HAWTHORN (O. Eng. haga-, hæg-, or hege-thorn, i.e. “hedge-thorn”), the common name for Crataegus, in botany, a genus of shrubs or small trees belonging to the natural order Rosaceae, native of the north temperate regions, especially America. It is represented in the British Isles by the hawthorn, white-thorn or may (Ger. Hagedorn and Christdorn; Fr. aubépine), C. Oxyacantha, a small, round-headed, much-branched tree, 10 to 20 ft. high, the branches often ending in single sharp spines. The leaves, which are deeply cut, are 1 to 2 in. long and very variable in shape. The flowers are sweet-scented, in flat-topped clusters, and ½ to ¾ in. in diameter, with five spreading white petals alternating with five persistent green sepals, a large number of stamens with pinkish-brown anthers, and one to three carpels sunk in the cup-shaped floral axis. The fruit, or haw, as in the apple, consists of the swollen floral axis, which is usually scarlet, and forms a fleshy envelope surrounding the hard stone.
The common hawthorn is a native of Europe as far north as 60½° in Sweden, and of North Africa, western Asia and Siberia, and has been naturalized in North America and Australia. It thrives best in dry soils, and in height varies from 4 or 5 to 12, 15 or, in exceptional cases, as much as between 20 and 30 ft. It may be propagated from seed or from cuttings. The seeds must be from ripe fruit, and if fresh gathered should be freed from pulp by maceration in water. They germinate only in the second year after sowing; in the course of their first year the seedlings attain a height of 6 to 12 in. Hawthorn has been for many centuries a favourite park and hedge plant in Europe, and numerous varieties have been developed by cultivation; these differ in the form of the leaf, the white, pink or red, single or double flowers, and the yellow, orange or red fruit. In England the hawthorn, owing to its hardiness and closeness of growth, has been employed for enclosure of land since the Roman occupation, but for ordinary field hedges it is believed it was generally in use till about the end of the 17th century. James I. of Scotland, in his Quair, ii. 14 (early 15th century), mentions the “hawthorn hedges knet” of Windsor Castle. The first hawthorn hedges in Scotland are said to have been planted by soldiers of Cromwell at Inch Buckling Brae in East Lothian and Finlarig in Perthshire. Annual pruning, to which the hawthorn is particularly amenable, is necessary if the hedge is to maintain its compactness and sturdiness. When the lower part shows a tendency to go bare the strong stems may be “plashed,” i.e. split, bent over and pegged to the ground so that new growths may start. The wood of the hawthorn is white in colour, with a yellowish tinge. Fresh cut it weighs 68 ℔ 12 oz. per cubic foot, and dry 57 ℔ 3 oz. It can seldom be obtained in large portions, and has the disadvantage of being apt to warp; its great hardness, however, renders it valuable for the manufacture of various articles, such as the cogs of mill-wheels, flails and mallets, and handles of hammers. Both green and dry it forms excellent fuel. The bark possesses tanning properties, and in Scotland in past times yielded with ferrous sulphate a black dye for wool. The leaves are eaten by cattle, and have been employed as a substitute for tea. Birds and deer feed upon the haws, which are used in the preparation of a fermented and highly intoxicating liquor. The hawthorn serves as a stock for grafting other trees. As an ornamental feature in landscapes, it is worthy of notice; and the pleasing shelter it affords and the beauty of its blossoms have frequently been alluded to by poets. The custom of employing the flowering branches for decorative purposes on the 1st of May is of very early origin; but since the alteration in the calendar the tree has rarely been in full bloom in England before the second week of that month. In the Scottish Highlands the flowers may be seen as late as the middle of June. The hawthorn has been regarded as the emblem of hope, and its branches are stated to have been carried by the ancient Greeks in wedding processions, and to have been used by them to deck the altar of Hymen. The supposition that the tree was the source of Christ’s crown of thorns gave rise doubtless to the tradition current among the French peasantry that it utters groans and cries on Good Friday, and probably also to the old popular superstition in Great Britain and Ireland that ill-luck attended the uprooting of hawthorns. Branches of the Glastonbury thorn, C. Oxyacantha, var. praecox, which flowers both in December and in spring, were formerly highly valued in England, on account of the legend that the tree was originally the staff of Joseph of Arimathea.
