"Chiefly about War Matters": Hawthorne's Swift Judgment of Lincoln

A deliberate and conspicuous creative presence permeates all of Hawthorne's narratives, whether these creations be his fictions, where we have come to expect this presence, or his letters, journals, essays, or prefaces, where we might not. Scholars have dealt with Hawthorne's narrative voice, but until the recent publication of his letters, this scholarship has been somewhat limited. With these letters' publication, we are now able to encounter more perceptively the artistry of Hawthorne's rhetoric. Hawthorne himself forged the key to understanding that creative presence, his narrative voice, in a letter to Sophia in 1841, while he was a resident at Brook Farm. In this letter he reveals just how he perceived the illusive, transitory, and ambiguous nature of language, even when it might be the author's conscious intention to proclaim a matter as truth: Every day of my life makes me feel more and more how seldom a fact is accurately stated; how, almost invariably, when a story has passed through the mind of a third person, it becomes so far as regards the impression that it makes in further repetitions, little better than a falsehood, and this, too, though the narrator be the most truth-seeking person in existence. How marvelous the tendency is! ... In truth a fantasy which we are to pursue forever and never grasp? ... This is May-day! Alas, what a difference between the ideal and the real!(1) Hawthorne reveals his experimentation with language and consigns the impartation of truth to the realm of fantasy. He also exhibits cognizance of the elusive and equivocal nature of truth, recognizing the fallen nature of language--the decline in our ability to communicate that coincides with the decline of civilization--what Oswald Spengler observed as Untergang.(2) All the more difficult does discerning truth become when the author--Hawthorne in this case--sets about deliberately to create fables while seemingly proclaiming truth. A master story-teller such as Hawthorne has had little difficulty since the inception of his literary creations in entertaining readers with his fictions. As entertaining as his stories are, they are no more creatively artistic than his purportedly truthful works--his letters, journals, essays, and prefaces. Among these creations is an article written about Hawthorne's meeting with then President Abraham Lincoln. In Chiefly About War Matters, narrational concerns invite questions about the politics of Hawthorne's encounter with Lincoln. Chiefly About War Matters artfully damns Lincoln where it appears at first to praise him. Although many nineteenth-century readers thought the article flattering, Hawthorne's description of the Chief is laced with contempt,(3) and nowhere more artfully than in the ostensibly editorial notes to the piece. In perpetrating this literary trickery Hawthorne adopts an ironic technique suggestive of Gulliver's Travels. Hawthorne's narrative artistry in Chiefly About War Matters specifically calls to mind Gulliver's publisher--Gulliver himself posing as publisher, or else a fictive publisher contrived by Swift--who feigns authorship and censorship of his ancient and intimate friend and cousin, Gulliver, to evoke a sympathetic reaction to the narrative. Indeed, Swift added Gulliver's letter to his Cousin Sympson to the 1735 Dublin edition, yet predated it April 2, 1727, to give the appearance that it had graced the book's first edition.(4) The prospect of Hawthorne's use of Swiftian technique in Chiefly About War Matters hardly surprises, since Hawthorne was indebted to Swift more generally, drawing on him for allusions in many short stories. Although Alice Lovelace Cook catalogues Hawthorne's indebtedness to Swift, she notes that he claims to disapprove of Swiftian satire. This however does not preclude his imaginative appropriation of some features of that literary technique (140-55). As George Parsons Lathrop demonstrates, Hawthorne read Swift and adapted Swiftian rhetoric to his own ends (95). …