Table Of Content
Now and then a maid-servant, neatly dressed, and now the shiningsable face of a slave, might be seen bustling across the windows, in the lowerpart of the house. At an open window of a room in the second story, hangingover some pots of beautiful and delicate flowers,—exotics, but which hadnever known a more genial sunshine than that of the New Englandautumn,—was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like the flowers, andbeautiful and delicate as they. Her presence imparted an indescribable graceand faint witchery to the whole edifice.
IV: A Day Behind the Counter
Like certainchintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely in their first newness, butcannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect afterwashing-day. Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affectionate in his nature. He took a certain kind of interest in Hepzibah and her brother, andPhœbe herself. He studied them attentively, and allowed no slightestcircumstance of their individualities to escape him. He was ready to do themwhatever good he might; but, after all, he never exactly made common cause withthem, nor gave any reliable evidence that he loved them better in proportion ashe knew them more.
House of the Seven Gables races to preserve its story before it's lost to climate change - GBH News
House of the Seven Gables races to preserve its story before it's lost to climate change.
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Gothic Romance
Observe that silvery dance upon the upper branchesof the pear-tree, and now a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs,while, through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant into theroom. They play over the Judge’s figure and show that he has not stirredthroughout the hours of darkness. They follow the shadows, in changeful sport,across his unchanging features. His grasp concealsthe dial-plate,—but we know that the faithful hands have met; for one ofthe city clocks tells midnight. Judge Pyncheon, while his two relatives have fled away with such ill-consideredhaste, still sits in the old parlor, keeping house, as the familiar phrase is,in the absence of its ordinary occupants.
Matthew Maule (The Elder)
Hepzibah accedes and after telling Phoebe that Clifford is soon to arrive home, she fetches his miniature (a very small portrait). Phoebe, who thought that Clifford was dead, admires the miniature, commenting on Clifford's sweet and childlike face. The two women sit down to tea, and when the shop-bell rings, Phoebe jumps up. To Hepzibah's great pleasure, Phoebe serves the customer with ease and skill. Despite her being a country girl, Phoebe is praised by the narrator for her lady-like qualities. Phoebe's presence is known in the town and inspires a steady stream of shop customers.
I: The Old Pyncheon Family
At first, Hepzibah worries that Phoebe’s presence will upset Hepzibah’s brother, Clifford, who is returning home from prison. Phoebe’s charm and diligence prevail, however, and she finally convinces Hepzibah to let her stay. When Clifford returns, battered and almost imbecilic from his time in prison, he is quite impressed by Phoebe. Contrary to Hepzibah’s fears, Clifford is more bothered by their poverty than by her tending to a store. The house was built on ground wrongfully seized from its rightful owner, Matthew Maule, by Colonel Pyncheon, the founder of the Massachusetts branch of the family. According to legend, at the time of his death Maule laid a curse upon the Pyncheon family.
X: The Pyncheon-Garden
At a party held to inaugurate his new mansion, the Colonel is found dead in his study, his beard covered in blood. The Colonel has left a will ordering that his portrait not be taken down, but one of his important documents—the deed for a giant land claim in Maine—is missing. The deed is never found, and generations of Pyncheons search for it in vain. From then on, the Pyncheon house continues to bring bad luck, culminating with young Clifford Pyncheon’s alleged murder of his uncle. This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s.
The Secret Garden
Although Hawthorne claims in his preface that The House of the Seven Gables is not based on any location. However, the Turner House, or Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, in Salem, Massachusetts, was an inspiration for him. The Ingersolls were Hawthorne’s cousins, and he was struck by the house’s history (though, having been renovated to match popular trends, it only boasted three gables at that time).
Judge Pyncheon’s son
The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that Hepzibah, unable toendure the suspense, rushed forward, threw open the door, and led in thestranger by the hand. At the first glance, Phœbe saw an elderly personage, inan old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almostwhite hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his forehead, exceptwhen he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room.
Surprising facts await visitors to famous home which inspired "The House of the Seven Gables" - Indiana Gazette
Surprising facts await visitors to famous home which inspired "The House of the Seven Gables".
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Thomas Maule is the son of Matthew Maule (the elder) and the father of Matthew Maule (the younger). When Thomas builds the house, he hides the deed to the legendary land in Maine behind the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon. Matthew Maule is the first owner of the land upon which the House of the Seven Gables is eventually built.
Clifford is glad to be home and seems stronger than Hepzibah, who is in tears. Uncle Venner arrives at the House of the Seven Gables to pick up the food Hepzibah sets aside for his pigs, and Holgrave tells him that no one is home. When Mrs. Gubbins comes to the shop, a neighbor tells her that she will not be able buy anything because Hepzibah and Clifford left yesterday to go to Judge Pyncheon's.
