The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne | Page 8

overshadowing brows. He has
not the look of a dare-devil. One might suppose that he was a person of
rather an obstinate disposition, but it is always difficult to draw the line
between obstinacy and determination.
A similar miniature of his son Nathaniel, born in 1775, and who died at
Surinam in his thirty-fourth year, gives us the impression of a person
somewhat like his father, and also somewhat like his son Nathaniel. He
has a long face instead of a round one, and his features are more
delicate and refined than those of the bold Daniel. The expression is
gentle, dreamy and pensive, and unless the portrait belies him, he could
not have been the stern, domineering captain that he has been
represented. He had rather a slender figure, and was probably much
more like his mother, who was a Miss Phelps, than the race of Judge
Hathorne. He may have been a reticent man, but never a bold one, and
we find in him a new departure. His face is more amiable and attractive
than his father's, but not so strong. In 1799 he was married to Miss
Elizabeth Clarke Manning, the daughter of Richard Manning, and then
only nineteen years of age. She appears to have been an exceptionally
sensitive and rather shy young woman--such as would be likely to
attract the attention of a chivalrous young mariner--but with fine traits
of intellect and character.

The maternal ancestry of a distinguished man is quite as important as
the paternal, but in the present instance it is much more difficult to
obtain information concerning it. The increasing fame of Hawthorne
has been like a calcium-light, illuminating for the past fifty years
everything to which that name attaches, and leaving the Manning
family in a shadow so much the deeper. All we can learn of them now
is, that they were descended from Richard Manning, of Dartmouth in
Devonshire, England, whose son Thomas emigrated to Salem with his
widowed mother in 1679, but afterwards removed to Ipswich, ten miles
to the north, whence the family has since extended itself far and
wide,--the Reverend Jacob M. Manning, of the Old South Church, the
fearless champion of practical anti-slaveryism, having been among
them. It appears that Thomas's grandson Richard started in life as a
blacksmith, which was no strange thing in those primitive times; but,
being a thrifty and enterprising man, he lived to establish a line of
stage-coaches between Salem and Boston, and this continued in the
possession of his family until it was superseded by the Eastern Railway.
After this catastrophe, Robert Manning, the son of Richard and brother
of Mrs. Nathaniel Hathorne, became noted as a fruit-grower (a business
in which Essex County people have always taken an active interest),
and was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
The Mannings were always respected in Salem, although they never
came to affluent circumstances, nor did they own a house about the city
common. Robert Manning, Jr., was Secretary of the Horticultural
Society in Boston for a long term of years, a pleasant, kindly man, with
an aspect of general culture. Hawthorne's maternal grandmother was
Miriam Lord, of Ipswich, and his paternal grandmother was Rachel
Phelps, of Salem. His father was only thirty-three when he died at
Surinam.
In regard to the family name, there are at present Hawthornes and
Hathornes in England, and although the two names may have been
identical originally, they have long since become as distinct as Smith
and Smythe. I have discovered only two instances in which the first
William Hathorne wrote his own name, and in the various documents at
the State House in which it appears written by others, it is variously
spelled Hathorn, Hathorne, Hawthorn, Haythorne, and

Harthorne,--from which we can only conclude that the a was
pronounced broadly. It was not until the reign of Queen Anne, when
books first became cheap and popular, that there was any decided
spelling of either proper or common names. Then the printers took the
matter into their own hands and made witch-work enough of it. The
word "sovereign," for instance, which is derived from the old French
_souvrain_, and which Milton spelled "sovran," they tortured into its
present form,--much as the clerks of Massachusetts Colony tortured the
name of William Hathorne. This, however, was spelled Hathorne
oftener than in other ways, and it was so spelled in the two signatures
above referred to, one of which was attached as witness to a deed for
the settlement of the boundary between Lynn and Salem, [Footnote:
Also in Lathrop's "Hawthorne."] and the other to a report of the
commissioners for the investigation of the French vessels coming to
Salem and Boston in 1651, the two other commissioners being Samuel
Bradstreet and David Denison. [Footnote: Massachusetts