The Hall of Fantasy

by Nathaniel Hawthorne




It has happened to me, on various occasions, to find myself in a
certain edifice which would appear to have some of the characteristics
of a public exchange. Its interior is a spacious hall, with a pavement
of white marble. Overhead is a lofty dome, supported by long rows of
pillars of fantastic architecture, the idea of which was probably taken
from the Moorish ruins of the Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted
edifice in the Arabian tales. The windows of this hall have a breadth
and grandeur of design and an elaborateness of workmanship that have
nowhere been equalled, except in the Gothic cathedrals of the Old
World. Like their prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven only
through stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall with
many-colored radiance and painting its marble floor with beautiful or
grotesque designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary
atmosphere, and tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These
peculiarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even an
American architect usually recognizes as allowable,—Grecian, Gothic,
Oriental, and nondescript,—cause the whole edifice to give the
impression of a dream, which might be dissipated and shattered to
fragments by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement. Yet, with such
modifications and repairs as successive ages demand, the Hall of
Fantasy is likely to endure longer than the most substantial structure
that ever cumbered the earth.

It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into this edifice,
although most persons enter it at some period or other of their lives;
if not in their waking moments, then by the universal passport of a
dream. At my last visit I wandered thither unawares while my mind was
busy with an idle tale, and was startled by the throng of people who
seemed suddenly to rise up around me.

“Bless me! Where am I?” cried I, with but a dim recognition of the
place.

“You are in a spot,” said a friend who chanced to be near at hand,
“which occupies in the world of fancy the same position which the
Bourse, the Rialto, and the Exchange do in the commercial world. All
who have affairs in that mystic region, which lies above, below, or
beyond the actual, may here meet and talk over the business of their
dreams.”

“It is a noble hall,” observed I.

“Yes,” he replied. “Yet we see but a small portion of the edifice. In
its upper stories are said to be apartments where the inhabitants of
earth may hold converse with those of the moon; and beneath our feet
are gloomy cells, which communicate with the infernal regions, and
where monsters and chimeras are kept in confinement and fed with all
unwholesomeness.”

In niches and on pedestals around about the hall stood the statues or
busts of men who in every age have been rulers and demigods in the
realms of imagination and its kindred regions. The grand old
countenance of Homer; the shrunken and decrepit form but vivid face of
AEsop; the dark presence of Dante; the wild Ariosto; Rabelais’s smile
of deep-wrought mirth, the profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes; the
all-glorious Shakespeare; Spenser, meet guest for an allegoric
structure; the severe divinity of Milton; and Bunyan, moulded of
homeliest clay, but instinct with celestial fire,—were those that
chiefly attracted my eye. Fielding, Richardson, and Scott occupied
conspicuous pedestals. In an obscure and shadowy niche was deposited
the bust of our countryman, the author of Arthur Mervyn.

“Besides these indestructible memorials of real genius,” remarked my
companion, “each century has erected statues of its own ephemeral
favorites in wood.”

“I observe a few crumbling relics of such,” said I. “But ever and anon,
I suppose, Oblivion comes with her huge broom and sweeps them all from
the marble floor. But such will never be the fate of this fine statue
of Goethe.”

“Nor of that next to it,—Emanuel Swedenborg,” said he. “Were ever two
men of transcendent imagination more unlike?”

In the centre of the hall springs an ornamental fountain, the water of
which continually throws itself into new shapes and snatches the most
diversified lines from the stained atmosphere around. It is impossible
to conceive what a strange vivacity is imparted to the scene by the
magic dance of this fountain, with its endless transformations, in
which the imaginative beholder may discern what form he will. The water
is supposed by some to flow from the same source as the Castalian
spring, and is extolled by others as uniting the virtues of the
Fountain of Youth with those of many other enchanted wells long
celebrated in tale and song. Having never tasted it, I can bear no
testimony to its quality.

“Did you ever drink this water?” I inquired of my friend.

“A few sips now and then,” answered he. “But there are men here who
make it their constant beverage,—or, at least, have the credit of doing
so. In some instances it is known to have intoxicating qualities.”

“Pray let us look at these water-drinkers,” said I.

