Chapter Chapter 1 · BLITHEDALE

The evening before my departure for

, I was returning to my

bachelor apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the

Veiled Lady, when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me in

an obscure part of the street.

"Mr. Coverdale," said he softly, "can I speak with you a moment?"

As I have casually alluded to the Veiled Lady, it may not be amiss to

mention, for the benefit of such of my readers as are unacquainted with

her now forgotten celebrity, that she was a phenomenon in the mesmeric

line; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new

science, or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times her

sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract much individual notice;

nor, in fact, has any one of them come before the public under such

skilfully contrived circumstances of stage effect as those which at

once mystified and illuminated the remarkable performances of the lady

in question. Nowadays, in the management of his "subject,"

"clairvoyant," or "medium," the exhibitor affects the simplicity and

openness of scientific experiment; and even if he profess to tread a

step or two across the boundaries of the spiritual world, yet carries

with him the laws of our actual life and extends them over his

preternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the contrary,

all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of picturesque disposition, and

artistically contrasted light and shade, were made available, in order

to set the apparent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to

ordinary facts. In the case of the Veiled Lady, moreover, the interest

of the spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of her identity,

and an absurd rumor (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, and at one

time very prevalent) that a beautiful young lady, of family and

fortune, was enshrouded within the misty drapery of the veil. It was

white, with somewhat of a subdued silver sheen, like the sunny side of

a cloud; and, falling over the wearer from head to foot, was supposed

to insulate her from the material world, from time and space, and to

endow her with many of the privileges of a disembodied spirit.

Her pretensions, however, whether miraculous or otherwise, have little

to do with the present narrative--except, indeed, that I had

propounded, for the Veiled Lady's prophetic solution, a query as to the

success of our Blithedale enterprise. The response, by the bye, was of

the true Sibylline stamp,--nonsensical in its first aspect, yet on

closer study unfolding a variety of interpretations, one of which has

certainly accorded with the event. I was turning over this riddle in

my mind, and trying to catch its slippery purport by the tail, when the

old man above mentioned interrupted me.

"Mr. Coverdale!--Mr. Coverdale!" said he, repeating my name twice, in

order to make up for the hesitating and ineffectual way in which he

uttered it. "I ask your pardon, sir, but I hear you are going to

Blithedale tomorrow."

I knew the pale, elderly face, with the red-tipt nose, and the patch

over one eye; and likewise saw something characteristic in the old

fellow's way of standing under the arch of a gate, only revealing

enough of himself to make me recognize him as an acquaintance. He was

a very shy personage, this Mr. Moodie; and the trait was the more

singular, as his mode of getting his bread necessarily brought him into

the stir and hubbub of the world more than the generality of men.

"Yes, Mr. Moodie," I answered, wondering what interest he could take in

the fact, "it is my intention to go to Blithedale to-morrow. Can I be

of any service to you before my departure?"

"If you pleased, Mr. Coverdale," said he, "you might do me a very great

favor."

"A very great one?" repeated I, in a tone that must have expressed but

little alacrity of beneficence, although I was ready to do the old man

any amount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself. "A very

great favor, do you say? My time is brief, Mr. Moodie, and I have a

good many preparations to make. But be good enough to tell me what you

wish."

"Ah, sir," replied Old Moodie, "I don't quite like to do that; and, on

further thoughts, Mr. Coverdale, perhaps I had better apply to some

older gentleman, or to some lady, if you would have the kindness to

make me known to one, who may happen to be going to Blithedale. You are

a young man, sir!"

"Does that fact lessen my availability for your purpose?" asked I.

"However, if an older man will suit you better, there is Mr.

Hollingsworth, who has three or four years the advantage of me in age,

and is a much more solid character, and a philanthropist to boot. I am

only a poet, and, so the critics tell me, no great affair at that! But

what can this business be, Mr. Moodie? It begins to interest me;

especially since your hint that a lady's influence might be found

desirable. Come, I am really anxious to be of service to you."

But the old fellow, in his civil and demure manner, was both freakish

and obstinate; and he had now taken some notion or other into his head

that made him hesitate in his former design.

"I wonder, sir," said he, "whether you know a lady whom they call

Zenobia?"

