The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne — John Shaqi
The Life and Genius of Nathaniel HawthorneStearns, Frank Preston
General
The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stearns, Frank Preston
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864; Novelists, American -- 19th century -- Biography
A similar miniature of his son Nathaniel, born in 1775, and who died at
Surinam in his thirty-fourth year, gives us the impression of a person
somewhat like his father, and also somewhat like his son Nathaniel.
He has a long face instead of a round one, and his features are more
delicate and refined than those of the bold Daniel. The expression is
gentle, dreamy and pensive, and unless the portrait belies him, he
could not have been the stern, domineering captain that he has been
represented. He had rather a slender figure, and was probably much more
like his mother, who was a Miss Phelps, than the race of Judge Hathorne.
He may have been a reticent man, but never a bold one, and we find in
him a new departure. His face is more amiable and attractive than his
father’s, but not so strong. In 1799 he was married to Miss Elizabeth
Clarke Manning, the daughter of Richard Manning, and then only nineteen
years of age. She appears to have been an exceptionally sensitive and
rather shy young woman--such as would be likely to attract the attention
of a chivalrous young mariner--but with fine traits of intellect and
character.
The maternal ancestry of a distinguished man is quite as important as
the paternal, but in the present instance it is much more difficult to
obtain information concerning it. The increasing fame of Hawthorne
has been like a calcium-light, illuminating for the past fifty years
everything to which that name attaches, and leaving the Manning family
in a shadow so much the deeper. All we can learn of them now is, that
they were descended from Richard Manning, of Dartmouth in Devonshire,
England, whose son Thomas emigrated to Salem with his widowed mother in
1679, but afterwards removed to Ipswich, ten miles to the north, whence
the family has since extended itself far and wide,--the Reverend Jacob
M. Manning, of the Old South Church, the fearless champion of practical
anti-slaveryism, having been among them. It appears that Thomas’s
grandson Richard started in life as a blacksmith, which was no strange
thing in those primitive times; but, being a thrifty and enterprising
man, he lived to establish a line of stage-coaches between Salem and
Boston, and this continued in the possession of his family until it
was superseded by the Eastern Railway. After this catastrophe, Robert
Manning, the son of Richard and brother of Mrs. Nathaniel Hathorne,
became noted as a fruit-grower (a business in which Essex County people
have always taken an active interest), and was one of the founders
of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The Mannings were always
respected in Salem, although they never came to affluent circumstances,
nor did they own a house about the city common. Robert Manning, Jr.,
was Secretary of the Horticultural Society in Boston for a long term
of years, a pleasant, kindly man, with an aspect of general culture.
Hawthorne’s maternal grandmother was Miriam Lord, of Ipswich, and his
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