was Major William Hathorne, of Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire, [Footnote:
This name appears in the American Note-Books (August 22, 1837) as
Wigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the Scotch Wigton, and have
substituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as being more probable. Memorials of
the family exist in the adjoining county of Somerset. (_A. N. B._,
October, 1836.)] in England, a younger son, who came to America with
Winthrop and his company, by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12,
1630. He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of land there,
and was made a freeman about 1634, and representative, or one of "the
ten men," in 1635. Although a man of note, his name is not affixed to
the address sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from Yarmouth,
before sailing, to their brethren in the English Church; but this is
easily accounted for by the fact that Hathorne was a determined
Separatist, while the major part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung to
Episcopacy. In 1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he would
remove hither, considering that "it was a public benefit that he should
become an inhabitant of that town." He removed accordingly, and, in
1638, he had additional lands granted to him "in consideration of his
many employments for towne and countrie." Some of these lands were
situated on a pleasant rising ground by the South River, then held to be
the most desirable part of the town; and a street running through that
portion bears the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he petitioned
the General Court that he might be allowed, with others, to form a
"company of adventurers" for trading among the French; and in the same
year he was appointed captain of a military company, the first regular
troop organized in Salem to "advance the military art." From 1636 to
1643 he had been a representative of the people, from Dorchester and
Salem; and from 1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of an
assistant. It was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the town
a tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every foreign vessel over
twenty tons trading to Salem and Marblehead, thus forestalling his
famous descendant in sitting at the receipt of customs. Besides these
various activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; and
in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of his
efficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army of
twelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of this
year he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of these
"were found to have been perfidious," and were sent to Boston, to be
sold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple of
weeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: "We catched an Indian
Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in many
lies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians to
be his executioners." There was some reason for this severity, for in
crossing a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. The
captain adds: "We have no bread these three days." This early ancestor
was always prominent. He had been one of a committee in 1661, who
reported concerning the "patent, laws, and privileges and duties to his
Majesty" of the colonists, opposing all appeals to the crown as
inconsistent with their charter, and maintained the right of their
government to defend itself against all attempts at overthrow. Two years
later he was charged by Charles's commissioners with seditious words,
and apologized for certain "unadvised" expressions; but the committee of
1661 reported at a critical time, and it needed a good deal of
stout-heartedness to make the declarations which it did; and on the
whole William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the community. He
is perhaps the only man of the time who has left a special reputation
for eloquence. Eliot speaks of him as "the most eloquent man of the
Assembly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, who
glided with the popular stream; as reputable for his piety as for his
political integrity." And Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence,"
naming the chief props of the state, says: "Yet through the Lord's mercy
we still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine William Hathorn,
whom the Lord hath indued with a quick apprehension, strong memory, and
Rhetorick, volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make
use of him often in Publick Service, especially when they have had to do
with any foreign government." It is instructive to find what ground he
took during the Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was a
forward figure in that long-sustained horror; and if Hathorne naturally
gravitated to the other extreme from Endicott, he would be likely, one
supposes, to have sympathized with the persecuted. The state was divided
in sentiment during those years; but James Cudworth wrote that "he that
will not whip and lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in matters
of religion, must not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in the
commonwealth." Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens that
Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gap
barely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, he
resumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to the
copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigure
New England history.
