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The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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"NATHANIEL HATHORNE.
"SALEM, February 13, 1817."

He wrote this with the greatest nicety, framing it in broad black
lines, and ornamenting the capitals in a manner that recalls the
decoration of John Hathorne's gravestone. He composed a number of poems
between his thirteenth and seventeenth years, quite as good as those of
Longfellow at the same age; but after he entered Bowdoin College he
dropped the practice altogether and never resumed it, although one
would suppose that Longfellow's example would have stimulated him to
better efforts. Neither does he appear to have tried his hand in
writing tales, as boys who have no thought of literary distinction
frequently do. During the years of his lameness he sometimes invented
extemporaneous stories, which invariably commenced with a voyage to
some foreign country, from which his hero never returned. This shows
how continually his father's fate was in his mind, although he said
nothing of it.

Robert Manning's interest in the stage-company afforded the boy fine
opportunities for free rides, and he probably also frequented the
stables; although neither as youth nor as man did he take much interest
in driving or riding. He was more fond of playing upon the wharves, a
good healthy place,--and watching the great ships sailing forth to far-
off lands, and returning with their strange cargoes,--enough to
stimulate any boy's imagination, if he has it in him. It is likely that
if Nathaniel's father had lived, he would also have followed a
seafaring life, and would never have become useful to the world in the
way that he did.

Somewhere about the close of the eighteenth century, Richard Manning,
the father of Mrs. Hathorne, purchased a large tract of land in
Cumberland County, Maine, between Lake Sebago and the town of Casco;
and in 1813 Robert Manning built a house near the lake, in the township
of Raymond, and his brother Richard, who had become much of an invalid,
went to live there, partly for his health and partly to keep an
oversight on the property. In 1817 Mrs. Hathorne also went there,
taking her children with her, and remaining, with some intermissions,
until 1822. Meanwhile the Mannings sold some thousands of acres of
land, although not, as we may suppose, at very good prices, and the
name of Elizabeth Hathorne was repeatedly attached to the deeds of
conveyance. The house that Robert built was the plainest sort of
structure, of only two stories, and with no appearance of having been
painted; but the farmers in the vicinity criticised it as "Manning's
folly,"--exactly why, does not appear clearly, unless they foresaw what
actually happened, that the house could be neither sold nor rented
after the Mannings had left it. For many years, it served as a meeting-
house,--one could not call it a church,--and now it has become a
Hawthorne museum, the town of Raymond very laudably keeping it in
repair.

Although none of the events in the early life of Hawthorne ought to be
considered positive misfortunes, as they all contributed to make him
what he was, yet upon general principles it is much to be regretted
that he should have passed the best years of his boyhood in this out-
of-the-way place. His good uncle supplied him with a boat and a gun,
and he enjoyed the small shooting, fishing, sailing and skating that
the place afforded; but in later years he wrote to Bridge, "It was at
Sebago that I learned my cursed habit of solitude," and this pursued
him through life like an evil genius, placing him continually at a
disadvantage with his fellow-men. It has been supposed that this mode
of life assisted in developing his individuality, but quite as strong
individualities have been developed in the midst of large cities.
"Speech is more refreshing than light."

When will parents learn wisdom in regard to their children? A
conscientious, tender-hearted boy will be sent to a rough country
school, to be scoffed at and maltreated there, before he is twelve
years old; while another of a coarser and harder nature will be kept at
home, to be petted and pampered until all the vigor and manliness are
sapped out of him. Parents who prefer to live in a modest, humble
manner, in order that their children may have better advantages,
deserve the highest commendation, but in this respect good instruction
is less important than favorable associations. From fourteen to twenty-
one is the formative period of character, and the influences which may
be brought to bear on the growing mind are of the highest importance.
Lake Sebago served as an excellent gymnasium for young Hawthorne, and
may have helped to develop his sense of the beautiful, but he found few
companions there, and those not of the most suitable kind. He was
exceedingly fond of skating--so much so that when the ice was smooth he
sometimes remained on the lake far into the night. This we can envy
him, for skating is the poetry of motion.

