The examiner., 1886-02-13
- POORLY PAID LITERARY WORK. why Noted Writers Experime nc with
 the Drama

The New York correspondent of the
 Boston Herald writes: '.How much Julian
 Hawthorne looks like his father,'' said a
 friend, in speaking of the son of the author of sFThe Scarlet Letter. and hundred other beautiful romances. "He has his fathers head and face and something of the imaginative power of the famous melancholy man. Many people think he is the best of mary story writers of the present day."
 was interested in my friends talk about young Hawthorne because I had just spent an hour with him and his brother-in-law, George Parsons Lathrop. Lathrop is 8 good-natured looking man, hardly medium size and as round as an apple. He looks as though he enjoyed life and it's pleasures and much of it's re- pose. Hawthorne is the exact opposite of his brother writer. He is tall, fine look ing citizen, with rather an athletic ap- pearance, and 8 face and head which look wonderfully like the pictures of Flaw thorne have seen. He has an easy, sub dued way of talking that is suggestive of a good command of himself. But, while he seems really well equipped man, he impresses one as if inheriting, at least in a degree, that solemn, even mournful, view of life for which his father was so noted He has just finished play. It is singular what a penchant almost every writer has for fame as 8 dramatist. Almost every one Fever knew either had one or more finished or was writing one. I suppose this is because one successful play makes 8 man famous and gives him money, while ordinary literary and newspaper work yield only 8 living to the most for tunate. How clearly this fact is demon strated in the case of the elder Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Walt Whitman and a score of other great writers, whose beautiful fancies have de- lighted the world, and made people better and wiser. Julian Hawthorne tells me that his father received only few thous- and dollars for all his works during his lifetime. James T. Field grew rich upon the product of this one mans genius and than 1ectured about his victim after death, asked MT. Hawthorne how many copies of seThe Scarlet Letter. had been issued. About 16O, 900 I should say,'' was his reply. s1t was the most successful of any of my fathers books" ''The House of the Seven Gables" did not reach more than half that number, but all of them were successful as compared with any books that are written at the present day, From Hawthorne's works, most of which have run through many editions, the Flaw thorne family receive today only very small royalty, and the children the great writer left have been obliged to make their own place in life, while the man who published the books is supposed to have died worth millions. What very sad commentary the history of these great writers furnishes. It is no wonder that men who can put beautiful thoughts upon paper now are casting about to write a successful play or do something that will make them money. Whittier once told me that if he had been forced to rely al together upon the production of his pen, he would have many times gone hungry; Longfellow furnished me with like testi- mony. Hawthorne's experience is well known, and poor Walt Whitman needs the aid of kind friends to make the last part of his pathway in life even reasonably comfortable.