IV. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: 1804-1864.

In the historic town of Salem, well remembered for its sad delusion concerning witchcraft in colonial times, and better famed in New England tradition for many brighter and happier events, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804. William Hathorne, first of the line to appear in the colony, was an associate of Governor Winthrop, and was known as a persecutor of the Quakers; John, his son, was a judge, and left an unenviable reputation as a bitter searcher out of "witches," relentless in the treatment of his victims. Many of the Hawthornes were seafaring men -- for during those years Salem was a thriving seaport and practically controlled the rich East Indian trade. Nathaniel's grandfather commanded a privateer in Revolutionary times and figures as the hero of the ballad on Bold Hathorne. The novelist's own father, also Nathaniel, was captain of a ship at an early age; he died at Surinam only four years after his son was born. From the shock of this event Mrs. Hawthorne never recovered. To the end of her life, forty years afterward, she lived in seclusion, rarely emerging from her room, even taking her meals apart from her children.

Hawthorne's Childhood.

Under these peculiar conditions the child who was destined to take his place as the foremost writer of fiction in America, and one of the world's great romancers, passed into boyhood. It is not surprising that peculiarities of temperament were developed, or that even as a child he was lonely, sensitive, and shy. When Nathaniel was nine years old, the family lived for a time in Maine. Their home was on the shore of Sebago Lake, in a region that was then almost wild, where the boy enjoyed a freedom like that of the birds, but where the inclination for solitude was intensified.

At College.

When Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College, in 1821, his habits of seclusion were in a measure broken. He was a healthy, hearty youth, slender, but finely built, handsome and athletic. His comrades called him "Oberon." Here were begun two intimate and lifelong friendships that had no slight influence in his later career: the friendships with Horatio Bridge and Franklin Pierce, later President of the United States. With Longfellow, also a classmate, Hawthorne seems to have had rather a slight acquaintance; but this was cordially renewed in later years. The future story-teller was already meditating the possibility of a literary career; in the dedication of one of his volumes to his friend Bridge, he speaks of the fact. The passage gives us such a pleasing glimpse of these college days and intimacies that it deserves quoting: --

"If anybody is responsible for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I know not whence your faith came; but, while we were lads together at a country college, -- gathering blueberries, in study-hours, under those tall academic pines; or watching the great logs, as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or shooting pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in the summer twilight; or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream which, I suppose, is still wandering river-ward through the forest, -- though you and I will never cast a line in it again, -- two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heard of, or else it had been the worse for us, -- still it was your prognostic of your friend's destiny, that he was to be a writer of fiction."

Hawthorne was graduated in the class of 1825. It is matter of record that while in college his superiority in English composition was recognized by his instructors; it is also clear from the passage quoted that at least one of his classmates already discerned the promise of the future in the gifts of imagination, insight, and budding genius.

Salem.

The ensuing ten years were spent by Hawthorne in his native city. His mother and sisters had again established themselves in their former home, and the peculiar habits of seclusion that had so colored Nathaniel's childhood were now resumed. The young man became a recluse. His meals were left before the locked door of his room, from which he issued chiefly at night. However there were days when he paced, solitary, the breezy pastures of Salem Neck, which juts forth a mile or two out upon the island-strewn bay; sometimes he turned toward the western suburbs, where he might stray for miles, uninterrupted and alone, over pasture roads bordered with sumach and barberry, or follow the upland ridge to the spot associated with gloomy memories of the fanatical severity of old Judge Hathorne and his associates in the witchcraft period, -- the low eminence of Gallows Hill. We must not think, however, that it was Hawthorne's desire to shun all human society. He trod the narrow winding streets of the ancient town with no slight stirrings of affection for the associations of the present and the past. He joined the groups of fishermen loafing around their drying nets or sun-bleached lobster traps; he mingled with sailor-men in their lounging-places, listening with an appreciative ear to their salty conversation. Of course Hawthorne had his acquaintance in the city; but he was strangely diffident, reserved, and silent; many thought him morose. It was a dreary ten years in his existence. "We do not even live at our house," he once exclaimed pathetically.

Yet Hawthorne was not idle. Shut in his chamber, he studied regularly if not systematically, and read widely. It was a period of reflection and experiment. In his lonely chamber he pondered and brooded. "Here my mind and character were formed," he wrote in 1840. "And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all, -- at least till I were in my grave.... By and by the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth."