Sewel relates [Footnote: History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412.] that
"Anne Coleman and four of her friends were whipped through Salem,
Boston, and Dedham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was a
magistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience; and when under the
government of Cromwell it was proposed to make a law that none shall
preach without license, he publicly said at Salem that if ever such a
law took place in New England he should look upon it as one of the most
abominable actions that were ever committed there, and that it would be
as eminent a Token of God's having forsaken New England, as any could
be." His famous descendant, alluding to this passage, [Footnote: See
"The Custom House," introductory to "The Scarlet Letter."] says that the
account of this incident "will last longer, it is to be feared, than any
record of his better deeds, though these were many." Yet it should not
be overlooked that Hathorne is the only one among the New England
persecutors whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark as to a
previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of sudden
death which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So
that even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and Sir
Thomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possible
for the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorant
bigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of
religious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer of
persecution never conceived of a fanaticism like that of the Friends,
which should so systematically outrage all his deepest sense of decency,
order, and piety, and--not content with banishment--should lead its
subjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, on the
commonwealth; as if a neighbor, under some mistaken zeal, were to
repeatedly mix poison with our porridge, until his arrest and death
should seem our only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on the
dissenting side, for a time, though there is no record of his saying,
like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that the blood of the Quakers was too
heavy upon him, and he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashes
for his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and subjected to
more torture afterward. But, whatever Hathorne's first feeling, after
five years of disturbance, exasperation was added to the responsibility
of taking office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his various
justifications, now; yet one cannot wonder that his descendant was
oppressed by the act. That he was so cannot be regretted, if only
because of the authentic fact that his reading of Sewel inspired one of
his most exquisite tales, "The Gentle Boy."
William Hathorne, however,--whatever his taste in persecution,--makes
his will peacefully and piously in 1679-80: "_Imprimis_, I give my
soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermore
my body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with him, whom
this vile body shall be made like unto his glorious body; and for the
estate God hath given me in this world.... I do dispose of as
followeth." Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers persons,
followed by "all my housing and land, orchard and appurtenances lying in
Salem," to his son John. Among other items, there is one devising his
"farm at Groton" to "Gervice Holwyse my gr. ch. [grandchild] if he can
come over and enjoy it." Here, by the way, is another bit of coincidence
for the curious. _Gervase Helwyse_ is the name of the young man who
appears in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," [Footnote: Twice-Told Tales, Vol.
II.] bereft of reason by his love for the proud and fatal heroine of
that tale. [Footnote: In the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will be
found some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Hawthorne
himself. He there tells of the marriage of one _Gervase Elwes_, son
of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in Suffolk. This Gervase died
before his father; his son died without issue; and thus John Maggott
Twining, grandson of the second Gervase through a daughter, came into
the baronetcy. This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. "He was the
famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him," says Mr.
Hawthorne, "through his grandfather Gervase, whose mother was a
Hawthorne." He then refers to William's devise, and says: "My ancestor
calls him his _nephew_." The will says, "gr. ch."; and I suppose
the mistake occurred through Mr. Hawthorne's not having that document at
hand, for reference.] Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced in
years when he led his troops against the Indians at Cocheco in 1676; for
it was only five years later that he disappeared from history and from
this life forever.
His son John inherited, together with housing and land, a good deal of
the first Hathorne's various energy and eminence. He was a freeman in
1677, representative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor,
from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's government. After the
deposition of Andros, he was called to join Bradstreet's Council of
Safety pending the accession of William of Orange; a magistrate for some
years; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, and afterward, in
1696, the commander of Church's troops, whom he led against St. John. He
attacked the enemy's fort there, but, finding his force too weak, drew
off, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy had somehow
developed into the dignity of major, so John found himself a colonel in
1711. But in 1717 he, too, died. And now there came a change in the
fortunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his magistracy, had
presided at the witchcraft trials, and had shown himself severe,
bigoted, and unrelenting in his spirit toward the accused persons.
Something of this may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was brought
before him, whose husband has left a pathetic record of her suffering.
"She was forced to stand with her arms stretched out. I requested that I
might hold one of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired me
to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which I
did; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she
should faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough to
torment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I
repeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me
to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room." [Footnote:
Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85.] It is not strange that
this husband should have exclaimed, that God would take revenge upon his
wife's persecutors; and perhaps he was the very man whose curse was said
to have fallen upon the justice's posterity.
From this time, at all events, the family lost its commanding position
in Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's son Joseph subsided into the quiet
of farm-life. The only notable association with his name is, that he
married Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the distinguished
mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it is in the beginning of the
eighteenth century that the Hathornes begin to appear as mariners. In
the very year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Hathorne
earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, in
his brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may
have died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem to
have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a member
of his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by a
Captain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with
four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782,
being one of the crew of an American privateer, "The Chase," captured by
the British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S.