The captain of the "Hawthorne," which plies back and forth across the
lake in summer, regularly points out to his passengers the house where
the Hathornes lived. It is easily seen from the steamer,--a severely
plain, unpainted building, in appearance much like the Manning house on
Herbert Street. Nearly in line with it a great cliff-like rock juts out
from the centre of the lake, on which the Indians centuries ago etched
and painted great warlike figures, whose significance is now known to
no one. It is said that Hawthorne frequently sailed or rowed to Indian
Rock, and to a sort of grotto there which was large enough for his boat
to enter. Both the rock and the Manning house are now difficult of
access. Longfellow wrote a pretty descriptive poem of a voyage on
Sebago, and it is remarkable how he has made use of every feature of
the landscape, every incident of the excursion, to fill his verses. The
lake has much the shape of an hour-glass, the northern and southern
portions being connected by a winding strait, so crooked that it
requires the constant effort of the pilot to prevent the little steamer
from running aground. There used to be fine fishing in it,--large
perch, bass, and a species of fresh-water salmon often weighing from
six to eight pounds.

Strangely enough, one of Hawthorne's acquaintances on the shores of
Sebago was a mulatto boy named William Symmes, the son of a Virginia
slave, foisted by his father upon a Maine sea-captain named Britton,
who lived in the half-wilderness around Raymond. Symmes afterwards
became a sailor, and continued in that vocation until the Civil War,
when he went to live in Alexandria, Va. In 1870 he published in the
Portland _Transcript_ what pretended to be a series of extracts
from a diary which young Hawthorne had kept while at Raymond, and which
was found there, after the departure of the Manning family, by a man
named Small, while moving a load of furniture which had been sold to
another party. Small preserved it until 1864, and then made a present
of it to Symmes.

Doubts have been cast on the genuineness of this diary, as was natural
enough under the circumstances; for the original manuscript was never
produced by Symmes, who died the following year, and no one knows what
has become of it. It may also be asked, why should Small have disposed
so readily of this manuscript to Symmes after preserving it sedulously
for more than forty years? Why did he not return it to its rightful
owner; or, if he felt ashamed of his original abstraction, why did not
Symmes restore it to the Hawthorne family after Hawthorne's death, when
every newspaper in the country was celebrating Hawthorne's genius? It
also might have occurred to one of them that such property would have a
marketable value, and could be disposed of at a high price to some
collector of literary curiosities; but Symmes did not even ask to be
remunerated for the portion that he contributed to the Portland
Transcript. Neither did he harbor the slightest ill feeling toward
Hawthorne, whom he claimed to have met several times in the course of
his wanderings,--once at Salem, and again at Liverpool,--and was always
treated by him with exceptional kindness and civility.

The only answer that can be made to these queries is, that men in
Symmes's position in life do not act according to any method that can
be previously calculated. In a case like the present, there could be no
predicting it; and it is possible that this mulatto valued the diary
above all price, as a souvenir of the one white man who had ever been
kind and good to him. Who knows what a heart there may have been in
William Symmes?

The internal evidence of this diary is so strongly in its favor as to
be almost conclusive. Lathrop, who made a special study of it, says:

"The fabrication of the journal by a person possessed of some literary
skill and familiar with the localities mentioned, at dates so long ago
as 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible feat, but it is an
extremely improbable one."

To which it might be added, that it could be only a Hawthorne that
could accomplish such a fabrication. Few things in literature are more
difficult than to make a boy talk _like_ a boy, and the tone of
this Sebago journal is not only boyish, but sweet and pleasant to the
ear, such as we might imagine the talk of the youthful Hawthorne. Not
only this, but there is a gradated improvement of intelligence in the
course of it,--rather too much so for entire credibility. It is quite
possible that there is more of it than Hawthorne ever wrote, but that
does not prevent us from having faith in the larger portion of it. The
purity of its diction, the nice adaptation of each word to its purpose,
and the accuracy of detail are much in its favor; besides which, the
personal reflections in it are exactly like Hawthorne. The published
portion of the diary in Mr. Pickard's book makes about fifty rather
small pages, but no dates are given except at the close, and that is
August, 1818; and as Hawthorne went to Sebago for the first time the
preceding year, we may presume that this note-book represents a winter
and summer vacation, during which he would seem to have enjoyed himself
in a healthy boyish fashion. We have only space for a few extracts from
this publication, which serve both to exemplify Hawthorne's mode of
life at Raymond and to illustrate the preceding statement concerning
the book.

