The Project Gutenberg eBook of The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Holgrave tells Phoebe the history of the Pyncheon family, in particular the controversy surrounding the supposedly murderous Clifford. The House of the Seven Gables once a "show place" in a small New England town, now presents little evidence of its former grandeur. Wind, sun, storm, and neglect left its sides, shingles, and chimney crumbling. The lawn in front, and what must have been a spacious garden at the rear, long since have missed the care of the cultivator's hand. There in front, to the right of the imposing entrance, is a small door adjacent to a window of what obviously was once a shop. To the house come two others, Phoebe Pyncheon, a country cousin not brought up as a Pyncheon, and Judge Pyncheon, a modern embodiment of the worst family traits.
Maule’s Well
Shehad dwelt too much alone,—too long in the Pyncheon House,—until hervery brain was impregnated with the dry-rot of its timbers. The House of the Seven Gables Museum Campus was designated as a National Historic Landmark District in 2007. Our seaside campus consists of 2 acres of land, seaside colonial revival gardens, and several historic buildings.
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He is particularly fond of the scarlet blossoms found on some of the bean-vines, which Holgrave planted after finding the presumably ancient seeds in one of the garrets. The blossoms attract an ongoing stream of hummingbirds, which Clifford watches with childlike enthusiasm. She remembers that the hummingbirds had the same effect on him in his youth, yet she is saddened by his present state. For his part, Clifford wants to be sure that what he is experiencing is real and sometimes asks Phoebe to pinch him or to give him a rose so that he can prick himself with the thorns.
Governor Pyncheon
Phœbesaw, however, that their growth must have been checked by a degree of carefullabor, bestowed daily and systematically on the garden. The white doublerosebush had evidently been propped up anew against the house since thecommencement of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, which,except a row of currant-bushes, constituted the only varieties of fruit, boremarks of the recent amputation of several superfluous or defective limbs. Therewere also a few species of antique and hereditary flowers, in no veryflourishing condition, but scrupulously weeded; as if some person, either outof love or curiosity, had been anxious to bring them to such perfection as theywere capable of attaining.
The tradition was, that a certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up theseeds, in sport, and that the dust of the street and the decay of the roofgradually formed a kind of soil for them, out of which they grew, when Alicehad long been in her grave. However the flowers might have come there, it wasboth sad and sweet to observe how Nature adopted to herself this desolate,decaying, gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how theever-returning Summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty, and grewmelancholy in the effort. The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better part of two centuries,with perhaps less of outward vicissitude than has attended most other NewEngland families during the same period of time. During the Revolution, the Pyncheon of that epoch, adopting the royalside, became a refugee; but repented, and made his reappearance, just at thepoint of time to preserve the House of the Seven Gables from confiscation. Forthe last seventy years the most noted event in the Pyncheon annals had beenlikewise the heaviest calamity that ever befell the race; no less than theviolent death—for so it was adjudged—of one member of the family bythe criminal act of another.
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
His hathad relation to no other part of his dress, and but very little to the headthat wore it. Thus Uncle Venner was a miscellaneous old gentleman, partlyhimself, but, in good measure, somebody else; patched together, too, ofdifferent epochs; an epitome of times and fashions. One inauspicious circumstance there was, which awakened a hardly concealeddispleasure in the breasts of a few of the more punctilious visitors.
VIII: The Pyncheon of To-Day
He is stopped by Phoebe and Hepzibah, but the narrator notes that such a plunge into the sea of humanity may have been a help to him. Clifford claims that they are ghosts whose only place is right there in the house. On yet another day, Clifford blows bubbles off the balcony, and one bubble lands and pops on Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon's nose. Still, she felt the more,for this incident, how unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house hadbecome. The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular bench werestill damp, and bestrewn with twigs and the disarray of the past storm.
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When Phœbe awoke,—which she did with the early twittering of theconjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,—she heard movements belowstairs, and, hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the kitchen. She stoodby a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose, as if with thehope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its contents, since herimperfect vision made it not very easy to read them. It was a cookery book, full of innumerableold fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with engravings, whichrepresented the arrangements of the table at such banquets as it might havebefitted a nobleman to give in the great hall of his castle. And, amid theserich and potent devices of the culinary art (not one of which, probably, hadbeen tested, within the memory of any man’s grandfather), poor Hepzibahwas seeking for some nimble little titbit, which, with what skill she had, andsuch materials as were at hand, she might toss up for breakfast. After an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into the garden. Theenclosure had formerly been very extensive, but was now contracted within smallcompass, and hemmed about, partly by high wooden fences, and partly by theoutbuildings of houses that stood on another street.
Subsequently the Judge's wealth is inherited by Phoebe, Clifford, and Hepzibah. Examination of the Judge's past suggests that he knew the circumstances of his rich uncle's death, and that he was responsible for Clifford's being imprisoned for the uncle's murder. Phoebe and Holgrave, who now confesses he was the last descendant of Matthew Maule, are pledged to be wed. With some regret, but with greater joy, they pack their belongings and go to the Judge's country place.
Support our mission to be a welcoming, thriving, historic site and community resource that engages people of all backgrounds in our inclusive American story. Horace Ingersoll, Susanna's adopted son, told Hawthorne a story of Acadian lovers that later inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1847 poem Evangeline.
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It was the belief of those who knew him best, that he wouldpositively have taken the very singular step of giving up the House of theSeven Gables to the representative of Matthew Maule, but for the unspeakabletumult which a suspicion of the old gentleman’s project awakened amonghis Pyncheon relatives. Their exertions had the effect of suspending hispurpose; but it was feared that he would perform, after death, by the operationof his last will, what he had so hardly been prevented from doing in his properlifetime. But there is no one thing which men so rarely do, whatever theprovocation or inducement, as to bequeath patrimonial property away from theirown blood. They may love other individuals far better than theirrelatives,—they may even cherish dislike, or positive hatred, to thelatter; but yet, in view of death, the strong prejudice of propinquity revives,and impels the testator to send down his estate in the line marked out bycustom so immemorial that it looks like nature.
Thefounder of this stately mansion—a gentleman noted for the square andponderous courtesy of his demeanor, ought surely to have stood in his own hall,and to have offered the first welcome to so many eminent personages as herepresented themselves in honor of his solemn festival. He was as yet invisible;the most favored of the guests had not beheld him. This sluggishness on ColonelPyncheon’s part became still more unaccountable, when the seconddignitary of the province made his appearance, and found no more ceremonious areception. The lieutenant-governor, although his visit was one of theanticipated glories of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted hislady from her side-saddle, and crossed the Colonel’s threshold, withoutother greeting than that of the principal domestic. Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty woodenhouse, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of thecompass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.
Symbolic of this change is the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon that lies on the floor. With the removal of this portrait, light exposes the hidden document of wealth. The iron-clad rule and all the curses of the older generations have been put to rest. The speed of the train not only takes Clifford to the wide-awake present moment, it inspires his thoughts and moves his tongue. He cannot help but express himself out loud in clear sentences and profound thought. It is as if modern technology, of which Clifford had previously had little experience, stirs him from his somewhat walking-dead state and tries urgently to make up to him all the spirit that was stolen from him by his imprisonment.
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