So we passed among the fantastic pillars till we came to a spot where a
number of persons were clustered together in the light of one of the
great stained windows, which seemed to glorify the whole group as well
as the marble that they trod on. Most of them were men of broad
foreheads, meditative countenances, and thoughtful, inward eyes; yet it
required but a trifle to summon up mirth, peeping out from the very
midst of grave and lofty musings. Some strode about, or leaned against
the pillars of the hall, alone and in silence; their faces wore a rapt
expression, as if sweet music were in the air around them, or as if
their inmost souls were about to float away in song. One or two,
perhaps, stole a glance at the bystanders, to watch if their poetic
absorption were observed. Others stood talking in groups, with a
liveliness of expression, a ready smile, and a light, intellectual
laughter, which showed how rapidly the shafts of wit were glancing to
and fro among them.

A few held higher converse, which caused their calm and melancholy
souls to beam moonlight from their eyes. As I lingered near them,—for I
felt an inward attraction towards these men, as if the sympathy of
feeling, if not of genius, had united me to their order,—my friend
mentioned several of their names. The world has likewise heard those
names; with some it has been familiar for years; and others are daily
making their way deeper into the universal heart.

“Thank Heaven,” observed I to my companion, as we passed to another
part of the hall, “we have done with this techy, wayward, shy, proud
unreasonable set of laurel-gatherers. I love them in their works, but
have little desire to meet them elsewhere.”

“You have adopted all old prejudice, I see,” replied my friend, who was
familiar with most of these worthies, being himself a student of
poetry, and not without the poetic flame. “But, so far as my experience
goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in
this age there appears to be a fellow-feeling among them which had not
heretofore been developed. As men, they ask nothing better than to be
on equal terms with their fellow-men; and as authors, they have thrown
aside their proverbial jealousy, and acknowledge a generous
brotherhood.”

“The world does not think so,” answered I. “An author is received in
general society pretty much as we honest citizens are in the Hall of
Fantasy. We gaze at him as if he had no business among us, and question
whether he is fit for any of our pursuits.”

“Then it is a very foolish question,” said he. “Now, here are a class
of men whom we may daily meet on ’Change. Yet what poet in the hall is
more a fool of fancy than the sagest of them?”

He pointed to a number of persons, who, manifest as the fact was, would
have deemed it an insult to be told that they stood in the Hall of
Fantasy. Their visages were traced into wrinkles and furrows, each of
which seemed the record of some actual experience in life. Their eyes
had the shrewd, calculating glance which detects so quickly and so
surely all that it concerns a man of business to know about the
characters and purposes of his fellow-men. Judging them as they stood,
they might be honored and trusted members of the Chamber of Commerce,
who had found the genuine secret of wealth and whose sagacity gave them
the command of fortune.

There was a character of detail and matter of fact in their talk which
concealed the extravagance of its purport, insomuch that the wildest
schemes had the aspect of everyday realities. Thus the listener was not
startled at the idea of cities to be built, as if by magic, in the
heart of pathless forests; and of streets to be laid out where now the
sea was tossing; and of mighty rivers to be stayed in their courses in
order to turn the machinery of a cotton-mill. It was only by an effort,
and scarcely then, that the mind convinced itself that such
speculations were as much matter of fantasy as the old dream of
Eldorado, or as Mammon’s Cave, or any other vision of gold ever
conjured up by the imagination of needy poet or romantic adventurer.

“Upon my word,” said I, “it is dangerous to listen to such dreamers as
these. Their madness is contagious.”

“Yes,” said my friend, “because they mistake the Hall of Fantasy for
actual brick and mortar, and its purple atmosphere for unsophisticated
sunshine. But the poet knows his whereabout, and therefore is less
likely to make a fool of himself in real life.”

“Here again,” observed I, as we advanced a little farther, “we see
another order of dreamers, peculiarly characteristic, too, of the
genius of our country.”

These were the inventors of fantastic machines. Models of their
contrivances were placed against some of the pillars of the hall, and
afforded good emblems of the result generally to be anticipated from an
attempt to reduce day-dreams to practice. The analogy may hold in
morals as well as physics; for instance, here was the model of a
railroad through the air and a tunnel under the sea. Here was a
machine—stolen, I believe—for the distillation of heat from moonshine;
and another for the condensation of morning mist into square blocks of
granite, wherewith it was proposed to rebuild the entire Hall of
Fantasy. One man exhibited a sort of lens whereby he had succeeded in
making sunshine out of a lady’s smile; and it was his purpose wholly to
irradiate the earth by means of this wonderful invention.

