The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Frank Preston Stearns

F >> Frank Preston Stearns >> The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26

This eBook was produced by Michelle Shephard, Eric Eldred,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE
LIFE AND GENIUS
OF
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

BY
FRANK PRESTON STEARNS

AUTHOR OF "THE REAL AND IDEAL IN LITERATURE," "LIFE OF
TINTORETTO," "LIFE OF BISMARCK," "TRUE REPUBLICANISM," "CAMBRIDGE
SKETCHES," ETC.

[Illustration: Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Frances Osborne Portrait: by
permission of the Essex Institute.]

INSCRIBED

TO
EMILIA MACIEL STEARNS

"In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,--
For the gods see everywhere."
--_Longfellow_

"Oh, happy dreams of such a soul have I,
And softly to myself of him I sing,
Whose seraph pride all pride doth overwing;
Who stoops to greatness, matches low with high,
And as in grand equalities of sky,
Stands level with the beggar and the king."
--_Wasson_

Preface

The simple events of Nathaniel Hawthorne's life have long been before
the public. From 1835 onward they may easily be traced in the various
Note-books, which have been edited from his diary, and previous to that
time we are indebted for them chiefly to the recollections of his two
faithful friends, Horatio Bridge and Elizabeth Peabody. These were
first systematised and published by George P. Lathrop in 1872, but a
more complete and authoritative biography was issued by Julian
Hawthorne twelve years later, in which, however, the writer has
modestly refrained from expressing an opinion as to the quality of his
father's genius, or from attempting any critical examination of his
father's literary work. It is in order to supply in some measure this
deficiency, that the present volume has been written. At the same time,
I trust to have given credit where it was due to my predecessors, in
the good work of making known the true character of so rare a genius
and so exceptional a personality.

The publication of Horatio Bridge's memoirs and of Elizabeth Manning's
account of the boyhood of Hawthorne have placed before the world much
that is new and valuable concerning the earlier portion of Hawthorne's
life, of which previous biographers could not very well reap the
advantage. I have made thorough researches in regard to Hawthorne's
American ancestry, but have been able to find no ground for the
statements of Conway and Lathrop, that William Hathorne, their first
ancestor on this side of the ocean, was directly connected with the
Quaker persecution. Some other mistakes, like Hawthorne's supposed
connection with the duel between Cilley and Graves, have also been
corrected.

F. P. S.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. SALEM AND THE HATHORNES: 1630-1800
II. BOYHOOD OF HAWTHORNE: 1804-1821
III. BOWDOIN COLLEGE: 1821-1825
IV. LITTLE MISERY: 1825-1835
V. EOS AND EROS: 1835-1839
VI. PEGASUS AT THE CART: 1839-1841
VII. HAWTHORNE AS A SOCIALIST: 1841-1842
VIII. CONCORD AND THE OLD MANSE: 1842-1845
IX. "MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE": 1845
X. FROM CONCORD TO LENOX: 1845-1849
XI. PEGASUS IS FREE: 1850-1852
XII. THE LIVERPOOL CONSULATE: 1852-1854
XIII. HAWTHORNE IN ENGLAND: 1854-1858
XIV. ITALY
XV. HAWTHORNE AS ART CRITIC: 1858
XVI. "THE MARBLE FAUN": 1859-1860
XVII. HOMEWARD BOUND: 1860-1862
XVIII. IMMORTALITY

PORTRAITS OF HAWTHORNE
EDITIONS OF HAWTHORNE'S BOOKS PUBLISHED UNDER HIS OWN DIRECTION.
MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE
APPENDICES

List of Illustrations

PORTRAIT OF HAWTHORNE, BY FRANCES OSBORNE IN 1893
HAWTHORNE'S BIRTHPLACE
HORATIO BRIDGE, FROM THE PORTRAIT BY EASTMAN JOHNSON
HAWTHORNE, FROM THE PORTRAIT BY CHARLES OSGOOD IN 1840
THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY
THE CUSTOM HOUSE, SALEM, MASS
THE WAYSIDE
GUIDO RENI'S PORTRAIT OF BEATRICE CENCI
STATUE OF PRAXITELES' RESTING FAUN
TORRE MEDIAVALLE DELLA SCIMMIA (HILDA'S TOWER) IN ROME

