Ticknor was taken suddenly ill, at the Continental Hotel, and died the next day. Stunned, wellnigh shattered by this sinister event, Hawthorne was almost incapacitated for action of any sort; but there were kind and ready friends in Philadelphia who came to his aid, and relieved him from the melancholy duty which he would else have had to meet. He returned to Concord, in what forlorn state an extract from a letter of Mrs. Hawthorne's may best convey: "He came back unlooked for, that day; and when I heard a step on the piazza, I was lying on a couch and feeling quite indisposed. But as soon as I saw him I was frightened out of all knowledge of myself,—so haggard, so white, so deeply scored with pain and fatigue was the face, so much more ill than ever I saw him before." Mrs. Hawthorne still hoped for some favorable turn, if he could but obtain a complete change of scene and escape from the austere New England spring, into some warmer climate. "He has not smiled since he came home till to-day," she wrote, "when I made him laugh, with Thackeray's humor, in reading to him." She was constant in her care; she would scarcely let him go up and down stairs alone. But not the most tender solicitude, nor any encouragement of unquenchable hope, could now avail to help him.
The only stratagem that could be devised to win back health and strength was the plan proposed by General Pierce, to take Hawthorne with him on an easy journey by carriage into New Hampshire. They started in May,—the two old college-mates; the ex-President so lately widowed and still in the shadow of his own bereavement, with the famous romancer so mournfully broken, who was never more to be seen in life by those to whom he was dearest. From the Pemigewasset House at Plymouth, New Hampshire, where they had stopped for the night, General Pierce sent the news on May 19, that Hawthorne was dead. "He retired last night," wrote the General, "soon after nine o'clock, and soon fell into a quiet slumber.... At two o'clock I went to H——'s bedside; he was apparently in a sound sleep; and I did not place my hand upon him. At four o'clock I went into his room again, and, as his position was unchanged, I placed my hand upon him and found that life was extinct.... He must have passed from natural slumber to that from which there is no waking, without the slightest movement."
Hawthorne was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord, on the 24th of May, 1864. The grave was made beneath the shadowing pines of a hill near one of the borders of the beautiful, wooded burial-ground, whence there is a peaceful view over the valley of the Concord River. It was close to the slope where Thoreau now lies, and not far away is the grassy resting-place of Emerson. The spot was one for which Hawthorne had cherished an especial fondness. Emerson, that day, stood beside the grave, and with him Longfellow and Lowell were present; Agassiz, Holmes, James Freeman Clarke, Edwin Whipple, Pierce, and Hillard, had all assembled to pay their last reverence. A great multitude of people attended the funeral service at the old Unitarian First Church in the village, and Mr. Clarke, who had performed the marriage ceremony for Hawthorne, conducted the rites above him dead. It was a perfect day of spring; the roadside banks were blue with violets, the orchards were in bloom; and lilies of the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among flowers, had blossomed early as if for him, and were gathered in masses about him. Like a requiem chant, the clear strains that Longfellow wrote in memory of that hour still echo for us its tender solemnity:—
"How beautiful it was, that one bright day
In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
The omnipresent pain.
"The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms,
Shot through with golden thread.
"Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,
The historic river flowed;
I was as one who wanders in a trance,
Unconscious of his road.
"The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;
Their voices I could hear,
And yet the words they uttered seemed to change
Their meaning to the ear.
"For the one face I looked for was not there,
The one low voice was mute;
Only an unseen presence filled the air,
And baffled my pursuit.
"Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream
Dimly my thought defines;
I only see—a dream within a dream—
The hill-top hearsed with pines.
"I only hear above his place of rest
Their tender undertone,
The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
The voice so like his own.
"There in seclusion and remote from men
The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the tale half told.
"Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clue regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must remain!"
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