Dr. Heidenhoff's Process and Miss Ludington's Sister: Edward Bellamy's Romances of Immortality

DR. HEIDENHOFF'S PROCESS AND MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER: EDWARD BELLAMY'S ROMANCES OF IMMORTALITY Robert E. Hogan* "Whether his ethics will keep his aesthetics in remembrance I do not know; but I am sure that one cannot acquaint one's self with his merely artistic work, and not be sensible that in Edward Bellamy we were rich in a romantic imagination surpassed only by that of Hawthorne."1 So William Dean Howells concluded his biographical sketch of Bellamy which prefaced the posthumous collection of Bellamy's stories. Bellamy would have been pleased by this comparison of his own "romantic imagination" with Hawthorne's but not shocked by it. Even in his first letter to Howells he had himself invoked the spirit of Hawthorne. "Your note speaking of the gratification given you by 'Dr HeidenhoFs [sic] Process,' " Bellamy wrote in 1881, "was as refreshing to me as you may suppose a note from Hawthorne in commendation of one of your earlier efforts should have been to you."2 Both Dr. Heidenhoff's Process (1880), which prompted Howells to write Bellamy in praise of it, and Miss Ludington's Sister, the publication of which in 1884 was aided by Howells' efforts, show in varying degrees the influence of Hawthorne. That Bellamy should have mined the vein of Hawthorne is hardly surprising, given the many similarities between the two men. Both were extraordinarily guarded and introspective. Both found the craft of fiction difficult, requiring large investments of their psychic energy. In their frequent moments of self-questioning, frustration, and despair, Hawthorne's twelve years after his graduation from Bowdoin were probably similar to Bellamy's years of writing doggedly for newspapers while waiting to be recognized as a writer of fiction. For both, the commitment to a literary career involved the rejection of careers their families would have considered more appropriate. If Nathaniel Hawthorne had visions of being derided by his Puritan ancestors as a mere writer of story-books, Edward Bellamy—unhappy •Robert E. Hogan is an Assistant Professor of English at Rhode Island College. This article is his first scholarly publication. He has an article on John Updike forthcoming in Renascence and is working on articles on Howells and Bellamy. 52Robert E. Hogan as a lawyer, nerve-shattered as a journalist, and relatively unknown as a writer of fiction—could perhaps exacerbate his feelings of guilt by imagining his clerical ancestors looking upon him with astonishment and displeasure.3 Indeed, the most evident similarity between Hawthorne and Bellamy is their preoccupation with sin, and guilt. Not only did Hawthorne explore the personal and social consequences ofthe Puritan habit of vigilance about sin, but, as his remarks in"The Custom House" show, he was acutely aware of his own hereditary implication in the sins of his Puritan ancestors. Bellamy, too, was deeply conscious of the sins of the past, as his keen interest in history and his repeated theorizing about the nature of guilt testify. For both, the character who dwells outside what Hawthorne called the "magnetic chain of humanity " held a strong fascination. Yet they brought to their common concern widely divergent assumptions about human nature: Bellamy, unlike Hawthorne, tried not to believe in original sin, in the fundamental imperfectibility of man. Although the fragmentary nature of Bellamy's extant papers and the difficulty of compiling a list ofthe books he owned make it impossible to establish with certainty how much Hawthorne he read, it is reasonable to assume that he must have read most of Hawthorne's fiction .4 Moreover, many of his notebook entries—in the ideas they express , even in their very phrasing—could easily be taken for ones in Hawthorne's notebooks. One might argue that this indicates only that Bellamy was part of the vogue which Sophia Hawthorne's publication of the notebooks in 1868 and 1870 inspired. For a time it was evidently fashionable to keep a Hawthornesque notebook: Constance Fenimore Woolson, to cite one example, left among her literary remains a notebook clearly inspired by Hawthorne's.5 But Bellamy went beyond simply imitating Hawthorne's notebook entries. One entry by Hawthorne, for instance, "A physician for the cure of moral diseases,"6...