BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 PROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 Mitntu ^* Sage 
 
 1891 
 
 A:/^.7^^A ;??> 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 1881. A3 
 
 Hawthorne's f rst diary.with an 4iccount 
 
 3 1924 022 247 930 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022247930 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST 
 DIARY 
 
 WLitl) an ^tconnt of its 
 ^ttitalierp aria toes 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL T. PICKARD 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WUITTIER 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1897 
 
COPYRIGHT 1897 
 BY SAMUEL T. PICKARD 
 ALL- RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A DIARY kept by Nathaniel Haw- 
 ^^- thome during his residence at 
 Raymond, Maine, came to light in Vir- 
 ginia during the late civil war, and fell 
 into the hands of a colored man named 
 William Symmes, who, by a curious 
 chance, was a companion of Hawthorne 
 in his fishing and gunning sports on 
 the shores of Lake Sebago. Symmes 
 said he had the book from a Maine sol- 
 dier whom he found in hospital. Be- 
 cause of his boyish friendship for Haw- 
 thorne, he so prized the Diary that he 
 could not be induced to part with it. 
 After holding it several years, he sent 
 extracts from it to a Maine newspaper, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 carefully avoiding, however, to furnish 
 an address by which he or his treasure 
 could be found. It has been ascer- 
 tained that he died at Pensacola, Flor- 
 ida, October 28, 1871. I have no doubt 
 the Diary was in his possession at the 
 time of his death, and it is reasonable 
 to suppose that it is still somewhere in 
 existence. It is my hope that the pub- 
 lication of this little volume may lead 
 to the second finding of it. 
 
 There is so much of romantic inter- 
 est attaching to the story of the life of 
 the mulatto Symmes, that I venture to 
 tell it, in connection with his account 
 of his youthful association with Haw- 
 thorne. The materials for this sketch 
 have been gathered with much care 
 from many sources. Every word of the 
 Diary, preserved by the copying of 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Symmes, i& given in these pages, and 
 I have added explanatory and confirma- 
 tory notes. 
 
 It is only fair to say that there have 
 been serious doubts in regard to the 
 authenticity of the notebook, caused 
 by the at first inexplicable mystery 
 which enveloped the conduct of the 
 man Symmes. I believe, however, that 
 the internal evidence of the master's 
 hand will convince all who read these 
 pages that they have before them a gen- 
 uine work by one of the greatest of 
 American authors. Since the death of 
 Symmes, facts have come to light which 
 partially explain much that was before 
 mysterious and even suspicious. 
 
 I wish here to express my sense of 
 obligation to Mr. Richard C. Manning, 
 of Salem, a cousin of Hawthorne's, who 
 
PREFACE 
 
 has assisted me in gathering the infor- 
 mation here given to the public. He 
 has in his possession many of the early 
 letters of his cousin, and from these I 
 am permitted to copy, for comparison 
 of style with the Diary, and also to 
 show Hawthorne's great love for his 
 Maine home. 
 
 S. T. P. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I. The Home in Raymond i 
 
 II. The Story of William Symmes . . 22 
 
 III. Extracts from Diary 49 
 
 Postscript 100 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Union Church, Raymond, Mb. Formerly resi- 
 dence of Hawthorne family, from a photograph 
 taken in 1891, and now reproduced by permission 
 of the Lothrop Publishing Co Prontisfiece 
 
 The Images, Sebago Lake. From a photograph 
 procured for this work by Mr. C. O. Stickney, 
 Bridgton. Hawthorne's Cave is at the right of the 
 rocks represented in this picture 10 
 
 Flat Rock, Thomas Pond : Hawthorne's favorite 
 fishing place. From a photograph taken in 1891, 
 m possession of the Manning family, Salem ... 32 
 
 Thomas Pond, Rattlesnake Mountain in the dis- 
 tance. From a photograph taken from Flat Rock 
 in 1891, in possession of the Manning family, Salem 8S 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 A 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 LL who have attempted to write the isolation 
 life of Hawthorne make little of "f^^^ 
 
 what he himself considered a most im- '^'^^ 
 portant portion of it, viz., his residence 
 as a boy among the lakes and woods of 
 Maine. His biographers do not agree 
 among themselves as to the years which 
 he spent in whole or in part in Ray- 
 mond ; they say so little of this part of 
 his life, that few readers would realize 
 that practically during the whole of his 
 "teens" his home was in a little hamlet 
 in a peculiarly isolated region, surrounded 
 by primeval forests, and in the midst of 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 a lake country then little known to the 
 outside world. He has himself said that 
 he came to the shore of Lake Sebago 
 when only eight or nine years old. He 
 certainly had there a home — one of his 
 homes — until he was about twenty-one. 
 His fitting for college necessitated his 
 coming out of this seclusion, and he 
 prosecuted his preliminary studies for 
 the most part in Salem, his native city. 
 But during his vacations he came back 
 every year to his home in the wilderness. 
 His whole future life was so much influ- 
 enced by his peculiar surroundings while 
 a boy, that I think the story of his Maine 
 residence deserves fuller treatment than it 
 has as yet received. Some extracts from 
 a diary kept by him in his boyhood, the 
 full story of which is now for the first 
 time told, give us a glimpse of his youth- 
 ful environment which must interest all 
 who have come under the spell of the 
 genius displayed in his maturer work. 
 His father, a shipmaster, died of yel- 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 low fever at Surinam, when he was four His 
 years old. His mother went at once into another 
 strict seclusion, and shunned society to 
 the end of her long life, more than forty 
 widowed years. She was therefore quite 
 ready to agree to the suggestion of her 
 brother, Robert Manning, to go into the 
 Maine wilderness with her little family, 
 a few years after the death of her hus- 
 band. Nathaniel received an injury to 
 his foot when eight or nine years of age, 
 and was obliged to use crutches for a 
 time. He later had an illness which 
 compelled him to resume his crutches. 
 As soon as he was strong enough he was 
 taken to his new home. His uncle Rob- 
 ert, who was at that time unmarried, paid 
 the expenses of his education, including 
 his college course. He went back and 
 forth between Salem and Raymond, from 
 about 1813 to 1825, when he graduated 
 from Bowdoin College. The location of 
 this Maine college is in the same county 
 with Raymond. 
 