He wrote -- wrote much; and burned much of what he wrote. His first venture in print was a novel, crude and not especially suggestive of the works that followed. This was Fanshawe, published anonymously in 1828. It is a product of the first graduate years; its scene is laid at "Harley College" and its characters are reminiscent of academic days. The book was suppressed by its author afterward, but, in 1879, was republished.

The Tales.

With his sketches and short stories, the young author had better success. In these the note of originality was clearly struck, and their style, wonderfully delicate and refined, speedily commanded attention and praise, although their audience was limited. They were published in the annuals (several appeared in the Boston Token, edited by S. G. Goodrich, far-famed in that day under the pen name of "Peter Parley," as the author and compiler of books for children), in the Salem Gazette, and in the New England Magazine. In 1837, by the kindly interest, unknown to Hawthorne, of his classmate, Horatio Bridge, the first collection was published under the title Twice-Told Tales. Here were gathered the historical sketches, The Gray Champion and The May-Pole of Merrymount; the strange study of Wakefield, the man who could not enter his own home; the delightful and now familiar Rill from the Town Pump; the allegories, Fancy's Show Box, The Great Carbuncle, and The Prophetic Pictures, -- so suggestive of Hawthorne's fondness for symbolism; as a boy he had counted The Faerie Queene and Pilgrim's Progress among his favorite books. Here also was the pathetic story of The Gentle Boy, and, with others, the characteristic tale, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment. The future work of the romancer was fairly foreshadowed in this representative collection.

Correspondence with Longfellow.

The Twice-Told Tales attracted favorable notice and sold to the extent of six or seven hundred copies. Longfellow made the volume the basis of an appreciative article in the North American Review; and a friendly correspondence followed. Writing to Longfellow in June, 1837, Hawthorne speaks with strong feeling of his hermit-like existence during the past ten years.

"I have secluded myself from society; and yet I never meant any such thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was going to lead. I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon and now I cannot find the key to let myself out, -- and if the door were open, I should be almost afraid to come out.... For the last ten years, I have not lived, but only dreamed of living."

But the dreamer was already beginning to participate in the joy of life. Under romantic circumstances, Hawthorne had made acquaintance with Miss Sophia Peabody -- an acquaintance that soon ripened into love; and in the glow of this experience, the ice of diffidence and reserve was melted.

The Boston Custom-House.

As we have already seen, the administration of President Van Buren, in its appointments to official positions, was noticeably helpful to men of literary talents. George Bancroft, the historian, was at this time collector of the port at Boston; in 1839, Nathaniel Hawthorne was made a weigher and gauger in the Boston custom-house. It is pathetic to think of genius thus compelled to labor for existence in uncongenial employment while his pen remains idle, but this was the experience of Robert Burns, and many others. So for two years the author of the Twice-Told Tales discharged his duties faithfully, weighing cargoes of salt or measuring coal -- as he once described -- "on board a black little British schooner." Narrow though it was, the experience may have been not unhelpful in its opportunity for practical contact with men.

Brook Farm.

Then came the year spent in the idealistic community at Brook Farm. Hawthorne was not a transcendentalist in the strict sense of the term, but this experiment in simple living, conjoined with high thinking, appealed to him; association with those who formed the colony would be profitable, and possibly here he might find a congenial location for a permanent home after his marriage, which was to occur in the following year. With hearty zeal, he entered into the life of the community. He performed his share in all the labor of the farm -- and it was strenuous enough.

"At the first glimpse of fair weather," he writes to his sister, soon after arriving, "Mr. Ripley summoned us into the cowyard, and introduced me to an instrument with four prongs, commonly entitled a dung-fork. With this tool I have already assisted to load twenty or thirty carts.... Besides I have planted potatoes and pease, cut straw and hay for the cattle, and done various other mighty works."

His sister, sympathetic and practical, wrote, in reply to another letter of similar tenor, -- "What is the use of burning your brains out in the sun, if you can do something better with them?" Possibly Hawthorne himself became somewhat doubtful of the desirability of prolonging the experience; at all events, before the twelve-month was quite up he withdrew from this interesting circle of enthusiasts, whose characteristics and plans have been described in a former chapter. In the American Note-Books, we find many picturesque details of this experience, and in his Blithedale Romance, written ten years later, the community life is presented as the background of the fiction.

The Old Manse.

