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The Sources of Hawthorne's Feathertop
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
According to entries in his Note Books which have often been pointed out, Hawthorne in 1843 was reading a “tale of Tieck”; and it has been conjectured that this tale was Die Vogelscheuche, which thus served as the source of Feathertop. On the other hand, the resemblance of Feathertop to the following entry of 1840 in the Note Books has also been frequently noted: “To make a story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view it should appear to change—now an old man, now an old woman—a gunner, a farmer, or the Old Nick.” And it has been suggested that if this note of 1840 be accepted as the source of Feathertop, the probability of Hawthorne's indebtedness to Tieck is thereby lessened.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931
References
1 American Note Books, pp. 333–343; Conway, Life of Hawthorne, pp. 71–72; Jessup-Canby, Book of the Short Story, pp. 10–11; Schönbach, “Beiträge zur Characteristik Nathaniel Hawthorne's,” Englische Studien, vii, 301–302; Pattee, Development of American Short Story, p. 106. All references are to the Riverside edition of the American Note Books.
2 American Note Books, p. 211; Schönbach, op. cit., p. 295; Chandler, A Study of the Tales and Romances written by Hawthorne before 1853 (Smith College Studies in Mod. Langs., vii, No. 4); Conway, Life of Hawthorne, pp. 71–72; Jessup-Canby, Book of the Short Story, pp. 10–11.
3 Passages from the American Note Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868; Ditto, Osgood, 1872; Riverside edition of Hawthorne's Works, Vol. ix; and other editions of his complete works. The American Note Books as published in separate volumes and in the editions of Hawthorne's works contain many notes that are not in the Atlantic Monthly version; and the latter in turn contains a smaller number of notes not included in the separate volumes.
4 I have used the version of Julian Hawthorne (Hawthorne and his Wife, i, 494) and Professor Arvin (Heart of Hawthorne's Journals, p. 131), both of whom had access to the original manuscript of the Note Books. Their version differs slightly from that given by Mrs. Hawthorne to the Atlantic Monthly, though, as will be seen from the following list, the variations are in no instance important: “of the most modest and meagre” (“of the rudest and most meagre”), “gay dandy” (“gray dandy”), “with these few sticks inside of it” (“with a few sticks inside of them”), “a mere thing of laths and clothes” (“a thing of mere talk and clothes”), “this wretched old thing” (“this wretched old creature”). Miss Chandler refers to Julian Hawthorne's reprinting of the note, but wrongly gives the date of it as 1847 (see p. 63).
5 Percy MacKaye's The Scarecrow, 1908, constitutes a fifth step.
6 See pp. 333, 338. Hawthorne frequently jotted down under a given date not only what had happened on that day but also what had happened on the previous day as well. For the sake of clearness I have put each day's happenings into a single paragraph and have added the dates and the phrases in the brackets. The time references have been included in the the excerpts from the Note Books in order to show how much time Hawthorne was giving to Tieck.
7 Ibid., pp. 339, 341. Mr. Conway (p. 71) thinks that the tale here referred to may have been Feathertop. There is, however, no evidence in the American Note Books of any connection between Hawthorne's reading of Tieck and his shaping out the scenes of this tale, save that of sequence of time, and even that is not immediate.
8 Ibid., pp. 342, 343.
9 Ibid., p. 343. An examination of all Hawthorne's Note Books—American, English, French, and Italian—failed to reveal any other references to Tieck or any passages other than the notes of 1840 and 1849 which might have any relation to Feathertop. Lathrop (A Study of Hawthorne, p. 207) suggests that Hawthorne's reading of Tieck in 1843 may have been due to Poe's statement that Tieck's “manner in some of his works is absolutely identical with that habitual to Hawthorne.” But the review by Poe in which this statement was made, did not appear until 1847. See Poe's Works, Va. ed., xiii, 141, 144. Schönbach (p. 302, note) first called attention to this discrepancy in dates.
10 Cf. Tieck, Gesammelte Novellen, Berlin: Reimer, 1854.
11 In order to give a clear account of what is in reality a most disconnected and rambling narrative, I have not referred to the many discussions concerning art, magic, chemistry, and the like with which the story is filled, nor have I included any mention of the minor characters or the important part which the elves play in the plot.
12 Both Feathertop and the scarecrow wear a three-cornered hat with a feather stuck in it, but these articles of wearing apparel were in universal use among gentlemen. Of perhaps more significance is the parallel between Ambrosius' intention to erect a fine-looking figure as a scarecrow and the following sentences from the fourth paragraph of Feathertop: “Now Mother Rigby ... might, with very little trouble, have made a scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself. But on this occasion ... she resolved to produce something fine, beautiful, and splendid, rather than hideous and horrible.”
13 American Note Books, p. 210.
14 Ibid., pp. 139–149, 179–180, 195–197; Atlantic Monthly, xviii, 542.
15 Ibid., pp. 41, 110, 113, 273, 282; Atlantic Monthly, xviii, 538, 543, 689.
16 American Note Books, p. 97.
17 Ibid., p. 106.
18 Ibid., p. 106.
19 Ibid. p. 210.
20 Professor Edwin H. Zeydel, to whom I am indebted for the foregoing information, adds, “There is no record that it has ever been translated into English, either here or in England.” Hence, if Hawthorne ever read it, he must have read it in the original.
21 Cf. Schönbach, op. cit., pp. 301–302. For a further discussion of Tieck's influence upon Hawthorne, see Beiden, “Poe's Criticism of Hawthorne,” Anglia xxiii, 399; Just, Die Romantischen Bewegung in der Amerikanischen Literatur, Weimar, 1910, pp. 43 ff.; Pattee, The Development of the American Short Story, p. 105.
22 On the day before he began Tieck he had finished translating Bürger's Lenore. Cf. American Note Books, pp. 332–33.