 3 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 In a slight autobiographical sketch pre- 
 pared by Hawthorne in 1853, he has this 
 His own to say of his life in Raymond : " When I 
 account ^as eight or nine years old, my mother, 
 "^ " with her three children, took up her resi- 
 dence on the banks of the Sebago Lake, 
 in Maine, where the family owned a large 
 tract of land ; and here I ran quite wild, 
 and would, I doubt not, have willingly 
 run wild till this time, fishing all day 
 long, or shooting with an old fowling- 
 piece; but reading a good deal, too, on 
 the rainy days, especially in Shakespeare 
 and 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and any 
 poetry or light books within my reach, 
 Those were delightful days ; for thai part 
 of the country was wild then, with only 
 scattered clearings, and nine tenths of it 
 primeval woods. . . . Having spent so 
 much of my boyhood and youth away 
 from my native place, I had very few ac- 
 quaintances in Salem, and during the nine 
 or ten years that I spent there, I doubt 
 whether so much as twenty people in the 
 4 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 town were aware of my existence. . . , 
 I would skate all alone on Sebago Lake, 
 with the deep shadows of the icy hills on 
 either hand. When I found myself far 
 away from home, and weary with the ex- Winter 
 haustion of skating, I would sometimes '^'^^ 
 take refuge in a log cabin, where half 
 a tree would be burning on the broad 
 hearth. I would sit in the ample chim- 
 ney, and look at the stars through the 
 great aperture through which the flames 
 went roaring up. Ah, how well I recall 
 the summer days, also, when with my 
 gun I roamed at will through the woods 
 of Maine ! How sad middle life looks to 
 people of erratic temperament ! Every- 
 thing looks beautiful in youth, for all 
 things are allowed to it then." 
 
 Julian Hawthorne says that his father 
 told him of many boyish experiences on 
 the great Sebago Lake ; how he used to 
 skate there in winter, and how, one day, 
 he followed for a great distance, armed 
 with his fowling-piece, the tracks of a 
 S 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 black bear, but without being able to 
 overtake him. He was a good deal of a 
 sportsman, and had all the fishing and 
 hunting he wanted. 
 
 In a letter to James T. Fields, written 
 in 1863, Hawthorne says: "I lived in 
 Maine like a bird in the air, so perfect 
 was the freedom I enjoyed. But it was 
 there I first got my cursed habits of soli- 
 tude." This sentence of itself shows his 
 own opinion of the biographical value of 
 his boyish experience. It is the main 
 object of this work to supply the link his 
 biographers have missed. 
 The lake A brief description of the region in 
 region which Hawthorne spent so much of his 
 youth, and of the places he mentions in 
 his diary, may be given here. The town 
 of Raymond is on the northeastern shore 
 of Lake Sebago, and sends a long, curv- 
 ing cape into its waters. This is known 
 as Raymond Cape ; it is four miles long, 
 and one mile in width. Its curve in- 
 closes on its southeastern side a body of 
 6 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 water called Jordan Bay. On its north- 
 western side is Dingley Bay with its 
 fourteen islands, which receives the wa- 
 ters of Dingley Brook ; this brook is only 
 about a mile in length, and is the outlet 
 of Thomas Pond, a little lake, perhaps a 
 mile wide. Sebago Lake, formerly called 
 the Great Pond, is the last and largest 
 of a chain of navigable lakes, thirty-one 
 miles in length. It is itself fourteen 
 miles long and eight miles broad. There 
 is a series of smaller lakes, several of 
 them larger than Thomas Pond, within 
 the area of the town of Raymond. They 
 have been given such names as Great 
 Rattlesnake, Little Rattlesnake, and Pan- 
 ther. The lofty head and rugged shoul- 
 ders of Rattlesnake Mountain tower 
 above these lakes and over wide meadows 
 covered with a heavy growth of white 
 oak. 
 
 The house occupied by Hawthorne's 
 mother was near the outlet of Dingley Dingley 
 Brook, and on the opposite side of the ^^""^ 
 7 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 brook was the residence of her brother, 
 Richard Manning. The store and mOl 
 often mentioned in Hawthorne's journal, 
 from which we are to give extracts, were 
 close at hand ; a fall of fifteen feet in the 
 brook gives a serviceable water-power at 
 this point. The favorite fishing-place of 
 young Hawthorne was at the head of the 
 brook, where it flows from Thomas Pond. 
 The large flat rock on which he sat goes 
 by the name of " Nat's Rocki" It was 
 the view from this point to which Consul 
 Hawthorne referred in his talk with his 
 old playmate, Symmes, when they met 
 on a street in Liverpool. Among the 
 Places places mentioned in the diary are " Pulpit 
 mentioned Rock," " The Images," " Frye's Island," 
 in diary g^^d " Muddy River." The great boulder, 
 somewhat resembling a pulpit, is a mile 
 from the Hawthorne house, easterly, on 
 the road to Portland. At the southern 
 extremity of the long narrow cape, pro- 
 jecting into Sebago Lake, is a picturesque 
 promontory known as " The Images ; " 
 8 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 this is five miles southerly from the lit- 
 tle hamlet which was the home of Haw- 
 thorne's boyhood. It was on the road 
 between these points that the Tarbox 
 tragedy occurred, which, according to 
 Symmes, was celebrated in verse by the 
 young poet. Some figures painted by 
 Indians were formerly to be seen upon 
 the cliffs at the extremity of the cape. 
 These were " The Images." A mass of '^The im- 
 rocks rises perpendicularly to the height "•^" 
 of about sixty feet, " then slopes upward, 
 in jagged, broken shapes, to a still fur- 
 ther height of thirty feet, with a few 
 spots of greensward, where scraggy pines 
 and stunted birches struggle for exist- 
 ence, seemingly out of the solid rock." 
 The water at the foot of the cliff is 
 eighty-five feet deep. The legend is that 
 Captain Frye, pursued by Indians, made 
 a desperate leap from this cliff, and swam 
 across to Frye's Island, where he con- 
 cealed himself from the Indians in the 
 dense forest. There is a cave at the 
 9 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 water line of the cliff, now called Haw- 
 thorne's Cave ; a boat can sail into this 
 cave twenty-five feet. It is said that this 
 was a favorite retreat of Hawthorne's. 
 He mentions a visit to this cave in his 
 diary. 
 
 Off the end of the cape, at a point 
 nearly central in the lake, and visible 
 from all its shores, is Frye's Island, with 
 its thousand acres of primeval woods. 
 At the northwestern corner of the lake, 
 nearly west of Dingley Bay, is the 
 mouth of "Muddy River," graphically 
 described by Hawthorne, in his account 
 of the fishing expedition. Midway be- 
 tween Dingley Brook and Muddy River 
 Song^o is the outlet of the famous Songo River, 
 which has been celebrated in Longfel- 
 low's verse, and in the prose of many 
 noted tourists. This exceedingly crooked 
 river, doubling upon itself many times, 
 connects Sebago Lake and Brandy Pond, 
 and gives a peculiar zest to the naviga- 
 tion of these waters : — 
 
 Hiver 
 
TJIE JMAGJ;S. .SLUAGO LAKE 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 " Nowhere such a devious stream, 
 Save in fancy or in dream, 
 Winding slow through bush and brake, 
 Links together lake and lake." 
 
