Dark Tales (With Original Illustrations). Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Dark Tales (With Original Illustrations) - Nathaniel Hawthorne


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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.

      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


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