The first observation in the diary is quoted by Lathrop, and has a
decidedly youthful tone.

"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house and the mill-
pond. The male is more courageous than any creature that I know about.
He seems to have taken possession of the territory from the great pond
to the small one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk that flies
from one to the other over his dominion. The fish-hawks must be
miserable cowards to be driven by such a speck of a bird. I have not
yet seen one turn to defend himself."

Kingbirds are the knights-errant of the feathered tribes. They never
attack another bird unless it is three times their own size; but when a
few years older, the boy Hawthorne would probably have noticed that the
kingbirds' powers of flight are so superior that all other birds are
practically at their mercy. This fixes the date of the entry in the
early summer of 1817, for kingbirds are not belligerent except during
the nesting season. Somewhat later in the year he writes:

"Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond with Mr. Peter White,
of Windham. He sailed up here from White's Bridge to see Captain
Dingley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride
out to the Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also kind enough
to say that I might go, with my mother's consent, which she gave after
much coaxing. Since the loss of my father, she dreads to have any one
belonging to her go upon the water. It is strange that this beautiful
body of water is called a 'pond.' The geography tells of many in
Scotland and Ireland, not near so large, that are called 'Lakes.'"

Notice his objection to bad nomenclature, and his school-boy argument
against it. In his account of this excursion he says further:

"After we got ashore, Mr. White allowed me to fire his long gun at a
mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure that I saw it at the time
the gun went off, but believe rather that I was watching for the noise
that I was about to make.

"Mr. Ring said that with practice I could be a gunner, and that now,
with a very heavy charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight
paces!"

Here or nowhere do we recognize the budding of Hawthorne's genius. This
clear introspective analysis is the foundation of all true mental
power, and Hawthorne might have become a Platonic philosopher, if he
had not preferred to be a story-teller.

These sports came to an end in the autumn when he was sent to study
with the Reverend Caleb Bradley, a somewhat eccentric graduate of
Harvard, who resided at Stroudwater, Maine, and with whom he remained
during the winter. [Footnote: S. T. Pickard's "Hawthorne's First
Diary."]He refers to this period of tuition in the short story of "The
Vision of the Fountain," and whether or no any such vision appeared to
him, we can fairly believe that the tale was suggested by some pretty
school-girl who made an impression on him, only to disappear in a
tantalizing manner. It is to be presumed that he returned to his mother
at Raymond, for Christmas; and at that time he heard a story of how an
Otisfield man named Henry Turner had killed three hibernating bears
which he discovered in a cave near Moose Pond, not a difficult feat
when one comes upon them in that torpid condition. This would place the
killing of the bears at about the first of December, which would be
probable enough, and the fact itself has been substantiated by Samuel
Pickard. The next succeeding entry relates to the drowning of a boy
while swimming, which could only have happened the following June. Mrs.
Hathorne was greatly alarmed, and objected to Nathaniel's going in
bathing with the other boys. He did not like the restriction, but
writes that he shall obey his mother.

There is a ghost story in the diary, quite original, and told with an
air of excellent credibility; and also a short anthropomorphic romance
concerning a badly treated horse, full of genuine pathos and kindly
sympathy,--more sympathetic, in fact, than Hawthorne's later stories,
in which he is sometimes almost too reserved and unemotional:

"'Good morning, Mr. Horse, how are you to-day?' 'Good morning,
youngster,' said he, just as plain as a horse can speak, and then said,
'I am almost dead, and I wish I was quite. I am hungry, have had no
breakfast and stand here tied by the head while they are grinding the
corn, and until master drinks two or three glasses of rum at the store,
and then drag him and the meal up the Ben Ham hill, and home, and am
now so weak that I can hardly stand. Oh, dear, I am in a bad way,' and
the old creature cried,--I almost cried myself."

The only difficulty in believing this diary to be genuine is the
question: If Hawthorne could write with such perspicuity at fourteen,
why are there no evidences of it during his college years? But it
sometimes happens so.