 Richard Manning was the resident Hisun- 
 proprietor and manager of the consider- "^^^ 
 able tract of land in Raymond owned by 
 his family. He buUt for himself a large, 
 square mansion, with a hip roof, in the 
 style that was then the fashion in his 
 native Essex County. It was much finer 
 in all its appointments than any house 
 in that region. His brother Robert fre- 
 quently visited Raymond, but kept the 
 old home in Salem. When their sister, 
 Mrs. Hawthorne, lost her husband, Rob- 
 ert Manning assumed the care of the 
 orphaned family. As the widow desired 
 seclusion, he built for her at Raymond a 
 house as large as Richard's, and in simi- 
 lar style, except that it had not a hip roof. 
 Hawthorne was eight or nine years old, 
 as we have seen, when he first came to 
 Maine. It was when he was ten years old, 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 The Haw- in 1814, that the house was built for his 
 thorne mother. He did not Hve there continu- 
 """ ously, but for several months each year, 
 until he graduated from Bowdoin College 
 at the age of twenty-one. His mother 
 and sisters were in their country home 
 during most of the time when he was 
 pursuing his studies at Salem and Bruns- 
 wick. Mrs. Hawthorne had a flower gar- 
 den, and a fine young orchard of apple- 
 trees which were kept neatly trimmed and 
 whitewashed. A row of butternut-trees 
 also ornamented the place. After her 
 return to Salem, the house was occupied 
 as a stage tavern. By the will of Richard 
 Manning, who died a few years later, it 
 was provided that a church be built in 
 the vicinity of his residence. His widow 
 married Francis Radoux, a Frenchman, 
 who suggested that this item of the will 
 might be executed by remodeling the 
 Hawthorne house into a church, as it was 
 too large a house for any family likely to 
 want it. This was done, but the in- 
 12 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 tended economy was not realized ; for 
 Radoux found that the cost of remodel- 
 ing exceeded that which a new and more 
 suitable meeting-house would have in- 
 volved. The massive chimneys, which 
 characterized all the dwellings of that 
 period, were removed, and the floor be- 
 tween the two stories, leaving only the 
 outer shell of the building hallowed by 
 so many memories. As there was no 
 society to take charge of the church, it 
 was dedicated as a free meeting-house, 
 open to clergymen of all denominations ; 
 and as "what is everybody's business is 
 nobody's," there was no one to take care 
 of the edifice now doubly sacred. For 
 a time it seemed going to ruin, but now 
 it is painted white and kept in excellent 
 repair, both as to exterior and interior, 
 and makes a neat and comfortable place 
 of worship. 
 
 A gentleman who when a boy lived Amigh- 
 near the Hawthornes, was a playmate of *"'''•' ""• 
 Nathaniel's, and who is mentioned by i""""""' 
 13 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 name in the diary from which extracts 
 are to be found in another chapter, more 
 than a quarter of a century ago gave 
 the present writer his impressions of the 
 family. He said : — 
 
 "Mrs. Hawthorne was a feeble wo- 
 man, and withal very reserved. She was 
 a pious woman, and a minute observer 
 of religious festivals, fasts, feasts, and 
 Sabbath days. She was inclined, it 
 was thought by her neighbors, to be 
 somewhat aristocratic. But not so with 
 Nat. He was a pleasant, lively, fun- 
 loving boy, and had no enemies. He 
 did much to make their home in Maine 
 attractive." 
 
 Mr. Richard C. Manning, of Salem, 
 who is a son of Robert Manning, the 
 uncle who defrayed the expenses of Haw- 
 thorne's education, has in his possession 
 a large collection of memorials of his dis- 
 tinguished cousin, including many let- 
 ters he wrote to his mother and sisters. 
 From some of these, which refer to his 
 14 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 life in Raymond, I am kindly permitted 
 by Mr. Manning to quote. I give these 
 specimens of his early letters for the 
 purpose of comparison with the extracts 
 from the diary of the same period, to be 
 found in another chapter, as doubts have 
 been expressed in regard to the genuine- 
 ness of the diary. 
 
 On the 24th of March, 18 19, he wrote 
 from Raymond to his uncle Robert, in 
 Salem : — 
 
 Dear Uncle, — I suppose you have Seepage 
 not heard of the death of Mr. Tarbox and ^9 
 his wife, who were frozen to death on 
 Wednesday last. They were brought 
 from the Cape on Saturday, and buried 
 from Captain Dingley's on Sunday. The 
 snow is going off very fast, and I don't 
 think we shall have much more sleighing. 
 I hope we shall not, for I am tired of 
 winter. You ordered me to write as well 
 as I could, but this is bad paper. I am 
 writing with a bad pen, and am in a 
 IS 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 hurry, as I am going to Portland at noon 
 with Mr. Leach. 
 
 Your affectionate nephew, 
 
 Nathaniel Hathorne. 
 P. S. This paper is two cents a sheet. 
 
 Homesick. On the 26th of July, 1 8 19, he* wrote 
 at Salem £j.qjjj Salem to his uncle Robert in Ray- 
 mond : " I know it is best for me to be 
 up here, as I have no time to lose in get- 
 ting my schooling. Sometimes I do have 
 very hard fits of homesickness. I wish 
 when you come, you would bring Ebe 
 (his sister Elizabeth) with you, not for 
 her sake, for I do not think she would be 
 half so well contented here as in Ray- 
 mond ; but for mine, for I have nobody 
 to talk to but - . . and it seems lone- 
 some here. There is a pot of excellent 
 guava jelly now in the house, and one of 
 preserved limes, and I am afraid they will 
 mould if you do not come ; for it 's es- 
 teemed sacrilege by grandmother to eat 
 any of them now, because she is keeping 
 16 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 them against somebody is sick, and I 
 suppose she would be very much disap- 
 pointed if everybody was to continue 
 well, and they were to spoil. We have 
 some oranges, too, which Isaac Burnham 
 gave grandmother, which are rotting as 
 fast as possible, and we stand a very fair 
 chance of not having any good of them, 
 because we have to eat the bad ones first, 
 as the good ones are to be kept till they 
 are spoiled also." 
 
