Produced by Michelle Shephard, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks
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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?’”
To which she replied:
“‘It is all false. I am clear.’ Whereupon Mrs. Pope, one of the
witnesses, fell into a grievous fit.” [Footnote: Upham’s “Salem
Witchcraft,” ii. 64.]
Alas, poor beleaguered soul! And one may well say, “What imaginations
those women had!” Tituba, the West Indian Aztec who appears in this
social-religious explosion as the chief and original incendiary,--verily
the root of all evil,--gave the following testimony:
“Q. ‘Did you not pinch Elizabeth Hubbard this morning?’
“A. ‘The man brought her to me, and made me pinch her.’
“Q. ‘Why did you go to Thomas Putnam’s last night and hurt his child?’
“A. ‘They pull and haul me, and make me go.’
“Q. ‘And what would they have you do?’
“A. ‘Kill her with a knife.’
“(Lieutenant Fuller and others said at this time, when the child saw
these persons, and was tormented by them, that she did complain of a
knife,--that they would have her cut her head off with a knife.)
“Q. ‘How did you go?’
“A. ‘We ride upon sticks, and are there presently.’
“Q. ‘Do you go through the trees or over them?’
“A. ‘We see nothing, but are there presently.’
“Q. ‘Why did you not tell your master?’
“A. ‘I was afraid. They said they would cut off my head if I told.’
“Q. ‘Would you not have hurt others, if you could?’
“A. ‘They said they would hurt others, but they could not.’
“Q. ‘What attendants hath Sarah Good?’
“A. ‘A yellow-bird, and she would have given me one.’
“Q. ‘What meat did she give it?’
“A. ‘It did suck her between her fingers.’”.
This might serve as an epilogue to “Macbeth,” and the wonder is that an
unlettered Indian should have had the wit to make such apt and subtle
replies. It is also noteworthy that these strange proceedings took
place after the expulsion of the royal governor, and previous to the
provincial government of William III. If Sir Edmund Andros had remained,
the tragedy might have been changed into a farce.
After all, it appears that John Hathorne was not a lawyer, for he
describes himself in his last will, dated June 27, 1717, as a merchant,
and it is quite possible that his legal education was no better than
that of the average English squire in Fielding’s time. It is evident,
however, from the testimony given above, that he was a strong believer
in the supernatural, and here if anywhere we find a relationship between
him and his more celebrated descendant. Nathaniel Hawthorne was too
clear-sighted to place confidence in the pretended revelations of
trance mediums, and he was not in the least superstitious; but he
was remarkably fond of reading ghost stories, and would have liked to
believe them, if he could have done so in all sincerity. He sometimes
felt as if he were a ghost himself, gliding noiselessly in the walks of
men, and wondered that the sun should cast a shadow from him. However,
we cannot imagine him as seated in jurisdiction at a criminal tribunal.
His gentle nature would have recoiled from that, as it might from a
serpent.
In the Charter Street burial-ground there is a slate gravestone,
artistically carved about its edges, with the name, “Col. John Hathorne
Esq.,” upon it. It is somewhat sunken into the earth, and leans forward
as if wishing to hide the inscription upon it from the gaze of mankind.
The grass about it and the moss upon the stone assist in doing this,
although repeatedly cut and cleaned away. It seems as if Nature wished
to draw a kind of veil over the memory of the witch’s judge, himself the
sorrowful victim of a theocratic oligarchy. The lesson we learn from his
errors is, to trust our own hearts and not to believe too fixedly in the
doctrines of Church and State. It must be a dull sensibility that can
look on this old slate-stone without a feeling of pathos and a larger
charity for the errors of human nature.
It is said that one of the convicted witches cursed Judge
Hathorne,--himself and his descendants forever; but it is more than
likely that they all cursed him bitterly enough, and this curse took
effect in a very natural and direct manner. Every extravagant political
or social movement is followed by a corresponding reaction, even if the
movement be on the whole a salutary one, and retribution is sure to
fall in one shape or another on the leaders of it. After this time the
Hathornes ceased to be conspicuous in Salem affairs. The family was not
in favor, and the avenues of prosperity were closed to them, as commonly
happens in such cases. Neither does the family appear to have multiplied
and extended itself like most of the old New England families, who can
now count from a dozen to twenty branches in various places. Of John
Hathorne’s three sons only one appears to have left children. The name
has wholly disappeared from among Salem families, and thus in a manner
has the witch’s curse been fulfilled.
Joseph Hathorne, the son of the Judge, was mostly a farmer, and that
is all that we now know of him. His son Daniel, however, showed a more
adventurous spirit, becoming a shipmaster quite early in life. It has
also been intimated that he was something of a smuggler, which was no
great discredit to him in a time when the unfair and even prohibitory
measures of the British Parliament in regard to American commerce
made smuggling a practical necessity. Even as the captain of a trading
vessel, however, Daniel Hathorne was not likely to advance the social
interests of his family. It is significant that he should have left the
central portion of Salem, where his ancestors had lived, and have built
a house for himself close to the city wharves,--a house well built and
commodious enough, but not in a fashionable location.
But Daniel Hathorne had the advantage over fashionable society in Salem,
in being a thorough patriot. Boston and Salem were the two strongholds
of Toryism during the war for Independence, which was natural enough, as
their wealthy citizens were in close mercantile relations with English
houses, and sent their children to England to be educated. Daniel
Hathorne, however, as soon as hostilities had begun, fitted out his
bark as a privateer, and spent the following six years in preying upon
British merchantmen. How successful he was in this line of business
we have not been informed, but he certainly did not grow rich by it;
although he is credited with one engagement with the enemy, in which his
ship came off with honor, though perhaps not with a decisive victory.
