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.

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