 In May, 1820, his uncle Robert was 
 again in Raymond, and Nathaniel, fear- 
 ing he would get out his gun and use it, 
 cautions him, " It has a very large charge 
 in it, and I guess it will kick" 
 
 Again writing from Salem, under date Early let- 
 of June 19, 1 82 1, he tells his mother how ^"'^ 
 much he wishes to see her, but adds : — 
 
 " I hope, dear mother, that you will 
 not be tempted by my entreaties to re- 
 turn to Salem to live. You can never 
 have so much comfort here as you now 
 enjoy. You are now undisputed mistress 
 17 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 of your own house ... If you remove to 
 Salem, I shall have no mother to return 
 to during the college vacations, and the 
 expense will be too great for me to come 
 to Salem. (This was written a few weeks 
 before his college life began.) If you re- 
 main at Raymond, think how delightfully 
 the time will pass, with all your children 
 round you, shut out from the world, and 
 nothing to disturb us. It will be a sec- 
 ond Garden of Eden. 
 
 " ' Lo, what an entertaining sight 
 Are kindred who agree.' 
 
 Elizabeth is as anxious for you to stay as 
 myself. She says she is contented to re- 
 main here for a short time, but greatly 
 prefers Raymond as a permanent place 
 of residence. The reason for my saying 
 so much on this subject is that Mrs. Dike 
 and Miss Manning (an older sister of his 
 mother) are very earnest for you to re- 
 turn to Salem, and I am afraid they will 
 commission uncle Robert to persuade 
 you to it. But, mother, if you wish to 
 i8 i9 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 live in peace, I conjure you not to con- 
 sent to it. Grandmother, I think, is 
 rather in favor of your staying." 
 
 In March, 1820, he wrote to his sister His love 
 Louisa from Salem : " Oh, that I had the f"^ ^^y- 
 wings of a dove, that I might fly hence *""" 
 and be at rest ! How often do I long 
 for my gun, and wish that I could again 
 savageize with you. But I shall never 
 again run wild in Raymond, and I shall 
 never be so happy as when I did. I 
 hope mother wUl upon no account think 
 of returning to Salem." 
 
 In July of the same year, he wrote to 
 his mother in Raymond : " I should like 
 to come down with Mr. Manning to see 
 you, but I suppose it is in vain to wish 
 it." 
 
 In August, 1 82 1, he wrote: "There 
 are few people of so much constancy as 
 myseK. I have preferred and still prefer 
 Ra)rmond to Salem, through every change 
 of fortune." 
 
 The following incident of his college 
 19 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 College life is so characteristic of the boy Haw- 
 ^if' thorne, that it is worth relating here. I 
 
 find it in the letters preserved by Rich- 
 ard Manning. In 1822, near the close 
 of his Freshman year, he was once found 
 to be breaking the rules of the college 
 by playing cards with some of his class- 
 mates, but not for money. He was fined 
 fifty cents by the faculty, and President 
 Allen wrote to Mrs. Hawthorne, asking 
 her to " cooperate with us in the attempt 
 to induce your son faithfully to observe 
 the laws of. the institution." He sug- 
 gested that her son was less to blame 
 than the person he played with ; he had 
 been tempted by his associate to break 
 the rules. In a letter to his sister, writ- 
 ten at this time, Hawthorne gives his 
 version of the affair, and is indignant 
 over the intimation that he had yielded 
 to temptation. He evidently wished to 
 bear all the blame that belonged to him, 
 and not to figure as a lamb led astray, 
 especially when so near the glorious 
 
THE HOME IN RAYMOND 
 
 estate of a Sophomore. He says : " I 
 am full as willing to play as the person 
 he suspects of having enticed me ; and 
 would have been influenced by no one. 
 I have a great mind to commence playing 
 again, merely to show them that I scorn 
 to be seduced by another into anything 
 wrong." His college record indicates 
 that his delinquencies were not at all seri- 
 ous, and merely show that he took life 
 jovially and carelessly. In October of 
 the same year, he wrote : " The laws of 
 the coUege are not too strict, and I do 
 not have to study as hard as I did in 
 Salem," 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 NEARLY thirty years ago there 
 came into my hands certdn ex- 
 tracts from what purported to be a diary 
 kept by Hawthorne, written when he was 
 a lad in his teens. In spite of many cir- 
 cumstances which at the time seemed 
 suspicious, the internal evidence of genu- 
 ineness was so great, that these extracts 
 were printed in a paper with which I 
 was connected at Portland. There was 
 at first what appeared to be unnecessary 
 mystery about the personality of the 
 correspondent who forwarded the notes. 
 His letters came at long intervals, were 
 First hint signed Only by the initials "W. S.," and 
 of diary were postmarked at Alexandria, Vir- 
 ginia. Efforts to communicate with him 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 by letter proved unavailing, and I could 
 only reach him by personal notes in my 
 paper. He never received nor asked for 
 money, nor replied to offers of compen- 
 sation. In the last letter I received from 
 him, in the summer of 1 871, he said he 
 was soon coming to Maine, and would 
 bring the old diary with him. In Novem- 
 ber of that year came intelligence of his 
 death, and no more was ever heard of the 
 notebook, though some extracts, found 
 copied among his papers left at Alexan- 
 dria, came to hand nearly two years after- 
 ward. Gradually some explanations of 
 the mystery came to light, and confirma- 
 tions of his story multiplied, until no rea- 
 sonable doubt existed that we had before 
 us the first indications Hawthorne ever 
 gave of the genius which now irradiates 
 our literature, and that they came to us 
 from a playmate of his youth, into whose 
 hands the diary had come in a romantic 
 way. 
 
 Our correspondent's name proved to 
 23 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 be William Symmes ; his story is in it- 
 self full of interest, and from it can be 
 gathered some of the reasons why there 
 was so much that seemed mysterious in 
 the matter of the diary. We did not 
 know until after his death that he was a 
 mulatto ; ignorance of this fact naturally 
 tangled the clues by which we were 
 searching for him in Virginia. This is a 
 brief statement of the leading incidents 
 Son of a of his life : He was born in Portland, 
 noted Maine, in 1805, and was the natural son 
 of a leading member of the Massachu- 
 setts bar of that day, who gave him his 
 own name. Upon the death of his father, 
 the son, then two years old, was sent into 
 the country, and was brought up as the 
 foster son of Captain Jonathan Britton, 
 of Otisfield, Maine, with whom he lived 
 until twenty years of age. It was during 
 these years that Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
 who was one year older than Symmes, 
 came to live in Raymond, an adjoining 
 town. 
 
