596 



HAWTHORNE 



HAY 



of England and Scotland. A sojourn of a year and 

 a half in Rome and Florence, beginning January 

 1858, supplied him with the materials for a new 

 romance, The Marble Faun, better known in 

 England as Transformation, which he wrote at 

 Redcar, Yorkshire, in the autumn of 1859, and pub- 

 lished in 1860. In June of this year he returned 

 to Concord, where approaching ill-health, and the 

 mental depression caused by the outbreak of civil 

 war in the United States, impeded his efforts at 

 literary composition. He wrote, however, a number 

 of brilliant papers embodying observations and 

 experiences in England, which were printed in the 

 Atlantic Monthly, and then issued in the volume 

 Our Old Home (1863). He also began a new 

 romance, founded on the idea of an elixir of 

 immortality. It remained unfinished at his death, 

 which occurred in the night of May 18, 1864, at 

 Plymouth, New Hampshire, whither he had gone 

 on a journey in search of health, with his friend 

 ex-president Pierce. He was buried at Concord, 

 Massachusetts, May 24, in a spot near which are 

 the graves of Emerson and Thoreau. 



In his style he early developed that maturity of 

 dignified composure, free from constraint or affecta- 

 tion, and that lucid expression, which are among 

 its most characteristic traits. With little faculty 

 for the harmonies of verse, he had a singular com- 

 mand over the musical qualities of prose, enabling 

 him to produce periods remarkable for their sonorous 

 richness and delicate cadences, that sometimes raise 

 them almost to the plane of poetry, yet never destroy 

 their character as prose by interjecting the actual 

 rhythms of verse. Although exceptionally fitted 

 for conveying subtleties of thought and fantasy, 

 his style is equally adapted to the comprehension 

 of children, being invariably clear, and strongly 

 marked by common sense. Another noticeable 

 peculiarity is that, in the entire range of his 

 writings, quotation is almost never resorted to ; 

 the author's mind being apparently so self-centred 

 that its originality felt no need of aid or illustra- 

 tion from other writers. The superlative merits of 

 Hawthorne's style were but slowly recognised in 

 his own country ; but his fame has rapidly and 

 steadily increased since his death. Several of his 

 works have been translated into foreign languages ; 

 and he is now generally esteemed as one of the 

 greatest imaginative minds of the century, holding 

 a place in the first rank among masters of modern 

 English prose. 



The personal appearance of Hawthorne was tall, 

 vigorous, and commanding. Powerful physically, 

 and in every way a strong specimen of manhood, 

 he yet in his manner and presence showed the 



fentleness of a woman. His intimates were few, 

 ut with them he was a genial comrade, as he was 

 also a delightful companion in his household. The 

 union in him of strength and sensitiveness has 

 been well described by James Russell Lowell : 



First, he from sympathy still held apart 

 By shrinking, over-eagerness of heart 

 New England's poet, soul reserved and deep, 

 " November nature with a name of May. 



The best extant portraits of Hawthorne are the 

 photographs taken by Mayall of London in May 

 1860. One of these was engraved in Harpers' 

 Magazine for July 1886 ; another in the Century 

 Magazine for May 1887. 



A preliminary version of the unfinished romance was 

 edited by his daughter Una, his eldest child, with the aid 

 of Robert Browning, and was published under the title 

 of Septimius Felton (1872). Another version, edited by 

 his son Julian, appeared as Dr Grimshaw's Secret ( 1883 ). 

 Both these forms had been abandoned by the author, 

 who left in MS. portions of the work as he meant to 

 complete it, The Dolliver Romance (1876). His widow 

 (who died in London, February 26, 1871) edited and 

 published his American Note-books (1868), English Note- 



books (1870), and French and Italian Note-books (1871) ; 

 besides bringing out a volume of her own Notes in England 

 and Italy ( 1868). George Parsons Lathrop, who married 

 Hawthorne's younger daughter Rose, published A Study 

 of Hawthorne (1876), containing many biographical 

 details, and edited the Riverside edition of the complete 

 works, with notes and a sketch of the author's life 

 (11 vols. 1883). Rose, the second daughter and youngest 

 child (born in 1851, married 1871), has also made numer- 

 ous contributions to periodicals in prose and verse, and 

 .published in 1888 a volume of poems entitled Along 

 the Shore. Una, the eldest child, born in 1844, died in 

 London in 1877. Julian Hawthorne issued a complet 

 memoir of his father, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his 

 Wife (2 vols. 1883). Henry James, junior, published a 

 brilliant but unsympathetic monograph on Hawthorne 

 (1879); James Russell Lowell a short life (1890); and 

 Moncure Con way one in 1890. See also the Personal Re- 

 collections of Horatio Bridge (1893). 



JULIAN HAWTHORNE, his son, was born at 

 Boston, Massachusetts, June 22, 1846. After his 

 studies at Harvard he devoted himself to engineer- 

 ing at Dresden ; next worked under General 

 M'Clellan in the New York Docks, returning to 

 Dresden to pursue a life of letters, continued later 

 in London (1875-82) and in New York. He sub- 

 sequently settled on a Jamaica farm. His first 

 novels, Bressant (1873) and Idolatry (1874), were 

 well followed by Garth (1875), Sebastian Strome 

 (1880), Fortune's Fool (1883), and Dust (1884); 

 and, not so well, by an innumerable series of shorter 

 stories, some not over good of the detective class, 

 such as David Poindexter's Disappearance (1888) 

 and Section 558 ; or The Fatal Letter (1888). 



Hay (from the same root as hew, hoe), the stems 

 and leaves of grasses or other plants dried for 

 Fodder (q.v.) of cattle. Throughout the grazing 

 and dairy districts of Ireland and England a large 

 breadth of old pasture is annually cut. In Scot- 

 land, however, little of this old natural grass is 

 converted into hay, and the crop consists mainly 

 of clover and sown grasses in which ryegrass bulks 

 largely. This requires less turning and labour 

 than the closer succulent natural grasses, and with 

 twice turning, and a week or ten days' drying, 

 will generally be fit for the rick, into which the 

 English farmer at once places it. In Scotland the 

 weather is seldom sufficiently fine to fit the hay, 

 within a moderate time, for a large rick, and the 

 practice here, as in the moister parts of England 

 and in Ireland, is to put it, after a few days, into 

 cocks, containing one or two hundredweight, and 

 thence, after another week, into what are techni- 

 cally called tramp-ricks, containing from one to 

 two tons. From these it is transferred at any 

 convenient time to the rick-yard. This practice, 

 although very prevalent in the north, is attended 

 with loss of time and labour, and, moreover, 

 bleaches and dries up the hay, giving it the appear- 

 ance of straw, and preventing that gentle heating 

 which English farmers desire both in their clover 

 and grass hay. In the United States timothy is 

 the best haymaking grass ; next come redtop, 

 orchard-grass, and blue-grass or June-grass. 



The management of the natural grasses of which 

 most English hay consists is somewhat different, 

 and the process is seen in perfection in Middlesex 

 and various of the counties about London. The 

 great matter too generally overlooked in Scot- 

 land is to preserve the colour and flavour of the 

 grass. This may be done by frequent turning, so 

 as to have it rapidly dried, and if possible without 

 the deteriorating washing of repeated rains. Arti- 

 ficial drying best attains this end, but is of course 

 impracticable on the large scale. In the best style 

 of English haymaking the grass, after being cut 

 with the scythe or machine, and as soon as the 

 dew is off, is shaken and spread out by means of 

 forks or of a tedding -m&clnne drawn by a horse. 



