Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/571

Rh HAWTHORNE 537 American ballad-lore. He too was a privateer, commander of the brig &quot;Fair American,&quot; which, cruising off the coast of Portugal, fell in with a British scow laden with troops for General Howe, which scow the bold Hathonie and his valiant crew at once engaged, and fought for over an hour, UHtil the vanquished enemy was glad to cut the Yankee grapplings and quickly bear away. The last of the Hathornes with whom we are concerned was a son of this sturdy old privateer, Nathaniel Hathonie. He was born in 1776, and about the beginning of the present century married Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, a daughter of Eichard Manning of Salem, whose ancestors emigrated to America about fifty years after the arrival of William Hathorne. Young Nathaniel took his hereditary place before the mast, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, made voyages to the East and West Indies, Brazil, and Africa, and finally died of .fever at Surinam, in the spring of 1808. He was the father of three children, the second of whom, Nathaniel, was born at Salem, July 4, 1804. After the death of her husband Mrs Ilathorne removed to the house of her father with her little family of children. Of the boyhood of Nathaniel no particulars have reached us, except that he was fond of taking long walks alone, and that he used to declare to his mother that he would go to sea some time, and would never return. Among the books that he is known to have read as a child were Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Thomson, The Castle of Indolence being an especial favourite. In the autumn of 1818 his mother removed to Raymond, a town in Cumberland county, Maine, where his uncle, Eichard Manning, had built a large and ambitious dwelling. Here the lad resumed his solitary walks, exchanging the narrow streets of Salem for the boundless, primeval wilderness, and its sluggish harbour for the fresh, bright waters of Sebago lake. He roamed the woods by day, with his gun and rod, and in the moon light nights of winter skated upon the lake alone till mid night. When he found himself away from home, and wearied with his exercise, he took refuge in a log cabin where half a tree would be burning upon the hearth. He had by this time acquired a taste for writing, that showed itself in a little blank-book, in which he jotted down his woodland adventures and feelings, and which was remark able for minute observation and nice perception of nature. After a year s residence at Eaymond, Nathaniel returned to Salem in order to prepare for college. He amused himself by publishing a manuscript periodical, which he called the Spectator, and which displayed considerable vivacity and talent. He speculated upon the profession that he would follow, with a sort of prophetic insight into his future. &quot; I do not want to be a doctor and live by men s diseases,&quot; he wrote to his mother, &quot;nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So I don t see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by your son, with Hawthorne s Works printed on their backs]&quot; Nathaniel entered Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in the autumn of 1821, where he became acquainted with two students who were destined to distinction Henry W. Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. He was an excellent classical scholar, his Latin compositions, even in his fresh man year, being remarkable for their elegance, while his Greek (which was less) was good. He made graceful translations from the Roman poets, and wrote several English poems which were creditable to him. After his graduation three years later, he returned to Salem, and to a life of isolation. He devoted his mornings to stvldy, his afternoons to writing, and his evenings to long walks along the rocky coast. He was scarcely known by sight to his townsmen, and he held so little communication with the members of his own family that his meals were frequently left at his locked door. He wrote largely, but destroyed many of his manuscripts, his taste was so difficult to please. He thought well enough, however, of one of his composi tions to print it anonymously in 1828. A crude melo dramatic story, entitled Fanshaive, it was unworthy even of his immature powers, and should never have been rescued from the oblivion which speedily overtook it. The name of Nathaniel Hawthorne finally became known to his country men as a writer in The Token, a holiday annual which was commenced in 1828 by Mr S. G. Goodrich (better known as &quot; Peter Parley &quot;), by whom it was conducted for fourteen years. This forgotten publication numbered among its contributors most of the prominent American writers of the time, none of whom appear to have added to their reputation in its pages, except the least popular of all Hawthorne, who was for years the obscurest man of letters in America, though he gradually made admirers in a quiet way. His first public recognition came from England, where his genius was discovered in 1835 by the late Henry F. Chorley, one of the editors of the Athenceum, in which he copied three of Hawthorne s most characteristic papers from The Token. He had but little encouragement to continue in literature, for Mr Goodrich was so much more a publisher than an author that he paid him wretchedly for his contributions, and still more wretchedly for his work upon an American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knoivledge, which he persuaded him to edit. This author- publisher consented, however, at a later period (1837) to title of Twice-told Tales. A moderate edition was got rid of, but the great body of the reading public ignored the book altogether. It was generously reviewed in the North American Review by his college friend Longfellow, who said it came from the hand of a man of genius, and praised it for the exceeding beauty of its style, which was as clear as running waters. The want of pecuniary success which had so far attended his authorship led Hawthorne to accept a situation which was tendered him by Mr George Bancroft, the historian, collector of the port of Boston under the Democratic rule of President Van Buren. He was appointed a weigher in the custom-house at a salary of about $1200 a year, and entered upon the duties of his office, which consisted for the most part in measuring coal, salt, and other bulky com modities on foreign vessels. It was irksome employment, but faithfully performed for two years, when he was super seded through a change in the national administration. Master of himself once more, he returned to Salem, where he remained until the spring of 1841, when he wrote a collection of children s stories entitled Grandfather s Chair, and joined an industrial association at West Roxbury, Mass. Brook Farm, as it was called, was a social Utopia, composed of a number of advanced thinkers, whose object was so to distribute manual labour as to give its members time for intellectual culture. The scheme worked admir ably on paper ; but it was suited neither to the tempera ment nor the taste of Hawthorne, and after trying it patiently for nearly a year he returned to the everyday life of mankind. One of Hawthorne s earliest admirers was Miss Sophia Peabody, a lady of Salem, whom he married in the summer of 1842. He made himself a new home in an old manse, at Concord, Mass., situated on historic ground, in sight of an old revolutionary battlefield, and devoted himself diligently to literature. He was known to the few by his Twice-told Tales, and to the many by his papers in the Democratic Revie^v. He published in 1842 a second portion of Grandfather s Chair, and in 1845 a second volume of Twice-told Tales. He edited, during the latter year the XI. 68
 * bring out a collection of Hawthorne s writings under the