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

CHAPTER I

SALEM AND THE HATHORNES: 1630-1800

The three earliest settlements on the New England coast were Plymouth,
Boston, and Salem; but Boston soon proved its superior advantages to
the two others, not only from its more capacious harbor, but also from
the convenient waterway which the Charles River afforded to the
interior of the Colony. We find that a number of English families, and
among them the ancestors of Gen. Joseph Warren and Wendell Phillips,
who crossed the ocean in 1640 in the "good ship Arbella," soon
afterward migrated to Watertown on Charles River for the sake of the
excellent farming lands which they found there. Salem, however,
maintained its ascendency over Plymouth and other neighboring harbors
on the coast, and soon grew to be the second city of importance in the
Colony during the eighteenth century, when the only sources of wealth
were fishing, shipbuilding, and commerce. Salem nourished remarkably.
Its leading citizens became wealthy and developed a social aristocracy
as cultivated, as well educated, and, it may also be added, as
fastidious as that of Boston itself. In this respect it differed widely
from the other small cities of New England, and the exclusiveness of
its first families was more strongly marked on account of the limited
size of the place. Thus it continued down to the middle of the last
century, when railroads and the tendency to centralization began to
draw away its financial prosperity, and left the city to small
manufactures and its traditional respectability.

The finest examples of American eighteenth century architecture are
supposed to exist in and about the city of Salem, and they have the
advantage, which American architecture lacks so painfully at the
present time, of possessing a definite style and character--edifices
which are not of a single type, like most of the houses in Fifth
Avenue, but which, while differing in many respects, have a certain
general resemblance, that places them all in the same category. The
small old country churches of Essex County are not distinguished for
fine carving or other ornamentation, and still less by the costliness
of their material, for they are mostly built of white pine, but they
have an indefinable air of pleasantness about them, as if they graced
the ground they stand on, and their steeples seem to float in the air
above us. If we enter them on a Sunday forenoon--for on week-days they
are like a sheepfold without its occupants--we meet with much the same
kind of pleasantness in the assemblage there. We do not find the deep
religious twilight of past ages, or the noonday glare of a fashionable
synagogue, but a neatly attired congregation of weather-beaten farmers
and mariners, and their sensible looking wives, with something of the
original Puritan hardness in their faces, much ameliorated by the
liberalism and free thinking of the past fifty years. Among them too
you will see some remarkably pretty young women; and young men like
those who dug the trenches on Breed's Hill in the afternoon of June 16,
1775. There may be veterans in the audience who helped Grant to go to
Richmond. Withal there is much of the spirit of the early Christians
among them, and virtue enough to save their country in any emergency.

These old churches have mostly disappeared from Salem city and have
been replaced by more aristocratic edifices, whose square or octagonal
towers are typical of their leading parishioners,--a dignified class,
if somewhat haughty and reserved; but they too will soon belong to the
past, drawn off to the great social centres in and about Boston. In the
midst of Salem there is a triangular common, "with its never-failing
elms," where the boys large and small formerly played cricket--married
men too--as they do still on the village greens of good old England,
and around this enclosure the successful merchants and navigators of
the city built their mansion houses; not half houses like those in the
larger cities, but with spacious halls and rooms on either side going
up three stories. It is in the gracefully ornamented doorways and the
delicate interior wood-work, the carving of wainscots, mantels and
cornices, the skilful adaptations of classic forms to a soft and
delicate material that the charm of this architecture chiefly
consists,--especially in the staircases, with their carved spiral posts
and slender railings, rising upward in the centre of the front hall,
and turning right and left on the story above. It is said that after
the year eighteen hundred the quality of this decoration sensibly
declined; it was soon replaced by more prosaic forms, and now the tools
no longer exist that can make it. Sir Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones
would have admired it. America, excepting in New York City, escaped the
false rococo taste of the eighteenth century.

The Salem sea-captains of old times were among the boldest of our early
navigators; sailing among the pirates of the Persian Gulf and trading
with the cannibals of Polynesia, and the trophies which they brought
home from those strange regions, savage implements of war and domestic
use, clubs, spears, boomerangs, various cooking utensils, all carved
with infinite pains from stone, ebony and iron-wood, cloth from the
bark of the tapa tree, are now deposited in the Peabody Academy, where
they form one of the largest collections of the kind extant. Even more
interesting is the sword of a sword-fish, pierced through the oak
planking of a Salem vessel for six inches or more. No human force could
do that even with a spear of the sharpest steel. Was the sword-fish
roused to anger when the ship came upon him sleeping in the water; or
did he mistake it for a strange species of whale?

