THE WAYSIDE. INTRODUCTORY.

Tanglewood Tales

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

THE WAYSIDE. INTRODUCTORY., TANGLEWOOD TALES by Nathaniel Hawthorne






A short time ago, I was favored with a flying visit from my
young friend Eustace Bright, whom I had not before met with
since quitting the breezy mountains of Berkshire. It being the
winter vacation at his college, Eustace was allowing himself a
little relaxation, in the hope, he told me, of repairing the
inroads which severe application to study had made upon his
health; and I was happy to conclude, from the excellent
physical condition in which I saw him, that the remedy had
already been attended with very desirable success. He had now
run up from Boston by the noon train, partly impelled by the
friendly regard with which he is pleased to honor me, and
partly, as I soon found, on a matter of literary business.

It delighted me to receive Mr. Bright, for the first time,
under a roof, though a very humble one, which I could really
call my own. Nor did I fail (as is the custom of landed
proprietors all about the world) to parade the poor fellow up
and down over my half a dozen acres; secretly rejoicing,
nevertheless, that the disarray of the inclement season, and
particularly the six inches of snow then upon the ground,
prevented him from observing the ragged neglect of soil and
shrubbery into which the place had lapsed. It was idle,
however, to imagine that an airy guest from Monument Mountain,
Bald Summit, and old Graylock, shaggy with primeval forests,
could see anything to admire in my poor little hillside, with
its growth of frail and insect-eaten locust trees. Eustace very
frankly called the view from my hill top tame; and so, no
doubt, it was, after rough, broken, rugged, headlong Berkshire,
and especially the northern parts of the county, with which his
college residence had made him familiar. But to me there is a
peculiar, quiet charm in these broad meadows and gentle
eminences. They are better than mountains, because they do not
stamp and stereotype themselves into the brain, and thus grow
wearisome with the same strong impression, repeated day after
day. A few summer weeks among mountains, a lifetime among green
meadows and placid slopes, with outlines forever new, because
continually fading out of the memory--such would be my sober
choice.

I doubt whether Eustace did not internally pronounce the whole
thing a bore, until I led him to my predecessor's little
ruined, rustic summer house, midway on the hillside. It is a
mere skeleton of slender, decaying tree trunks, with neither
walls nor a roof; nothing but a tracery of branches and twigs,
which the next wintry blast will be very likely to scatter in
fragments along the terrace. It looks, and is, as evanescent as
a dream; and yet, in its rustic network of boughs, it has
somehow enclosed a hint of spiritual beauty, and has become a
true emblem of the subtile and ethereal mind that planned it. I
made Eustace Bright sit down on a snow bank, which had heaped
itself over the mossy seat, and gazing through the arched
windows opposite, he acknowledged that the scene at once grew
picturesque.

"Simple as it looks," said he, "this little edifice seems to be
the work of magic. It is full of suggestiveness, and, in its
way, is as good as a cathedral. Ah, it would be just the spot
for one to sit in, of a summer afternoon, and tell the children
some more of those wild stories from the classic myths!"

"It would, indeed," answered I. "The summer house itself, so
airy and so broken, is like one of those old tales, imperfectly
remembered; and these living branches of the Baldwin apple
tree, thrusting so rudely in, are like your unwarrantable
interpolations. But, by the by, have you added any more legends
to the series, since the publication of the 'Wonder-Book'?"

"Many more," said Eustace; "Primrose, Periwinkle, and the rest
of them, allow me no comfort of my life unless I tell them a
story every day or two. I have run away from home partly to
escape the importunity of these little wretches! But I have
written out six of the new stories, and have brought them for
you to look over."

"Are they as good as the first?" I inquired.

"Better chosen, and better handled," replied Eustace Bright.
"You will say so when you read them."

"Possibly not," I remarked. "I know from my own experience,
that an author's last work is always his best one, in his own
estimate, until it quite loses the red heat of composition.
After that, it falls into its true place, quietly enough. But
let us adjourn to my study, and examine these new stories. It
would hardly be doing yourself justice, were you to bring me
acquainted with them, sitting here on this snow bank!"

So we descended the hill to my small, old cottage, and shut
ourselves up in the south-eastern room, where the sunshine
comes in, warmly and brightly, through the better half of a
winter's day. Eustace put his bundle of manuscript into my
hands; and I skimmed through it pretty rapidly, trying to find
out its merits and demerits by the touch of my fingers, as a
veteran story-teller ought to know how to do.

It will be remembered that Mr. Bright condescended to avail
himself of my literary experience by constituting me editor of
the "Wonder-Book." As he had no reason to complain of the
reception of that erudite work by the public, he was now
disposed to retain me in a similar position with respect to the
present volume, which he entitled TANGLEWOOD TALES. Not, as
Eustace hinted, that there was any real necessity for my
services as introducer, inasmuch as his own name had become
established in some good degree of favor with the literary
world. But the connection with myself, he was kind enough to
say, had been highly agreeable; nor was he by any means
desirous, as most people are, of kicking away the ladder that
had perhaps helped him to reach his present elevation. My young
friend was willing, in short, that the fresh verdure of his
growing reputation should spread over my straggling and
half-naked boughs; even as I have sometimes thought of training
a vine, with its broad leafiness, and purple fruitage, over the
worm-eaten posts and rafters of the rustic summer house. I was
not insensible to the advantages of his proposal, and gladly
assured him of my acceptance.