“It is nothing new,” said I; “for most of our sunshine comes from
woman’s smile already.”

“True,” answered the inventor; “but my machine will secure a constant
supply for domestic use; whereas hitherto it has been very precarious.”

Another person had a scheme for fixing the reflections of objects in a
pool of water, and thus taking the most life-like portraits imaginable;
and the same gentleman demonstrated the practicability of giving a
permanent dye to ladies’ dresses, in the gorgeous clouds of sunset.
There were at least fifty kinds of perpetual motion, one of which was
applicable to the wits of newspaper editors and writers of every
description. Professor Espy was here, with a tremendous storm in a
gum-elastic bag. I could enumerate many more of these Utopian
inventions; but, after all, a more imaginative collection is to be
found in the Patent Office at Washington.

Turning from the inventors we took a more general survey of the inmates
of the hall. Many persons were present whose right of entrance appeared
to consist in some crotchet of the brain, which, so long as it might
operate, produced a change in their relation to the actual world. It is
singular how very few there are who do not occasionally gain admittance
on such a score, either in abstracted musings, or momentary thoughts,
or bright anticipations, or vivid remembrances; for even the actual
becomes ideal, whether in hope or memory, and beguiles the dreamer into
the Hall of Fantasy. Some unfortunates make their whole abode and
business here, and contract habits which unfit them for all the real
employments of life. Others—but these are few—possess the faculty, in
their occasional visits, of discovering a purer truth than the world
call impart among the lights and shadows of these pictured windows.

And with all its dangerous influences, we have reason to thank God that
there is such a place of refuge from the gloom and chillness of actual
life. Hither may come the prisoner, escaping from his dark and narrow
cell and cankerous chain, to breathe free air in this enchanted
atmosphere. The sick man leaves his weary pillow, and finds strength to
wander hither, though his wasted limbs might not support him even to
the threshold of his chamber. The exile passes through the Hall of
Fantasy to revisit his native soil. The burden of years rolls down from
the old man’s shoulders the moment that the door uncloses. Mourners
leave their heavy sorrows at the entrance, and here rejoin the lost
ones whose faces would else be seen no more, until thought shall have
become the only fact. It may be said, in truth, that there is but half
a life—the meaner and earthier half—for those who never find their way
into the hall. Nor must I fail to mention that in the observatory of
the edifice is kept that wonderful perspective-glass, through which the
shepherds of the Delectable Mountains showed Christian the far-off
gleam of the Celestial City. The eye of Faith still loves to gaze
through it.

“I observe some men here,” said I to my friend, “who might set up a
strong claim to be reckoned among the most real personages of the day.”

“Certainly,” he replied. “If a man be in advance of his age, he must be
content to make his abode in this hall until the lingering generations
of his fellow-men come up with him. He can find no other shelter in the
universe. But the fantasies of one day are the deepest realities of a
future one.”

“It is difficult to distinguish them apart amid the gorgeous and
bewildering light of this ball,” rejoined I. “The white sunshine of
actual life is necessary in order to test them. I am rather apt to
doubt both men and their reasonings till I meet them in that truthful
medium.”

“Perhaps your faith in the ideal is deeper than you are aware,” said my
friend. “You are at least a democrat; and methinks no scanty share of
such faith is essential to the adoption of that creed.”

Among the characters who had elicited these remarks were most of the
noted reformers of the day, whether in physics, politics, morals, or
religion. There is no surer method of arriving at the Hall of Fantasy
than to throw one’s-self into the current of a theory; for, whatever
landmarks of fact may be set up along the stream, there is a law of
nature that impels it thither. And let it be so; for here the wise head
and capacious heart may do their work; and what is good and true
becomes gradually hardened into fact, while error melts away and
vanishes among the shadows of the ball. Therefore may none who believe
and rejoice in the progress of mankind be angry with me because I
recognized their apostles and leaders amid the fantastic radiance of
those pictured windows. I love and honor such men as well as they.

