Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804. His
ancestors were prominent in the affairs of the colony: John Hawthorne
was one of the judges who tried the witches in 1620; and another John
Hawthorne was a member of the dignified school committee of Salem in
1796. Hawthorne's father, a ship captain, died in a foreign land when
his son was only four years old; his mother lived for forty years after
the death of her husband the life of a recluse in her own house. The
family's star was in the decline and the people of Salem looked on
Nathaniel as a lazy and very queer boy. He grew up in a unique
solitude. During these years of seclusion Hawthorne acquired the habit
of keeping silent on all occasions, and reading a few books frequently
and thoroughly. The _Newgate Calendar_ must have supplied him with many
subtle suggestions for his later writings on sin and crime, for in
almost all of his productions his imagination is tinged with, this old
Puritanic philosophy and theology.
He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution
in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who
afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation
Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and sisters
in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this period he
wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had written in the
daytime.
He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the
Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the
Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I
really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of
them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after
permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at two
separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a voice
being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9, 1842.
From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly
occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In 1846
he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He retired
from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts, for two
years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce appointed him
consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this position until 1857.
After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the
continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White
Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of solitude
during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide publicity
of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The publication
of his _Notes_ has opened his desk and work-shop to every one, and has
revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man, who realized
his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his literary
opportunities.