After the death of her husband, this
brother Robert came to her assistance, Captain Hathorne having left but
little property: he was only thirty-two when he died.
Nathaniel had been born in a solid, old-fashioned little house on Union
Street, which very appropriately faced the old shipyard of the town in
1760; and it appears that in the year before his birth, the Custom House
of that time had been removed to a spot "opposite the long brick
building owned by W. S. Gray, and Benjamin H. Hathorne,"--as if the
future Surveyor's association with the revenue were already drawing
nearer to him. The widow now moved with her little family to the house
of her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. The
land belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the house
they had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years,
Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he was
born. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on Union
Street, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "American
Note-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber FAME
was won," as likewise in the longer revery in the same volume, dated
October 4, 1840.
"Certainly," the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of him, "no man ever
needed less a formal biography." But the earlier portion of his life, of
which so little record has been made public, must needs bear so
interesting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine it with
as much care as I may.
Pages:
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74