The Portland daily press., 1881-01-15
The Concord Conversation upon
Hawthorne.

EDITORS Easy Chair, in Harper's Magazine.l
The conversation upon Hawthorne which
took place at Concord last Summer, and upon
which the Easy Chair comm ented with favor
as supplying many vivid and interesting
glimpses of his life and character, has been crit
icised severely by Mr.. Julian Hawthorne so far
as Mr.. Alcott's contribution is concerned. Miss
Peabody, also, seems to have been somewhat
in error in describing certain details of the old
or Hawthorne homestead. AS the Easy Chair
wido andi enoo to tfe cor, v,,4satios,, it
its duty to make one or two corrections, that
the future estimate of our great author, so far
as early domestic influences are involved, may
not be inaccurate.
The conversation represented the mother of
Hawthorne as Withdrawing to her chamber
after her husbands death, and mainly passing
the rest of her life there in morbid retirement,
and clothed always in white. The picture of
the elder Mrs. Hawthorne, indeed was a sim
guar reproduction of Dickenss grotesque por-
trait OF Miss Haversham. Whoever saw it and
reflected upon the influence of such morbid
oddity upon young and sensitively imagina-
tive child, might easily find in this fact alone
key to much of the singular shyness and run
hhS " SOfCi VI ddWbuOTu6 ulIUS6lI. But
there has been some misunderstanding or mis-
reporting. Mrs. Hawthorne was not especial
ly addicted to seclusion or to dressing in white
indeed, it is not clear that she ever did So
and her house was a free and joyous resort for
the younger people. Mrs. Hawthorne was a
widow, and lived quietly with her family up
on moderate income, and her son Nathaniel
was always shy and solitary. Ii is very posi-.
hla hat N nj dave Hoxp
stories of his early life with the sly, humorous
and fanciful exaggeration which was charac-
teristic, and that such ''tales of the grotesaue
and arabesque" were received by the bearers
as sooer variations The Easy Chair itself has
heard him speak of old Salem and his life
there, but al his illusions to his own habits
pointed only to the child as father of the man,
and there was no implication or insnuation
that the family household was in any way SO
extraordinary as the figure of his mother as
the impression were derived from him, it was
misapp rehended play of characteristic hu-
NOR.
So captivating and shadowy personality as
Hawthorne's is sure to provoke curiosity
which seizes upon the marvellous as probable
He was singularly reticent with his tongue
and communicative only with his pen. In
deed, the careful reader of his works, as he fol-
lows, fascinated, the enchanted line, will be
surprised 10 see how much Hawthorne has
told of himself. Everything that can be known
of such men is not, indeed, too much, and the
desire to know every detail is nsuperabe.
But 1t is precisely of such yelled figures, also
that the most fanciful tales are told and 1est-
less curiosity envelops them in romance
Witch-haunted Salem teens with strange le-
gends OF its most famous son, but they are not
to be received as history or biography; they
are tributes of loyalty to genius, and signs of
the nndying interest in great men. Mr.. Par
ton has shown how a reverent mythology has
accumulated about Washington, from the hat
chet and the cherry tree to the prayer in the
snowy wood. Washington's head is girt with
an aureola of fable The terrible tests of mod
ern criticism and investigation rob us of the
Roman wolf sucking Romulus and Remus,
and reduce William Tell TO myth. Even the
white-headed warrior suddenly appearing to
repel the Indian attack upon HadIey-one of
the most heroic and inspiring traditions of our
early history-vanishes at the Ithuriel touch
of Mr.. Sheldon. Of all our renowned authors
there is none around whom strange stories
would so certainly gather as around the re-
mote and silent Hawthorne. and no such sto-
ries should be SO carefully scrutinized as those
told of him.