HAWTHOKNK 



.VJ5 



of the Quakers. IIin BOO John, also a military 

 officer and magistrate, presided at the famous 

 III.M- of tin- Salem witchcraft cases. Daniel, the 

 Mthor's grandfather, was a member of an Ameri- 

 can legiment, mill also commanded a privateer, in 

 the war ni tin- Revolution against (Ircat Britain. 



Daniel's son Nathaniel, 'a silent, reserved, 

 severe man, of an athletic and rather slender 

 liiiilil, and haliitnally of a rather melancholy cast 

 of thought,' liee-ime a captain in the merchant 

 marine ; tin- family having suH'ered a decline of 

 fortune, ami tin 1 male members mostly following 

 the sea. He died when his son Nathaniel, the 

 subject of this article, was but four years old. His 

 wiilnw, a woman of great refinement and religious 

 sensibility, lived always afterwards in close retire- 

 ment and straitened circumstances, with her two 

 daughters ami her son Nathaniel, who, from his 

 ninth to his thirteenth year, was somewhat con- 

 fined by an accidental lameness. His intense love 

 of reading was doubtless fostered by these condi- 

 tions. At fourteen he went with his mother to a 

 lonely farm in the woods of Raymond, Maine ; 

 forming there, as he thought, that habit of soli- 

 tude which became one of his permanent traits, 

 but was probably inherited in part from his father. 

 He was, however, a healthy, happy lad, given to 

 outdoor sports and exercise, and quite free from 

 morbidness in spite of his fondness for solitude. 

 In Raymond he began to keep note-books, record- 

 ing his observations ; a practice which he resumed 

 and continued through the greater part of his career. 

 He took gdod rank at Bowdoin College, where he 

 graduated with Longfellow in 1825, just one year 

 later than Franklin Pierce, with whom he formed 

 a friendship. Here he first displayed a tendency to 

 authorship, having begun his first novel during his 

 undergraduate course. But the conditions then 

 were unfavourable to authorship as a profession, 

 and his progress was slow. After his return 

 to Salem he shut himself up for twelve years 

 ' in a heavy seclusion,' writing tales and verses. 

 Of the latter few have survived. In 1828 he pub- 

 lished anonymously his first novel, Fanshawe, 

 which was unsuccessful. Continuing to contribute 

 to annuals and magazines, under various pseu- 

 donyms that made it still more difficult for him to 

 become known, he edited in 1836 a short-lived 

 periodical for S. G. Goodrich, for whom also he 

 wrote Peter Parley's Universal History, an enor- 

 mously profitable publication, of which Goodrich 

 figured as the author and took the proceeds, while 

 Hawthorne received only one hundred dollars. 



Meanwhile some of his short fictions had gained 

 such favourable notice from the London Atherueum 

 that in 1837 a group of them, to which he gave the 

 name Twice-told Tales, was issued in one volume, 

 the risk of which was assumed, without the know- 

 ledge of Hawthorne, by his friend and classmate, 

 H. N. Bridge. This book, which an impartial and 

 competent critic has said ' marked a distinct epoch 

 in American literature,' was reviewed with nigh 

 praise by Longfellow, and substantially made the 

 beginning of Hawthorne's fame. Yet he still had 

 long to wait for its fulfilment. The full force of 

 the new author's genius was by no means appre- 

 ciated in his own country ; and diligent though he 

 was with his pen, he was still unable to live by it. 

 In January 1839 the historian Bancroft, then col- 

 lector of the port of Boston, appointed him weigher 

 and gauger in the custom-house, which post he 

 held until early in 1841. In April he allied him- 

 self with an industrial association at Brook Farm 

 (q.v.), near Boston, founded by Dr George Ripley 

 (afterwards a distinguished cntic), with a number 

 of highly cultivated men and women, among whom 

 were George William Curtis, Charles A. Dana, and 

 Margaret Fuller. The object was to establish an 



idyllic, semi-HocialiHtic community, in which every 

 member should do manual labour and share profits 

 in common, while carrying on hi* or her chooen 

 intellectual work, and maintaining in the commu- 

 nity a separate single or family life. Hawthorne, 

 wln> was about to marry, had some hope of making 

 his home here, but tiiufing the experiment unsatis- 

 factory he withdrew. Meanwhile lie wrote and 

 published in three parts a series of simple storied 

 for children, from New England history viz. 

 Grandfather's Chair, Famous Old People, and 

 l.lln:rty Tree (1841). In July 1842 he wedded 

 Sophia Amelia Peabody, of Salem, his union with 

 whom became one of the rarest and most beauti- 

 ful chapters in the annals of happy marriages. No 

 account of Hawthorne would lie complete which 

 failed to lay stress upon his marriage to this lady, 

 who, as their son Julian h;i> written, ' WOK a bless- 

 ing and an illumination wherever she went ; and 

 no one ever knew her without receiving from her 

 far more than could be given in return.' 



Removing to Concord, Massachusetts, he issued 

 Biographical Stories (1842) for children, brought 

 out an enlarged two- volume edition of the Twice- 

 told Tales (1842), and lived for four years in the 

 old colonial manse, previously occupied by the 

 ancestors of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and by Emer- 

 son himself, overlooking the field of the first battle 

 of the Revolution. Here he dwelt happily, preserv- 

 ing his old custom of comparative isolation, and, 

 seeing but little of his famous neighbours Emer- 

 son and Thoreau. He wrote many sketches and 

 studies for the Democratic Review. These formed 

 the Mosses from an Old Manse ( 1846). But he was 

 poorly paid, or not at all. The Review failed ; and, 

 as he had lost all his previous savings invested at 

 Brook Farm, lie was forced to leave this home, and 

 accept a place in the custom-house again this 

 time as surveyor, in his native town, Salem. The 

 place was uncongenial, and for nearly four years 

 lie remained silent as an author. But by the 

 expiration of his term he had completed ( February 

 1850) The Scarlet Letter, which at once gained great 

 renown, and still remains perhaps the best known 

 of his works. It did not, however, bring him 

 pecuniary ease. Hiring a small house at Lenox, 

 Massachusetts, he entered upon a phase of remark- 

 able productivity, showing that he had needed 

 only encouragement and recognition to bring his 

 powers into full play. At Lenox he wrote The 

 House of the Seven Gables ( 1851 ), which added to 

 his celebrity and popularity ; also The Wonder 

 Book, a recast of classic legends for children 

 (1851) ; and prepared The Snow Image, which was 

 not published until 1852. In the winter he wrote 

 at West Newton The Blithedale Romance, which 

 incidentally drew colouring from the Brook Farm 

 episode, though in no way attempting to depict it 

 as a fact. Having bought at Concord a small 

 house, which he christened 'The Wayside,' he sett led 

 there in the summer of 1852, and wrote a Life of 

 General Franklin Pierce, his old college friend, 

 who had been nominated for the presidency of the 

 United States. Immediately afterwards lie com- 

 pleted Tanglewood Tales, a continuation of The 

 Wonder Book ; but this appeared first in 1853. 



Pierce, on his inauguration as president in March 

 1853, named Hawthorne to be consul at Liverpool, 

 a lucrative office which his experience in the 

 custom-house qualified him to fill. The appoint- 

 ment was confirmed by the senate ; and although 

 Hawthorne had resolved to accept nothing from 

 the president, and much persuasion had to be used 

 to change his mind, he finally took the appoint- 

 ment, and sailed for Liverpool, midsummer, 1853. 

 He held the consulate until near the close of 1857, 

 attending closely to his duties, but spending part 

 of the time in London, and visiting various portions 



