Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe" - An Essay

A rumor can outrun a man’s own footsteps, yet it’s the living breath of truth that finally catches up.

I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” this morning.  And though it isn’t one of the stories folks usually brag about reading, it’s got a certain hometown flavor to it, the kind of tale you might hear from an older neighbor leaning against his truck in the driveway, telling you a story he swears is true even though the details keep sliding around on him.

Things get going when Dominicus Pike, a traveling tobacco peddler who seems to enjoy jawing with people almost as much as selling them anything, hears a dramatic rumor: Mr. Higginbotham, a well-liked older gentleman with a little money and a spotless reputation, has been murdered. And not just murdered, but found hanging “by the neck,” like something grim you’d overhear at a gas station out on the outskirts of town. You’d figure Pike might be shaken by that, but mostly he seems happy to have something juicy to pass along on the road.

Every time he rolls into another small town - the kind with a breakfast place that opens at 5 a.m. and a Main Street that quiets down by sunset - he retells the story. And, sure enough, each time he lets it out of his mouth, it grows a shade wilder, like the way rumors get after a long week when people are bored and looking for something to talk about.

It doesn’t take long to see Hawthorne knew exactly how stories behave in places like that - places a lot like Elmira. Talk gets passed around quicker than the river rises after a rainstorm. Folks don’t mean any harm; they just want to feel like they’ve got news worth sharing, something to make the day a little more interesting. And once a story starts making the rounds, it stretches itself out without anyone needing to push it.

Naturally, the punchline is that Mr. Higginbotham’s alive and kicking. Not a bit dead...just annoyed that half the county seems convinced he’s hanging from a tree somewhere. The whole “catastrophe” melts away the moment he appears in the flesh. And that’s Hawthorne’s little wink: the real thing is almost always plainer than the version that’s been passed from car to porch to barstool.

Because the story breezes along, it’s easy to miss how neatly Hawthorne captures something true about the way people operate, especially in towns where everyone knows who your grandparents were. We’re drawn to a dramatic tale. We trust a story if it’s traveled far enough. And we’ll repeat it just to feel like we’re part of the loop, even if it’s gotten more twisted than the back roads outside town.

By the end, Dominicus Pike gets his lesson (though whether he hangs onto it is anybody’s guess) and Mr. Higginbotham gets to enjoy being alive with a little more appreciation than before. The reader gets a smile. And Hawthorne shows he can spin a light, friendly yarn just as well as the darker pieces he’s famous for.

We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

A Closing Poem in the Style of Robert Frost, Spoken by Mr. Higginbotham

I heard I’d died before my time,

Or so the traveling peddlers said;

They hung me high in rumor’s rhyme,

While I sat home and baked my bread.

The roads were white with whispered lies,

Frost-bitten tales with lively tread;

I walked out just to clear the skies,

And show the townsfolk I’m not dead.

Now every gossip, pale with shock,

Admits the truth with grudging grin;

It seems a man must take a walk

To prove he’s still alive within.

And if they speak of me once more,

I hope it’s not of ropes or doom,

But how I stepped outside my door

And set the record straight with bloom.

GBS jr

2005