Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Nathaniel (1804-1864), a distinguished American author. Hawthorne was born at Salem, July 4, 1804. The old Hawthorne house is still standing on Union Street. It is a plain, wooden, clapboarded building, two stories high, with a gabled roof, inclosing a large garret, the favorite resort of children on rainy days. Hawthorne's father was a sea captain, descended from a respectable English family. An ancestor was a judge during the trial of witches at Salem. Captain Hawthorne died abroad of yellow fever in 1808. Mrs. Hawthorne went home with her children to her father's house which was so near by that their gardens joined. Hawthorne's uncle, Robert Manning, took charge of his education. Nathaniel was a great reader. His earliest favorite was Pilgrim's Progress, "which he used to read by the hour, perched up in a large chair in the corner of his grandmother's room, near a window." He was fond of Thomson, Pope, Milton, and Shakespeare. The Faerie Queen was the first book bought with his own money. The little fellow was given to inventing long, fanciful stories, telling where he was going when he grew up, and of his wonderful adventures, always ending, "And I'm never coming back again." The Waverley Novels had just appeared and were a great source of pleasure to young Nathaniel.

Among Hawthorne's instructors was Joseph Worcester of dictionary fame. In 1818 Mrs. Hawthorne and the children accompanied her brother Richard to Maine where they resided for a year. "I lived in Maine," said Hawthorne, "like a bird of the air, so perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." He appears to have enjoyed skating, boating, and camping. After returning to Salem, "N. Hawthorne" embarked on the publication of a Wednesday paper which he called the Spectator, "price twelve cents per annum, payment to be made at the end of the year." For a young lad, he used a great many long words. An editorial on courage contains some views on the fictitious reputation enjoyed by many. He tells of blundering into the enemy's ranks during a battle of snowballs from which he retired upon receiving a tremendous volley, but he was congratulated by his own party for his great courage, which, of course, he did not deserve. The following quotation from the same editorial is certainly amusing, and shows that authors are not born without some faults of style: "A lady kills a striped snake while swallowing a toad. We have it from herself. This is true courage."

Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in his seventeenth year. He graduated with the famous class of 1825, which contained besides himself, such men as H. W. Longfellow, J. S. C. Abbott, and Franklin Pierce. Hawthorne appears to have remained at home for many years, reading, writing, and contributing articles to various periodicals. In 1837, he collected a number of fugitive pieces and published them under the name of Twice-Told Tales. A second volume was added in 1842. In the preface, he claims one distinction, that he is the "obscurest man of letters in America." In 1839 Hawthorne was weigher and gauger in the customs office of Boston, the historian, Bancroft, being at that time collector. He was also a participant in the Brook Farm experiment, but its life was distasteful to him.

Hawthorne was married in 1842 to Miss Sophia Peabody and went to live at Concord in the house which became celebrated as the Old Manse. Here he dreamed, and here he wrote his Mosses from an Old Manse. They were expelled by the return of its owner. In 1845 Hawthorne was recommended to President Polk by his old friend Bancroft, and was made surveyor of the port of Salem. The Salem customhouse is described in the Scarlet Letter, which was published in 1850. The House of Seven Gables followed in 1851. The Wonder Book, Tanglewood Tales, and The Blithedale Romance came in succession. In 1853 Hawthorne was appointed to the consulate of Liverpool by his classmate, Franklin Pierce, then president. His continental life he has described in his French and Italian Note-Books. At the expiration of his official life, Hawthorne continued to live in Italy, residing for a time in Florence. The results of his seven years abroad were The Marble Faun and French and Italian Note-Books. Hawthorne returned to America in 1860, and resumed his residence in his home of "The Wayside" at Concord. Here he wrote until May 19, 1864. He left unfinished The Dolliver Romance. His grave is under a group of pines on the brow of a hill. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Whipple, and his dearest friend, Pierce, attended his funeral. Hawthorne is considered one of America's greatest writers. English critics, who are unsparing in their treatment of American literature, usually give Hawthorne high place.

SAYINGS.

Created by Providence expressly for our use.

Sin may become a powerful factor in the development of mind and soul.

Cursed habit of solitude.

The Devil himself gets into my inkstand, and I can only exorcise him by penfuls at a time.

I went to live in Arcady and found myself up to the chin in a barnyard.

Each sect surrounds its own righteousness with a hedge of thorns.

Each human soul is the first-created inhabitant of its own Eden.

Every author has imagined and shaped out in his thought more and far better works than those which actually proceeded from his pen.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool.

If I pride myself on anything it is because I have a smile that children love.

TRIBUTES.

I never knew him to utter an unmanly sentiment or to do a mean thing.--Bridge.

He is like a dim room with a little taper of personality burning in one corner of it.--Holmes.

A November nature with a name of May.--Lowell.

His voice touched the ear like a melody.

The most wonderful eyes in the world, searching as lightning, and unfathomable as night.

The Scarlet Letter is "ghastly."--Emerson.

He had a spiritual insight, but it did not penetrate to the source of spiritual joy.

The world would sooner see another Shakespeare than another Hawthorne--Emerson.

It were idle to deny that the life of Nathaniel Hawthorne does not attract one to him as a man, so warmly and genially as one is attracted to personalities like Charles Lamb or Robert Louis Stevenson. But there was much that was admirable in Hawthorne's character. He was in his work the New England conscience made flesh; surely an important role and mission.--Richard Burton.

Mr. Hawthorne's difficulty seems to have been to find in the vast human workshop of America a frame sufficiently picturesque for the reception of his richly colored pictures.--London Times.