In one sense it was all very simple, this childhood and youth and early
training of Hawthorne. We can see that the conditions were not
complicated and were quite homely. But the influence of good literature
had been at work upon the excellent mental substance derived from a
father who was fond of reading and a mother who had the plain elementary
virtues on which so much depends, and great purity of soul. The
composure and finish of style which he already had at command on going
to college were ripened amid the homely conditions aforesaid: there must
have been an atmosphere of culture in his home, unpretentious though the
mode of life there was. His sister, as I have mentioned, showed much the
same tone, the same commanding ease, in her writing. There existed a
dignity, a reserve, an instinctive refinement in this old-fashioned
household, which moved its members to appropriate the best means of
expression as by natural right. They appear to have treated the most
ordinary affairs of life with a quiet stateliness, as if human existence
were really a thing to be considered with respect, and with a frank
interest that might occasionally even admit of enthusiasm or strong
feeling with regard to an experience, although thousands of beings might
have passed through it before. Our new horizons, physically enlarged by
rapid travel, our omnifarious culture, our passion for obtaining a glaze
of cosmopolitanism to cover the common clay from which we are all
moulded, do not often yield us anything essentially better than the
narrow limits of the little world in which Hawthorne grew up. He was now
to go back to Salem, which he once spoke of as being apparently for him
"the inevitable centre of the universe;" and the conditions there were
not radically altered from what they had been before. We can form an
outline of him as he was then, or at most a water-color sketch
presenting the fresh hues of youth, the strong manly frame of the young
graduate, his fine deep-lighted eyes, and sensitively retiring ways. But
we have now to imagine the change that took place in him from the recent
college Senior to the maturing man; change that gradually transforms him
from the visionary outline of that earlier period to a solid reality of
flesh and blood, a virile and efficient person who still, while
developing, did not lose the delicate sensibility of his young prime.
His family having reëstablished themselves in Salem, at the old Herbert
Street house, he settled himself with them, and stayed there until
December, 1828, meanwhile publishing "Fanshawe" anonymously. They then
moved to a smaller house on Dearborn Street, North Salem; but after four
years they again took up their abode in the Herbert Street homestead.
Hawthorne wrote industriously; first the "Seven Tales of my Native
Land," which he burned, and subsequently the sketches and stories which,
after appearing in current periodicals, were collected as "Twice-Told
Tales." In 1830 he took a carriage trip through parts of Connecticut. "I
meet with many marvellous adventures," was a part of his news on this
occasion, but they were in reality adventures of a very tame
description. He visited New York and New Hampshire and Nantucket, thus
extending slightly his knowledge of men and places. A great deal of
discursive reading was also accomplished. In 1836 he went to Boston to
edit for Mr. S. G. Goodrich "The American Magazine of Useful and
Entertaining Knowledge." It did not turn out to be either useful or
entertaining for the editor, who was to be paid but $500 a year for his
drudgery, and in fact received only a small part of that sum. Through
Goodrich, he became a copious contributor to "The Token," in the pages
of which his tales first came to be generally known; but he gave up the
magazine after a four months' misery of editorship, and sought refuge
once more in his native town.
Salem was an isolated place, was not even joined to the outer world by
its present link of railroad with Boston, and afforded no very generous
diet for a young, vigorous, hungry intellect like that of Hawthorne.
