The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-11-15
THE HAWTHORNE MEMOIRS.
Sketches of Two Remarkable Characters
The Home Life of a Man Of Genius.

titled "Nathanlel hawthorne anu LIE NH0' 10
a piece of literary work which has many merits
and will attract many readers. 1t reveals with
singular c~learness the inner life Of Hawthorne
and his wife, their fitness for each other, their
intimate and tender affection, the singular
beauty of their married career, and the way IN
which an unusually wise and tender woman
aided a man of genius and sustained him IN his
work. The story is written without ambition
and without reserve. There are parts Of it, like
the letters of his college friends and his own
love letters, which add little to our knowledge of
Hawthorne, and seem below the high level on
which his own life was lived; but these
are almost the only blemishes, If, indeed,
they are truly such, upon a work OF
singular delcaey, beauty and honest reNe-
lations. The reader is admitted to
the utmost intimacy with the Hawthorne house
hold, father, mother, children, family, friends,
but such was the genuineness OF the lines here
recounted that the revelations of home dolngs
do not seem light or trivial. The biography is
almost purely domestic, especially the first vol
ume, with which alone an attempt Will be made
to deal in this first article. One knows hardly
whom most to admlre-Hawthorne or his wife.
The son has drawn the portraits Of each With
tenderness and vigor, and apparent truthtulness,
and has made out of fragmentary matters: what
was left after Hawthorne had put his best into
his romanees, a graphic and slngularly Ylvld
story. His materials IL one sense have been in
adequate. Hawthorne was not in any sense a
public man. He was all his life a literary re-
cluse, aware of his unique power of imagination,
aware, too, of his weakness as a man among
men, and, in some degrees in public life, in no
way ever forcing himself upon the attention Of
the public. No one can study this biography
faithfully without becoming aware that a diff
cult story has been remarkably well told. Some
disappointment may be felt because there
70 -A aha.,E nufhaupn- pa0fhndc
of writing, and about the growth of his literary
power, but hints of this in his own
words are freely scattered through these
ample pages, and there is much evidence to show
how he grew, and how his greatest romances
became the living creations of his imagination.
Mr.. Julian Hawthorne has all the strength that
comes of a good literary style and a good
method, and these volumes are a constant illus
tration of the way in which a genuine and nat
ural writer is able to hold the interest of his
readers while he is unfolding his theme. The
biography might, perhaps, bear more eolorirg,
but there is safety in a wise reticence, and Mr..
Hawthorne has usually left out unimportant
matters and made a portrait in which his father
stands on his true ground, and passes for what
men concede him to have been.
In this part of the notice, Hawthorne and his
wife are but set forth by extracts from the BIZ
ography that indicate their leading qualities of
mind and heart. He came of blue blood that is
traced back to Wales, and had many distin-
guished ancestors in old England. His wife, Miss
Sophia Peabody, Also had the best English
blood in her veins, and there are few lives
that have come within the field of biography in
which there is more sweetness and light than are
found in these sketches of the Hawthorne home.
The son has added to a growing reputation in
writing this ample memoir. He shows insight,
sympathy, fine discrimination and a large sanity
in dealing with tender and sacred topics, and
looks at his father and mother rather in the
light of their literary sympathies and careers
than in the way of eulogizing their several do
ings- The ancestral tendencies in Hawthorne are
we'll set forth in the following statement of the
conditions and environment that controlled his
life:
Now, as regards the subjectof this biography
"a man whose personal weight and influence
was strongly impressed upon al who knew him,
and whose private moral life was as free from
degradation as his writings are-there is no rea-
son 10 doubt that he inherited. or at all events
possessed in himself, a full share of the faults
and foibles of mankind in general. He was.
moreover, hampered by certain inconvenience
or misfortures incident to the period and society
in which he was placed-sueh as puritanism,
Calvinism. narrow social and moral prejudices,
the tyranny Of local traditions and
presidents, and very limited pecu-
mary resources. Furthermore, he was
brought up las will appear later on under
what might be considered special disadvantages
His mother, a woman of fine gifts, but of ex-
treme sensibility. lost her husband IN her TWEEN
ty-eighth year; and, from an exaggerated, al
most HindOolike construction Of the law of Sc
clusion which the public taste of that day i'm
posed upon widows, she withdrew entirely from
society, and permitted the habit of solitude to
grow upon her to such a degree that she actually
remained a strict hermit to the end of her long
life, or for more than forty years after Captain
Hawthornes death. Such behavior on the moth
ers part could not fail to have its effect on the
children. They had no opportunity to know
what social intercourse meant; their peculiari-
ties and eccentricities were at least negatively
encouraged; they grew to regard themselves as
something apart from the general world. 1t is
saying much for the sanity and healthfulness of
the minds of these three children that their
loneliness distorted their Judgment, their percep-
ton of the relations Of things, so little
as it did. Elizabeth, he eldest, had, in
deed, an understanding in many re-
spects as commanding and penetrating as that
of her famous brother; a cold, clear, dlspaSslon-
ate common sense, softened by a touch of humor
such as few women possess. The only thing |
fear her brother said once, is the ridicule OF
Elizabeth AS for Louisa, the youngest OF the
three, she was more commonplace than any of
them-a pleasant, refined, sensible, feminine
parsonage, with considerable innate sociability
of temperament.
Nathaniel, two years younger than Eliza
beth, and four. years older than Louisa, had the
advantage, in the first place of being a boy. He
could go out in the streets, play with other boys,
fight with them, make friends with them. He
was distinguished by a cool and discriminating
judgment, with a perception of the ludicrous
which, especially III MS carrier years; manlIeSUeu
itself in a disposition to satire. Being more than
6 match, intellectually, for the boys of his own
age with whom he came in contact, he had a
certain ascendeney over them, which could be
enforced at need by his personal strength and
pugnaeity. He was daring, but never reck-
less; he did not c~onfound cour-
age with foolhardines. These char
aeteristics could hardly have failed to in
spire in him a fair degree of self-complaeeney.
which would probably continue until the deeper
thoughts which succeed those of boyhood made
him look more broadly, and therefore more
humbly, upon the relations of things and men.
But, at all events, he had a better chance than
his sisters TO escape from the pensive gloom of
his mothers mode of existence into the day
light and breeze of common life. Her solitary
habits, however, affected and stimulated his
imagination, which was further nourished by
the tales of the war of 1912 and of the revolu-
ton related to him by his elders, and by the