The number of species in the genus is from fifty to seventy, according to the view taken as to whether or not some of the forms, especially of those occurring in the United States, represent distinct species. C. coccinea, a native of Canada and the eastern United States, with bright scarlet fruits, was introduced into English gardens towards the end of the 17th century. C. Crus-Galli, with a somewhat similar distribution and introduced about the same time, is a very decorative species with showy, bright red fruit, often remaining on the branches till spring, and leaves assuming a brilliant scarlet and orange in the autumn; numerous varieties are in cultivation. C. Pyracantha, known in gardens as pyracantha, is evergreen and has white flowers, appearing in May, and fine scarlet fruits of the size of a pea which remain on the tree nearly all the winter. It is a native of south Europe and was introduced into Britain early in the 17th century.
HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL (1804-1864), American writer, son of Nathaniel Hathorne (1776-1808), was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July 1804. The head of the American branch of the family, William Hathorne of Wilton, Wiltshire, England, emigrated with Winthrop and his company, and arrived at Salem Bay, Mass., on the 12th of June 1630. He had grants of land at Dorchester, where he resided for upwards of six years, when he was persuaded to remove to Salem by the tender of further grants of land there, it being considered a public benefit that he should become an inhabitant of that town. He represented his fellow-townsmen in the legislature, and served them in a military capacity as a captain in the first regular troop organized in Salem, which he led to victory through an Indian campaign in Maine. Originally a determined “Separatist,” and opposed to compulsion for conscience, he signalized himself when a magistrate by the active part which he took in the Quaker persecutions of the time (1657-1662), going so far on one occasion as to order the whipping of Anne Coleman and four other Friends through Salem, Boston and Dedham. He died, an old man, in the odour of sanctity, and left a good property to his son John, who inherited his father’s capacity and intolerance, and was in turn a legislator, a magistrate, a soldier and a bitter persecutor of witches. Before the death of Justice Hathorne in 1717, the destiny of the family suffered a sea-change, and they began to be noted as mariners. One of these seafaring Hathornes figured in the Revolution as a privateer, who had the good fortune to escape from a British prison-ship; and another, Captain Daniel Hathorne, has left his mark on early American ballad-lore. He too was a privateer, commander of the brig “Fair American,” which, cruising off the coast of Portugal, fell in with a British scow laden with troops for General Howe, which scow the bold Hathorne and his valiant crew at once engaged and fought for over an hour, until the vanquished enemy was glad to cut the Yankee grapplings and quickly bear away. The last of the Hathornes with whom we are concerned was a son of this sturdy old privateer, Nathaniel Hathorne. He was born in 1776, and about the beginning of the 19th century married Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, a daughter of Richard Manning of Salem, whose ancestors emigrated to America about fifty years after the arrival of William Hathorne. Young Nathaniel took his hereditary place before the mast, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, made voyages to the East and West Indies, Brazil and Africa, and finally died of fever at Surinam, in the spring of 1808. He was the father of three children, the second of whom was the subject of this article. The form of the family name was changed by the latter to “Hawthorne” in his early manhood.
After the death of her husband Mrs Hawthorne removed to the house of her father with her little family of children. Of the boyhood of Nathaniel no particulars have reached us, except that he was fond of taking long walks alone, and that he used to declare to his mother that he would go to sea some time and would never return. Among the books that he is known to have read as a child were Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Thomson, The Castle of Indolence being an especial favourite. In the autumn of 1818 bis mother removed to Raymond, a town in Cumberland county, Maine, where his uncle, Richard Manning, had built a large and ambitious dwelling. Here the lad resumed his solitary walks, exchanging the narrow streets of Salem for the boundless, primeval wilderness, and its sluggish harbour for the fresh bright waters of Sebago lake. He roamed the woods by day, with his gun and rod, and in the moonlight nights of winter skated upon the lake alone till midnight. When he found himself away from home, and wearied with his exercise, he took refuge in a log cabin where half a tree would be burning upon the hearth. He had by this time acquired a taste for writing, that showed itself in a little blank-book, in which he jotted down his woodland adventures and feelings, and which was remarkable for minute observation and nice perception of nature.
