Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne, 1860s

Franklin Pierce (friend, 1804-1869)

> "*Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.*"
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Nathaniel Hawthorne Jr. (July 4th, 1804 - May 19th, 1864) was an American novelist who wrote *The Scarlet Letter*.

He is also the writer of *The House of the Seven Gables* and other short stories and is regarded as one of America's greatest authors.

## Biography

### Ancestry

One of Hawthorne's earliest ancestors was William Hathorne, who emigrated from England to America in 1630. He first settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Salem in 1636, where he became a judge for the General Court of Massachusetts. Hathorne's son, John Hathorne, was a merchant and judge of the Superior Court but was best remembered as a judge during the Salem Witch trials. His great-great-grandson Nathaniel subsequently changed his surname by adding a "w" to distance himself from his ancestor's shameful connection.

### Early Life

Nathaniel Hathorne Jr was born on July 4th, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the second child and only son to Captain Nathaniel Hathorne Sr and Elizabeth Clarke. He had two sisters, one older named Elizabeth and a younger named Maria. Captain Hathorne spent most of his time seafaring, leaving his wife alone to raise their children. In 1808, Captain Hathorne died of yellow fever at sea, and shortly after his death, Hawthorne and his mother and siblings went to live with his uncle Robert Manning.

Hawthorne spent most of his early years in Maine and Salem. When he was nine years old, he suffered from an injured leg while playing a game of ball that left him temporarily invalid for a year, but he passed the time by being an avid reader and living a quiet life in Raymond, Maine, with his mother and sisters.

### Education

At 17 years old, Hawthorne enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, with the help of his wealthy uncles. At Bowdoin, Hawthorne's classmates included poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future US president Franklin Pierce, who would become Hawthorne's friends. At Bowdoin, Hawthorne spent most of his time reading and writing fictional stories, excluding himself from his peers and doing less studying. He had even interacted with his friends by drinking, gambling, smoking, and violating college rules. He would sometimes pay a fine if caught, but he managed to avoid being suspended. He also received a decent formal education.

While at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had started work on the novel *Fanshawe*. After graduating from Bowdoin in 1825 and returning to Salem, he finished the rest of the manuscript of *Fanshawe*. Unable to find a publisher, he published the novel himself but later regretted it and attempted to destroy most of the copies, although some of them have survived.

### Literary Career

After graduating from Bowdoin, Hawthorne returned home to be with his mother and sisters for 12 years, where he lived reclusively in an upstairs bedchamber. During that time, he began teaching himself about writing and sketching. Most of the early short stories he wrote during his "solitary years" were published anonymously; however, they didn't receive much attention and were rejected several times by publishers. Some of his earliest works he had published included his first failed novel *Fanshaw: A Tale,* in 1828 and *Twice-Told Tales*, a collection of his short stories. In desperate need of income, he got a job as a weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House in 1839.

Later on, while dealing with debt, Hawthorne moved back to Salem, and with his political connections, he became a surveyor at the Salem Custom House in 1846. He was able to give his family more security and income during his time at the Custom House. But after President Zachary Taylor's election, Hawthorne was laid off from his job. In late 1849 he began work for *The Scarlet Letter*, one of his greatest works and one of the finest American novels set during the early days of Puritanism in Colonial America. It was then published in 1850 and became an instant success, selling out 2,500 copies within a week and becoming one of the first novels to be mass-produced. By this time, he was living in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he befriended another future novelist named Herman Melville. He struggled to write his novel, which would become Moby-Dick, but with Hawthorne's help, it was published and later received critical acclaim.

Hawthorne would go on to write more novels and become one of America's greatest novels, with successful works such as *The House in Seven Gables* and *The Blithedale Romance.*

### Marriage and Family

In 1838, Hawthorne met Sophia Peabody, a painter, transcendentalist and illustrator, who was also from Salem. During his courtship with her, he spent some time at the Brooks Farm Community, where he befriended two famous American poets, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He could make more money than would be enough to start a new life with Sophia and live at the commune farm for six months before officially resigning from his position. While he enjoyed the surrounding nature around Brooks Farm, he found his working hours long and difficult, but he later fictionalized his experience in his novel *The Blithedale Romance.*

The couple were married on July 9th, 1842, at the Peabody household at 13 West. St., in Boston, Massachusetts. The newlyweds then moved into the Old Manse, a clergy house in Concord, Massachusetts. His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rented the house with him, as his grandfather first built the house in 1769. Hawthorne would later write to his sister Louisa about how happy they were despite their age gap (she was 32 at the time of their wedding, and he was a few days short of his 38th birthday). On their first wedding anniversary, Hawthorne wrote to Sophia, expressing his happiness in their marriage and their increasing romantic bond. Despite their financial issues at the time, they still enjoyed their life together at the Old Manse.