We cannot refrain from quoting one more extract from the last entry in
the Sebago diary, so beautifully tender and considerate as it is of his
mother's position toward her only son. He had been invited by a party
of their neighbors to go on an all-day excursion, and though his mother
grants his request to be allowed to join them, he feels the reluctance
with which she does so and he writes:

"She said 'Yes,' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my day's pleasure
would cost _her_ one of anxiety. However, I gathered up my hooks
and lines, with some white salted pork for bait, and with a fabulous
number of biscuit, split in the middle, the insides well buttered, then
skilfully put together again, and all stowed in sister's large work-
bag, and slung over my shoulder, I started, making a wager with Enoch
White, as we walked down to the boat, as to which could catch the
largest number of fish." [Footnote: Appendix A.]

This is the only entry that is dated (August, 1818), and as it was on
this same occasion that the black ducks were shot, it must have been on
one of the last days of August. We may presume that Nathaniel returned
to his studies at Stroudwater the following month, for we do not hear
of him again at Raymond--or in Salem, either--until March 24, when he
writes to his uncle, Robert Manning, who has evidently just returned
from Raymond to Salem, and speaks of expecting to go to Portland with a
Mr. Linch for the day. On May 16, 1819, he writes to his uncle Robert
again:

"The grass and trees are green, the fences finished and the garden
planted. Two of the goats are on the island and the other kept for the
milk. I have shot a partridge and a hen-hawk and caught eighteen large
trout [probably Sebago salmon]. I am sorry that my uncle intends
sending me to school again, for my mother can hardly spare me."

From which it is easy to infer that he had not attended school very
regularly of late, and Uncle Robert would seem to have concluded that
it would be better to have his fine nephew where he could personally
supervise his goings and comings. Accordingly, on July 26 we find
Nathaniel attending school in Salem,--a most unusual season for it,--
and although his mother remained at Raymond two years longer, he was
not permitted to return there again, except possibly for short periods.

Emerson once pointed out to me on Sudbury Street, Boston, an extremely
old man with long white locks and the face of a devoted scholar,
advancing toward us with slow and cautious steps. "That," said he, "is
Doctor Worcester, the lexicographer." Hawthorne's early education
remains much of a mystery. In 1819 he complains in a letter to his
mother that he has to go to a cheap school,--a good indication that he
did not intend to trust to fortune for his future welfare; soon after
this we hear that dictionary Worcester is his chief instructor. He
could not have found a more amiable or painstaking pedagogue; nor is it
likely that the fine qualities of his teacher were ever better
appreciated. Hawthorne himself says nothing of this, for it was not his
way to express admiration for man or woman, but we can believe that he
felt the same affection for the doctor that well-behaved boys commonly
do for their old masters. It was from Worcester that he derived his
excellent knowledge of Latin, the single study of which he was fond;
and it is his preference for words derived from the Latin which gives
grace and flexibility to Hawthorne's style, as the force and severity
of Emerson's style come from his partiality for Saxon words. During his
last year at school, Hawthorne took private lessons of a Salem lawyer,
Benjamin Oliver, and perhaps studied with him altogether at the finish.

Hawthorne's life had been so irregular for years that it is creditable
to him that he should have succeeded in entering college at all. We
hear of him at Sebago in winter and at Salem in July. He writes to his
Uncle Robert to look out for the shot-gun which he left in a closet at
Sebago, and which has a rather heavy charge of powder in it. He appears
to have found as little companionship in Salem as he did in that
wilderness,--the natural effect of such a life. He may have been
acquainted with half the boys in Salem, but he did not make any warm
friends among them. His sister Louisa, who was a more vivacious person
than Elizabeth, was his chief companion and comfort. Seated at the
window with her on summer evenings, he elaborated the plan of an
imaginary society, a club of two, called the "Pin Society," to which
all fees, assessments and fines were paid in pins,--then made by hand
and much more expensive than now. He constituted himself its secretary,
and wrote imaginary reports of its proceedings, in which Louisa is
frequently fined for absence from meetings. We do not hear of their
going to parties or dances with other children.