There is a court-house on Federal Street, built in Webster's time, of
hard cold granite in the Grecian fashion of the day, not of the white
translucent marble with which the Greeks would have built it. Is it the
court-house where Webster made his celebrated argument in the White
murder case, or was that court-house torn down and a plough run through
the ground where it stood, as Webster affirmed that it ought to be?
Salem people were curiously reticent in regard to that trial, and
fashionable society there did not like Webster the better for having
the two Knapps convicted.

Much more valuable than such associations is William Hunt's full-length
portrait of Chief Justice Shaw, which hangs over the judge's bench in
the front court-room. "When I look at your honor I see that you are
homely, but when I think of you I know that you are great." it is this
combination of an unprepossessing physique with rare dignity of
character which Hunt has represented in what many consider the best of
American portraits. It is perhaps too much in the sketchy style of
Velasquez, but admirable for all that.

Time has dealt kindly with Salem, in effacing all memorials of the
witchcraft persecution, except a picturesque old house at the corner of
North and Essex Streets, where there are said to have been preliminary
examinations for witchcraft,--a matter which concerns us now but
slightly. The youthful associations of a genius are valuable to us on
account of the influence which they may be supposed to have had on his
early life, but associations which have no determining consequences may
as well be neglected. The hill where those poor martyrs to superstition
were executed may be easily seen on the left of the city, as you roll
in on the train from Boston. It is part of a ridge which rises between
the Concord and Charles Rivers and extends to Cape Ann, where it dives
into the ocean, to reappear again like a school of krakens, or other
marine monsters, in the Isles of Shoals.

New England has not the fertile soil of many sections of the United
States, and its racking climate is proverbial, but it is blessed with
the two decided advantages of pure water and fine scenery. There is no
more beautiful section of its coast than that between Salem Harbor and
Salisbury Beach, long stretches of smooth sand alternating with bold
rocky promontories. A summer drive from Swampscott to Marblehead
reminds one even of the Bay of Naples (without Vesuvius), and the
wilder coast of Cape Ann, with its dark pines, red-roofed cottages, and
sparkling surf, is quite as delightful. William Hunt went there in the
last sad years of his life to paint "sunshine," as he said; and
Whittier has given us poetic touches of the inland scenery in elevated
verse:

"Fleecy clouds casting their shadows
Over uplands and meadows;
And country roads winding as roads will,
Here to a ferry, there to a mill."

Poets arise where there is poetic nourishment, internal and external,
for them to feed on; and it is not surprising that a Whittier and a
Hawthorne should have been evolved from the environment in which they
grew to manhood.

It is a common saying with old Boston families that their ancestors
came to America in the "Arbella" with Governor Winthrop, but as a
matter of fact there were at least fifteen vessels that brought
colonists to Massachusetts in 1630, and I cannot discover that any
lists of their passengers have been preserved. The statement that
certain persons came over at the same time with Governor Winthrop might
soon become a tradition that they came in the same ship with him; but
all that we know certainly is that Governor Winthrop landed about the
middle of June, 1630, and that his son arrived two weeks later in the
"Talbot," and was drowned July 2, while attempting to cross one of the
tide rivers at Salem. Who arrived in the thirteen other vessels that
year we know not. Ten years later Sir Richard Saltonstall emigrated to
Boston with the Phillips and Warren families in the "Arbella" (or
"Arabella"), and there is no telling how much longer she sailed the
ocean.

Hawthorne himself states that his ancestors came from Wig Castle in
Wigton in Warwickshire, [Footnote: Diary, August 22, 1837.] but no such
castle has been discovered, and the only Wigton in England appears to
be located in Cumberland. [Footnote: Lathrop's "Study of Hawthorne,"
46.] He does not tell us where he obtained this information, and it
certainly could not have been from authentic documents,--more likely
from conversation with an English traveller. Hawthorne never troubled
himself much concerning his ancestry, English or American; while he was
consul at Liverpool, he had exceptional advantages for investigating
the subject, but whatever attempt he made there resulted in nothing. It
is only recently that Mr. Henry F. Waters, who spent fifteen years in
England searching out the records of old New England families,
succeeded in discovering the connecting link between the first American
Hawthornes and their relatives in the old country. It was a bill of
exchange for one hundred pounds drawn by William Hathorne, of Salem,
payable to Robert Hathorne in London, and dated October 19, 1651, which
first gave Mr. Waters the clue to his discovery. Robert not only
accepted his brother's draft, but wrote him this simple and business-
like but truly affectionate epistle in return:

"GOOD BROTHER: Remember my love to my sister, my brother John and
sister, my brother Davenport and sister and the rest of our friends.

