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Julian Hawthorne states that his father had a plan at this time of writing another romance, of a more cheerful tone than "The Blithedale Romance," but the full current of his poetic activity was suddenly brought to a standstill by an event that nobody would have dreamed of.
"At least," remarked I, "you may tell us how and where you met with her." "An old man brought her to my lodgings," answered Hollingsworth, "and begged me to convey her to Blithedale, where so I understood him she had friends; and this is positively all I know about the matter."
From that instant, too, she melted in quietly amongst us, and was no longer a foreign element. Though always an object of peculiar interest, a riddle, and a theme of frequent discussion, her tenure at Blithedale was thenceforth fixed.
Magnus and bishop of Exeter, at which I started, not so much because he had directed the publication of the first complete version of the English Bible, as because he had borne the name of a chief character in The Blithedale Romance.
God's ways are in nothing more mysterious than in this matter of trying to do good." This is the same voice that was heard in "The House of the Seven Gables" and "The Blithedale Romance," and shows how deep-seated was Hawthorne's antipathy to conscious philanthropy, and doubtless he meant Elizabeth Peabody as she read it to lay it to heart as an abolitionist.
Is it possible that Hawthorne put on a good face for this letter to his sister, in order to keep up appearances; or was it like the common experience of music and drawing teachers that the first lessons are the best performed; or did he really have some disagreement with Ripley, like that which he represents in "The Blithedale Romance"? The last is the more probable, although we do not hear of it otherwise.
"You are very kind; but I am afraid I have troubled you, when, after all, there may be no need. Perhaps, with your good leave, I will come to your lodgings to-morrow morning, before you set out for Blithedale. I wish you a good-night, sir, and beg pardon for stopping you."
To this day, however, I hardly know whether I then beheld Zenobia in her truest attitude, or whether that were the truer one in which she had presented herself at Blithedale. In both, there was something like the illusion which a great actress flings around her. "Have you given up Blithedale forever?" I inquired. "Why should you think so?" asked she.
I fail to find anything like the portrait-painting which others have discovered in the delineations of Blithedale characters. There are personal traits alluded to suggestive of Dr. Ripley, of Georgiana Bruce, of Orestes Brownson and others, but these hints are not definite enough to identify them with the personages of the book.
But when all is said about a certain want of substance and cohesion in the latter portions of The Blithedale Romance, the book is still a delightful and beautiful one. Zenobia and Hollingsworth live in the memory, and even Priscilla and Coverdale, who linger there less importunately, have a great deal that touches us and that we believe in.
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