Surroundings, however, cannot make a mind, though they may color its
processes. He proceeded to extract what he could from the material at
hand. "His mode of life at this period was fitted to nurture his
imagination, but must have put the endurance of his nerves to the
severest test. The statement that for several years 'he never saw the
sun' is entirely an error. In summer he was up shortly after sunrise,
and would go down to bathe in the sea; but it is true that he seldom
chose to walk in the town except at night, and it is said that he was
extremely fond of going to fires if they occurred after dark. The
morning was chiefly given to study, the afternoon to writing, and in the
evening he would take long walks, exploring the coast from Gloucester to
Marblehead and Lynn--a range of many miles.... Sometimes he took the day
for his rambles, wandering perhaps over Endicott's ancient Orchard Farm
and among the antique houses and grassy cellars of old Salem Village,
the witchcraft ground; or losing himself among the pines of Montserrat
and in the silence of the Great Pastures, or strolling along the beaches
to talk with old sailors and fishermen." "He had little communication
with even the members of his family. Frequently his meals were brought
and left at his locked door, and it was not often that the four inmates
of the old Herbert Street mansion met in family circle. He never read
his stories aloud to his mother and sisters, as might be imagined from
the picture which Mr. Fields draws of the young author reciting his new
productions to his listening family; though, when they met, he sometimes
read older literature to them. It was the custom in this household for
the members to remain very much by themselves: the three ladies were
perhaps nearly as rigorous recluses as himself; and, speaking of the
isolation which reigned among them, Hawthorne once said, 'We do not even
_live_ at our house!' But still the presence of this near and gentle
element is not to be underrated, as forming a very great compensation in
the cold and difficult morning of his life." Of self-reliant mind,
accustomed to solitude and fond of reading, it was not strange that they
should have fallen into these habits, which, however peculiarly they may
strike others, did not necessarily spring from a morbid disposition, and
never prevented the Hawthornes from according a kindly reception to
their friends.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's own associates were not numerous. There was a good
society in the town, for Salem was not, strictly speaking, provincial,
but--aided in a degree by the separateness of its situation--retained
very much its old independence as a commercial capital. There were
people of wealth and cultivation, of good lineage in our simple domestic
kind, who made considerable display in their entertainments and were
addicted to impressive absences in Paris and London. Among these
Hawthorne did not show himself at all. His preference was for
individuals who had no pretensions whatever in the social way. Among his
friends was one William B. Pike, a carpenter's son, who, after
acquiring an ordinary public-school education without passing through
the higher grades, adopted his father's trade, became a Methodist
class-leader, secondly a disciple of Swedenborg, and at length a
successful politician, being appointed Collector of the port of Salem by
President Pierce. He is described as having "a strongly marked,
benignant face, indicative of intelligence and individuality. He was
gray at twenty, and always looked older than his years.... He had a keen
sense of the ludicrous, a vivid recollection of localities and
incidents, a quick apprehension of peculiarities and traits, and was a
most graphic and entertaining narrator."[4] As Mr. James has said:
"Hawthorne had a democratic strain in his composition, a relish for the
common stuff of human nature. He liked to fraternize with plain people,
to take them on their own terms." It was the most natural thing in the
world for him to fancy such a man as Pike is represented to have been.
His Society in college was the one which displayed a democratic
tendency; and, in addition to making friends with persons of this stamp,
men of some education and much innate "go," he had a taste for loitering
in taverns where he could observe character in the rough, without being
called upon to take an active share in talk. "Men," we are told, "who
did not meddle with him he loved, men who made no demands on him, who
offered him the repose of genial companionship. His life-long friends
were of this description, and his loyalty to them was chivalrous and
fearless, and so generous that when they differed from him on matters of
opinion he rose at once above the difference and adhered to them for
what they really were." Inevitably, such a basis for the selection of
companions, coupled with his extreme reserve, subjected him to
criticism; but when, in 1835, his former classmate, the Rev. George B.
Cheever, was thrown into jail on account of the satirical temperance
pamphlet which has already been referred to in this sketch, Hawthorne
emerged from his strict privacy, and daily visited the imprisoned
clergyman. He showed no especial love for his native place, and in
return it never made of him a popular idol. At this initial epoch of his
career as an author there probably did not exist that active ill-will
which his chapter on the Custom House afterwards engendered; he was in
fact too little known to be an object of malice or envy, and his humble
friendships could not be made the ground of unfavorable insinuations.
The town, however, was not congenial to him, and the profound retirement
in which he dwelt, the slow toil with scanty meed of praise or gold, and
the long waiting for recognition, doubtless weighed upon and preyed upon
him.
