The House of the Seven Gables

by

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Clifford is Hepzibah’s brother and one of the last surviving members of the Pyncheon family. However, he does not take after them; in fact, he is tender-hearted, delicate, and a lover of beauty. These characteristics make it especially devastating when Judge Pyncheon lets Clifford take the fall for Uncle Jaffrey’s death, leading to Clifford’s 30 years of imprisonment. When Clifford is released and returns to the House of the Seven Gables, he is a shell of his younger self, bewildered, disoriented, and unable to relate to the world around him. After Hepzibah’s age proves to be off-putting to Clifford, Phoebe forms a special bond with him and helps him regain a childlike joy in nature and simple pastimes. After Judge Pyncheon threatens Clifford with commitment to an asylum, citing his childlike and erratic behavior, the Judge soon ends up dead by mysterious means. Clifford gleefully flees the House with Hepzibah, enjoying a triumphant train journey during which he regales a fellow passenger with theories about progress, until he realizes they cannot outrun the Pyncheon curse. However, in the aftermath of the Judge’s death, Clifford is somewhat vindicated for Uncle Jaffrey’s death and he regains a measure of happiness when he and his relatives move into the countryside.

Clifford Pyncheon Quotes in The House of the Seven Gables

The The House of the Seven Gables quotes below are all either spoken by Clifford Pyncheon or refer to Clifford Pyncheon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Wrongdoing, Guilt, and Retribution Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

Here is one of the truest points of melancholy interest that occur in ordinary life. It was the final throe of what called itself old gentility. A lady—who had fed herself from childhood with the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it was that a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught for bread—this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing means, is fain to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank. Poverty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime, had come up with her at last. She must earn her own food, or starve! And we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently, at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

By the involuntarily effect of a genial temperament, Phoebe soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of her two forlorn companions. The grime and sordidness of the House of the Seven Gables seemed to have vanished since her appearance there; the gnawing tooth of the dry rot was stayed among the old timbers of its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, from the antique ceilings, upon the floors and furniture of the rooms below—or, at any rate, there was a little housewife, as light-footed as the breeze that sweeps a garden walk, gliding hither and thither to brush it all away.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey)
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:

Now, Phoebe's presence made a home about her—that very sphere which the outcast, the prisoner […] instinctively pines after—a home! She was real! Holding her hand, you felt something; a tender something; a substance, and a warm one—and so long as you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you might be certain that your place was good in the whole sympathetic chain of human nature. The world was no longer a delusion.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Coming so late as it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight. The more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized. With a mysterious and terrible Past, which had annihilated his memory, and a blank Future before him, he had only this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once look closely at it, is nothing.

Related Characters: Clifford Pyncheon
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Clifford would, doubtless, have been glad to share their sports. One afternoon, he was seized with an irresistible desire to blow soap bubbles; an amusement, as Hepzibah told Phoebe apart, that had been a favorite one with her brother when they were both children. Behold him, therefore, at the arched window, with an earthen pipe in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a wan, unreal smile over his countenance, […] Behold him, scattering airy spheres abroad, from the window into the street! Little impalpable worlds were those soap bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the nothing of their surface.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey)
Related Symbols: House
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

"I shall never be so merry as before I knew Cousin Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford. I have grown a great deal older, in this little time. Older, and, I hope, wiser, and—not exactly sadder, but, certainly, with not half so much lightness in my spirits! I have given them my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of course, I cannot both give and keep it. They are welcome, notwithstanding!"

Related Characters: Phoebe Pyncheon (speaker), Hepzibah Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Holgrave
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of the sensibilities are very capable of falling into mistakes of this kind. They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance. Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of life. They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and appropriating to themselves the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors. With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man himself. Behold, therefore, a palace!

Related Characters: Clifford Pyncheon, Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey), Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon
Page Number: 159
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they had been drawn into the great current of human life, and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fate itself.

Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents, inclusive of Judge Pyncheon’s visit, could be real, the recluse of the Seven Gables murmured in her brother's ear: "Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?"

