Sights From a Steeple

Sights From a Steeple is an early sketch by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in The Token in 1831 and later collected in Twice Told Tales. It is one of the very first pieces he published, written when he was still in his mid twenties and finding the small observational voice that would carry him through his early career.

The sketch is exactly what the title suggests. The narrator has climbed the steeple of a church in a small New England town and stands looking down at the streets, the harbour, and the people going about their day. He describes what he sees from his perch, picking out small dramas, watching merchants haggling, children playing, a young couple walking, a funeral procession, a thunderstorm moving in across the bay. The piece has no plot. It is pure observation, the kind of thing Hawthorne would later say was the easiest thing in the world to write and the hardest to write well.

What makes the sketch interesting now is how much of the mature Hawthorne is already in it. The observer is detached but not cold. He notices the funeral and the marriage in nearly the same paragraph, and he is interested in the way both fit into the larger rhythm of the town. The thunderstorm at the end gives the piece a final movement, drawing everything together as the rain drives the people indoors and the streets empty.

The sketch runs about ten pages and is one of the most pleasant of the very early pieces. It anticipates a great deal of his later short work, particularly The Toll Gatherer’s Day and Chippings with a Chisel, where the same fixed observer device is used. For readers curious about how Hawthorne started, this is one of the friendliest pieces to begin with. The voice is already his, only younger and lighter.