 24 
 
 lawyer 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 Richard Manning was a gentleman of 
 culture and refined tastes, somewhat 
 aristocratic in his bearing, and found few 
 associates in the sparsely settled region, 
 which to this day is scarcely more popu- 
 lous than at the beginning of this cen- 
 tury. Britton was an unpolished and ec- Captain 
 centric man, of much native ability, and ■*"''<'« 
 became a frequent visitor at Manning's. 
 His mulatto foster son sometimes accom- 
 panied him, and there he met young 
 Hawthorne, became his companion in 
 gunning and fishing expeditions, and a 
 lasting friendship existed between them. 
 The district school was open to the 
 young mulatto, and he availed himself of 
 its advantages. His letters, which we 
 give precisely as he wrote them, show 
 how far he was from being illiterate. 
 But I do not think he could have known 
 of his paternal ancestry, for he spelled 
 his name " Sims." At the age of twenty 
 he went to sea as a common sailor, and 
 we shall see how in the streets of Liver- 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 pool he was once cordially greeted by 
 Consul Hawthorne. During our civil 
 war he was a member of Colonel Baker's 
 secret detective force. He died at Pen- 
 sacola, Florida, October 28, 1871. Some 
 further information in regard to him may 
 be found in a postscript at the close of 
 this volume. 
 
 We will let him give his own account 
 of the manner in which he came into 
 possession of the early diary of his old 
 playmate. In 1870 an article was going 
 the rounds of the newspapers to the ef- 
 fect that no one was then living at Ray- 
 mond who remembered the boy Haw- 
 thorne. The paper with which I was 
 connected, the " Portland Transcript," 
 having published this article, we soon 
 received a letter from Alexandria, Vir- 
 ginia, signed "W. S.," which is so full 
 of interesting reminiscence of that part 
 of Hawthorne's life of which his biogra- 
 phers have made little account, that no 
 excuse is needed for giving a liberal ex- 
 26 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 tract from it in this place. After men- 
 tioning several reasons why the elderly- 
 people of Raymond did not remember 
 Hawthorne, he says : — 
 
 " Another reason is, that these people Letter 
 do not recognize the name when they /'"'"» 
 hear it spoken or see it on paper. The ^y""""" 
 universal pronunciation of the name in 
 Raymond was Hathorne — the first syl- 
 lable exactly as the word 'hearth' was 
 pronoxmced at that time. I remember 
 meeting in 1852, in Portland, Mr. Jacob 
 Watkins, who lived within cannon-shot 
 of the Richard Manning place, and knew 
 the lad Hawthorne very well ; I said to 
 him, ' Nat Hawthorne is becoming fa- 
 mous.' He seemed puzzled, and said 
 inquiringly, ' Nat who ? ' I answered, 
 ' That boy who used to live in your meet- 
 ing-house with his mother, and fish out 
 on that great flat rock at the outlet of 
 Thomas Pond, and sit gazing for hours 
 at a time across at your field and brick- 
 yard.' 'Oh yes,' said the old gentleman, 
 27 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 'you mean Nat Hathorne,' sounding the 
 • a ' as in bath. ' What of him ? ' I told 
 him that ' Nat ' was becoming popular as 
 a writer. The good old man said he had 
 seen the name of a Mr. Hawthorne in 
 the papers, but never suspected it was 
 the name of young 'Nat Hathorne.' I 
 lived with one of the few men who visited 
 Richard Manning, and used to go there 
 often with my foster father. Nat Haw- 
 thorne and I were nearly of the same 
 Thomas age and often played together. Thomas 
 Pond Pond, a beautiful sheet of water, lay 
 about a half a mile to the eastward of 
 his mother's house, the outlet of which 
 is the creek running between Manning's 
 house and that of his sister. We used 
 to go to the pond, and on a large flat 
 rock, partly covered with water, fish for 
 perch and minnows, and try our skill at 
 throwing stones as far as we could into 
 the pond. At that time there was a 
 charming knoll, a few rods from the out- 
 let, entirely clear of underbrush and com- 
 28 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 pletely surrounded by a growth of hand- 
 some trees. Nat told me that his uncle 
 Richard said the knoll was an Indian 
 burying-ground. There were ridges hav- 
 ing an artificial appearance, that he in- 
 sisted were Indian graves. On one of Indian 
 our excursions to the pond he read to ^''^" 
 me some verses that he had written, the 
 subject being the freezing to death of a 
 Mr. Tarbox and wife, in a terrible storm. 
 This happened in their immediate neigh- 
 borhood. One of the little orphans, 
 Elizabeth Tarbox, was adopted by Mrs. 
 Richard Manning, and was treated with 
 particular tenderness by little Nat. He 
 also read to me some poetry of his upon 
 another sad event, that happened at about 
 that time, the drowning of the wife and 
 infant of Mr. Nathaniel Knight.^ In 
 
 1 In Griffith's Poets of Maine, p. io6, is given a 
 ballad describing the Knight tragedy, and it is sug- 
 gested that these were the verses written by Haw- 
 thorne and recited to Sjrmmes. But it has been 
 found that this was not the case ; they were the effu- 
 sion of a local ballad-monger named Daniel Shaw. 
 29 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 crossing the bridge at Horsebeef Falls 
 on the Presumpscot River, between Gor- 
 ham and Windham, Mr. Knight's horse 
 became unmanageable and backed the 
 sleigh off the bridge, and Mrs. Knight 
 was thrown from a great height, struck 
 the water, and was carried under the ice 
 below the falls. I cannot recall a single 
 line of his poetry, but remember that he 
 read with much feeling, and that I was 
 near crying at his pathos, and told him 
 his 'verses were terrible pretty.' Nat 
 said he would not have his uncle Rich- 
 Nafspo- ard see the poetry on any account, for 
 '^''y- he would be sure to laugh. I remember 
 saying with much emphasis, that ' if his 
 uncle said anything against the verses he 
 was no judge.' We could not have been 
 more than ten years old, and I suspect I 
 was not an eminent critic ; but it would 
 be a satisfaction to hear those early pro- 
 ductions of his read now, to know if they 
 would touch the ear as they did then." 
 [Symmes is mistaken as to the age of 
 30 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 the young poet ; he must have been fif- 
 teen years old, for the Tarbox tragedy 
 occurred March 17, 18 19. The Knight 
 affair happened in 1807.] 
 
