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He, it will be seen, remarks in thePreface, alluding to himself in the third person, that he trusts not to becondemned for “laying out a street that infringes upon nobody’sprivate rights... Here, as elsewhere,he exercised the liberty of a creative mind to heighten the probability of hispictures without confining himself to a literal description of something he hadseen. After the Colonel’s death, it appears that the Pyncheons are destined to become very rich on the basis of a land grant in the Maine wilderness. Despite this, subsequent generations carry themselves like potential nobility and tend to become sluggish, expecting to be enriched at any time. Some occasionally doubt the Pyncheons’ right to the land on which the House is built. After Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon researches the history of the property and concludes that it rightly belonged to the Maules, he is soon found dead.
Alice Pyncheon
His terms were, that either the aforesaid ground-rent,from the day when the cellar began to be dug, should be paid down, or themansion itself given up; else he, the ghostly creditor, would have his fingerin all the affairs of the Pyncheons, and make everything go wrong with them,though it should be a thousand years after his death. It was a wild story,perhaps, but seemed not altogether so incredible to those who could rememberwhat an inflexibly obstinate old fellow this wizard Maule had been. One afternoonhe was seized with an irresistible desire to blow soap-bubbles; an amusement,as Hepzibah told Phœbe apart, that had been a favorite one with her brotherwhen they were both children. Behold him, therefore, at the arched window, withan earthen pipe in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a wan, unrealsmile over his countenance, where still hovered a beautiful grace, which hisworst enemy must have acknowledged to be spiritual and immortal, since it hadsurvived so long!
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This could not be, however;he was not there; for, while Hepzibah was looking, a strange grimalkin stoleforth from the very spot, and picked his way across the garden. The catstared up at her, like a detected thief or murderer, and, the next instant,took to flight. Chanticleerand his family had either not left their roost, disheartened by theinterminable rain, or had done the next wisest thing, by seasonably returningto it. But it would be no fair picture of Clifford’s state of mind were we torepresent him as continually or prevailingly wretched. On the contrary, therewas no other man in the city, we are bold to affirm, of so much as half hisyears, who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless moments as himself. He hadno burden of care upon him; there were none of those questions andcontingencies with the future to be settled which wear away all other lives,and render them not worth having by the very process of providing for theirsupport.
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After a very briefinspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep mustnecessarily be such an one as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aimas a child’s first journey across a floor, had just brought himhitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might not havesufficed for a free and determined gait. The expression of his countenance—while, notwithstandingit had the light of reason in it—seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearlyto die away, and feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame which wesee twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently thanif it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward,—more intently, butwith a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself intosatisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished.
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The House Of Seven Gables Becomes A National Historic Landmark - Antiques and the Arts Online
The House Of Seven Gables Becomes A National Historic Landmark.
Posted: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Abook and a small slate, under his arm, indicated that he was on his way toschool. He stared at Hepzibah a moment, as an elder customer than himself wouldhave been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitudeand queer scowl wherewith she regarded him. All this time, however, we are loitering faintheartedly on the threshold of ourstory. In very truth, we have an invincible reluctance to disclose what MissHepzibah Pyncheon was about to do. He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was flung wide open by asudden gust of wind that passed, as with a loud sigh, from the outermost portalthrough all the passages and apartments of the new house.
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His grasp concealsthe dial-plate,—but we know that the faithful hands have met; for one ofthe city clocks tells midnight. As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and unreality kept dimlyhovering round about her, and so diffusing itself into her system that one ofher hands was hardly palpable to the touch of the other. ” and sometimes exposed her face tothe chill spatter of the wind, for the sake of its rude assurance that she was.Whether it was Clifford’s purpose, or only chance, had led them thither,they now found themselves passing beneath the arched entrance of a largestructure of gray stone. Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airyheight from floor to roof, now partially filled with smoke and steam, whicheddied voluminously upward and formed a mimic cloud-region over their heads.
A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight, may see rank,dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far as regards their claim tohuman reverence, and yet not feel as if the universe were thereby tumbledheadlong into chaos. But Phœbe, in order to keep the universe in its oldplace, was fain to smother, in some degree, her own intuitions as to JudgePyncheon’s character. And as for her cousin’s testimony indisparagement of it, she concluded that Hepzibah’s judgment wasembittered by one of those family feuds which render hatred the more deadly bythe dead and corrupted love that they intermingle with its native poison. After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phœbe emerged from her chamber,with a purpose to descend again into the garden.
