The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Appendix to Volume XII: Tales, Sketches, and other Papers by Nathaniel Hawthorne with a Biographical Sketch by George Parsons Lathrop: Biographical Sketch of Nathaniel HawthorneLathrop, George Parsons
General
The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Appendix to Volume XII: Tales, Sketches, and other Papers by Nathaniel Hawthorne with a Biographical Sketch by George Parsons Lathrop: Biographical Sketch of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Lathrop, George Parsons
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864; Novelists, American -- 19th century -- Biography
a sense of occult power in him, that they nicknamed him Oberon. Although
unusually calm-tempered, however, he was quick to resent disrespectful
treatment (as he had been with John Knights), and his vigorous, athletic
frame made him a formidable adversary. In the same class with him were
Henry W. Longfellow; George Barrell Cheever, since famous as a divine,
and destined to make a great stir in Salem by a satire in verse called
"Deacon Giles's Distillery," which cost him a thirty days' imprisonment,
together with the loss of his pastorate; also John S. C. Abbott, the
writer of popular histories; and Horatio Bridge, afterwards Lieutenant
in the United States Navy, and now Commander. Bridge and Franklin
Pierce, who studied in the class above him, were his most intimate
friends. He boarded in a house which had a stairway on the outside,
ascending to the second story; he took part, I suppose, in the
"rope-pulls" and "hold-ins" between Freshmen and Sophomores, if those
customs were practised then; he was fined for card-playing and for
neglect of theme; entered the Athenæan Society, which had a library of
eight hundred volumes; tried to read Hume's "History of England," but
found it "abominably dull," and postponed the attempt; was fond of
whittling, and destroyed some of his furniture in gratifying that taste.
Such are the insignificant particulars to which we are confined in
attempting to form an idea of the externals of his college-life. Pierce
was chairman of the Athenæan Society, and also organized a military
company, which Hawthorne joined. In the Preface to "The Snow-Image" we
are given a glimpse of the simple amusements which occupied his leisure:
"While we were lads together at a country college, gathering blueberries
in study hours under those tall academic pines; or watching the great
logs as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or shooting
pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in the
summer-twilight; or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream which,
I suppose, is still wandering riverward through the forest." He became
proficient in Latin. Longfellow was wont to recall how he would rise at
recitation, standing slightly sidewise--attitude indicative of his
ingrained shyness--and read from the Roman classics translations which
had a peculiar elegance and charm. In writing English, too, he won a
reputation, and Professor Newman was often so struck with the beauty of
his work in this kind that he would read them in the evening to his own
family. Professor Packard says: "His themes were written in the
sustained, finished style that gives to his mature productions an
inimitable charm. The recollection is very distinct of Hawthorne's
reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself at the
professor's study and submitted a composition which no man in his class
could equal."
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