Hawthorne

by Brenda Wineapple

  46   “I know that”: EH to ECH, May 14, 1822, Bowdoin.

  47   “As steady as”: NH to EH, Aug. 5, 1822, C XV, p. 174.

  48   His braggadocio …“De Patris”: Minutes, Executive Government, Bowdoin College, July 26, 1824. The speech is in the Bowdoin College Library.

  49   He often stopped: George J. Little to unknown, n.d., PE.

  50   “I verily beleive”: NH to EH, Oct. 1, 1824, C XV, p. 184.

  51   “rarely sought”: Personal Recollections, p. 47.

  52   “My term bills”: NH to EH, Oct. 1, 1824, C XV, p. 185.

  53   “Uncle Richard seemed”: NH to EH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 194.

  54   “I am perfectly satisfied”: EH to NH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 195.

  55   “The family had before”: NH to EH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 194. NH alludes to his embarrassment at unmerited praise in “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” calling it a “miserable and humiliating torture.” See “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 97.

  56   “say this for the purpose,” “I did hope”: NH to EH, July 14, 1825, C XV, p. 194.

  57   Bridge declined … Nathaniel was Commander: Personal Recollections, p. 41.

  58   The graduation took place: Courtesy Carolyn Moseley, Bowdoin College Archives.

  59   “Already has a voice”: Lawrance Thompson, Young Longfellow (New York: Macmillan, 1938), p. 71.

  CHAPTER FIVE: THAT DREAM OF UNDYING FAME

  1     “without mercy”: Preface to Twice-told Tales,” in Tales, p. 1150; see also NH to Cornelius Mathews and ED, Dec. 22, 1841, C XV, p. 600.

  2     “I am as tractable”: NH to Charles W. Webber, Dec. 14, 1848, C XVI, p. 251.

  3     “He always puts”: MM to Horace Mann Jr., Apr. 24, 1864, Antioch.

  4     “formed several plans”: Personal Recollections, p. 67.

  5     “Uncle Manning’s counting-house”: Personal Recollections, p. 67.

  6     But even before graduating: “The Ocean” and “Moonlight,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, pp. 6–7. Both were published before his graduation, the former appearing in the Salem Gazette, Aug. 26, 1825, and the latter in the Gazette, Sept. 2, 1825.

  7     Then he’d walk … Or he’d hike: George Holyoke to G. M. Williamson, Nov. 10, 1901, BY; Rebecca Manning, “Some Facts about Hawthorne,” PE; EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft; EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

  8     Ebe recalled: See Chapter 2; EH also remembered that two stories, “Alice Doane” and “Susan Grey,” were tales of witchcraft, EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft. “Alice Doane” is likely an earlier version of the story “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” published in The Token in 1835. For the best account and possible dating of NH’s early tales, see Nelson F. Adkins, “The Early Projected Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 39 (1945), pp. 119–55, and Nelson F. Adkins “Notes on the Hawthorne Canon,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 60 (1966), pp. 364–67. Although most scholars agree with Adkins and the Centenary editors in doubting that NH wrote “The Interrupted Nuptials,” published on Oct. 12, 1827, in the Salem Gazette, the crudely melodramatic story could represent NH’s earliest style; and with its tale of a sister and brother about to wed one another, it thematically fits the sketchy outline of “We Are Seven.” See C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., “ ‘The Interrupted Nuptials’: A Question of Attribution,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, 1971, ed. C. E. Frazer Clark Jr., pp. 49–66.

  9     “That wild fellow”: “P’s Correspondence,” in Tales, p. 1020.

  10   “It is American”: John Neal, American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine, ed. Fred Lewis Pattee (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1937), pp. 10, 200. See also David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 198–214.

  11   However, in his earliest: John Neal’s own Quaker upbringing and the mistreatment he endured in boyhood bear comparison to Hawthorne’s tale of the woebegone Quaker child of “The Gentle Boy.” See Benjamin Lease, That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1972).

  12   Two of the stories: “The Hollow of the Three Hills” was published without attribution in the Salem Gazette (Nov. 12, 1830), and “An Old Woman’s Tale” appeared without attribution in the Gazette (Dec. 21, 1830). The setting of “The Hollow of the Three Hills” suggests a very early composition date, for its visionary landscape loosely refers to Portland, Maine, a city set in a hollow among two hills—as well as Boston, the standard interpretation.

