individuals of any kind are indeed much less numerous than one might
have expected; there is little psychology, little description of
manners. We are told by Mr. Lathrop that there existed at Salem during
the early part of Hawthorne's life "a strong circle of wealthy
families," which "maintained rigorously the distinctions of class,"
and whose "entertainments were splendid, their manners magnificent."
This is a rather pictorial way of saying that there were a number of
people in the place--the commercial and professional aristocracy, as
it were--who lived in high comfort and respectability, and who, in
their small provincial way, doubtless had pretensions to be exclusive.
Into this delectable company Mr. Lathrop intimates that his hero was
free to penetrate. It is easy to believe it, and it would be difficult
to perceive why the privilege should have been denied to a young man
of genius and culture, who was very good-looking (Hawthorne must have
been in these days, judging by his appearance later in life, a
strikingly handsome fellow), and whose American pedigree was virtually
as long as the longest they could show. But in fact Hawthorne appears
to have ignored the good society of his native place almost
completely; no echo of its conversation is to be found in his tales or
his journals. Such an echo would possibly not have been especially
melodious, and if we regret the shyness and stiffness, the reserve,
the timidity, the suspicion, or whatever it was, that kept him from
knowing what there was to be known, it is not because we have any very
definite assurance that his gains would have been great. Still, since
a beautiful writer was growing up in Salem, it is a pity that he
should not have given himself a chance to commemorate some of the
types that flourished in the richest soil of the place. Like almost
all people who possess in a strong degree the storytelling faculty,
Hawthorne had a democratic strain in his composition and a relish for
the commoner stuff of human nature. Thoroughly American in all ways,