It would be endless to describe the herd of real or self styled
reformers that peopled this place of refuge. They were the
representatives of an unquiet period, when mankind is seeking to cast
off the whole tissue of ancient custom like a tattered garment. Many of
then had got possession of some crystal fragment of truth, the
brightness of which so dazzled them that they could see nothing else in
the wide universe. Here were men whose faith had embodied itself in the
form of a potato; and others whose long beards had a deep spiritual
significance. Here was the abolitionist, brandishing his one idea like
an iron flail. In a word, there were a thousand shapes of good and
evil, faith and infidelity, wisdom and nonsense,—a most incongruous
throng.

Yet, withal, the heart of the stanchest conservative, unless he abjured
his fellowship with man, could hardly have helped throbbing in sympathy
with the spirit that pervaded these innumerable theorists. It was good
for the man of unquickened heart to listen even to their folly. Far
down beyond the fathom of the intellect the soul acknowledged that all
these varying and conflicting developments of humanity were united in
one sentiment. Be the individual theory as wild as fancy could make it,
still the wiser spirit would recognize the struggle of the race after a
better and purer life than had yet been realized on earth. My faith
revived even while I rejected all their schemes. It could not be that
the world should continue forever what it has been; a soil where
Happiness is so rare a flower and Virtue so often a blighted fruit; a
battle-field where the good principle, with its shield flung above its
head, can hardly save itself amid the rush of adverse influences. In
the enthusiasm of such thoughts I gazed through one of the pictured
windows, and, behold! the whole external world was tinged with the
dimly glorious aspect that is peculiar to the Hall of Fantasy, insomuch
that it seemed practicable at that very instant to realize some plan
for the perfection of mankind. But, alas! if reformers would understand
the sphere in which their lot is cast they must cease to look through
pictured windows. Yet they not only use this medium, but mistake it for
the whitest sunshine.

“Come,” said I to my friend, starting from a deep revery, “let us
hasten hence, or I shall be tempted to make a theory, after which there
is little hope of any man.”

“Come hither, then,” answered he. “Here is one theory that swallows up
and annihilates all others.”

He led me to a distant part of the hall where a crowd of deeply
attentive auditors were assembled round an elderly man of plain,
honest, trustworthy aspect. With an earnestness that betokened the
sincerest faith in his own doctrine, he announced that the destruction
of the world was close at hand.

“It is Father Miller himself!” exclaimed I.

“No less a man,” said my friend; “and observe how picturesque a
contrast between his dogma and those of the reformers whom we have just
glanced at. They look for the earthly perfection of mankind, and are
forming schemes which imply that the immortal spirit will be connected
with a physical nature for innumerable ages of futurity. On the other
hand, here comes good Father Miller, and with one puff of his
relentless theory scatters all their dreams like so many withered
leaves upon the blast.”

“It is, perhaps, the only method of getting mankind out of the various
perplexities into which they have fallen,” I replied. “Yet I could wish
that the world might be permitted to endure until some great moral
shall have been evolved. A riddle is propounded. Where is the solution?
The sphinx did not slay herself until her riddle had been guessed. Will
it not be so with the world? Now, if it should be burned to-morrow
morning, I am at a loss to know what purpose will have been
accomplished, or how the universe will be wiser or better for our
existence and destruction.”

“We cannot tell what mighty truths may have been embodied in act
through the existence of the globe and its inhabitants,” rejoined my
companion. “Perhaps it may be revealed to us after the fall of the
curtain over our catastrophe; or not impossibly, the whole drama, in
which we are involuntary actors, may have been performed for the
instruction of another set of spectators. I cannot perceive that our
own comprehension of it is at all essential to the matter. At any rate,
while our view is so ridiculously narrow and superficial it would be
absurd to argue the continuance of the world from the fact that it
seems to have existed hitherto in vain.”

“The poor old earth,” murmured I. “She has faults enough, in all
conscience, but I cannot hear to have her perish.”

“It is no great matter,” said my friend. “The happiest of us has been
weary of her many a time and oft.”

“I doubt it,” answered I, pertinaciously; “the root of human nature
strikes down deep into this earthly soil, and it is but reluctantly
that we submit to be transplanted, even for a higher cultivation in
heaven. I query whether the destruction of the earth would gratify any
one individual, except perhaps some embarrassed man of business whose
notes fall due a day after the day of doom.”

