The manuscript of the unfinished "Dolliver Romance" lay upon his coffin
during the funeral services at Concord, but, contrary to the impression
sometimes entertained on this point, was not buried with him. It is
preserved in the Concord Public Library. The first chapter was
published in the "Atlantic" as an isolated portion, soon after his
death; and subsequently the second chapter, which he had been unable to
revise, appeared in the same periodical. Between this and the third
fragment there is a gap, for bridging which no material was found among
his papers; but, after hesitating for several years, Mrs. Hawthorne
copied and placed in the publishers' hands that final portion, which,
with the two parts previously printed, constitutes the whole of what
Hawthorne had put into tangible form.
Hawthorne had purposed prefixing a sketch of Thoreau, "because, from a
tradition which he told me about this house of mine, I got the idea of
a deathless man, which is now taking a shape very different from the
original one." This refers to the tradition mentioned in the editor's
note to "Septimius Felton," and forms a link in the interesting chain
of evidence connecting that romance with the "Dolliver Romance." With
the plan respecting Thoreau he combined the idea of writing an
autobiographical preface, wherein The Wayside was to be described,
after the manner of his Introduction to the "Mosses from an Old Manse";
but, so far as is known, nothing of this was ever actually committed to
paper.
Beginning with the idea of producing an English romance, fragments of
which remain to us in "The Ancestral Footstep," and the incomplete work
known as "Doctor Grimshawe's Secret," he replaced these by another
design, of which "Septimius Felton" represents the partial execution.
But that elaborate study yielded, in its turn, to "The Dolliver
Romance." The last-named work, had the author lived to carry it out,
would doubtless have become the vehicle of a profound and pathetic
drama, based on the instinctive yearning of man for an immortal
existence, the attempted gratification of which would have been set
forth in a variety of ways: First, through the selfish old sensualist,
Colonel Dabney, who greedily seized the mysterious elixir and took such
a draught of it that he perished on the spot; then, through the simple
old Grandsir, anxious to live for Pansie's sake; and, perhaps, through
Pansie herself, who, coming into the enjoyment of some ennobling love,
would wish to defeat death, so that she might always keep the
perfection of her mundane happiness,--all these forms of striving to be
made the adumbration of a higher one, the shadow-play that should
direct our minds to the true immortality beyond this world.
G. P. L.
THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.
A SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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