Hawthorne in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life,Drawn from Recollections,Interviews, and Memoirs by Family,Frie

“ Bowdoin College— Nathaniel Hawthorne” ( 1875)

“Bowdoin College—Nathaniel Hawthorne” (1875) John S. C. Abbott Written to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Bowdoin College’s class of 1825 and its most prominent member, the reminiscence that follows is among the best of the type that began to appear with increasing frequency after 1875. A classmate of Hawthorne and Longfellow, John Stevens Cabot Abbott (1805– 1877) was ordained a Congregational minister in 1830, after finishing his studies in theology at Andover Theological Seminary in 1829. Abbott held pastorates in Worcester, Roxbury, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, and in New Haven, Connecticut, but he made his reputation as an author of popular histories , biographies, and devotional and instructional tracts, rather than as a preacher. His major works include The Mother at Home (1833), A History of Napoleon Bonaparte (1855), A History of the Civil War in America (1863–1866), and A History of Frederick the Great (1871). Although Abbott borrowed some details of Hawthorne’s life in Concord from Curtis’s 1853 sketch printed above, his treatment of Hawthorne here, especially in its emphasis on his subject’s college days, is largely original. Remarking that during the four years of their collegiate intimacy “I cannot remember that I ever heard Hawthorne laugh,” his recollections of Hawthorne’s association with himself, Cilley, Cheever, and Pierce are nonetheless positive and, in many instances, quite flattering. Following its appearance, Abbott’s reminiscence became a source for other treatments of Hawthorne’s time at Bowdoin. Two of the more notable such works are Joseph W. Symonds’s Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Oration Delivered before the Alumni of Bowdoin College (1878) and George T. Packard’s “The College Days of Hawthorne” (The Christian Union 41 [26 June 1890]: 900–1). Ramblingly nostalgic about the Bowdoin of Hawthorne’s day and his place in it, both authors narrowly read Hawthorne’s inner life through reference to his fictional characters. For instance, after introducing the assembled alumni to “the men whose genius and fame have become a part of our common inheritance,” Symonds brings Hawthorne into his narrative this way: And among these, somewhat aloof from the group, in the seclusion of a strange experience, with a shadow resting upon his face, that might be of a [155] [155] XZ hawthorne in his own time [156] passing cloud, but does not pass, intent, absorbed, as if he had questioned guilt and sorrow for their darkest secret and was awaiting reply, or as if he were following to the utmost verge of thought the threads of somber hue on which human life is woven in woof of changeful light and shade, however memory may recall or fancy may paint him, will forever remain the noble presence of Nathaniel Hawthorne. (5–6) . . . Emerson has been credited with saying: “I do not love to see a distinctly-defined, clean-cut thought. I love rather to see a grand idea looming up majestic through the haze of obscurity.” Nathaniel Hawthorne was such a man. No one could read him. He dwelt in unrevealed recesses,which his most intimate friends were never permitted to penetrate. He entered Bowdoin College at the age of seventeen, a welldressed ,gentlemanly boy,of ordinary stature,but of unusually winning countenance and gentle manners. In a class of but about forty, nearly all dwelling in the same hall and meeting three or four times each day, in chapel or classroom , the members were thrown into the most intimate social relations. The soft tones of voice, remarkably sweet, modest address, and courteous bearing of Hawthorne rendered him universally popular. He was an accomplished scholar, a great reader, and he soon acquired the reputation of being one of the finest writers in the class. In such an intimacy of four years I cannot remember that I ever heard Hawthorne laugh, though his face was often brightened by a very winning smile. He never seemed melancholy, so as to oppress one’s spirits with gloom; but there was an aspect of silent pensiveness spread over his features, which arrested the eye and led one to inquire: “Who is that young man?” In saying that Hawthorne was popular the word must be used a little differently from its ordinary sense. There was no one in the class who would have taken the liberty of slapping him on the shoulder. He was a lonely man, living by himself; yet there was nothing in his demeanor to repel the friendly advances of any one. It may not be improper here to remark that the...