Hawthorne (NATHANIEL an American July)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

NATHANIEL, an American July 4, 1804 writer, from, born a in long Salem New, Mass Eng-., land ancestry. When he was four written, but his years old, his father, a sea-captain, died in a distant land, and from that time his mother lived in complete seclusion. Thus home influences as well as an inborn disinclination for action made Hawthorne something of a recluse. The happiest time of his childhood was a period spent on Lake Sebago, in Maine, from which he was sent back to Salem to complete his preparation for college. At seventeen he entered Bowdoin, where he made only an average record, his main interests ests being not in his studies but in the reading in all fields of literature that he carried on by himself. For twelve years after he left college (1825-1837) he lived in the utmost seclusion, reading much and writing much, but destroying the greater part of his compositions. He saw little of his mother and sisters during this time, had no intimate friends, and published little. It was a period of self-training not unlike that of Milton at Horton. He sent a collection of seven tales to various publishers, who promptly returned them. Largely with own his funds he published "Fanshawe" in 1828, but afterward destroyed the greater part of the edition. "The Gentle Boy," and three other tales appeared in an annual in 1832, anonymously, and a few other tales appeared in the same way in succeeding years. Thus he prepared the way for "Twice-Told Tales," in 1838. Though its circulation was small, Hawthorne was encouraged by the favorable comments it called forth and came out of his hermit-like seclusion, got a position in the Boston Custom House, fell in love with Sophia Peabody, and in 1841 joined a communistic experiment at Brook Farm. In 1847 he married and went to live, for three years, in the Old Manse at Concord. Here he came to know Emerson, Alcott, Thoreau, and helped to make a community of authors. A second series Concord of "Twice-Told Tales," appeared in 1842; "Mosses from an Old Manse," in 1846, and "The Scarlet Letter" in 1850. Meantime, President Polk appointed him to the custom house at Salem, 1846. By 1851 he had moved again, this time to the Berkshires, where he wrote "The House of the Seven Gables," (1851), and two collections of tales for children, "The Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales." President Pierce, who had been his classmate at Bowdoin, appointed him consul at Liverpool, and before his return to America he spent some time on the continent. In Italy he planned "The Marble Faun," which was written while 1860. he was still abroad and appeared in planned Various and partly other romances were health failed rapidly after his return to Concord in 1860, and he died May 19, 1864. Besides his tales and romances, Hawthorne left voluminous note-books, written in America and abroad, which constitute a record of his reading and meditation. These afford valuable clues to his view of life, show the germs out of which his masterpieces grew, and illustrate the way in which he used simple incidents as symbols of truth. His material comes most often from legends and incidents of colonial New England. In the "Twice-Told Tales" we find simple descriptive sketches, which have little narrative but suggest types and symbols of experience, as yet without interpretation. We also find stories and legends of early colonial history, without significance except as simple narratives, but es but giving promise of the deeper study of Puritan character that was to follow. A third group is made up of tales, mainly legendary, which have symbolic or allegorical meaning, such "The as Minister's Black Veil," "The Wedding Knell," "The Lily's Quest." The pursuit of happiness is an illusion; there is a veil that separates one personality from another. In such a tale as "The Maypole of Merrymount," two racial ideals, the pagan tradition of old England and the Puritan tradition, are brought into collision, the more dramatic because the etting is the primeval forest of New England, with an untamed nature, the beasts of the forest, and the Indians as a background. Hawthorne's work suggests the allegory of medieval and Elizabethan times. He uses symbols constantly as a means to perception of spiritual truth. The riddle of the soul's growth is Lis theme, in "The Minister's Black Veil" and in the series of the great romances, -in Dimmesdale, in Pyncheon, in the Faun. These symbols he worked out with exquisite skill. He described himself as a man sitting by the wayside of life and looking upon it as if under enchantment. Sitting thus, he observes the pilgrimage of the life of man and paints it for us with a careful realism that is also conscious of the spiritual truth which these realities reveal to the seeing eye.