Talking Big

It was, by all accounts I’ve found, a beautiful day. Late in May, after a week of rain in Concord, it was a sunny day of blue skies. Nathaniel Hawthorne had died on May 19, 1864 while traveling in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with his Bowdoin College friend, the former US President Franklin Pierce. His funeral was held on May 23rd, and the day is a fascinating snapshot of one moment in the history of the so-called American Renaissance. As you’ll see below, many of the famous writers present were moved to write pastoral elegies, some in verse, some in prose, some in fragments, others in revealing passages.

Here is a passage from Brenda Wineapple’s biography that sets the scene:

It was raining on Sunday too, but Monday sparkled, the air fresh and sweet, the sky a robin’s-egg blue. The village was thronged with spectators, who strolled arm in arm to the Old Manse, already a tourist site. Some of the onlookers rowed on the lazy river nearby, its bank spread with purple flowers. But at three o’clock, mourners deserted the sunshine and filed into the Church of the First Parish, where Louisa Alcott had arranged the flowers in blazing shades of white: lilies of the valley, Hawthorne’s favorite, and luxurious apple blossoms picked from orchards at the Manse. Huge vases of them stood in each of the church windows. “It looked like a happy meeting,” Oliver Holmes murmured to Emerson.

 Hawthorne: A Life, Brenda Wineapple, Knopf, 2003

Wineapple follows a number of first-hand accounts, one of the most detailed of which (in regards to the agenda of the day and who was there) is from the journal of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here is Emerson:

May 24, 1864:

Yesterday, May 23, we buried Hawthorne in Sleepy Hollow, in a pomp of sunshine and verdure, and gentle winds. James Freeman Clarke read the service in the church and at the grave. Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, Hoar, Dwight, Whipple, Norton, Alcott, Hillard, Fields, Judge Thomas, and I attended the hearse as pallbearers. Franklin Pierce was with the family. The church was copiously decorated with white flowers delicately arranged. The corpse was unwillingly shown, – only a few moments to this company of his friends. But it was noble and serene in its aspect, – nothing amiss, – a calm and powerful head. A large company filled the church and the grounds of the cemetery. All was so bright and quiet that pain or mourning was hardly suggested, and Holmes said to me that it looked like a happy meeting.

Clarke in the church said that Hawthorne had done more justice than any other to the shades of life, shown a sympathy with the crime in our nature, and, like Jesus, was the friend of sinners.

I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more fully rendered, – in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could not longer be endured, and he died of it. I have found in his death a surprise and disappointment. I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power. Moreover, I have felt sure of him in his neighbourhood, and in his necessities of sympathy and intelligence, – that I could well wait his time, – his unwillingness and caprice, – and might one day conquer a friendship. It would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him, – there were no barriers, – only, he said so little, that I talked too much, and stopped only because, as he gave no indications, I feared to exceed. He showed no egotism or self-assertion, rather a humility, and, at one time, a fear that he had written himself out. One day, when I found him on the top of his hill, in the woods, he paced back the path to his house, and said ‘This path is the only remembrance of me that will remain.’ Now it appears that I waited too long.

There’s such melancholy in that last paragraph. Emerson is so frank that he and Hawthorne while friendly never struck a friendship. He likely knew his journals would be left for posterity, as he and Hawthorne were both famous. The minister that Emerson mentions above is James Freeman Clarke. He had presided over Hawthorne’s marriage to Sophia Peabody in 1842. Below, Sophia Hawthorne describes the day in a letter to a former household servant. She picks up on the detail of the flowers mentioned by Emerson and Wineapple above, flowers apparently arranged by Louisa Alcott.