That gray hair, and those furrows,—withtheir record of infinite sorrow so deeply written across his brow, and socompressed, as with a futile effort to crowd in all the tale, that the wholeinscription was made illegible,—these, for the moment, vanished. An eyeat once tender and acute might have beheld in the man some shadow of what hewas meant to be. Anon, as age came stealing, like a sad twilight, back over hisfigure, you would have felt tempted to hold an argument with Destiny, andaffirm, that either this being should not have been made mortal, or mortalexistence should have been tempered to his qualities. There seemed no necessityfor his having drawn breath at all; the world never wanted him; but, as he hadbreathed, it ought always to have been the balmiest of summer air. The sameperplexity will invariably haunt us with regard to natures that tend to feedexclusively upon the Beautiful, let their earthly fate be as lenient as it may.
It was as potent, andperhaps endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a galvanic ring! Hepzibah,at all events, was indebted to its subtile operation both in body and spirit;so much the more, as it inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, atwhich, still the better to keep up her courage, she allowed herself an extraspoonful in her infusion of black tea. The child, staring with round eyes at this instance of liberality, whollyunprecedented in his large experience of cent-shops, took the man ofgingerbread, and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk(little cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow’s head was in his mouth. Ashe had not been careful to shut the door, Hepzibah was at the pains of closingit after him, with a pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness ofyoung people, and particularly of small boys. She had just placed anotherrepresentative of the renowned Jim Crow at the window, when again the shop-belltinkled clamorously, and again the door being thrust open, with itscharacteristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who,precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit.
The approaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared to pause atthe head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice in the descent; he pausedagain at the foot. Each time, the delay seemed to be without purpose, butrather from a forgetfulness of the purpose which had set him in motion, or asif the person’s feet came involuntarily to a stand-still because themotive-power was too feeble to sustain his progress. He took hold of the knob of the door;then loosened his grasp without opening it. Hepzibah, her hands convulsivelyclasped, stood gazing at the entrance.
Now, Hepzibah hadunconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there would be a gleam orhalo, of some kind or other, about her person, which would insure an obeisanceto her sterling gentility, or, at least, a tacit recognition of it. On theother hand, nothing tortured her more intolerably than when this recognitionwas too prominently expressed. The vulgar creature was determined to see for herself what sort of afigure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after wasting all the bloom and much ofthe decline of her life apart from the world, would cut behind a counter. Inthis particular case, however mechanical and innocuous it might be at othertimes, Hepzibah’s contortion of brow served her in good stead. Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhat ostentatiouslythrough her mind, it is altogether surprising what a calmness had come overher.
Thus unscrupulouslydid the old gentlewoman sacrifice the continuance, perhaps, of an ancientfeathered race, with no better end than to supply her brother with a daintythat hardly filled the bowl of a tea-spoon! It must have been in reference tothis outrage that Chanticleer, the next day, accompanied by the bereaved motherof the egg, took his post in front of Phœbe and Clifford, and deliveredhimself of a harangue that might have proved as long as his own pedigree, butfor a fit of merriment on Phœbe’s part. Hereupon, the offended fowlstalked away on his long stilts, and utterly withdrew his notice from Phœbeand the rest of human nature, until she made her peace with an offering ofspice-cake, which, next to snails, was the delicacy most in favor with hisaristocratic taste. For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were not the Judge’sresolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside, and step across the threshold into theparlor, whence issued that broken and miserable murmur of entreaty.
The other, we are almost ashamed to say, was thevenerable Uncle Venner, in a clean shirt, and a broadcloth coat, morerespectable than his ordinary wear, inasmuch as it was neatly patched on eachelbow, and might be called an entire garment, except for a slight inequality inthe length of its skirts. Clifford, on several occasions, had seemed to enjoythe old man’s intercourse, for the sake of his mellow, cheerful vein,which was like the sweet flavor of a frost-bitten apple, such as one picks upunder the tree in December. A man at the very lowest point of the social scalewas easier and more agreeable for the fallen gentleman to encounter than aperson at any of the intermediate degrees; and, moreover, as Clifford’syoung manhood had been lost, he was fond of feeling himself comparativelyyouthful, now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of Uncle Venner. Hepzibah, whenever she happened to witness one of these fits of miniatureenthusiasm, would shake her head, with a strange mingling of the mother andsister, and of pleasure and sadness, in her aspect.
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