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JULY 4

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I

There will always be difference of opinion. whether Longfellow, Lowell, or Whittier is the greatest American poet; but there is not question that Hawthorne is the greatest American novelist; nor is there any question that "The Scarlet Letter" is the greatest single literary work that America has produced.

II

He was born at Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804. His ancestors on his father's side were Puritans of the sternest character, many of them being sea-faring men. His father was a silent, reserved, severe man, habitually of a rather melancholy cast of thought. His mother came from a family also reserved and peculiar, and after his father's death

she lived in the closest retirement forty years. When seven years old he went to a school taught by Joseph E. Worcester, the afterward noted lexicographer. In 1825 he was graduated from Bowdoin college, where he had among his classmates Longfellow, George B. Cheever, and John S. C. Abbott. Franklin Pierce was in the class before him, and was there and through life one of his two or three intimate friends. After several years

GEORGE BANCROFT, 1800-1891

of obscure literary work, he received in 1839 from George Bancroft, then

collector of customs at Boston, an appointment as weigher and gauger, which place he held

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from 1838 to 1840, at a salary of $1,200. From 1846 to 1850 he was surveyor of the port of Salem at a salary of $1,200. In 1852, when Franklin Pierce was democratic candidate for president he wrote a biography

Early Literary Work

197

of him, saying that he would accept no office in case Mr. Pierce was elected; but his scruples were overcome, and from 1852 to 1857 he was United States consul at Liverpool. After three years of travel he lived from 1860 to 1864 in "The Wayside", Concord, Mass., and he died May 19, 1864.

III

For twelve years after leaving college he lived in Salem with his mother and two sisters a life of solitude, now and then visiting an uncle in Maine and hunting on the shores of Sebago lake, or spending a week or two with his classmate Horatio Bridge, but spending most of his time in reading, in meditating, and in writing. Most of what he wrote he burned, but some articles were published under assumed names. His dreams during this period are revealed in "The Ambitious Guest", one of his earlier stories, in which he says of the hero, alluding to himself:

A glory was to beam upon his pathway, though not perhaps while he was treading it; but posterity should confess that a gifted one had passed from the cradle to the tomb with no one to recognize him.

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For his twelve years' work he had to show some 45 short sketches*. These were afterwards gathered into two volumes of "TwiceTold Tales", published in 1837 and 1842. In the preface the author wonders rather that they are called for now than that they did not attract more attention at the time, and perhaps he is not too modest. Few of them would attract attention

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now except for the reflected light

thrown upon them

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW by

1807-1882

his later achievements.

But they brought him somewhat into notice. Longfellow, always a kindly critic, said of the book:

*In the preface to "Mosses from an Old Manse" (1846), another collection of tales, he describes the "Old Manse" itself, the house in Concord where Emerson had lived before him, and in which he spent his first four years of married life. A list of 39 contributions published from 1832-38 is given on pages 175-6 of Julian Hawthorne's "Hawthorne and his wife."

The Scarlet Letter

199

It comes from the hand of a man of genius. Everything about it has the freshness of morning and of May. These flowers and green leaves of poetry have not the dust of the highway upon them; they have been gathered fresh from the secret places of a peaceful and gentle heart; there flow deep waters, silent, calm, and cold; and the green leaves look into them and "God's blue heaven".

IV

"The Scarlet Letter" (1850) was written under a stress of unhappy circumstances. He had just lost his position in the custom house, and was obliged to write for bread for himself and family. When it was half written his mother was taken ill and died. He had debts which he could not pay, and difficulty in getting ready money for the expenses of the household. He had an intolerable attack of earache lasting without intermission for several days, and yet was obliged to take entire charge of the children. Yet the book was in the printers' hands within six months from the time it was begun.

The key to the book is that to peer into the secrets of a human heart without sympathy is the unpardonable sin.

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