After a year’s residence at Raymond, Nathaniel returned to Salem in order to prepare for college. He amused himself by publishing a manuscript periodical, which he called the Spectator, and which displayed considerable vivacity and talent. He speculated upon the profession that he would follow, with a sort of prophetic insight into his future. “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases,” he wrote to his mother, “nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So I don’t see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by your son, with ‘Hawthorne’s Works’ printed on their backs?”
Nathaniel entered Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in the autumn of 1821, where he became acquainted with two students who were destined to distinction—Henry W. Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. He was an excellent classical scholar, his Latin compositions, even in his freshman year, being remarkable for their elegance, while his Greek (which was less) was good. He made graceful translations from the Roman poets, and wrote several English poems which were creditable to him. After graduation three years later (1825) he returned to Salem, and to a life of isolation. He devoted his mornings to study, his afternoons to writing, and his evenings to long walks along the rocky coast. He was scarcely known by sight to his townsmen, and he held so little communication with the members of his own family that his meals were frequently left at his locked door. He wrote largely, but destroyed many of his manuscripts, his taste was so difficult to please. He thought well enough, however, of one of his compositions to print it anonymously in 1828. A crude melodramatic story, entitled Fanshawe, it was unworthy even of his immature powers, and should never have been rescued from the oblivion which speedily overtook it. The name of Nathaniel Hawthorne finally became known to his countrymen as a writer in The Token, a holiday annual which was commenced in 1828 by Mr S. G. Goodrich (better known as “Peter Parley”), by whom it was conducted for fourteen years. This forgotten publication numbered among its contributors most of the prominent American writers of the time, none of whom appear to have added to their reputation in its pages, except the least popular of all—Hawthorne, who was for years the obscurest man of letters in America, though he gradually made admirers in a quiet way. His first public recognition came from England, where his genius was discovered in 1835 by Henry F. Chorley, one of the editors of the Athenaeum, in which he copied three of Hawthorne’s most characteristic papers from The Token. He had but little encouragement to continue in literature, for Mr Goodrich was so much more a publisher than an author that he paid him wretchedly for his contributions, and still more wretchedly for his work upon an American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, which he persuaded him to edit. This author-publisher consented, however, at a later period (1837) to bring out a collection of Hawthorne’s writings under the title of Twice-told Tales. A moderate edition was got rid of, but the great body of the reading public ignored the book altogether. It was generously reviewed in the North American Review by his college friend Longfellow, who said it came from the hand of a man of genius, and praised it for the exceeding beauty of its style, which was as clear as running waters.
The want of pecuniary success which had so far attended his authorship led Hawthorne to accept a situation which was tendered him by George Bancroft, the historian, collector of the port of Boston under the Democratic rule of President Van Buren. He was appointed a weigher in the custom-house at a salary of about $1200 a year, and entered upon the duties of his office, which consisted for the most part in measuring coal, salt and other bulky commodities on foreign vessels. It was irksome employment, but faithfully performed for two years, when he was superseded through a change in the national administration. Master of himself once more, he returned to Salem, where he remained until the spring of 1841, when he wrote a collection of children’s stories entitled Grandfather’s Chair, and joined an industrial association at West Roxbury, Mass. Brook Farm, as it was called, was a social Utopia, composed of a number of advanced thinkers, whose object was so to distribute manual labour as to give its members time for intellectual culture. The scheme worked admirably—on paper; but it was suited neither to the temperament nor the taste of Hawthorne, and after trying it patiently for nearly a year he returned to the everyday life of mankind.