"In haste I rest
"Your loving brother,

"From Bray this 1 April, 1653. ROBERT HATHORNE."

From this it appears that Major William Hathorne not only had a brother
John, who established himself in Lynn, but a sister Elizabeth, who
married Richard Davenport, of Salem. Concerning Robert Hathorne we only
know further that he died in 1689; but in the probate records of
Berkshire, England, there is a will proved May 2, 1651, of William
Hathorne, of Binfield, who left all his lands, buildings and tenements
in that county to his son Robert, on condition that Robert should pay
to his father's eldest son, William, one hundred pounds, and to his son
John twenty pounds sterling. He also left to another son, Edmund,
thirty acres of land in Bray, and there are other legacies; but it
cannot be doubted that the hundred pounds mentioned in this will is the
same that Major William Hathorne drew for five months later, and that
we have identified here the last English ancestor of Nathaniel
Hawthorne. His wife's given name was Sarah, but her maiden name still
remains unknown. The family resided chiefly at Binfield, on the borders
of Windsor Park, and evidently were in comfortable circumstances at
that time. From William Hathorne, senior, their genealogy has been
traced back to John Hathorne (spelled at that time Hothorne), who died
in 1520, but little is known of their affairs, or how they sustained
themselves during the strenuous vicissitudes of the Reformation.
[Footnote: "Hawthorne Centenary at Salem," 81.]

Emmerton and Waters [Footnote: "English Records about New England
Families."] state that William Hathorne came to Massachusetts Bay in
1630, and this is probable enough, though by no means certain, for they
give no authority for it. We first hear of him definitely as a
freeholder in the settlement of Dorchester in 1634, but his name is not
on the list of the first twenty-four Dorchester citizens, dated October
19, 1630. All accounts agree that he moved to Salem in 1636, or the
year following, and Nathaniel Hawthorne believed that he came to
America at that time. Upham, the historian of Salem witchcraft, who has
made the most thorough researches in the archives of old Salem
families, says of William Hathorne:

"William Hathorne appears on the church records as early as 1636. He
died in June, 1681, seventy-four years of age. No one in our annals
fills a larger space. As soldier, commanding important and difficult
expeditions, as counsel in cases before the courts, as judge on the
bench, and innumerable other positions requiring talent and
intelligence, he was constantly called to serve the public. He was
distinguished as a public speaker, and is the only person, I believe,
of that period, whose reputation as an orator has come down to us. He
was an Assistant, that is, in the upper branch of the Legislature,
seventeen years. He was a deputy twenty years. When the deputies, who
before sat with the assistants, were separated into a distinct body,
and the House of Representatives thus came into existence, in 1644,
Hathorne was their first Speaker. He occupied the chair, with
intermediate services on the floor from time to time, until raised to
the other House. He was an inhabitant of Salem Village, having his farm
there, and a dwelling-house, in which he resided when his legislative,
military, and other official duties permitted. His son John, who
succeeded him in all his public honors, also lived on his own farm in
the village a great part of the time." [Footnote: "Salem Witchcraft,"
i. 99.]

Evidently he was the most important person in the colony, next to
Governor Winthrop, and unequalled by any of his descendants, except
Nathaniel Hawthorne, and by him in a wholly different manner; for it is
in vain that we seek for traits similar to those of the great romance
writer among his ancestors. We can only say that they both possessed
exceptional mental ability, and there the comparison ends.

