A Man With An Agenda

This was a real treat after the slog I had with 'Tristram Shandy'. The story was familiar, I'd read a comic serialization of it - in 'Boys' Life'? - somewhere and was always curious how it really went. A looming ancestral house on cursed ground, and a family whose every generation must carry the guilt of its forebears are perfectly captured by Hawthorne's prose.

Hepzibah Pyncheon has lived alone for many years in the House of the Seven Gables, maintaining family dignity mostly by staying indoors. The weight of the past and the lack of air makes the house oppressive, but she belongs there, so she stays. Hepzibah has had news that forces her to make a decision with irrevocable consequences. Though she has rented part of the house to a young daguerreotypist she is in need of money and would rather die than ask her cousin, the Judge, so she must do the lesser sin, which is turn her hand to business. It is a terrible moment for her sheltered and mouldy existence and Hawthorne finds it very funny.

Shortly after opening up her shop Hepzibah is given a surprise visit from her young cousin Phoebe. Phoebe is fresh from the country and is unlike the dusty Hepizibah in every particular.

"Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home."

Phoebe is followed closely by the return home of Hepzibah's brother Clifford who was accused and found guilty of the murder of their uncle decades before. He is a shattered man, but slowly, by benefit of Phoebe's ministrations and, horribly, not Hepzibah's, begins to become himself again. He was a dandy and an aesthete. With the addition of Mr. Holgrave the artist and some peculiar chickens they make an odd family in that old house.

There is conflict and Hawthorne skillfully weaves into the narrative more of the past of the family and house and the disastrous effects of greed, promised wealth and idleness.