"Not personally," I answered, "although I expect that pleasure

to-morrow, as she has got the start of the rest of us, and is already a

resident at Blithedale. But have you a literary turn, Mr. Moodie? or

have you taken up the advocacy of women's rights? or what else can have

interested you in this lady? Zenobia, by the bye, as I suppose you

know, is merely her public name; a sort of mask in which she comes

before the world, retaining all the privileges of privacy,--a

contrivance, in short, like the white drapery of the Veiled Lady, only

a little more transparent. But it is late. Will you tell me what I

can do for you?"

"Please to excuse me to-night, Mr. Coverdale," said Moodie. "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."

And so he slipt away; and, as he did not show himself the next morning,

it was only through subsequent events that I ever arrived at a

plausible conjecture as to what his business could have been. Arriving

at my room, I threw a lump of cannel coal upon the grate, lighted a

cigar, and spent an hour in musings of every hue, from the brightest to

the most sombre; being, in truth, not so very confident as at some

former periods that this final step, which would mix me up irrevocably

with the Blithedale affair, was the wisest that could possibly be

taken. It was nothing short of midnight when I went to bed, after

drinking a glass of particularly fine sherry on which I used to pride

myself in those days. It was the very last bottle; and I finished it,

with a friend, the next forenoon, before setting out for Blithedale.

II. BLITHEDALE

There can hardly remain for me (who am really getting to be a frosty

bachelor, with another white hair, every week or so, in my mustache),

there can hardly flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth, as

that which I remember, the next day, at Blithedale. It was a wood

fire, in the parlor of an old farmhouse, on an April afternoon, but

with the fitful gusts of a wintry snowstorm roaring in the chimney.

Vividly does that fireside re-create itself, as I rake away the ashes

from the embers in my memory, and blow them up with a sigh, for lack of

more inspiring breath. Vividly for an instant, but anon, with the

dimmest gleam, and with just as little fervency for my heart as for my

finger-ends! The staunch oaken logs were long ago burnt out. Their

genial glow must be represented, if at all, by the merest phosphoric

glimmer, like that which exudes, rather than shines, from damp

fragments of decayed trees, deluding the benighted wanderer through a

forest. Around such chill mockery of a fire some few of us might sit

on the withered leaves, spreading out each a palm towards the imaginary

warmth, and talk over our exploded scheme for beginning the life of

Paradise anew.

Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, I am bold to

affirm--nobody, at least, in our bleak little world of New

England,--had dreamed of Paradise that day except as the pole suggests

the tropic. Nor, with such materials as were at hand, could the most

skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of Eve's bower

than might be seen in the snow hut of an Esquimaux. But we made a

summer of it, in spite of the wild drifts.

It was an April day, as already hinted, and well towards the middle of

the month. When morning dawned upon me, in town, its temperature was

mild enough to be pronounced even balmy, by a lodger, like myself, in

one of the midmost houses of a brick block,--each house partaking of

the warmth of all the rest, besides the sultriness of its individual

furnace--heat. But towards noon there had come snow, driven along the

street by a northeasterly blast, and whitening the roofs and sidewalks

with a business-like perseverance that would have done credit to our

severest January tempest. It set about its task apparently as much in

earnest as if it had been guaranteed from a thaw for months to come.

The greater, surely, was my heroism, when, puffing out a final whiff of

cigar-smoke, I quitted my cosey pair of bachelor-rooms,--with a good

fire burning in the grate, and a closet right at hand, where there was

still a bottle or two in the champagne basket and a residuum of claret

in a box,--quitted, I say, these comfortable quarters, and plunged into

the heart of the pitiless snowstorm, in quest of a better life.

The better life! Possibly, it would hardly look so now; it is enough

if it looked so then. The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the

doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the

truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to

know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.

Yet, after all, let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious, to

follow out one's daydream to its natural consummation, although, if the

vision have been worth the having, it is certain never to be

consummated otherwise than by a failure. And what of that? Its

airiest fragments, impalpable as they may be, will possess a value that

lurks not in the most ponderous realities of any practicable scheme.

They are not the rubbish of the mind. Whatever else I may repent of,

therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I

once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world's

destiny--yes!--and to do what in me lay for their accomplishment; even

to the extent of quitting a warm fireside, flinging away a freshly

lighted cigar, and travelling far beyond the strike of city clocks,

through a drifting snowstorm.

