The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne | Page 9

Archives, x.
171.]The name was undoubtedly Hathorne, and so it continued with
one or two slight variations during the eighteenth century down to the
time of Nathaniel Hathorne, Jr., who entered and graduated at Bowdoin
College under that name, but who soon afterward changed it to
Hawthorne, for reasons that have never been explained.
All cognomens would seem to have been derived originally from some
personal peculiarity, although it is no longer possible to trace this back
to its source, which probably lies far away in the Dark Ages,--the
formative period of languages and of families. Sometimes, however,
we meet with individuals whose peculiarities suggest the origin of their
names: a tall, slender, long-necked man named Crane; or a timid,
retiring student named Leverett; or an over-confident, supercilious
person called Godkin In the name of Hawthorne also we may imagine a
curious significance: "When the may is on the thorn," says Tennyson.
The English country people call the flowering of the hawthorn "the
may." It is a beautiful tree when in full bloom. How sweet-scented and
delicately colored are its blossoms! But it seems to say to us, "Do not
come too close to me."

CHAPTER II
BOYHOOD OF HAWTHORNE: 1804-1821
Salem treasures the memory of Hawthorne, and preserves everything
tangible relating to him. The house in which he was born, No. 27 Union
Street, is in much the same style and probably of the same age as the
Old Manse at Concord, but somewhat smaller, with only a single
window on either side of the doorway--five windows in all on the front,
one large chimney in the centre, and the roof not exactly a gambrel, for
the true gambrel has a curve first inward and then outward, but
something like it. A modest, cosy and rather picturesque dwelling,
which if placed on a green knoll with a few trees about it might become
a subject for a sketching class. It did not belong to Hawthorne's father,
after all, but to the widow of the bold Daniel, It was the cradle of
genius, and is now a shrine for many pilgrims. Long may it survive, so
that our grandchildren may gaze upon it.
Here Nathaniel Hawthorne first saw daylight one hundred years ago
[Footnote: 1804.] on the Fourth of July, as if to make a protest against
Chauvinistic patriotism; here his mother sat at the window to see her
husband's bark sail out of the harbor on his last voyage; and here she
watched day after day for its return, only to bring a life- long sorrow
with it. The life of a sea-captain's wife is always a half- widowhood,
but Mrs. Hathorne was left at twenty-eight with three small children,
including a daughter, Elizabeth, older than Nathaniel, and another,
Louisa, the youngest. The shadow of a heavy misfortune had come
upon them, and from this shadow they never wholly escaped.
Lowell criticised a letter which John Brown wrote concerning his
boyhood to Henry L. Stearns, as the finest bit of autobiography of the
nineteenth century.[Footnote: _North American Review_, April 1860.]
It is in fact almost the only literature of the kind that we possess. A
frequent difficulty that parents find in dealing with their children is,
that they have wholly forgotten the sensations and impressions of their
own childhood. The instructor cannot place himself in the position of
the pupil. A naturalist will spend years with a microscope studying the

development of a plant from the seed, but no one has ever applied a
similar process to the budding of genius or even of ordinary intellect.
We have the autobiography of one of the greatest geniuses, written in
the calm and stillness of old age, when youthful memories come back
to us involuntarily; yet he barely lifts the veil from his own childhood,
and has much more to say of external events and older people than of
himself and his young companions. How valuable is the story of
George Washington and his hatchet, hackneyed as it has become! What
do we know of the boyhood of Franklin, Webster, Seward and
Longfellow? Nothing, or next to nothing.
[Illustration: WINDOW OF THIS CHAMBER]
Goethe says that the admirable woman is she who, when her husband
dies, becomes a father to his children; but in the case of Hawthorne's
mother, this did not happen to be necessary. Her brother, Robert
Manning, a thrifty and fairly prosperous young man, immediately took
Mrs. Hathorne and her three children into his house on Herbert Street,
and made it essentially a home for them afterward. To the fatherless
boy he was more than his own father, away from home ten months of
the year, ever could have been; and though young Nathaniel must have
missed that tenderness of feeling which a man can only entertain
toward his own