C., with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually,
originated the traditional career of the men of this family,--"a
gray-headed shipmaster in each generation," as the often-quoted passage
puts it, "retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy
of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast." But the most
eminent among these hardy skippers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph,
and grandfather of the author.
Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired only on April 18,
1796, eight years and a little more before his famous grandson came into
the world. Something of the old prowess revived in him, and being a
stout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, he became
commander of a privateer during our Revolution; indeed, it is said he
commanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, but
their reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of his
bravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have met
with is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, who
was perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of his
countryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piratical
craft:--
BRIG "FAIR AMERICAN": DANIEL HATHORNE, COMMANDER.
The twenty-second of August, before the close of day,
All hands on board our privateer, we got her under weigh.
We kept the Eastern shore on board for forty leagues or more,
When our departure took for sea, from the Isle of Monhegan
shore.
Bold Hathorne was commander, a man of real worth,
Old England's cruel tyranny induced him to go forth;
She with relentless fury was plundering all the coast,
And thought because her strength was great, our glorious cause
was lost.
Now farewell to America,--farewell our friends and wives,
We trust in Heaven's peculiar care, for to protect their lives,
To prosper our intended cruise upon the raging main,
And to preserve our dearest friends till we return again.
The wind it being leading and bore us on our way,
As far unto the Eastward as the Gulf of Florida,
When we fell in with a British ship hound homeward from the main;
We gave her two bow-chasers, and she returned the same.
We hauled up our courses and prepared for fight;
The contest held four glasses,[*] until the dusk of night;
Then having sprung our mainmast, and had so large a sea,
We dropped astern, and left our chase till the returning day.
[* The time consumed in the emptying of a half-hour glass four
times,--two hours.]
Next day we fished our mainmast, the ship still being nigh,
All hands was for engaging, our chance once more to try;
But wind and sea being boisterous, our cannon would not bear;
We thought it quite imprudent, and so we left her there.
We cruised to the Eastward, near the coast of Portuigale:
In longitude of twenty-seven we saw a lofty sail.
We gave her chase, and soon perceived she was a British scow
Standing for fair America with troops for General Howe.
Our captain did inspect her with glasses, and he said:--
"My boys, she means to fight us, but be you not afraid;
All hands repair to quarters, see everything is clear;
We'll give him a broadside, my boys, as soon as she comes near."
She was prepared with nettings, and her men were well secured,
And bore directly for us, and put us close on board,
When the cannons roared like thunder, and the muskets fired amain;
But soon we were alongside, and grappled to her chain.
And now the scene is altered,--the cannon ceased to roar;
We fought with swords and boarding-pikes one glass and something more;
The British pride and glory no longer dared to stay,
But cut the Yankee grappling, and quickly bore away.
Our case was not so desperate, as plainly might appear,
Yet sudden death did enter on board our privateer;
Mahany, Clew, and Clemmans, the valiant and the brave,
Fell glorious in the contest, and met a watery grave!
Ten other men were wounded, among our warlike crew,
With them our noble captain, to whom all praise is due.
To him and all our officers let's give a hearty cheer!
Success to fair America and our good privateer!
This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm of it seems to show
that the writer had not quite got his sea-legs on, in boarding the
poetic craft. Especially is he to be commiserated on that unhappy
necessity to which the length of the verse compels him, of keeping "the
Eastern shore on board for forty leagues," in the first stanza; but it
was due to its historic and associative value to give it entire.
