"His mother, a woman of fine gifts but extreme sensibility lost her husband in her twenty-eighth year; and from an exaggerated, almost Hindoo-like, construction of the law of seclusion which the public taste of that day imposed upon widows, she withdrew entirely from society and permitted the habit of solitude to grow upon her to such a degree that she actually remained a strict hermit to the end of her long life, or for more than forty years after Captain Hawthorne's death. Such behavior on the mother's part could not fail to have its effect upon the children. They had no opportunity to know what social intercourse meant; their peculiarities and eccentricities were at least negatively encouraged; they grew to regard themselves as something apart from the general world. It is saying much for the sanity and healthfulness of the minds of these three children, that their loneliness distorted their judgment—their perception of the relation of things—as little as it did."
The sister is described as having in many respects an intellect as commanding and penetrating as that of her brother, and yet she followed in the way of her mother and passed her life in almost complete seclusion, caring for nothing but the reading of books and the taking of long walks, sleeping always until noon, and sitting up until two or three o'clock in the morning in perfect solitude. She boarded for many years after her mother's death at a farm-house on the seashore, and could not be induced to come out, even to attend the funeral of her brother at Concord, although he was her pride and idol throughout life.
Had Hawthorne himself been less fortunate in his marriage, there is little doubt that his own peculiarities would have become exaggerated, perhaps even to the extent of those of his sister. But he married a woman who both understood and appreciated him, and whom he idolized. From this union grew all the happiness and success of his life. His son says:—
"To attempt to explain and describe his career without taking this event into consideration would be like trying to imagine a sun without heat or a day without a sun. Nothing seems less likely than that he should have accomplished his work in literature independently of her sympathy and companionship. Not that she afforded him any direct and literal assistance in the composition of his books and stories: her gifts were wholly unsuited to such employment, and no one apprehended more keenly than she the solitariness and uniqueness of his genius, insomuch that she would have deemed it something not far removed from profanation to have offered to advise or sway him in regard to his literary productions. She believed in his inspiration, and her office was to promote, as far as in her lay, the favorableness of the conditions under which it should manifest itself."
It was to this that she devoted her life,—to comfort, to cheer, to soothe, to inspire, to guard from all outward annoyances, the poetical and sensitive man who believed in her so implicitly and leaned upon her so confidently. They led a very quiet and secluded life during the most of his literary career, and seemed almost to resent any intrusion of the outside world upon them, not only as regarded persons, but even as regarded agitating questions and pressing ideas.
They took very slight interest in the questions which stirred New England life in their day, and held entirely aloof from the reforms which shook the social life around them from centre to foundation-stone. Indeed, he had a deep-seated dislike to the genus Reformer, and presented his picture of the whole race in "Hollingsworth." Perhaps he had known some individual reformer of that odious type, and out of this grew his dislike of the whole species. At any rate, the men—of whom New England was full at that time—who
"Blew the fiery breath of storm
Through the hoarse trumpet of Reform"
never received much aid or sympathy from Nathaniel Hawthorne or his wife. Nor will they, apparently, from his son, who says of his father, "He was not a teetotaler any more than he was an abolitionist or a Thug."
But if their sympathies did not go out very widely to the outside world, there was the most perfect sympathy and companionship in the home life, and no more beautiful record of a perfect marriage has ever been made than this life of the Hawthornes presents. Yes, it was a happy life they led, these two in their married isolation, despite poverty and obscurity and a lack of appreciation in the early time, and of trial, from ill-health and other causes, in later years. He lived like Carlyle, a good deal in the shadows of his famous books, and was sometimes for months in the possession of the demon of composition. While composing "The Marble Faun" he thus writes in a letter: