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

“ Hawthorne” ( 1853)

“Hawthorne” (1853) George William Curtis A prolific author, travel writer, critic, and political journalist, George William Curtis (1824–1892) knew most of the major figures associated with New EnglandTranscendentalismandwasparticularlytakenwithEmerson .Curtisandhis brother James Burrill Curtis joined the Brook Farm community in 1842 and lived there as boarders for nearly a year and a half. Following a brief stint in New York, Curtis joined his brother in Concord in 1844, where they stayed with a farmer’s family for most of the next two years. He spent from 1846 to 1850 abroad, living in Europe, Egypt, and Syria. On his return to America, Curtis became one of the editors of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine when it began in 1852, and the following year he inaugurated a series of columns known as the “Editor’s Easy Chair” for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, which he continued for many years. The sketch that follows, which was quite influential in shaping Hawthorne’s personal reputation in the nineteenth century, is discussed at length in the introduction to this volume. Hawthorne has himself drawn the picture of the “Old Manse” in Concord. He has given to it that quiet richness of coloring which ideally belongs to an old country mansion. It seems so fitting a residence for one who loves to explore the twilight of antiquity—and the gloomier the better—that the visitor, among the felicities of whose life was included the freedom of the Manse, could not but fancy that our author’s eyes first saw the daylight enchanted by the slumberous orchard behind the house, or tranquillized into twilight by the spacious avenue in front. The character of his imagination , and the golden gloom of its blossoming, completely harmonize with the rusty, gable-roofed old house upon the river side, and the reader of his books would be sure that his boyhood and youth knew no other friends than the dreaming river, and the melancholy meadows and drooping foliage of its vicinity. Since the reader,however,would greatly mistake if he fancied this,in good sooth, the ancestral halls of the Hawthornes,—the genuine Hawthornden,— he will be glad to save the credit of his fancy by knowing that it was here [64] [64] [64] XZ our author’s bridal tour,—which commenced in Boston, then three hours away,—ended,and his married life began.Here,also,his first child was born, and here those sad and silver mosses accumulated upon his fancy,from which he heaped so soft a bed for our dreaming. “Between two tall gate-posts of rough hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash trees.” It was a pleasant spring day in the year 1842, and as they entered the house, nosegays of fresh flowers, arranged by friendly hands, welcomed them to Concord and summer. The dark-haired man, who led his wife along the avenue that afternoon, had been recently an officer of the customs in Boston, before which he had led a solitary life in Salem. Graduated with Longfellow at Bowdoin College, in Maine,he had lived a hermit in respectable Salem,an absolute recluse even from his own family, walking out by night and writing wild tales by day, most of which were burnt in his bachelor fire, and some of which, in newspapers, magazines, and annuals, led a wandering, uncertain, and mostly unnoticed life. Those tales, among this class, which were attainable, he collected into a small volume,and apprising the world that they were “twice-told,”sent them forth anew to make their own way,in the year 1837.But he piped to the world, and it did not dance.He wept to it,and it did not mourn.The book,however, as all good books do, made its way into various hearts. Yet the few penetrant minds which recognized a remarkable power and a method of strange fascination in the stories, did not make the public, nor influence the public mind. “I was,”he says in the last edition of these tales,“the most unknown author in America.”Full of glancing wit,of tender satire,of exquisite natural deception, of subtle and strange analysis of human life,darkly passionate and weird,they yet floated unhailed barques upon the sea of publicity,—unhailed, but laden and gleaming at every crevice with the true treasure of Cathay. Bancroft...