  13   “Then came a measured”: “The Hollow of the Three Hills,” in Tales, p. 33. See Dan McCall, Citizens of Somewhere Else (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1999), chap. 2, whose fine analysis of this story also links it to several Dickinson poems and to John Gibson Lockhart’s Adam Blair, an understated connection.

  14   “Oho!”: “An Old Woman’s Tale,” in Tales, p. 33.

  15   Identifying with: See Horace Conolly to William D. Northend to Henry Johnson, n.d., Bowdoin.

  16   “All really educated men”: “New York University,” in Hawthorne as Editor, ed. Arlin Turner (University: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1941), p. 195. Likely the comment is NH’s, or at least was approved by him, if written by EH.

  17   His reading … He relished: EH to JTF, Jan. 28, 1871, BPL.

  18   They used Aunt Mary Manning’s: The most complete list of the borrowings from the Salem Athenaeum remains Marion L. Kesselring, “Hawthorne’s Reading, 1828–1850,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 53:2 (Feb. 1949), pp. 55–71, 121–38, 173–94. But Kesselring, like later biographers, tends to forget that these books served the entire Hawthorne family, who were avid readers. For example, the course in French literature that Kesselring says Hawthorne planned for himself was doubtless planned by EH for herself, and many of the novels were doubtless intended for LH or ECH and perhaps other family members. When she visited relatives, LH, herself a proud reader, told her mother in mock horror that “I heard a young lady the other day talking about Goldsmith the author of Rasselas!” Then she asked plaintively, “Have you read anything new since I came away? There is nothing to read here. I should really like a good book” (LH to ECH, Aug. 12, 1827, Berg).

  19   “I am sure nobody”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

  20   “fantastic dreams”: “The Hollow of the Three Hills,” in Tales, p. 7.

  21   “The knowledge, communicated,” “Fancy must”: “Sir William Phips,” in Tales, p. 12.

  22   “a mood half savage”: Personal Recollections, p. 68.

  23   In another version of events: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft. See also Lathrop, A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 135.

  24   “inexorable”: Personal Recollections, p. 68.

  25   “He did not wish”: JH, “Hawthorne’s Philosophy,” holograph manuscript, Huntington. See also J. Donald Crowley, “Historical Commentary,” in Twice-told Tales, CIX, p. 486.

  26   Presumably he put: AF to JH, Feb. 27, 1904, bMS Am 1745(4), Houghton.

  27   Similarly, he burned: See, for example, Personal Recollections, p. 69. See also SH to JTF, Oct. 14, 1865, BPL: “If he journalized before 1835, he destroyed the books.”

  28   “Knowing the impossibility”: “Passages from a Relinquished Work,” in Tales, p. 183. See Chapter 6: three tales sent to Samuel Goodrich in 1830, “Alice Doane,” “The Gentle Boy,” and “My Uncle Molineux,” were doubtless modified versions, if not the actual stories, originally intended for Seven Tales.

  29   On March 30, 1826: Elizabeth Manning, “The Boyhood of Hawthorne,” p. 501.

  30   In 1825: Nathaniel Hathorne, logbook, inscribed by NH in 1825, Huntington.


  31   “Nath. Hawthorne”: See the logbook of NH’s father, inscribed by NH in 1825 as “Nathaniel Hathorne, Salem 1825; Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Huntington. He also inscribed his name “Nath. Hawthorne” on the 1825 Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy (Boston: Hilliard, 1825). Hawthorne likely changed the spelling of his name when he reached his majority, although I have found no corroborating legal documents.

  32   “We were in those days”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

  33   When Samuel introduced … a great-uncle: Colonel John Hathorne (1749–1834), the nephew of NH’s grandfather Daniel, was a moderately wealthy merchant involved in the shipping, dry goods, and goldsmith businesses (the possible model for Peter Hovenden in “The Artist of the Beautiful”) and a gentleman farmer who retired to his estate near Salem Neck. He remained a close friend of the Reverend William Bentley and a Republican. His children died young, with the exception of Ebenezer (1789–1858), a Custom House clerk and Democrat whom NH knew. But doubtless NH’s animosity toward the Hathornes came in part from the stories told him by his second cousin Susanna Ingersoll. See Chapter 11.

