When Hawthorne
finally got up and made his speech, his "voice, meantime, having a
far-off and remote echo," and when, as we learn from others, a burst of
applause greeted a few well-chosen words drawn from that full well of
thought, that pellucid rill of "English undefiled," the unobtrusive
gentleman by his side applauded and said to him, "It was handsomely
done." The compliment pleased the shy man. It is the only compliment to
himself which Hawthorne ever recorded.
Now, had Hawthorne been congratulated by a sympathetic, effusive
American, who had clapped him on the back, and who had said, "O, never
fear--you will speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy sprite
in his own eyes would have read in his neighbor's eyes the dreadful
truth that his sympathetic neighbor would have indubitably betrayed--a
fear that he would _not_ do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman
neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne spoke well or ill; and,
although pleased that he did speak well, invested no particular sympathy
in the matter, either for or against, and so spared Hawthorne's shyness
the last bitter drop in the cup, which would have been a recognition of
his own moral dread. Hawthorne bitterly records his own sufferings. He
says, in one of his books, "At this time I acquired this accursed habit
of solitude." It has been said that the Hawthorne family were, in the
earlier generation, afflicted with shyness almost as a
disease--certainly a curious freak of nature in a family descended from
robust sea-captains.
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