Merely from the title of the stories I saw at once that the
subjects were not less rich than those of the former volume;
nor did I at all doubt that Mr. Bright's audacity (so far as
that endowment might avail) had enabled him to take full
advantage of whatever capabilities they offered. Yet, in spite
of my experience of his free way of handling them, I did not
quite see, I confess, how he could have obviated all the
difficulties in the way of rendering them presentable to
children. These old legends, so brimming over with everything
that is most abhorrent to our Christianized moral sense some of
them so hideous, others so melancholy and miserable, amid which
the Greek tragedians sought their themes, and moulded them into
the sternest forms of grief that ever the world saw; was such
material the stuff that children's playthings should be made
of! How were they to be purified? How was the blessed sunshine
to be thrown into them?

But Eustace told me that these myths were the most singular
things in the world, and that he was invariably astonished,
whenever he began to relate one, by the readiness with which it
adapted itself to the childish purity of his auditors. The
objectionable characteristics seem to be a parasitical growth,
having no essential connection with the original fable. They
fall away, and are thought of no more, the instant he puts his
imagination in sympathy with the innocent little circle, whose
wide-open eyes are fixed so eagerly upon him. Thus the stories
(not by any strained effort of the narrator's, but in harmony
with their inherent germ) transform themselves, and re-assume
the shapes which they might be supposed to possess in the pure
childhood of the world. When the first poet or romancer told
these marvellous legends (such is Eustace Bright's opinion), it
was still the Golden Age. Evil had never yet existed; and
sorrow, misfortune, crime, were mere shadows which the mind
fancifully created for itself, as a shelter against too sunny
realities; or, at most, but prophetic dreams to which the
dreamer himself did not yield a waking credence. Children are
now the only representatives of the men and women of that happy
era; and therefore it is that we must raise the intellect and
fancy to the level of childhood, in order to re-create the
original myths.

I let the youthful author talk as much and as extravagantly as
he pleased, and was glad to see him commencing life with such
confidence in himself and his performances. A few years will do
all that is necessary towards showing him the truth in both
respects. Meanwhile, it is but right to say, he does really
appear to have overcome the moral objections against these
fables, although at the expense of such liberties with their
structure as must be left to plead their own excuse, without
any help from me. Indeed, except that there was a necessity for
it--and that the inner life of the legends cannot be come at
save by making them entirely one's own property--there is no
defense to be made.

Eustace informed me that he had told his stories to the
children in various situations--in the woods, on the shore of
the lake, in the dell of Shadow Brook, in the playroom, at
Tanglewood fireside, and in a magnificent palace of snow, with
ice windows, which he helped his little friends to build. His
auditors were even more delighted with the contents of the
present volume than with the specimens which have already been
given to the world. The classically learned Mr. Pringle, too,
had listened to two or three of the tales, and censured them
even more bitterly than he did THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES; so
that, what with praise, and what with criticism, Eustace Bright
thinks that there is good hope of at least as much success with
the public as in the case of the "WonderBook."

I made all sorts of inquiries about the children, not doubting
that there would be great eagerness to hear of their welfare,
among some good little folks who have written to me, to ask for
another volume of myths. They are all, I am happy to say
(unless we except Clover), in excellent health and spirits.
Primrose is now almost a young lady, and, Eustace tells me, is
just as saucy as ever. She pretends to consider herself quite
beyond the age to be interested by such idle stories as these;
but, for all that, whenever a story is to be told, Primrose
never fails to be one of the listeners, and to make fun of it
when finished. Periwinkle is very much grown, and is expected
to shut up her baby house and throw away her doll in a month or
two more. Sweet Fern has learned to read and write, and has put
on a jacket and pair of pantaloons--all of which improvements I
am sorry for. Squash Blossom, Blue Eye, Plantain, and Buttercup
have had the scarlet fever, but came easily through it.
Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the
whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors
whenever the sun shone. Cowslip, during the autumn, had either
the measles, or some eruption that looked very much like it,
but was hardly sick a day. Poor Clover has been a good deal
troubled with her second teeth, which have made her meagre in
aspect and rather fractious in temper; nor, even when she
smiles, is the matter much mended, since it discloses a gap
just within her lips, almost as wide as the barn door. But all
this will pass over, and it is predicted that she will turn out
a very pretty girl.

As for Mr. Bright himself, he is now in his senior year at
Williams College, and has a prospect of graduating with some
degree of honorable distinction at the next Commencement. In
his oration for the bachelor's degree, he gives me to
understand, he will treat of the classical myths, viewed in the
aspect of baby stories, and has a great mind to discuss the
expediency of using up the whole of ancient history, for the
same purpose. I do not know what he means to do with himself
after leaving college, but trust that, by dabbling so early
with the dangerous and seductive business of authorship, he
will not bc tempted to become an author by profession. If so I
shall be very sorry for the little that I have had to do with
the matter, in encouraging these first beginnings.

I wish there were any likelihood of my soon seeing Primrose,
Periwinkle, Dandelion, Sweet Fern, Clover Plantain,
Huckleberry, Milkweed, Cowslip, Buttercup, Blue Eye, and Squash
Blossom again. But as I do not know when I shall re-visit
Tanglewood, and as Eustace Bright probably will not ask me to
edit a third "WonderBook," the public of little folks must not
expect to hear any more about those dear children from me.
Heaven bless them, and everybody else, whether grown people or
children!