To stop at that would be to make a superficial summary. His seclusion
was also of the highest utility to him, nay, almost indispensable to his
development; for his mind, which seemed to be only creeping, was making
long strides of growth in an original direction, unhindered by arbitrary
necessities or by factitious influences.
Nevertheless, the process had gone on long enough; and it was well that
circumstances now occurred to bring it to a close, to establish new
relations, and draw him somewhat farther into the general circle of
human movement. Dr. Peabody, who has been spoken of on a preceding page
as living on the opposite side of Union Street from Hawthorne's
birthplace, had, during the vicissitudes of the young author's education
and journeys to and fro, changed his residence and gone to Boston. No
acquaintance had as yet sprung up between the two families which had
been domiciled so near together, but in 1832 the Peabodys returned to
Salem; and Miss Elizabeth, who followed in 1836, having been greatly
struck by the story of "The Gentle Boy," and excited as to the
authorship, set on foot an investigation which resulted in her meeting
Hawthorne. It is an evidence of the approachableness, after all, of his
secluded family, that Miss Louisa Hawthorne should have received her
readily and with graciousness. Miss Peabody, having formerly seen one of
Miss Hawthorne's letters, had supposed that she must be the writer of
the stories, under shelter of a masculine name. She now learned her
mistake. Months passed without any response being made to her advance.
But when the first volume of "Twice-Told Tales" was issued, Hawthorne
sent it to her with his compliments. Up to this time she had not
obtained even a glimpse of him anywhere; and, in acknowledging his gift,
she proposed that he should call at her father's house; but although
matters had proceeded thus far, and Dr. Peabody lived within three
minutes' walk of Herbert Street, Hawthorne still did not come. It was
more than a year afterward that she addressed an inquiry to him about a
new magazine, and in closing asked him to bring his sisters to call in
the evening of the same day. This time he made his appearance, was
induced to accept an invitation to another house, and thus was led into
beginning a social intercourse which, though not extensive, was
unequalled in his previous experience.
About a week after the first call, he came again. Miss Sophia Peabody,
who was an invalid, had been unable to appear before, but this time she
entered the room; and it was thus that Hawthorne met the lady whom he
was to make his wife some two or three years later. She was now about
twenty-nine, and younger by five years than Hawthorne. In childhood her
health had received a serious shock from the heroic treatment then
upheld by physicians, which favored a free use of mercury, so that it
became necessary from that time on to nurse her with the utmost care.
Many years of invalidism had she suffered, being compelled to stay in a
darkened room through long spaces of time, and although a sojourn in
Cuba had greatly benefited her, it was believed she could never be quite
restored to a normal state of well-being. Despite such serious
obstacles, she had gently persisted in reading and study; she drew and
painted, and no fear of flippant remark deterred her from attempting
even to learn Hebrew. At the same time she was a woman of the most
exquisitely natural cultivation conceivable. A temperament inclined like
hers, from the beginning, to a sweet equanimity, may have been assisted
towards its proper culmination by the habit of patience likely enough to
result from the continued endurance of pain; but a serenity so benign
and so purely feminine and trustful as that which she not displayed, but
spontaneously exhaled, must have rested on a primary and plenary
inspiration of goodness. All that she knew or saw sank into her mind and
took a place in the interior harmony of it, without ruffling the
surface; and all that she thought or uttered seemed to gain a fragrance
and a flower-like quality from having sprung thence. Neither were
strength of character and practical good sense absent from the company
of her calm wisdom and refinement. In brief, no fitter mate for
Hawthorne could have existed.
Soon after their acquaintance began, she showed him, one evening, a
large outline drawing which she had made, to illustrate "The Gentle
Boy," and asked him: "Does that look like Ilbrahim?"
Hawthorne, without other demonstration, replied quietly: "Ilbrahim will
never look otherwise to me."