"A dream, Hepzibah!" repeated he, almost laughing in her face. "On the contrary, I have never been awake before!"

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon (speaker), Clifford Pyncheon (speaker), Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey)
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:

You are aware, my dear sir […] that all human progress is in a circle; or, to use a more accurate and beautiful figure, in an ascending spiral curve. While we fancy ourselves going straight forward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely new position of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago hied and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined, and perfected to its ideal. […] [Railroads] give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! […] Why, therefore, should [man] build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him?

Related Characters: Clifford Pyncheon (speaker)
Related Symbols: House
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
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Clifford Pyncheon Quotes in The House of the Seven Gables

The The House of the Seven Gables quotes below are all either spoken by Clifford Pyncheon or refer to Clifford Pyncheon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Wrongdoing, Guilt, and Retribution Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

Here is one of the truest points of melancholy interest that occur in ordinary life. It was the final throe of what called itself old gentility. A lady—who had fed herself from childhood with the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it was that a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught for bread—this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing means, is fain to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank. Poverty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime, had come up with her at last. She must earn her own food, or starve! And we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently, at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

By the involuntarily effect of a genial temperament, Phoebe soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of her two forlorn companions. The grime and sordidness of the House of the Seven Gables seemed to have vanished since her appearance there; the gnawing tooth of the dry rot was stayed among the old timbers of its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, from the antique ceilings, upon the floors and furniture of the rooms below—or, at any rate, there was a little housewife, as light-footed as the breeze that sweeps a garden walk, gliding hither and thither to brush it all away.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey)
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:

Now, Phoebe's presence made a home about her—that very sphere which the outcast, the prisoner […] instinctively pines after—a home! She was real! Holding her hand, you felt something; a tender something; a substance, and a warm one—and so long as you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you might be certain that your place was good in the whole sympathetic chain of human nature. The world was no longer a delusion.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Coming so late as it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight. The more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized. With a mysterious and terrible Past, which had annihilated his memory, and a blank Future before him, he had only this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once look closely at it, is nothing.

Related Characters: Clifford Pyncheon
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Clifford would, doubtless, have been glad to share their sports. One afternoon, he was seized with an irresistible desire to blow soap bubbles; an amusement, as Hepzibah told Phoebe apart, that had been a favorite one with her brother when they were both children. Behold him, therefore, at the arched window, with an earthen pipe in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a wan, unreal smile over his countenance, […] Behold him, scattering airy spheres abroad, from the window into the street! Little impalpable worlds were those soap bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the nothing of their surface.

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Phoebe Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey)
Related Symbols: House
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

"I shall never be so merry as before I knew Cousin Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford. I have grown a great deal older, in this little time. Older, and, I hope, wiser, and—not exactly sadder, but, certainly, with not half so much lightness in my spirits! I have given them my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of course, I cannot both give and keep it. They are welcome, notwithstanding!"

Related Characters: Phoebe Pyncheon (speaker), Hepzibah Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Holgrave
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of the sensibilities are very capable of falling into mistakes of this kind. They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance. Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of life. They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and appropriating to themselves the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors. With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man himself. Behold, therefore, a palace!

Related Characters: Clifford Pyncheon, Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey), Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon
Page Number: 159
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they had been drawn into the great current of human life, and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fate itself.

Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents, inclusive of Judge Pyncheon’s visit, could be real, the recluse of the Seven Gables murmured in her brother's ear: "Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?"

"A dream, Hepzibah!" repeated he, almost laughing in her face. "On the contrary, I have never been awake before!"

Related Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon (speaker), Clifford Pyncheon (speaker), Judge Pyncheon (Cousin Jaffrey)
Related Symbols: House
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:

You are aware, my dear sir […] that all human progress is in a circle; or, to use a more accurate and beautiful figure, in an ascending spiral curve. While we fancy ourselves going straight forward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely new position of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago hied and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined, and perfected to its ideal. […] [Railroads] give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! […] Why, therefore, should [man] build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him?

Related Characters: Clifford Pyncheon (speaker)
Related Symbols: House
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis: