Little Masterpieces - Nathaniel Hawthorne/Wakefield

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Ethan Brand

Little Masterpieces
Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Bliss Perry

Wakefield

Drowne's Wooden Image

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New York: Doubleday, McClure & Co., pages 83–100

4068680Little Masterpieces — WakefieldBliss PerryNathaniel Hawthorne

Wakefield

IN some old magazine or newspaper, I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man let us call him Wakefield-who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact thus abstractedly stated is not very uncommon, nor without a proper distinction of circum stances to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delin quency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt up wards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in ,his matrimonial felicity when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife, long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a loviresigned to her autumnal widowhood he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a loving spouse till death.

This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is one, I think, which appeals to the generous sympathies of mankind. We know, each for himself, that none of us would per petrate such a folly, yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least, it has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that the story must be true, and a conception of its hero's character. Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or if he prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield svagary, I bid him welcome; trusting that there will be a pervading spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them, done up neatly, and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy, and every striking incident its moral.