 "After the age of twenty I went to Haw- 
 sea, and have ever since been a wan- ^'"^"'"^ 
 
 1 • -i-i • TT , manner 
 
 derer, occasionally meeting Hawthorne 
 
 by chance. He never forgot me, and 
 once, after he graduated, came on board 
 a vessel in Salem harbor and stayed with 
 me two hours. I was then before the 
 mast. I have heard people say Haw- 
 thorne was cold and distant; if he was 
 so, there was one of his youthful asso- 
 ciates who, as the world goes, was not 
 his equal socially, certainly not intel- 
 lectually, who was never forgotten. The 
 last time I saw him we were in Liver- 
 pool ; he recognized me across the street, 
 and ' hove me to.' We had a long talk, 
 and he conversed in that easy, bewitch- 
 ing style, of which he was perfect mas- 
 ter when he pleased. I asked if he 
 had ever been to Raymond since his 
 31 
 
in Liver- 
 pool 
 
 HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 mother moved back to Salem. He an- 
 swered : — ' 
 Meeting " ' I have been there since, but have 
 not a wish to go again, for soon after we 
 left, uncle Richard rented the house to 
 Colonel Eben Scribner, to keep a stage 
 tavern ; everything I loved was neg- 
 lected. Our fruit trees died, and the 
 long row of butternuts that I watched 
 with such solicitude are not inclosed, and 
 now they have turned the. old mansion 
 into a meeting-house. Uncle Richard is 
 dead, and little Betsey Tarbox is mar- 
 ried and gone from there. No,' my idols 
 are destroyed, and I have no desire to 
 revisit the places where the altars stood. 
 But this I will tell you, that I have 
 visited many places called beautiful in 
 Europe and the United States, but have 
 never seen the place that enchanted me 
 like the flat rock at the outlet of Thomas 
 Pond, from which we used to fish. In 
 an October afternoon, just when the oak- 
 trees put on their red coats, the view 
 32 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 from that spot, looking to the slopes of 
 Rattlesnake Mountain, through the haze 
 of Indian summer, was to me more en- 
 chanting than anything I have since 
 seen, and I have seriously thought of in- 
 ducing some artist to go to Raymond in 
 the pleasant autumn, to make for me a 
 view from the rock where we used to 
 play. I also wish that some curious per- 
 son would open some of the Indian graves 
 that I feel sure are there.' 
 
 " Hawthorne said much more that I 
 cannot recall. I parted from him for the 
 last time in Liverpool." 
 
 In further explanation of the misun- change of 
 derstanding in regard to the name, it "'""' 
 should be said, that the family name was 
 spelled Hathome until 1825, when Na- 
 thaniel graduated. He had found that 
 the proper spelling was Hawthorne, and 
 himself made the change. In his di- 
 ploma, giving the degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts, the name was spelled without the 
 "w," and on this parchment is still to be 
 33 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 seen his partial erasure of the name as 
 written by the college authorities, and 
 his substitution of the new name he was 
 to render famous. 
 Betsey All the names and incidents mentioned 
 
 Tarbox jjy Symmes have been verified, and a few 
 years ago I found "little Betsey Tarbox," 
 now a venerable matron. To her Haw- 
 thorne was only a family tradition, for 
 she was only four or five years old when 
 she last saw the lad who remembered her 
 so fondly thirty years later. His aunt, 
 who had been as a mother to her, often 
 spoke of Nathaniel, and she had heard 
 from her of the diary he left at Ray- 
 mond. The letter from which the above 
 extract is given was followed, at an in- 
 terval of six months, by one in which 
 the first intelligence of the diary was 
 vouchsafed. I copy Symmes's account of 
 the somewhat romantic way in which it 
 came into his possession. He wrote, as 
 before, from Alexandria, and signed only 
 his initials : — 
 
 34 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 " Since the first year of the late war First ac- 
 I have been in this part of Virginia, and <:<»*"* of 
 in 1863 became acquainted with several ""^ 
 soldiers of the Twenty-fifth Maine Regi- 
 ment, who were quartered in Fairfax 
 County. Among them was a private 
 named Small, to whom I rendered some 
 service during an illness, and was one 
 day inquiring what part of Cumberland 
 he came from, as I had been informed 
 that nearly all the regiment was raised 
 in that county. He said his home was 
 Raymond. I then asked him if he knew 
 that Hawthorne, the author, lived there 
 through his boyhood, but he seemed not 
 to understand my meaning. I then ex- 
 plained to him, but found he had never 
 heard of the man. After thinking a few 
 moments, he said, ' You remind me of 
 something ; Frank Redo (the name as 
 well as I can spell and remember it) 
 moved a large lot of rich old furniture 
 from the old Manning house to the Cap- 
 tain Davis place several years ago. I 
 35 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 helped him to load and stow it away. 
 There was a large mahogany bookcase 
 and a lot of old books, and among them 
 TTudi- one entirely in writing, and I feel sure 
 ary found .the name of Hawthorne was on the out- 
 side. I read portions^ and it was a jour- 
 nal of some kind; it was filled with all 
 sorts of witch and ghost stories, and a 
 little of everything. Frank cared nothing 
 for the book, and gave it to me. If no 
 one has destroyed it, the thing is safe at 
 home.' 
 
 " I said, if the book was what he de- 
 scribed it would be a prize to me ; and 
 he promised if he got home alive he 
 would certainly send it to me by ex- 
 press. Thinking that he would perhaps 
 forget the matter, I forgot it myself, but 
 in the latter part of 1864 it came to me 
 at Camp Distribution, by the Sanitary 
 Commission Express, neatly done up and 
 directed. I have it now, and shall keep 
 it while I keep anything. This book was 
 originally a bound blank one, not ruled, 
 36 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 and has been gnawed by mice or eaten 
 by moths on the edges. On the first 
 leaf, in a beautiful round hand, is written 
 the following : — 
 
 " ' Presented by Richard Manning, to his His un- • 
 nephew Nathaniel Hathome, with the advice de'sgift 
 that he write out his thoughts, some every day, 
 in as good words as he can, upon any and all 
 subjects, as it is one of the best means of his 
 securing for mature years, command of thought 
 and language. 
 
 " ^ Raymond, June 1, 1816? 
 
 " The book has about two hundred and 
 fifty pages, and was about six by eight 
 inches before it was gnawed. It is writ- 
 ten throughout, the first part in a boyish 
 hand, though legibly, and showing in its 
 progress a marked improvement in pen- 
 manship. 
 
 " In his youth Hawthorne was much 
 inclined to talk of the supernatural. I 
 have heard him many times tell ghost Fonda/ 
 and haunted house stories, though never ^^"'^^ 
 as though he believed what he was say- '^ """ 
 37 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 ing. There always seemed to be an un- 
 dercurrent of incredulity. One of your 
 correspondents, who dates at Bolster's 
 Mills [Robinson Cook], describes the 
 mother of Nathaniel as being somewhat 
 superstitious, and from what I recollect 
 of her, he is correct. Not a gross and 
 ignorant, but a polished and pious super- 
 stition. Perhaps this proclivity in the 
 parent may account for his filling his 
 journal with so many of the local stories 
 of the supernatural. 
 