This exploit was celebrated in a rude ballad of the time, which has been
preserved in “Griswold’s Curiosities of American Literature,” and has
at least the merit of plain unvarnished language. [Footnote: Also in
Lathrop’s “Hawthorne.”]
There is a miniature portrait of Daniel Hathorne, such as was common in
Copley’s time, still in the possession of the Hawthorne family, and
it represents him as rather a bullet-headed man, with a bright, open,
cheery face, a broad English chin and strongly marked brows,--an
excellent physiognomy for a sea-captain. He appears besides to have had
light brown or sandy hair, a ruddy complexion and bright blue eyes;
but we cannot determine how truthful the miniature may be in respect
to coloring. At all events, he was of a very different appearance from
Nathaniel Hawthorne, and if he resembled his grandson in any external
respect, it was in his large eyes and their overshadowing brows. He has
not the look of a dare-devil. One might suppose that he was a person of
rather an obstinate disposition, but it is always difficult to draw the
line between obstinacy and determination.
A similar miniature of his son Nathaniel, born in 1775, and who died at
Surinam in his thirty-fourth year, gives us the impression of a person
somewhat like his father, and also somewhat like his son Nathaniel.
He has a long face instead of a round one, and his features are more
delicate and refined than those of the bold Daniel. The expression is
gentle, dreamy and pensive, and unless the portrait belies him, he
could not have been the stern, domineering captain that he has been
represented. He had rather a slender figure, and was probably much more
like his mother, who was a Miss Phelps, than the race of Judge Hathorne.
He may have been a reticent man, but never a bold one, and we find in
him a new departure. His face is more amiable and attractive than his
father’s, but not so strong. In 1799 he was married to Miss Elizabeth
Clarke Manning, the daughter of Richard Manning, and then only nineteen
years of age. She appears to have been an exceptionally sensitive and
rather shy young woman--such as would be likely to attract the attention
of a chivalrous young mariner--but with fine traits of intellect and
character.
The maternal ancestry of a distinguished man is quite as important as
the paternal, but in the present instance it is much more difficult to
obtain information concerning it. The increasing fame of Hawthorne
has been like a calcium-light, illuminating for the past fifty years
everything to which that name attaches, and leaving the Manning family
in a shadow so much the deeper. All we can learn of them now is, that
they were descended from Richard Manning, of Dartmouth in Devonshire,
England, whose son Thomas emigrated to Salem with his widowed mother in
1679, but afterwards removed to Ipswich, ten miles to the north, whence
the family has since extended itself far and wide,--the Reverend Jacob
M. Manning, of the Old South Church, the fearless champion of practical
anti-slaveryism, having been among them. It appears that Thomas’s
grandson Richard started in life as a blacksmith, which was no strange
thing in those primitive times; but, being a thrifty and enterprising
man, he lived to establish a line of stage-coaches between Salem and
Boston, and this continued in the possession of his family until it
was superseded by the Eastern Railway. After this catastrophe, Robert
Manning, the son of Richard and brother of Mrs. Nathaniel Hathorne,
became noted as a fruit-grower (a business in which Essex County people
have always taken an active interest), and was one of the founders
of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The Mannings were always
respected in Salem, although they never came to affluent circumstances,
nor did they own a house about the city common. Robert Manning, Jr.,
was Secretary of the Horticultural Society in Boston for a long term
of years, a pleasant, kindly man, with an aspect of general culture.
Hawthorne’s maternal grandmother was Miriam Lord, of Ipswich, and his
paternal grandmother was Rachel Phelps, of Salem. His father was only
thirty-three when he died at Surinam.
In regard to the family name, there are at present Hawthornes and
Hathornes in England, and although the two names may have been identical
originally, they have long since become as distinct as Smith and Smythe.
I have discovered only two instances in which the first William Hathorne
wrote his own name, and in the various documents at the State House in
which it appears written by others, it is variously spelled Hathorn,
Hathorne, Hawthorn, Haythorne, and Harthorne,--from which we can only
conclude that the a was pronounced broadly. It was not until the reign
of Queen Anne, when books first became cheap and popular, that there was
any decided spelling of either proper or common names. Then the printers
took the matter into their own hands and made witch-work enough of it.
The word “sovereign,” for instance, which is derived from the old French
_souvrain_, and which Milton spelled “sovran,” they tortured into its
present form,--much as the clerks of Massachusetts Colony tortured the
name of William Hathorne. This, however, was spelled Hathorne oftener
than in other ways, and it was so spelled in the two signatures above
referred to, one of which was attached as witness to a deed for the
settlement of the boundary between Lynn and Salem, [Footnote: Also in
Lathrop’s “Hawthorne.”] and the other to a report of the commissioners
for the investigation of the French vessels coming to Salem and Boston
in 1651, the two other commissioners being Samuel Bradstreet and
David Denison. [Footnote: Massachusetts Archives, x. 171.]The name
was undoubtedly Hathorne, and so it continued with one or two slight
variations during the eighteenth century down to the time of Nathaniel
Hathorne, Jr., who entered and graduated at Bowdoin College under that
name, but who soon afterward changed it to Hawthorne, for reasons that
have never been explained.
All cognomens would seem to have been derived originally from some
personal peculiarity, although it is no longer possible to trace this
back to its source, which probably lies far away in the Dark Ages,--the
formative period of languages and of families. Sometimes, however, we
meet with individuals whose peculiarities suggest the origin of their
names: a tall, slender, long-necked man named Crane; or a timid,
retiring student named Leverett; or an over-confident, supercilious
person called Godkin In the name of Hawthorne also we may imagine a
curious significance: “When the may is on the thorn,” says Tennyson. The
English country people call the flowering of the hawthorn “the may.” It
is a beautiful tree when in full bloom. How sweet-scented and delicately
colored are its blossoms! But it seems to say to us, “Do not come too
close to me.”