There were four of us who rode together through the storm; and

Hollingsworth, who had agreed to be of the number, was accidentally

delayed, and set forth at a later hour alone. As we threaded the

streets, I remember how the buildings on either side seemed to press

too closely upon us, insomuch that our mighty hearts found barely room

enough to throb between them. The snowfall, too, looked inexpressibly

dreary (I had almost called it dingy), coming down through an

atmosphere of city smoke, and alighting on the sidewalk only to be

moulded into the impress of somebody's patched boot or overshoe. Thus

the track of an old conventionalism was visible on what was freshest

from the sky. But when we left the pavements, and our muffled

hoof-tramps beat upon a desolate extent of country road, and were

effaced by the unfettered blast as soon as stamped, then there was

better air to breathe. Air that had not been breathed once and again!

air that had not been spoken into words of falsehood, formality, and

error, like all the air of the dusky city!

"How pleasant it is!" remarked I, while the snowflakes flew into my

mouth the moment it was opened. "How very mild and balmy is this

country air!"

"Ah, Coverdale, don't laugh at what little enthusiasm you have left!"

said one of my companions. "I maintain that this nitrous atmosphere is

really exhilarating; and, at any rate, we can never call ourselves

regenerated men till a February northeaster shall be as grateful to us

as the softest breeze of June!"

So we all of us took courage, riding fleetly and merrily along, by

stone fences that were half buried in the wave-like drifts; and through

patches of woodland, where the tree-trunks opposed a snow-incrusted

side towards the northeast; and within ken of deserted villas, with no

footprints in their avenues; and passed scattered dwellings, whence

puffed the smoke of country fires, strongly impregnated with the

pungent aroma of burning peat. Sometimes, encountering a traveller, we

shouted a friendly greeting; and he, unmuffling his ears to the bluster

and the snow-spray, and listening eagerly, appeared to think our

courtesy worth less than the trouble which it cost him. The churl! He

understood the shrill whistle of the blast, but had no intelligence for

our blithe tones of brotherhood. This lack of faith in our cordial

sympathy, on the traveller's part, was one among the innumerable tokens

how difficult a task we had in hand for the reformation of the world.

We rode on, however, with still unflagging spirits, and made such good

companionship with the tempest that, at our journey's end, we professed

ourselves almost loath to bid the rude blusterer good-by. But, to own

the truth, I was little better than an icicle, and began to be

suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold.

And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farmhouse, the

same fire that glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences at the

beginning of this chapter. There we sat, with the snow melting out of

our hair and beards, and our faces all ablaze, what with the past

inclemency and present warmth. It was, indeed, a right good fire that

we found awaiting us, built up of great, rough logs, and knotty limbs,

and splintered fragments of an oak-tree, such as farmers are wont to

keep for their own hearths, since these crooked and unmanageable boughs

could never be measured into merchantable cords for the market. A

family of the old Pilgrims might have swung their kettle over precisely

such a fire as this, only, no doubt, a bigger one; and, contrasting it

with my coal-grate, I felt so much the more that we had transported

ourselves a world-wide distance from the system of society that

shackled us at breakfast-time.

Good, comfortable Mrs. Foster (the wife of stout Silas Foster, who was

to manage the farm at a fair stipend, and be our tutor in the art of

husbandry) bade us a hearty welcome. At her back--a back of generous

breadth--appeared two young women, smiling most hospitably, but looking

rather awkward withal, as not well knowing what was to be their

position in our new arrangement of the world. We shook hands

affectionately all round, and congratulated ourselves that the blessed

state of brotherhood and sisterhood, at which we aimed, might fairly be

dated from this moment. Our greetings were hardly concluded when the

door opened, and Zenobia--whom I had never before seen, important as

was her place in our enterprise--Zenobia entered the parlor.

This (as the reader, if at all acquainted with our literary biography,

need scarcely be told) was not her real name. She had assumed it, in

the first instance, as her magazine signature; and, as it accorded well

with something imperial which her friends attributed to this lady's

figure and deportment, they half-laughingly adopted it in their

familiar intercourse with her. She took the appellation in good part,

and even encouraged its constant use; which, in fact, was thus far

appropriate, that our Zenobia, however humble looked her new

philosophy, had as much native pride as any queen would have known what

to do with.

III.