of all discouragement, and
making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and,
I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him
for a brief space after death—is, that finally, and in no long
time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be
restored to office. This faith, more than anything else, steals
the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream
of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so
much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a
little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and
support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go
to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy,
at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of
his Uncle’s pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight
a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular
disease. Uncle Sam’s gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy
old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment
like that of the Devil’s wages. Whoever touches it should
look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard
against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better
attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth,
its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.Here was a fine prospect in the distance! Not that the Surveyor
brought the lesson home to himself, or admitted that he
could be so utterly undone, either by continuance in office, or
ejectment. Yet my reflections were not the most comfortable.
I began to grow melancholy and restless; continually prying
into my mind, to discover which of its poor properties were
gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the
remainder. I endeavored to calculate how much longer I could
stay in the Custom-House, and yet go forth a man. To confess
the truth, it was my greatest apprehension,—as it would never
be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual as
myself, and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to
resign,—it was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely
to grow gray and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become
much such another animal as the old Inspector. Might it not,
in the tedious lapse of official life that lay before me, finally be
with me as it was with this venerable friend,—to make the
dinner-hour the nucleus of the day, and to spend the rest of
it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the
shade? A dreary look-forward this, for a man who felt it to
be the best definition of happiness to live throughout the whole
range of his faculties and sensibilities! But, all this while, I
was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had
meditated better things for me than I could possibly imagine
for myself.A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship—to
adopt the tone of “P. P.”—was the election of General
Taylor to the Presidency. It is essential, in order to form a complete
estimate of the advantages of official life, to view the incumbent
at the incoming of a hostile administration. His position is then
one of the most singularly irksome, and, in every contingency,
disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly occupy; with
seldom an alternative of good, on either hand, although what
presents itself to him as the worst event may very probably be
the best. But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride
and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control
of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by
whom, since one or the other must needs happen, he would
rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who has
kept his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the blood-thirstiness
that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be
conscious that he is himself among its objects! There are few
uglier traits of human nature than this tendency—which I now
witnessed in men no worse than their neighbors—to grow cruel,
merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. If
the guillotine, as applied to office-holders, were a literal fact
instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere
belief that the active members of the victorious party were sufficiently
excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have
thanked Heaven for the opportunity! It appears to me—who
have been a calm and curious observer, as well in victory as
defeat—that this fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge
has never distinguished the many triumphs of my own party as
it now did that of the Whigs. The Democrats take the offices,
as a general rule, because they need them, and because the practice
of many years has made it the law of political warfare,
which, unless a different system be proclaimed, it were weakness
and cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit of victory
has made them generous. They know how to spare, when they
see occasion; and when they strike, the axe may be sharp, indeed,
but its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their
custom ignominiously to kick the head which they have just
struck off.In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, I saw
much reason to congratulate myself that I was on the losing
side, rather than the triumphant one. If, heretofore, I had been
none of the warmest of partisans, I began now, at this season
of peril and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which
party my predilections lay; nor was it without something like
regret and shame, that, according to a reasonable calculation of
chances, I saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better
than those of my Democratic brethren. But who can see an
inch into futurity, beyond his nose? My own head was the
first that fell!The moment when a man’s head drops off is seldom or never,
I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.
Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so
serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it,
if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst,
of the accident which has befallen him. In my particular case,
the consolatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed, had suggested
themselves to my meditations a considerable time before
it was requisite to use them. In view of my previous weariness
of office, and vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat
resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea
of committing suicide, and, although beyond his hopes, meet
with the good hap to be murdered. In the Custom-House, as
before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years; a term long
enough to rest a weary brain; long enough to break off old
intellectual habits, and make room for new ones; long enough,
and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what
was really of no advantage nor delight to any human being, and
withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have stilled
an unquiet impulse in me. Then, moreover, as regarded his
unceremonious ejectment, the late Surveyor was not altogether
ill-pleased to be recognized by the Whigs as an enemy; since
his inactivity in political affairs—his tendency to roam, at will,
in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather
than confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren of the
same household must diverge from one another—had sometimes
made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was
a friend. Now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though
with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might be looked
upon as settled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more
decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party with
which he had been content to stand, than to remain a forlorn
survivor, when so many worthier men were falling; and, at last,
after subsisting for four years on the mercy of a hostile administration,
to be compelled then to define his position anew, and
claim the yet more humiliating mercy of a friendly one.Meanwhile the press had taken up my affair, and kept me,
for a week or two, careering through the public prints, in my
decapitated state, like Irving’s Headless Horseman; ghastly and
grim, and longing to be buried, as a politically dead man ought.
So much for my figurative self. The real human being, all this
time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself
to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best;
and, making an investment in ink, paper, and steel-pens, had
opened his long-disused writing-desk, and was again a literary
man.Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor,
Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty through long idleness,
some little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery
could be brought to work upon the tale, with an effect
in any degree satisfactory. Even yet, though my thoughts were
ultimately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a
stern and sombre aspect; too much ungladdened by genial sunshine;
too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences
which soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and,
undoubtedly, should soften every picture of them. This uncaptivating
effect is perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished
revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped
itself. It is no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness
in the writer’s mind; for he was happier, while straying through
the gloom of these sunless fantasies, than at any time since he
had quitted the Old Manse. Some of the briefer articles, which
contribute to make up the volume, have likewise been written
since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and honors of
public life, and the remainder are gleaned from annuals and magazines
of such antique date that they have gone round the circle,
and come back to novelty again. Keeping up the metaphor of
the political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the Posthumous
Papers of a Decapitated Surveyor; and the sketch
which I am now bringing to a close, if too autobiographical for
a modest person to publish in his lifetime, will readily be excused
in a gentleman who writes from beyond the grave. Peace
be with all the world! My blessing on my friends! My forgiveness
to my enemies! For I am in the realm of quiet!Posthumous
Papers of a Decapitated Surveyor At the time of writing this article the author intended to publish, along with
“The Scarlet Letter,” several shorter tales and sketches. These it has been thought
advisable to defer. At the time of writing this article the author intended to publish, along with
“The Scarlet Letter,” several shorter tales and sketches. These it has been thought
advisable to defer.[1]The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me.
The old Inspector,—who, by the by, I regret to say, was overthrown
and killed by a horse, some time ago; else he would
certainly have lived forever,—he, and all those other venerable
personages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but
shadows in my view; white-headed and wrinkled images, which
my fancy used to sport with, and has now flung aside forever.
The merchants,—Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball,
Bertram, Hunt,—these, and many other names, which had such
a classic familiarity for my ear six months ago,—these men of
traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position in the
world,—how little time has it required to disconnect me from
them all, not merely in act, but recollection! It is with an effort
that I recall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon,
likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the
haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it
were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in
cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden
houses, and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity
of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my
life. I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good towns-people
will not much regret me; for—though it has been as dear an
object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance
in their eyes, and to win myself a pleasant memory in this abode
and burial-place of so many of my forefathers—there has never
been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man requires,
in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I shall do better
amongst other faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be
said, will do just as well without me.thereIt may be, however,—O, transporting and triumphant thought!—that
the great-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes
think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days, when the antiquary
of days to come, among the sites memorable in the town’s history,
shall point out the locality of The Town Pump!The Town Pump