The attempt has been made to connect William Hathorne with the
persecution of the Quakers, [Footnote: Conway's "Life of Hawthorne,"
15.] and it is true that he was a member of the Colonial Assembly
during the period of the persecution; it is likely that his vote
supported the measures in favor of it, but this is not absolutely
certain. We do not learn that he acted at any time in the capacity of
sheriff; the most diligent researches in the archives of the State
House at Boston have failed to discover any direct connection on the
part of William Hathorne with that movement; and the best authorities
in regard to the events of that time make no mention of him. [Footnote:
Sewel, Hallowell, Ellis.] It was the clergy who aroused public opinion
and instigated the prosecutions against both the Quakers and the
supposed witches of Salem, and the civil authorities were little more
than passive instruments in their hands. Hathorne's work was
essentially a legislative one,--a highly important work in that wild,
unsettled country,--to adapt English statutes and legal procedures to
new and strange conditions. He was twice Speaker of the House between
1660 and 1671, and as presiding officer he could exert less influence
on measures of expediency than any other person present, as he could
not argue either for or against them. And yet, after Charles II. had
interfered in behalf of the Quakers, William Hathorne wrote an
elaborate and rather circuitous letter to the British Ministry, arguing
for non-intervention in the affairs of the colony, which might have
possessed greater efficacy if he had not signed it with an assumed
name. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne's "Nathaniel Hawthorne," i. 24.] However
strong a Puritan he may have been, William Hathorne evidently had no
intention of becoming a martyr to the cause of colonial independence.
Yet it may be stated in his favor, and in that of the colonists
generally, that the fault was not wholly on one side, for the Quakers
evidently sought persecution, and would have it, cost what it might.
[Footnote: Hallowell's "Quaker Invasion of New England."] Much the same
may be affirmed of his son John, who had the singular misfortune to be
judge in Salem at the time of the witchcraft epidemic. The belief in
witchcraft has always had its stronghold among the fogs and gloomy
fiords of the North. James I. brought it with him from Scotland to
England, and in due course it was transplanted to America. Judge
Hathorne appears to have been at the top of affairs at Salem in his
time, and it is more than probable that another in his place would have
found himself obliged to act as he did. Law is, after all, in
exceptional cases little more than a reflex of public opinion. "The
common law," said Webster, "is common-sense," which simply means the
common opinion of the most influential people. Much more to blame than
John Hathorne were those infatuated persons who deceived themselves
into thinking that the pains of rheumatism, neuralgia, or some similar
malady were caused by the malevolent influence of a neighbor against
whom they had perhaps long harbored a grudge. _They_ were the true
witches and goblins of that epoch, and the only ones, if any, who ought
to have been hanged for it.

What never has been reasoned up cannot be reasoned down. It seems
incredible in this enlightened era, as the newspapers call it, that any
woman should be at once so inhuman and so frivolous as to swear away
the life of a fellow-creature upon an idle fancy; and yet, even in
regard to this, there were slightly mitigating conditions. Consider
only the position of that handful of Europeans in this vast wilderness,
as it then was. The forests came down to the sea-shore, and brought
with them all the weird fancies, terrors and awful forebodings which
the human mind could conjure up. They feared the Indians, the wild
beasts, and most of all one another, for society was not yet
sufficiently organized to afford that repose and contentment of spirit
which they had left behind in the Old World. They had come to America
to escape despotism, but they had brought despotism in their own
hearts. They could escape from the Stuarts, but there was no escape
from human nature.

It is likely that their immediate progenitors would not have carried
the witchcraft craze to such an extreme. The emigrating Puritans were a
fairly well-educated class of men and women, but their children did not
enjoy equal opportunities. The new continent had to be subdued
physically and reorganized before any mental growth could be raised
there. Levelling the forest was a small matter beside clearing the land
of stumps and stones. All hands were obliged to work hard, and there
was little opportunity for intellectual development or social culture.
As a logical consequence, an era ensued not unlike the dark ages of
Europe. But this was essential to the evolution of a new type of man,
and for the foundation of American nationality; and it was thus that
the various nationalities of Europe arose out of the ruins of the Roman
Empire.

The scenes that took place in Judge Hathorne's court-room have never
been equalled since in American jurisprudence. Powerful forces came
into play there, and the reports that have been preserved read like
scenes from Shakespeare. In the case of Rebecca Nurse, the Judge said
to the defendant:

"'You do know whether you are guilty, and have familiarity with the
Devil; and now when you are here present to see such a thing as these
testify,--and a black man whispering in your ear, and devils about
you,--what do you say to it?'"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26