In 1842, -- when Hawthorne was thirty-eight, -- occurred his marriage to Miss Peabody, and their settlement in the "Old Manse" at Concord. Here for four years they lived happy and hopeful, in spite of the really straitened circumstances, due to slender income from literary work. But Hawthorne wrote busily, encouraged by evidences that his work was recognized and appreciated more and more widely as its volume increased. The second collection of the Twice-Told Tales appeared in 1842. The Journal of an African Cruiser (1845) was edited for his friend Horatio Bridge, who had entered the American Navy and whose log-books supplied the material of this narrative. The stories and sketches produced during this period were published collectively in 1846, under the happily chosen title Mosses from an Old Manse. Although he never wholly lost his habit of reserve, -- the tendency to aloofness which was in his nature, -- Hawthorne was no longer a recluse. He met Emerson more or less frequently, although he "sought nothing from him as a philosopher." He listened courteously to the conversation of Margaret Fuller and the other members of that distinguished coterie; but he writes in his Note-Books most enthusiastically of excursions with Ellery Channing and Thoreau, "when we cast aside all irksome forms and straight-laced habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the Indians or any less conventional race, during one bright semicircle of the sun."

In the Custom-House at Salem.

This pleasant period of our author's life was terminated in 1846 by an appointment to the surveyorship at the custom-house in Salem. Once more the Hawthornes were domiciled in the city of their birth. There were two children in the household, a daughter, Una, born in Concord, and Julian, well known as a writer in our own day, whose birth occurred in Boston just before the removal to Salem. It is in his companionship with these children, gayly, even boisterously participating in their sports and pastimes, that we catch our pleasantest glimpses of Hawthorne in this period. In 1849, following his enforced retirement from office, -- the result of political schemes, -- Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter.

The Scarlet Letter.

Although Hawthorne's reputation as a writer of tales was already well established, it was through this remarkable novel that his mastery in the field of romantic fiction was really revealed. In this narrative the inheritance of ancestral tradition is easily perceived; so, too, the influence of the old New England religious atmosphere. The fact of sin and its effects on the soul, the workings of conscience, the problems of repentance and atonement, -- these are the themes with which Hawthorne works in the strong and impressive narrative of Hester Prynne, the young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and the elfish child, little Pearl. The sombre background of Puritan bigotry and persecution affords a setting as effective as it is appropriate. In construction and form it is beautifully developed, while its verbal style is exceptional in its delicacy and beauty. "The finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in this country;" so Henry James describes it. The essay on The Custom-House, prefatory to the novel, is one of the most charming of Hawthorne's sketches. The picture of his associates at the seat of custom, humorous and ironical in tone, was, perhaps, too true to life to be relished; at all events (when this essay was read by his fellow citizens) irritation followed, and there was a general expression of hostility toward the novelist. He soon removed from Salem.

At Lenox.

For a year and a half the Hawthornes lived in Lenox, among the Berkshire Hills, -- the beautiful region in western Massachusetts where William Cullen Bryant had passed his early years. Here Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), the only one of his romances the scene of which is actually laid in Salem. This novel, thought by its author to be a greater work than The Scarlet Letter, is recognized as one of his best productions, although not placed above its predecessor. The working out of an ancient curse invoked upon the head of a family line is the theme of the romance.

The Children's Stories.

It must not be forgotten that this writer of weird tales and of sombre romance was also a successful story-teller for children, and that his essays in this field are still favorites among the children's classics. Here belong the earlier collections, like Grandfather's Chair (1841) and Biographical Stories (1842), which have not been previously mentioned. From the grim pages of The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne now turned to the preparation of the delightful Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1852); and here, with a fascinating freshness of style, simply, yet beautifully, he recounts the Greek myths of Midas, Pandora, of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples, Bellerophon and the Chimera, of Baucis and Philemon, of Perseus and Medusa. A second series of classical myths presented in the same entertaining manner appeared in Tanglewood Tales (1853).

The Blithedale Romance.

During a brief temporary residence in West Newton, Hawthorne wrote The Blithedale Romance, not one of his most attractive works. It is a sombre tale, but commands a peculiar interest because reminiscent of the sojourn at Brook Farm and some of its associations. The romance was not published until the following year (1852), when the Hawthornes were once more living in Concord, where the novelist had bought a cottage, -- it was the home of the Alcotts, -- to which the name of "The Wayside" was now given. Unhappily this house is not associated with the creation of any noteworthy work.

Consulship at Liverpool.

In 1852, the writer of romances took time to prepare a campaign biography -- a life of his old classmate and ever loyal friend, Franklin Pierce. Following Pierce's election as President, Hawthorne was formally appointed United States Consul at Liverpool, and in July, 1853, sailed with his family for England. There he remained until he resigned his office in 1857. No literary work marks this period of four years' English residence, except the usual minute record of observation and experience comprised in Hawthorne's interesting note-books.

