The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne | Page 3

Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones would have admired it. America,
excepting in New York City, escaped the false rococo taste of the
eighteenth century.
The Salem sea-captains of old times were among the boldest of our
early navigators; sailing among the pirates of the Persian Gulf and
trading with the cannibals of Polynesia, and the trophies which they
brought home from those strange regions, savage implements of war
and domestic use, clubs, spears, boomerangs, various cooking utensils,
all carved with infinite pains from stone, ebony and iron-wood, cloth
from the bark of the tapa tree, are now deposited in the Peabody
Academy, where they form one of the largest collections of the kind
extant. Even more interesting is the sword of a sword-fish, pierced
through the oak planking of a Salem vessel for six inches or more. No
human force could do that even with a spear of the sharpest steel. Was

the sword-fish roused to anger when the ship came upon him sleeping
in the water; or did he mistake it for a strange species of whale?
There is a court-house on Federal Street, built in Webster's time, of
hard cold granite in the Grecian fashion of the day, not of the white
translucent marble with which the Greeks would have built it. Is it the
court-house where Webster made his celebrated argument in the White
murder case, or was that court-house torn down and a plough run
through the ground where it stood, as Webster affirmed that it ought to
be? Salem people were curiously reticent in regard to that trial, and
fashionable society there did not like Webster the better for having the
two Knapps convicted.
Much more valuable than such associations is William Hunt's
full-length portrait of Chief Justice Shaw, which hangs over the judge's
bench in the front court-room. "When I look at your honor I see that
you are homely, but when I think of you I know that you are great." it is
this combination of an unprepossessing physique with rare dignity of
character which Hunt has represented in what many consider the best of
American portraits. It is perhaps too much in the sketchy style of
Velasquez, but admirable for all that.
Time has dealt kindly with Salem, in effacing all memorials of the
witchcraft persecution, except a picturesque old house at the corner of
North and Essex Streets, where there are said to have been preliminary
examinations for witchcraft,--a matter which concerns us now but
slightly. The youthful associations of a genius are valuable to us on
account of the influence which they may be supposed to have had on
his early life, but associations which have no determining consequences
may as well be neglected. The hill where those poor martyrs to
superstition were executed may be easily seen on the left of the city, as
you roll in on the train from Boston. It is part of a ridge which rises
between the Concord and Charles Rivers and extends to Cape Ann,
where it dives into the ocean, to reappear again like a school of krakens,
or other marine monsters, in the Isles of Shoals.
New England has not the fertile soil of many sections of the United
States, and its racking climate is proverbial, but it is blessed with the

two decided advantages of pure water and fine scenery. There is no
more beautiful section of its coast than that between Salem Harbor and
Salisbury Beach, long stretches of smooth sand alternating with bold
rocky promontories. A summer drive from Swampscott to Marblehead
reminds one even of the Bay of Naples (without Vesuvius), and the
wilder coast of Cape Ann, with its dark pines, red-roofed cottages, and
sparkling surf, is quite as delightful. William Hunt went there in the last
sad years of his life to paint "sunshine," as he said; and Whittier has
given us poetic touches of the inland scenery in elevated verse:
"Fleecy clouds casting their shadows Over uplands and meadows; And
country roads winding as roads will, Here to a ferry, there to a mill."
Poets arise where there is poetic nourishment, internal and external, for
them to feed on; and it is not surprising that a Whittier and a
Hawthorne should have been evolved from the environment in which
they grew to manhood.
It is a common saying with old Boston families that their ancestors
came to America in the "Arbella" with Governor Winthrop, but as a
matter of fact there were at least fifteen vessels that brought colonists to
Massachusetts in 1630, and I cannot discover that any lists of their
passengers have been preserved. The statement that certain persons
came over at the same time with Governor Winthrop might soon
become a tradition that they came in the same ship with him; but all