Grand tours: Shaken and stirred on the pilgrim trail

Great writers and their adventures in literature. This week Nathaniel Hawthorne in Massachusetts

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4 July 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. (One of his ancestors was John Hathorne, a presiding magistrate in the Salem witch trials.) After leaving college, Hawthorne became a Custom House official, but the success of his most famous book, 'The Scarlet Letter', enabled him to write full time. He left Salem in 1850 for Lenox, a small town in the Berkshires, where he became acquainted with the writer Herman Melville. This extract is taken from his short story 'The Canterbury Pilgrims'. Hawthorne died on 19 May, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

The summer moon, which shines in so many a tale, was beaming over a broad extent of uneven country. Some of its brightest rays were flung into a spring of water, where no traveller, toiling, as the writer has, up the hilly road beside which it gushes, ever failed to quench his thirst. The work of neat hands and considerate art was visible about this blessed fountain. An open cistern, hewn and hollowed out of solid stone, was placed above the waters, which filled it to the brim, but by some invisible outlet were conveyed away without dripping down its sides. Though the basin had not room for another drop, there was a secret charm that forbade it to overflow.

While the moon was hanging almost perpendicularly over this spot, two figures appeared on the summit of the hill, and came with noiseless footsteps down towards the spring. They were then in the first freshness of youth; yet they wore a strange, old-fashioned garb. One, a young man with ruddy cheeks, walked beneath the canopy of a broad-brimmed gray hat; he seemed to have inherited his great-grandsire's square-skirted coat, and a waistcoat that extended its immense flaps to his knees; his brown locks, also, hung down behind, in a mode unknown to our times. By his side was a sweet young damsel, her fair features sheltered by a prim little bonnet, within which appeared the vestal muslin of a cap; her close, long-waisted gown, and indeed her whole attire, might have been worn by some rustic beauty who had faded half a century before. But that there was something too warm and life-like in them, I would here have compared this couple to the ghosts of two young lovers who had died long since in the glow of passion, and now were straying out of their graves.

"Thee and I will rest here a moment, Miriam," said the young man, as they drew near the stone cistern, "for there is no fear that the elders know what we have done; and this may be the last time we shall ever taste this water."

Thus speaking, with a little sadness in his face, which was also visible in that of his companion, he made her sit down on a stone, and was about to place himself very close to her side; she, however, repelled him, though not unkindly.

"Nay, Josiah," said she, giving him a timid push with her maiden hand, "thee must sit farther off, on that other stone, with the spring between us. What would the sisters say, if thee were to sit so close to me?"

"But we are of the world's people now, Miriam," answered Josiah.

The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth, in fact, seem altogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat apart from each other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight discovered the tops of a group of buildings. While their attention was thus occupied, a party of travellers made a halt to refresh themselves at the spring. There were three men, a woman, and a little girl and boy. Their attire was mean, covered with the dust of the summer's day, and damp with the night-dew; they all looked woebegone, as if the cares and sorrows of the world had made their steps heavier;even the two little children appeared older than the young man and maiden.

"Good evening to you, young folks," was the salutation of the travellers; and "Good evening, friends," replied the youth and damsel.

"Is that white building the Shaker meeting-house?" asked one of the strangers. "And are those the red roofs of the Shaker village?"

"Friend, it is the Shaker village," answered Josiah, after some hesitation.

The travellers, who, from the first, had looked suspiciously at the garb of these young people, now taxed them with an intention which all the circumstances, indeed, rendered too obvious to be mistaken.

"It is true, friends," replied the young man, summoning up his courage. "Miriam and I have a gift to love each other, and we are going among the world's people, to live after their fashion. And ye know that we do not transgress the law of the land; and neither ye, nor the elders themselves, have a right to hinder us."

"Yet you think it expedient to depart without leave-taking," remarked one of the travellers.

"Yea, ye-a," said Josiah, reluctantly, "because father Job is a very awful man to speak with; and being aged himself, he has but little charity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh."

"Well," said the stranger, "we will neither use force to bring you back to the village, nor will we betray you to the elders. But sit you here awhile, and when you have heard what we shall tell you of the world which we have left, and into which you are going, perhaps you will turn back with us of your own accord. What say you?" added he, turning to his companions. "We have travelled thus far without becoming known to each other. Shall we tell our stories, here by this pleasant spring, for our own pastime, and the benefit of these misguided young lovers?"

Follow in the footsteps

A life of celibacy

The Shakers were founded by Mother Anne Lee (1736-1784), a former Quaker who emigrated to America from Manchester, England, to escape religious persecution. They shared many Quaker beliefs, such as the importance of the work ethic and the potential perfection of mankind, but with one important difference: the Shakers were celibate.

Their aim was to create a paradise on earth, and in paradise, they believed, there was no need for procreation. Married people could join the Shakers, but they had to give up sexual relations. The Shakers made converts and often adopted orphans, but despite this, their communities inevitably died out. Anne Lee apparently suffered four miscarriages and it could be that this lay behind her advocacy of celibacy.

To be a pilgrim

Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire was the sixth of 19 American Shaker communities. Founded in 1792, it is now a National Historic Landmark and contains 25 original Shaker buildings, including the laundry (complete with prototype spin-dryer), the meeting house, the school house and the Sisters' shop, where the sisters did their weaving and sewing.

There is an excellent restaurant, The Creamery, and a craft shop selling typically Shaker-inspired products, such as brooms, peg rails and oval baskets.

Canterbury Shaker Village, 288 Shaker Road, Canterbury, NH 03224 (001 8866 783 9511; www.shakers.org). Open daily, 10am-5pm, 1 May to 31 October, 10am-4pm at weekends in April, November and December. Admission: $12 (£8.50) adults, $6 children, under-fives free. The village is north of Concord, New Hampshire, and takes 20 minutes by car. From Interstate 93, take exit 18 and follow signs to the village.

Hawthorne country

Hawthorne was sceptical about the benefits of Shaker life but he himself experienced a communal lifestyle at Brook Farm in Massachusetts. Brook Farm, an isolated farmstead nine miles from Boston on the Charles River, in Roxbury, was a Transcendentalist experiment in co-operative living which ran from 1841 to 1847. Hawthorne invested $500 apiece for himself and his fiancée, Sophia Peabody, and lived there for seven months in 1841 by which time he had become disillusioned. The Blithedale Romance was a thinly disguised satire on Brook Farm.

The Boston-centred Transcendentalist movement was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and believed that human existence transcended the sensory realm, and rejected formalism in favour of individual responsibility. Brook Farm as Hawthorne knew it no longer survives, but you can stay at the Brook Farm Inn, 15 Hawthorne Street, Lenox, Massachusetts 01240 (001 413 637 3013; www.brookfarm.com). Each bedroom is individually decorated and room rates start from $150 per night.