On the 23d of May, Monday, were the funeral ceremonies. The church was dressed with white flowers, thousands of lilies of the valley and other white flowers. In every window was a tall vase. All along the galleries were rows of vases and the pulpit was covered, and crosses made of white flowers were hung on each side. The fragrance of the lilies filled the church. The coffin was placed before the pulpit and covered with lilies and two wreathes. One was of apple blossoms from the Old Manse-from the orchard he used to love-and one was very superb-of hot house flowers, white tea roses, orange flowers, gillyflowers, and others woven together. His friends, all the eminent literary men in the country came, and the church was filled. An anthem was sung

 We will be glad-

Thy will be done-

 were the words. I sent for Mr Clarke, the clergyman who married us-and he performed the rites and made a beautiful discourse. It was a perfect day. The apple trees were all in great bloom and the sun was bright and the west wind blew. The birds sang all day. The pall bearers were sixteen gentlemen, his friends. Mr Emerson was at the head of one line on one side. Mr Fields and Judge Hoar were at the end of each line. Mr Fields carried in his hand an unfinished manuscript of Mr Hawthorne. They carried the body to the height of the hill at Sleepy Hollow, and laid it beneath tall white pines. It was a favorite spot of Mr Hawthorne. But, dear Anne, I knew he was not there, but in Heaven above.

 Every body said there never was such a funeral before. When my carriage came down the hill, those sixteen heads at the foot of the hill, waiting for So I had to come home to the house he would never enter again. But I have been wonderfully supported, and I am now pretty well. But I have been nowhere yet, not even to my sister’s.

You can read the full letter here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2922343

From A New Account of Hawthorne’s Last Days, Death, and Funeral Author(s): Maurice Bassan Source: American Literature , Jan., 1956, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Jan., 1956), pp. 561-565 Published by: Duke University Press

Here is what the New York Times had to say of the event.

May 26, 1864.

FUNERAL OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. — Mr. HAWTHORNE’s funeral took place at Concord, Mass., on Monday. The following distinguished persons were present:

Prof. Longfellow, Prof. Agassiz, Ex-President Franklin Pierce, Dr. O.W. Holmes, James Russell Lowell, George S. Hilllard, Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, Charles E. Norton, Prof. Geo. W. Greene, Judge Hoar, B.F. Thomas, Ralph Waldo Emerson, E.P. Whipple, A. Bronson Alcott, James T. Fields, George B. Loring, John S. Dwight, Richard S. Frothingham, A. Williams, of A. Williams & Co., Richard S. Spofford, Jr., Miss Harriet E. Prescott, Mrs. James T. Fields, and others.

At the close of the services at the church, the coffin was placed in the hearse, having upon it a wreath of apple-blossoms, from the “Old Manse,” which, by the pen of Mr. HAWTHORNE, has become a familiar name to our literature, and the manuscript of an unfinished romance which had engaged the attention of the deceased in his later days. He was buried on the summit of a hill in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

All of the writers were seemingly touched by the spring day. Here is the poet Longfellow in a contemporary letter (May 25, 1864, two days after the funeral) to Charles Sumner corroborating some details of the day.

25th.  You  have  doubtless  read  some  description  of Hawthorne’s  funeral.  It  was  a  lovely  day ;  the  village all  sunshine  and  blossoms  and  the  song  of  birds.  You cannot  imagine  anything  at  once  more  sad  and  beautiful. He  is  buried  on  a  hill-top  under  the  pines.  I  saw  your portrait  at  Emerson’s ;  so  in  a  certain  sense  you  were present.

Longfellow also wrote a poem about Hawthorne you can read here.

Here is Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Atlantic in July of 1864.

In a patch of sunlight, flecked by the shade of tall, murmuring pines, at the summit of a gently swelling mound where the wildflowers had climbed to find the light and the stirring of fresh breezes, the tired poet was laid beneath the green turf. Poet let us call him, though his chants were not modulated in the rhythm of verse. The element of poetry is air: we know the poet by his atmospheric effects, by the blue of his distances, by the softening of every hard outline he touches, by the silvery mist in which he veils deformity and clothes what is common so that it changes to awe-inspiring mystery, by the cloud of gold and purple which are the drapery of his dreams.

Note: I have not been able to find any text of the sermon delivered by James Freeman Clarke that day. If you know of a copy that exists and where, please leave a comment below. I’ll owe you one.