In August, 1820, he started an imaginary newspaper called the
_Spectator_, which he wrote himself with some help from Louisa,
and of which there was only one copy of each number. He continued this
through five successive issues, and we trace in its pages the
commencement of Hawthorne's peculiar humor,--too quiet and gentle to
make us laugh, but with a penetrating tinge of pathos. Take for
instance the following:

"There is no situation in life more irksome than that of an editor who
is obliged to find amusement for his Readers, from a head which is too
often (as is the present predicament with our own) filled with
emptiness. Since commencing this paper, we have received no
communication of any kind, so that the whole weight of the business
devolves upon our own shoulders, a load far too great for them to bear.
We hope the Public will reflect on these grievances."

This is true fiction, and Nathaniel was not the first or the last
editor to whom the statement has applied. His difficulties are
imaginary, but he realizes what they might be in reality.

In another number he says:

"We know of no news, either domestic or foreign, and we hope our
readers will excuse our not inserting any. The law which prohibits
paying debts when a person has no money will apply in this case."

Then he makes this quiet hit against the people of Maine for having
separated themselves and their territory from Massachusetts:

"By a gentleman in the state of Maine, we learn that a famine is
seriously apprehended owing to the want of rain. Potatoes could not be
procured in some places. When children break their leading strings, and
run away from their Parent, (as Maine has done) they may expect
sometimes to suffer hunger." [Footnote: _Wide Awake_, xxxiii.
512.]

Of his religious instruction we hear nothing; but church-going in New
England during the first forty years of the nineteenth century was
wellnigh universal, and it makes little difference now to which of the
various forms of Calvinistic worship the Manning family subscribed.
That young Hawthorne was seriously impressed in this way is evident
from the following ode, which he may have composed as early as his
fifteenth year:

"Oh, I have roamed in rapture wild
Where the majestic rocks are piled
In lonely, stern, magnificence around
The troubled ocean's steadfast bound;
And I have seen the storms arise
And darkness veil from mortal eyes
The Heavens that shine so fair and bright,
And all was solemn, silent night.
Then I have seen the storm disperse,
And Mercy hush the whirlwind fierce,
And all my soul in transport owned
There is a God, in Heaven enthroned."

There is more of a rhetorical flourish than of serious religious
feeling in this; but genuine piety is hardly to be expected, and not
greatly to be desired, in a boy of that age. It represents the desire
to be religious, and to express something, he knows not what.

Nathaniel Hawthorne had already decided on his vocation in life before
he entered Bowdoin College,--a decision which he afterwards adhered to
with inflexible determination, in spite of the most discouraging
obstacles. In a memorable letter to his mother, written March 13, 1821,
he says:

"I am quite reconciled to going to college, since I am to spend my
vacations with you. Yet four years of the best part of my life is a
great deal to throw away. I have not yet concluded what profession I
shall have. The being a minister is of course out of the question. I
shall not think that even you could desire me to choose so dull a way
of life. Oh, no, mother, I was not born to vegetate forever in one
place, and to live and die as tranquil as--a puddle of water. As to
lawyers, there are so many of them already that one-half of them (upon
a moderate calculation) are in a state of actual starvation. A
physician, then, seems to be 'Hobson's choice'; but yet I should not
like to live by the diseases and infirmities of my fellow-creatures.
And it would weigh very hardly on my conscience, in the course of my
practice, if I should chance to send any unlucky patient '_ad
infernum_,' which, being interpreted, is 'to the realms below.' Oh
that I was rich enough to live without profession! What do you think of
my becoming an author, and relying for support upon my pen? Indeed, I
think the illegibility of my hand is very author-like." [Footnote:
Conway, 24.]

Such were the Ides of March for Hawthorne. It was no boyish ambition
for public distinction, nor a vain grasping at the laurel wreath, but a
calmly considered and clear-sighted judgment.




CHAPTER III

BOWDOIN COLLEGE: 1821-1825.


The life of man is not like a game of chess, in which the two players
start upon equal terms and can deliberate sufficiently over every move;
but more like whist, in which the cards we hold represent our fortunes
at the beginning, but the result of the game depends also on the skill
with which we play it. Life also resembles whist in this, that we are
obliged to follow suit in a general way to those who happen to have the
lead.

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