 "I am satisfied that the journal is a 
 genuine one of Hawthorne's. StUl it is 
 possible that I have been imposed on, al- 
 though I cannot conceive why or where- 
 fore. As to selling the book, I should 
 as soon think of making money on a 
 favorite book bequeathed by my father. 
 I think that there are entries in this 
 manuscript book that will interest many 
 readers, especially in the county of Cum- 
 berland. If it is spurious, there are many 
 living who will detect it at once, for many 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 things are noticed that must have at the 
 time attained publicity. If you desire to 
 publish some extracts from this journal, 
 I will furnish them from time to time, my 
 only object being to contribute a little 
 in return for the pleasure I have enjoyed, 
 through the kindness of a lady friend, 
 in reading the ' Portland Transcript ' for 
 three years past." 
 
 Frank " Redo," to whom reference is Francis 
 made in this letter, was either the K<"ioux 
 Frenchman, Francis Radoux,^ who mar- 
 ried the widow of Richard Manning, or 
 his son of the same name. The old gen- 
 tleman was living in Portland when the 
 above letter came to hand, and I called 
 upon him, an officer of the Napoleonic 
 wars, with whom I had long been ac- 
 
 1 Francis Radoux came to'this country soon after 
 the downfall of Napoleon. At the battle of Water- 
 loo he served as a lieutenant in the French army. 
 He was a teacher of the polite accomplishment of 
 dancing for many years in Portland and other New 
 England cities. He died in Portland at a good old 
 age, about twenty years ago. 
 39 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 Had been quainted. He said that his wife had told 
 told of him of this notebook, and wanted him to 
 amry ^.^^^ j^^ ^^^^ could not find it at the time, 
 and believed it had been lost or loaned. 
 He cettainly had not given it to Small, 
 and believed that Small had appropriated 
 it at the time he assisted in removing 
 his household goods from the Manning 
 house, after the death of his wife. He 
 admitted that it was possible his son had 
 given it to Small. As for himself, he 
 had never seen it. 
 
 It must be acknowledged- that the mys- 
 tery enveloping the whole affair up to 
 this time made us suspicious that a liter- 
 ary hoax was being perpetrated. For 
 not only had " W. S." failed to give any 
 address by which he could be reached, 
 but we could not find at Raymond or 
 vicinity any one who could guess for 
 whom the initials might stand. But 
 when in a few weeks the first installment 
 of the promised "extracts " came, with a 
 letter signed "W. Sims," and still later 
 40 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 Other extracts followed; when we had 
 learned the origin and history of our cor- 
 respondent, and found his statements 
 reliable in many instances, we could no 
 longer doubt that the notes were really 
 written by Hawthorne, and came to the 
 conclusion that for some reason Symmes 
 was afraid to trust the book out of his 
 hands. Perhaps he feared that Small Suspi- 
 did not come by it honestly, or that the ""»■' 
 Hawthorne family would claim it. The 
 old Frenchman, Radoux, told me he 
 should demand possession of it, if by any 
 chance it came to light, as it had been 
 left to him by his wife, Hawthorne's 
 aunt. The Mannings in Salem were 
 anxious to get it, in order to put at rest 
 by the chirography the question of its 
 genuineness. But all detective machin- Detectives 
 ery set at work to find Symmes proved "^P^'y^ 
 a failure, though I think we should have 
 found him if we had known at the time 
 that he was a colored man. When after 
 his death this was made public, he was 
 41 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 remembered by many people in the home 
 of his childhood. We found also a pos- 
 sible reason for the failure of the detec- 
 tives who were employed at Washington 
 in search of Symmes and the diary. 
 Symmes was himself ^a detective in the 
 very office to which application was 
 made, and found some means to check- 
 mate the searchers ! He was a prot^gd 
 and favorite of Colonel Baker. 
 
 The incidents and names recorded by 
 Hawthorne in these notes have been ver- 
 ified by the memories of scores of our 
 correspondents in Cumberland County. 
 And even if it were not so, the internal 
 evidence is convincing. The style is that 
 of an immature Hawthorne, most clearly ; 
 and considering that he was only twelve 
 years old when his uncle gave him the 
 book, with the admirably expressed in- 
 junction to "write out his thoughts, some 
 every day, in as good words as he could, 
 upon any and all subjects," we think his 
 first literary achievement remarkable. It 
 42 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 is a great pity that only a few of these The hook 
 sibylline leaves have been rescued ; for vanished 
 Symmes died and the book vanished, 
 when he had copied only three install- 
 ments, comprising but comparatively few 
 of the two hundred and fifty pages of the 
 book. Symmes appears to have selected 
 for the most part the items that con- 
 tained names likely to be remembered in 
 the county. He gave us only one or 
 two of the creepy ghost stories of which 
 he speaks in his first account of the book. 
 As Symmes died in Pensacola, and prob- 
 ably had the book with him at the time, 
 a search in that region may yet reveal it. 
 It was a treasure this old playmate of 
 Hawthorne valued so highly that it is 
 most likely he would carry it with him in 
 his travels. 
 
 Julian Hawthorne, in his life of his 
 father, refers contemptuously to the 
 claims of this diary, and indeed affects 
 to consider it of little consequence even 
 if proved genuine. He says : — 
 43 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 " With deference to the contrary opin- 
 Haw- ion of those who are worth listening to 
 ornes ^^ ^^^ subject, the present writer has 
 been unable to find in this diary any 
 trustworthy evidence, either external or, 
 internal, of its being anything else than 
 a clumsy and leaky fabrication. Assum- 
 ing it to be genuine, however, it seems 
 singularly destitute of biographical value; 
 and at all events it shall not be inflicted 
 on the reader. . . . Babies are interest- 
 ing and instructive in a high degree, be- 
 cause they are impersonaj and unself- 
 conscious ; but a half - grown boy is a 
 morally amphibious creature, who, so far 
 as he has attained individuality, is dis- 
 agreeable, and so far as he has not at- 
 tained it, is superfluous." 
 
