There seems to be good
authority for believing that Hawthorne could have entered this circle,
had he so chosen. He had relatives who took an active part within it;
and it appears that there was a disposition among some of the
fashionable coterie to show him particular favor, and that advances were
made by them with the wish to draw him out. But one can conceive that it
would not be acceptable to him to meet them on any but terms of entire
equality. The want of ample supplies of money, which was one of the
results of the fallen fortunes of his family, made this impossible;
those who held sway were of older date in the place than some of the
Hawthornes, and, like many another long-established stock, they had a
conviction that, whatever their outward circumstances might be, a
certain intrinsic superiority remained theirs. They were, like the lady
of Hawthorne blood mentioned in the "American Note-Books," "proud of
being proud." The Hawthornes, it was said, were as unlike other people
as the Jews were to Gentiles; and the deep-rooted reserve which
enveloped Hawthorne himself was a distinct family trait. So that,
feeling himself to be in an unfair position, he doubtless found in these
facts enough to cause him acute irritation of that sort which only very
young or very proud and shrinking men can know. Besides this, the
altered circumstances of his line, and his years in Maine, had brought
him acquainted with humbler phases of life, and had doubtless developed
in him a sympathy with simpler and less lofty people than these
magnates.
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