The drawing was shown to Washington Allston, who accorded it his praise;
and a Miss Burleigh, who was among the earliest admirers of Hawthorne's
genius, having offered to pay the cost of an engraving from it, the
design was reproduced and printed with a new special edition of the
story, accompanied by a Preface, and a Dedication to Miss Sophia
Peabody. The three sisters and two brothers who composed the family of
Dr. Peabody were strongly imbued with intellectual tastes: nothing of
importance in literature, art, or the philosophy of education escaped
them, when once it was brought to their notice by the facilities of the
time. Miss Sophia was not only well read and a very graceful amateur in
the practice of drawing and painting, but evinced furthermore a somewhat
remarkable skill in sculpture. About the year 1831, she modelled a bust
of Laura Bridgman, the blind girl, who was then a child of twelve years.
This portrait not only was said to be a very good likeness,
but--although it is marred by a representation of the peculiar band used
to protect the eyes of the patient--has considerable artistic value, and
attains very nearly to a classic purity of form and treatment. Miss
Peabody also executed a medallion portrait, in relief, of Charles
Emerson, the brilliant brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose great
promise was frustrated by his premature death. This medallion was done
from memory. The artist had once seen Mr. Emerson while he was
lecturing, and was so strongly impressed by his eloquent profile that,
on going home, she made a memory-sketch of it in pencil, which supplied
a germ for the portrait in clay which she attempted after his death.
The appearance of the "Twice-Told Tales" in book-form had, like that of
the "Gentle Boy" design, been due to the kindness of a friend. In this
case it was Lieutenant Bridge who became responsible for the expense;
and the volume met with, if not much pecuniary success, a gratifying
literary renown. The author sent a copy to Longfellow, who acknowledged
it cordially; and then Hawthorne wrote him as follows:--
"By some witchcraft or other--for I really cannot assign any reasonable
cause--I have been carried apart from the main current of life, and find
it impossible to get back again. Since we last met, which you remember
was in Sawtell's room, where you read a farewell poem to the relics of
the class--ever since that time I have secluded myself from society; and
yet I never meant any such thing nor dreamed what sort of life I was
going to lead.... For the last ten years I have not lived, but only
dreamed of living....
"As to my literary efforts, I do not think much of them, neither is it
worth while to be ashamed of them. They would have been better, I trust,
if written under more favorable circumstances."
But Longfellow broke out, as it were, into an exulting cry over them,
which echoed from the pages of the next "North American Review."[5] His
notice was hardly a criticism; it was a eulogy, bristling with the
adornment of frequent references to European literature; but it is worth
while to recall a few of its sentences.
"When a star rises in the heavens," said Longfellow, "people gaze after
it for a season with the naked eye, and with such telescopes as they may
find. In the stream of thought, which flows so peacefully deep and clear
through this book, we see the bright reflection of a spiritual star,
after which men will be prone to gaze 'with the naked eye and with the
spy-glasses of criticism.'... To this little work we would say, 'Live
ever, sweet, sweet book.' It comes from the hand of a man of genius.
Everything about it has the freshness of morning and of May.... The
book, though in prose, is nevertheless written by a poet. He looks upon
all things in a spirit of love and with lively sympathies. A calm,
thoughtful face seems to be looking at you from every page; with now and
then a pleasant smile, and now a shade of sadness stealing over its
features. Sometimes, though not often, it glares wildly at you, with a
strange and painful expression, as, in the German romance, the bronze
knocker of the Archivarius Lindhorst makes up faces at the student
Anselm.... One of the prominent characteristics of these tales is that
they are national in their character. The author has wisely chosen his
themes among the traditions of New England.... This is the right
material for story. It seems as natural to make tales out of old
tumble-down traditions as canes and snuff-boxes out of old steeples, or
trees planted by great men."
This hearty utterance of Longfellow's not only was of advantage to the
young author publicly, but also doubtless threw a bright ray of
encouragement into the morning-dusk which was then the pervading
atmosphere of his little study, which he termed his "owl's nest." "I
have to-day," he wrote back, "received and read with huge delight, your
review of 'Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.' I frankly own that I was not
without hopes that you would do this kind office for the book; though I
could not have anticipated how very kindly it would be done. Whether or
no the public will agree to the praise which you bestow on me, there are
at least five persons who think you the most sagacious critic on earth,
viz., my mother and two sisters, my old maiden aunt, and finally the
strongest believer of the whole five, my own self. If I doubt the
sincerity and earnestness of any of my critics, it shall be of those who
censure me. Hard would be the lot of a poor scribbler, if he may not
have this privilege."