The couple had three children: Una, Julian & Rose. Una Hawthorne was born on March 3rd, 1844, following a difficult 10-hour labour at Old Manse. Hawthorne was 40 years old at the time of his daughter’s birth and was struggling with his literary career, as his first novel he wrote seven years earlier, *Twice-Told Tales*, hardly had his name known among readers following the Panic of 1837. Una was named after the main protagonist, Lady Una, in the 1590 English epic poem, *The Faerie Queene,* by Edmund Spenser. Her godfather was John L. O’Sullivan, one of her father’s earliest publishers, and some scholars suggest she may have been the inspiration for Pearl in *The Scarlet Letter*, which her father published in 1850. However, she was not allowed to read her father’s famous novel. Shortly after Una’s birth, Hawthorne would write that fatherhood has brought “ *a very sober and serious kind of happiness*.” In October 1845, the Hawthornes were evicted from Old Manse after they could not pay their rent and moved to Salem, where they lived with Hawthorne’s mother, Elizabeth. Around this time, Sophia was pregnant with her second child, and in March 1846, she moved to 77 Carter Street in Boston to be closer to her mother and doctor while awaiting the birth. Then, Hawthorne took his job as a surveyor at the Salem Customs House.

Julian Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on June 22nd, 1846. Hawthorne then wrote to his sister about his son’s birth, “*A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock, this morning, who claims to be your nephew and the heir of all our wealth and honours. He has dark hair and is no great beauty at present but is said to be a particularly fine little urchin by everybody who has seen him*.*”* Following Julian’s birth, the family returned to Salem but then moved into a large house that was big enough for Elizabeth to live with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Following his job loss from the Custom House and the publication of *The Scarlet Letter* in 1850, Hawthorne began writing full-time with Sophia supporting her husband’s finances by selling painted lampshades and firescreens. The family eventually left Salem and moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, where they lived in a rented red farmhouse.

Rose Hawthorne was born on May 20th, 1851, in the farmhouse, her family was renting in Lenox; just a month after her father published *The House of Seven Gables*. Sophia had gone into labour early, and before the midwife arrived, Hawthorne helped his wife deliver their daughter.

Una Hawthorne suffered from physical and mental illnesses most of her life and died in 1877, in England, where she was initially buried; in 2006, her remains were transferred to Concord, where she was reinterred with her parents in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Julian Hawthorne followed in his father’s footsteps and became a novelist, poet and short story writer, and he lived to the age of 88 in 1934. Later in her life, Rose married poet and novelist George Parsons Lathrop, and had one son named Francis who died of diphtheria when he was five years old. After her husband died from alcoholism, Rose nursed the sick and founded a religious order called the Servants of Relief for Incurable Cancer. She died in 1926 at the age of 75.

### Life Abroad

In 1852, Hawthorne’s friend Franklin Pierce was elected President of the United States. That same year, Hawthorne bought the Wayside house, which was previously home to *Little Women* author Louisa May Alcott, and moved there with Sophia and their children. Because he had wrote a campaign biography for his friend Pierce, Hawthorne was then assigned as consul in Liverpool, England. As such, the Hawthornes lived at Wayside for only a hear before they moved to England in 1853. He served his post in Liverpool from 1853-57, and during that time, he wrote the novel *Our Old Home*. In the summer of 1854, the family spent most of their time visiting English cathedrals and ruins, and took a trip in the Welsh mountains.

While in England, Sophia fell ill from the weather, and Hawthorne considered about resigning from his post and returning to America. He even thought about switching places with his friend and United States Minister of Portugal John O’Sullivan, but he knew nothing about different languages from an ambassador. However, O’Sullivan encouraged Sophia to spend some time in Madeira as a way to regain her strength. Sophia took this advice, and in 1855, she took her daughters with her to Lisbon, leaving Hawthorne behind with his son Julian. Hawthorne later found himself miserable without his wife and daughters, so he went on a travelling, three week expedition with his friend Francis Bennoch, and they visited several English landmarks such as the Hastings battlefield and Battle Abbey. Shortly after his trip with Bennoch, Sophia and the girls returned to England.

Following James Buchanan’s election as President of the United States in 1856, Hawthorne resigned from his post on July 1st, 1857 and travelled with his family in Scotland. Several months later, the family left London and travelled to Paris, before they embarked to Rome. They stayed in Italy for a year and a half, during which they visited Siena and Florence, and toured famous art museums such as Villa Ludovis and Casino Aurora. However, after Una nearly died from malaria in Rome, Hawthorne later detested Rome and wrote to his friend and publisher James Thomas Fields that he is looking forward to leaving Rome forever.

After Una slightly recovered from her illness, the family next travelled to Genoa, Marseille and Geneva. After a while, Hawthorne longed to have a quiet, secluded place to do his writing, so his friends convinced him to travel to Redcar in Yorkshire, England, where they think is the ideal place for him to continue his literary career. In the summer of 1858, Hawthorne and his family settled in a small cottage in Redcar, where he wrote his last fiction novel *The Marble Faun* (1860). Afterwards, the family returned to the Wayside in Concord.

### Final Years and Death

Shortly after the start of the American Civil War, Hawthorne travelled to Washington D.C., where he wrote an essay “Chiefly About War Matters”. By early 1864, his health started failing, and he was unable to write any romance novels. He suffered from pain in his stomach but refused any medical treatment. He decided to go on a trip with his friend Franklin Pierce to the White Mountains in Plymouth, New Hampshire. On May 18th, Hawthorne and Pierce were staying in an inn when Hawthorne retired for the night. Hawthorne died in his sleep the next day, and Pierce found his body in his room.

Hawthorne was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord on May 23rd, 1964.