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

“ Nathaniel Hawthorne” ( 1880)

“Nathaniel Hawthorne” (1880) George B. Loring Although he prepared as a physician at Harvard, George Bailey Loring (1817– 1891) spent the greater part of his career as a conservative politican, holding positions such as postmaster of Salem, chairman of the Massachusetts State Republican Committee, U.S. commissioner of agriculture, and U.S. minister to Portugal. Loring typically wrote essays on politics and agriculture, but had Hawthorne lived, he would have found in his former friend a clever and sensitive reader who applauded the strength implicit in Hawthorne’s Calvinist lineage and understood more clearly than most that he consciously divided his public (including familial) and creative time between the real world and the supernatural. In 1882, Loring drew an address on the real and the supernatural in Hawthorne ’s life and writings from the essay that follows (see “Pictures of Hawthorne . From an Address by the Hon. G. B. Loring,” New-York Tribune [25 April 1882]: 6:1). In the address as reported, he developed his subject with the exactness of a scientist and included this anecdote, likely for oratorical effect: “Theodore Parker once said to me he had no idea that Hawthorne understood his own genius or comprehended the philosophical meaning of many of the circumstances or characters found in his books; that his characters were true to Nature, in spite of himself.” When . . . we approach the investigation of a character like Hawthorne’s, we start with a feeling that our vision must inevitably be limited. His horizon is so much more vast than ours, that we hardly expect to view it, either with the naked eye,or with any artificial aid within our reach.But we can turn with interest and satisfaction to the circumstances under which he was developed, and the influences by which he was surrounded.The fact that he was born in Salem may not amount to much to other people, but it amounted to a great deal to him. The sturdy and defiant spirit of his progenitor, who first landed on these shores,found a congenial abode....He was a stern separatist ...and had that liberal religious faith which made the Plymouth colony the home [187] [187] XZ hawthorne in his own time [188] of the persecuted, and gave it immortal power in controlling the religious and political systems of our land; but he was also a warrior, a politician, a legislator, a legal adviser, a merchant, an orator with persuasive speech. His piety seldom drove him to fanaticism, and he had a sound and just understanding of the wants of those about him, and of the form of government under which they were to live—an understanding so clear that whenever he surrendered as a magistrate to the heated and intolerant spirit of his times,he did it reluctantly and with mental and moral protest. He had great powers of mind and body, and forms a conspicuous figure in that imposing and heroic group which stands around the cradle of New England. The generations of the family that followed took . . . [a] prominent part in the manly adventures which marked our entire colonial period. With less religious demonstration than the first of their line on this continent, they were severe and gloomy justices ,strong and successful farmers,bold and adventurous mariners,down to the time when the great author was born. It was among the family traditions gathered from the Indian wars, the tragic and awful spectre of the witchcraft delusion, the wild life of the privateer, that he first saw the light, and while he was yet a child the death of his father in a distant port was impressed upon his mind as one of the solemn mysteries of the sea. It was not a conspicuous, but it was an intimate part which his progenitors performed in that period which constitutes the romance of American history. . . . There was never a more intense Hathorne than the father of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the silent, sombre sailor, who represented all the courage and power of the family, with a busy and thoughtful mind which dwelt upon that curious and interesting family-record with a sort of superstitious awe and deep admiration. So far as any inheritance of faculties from his father’s line is concerned, Hawthorne had a right to be a powerful, thoughtful, reticent, dreamy, brooding, sensible, unambitious,retiring man—and he was....[H]is mother simply added to all these qualities greater intensity and more fervor from her own soul. . . . The qualities of mind...