Italy and The Marble Faun.

The next two years were passed in Italy, mainly in Rome. It was for the most part a pleasing and illuminating sojourn. The associations with American residents, notably with Story, the sculptor, were stimulating. The serious illness of the daughter, Una, cast a cloud upon the last few months of the stay in Rome, yet here Hawthorne collected the material for what was to prove his last and most popular romance. During a summer in Florence, the family occupied a romantic villa "with a moss-grown tower" which had the reputation of being haunted. "I mean to take it away bodily and clap it into a romance which I have in my head," Hawthorne wrote in his note-books; and thus was Hilda's airy nest in The Marble Faun projected. In the spring of 1859, the Hawthornes returned to England, where the new romance was completed. It was published in England in the early part of 1860, under the title Transformation, and simultaneously in America as The Marble Faun. The Hawthornes then came home.

The story of The Marble Faun, again, is psychological; it deals with the development of a soul under the influence of a committed sin. The central figure is that of Donatello, a youth whose resemblance to the sculptured faun of Praxiteles is so marked as to suggest that he himself is but half human, his free and apparently irresponsible nature confirming the suspicion. Through participation in a crime, the soul of Donatello appears to be awakened, and we infer that his humanity begins in the self-revelation which follows his sin. The effects of this act upon characters of contrasted types is subtly worked out: upon Miriam, the chief actor in the crime; upon Hilda, who is only a witness, but whose intensely moral soul -- puritan of the puritans that she is -- suffers most keenly of all. The pure-minded, sweet-souled Hilda, feeding the doves as they flock daily about her ancient tower, and in her hour of self-torture groping for relief from the sense of contamination which comes only from her knowledge of another's crime, -- this is, for most readers, the most attractive character in the book. There is much concerning Italian art in The Marble Faun, at least much concerning sculpture; this fact and also the circumstance that historic spots are picturesquely described, have made something of a glorified guide-book of the romance, and have enhanced its value in the eyes of many. But Hawthorne is not a sound critic of art. The Marble Faun should be read for its story and its characters, and the problems they present.

Closing Years.

Once more the romancer and his family occupied "The Wayside." Full recognition of Hawthorne's peculiar genius had been won; among American writers he was regarded essentially the foremost. Yet the four years of life remaining were not very happy ones. Various circumstances and events conspired to create depression and to recall the old spirit of aloofness and reserve. His daughter, Rose, at this period ten or twelve years old, gives this description of her father:--

"I always felt a great awe of him, -- a tremendous sense of his power. His large eyes, liquid with blue and white light and deep with dark shadows, told me, even when I was very young, that he was in some respects different from other people.... We were usually a silent couple when off for a walk together, or when we met by chance in the household.... I longed myself to hear the splendidly grotesque fairy tales... which Una and Julian had reveled in when our father had been at leisure in Lenox and Concord."

Hawthorne was greatly agitated by the breaking out of civil war. His politics identified him with the unpopular popular party in the North, and his stanch loyalty to his friend Pierce, then in disfavor, seemed to arouse in a degree public sentiment against himself. From his English note-books he had culled material which was published under the title Our Old Home, in 1863; this volume, in spite of some protests from his friends, he insisted upon dedicating to Franklin Pierce. The appropriateness of the dedication is easily seen; and probably it was appreciated by most of Hawthorne's readers then; still the novelist felt somewhat the stigma of personal unpopularity. He became despondent and his splendid health rapidly declined. He could not advance with the literary work in hand. He made a journey to Washington with his intimate friend, Ticknor, the publisher, in the endeavor to shake off his weariness and depression. Ticknor died suddenly in Philadelphia, and Hawthorne returned, very ill. Early in May, 1864, Mr. Pierce proposed that his former classmate should accompany him on a tour through the White Mountains, and the novelist left his home in Concord with a last farewell. At a hotel in Plymouth, New Hampshire, after his journey, Hawthorne retired to rest -- and fell asleep.

On the 23d of May, the body of our great romance-writer was laid in the village burial-place at Concord, a most distinguished company following to the grave. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes were in the group. They were all his friends and admirers of his genius. The manuscript of the unfinished work, The Dolliver Romance, was laid on the coffin. It was this funeral which inspired Longfellow's tender tribute to Hawthorne:--

"Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream
   Dimly my thought defines;
I only see -- a dream within a dream --
   The hill-top hearsed with pines.

"I only hear above his place of rest
   Their tender undertone,
The infinite longings of a troubled breast,
   The voice so like his own.

