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In this issue, besides the four mentioned, the story "My Wife's Novel" has also been attributed to Hawthorne. The project of the "Provincial Tales" had by this time been abandoned, temporarily at least, and the author's mind turned to other kinds of writing.
No tribute to Hawthorne is less in accord with the biddings of his genius than that which would merely make a school of followers.
Anna Jameson arrived late in April; a sturdy, warm-hearted Englishwoman greatly devoted to art, for which her books served as elementary treatises and pioneers to the English and Americans of those days. She was so anxious to meet Hawthorne that she persuaded William Story to bring him and his wife to her lodgings when she was too ill to go forth.
That seems to me exquisite, and the book is full of touches as deep and delicate. After writing it, Hawthorne went back to live in Concord, where he had bought a small house in which, apparently, he expected to spend a large portion of his future. This was in fact the dwelling in which he passed that part of the rest of his days that he spent in his own country.
On separating, it is pleasant to notice, the friends exchanged keepsakes. The four years had lapsed quietly and quickly by, and Hawthorne, who now adopted the fanciful spelling of the name after his personal whim, was man grown.
Of such a race came NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, who was born at Salem, on the 4th, of July, 1804. His father was a sea captain, and died of the yellow fever at Havana, in 1810. His mother was a woman of great beauty and extreme sensibility, and it was from her that Nathaniel derived the peculiarities of character which distinguished him through life.
My mother had at first gently protested; she did not want his upper lip and mouth to be hidden. But as the brown mustache, thick and soldier-like, appeared, she became reconciled, and he wore it to the end of his life. "Field-Marshal Hawthorne" James T. Fields used to call him after we got home.
Innes, his mother's old friend, meeting him at Vieusseux's reading-room a few days before, had detained him for a chat, and in the course of it asked him if he knew this Mrs. Hawthorne of whom the Fosses appeared so fond. An amusing type, she must be.
Indeed, he spoke to them about becoming a member of the Society, and was evidently much impressed with the thrift and peace of the establishment. This visit in early life to the Shakers is interesting as suggesting to Hawthorne his beautiful story of "The Canterbury Pilgrims," which is in his volume of "The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales."
As to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannot properly be instanced in this connection; for he analyzed chiefly those parts of human nature which remain substantially unaltered in the face of whatever changes of opinion, civilization, and religion.
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