A battered house with seven gables stands in a small New England town. (Gables are the triangular structures formed by two intersecting points of a roof.) The house, which belongs to the Pyncheon family, has a long and controversial history. In the mid-1600s, a local farmer named Matthew Maule builds a house on fertile land near a pleasant spring. In the late 1600s, the surrounding neighborhood has become fashionable, and the wealthy Colonel Pyncheon covets Maule’s land. Several years later, Maule is hanged for witchcraft, and rumors abound that Pyncheon was behind Maule’s conviction. Maule curses Colonel Pyncheon from the scaffold, but the Colonel is unfazed; he even hires Maule’s own son to build him a new mansion with seven gables on the property.
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Her hereditaryreverence made her afraid to judge the character of the original so harshly asa perception of the truth compelled her to do. But still she gazed, because theface of the picture enabled her—at least, she fancied so—to readmore accurately, and to a greater depth, the face which she had just seen inthe street. Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on, however, without many andserious interruptions of this mood of cheerful vigor. As a general rule,Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree ofencouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion oftheir powers.
Clifford was content, whether the sweet, airy homeliness ofher tones came down from the upper chambers, or along the passageway from theshop, or was sprinkled through the foliage of the pear-tree, inward from thegarden, with the twinkling sunbeams. He would sit quietly, with a gentlepleasure gleaming over his face, brighter now, and now a little dimmer, as thesong happened to float near him, or was more remotely heard. It pleased himbest, however, when she sat on a low footstool at his knee. Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged andwell-provisioned breakfast-table.
For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, there had hardly been sobitter a pang in all her previous misery about the matter as what thrilledHepzibah’s heart on overhearing the above conversation. The testimony inregard to her scowl was frightfully important; it seemed to hold up her imagewholly relieved from the false light of her self-partialities, and so hideousthat she dared not look at it. She was absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slightand idle effect that her setting up shop—an event of such breathlessinterest to herself—appeared to have upon the public, of which these twomen were the nearest representatives. A glance; a passing word or two; a coarselaugh; and she was doubtless forgotten before they turned the corner. Theycared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for her degradation.
He consideredhimself a thinker, and was certainly of a thoughtful turn, but, with his ownpath to discover, had perhaps hardly yet reached the point where an educatedman begins to think. —as to thebetter centuries that are coming, the artist was surely right. Thisenthusiasm, infusing itself through the calmness of his character, and thustaking an aspect of settled thought and wisdom, would serve to keep his youthpure, and make his aspirations high. Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change partly to be regretted,although whatever charm it infringed upon was repaired by another, perhaps moreprecious.
He was evidently trying to grapple with the present scene, and bring ithome to his mind with a more satisfactory distinctness. He desired to becertain, at least, that he was here, in the low-studded, cross-beamed,oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some other spot, which had stereotyped itselfinto his senses. But the effort was too great to be sustained with more than afragmentary success.
These three visionarycharacters possessed a mutual knowledge of the missing document. One of them,in truth,—it was he with the blood-stain on his band,—seemed,unless his gestures were misunderstood, to hold the parchment in his immediatekeeping, but was prevented by his two partners in the mystery from disburdeninghimself of the trust. Finally, when he showed a purpose of shouting forth thesecret loudly enough to be heard from his own sphere into that of mortals, hiscompanions struggled with him, and pressed their hands over his mouth; andforthwith—whether that he were choked by it, or that the secret itselfwas of a crimson hue—there was a fresh flow of blood upon his band. Uponthis, the two meanly dressed figures mocked and jeered at the much-abashed olddignitary, and pointed their fingers at the stain. As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting Maule’s arrival, blackScipio, of course, lost no time in ushering the carpenter into hismaster’s presence. The room in which this gentleman sat was a parlor ofmoderate size, looking out upon the garden of the house, and having its windowspartly shadowed by the foliage of fruit-trees.
The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. The earliest section of the House of the Seven Gables was built in 1668 for Captain John Turner, a wealthy sea captain and merchant who was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1644. Turner partially funded the house's construction through his business of selling fish to slave plantations in the West Indies.[3] The property remained in his family's possession for three generations, descending from John Turner II to John Turner III.
To theindividual before us, it could only be a grief, intense in due proportion withthe severity of the infliction. For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still, retainingHepzibah’s hand instinctively, as a child does that of the grown personwho guides it. He saw Phœbe, however, and caught an illumination from heryouthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about theparlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the glass vase offlowers that was standing in the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speaknearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy. Imperfect as itwas, however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribablegrace, such as no practised art of external manners could have attained. It wastoo slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected afterwards, seemedto transfigure the whole man.
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