  34   “Perhaps that is”: Horace Conolly to William D. Northend to Henry Johnson, n.d., Bowdoin. In old documents, the name was variously spelled Hathorn, Hathorne, Harthorne, and Hawthorne.

  35   Whatever the reason: George William Curtis, who met Hawthorne at Brook Farm, wrote soon after Hawthorne’s death that he’d changed the spelling of his name after discovering the original spelling. See George William Curtis, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Essays from the North American Review, ed. Allen Thorndike Rice (New York: D. Appleton, 1879), p. 336; the essay originally appeared as “Hawthorne,” North American Review 99 (Oct. 1864), pp. 539–57.

  36   The other youth: Another model for the character is his classmate Gorham Deane, who died before graduation, and to a lesser extent Cotton Mather’s brother Nathanael, buried at Charter Street. Cotton Mather said that “study kill’d him.” See Kenneth Silverman, Cotton Mather and His Times (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 76–77. The inscription is still visible, its irony intact and not lost on Hawthorne: “An Aged person that had seen but Nineteen Winters in the World.” See also “Lost Notebook,” n.d., in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, CXXIII, p. 205.

  37   Made for and by: Walcott also bears comparison with Bridge, who began to call himself Edward in his letters to Hawthorne. Also, taking the epigraph of the first chapter from Love’s Labour’s Lost, Hawthorne compares the all-male Harley College to the commonwealth of learning ridiculed by Shakespeare. Thus Hawthorne implies that Fanshawe ultimately chooses not just celibacy but a celibacy sanctioned by (and performed in) the company of men.

  38   “dreams of undying fame”: Fanshawe, p. 18.

  39   “The road, at all times”: Fanshawe, p. 89.

  40   “She knew not”: Fanshawe, p. 97.

  41   “tie that shall”: Fanshawe, pp. 99, 111.

  42   “drew her husband”: Fanshawe, p. 114.

  43   “Theirs was a long”: Fanshawe, p. 114.

  44   Grandmother Manning died: In addition, at her death Maria Manning had bequeathed half of the property due her from their father’s estate.

  45   “It was my fortune”: Quoted in NHHW, vol. 1, p. 96, and corroborated almost verbatim in Richard Stoddard, “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” National Magazine 2:1 (1853), p. 18.

  46   Reportedly given: Master’s degree, Huntington. One suspects that some sort of proof of advanced scholarship was required, although the degree was conferred routinely, according to the Laws of Bowdoin College, 1825 printing, courtesy Carolyn Moseley: “Law 61. Every Bachelor, who, in the third year after the first degree given to his class, having preserved a good moral character, shall attend at commencement and perform the appointed public exercises, unless excused, may receive the degree of Master of Arts. The part to be performed by a Bachelor shall be presented to the President for his examination as early as the Monday before commencement. The candidates for a Medical degree shall also, unless excused, attend at commencement, and must possess a good moral character. Law 62. Each candidate for the second degree shall pay the sum of five dollars for the public dinner. Candidates for either degree shall pay five dollars each to the Treasurer for the President. Candidates for either degree, if they seasonably request it, may be furnished with a diploma, signed by the President and Secretary of the Trustees, for which three dollars shall be paid to the Treasurer, one of which is for the President.”

  When Hawthorne was awarded his degree, so were John S. C. Abbot, Samuel P. Benson, Cyrus H. Coolidge, David Hayes, William Hale, John D. Kinsman, Josiah S. Little, Stephen Longfellow, Henry W. Longfellow, Thomas Macdougall, George W. Pierce, and Edward J. Vose.

  Hawthorne’s master’s degree was recorded in the Sept. 3, 1828, Votes of the Trustees.

  47   “I wish to God”: Horace Conolly to William D. Northend to Henry Johnson, n.d., Bowdoin.

  48   “not going to work”; “as so much”: EH to JTF, Dec. 13 and 16 [1870], BPL; Rebecca Manning, “Some Thoughts about Hawthorne,” PE.