His pleasant intimacy with the Peabodys went on; the dawn of his new
epoch broadened, and he began to see in Miss Sophia Peabody the figure
upon which his hopes, his plans for the future converged. Her father's
house stood on the edge of the Charter Street Burying-Ground, oldest of
the Salem cemeteries. "A three-story wooden house"--thus he has
described it--"perhaps a century old, low-studded, with a square front,
standing right upon the street, and a small enclosed porch, containing
the main entrance, affording a glimpse up and down the street through an
oval window on each side: its characteristic was decent respectability,
not sinking below the level of the genteel." In his "Note-Books" (July
4, 1837) he speaks of the old graveyard. "A slate gravestone round the
borders, to the memory of 'Col. John Hathorne Esq.,' who died in 1717.
This was the witch-judge. The stone is sunk deep into the earth, and
leans forward, and the grass grows very long around it.... Other
Hathornes lie buried in a range with him on either side.... It gives
strange ideas, to think how convenient to Dr. P----'s family this
burial-ground is,--the monuments standing almost within arm's reach of
the side-windows of the parlor--and there being a little gate from the
back-yard through which we step forth upon those old graves aforesaid.
And the tomb of the P---- family is right in front, and close to the
gate." Among the other Hathornes interred there are Captain Daniel, the
privateersman, and a Mr. John Hathorne, "grandson of the Hon. John
Hathorne," who died in 1758. The specification of his grandfather's
name, with the prefix, shows that the relentless condemner of witches
was still held in honor at Salem, in the middle of the eighteenth
century. Dr. Peabody's house and this adjoining burial-ground form the
scene of the unfinished "Dolliver Romance," and also supply the setting
for the first part of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." In the latter we find it
pictured with a Rembrandtesque depth of tone:--
"It stood in a shabby by-street and cornered on a graveyard.... Here
were old brick tombs with curious sculpture on them, and quaint
gravestones, some of which bore puffy little cherubs, and one or two
others the effigies of eminent Puritans, wrought out to a button, a fold
of the ruff, and a wrinkle of the skull-cap.... Here used to be some
specimens of English garden flowers, which could not be accounted
for--unless, perhaps, they had sprung from some English maiden's heart,
where the intense love of those homely things and regret of them in the
foreign land, had conspired together to keep their vivifying
principle.... Thus rippled and surged with its hundreds of little
billows the old graveyard about the house which cornered upon it; it
made the street gloomy so that people did not altogether like to pass
along the high wooden fence that shut it in; and the old house itself,
covering ground which else had been thickly sown with bodies, partook of
its dreariness, because it hardly seemed possible that the dead people
should not get up out of their graves and steal in to warm themselves at
this convenient fireside."
This was the place in which Hawthorne conducted his courtship; but we
ought not to lose sight of the fact that, in the account above quoted,
he was writing imaginatively, indulging his fancy, and dwelling on
particular points for the sake of heightening the effect. It is not
probable that he associated gloomy fantasies with his own experience as
it progressed in these surroundings. Here as elsewhere it is important
to bear in mind the distinction which Dr. Loring has made: "Throughout
life," he declares, "Hawthorne led a twofold existence--a real and a
supernatural. As a man, he was the realest of men. From childhood to old
age, he had great physical powers. His massive head sat upon a strong
and muscular neck, and his chest was broad and capacious. His strength
was great; his hand and foot were large and well made.... In walking, he
had a firm step and a great stride without effort. In early manhood he
had abounding health, a good digestion, a hearty enjoyment of food. His
excellent physical condition gave him a placid and even temper, a
cheerful spirit. He was a silent man and often a moody one, but never
irritable or morose; his organization was too grand for that. He was a
most delightful companion. In conversation he was never controversial,
never authoritative, and never absorbing. In a multitude his silence was
oppressive; but with a single companion his talk flowed on sensibly,
quietly, and full of wisdom and shrewdness. He discussed books with
wonderful acuteness, sometimes with startling power, and with an
unexpected verdict, as if Shakespeare were discussing Ben Jonson. He
analyzed men, their characters and motives and capacity, with great
penetration, impartially if a stranger or an enemy, with the tenderest
and most touching justice if a friend. He was fond of the companionship
of all who were in sympathy with this real and human side of his life."