Perhaps, after all, it was a shrewd insight that caused the Hathornes to
take to the sea. Salem's greatest glory was destined for a term to lie
in that direction. Many of these old New England seaports have
magnificent recollections of a commercial grandeur hardly to be guessed
from their aspect to-day. Castine, Portsmouth, Wiscasset, Newburyport,
and the rest,--they controlled the carrying of vast regions, and
fortune's wheel whirled amid their wharves and warehouses with a merry
and reassuring sound. Each town had its special trade, and kept the
monopoly. Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled the trade with Martinique,
Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, sending out fish and bringing back sugar;
Gloucester bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought coffee
and dye-stuffs from Surinam; Marblehead had the Bilboa business; and
Salem, most opulent of all, usurped the Sumatra, African, East Indian,
Brazilian, and Cayenne commerce. By these new avenues over the ocean
many men brought home wealth that literally made princes of them, and
has left permanent traces in the solid and stately homes they built,
still crowded with precious heirlooms, as well as in the refinement
nurtured therein, and the thrifty yet generous character they gave to
the town. Among these successful merchants was Simon Forrester, who
married Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-aunt Rachel, and died in 1817,
leaving an immense property. Him Hawthorne speaks of in "The Custom
House"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon
Forrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head,
however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth
began to dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to undermine
the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast that
his immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest road
to wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without ever
winning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on Justice Hathorne's
head might with some reason have been thought to still hang over his
race, as Hawthorne suggests that its "dreary and unprosperous condition
... for many a long year back" would show. Indeed, the tradition of such
a curse was kept alive in his family, and perhaps it had its share in
developing that sadness and reticence which seem to have belonged to his
father.
It is plain from these circumstances how the idea of "The House of the
Seven Gables" evolved itself from the history of his own family, with
important differences. The person who is cursed, in the romance, uses a
special spite toward a single victim, in order to get hold of a property
which he bequeaths to his own heirs. Thus a double and treble wrong is
done, and the notion of a curse working upon successive generations is
subordinate to the conception of the injury which a man entails to his
own descendants by forcing on them a stately house founded upon a sin.
The parallel of the Hathorne decline in fortune is carried out; but it
must be observed that the peculiar separateness and shyness, which
doubtless came to be in some degree a trait of all the Hathornes, is
transferred in the book from the family of the accursed to that of
Maule, the utterer of the evil prophecy. "As for Matthew Maule's
posterity," says the romancer, "to all appearance they were a quiet,
honest, well-meaning race of people"; but "they were generally
poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful
diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea
as sailors before the mast"; and "so long as any of the race were to be
found, they had been marked out from other men--not strikingly, nor as
with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt, rather than spoken
of--by an hereditary character of reserve. Their companions, or those
who endeavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle round about
the Maules, within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an
exterior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossible
for any man to step." The points of resemblance here may be easily
distinguished. In the "American Note-Books" occurs an anecdote which
recalls the climax of the romance. It concerns Philip English, who had
been tried for witchcraft by John Hathorne, and became his bitter enemy.
On his death-bed, he consented to forgive him; "But if I get well," said
he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" One of English's daughters (he
had no sons) afterward married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly is
the touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, based
upon the mental and moral anatomy of actual beings! It is a delicate
study of the true creative art to follow out this romantic shape, and
contrast it with the real creatures and incidents to which it has a sort
of likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, probably not
consciously, but through association, whatever he likes from the real,
and deviates from it precisely where he feels this to be fitting; adds a
trait here, and transfers another there; and thus completes something
having a unity and inspiration of its own, neither a simple reproduction
nor an unmixed invention, the most subtile and harmonious product of the
creative power. It is in this way that "The House of the Seven Gables"
comes to be not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in the
most essentially true way representative of it. Surely no one could have
better right to thus embody the characteristics of the town than
Hawthorne, whose early ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it,
and whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes almost
foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely no
one can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of his
townsmen's character and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, though
always mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep-eyed
and gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed "all the Puritanic
traits, both good and evil," and who uses what is as much to the
disadvantage of his own blood as to that of others, with such absolute,
admirable impartiality.
[Illustration]
III.
BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE.
1804-1828.
With such antecedents behind him, and such associations awaiting him,
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804.