  49   “not to be forgotten” … “He could have borne”: “The Ambitious Guest,” in Tales, p. 301.

  50   “it is our nature”: “The Ambitious Guest,” in Tales, p. 303.

  51   “The story had been told”: “The Ambitious Guest,” in Tales, p. 306.

  52   “Who has not heard”: “The Ambitious Guest,” Tales, p. 306.

  53   “Fame—some very”: “Lost Notebook,” in Miscellaneous Prose and Verse, C XXIII, p. 169.

  54   They were all killed: NH visited the scene of the disaster in 1832 but may have begun the story, or an early version of it, much earlier. “The Ambitious Guest” first appeared in the New-England Magazine 8 (June 1835), but the date of the composition of this and other early stories is far from certain. I would date it quite early, perhaps shortly after the Willey disaster and/or around when Fanshawe was written. Parts of “The Ambitious Guest” also resemble Fanshawe (which EH said was begun early, in college). The villain dies below a precipice in an unmarked grave, “but the legend, though my version of it may be forgotten, will long be traditionary in that lonely spot, and give to the rock, and the precipice, and the fountain, an interest thrilling to the bosom of the romantic wanderer” (p. 108).

  Although many scholars assume Hawthorne destroyed most of the manuscripts for “We Are Seven,” I tend to think that he probably saved ample portions of them to rework later, as in the case of “Alice Doane.” There is also reason to believe that some of Hawthorne’s unattributed work has yet to be discovered. In any case, given the obscure chronology of composition, I tend to group several stories thematically and on occasion, as in the case of “The Ambitious Guest” and “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” I willingly entertain the notion that some stories were conceived or composed earlier than traditionally assumed and then recycled for the later volume, Provincial Tales. Certainly Hawthorne did just this when gathering materials for Twice-told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse.

  55   The surrogate father’s: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” first published in 1831 in The Token (dated 1832). See also Nina Baym, The Shape of Hawthorne’s Career (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 15–53.

  56   “I have loved you”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 90.

  57   “mental horrors”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 98.

  58   “one secret thought”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 98.

  59   “not unlike a gigantic gravestone”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 88.

  60   “The vow that”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 107.

  61   Fusing psychological obsession: Frederick Crews, The Sins of the Fathers, pp. 80–95, remains the best psychological reading of the story; similarly, Michael Colacurcio’s historicist reading, in The Provin
ce of Piety (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 107–30, has not been surpassed, but see Diane Naples, “ ‘Roger Malvin’s Burial’: A Parable for Historians?,” American Transcendental Quarterly 13 (1972), pp. 45–48. Gloria Erlich usefully follows Crews but insists on interpreting Roger Malvin solely as Robert Manning, when the initials “RM” refer to Grandfather Manning as well as his two sons; see Erlich, Family Themes and Hawthorne’s Fiction, pp. 113–17

  62   “Your tears” … “sin was”: “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” in Tales, p. 107.

  63   “Your father”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

  64   A stalwart Democrat: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft; EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

  65   “At that time”: According to EH, NH met “Susan” circa 1833. See EH to UH, transcribed by JH, Feb. 14, 1862, Bancroft.

  66   “I should have feared”: EH to JTF, Dec. 26 [1870], BPL.

  67   Children of the night: See “The Interrupted Nuptials,” published Oct. 12, 1827, Salem Gazette.

  68   “they know not what”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 206.

  69   “Thoughts meant”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 207.

  70   “my very,” “with indisputable”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 209.

  71   “as if a fiend”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 211.

  72   The women don’t: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 216.

  73   “We are a people”: “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” in Tales, p. 206.

  74   The narrator: A fine discussion of the artist in Hawthorne’s work remains Millicent Bell, Hawthorne’s View of the Artist (Albany: State Univ. of New York, 1962).

  CHAPTER SIX: STORYTELLER

  1     “By some fatality”: EH to UH, Feb. 26, 1865, transcribed by JH, Bancroft.

  2     They moved: The family sold Mary Manning the Herbert Street property for two thousand dollars on June 2, 1829; she converted the house for tenants.