But there was another side of his being, for which we may adopt the name
that Dr. Loring has given it, the "supernatural." It was this which gave
him his high distinction. "When he entered upon his work as a writer, he
left behind him his other and accustomed personality by which he was
known in general intercourse. In this work he allowed no interference,
he asked for no aid. He was shy of those whose intellectual power and
literary fame might seem to give them a right to enter his sanctuary. In
an assembly of illustrious authors and thinkers, he floated, reserved
and silent, around the margin in the twilight of the room, and at last
vanished into the outer darkness; and when he was gone, Mr. Emerson said
of him: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.' The working of
his mind was so sacred and mysterious to him that he was impatient of
any attempt at familiarity or even intimacy with the divine power within
him. His love of personal solitude was a ruling passion, his
intellectual solitude was an overpowering necessity.... Hawthorne said
himself that his work grew in his brain as it went on, and was beyond
his control or direction, for nature was his guide.... I have often
thought that he understood his own greatness so imperfectly, that he
dared not expose the mystery to others, and that the sacredness of his
genius was to him like the sacredness of his love."
And did not Hawthorne write to his betrothed wife?--"Lights and shadows
are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know not whence
they come nor whither they go; nor do I inquire too closely into them.
It is dangerous to look too minutely into such phenomena." What we may
collect and set down of mere fact about his surroundings and his acts
relates itself, therefore, mainly to his outwardly real existence, to
the mere shell or mask of him, which was all that anybody could behold
with the eyes; and as for the interior and ideal existence, it is not
likely that we shall securely penetrate very far, where his own
impartial and introverted gaze stopped short. It is but a rough method
to infer with brusque self-confidence that we may judge from a few words
here and there the whole of his thought and feeling. A fair enough
notion may be formed as to the status of his post-collegiate life in
Salem, from the data we have, but we can do no more than guess at its
formative influence upon his genius. And I should be sorry to give an
impression that because his courtship went on in the old house by the
graveyard, of which he has written so soberly, there was any shadow of
melancholy upon that initiatory period of a new happiness. His
reflections concerning the spot had to do with his imaginative, or if
one choose, his "supernatural," existence; what actually passed there
had to do with the real and the personal, and with the life of the
affections. We may be sure that the meeting of two such perfected
spirits, so in harmony one with another, was attended with no qualified
degree of joy. If it was calm and reticent, without rush of excitement
or exuberant utterance, this was because movement at its acme becomes
akin to rest. Let us leave his love in that sanctity which, in his own
mind, it shared with his genius.
Picturesquely considered, however,--and the picturesque never goes very
deep,--it is certainly interesting to observe that Hawthorne and his
wife, both of Salem families, should have been born on opposite sides of
the same street, within the sound of a voice; should have gone in
separate directions, remaining unaware of each other's existence; and
then should finally have met, when well beyond their first youth, in an
old house on the borders of the ancient burial-ground in which the
ancestors of both reposed, within hail of the spot where both had first
seen the light.
When they became engaged, there was opposition to the match on the part
of Hawthorne's family, who regarded the seemingly confirmed invalidism
of Miss Peabody as an insuperable objection; but this could not be
allowed to stand in the way of a union so evidently pointed out by
providential circumstance and inherent adaptability in those who were to
be the parties to it. The engagement was a long one; but in the interval
before her marriage Miss Peabody's health materially improved.