Stalking Nathaniel

I read an amusing, though very flowery, little pamphlet yesterday entitled A Pilgrimage to Salem in 1838 in which the anonymous author, described merely as a “southern admirer” of Nathaniel Hawthorne, happens upon a copy of the recently-published Twice-Told Tales while visiting Boston and, immediately transfixed, decides to travel up to Salem so that he might see–and perhaps even talk to– the object of his affection before returning to his “plantation”. He immediately boards the steamship that will take him to East Boston, where he jumps on the brand new Eastern Railroad train to Salem, and once there, I discovered the way to the lodgings of my favorite author. He was not within, but would probably be at home some time in the course of the day.  I inquired respecting his haunts. They were the Athenaeum—the bookstores–the streets occasionally, or North Fields, or South Fields, or the heights above the turnpike, or the beach near the fort; and sometimes, I was told, he would extend his excursions by foot as far as Manchester, along the wave-washed, secluded, and rocky shore in Beverly. And so Mr. Southern Gentleman pursues Nathaniel here, there, and everywhere, and somehow always misses him (he just left)  but takes in the sights of Salem along the way.

1840 Map of the North Shore showing the new Eastern Railroad, David Rumsey Collection; the East Boston Depot, from an Edwin Whitefield drawing, and George Elmer Browne’s drawing of the first Salem station, built in 1838, both from Francis Boardman Crowninshield Bradlee’s Eastern Railroad: a Historical Account of Early Railroading in Eastern New England (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1917). The object of this pilgrimage: Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his earliest portrait by Charles Osgood, supposedly commissioned by the author’s uncle, Robert Manning, Peabody Essex Museum. (One can understand the stalking!)

There is something about this article: something a little off. I couldn’t find the original, supposedly published in a Charleston, S.C. periodical titled The Southern Rose in March of 1839; instead I read a reprint in a 1916 Essex Institute publication, A pilgrimage to Salem in 1838, by a Southern admirer of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Reprinted from “The Southern rose” (Charleston, S.C.) of March 2 and 16, 1839, with a Foreword by Victor Hugo Paltsits, Another view by John Robinson, and A rejoinder by Mr. Paltsits. Mr. Paltsits, of the New York Public Library, believed that the author was William Gilmore Simms, the southern novelist and historian (and slavery apologist), while Mr. Robinson, the great horticulturist and curator at the Peabody Museum, thought it might have been Nathaniel himself! Just think of that: what a public relations feat early in Hawthorne’s career! He comes off as sought after, mysterious, elusive, brooding in a Heathcliffian way, and very clever: a perfect characterization for a young novelist. Robinson thinks the “southern admirer” knows Salem too well, and he certainly does throw in a lot of place names. I’m quite fixated on the train trip myself, about which the article’s author is a bit too blasé while everyone in Salem was much more obviously excited, including Hawthorne. An article in the Salem Register dated September 3, 1838 notes that the railroad has been the great centre of attraction to the people of Salem and vicinity. The novelty of this mode of travelling has drawn immense crowds to witness its operation, and on every occasion of the arrival and departure of the cars, the grounds in the neighborhood of the depot and on the eastern bank of the Mill Pond are covered with delighted spectators of the bustling scene, while the new faces in our streets, and the hurrying to and fro of carriages for the accommodation of passengers, have given to our city a busy appearance to which it has long been a stranger. The southern visitor does not describe a Salem that is in any way busy, but then he is singularly focused on Hawthorne, and also, really, on himself.

The southern admirer, whoever he is, seems particularly excited to encounter Salem’s Old Town Pump (here in 1856 and 1884 illustrations), memorialized by Hawthorne in “A Rill from the Town Pump” in Twice-Told Tales.