Then methought I heard the expostulating cry of a multitude against the
consummation prophesied by Father Miller. The lover wrestled with
Providence for his foreshadowed bliss. Parents entreated that the
earth’s span of endurance might be prolonged by some seventy years, so
that their new-born infant should not be defrauded of his lifetime. A
youthful poet murmured because there would be no posterity to recognize
the inspiration of his song. The reformers, one and all, demanded a few
thousand years to test their theories, after which the universe might
go to wreck. A mechanician, who was busied with an improvement of the
steam-engine, asked merely time to perfect his model. A miser insisted
that the world’s destruction would be a personal wrong to himself,
unless he should first be permitted to add a specified sum to his
enormous heap of gold. A little boy made dolorous inquiry whether the
last day would come before Christmas, and thus deprive him of his
anticipated dainties. In short, nobody seemed satisfied that this
mortal scene of things should have its close just now. Yet, it must be
confessed, the motives of the crowd for desiring its continuance were
mostly so absurd, that unless infinite Wisdom had been aware of much
better reasons, the solid earth must have melted away at once.

For my own part, not to speak of a few private and personal ends, I
really desired our old mother’s prolonged existence for her own dear
sake.

“The poor old earth!” I repeated. “What I should chiefly regret in her
destruction would be that very earthliness which no other sphere or
state of existence can renew or compensate. The fragrance of flowers
and of new-mown hay; the genial warmth of sunshine, and the beauty of a
sunset among clouds; the comfort and cheerful glow of the fireside; the
deliciousness of fruits and of all good cheer; the magnificence of
mountains, and seas, and cataracts, and the softer charm of rural
scenery; even the fast-falling snow and the gray atmosphere through
which it descends,—all these and innumerable other enjoyable things of
earth must perish with her. Then the country frolics; the homely humor;
the broad, open-mouthed roar of laughter, in which body and soul
conjoin so heartily! I fear that no other world call show its anything
just like this. As for purely moral enjoyments, the good will find them
in every state of being. But where the material and the moral exist
together, what is to happen then? And then our mute four-footed friends
and the winged songsters of our woods! Might it not be lawful to regret
them, even in the hallowed groves of paradise?”

“You speak like the very spirit of earth, imbued with a scent of
freshly turned soil,” exclaimed my friend.

“It is not that I so much object to giving up these enjoyments on my
own account,” continued I, “but I hate to think that they will have
been eternally annihilated from the list of joys.”

“Nor need they be,” he replied. “I see no real force in what you say.
Standing in this Hall of Fantasy, we perceive what even the
earth-clogged intellect of man can do in creating circumstances which,
though we call them shadowy and visionary, are scarcely more so than
those that surround us in actual life. Doubt not then that man’s
disembodied spirit may recreate time and the world for itself, with all
their peculiar enjoyments, should there still be human yearnings amid
life eternal and infinite. But I doubt whether we shall be inclined to
play such a poor scene over again.”

“O, you are ungrateful to our mother earth!” rejoined I. “Come what
may, I never will forget her! Neither will it satisfy me to have her
exist merely in idea. I want her great, round, solid self to endure
interminably, and still to be peopled with the kindly race of man, whom
I uphold to be much better than he thinks himself. Nevertheless, I
confide the whole matter to Providence, and shall endeavor so to live
that the world may come to an end at any moment without leaving me at a
loss to find foothold somewhere else.”

“It is an excellent resolve,” said my companion, looking at his watch.
“But come; it is the dinner-hour. Will you partake of my vegetable
diet?”

A thing so matter of fact as an invitation to dinner, even when the
fare was to be nothing more substantial than vegetables and fruit,
compelled us forthwith to remove from the Hall of Fantasy. As we passed
out of the portal we met the spirits of several persons who had been
sent thither in magnetic sleep. I looked back among the sculptured
pillars and at the transformations of the gleaming fountain, and almost
desired that the whole of life might be spent in that visionary scene
where the actual world, with its hard angles, should never rub against
me, and only be viewed through the medium of pictured windows. But for
those who waste all their days in the Hall of Fantasy, good Father
Miller’s prophecy is already accomplished, and the solid earth has come
to an untimely end. Let us be content, therefore, with merely an
occasional visit, for the sake of spiritualizing the grossness of this
actual life, and prefiguring to ourselves a state in which the Idea
shall be all in all.