"There in seclusion and remote from men
   The wizard hand lies cold,
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,
   And left the tale half told."

The appearance of Hawthorne's writings did not cease with his death. The note-books, so continuously and so carefully kept, have been drawn upon, and much of their material published. Passages from the American Note-Books (1868), English Note-Books (1870), and French and Italian Note-Books (1871) have thus appeared. In 1872, the romance, Septimius Felton, unrevised and therefore unfinished, was published. A few fragmentary scenes from The Dolliver Romance were included in a volume with other hitherto unpublished pieces in 1876. The youthful production, Fanshawe, was reprinted. Another unfinished romance, Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, was issued in 1883, together with more sketches, tales, and studies. In the same year there appeared an edition of the Complete Works.

Place in Literature.

Hawthorne's place in our literature is established: he is the most commanding figure that America has produced in the field of romance. The universal superiority of his genius has been challenged by more than one critic; yet others have granted him the highest distinction even in this broader field. Henry James describes him as "the most beautiful and most eminent representative of a literature;... in the field of letters... the most valuable example of the American genius." Some points in comparison may be helpful. It is obvious that he is altogether original; Irving, in his sketches, was as obviously working after earlier English models. Hawthorne's peculiar choice of theme -- the study of influences, supernatural in the noblest sense, acting on the human soul in its development -- lifts his effort to a much higher plane than was reached by Cooper, admirable story-teller that he was. Hawthorne's one contemporary rival in the domain of the short story was Edgar Allan Poe; while Hawthorne lacks the intensity and passion of Poe, he also escapes the morbidness which mars the beauty of Poe's art. In spite of occasional vagueness in outline and in details, together with an inclination to allegory which is perhaps too mechanical to be accepted as one of the best methods of literary art, Nathaniel Hawthorne is emphatically our greatest master in romantic fiction; and in that peculiar field in which he worked he remains unique.

The volume of his production is by no means small. We count but four successful romances completed; one of these, however, The Scarlet Letter, is acknowledged by all critics to be the strongest work of fiction yet produced in America, and two of the other three, The House of Seven Gables and The Marble Faun, are admirable examples of narrative art. But Hawthorne's numerous tales and sketches must also be taken into account. Many of them stand forth with marks of high distinction. The Gentle Boy, The Snow-Image, The Great Stone Face, The Ambitious Guest, -- these are fine examples of the short story, as then conceived, in quiet tone; Wakefield, Ethan Brand, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, Roger Malvin's Burial, Young Goodman Brown, The White Old Maid, and Rappaccini's Daughter have the weirdness and the fantasy of more pronounced romance. The historical sketches like The Gray Champion, The May-Pole of Merrymount, and the Legends of the Province House are unsurpassed in their kind. The allegories like Fancy's Show Box, theBirthmark, and Earth's Holocaust perhaps do not call for especial praise, but the sketches based on realities, of which we should note particularly A Rill from the Town Pump, Main Street, The Old Manse, and the essay on The Custom-House, are well worthy of admiration.

It is a wonderful collection -- the product of a wonderful imagination, fantastic, sometimes grotesque, always subtle, always expressing itself in a style of the utmost delicacy and charm. Hawthorne was ever an idealist. Whether it was a result of his "tendency to aloofness," his early years of solitude and contemplation, or not, he had somehow received the gift of insight which showed him the human heart. Certainly he achieved in unusual degree the story-teller's art.

Suggestions for Reading.

The reader may make his own selection from the various groups of Hawthorne's tales mentioned in preceding paragraphs; but on no account should he miss the introductory essays which accompany Mosses from an Old Manse and The Scarlet Letter; he will also find it interesting and worth while to dip here and there in the American Note-Books.

Authorities.

While Julian Hawthorne's Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife will rank as chief authority, A Study of Hawthorne, by George Parsons Lathrop, will prove more generally useful, and the admirable brief sketch of Hawthorne (in the Beacon Biographies) by Mrs. Fields may be used to good advantage. Mrs. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop's Memories of Hawthorne, and the Recollections of Hawthorne, by Horatio Bridge, are especially recommended. Henry James is the author of the Hawthorne in the English Men of Letters Series and Moncure D. Conway of that in the Great Writers Series. In Yesterdays with Authors, by James T. Fields, and the essays Hawthorne and The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, by George W. Curtis (Literary and Social Essays), will be found picturesque and suggestive glimpses of this strange personality. Professor Trent's American Literature contains a most comprehensive study of Hawthorne's literary work. The only editions of Hawthorne's complete works are published by Houghton Mifflin Company.