Listen to the AudioBook: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

THE SCARLET LETTER.

BY

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

Illustrated.

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THE CUSTOM HOUSE.—INTRODUCTORY

It is a fact not more curious than it is undeniable that the riches of the English language, in the most surprising abundance and variety, are to be found nowhere save in the free and lawless repositories of the Custom-House. Poetical talents themselves, let me say, are apt to show their bloom in no soil so well as that of a public office. Understand me a little more intimately and you will comprehend why this is the case.

I spent fourteen months at Salem, as Collector of the Port, an office in which, I believe, I succeeded in rendering myself tolerably acceptable to the higher circles of commercial life, without entangling myself too deeply in the petty intrigues of the subordinate officers. Here, it was, in the midst of my official concerns, that I first astray into the contemplation of this subject, whereon, with prolonged but not entirely profitless meditation, I have at length wrought out the tale that is here presented.

The Custom-House system, like every other human contrivance, is of a mixed texture; part honest in its substance, and part base metal. It affords opportunity enough for the mood of reflection, and leisure enough for the thoughts to mature themselves into a story. To this I attribute, in some not inconsiderable degree, the making of the book which I now respectfully submit to the public.

The official life, if it be considered merely as the outward substance, is dull enough to satiate the most unblushingly imaginative. My predecessor, the aforementioned Mr. Heathcote, was a gentleman of horticultural propensities, less famous for the accuracy of his accounts than for his success in cultivating the prize-winning marrow. He was a man of deep reflection, certainly, but his reflections were confined almost entirely to the nature of soils and the improvement of his cabbages.

He was succeeded by a respectable man from Boston, a lawyer by profession, who, in my humble estimation, possessed qualifications for office precisely such as disqualified him for understanding the true spirit of the Custom-House. He was a man, in short, too upright to be flexible, and too scrupulous to be accommodating.

As for myself, having been thrust into this unlooked-for post, I soon found that the former incumbents, in their unmolested career, had left many venerable abuses to perpetuate themselves. I could not but observe, with the most inquisitive spirit, the manifold customs and traditions which were in full operation.

It was, moreover, in the very office which I occupied—that of Surveyor of the Port—that my attention was first snared by the object which has given my fancy its present theme.

The room where the Collector, the Deputy Collector, the Surveyor (myself, for the brief period of my stewardship), and the Controller were accustomed to gather, was a spacious chamber, furnished with but little regard to the picturesque. Its windows opened upon a view that did honor to the town’s maritime importance, but which was, in truth, a very prosaic affair.

The Surveyor’s desk, a venerable relic of the past, stood in a remote corner. It was of a dark, heavy-caste wood, and bore the scars of many generations of official hands. It was near this desk, I say, in the recess of a large, dusty, and seldom-visited closet, that the object of my present purpose was brought to light.

The closet, in fact, was a little kingdom of dust, in which the patient spiders were the undisputed sovereigns. The air within was thick with the fine, dry particles of ages. It seemed the very breath of moth and decay.

One, in the performance of my duty, I was rummaging among the forgotten lumber and cast-off furniture of the office, when my fingers chanced upon a roll of parchment, far more massive than the invoices and manifests usually subjected to such handling. It was secured with a tarnished gold thread, and almost entirely enveloped in a yellowed, glazed leather covering.

When I had broken the seal—which bore the impression of an antique family crest, a raven with a cluster of grapes in its beak—the parchment unrolled itself with a reluctant, crackling sound.

It was a manuscript—and its contents, in the faded, stiff characters of a long-vanished hand, told a story which immediately seized upon my imagination. It was the record of the trial and condemnation of one Hester Prynne, and the details concerning the scarlet letter which she was condemned to wear.

The manuscript, alas! was incomplete. A large portion of the latter pages, where the author, no doubt, had intended to unfold the final destinies of the principal characters, was lost, or worse, had been torn away and utterly destroyed. It was a tantalizing fragment, yet in its very incompleteness, it possessed a singular power to excite the mind.

I bore the precious document home, and there, night after night, I pored over its venerable contents. The tale of Hester Prynne, the sad history of the scarlet letter, took firm hold of my mind. The dusty old papers, the forgotten customs, the very air of the Custom-House—all seemed to conspire to urge me onward.

And thus, I offer this narrative to the world. It is a legend of the old Puritan times, a tale in which the gloom of their creed mingles with the shadowy romance of their deeds.

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I. THE PRISON-DOOR

Between the courthouse and the jail, in old Boston town, there was a contiguous barrier of black, aged wood, which only served to emphasize the grimness of both edifices. The jail was a small, dark, iron-studded structure, looking like a stray fragment of the Tower of London, or some yet ruder edifice of earlier England.

The mouldering timbers of the prison, the moss-grown stone, and the general aspect of decay, spoke of a long period of unmolested grimness. The settlement was barely fifty years old, and already was its architecture assuming the stern uniformity of antiquity.

But, on the whole, the grimness of the jail was not so offensive to the world as the grimness of the prison-door. It was, in fact, a most forbidding object. The door was of massive oak, and was adorned with a terrible complexity of iron spikes and studs. It was the sternest sentinel that ever guarded a den of iniquity.

Set into the door, just above the great, rusting padlock, was a slip of iron, wrought in an ornate fashion, which served as a knocker. The iron was deeply rusted, and the whole aspect of the door was one of grim antiquity and profound warning.

The faint sunlight of early summer struggled upon this entrance, but seemed rather to wither where it touched than to impart any genial warmth.

On one side of the heavy door, there was a small, iron-grated window, through which, perhaps, a jailer might occasionally peer. The rest was solid oak and iron.

And here, precisely in front of this dismal portal, was a spot of earth where a great deal of moral and physical manure had been bestowed. The log-house, which the Puritans built for their first meeting-house, was surrounded by a small patch of garden ground, which, in the course of fifty years, had sent forth a rank and luxuriant growth of weeds.

But, in the immediate vicinity of the prison-door, there was a strange contrast. Amidst the weedy wilderness, there sprang up a single, lonely plant of the most attractive and vigorous character. It was a wild rose-bush, with its clustered blossoms, half in bloom and half in bud, emerging with a sweet fragrance from the rank soil.

This rose-bush appeared to be as ancient as the settlement itself. It had sprung up under the footsteps of the grim old Puritans, and had been nourished by the footsteps of the doomed.

It suggested some tender truth, or sweet mercy, which the occupants of the prison-door, in their rigid adherence to the letter of the law, had entirely overlooked. It offered a sweet emblem of beauty and passion, inappropriate to the bleak formality of the place.

The sternest and the most intolerant might have paused here, and felt a stir of feeling not wholly of the earth.

And it was at this very door, on a summer morning, full of the damp and heavy perfume of the rose-bush, that the heavy door swung inward, and a procession issued forth.

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