 I do not beUeve that this characteriza- 
 tion of the extracts now to be given will 
 be accepted as just criticism. These 
 notes show the powers of close and mi- 
 nute observation which distinguished 
 Hawthorne as a man and an author ; 
 
 44 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 they were the work of a lad who had " at- 
 tained individuality" without becoming 
 " disagreeable." Mr. Lathrop, in his Mr. La- 
 biographical sketch of his father-in-law, *^^^f^ 
 expresses belief in the genuineness of 
 the diary, and copies a few of the items 
 from it. But, as before remarked, no bio- 
 grapher of Hawthorne has taken suffi- 
 cient account of his peculiar manner of 
 life in the Maine wilderness, in its effect 
 upon his susceptible nature. None of 
 them seems to understand how much of 
 his boyhood and young manhood was 
 spent there. It may be that his mother 
 did not occupy the house her brother 
 built for her later than the year 1822, 
 but Nathaniel made his home with his 
 uncle during his visits in other years. 
 His college and his Raymond home were 
 only a few miles apart. No biography 
 mentions the fact that for at least one 
 term Hawthorne's studies in prepara- 
 tion for college were prosecuted at 
 Stroudwater, Westbrook, which is also 
 4S 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 in Cumberland County. He went from 
 Raymond with Jacob Dingley, a relative 
 of Mrs. Manning's, whom Hawthorne 
 mentions in his diary, and they lived in 
 Rev. Caleb the family of their teacher, Rev. Caleb 
 Bradley Bradley, who was a graduate of Harvard, 
 somewhat eccentric, and a man of such 
 pronounced individiaality that it would 
 be strange if even the few weeks Haw- 
 thorne spent with him did not leave last- 
 ing impressions upon his mind. And 
 yet I fail to find any reference to this 
 teacher in any work of Hawthorne's, un- 
 less it be in The Vision of the Foun- 
 tain in "Twice -Told Tales." In this 
 sketch he locates himself in a village 
 more than a hundred miles from home, 
 at the age of fifteen, and living in the 
 family of an old clergyman, who econo- 
 mizes fuel by using, as the foundation of 
 his parlor fire, a heap of tan, or ground 
 bark. All these circumstances seem a 
 reminiscence of his brief residence at 
 Stroudwater, while a pupil of Bradley's. 
 46 
 
THE STORY OF WILLIAM SYMMES 
 
 The first installment of extracts sent 
 by Symmes was accompanied by a note 
 dated at Alexandria, Virginia, January 
 21, 1871, and signed "W. Sims," this 
 being the first hint of the name of our 
 correspoiident. In this note he said : — 
 
 " I have copied exactly some of the Symme^s 
 entries in Hawthorne's journal, and send ''^''"'^ 
 them to you herewith. They are no 
 doubt genuine, or if they are not, your 
 readers in that region will detect the 
 fraud. I know not whether the names 
 are real or fictitious ; only two of them 
 were known to me thirty-six years ago. 
 Almost all the dates in the journal are 
 gone. They were close to the margin, 
 and mice and moths have eaten the outer 
 edges. The book has at some time been 
 in the water so as to destroy the binding 
 and obliterate every date on the inner 
 right hand margin. If what I send are 
 not worth publishing, burn them ; if they 
 are, and you hereafter signify in ' notices 
 to correspondents ' that you would like 
 47 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 more extracts, when I have time I will 
 send some additional. What I here send 
 were copied whenever I could get a few 
 spare moments. As I shall always re- 
 member Cumberland County with plea- 
 sure, if the extracts shall amuse any of 
 your readers there I shall be well paid." 
 
 Having now given a history of the 
 diary, some romantic features of which 
 at first excited suspicion, we will set 
 forth the " extracts " sent by S)mimes, 
 confident that unprejudiced readers will 
 agree with us that whatever may be said 
 of the external evidence, the internal is 
 satisfactory proof that they came from 
 the hand of Hawthorne. Within a few 
 weeks after the publication of the notes, 
 we received scores of letters confirmatory 
 of the names and incidents mentioned, 
 some of the most striking of these verifi- 
 cations coming after we had learned of 
 the death of Symmes. The notes are 
 here given exactly as received, with the 
 addition of some explanations and cor- 
 roboratory circumstances. 
 48 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 WENT yesterday in a sailboat on a sail 
 the Great Pond with Mr. Peter ""-tofe 
 White,! of Windham. He sailed up here ^''"'^'' 
 from White's Bridge to see Captain Ding- 
 ley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. 
 Ring to take a boat-ride out to the Ding- 
 ley Islands and to the Images. He was 
 also kind enough to say that I might go, 
 with my mother's consent, which she 
 gave after much coaxing. Since the loss 
 of my father, she dreads to have any one 
 belonging to her go upon the water. It 
 is strange that this beautiful body of 
 water is called a "Pond." The geo- 
 
 1 [Peter White was long considered the best pilot 
 of Sebago Lake, and of Songo and Crooked rivers, 
 in which region he spent much of his life fishing and 
 fowling. The common name of the lake at that time 
 was " Great Pond."] 
 
 49 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 graphy tells of many in Scotland and 
 Ireland, not near so large, that are 
 called " Lakes." It is not respectful to 
 speak of so noble, deep, and broad a col- 
 lection of clear water as a " Pond." It 
 makes a stranger think of geese, and 
 then of goosepond. Mr. White, who 
 knows all this region, told us that the 
 streams from thirty-five ponds, large and 
 small, flow into this, as he calls it, Great 
 Basin. We landed on one of the small 
 islands that Captain Dingley cleared for 
 a sheep pasture when he first came to 
 Raymond. Mr. Ring said he had to do 
 it to keep his sheep from the bears and 
 wolves. A growth of trees has started 
 on the island, and makes a grove so fine 
 and pleasant, that I wish almost that our 
 house was there. On the way from the 
 island to the Images, Mr. Ring caught 
 a black spotted trout that was almost a 
 whale, and weighed, before it was cut 
 open, after we got back to uncle Rich- 
 ard's store, eighteen and a half pounds. 
 5° 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 The men said that if it had been weighed 
 as soon as it came out of the water it 
 would have been nineteen pounds. This 
 trout had a droll-looking hooked nose, 
 and they tried to make me believe that 
 if the line had' been in my hands I should 
 have been obliged to let go, or have been 
 pulled out of the boat. They were men, 
 and had a right to say so. I am a boy, 
 and have a right to think differently. 
 We landed at the Images, when I crept in cave 
 into the cave and got a drink of cool °-* " '^' 
 water. In coming home we sailed over "^"^^ 
 a place, not far from the Images, where 
 Mr. White has at some time let down a 
 line four hundred feet without finding 
 bottom. This seems strange, for he told 
 us, too, that his boat, as it floated, was 
 only two hundred and fifty feet higher 
 than the boats in Portland Harbor, and 
 that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, 
 a man standing on its bottom, just under 
 where we then were, would be more than 
 one hundred and fifty feet lower than 
 SI 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 the surface of the water at the Portland 
 
 wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, 
 
 Rattle- jiad a good view of Rattlesnake Moun- 
 
 Moun- ^"^t ^'^'^ it seemed to me wonderfully 
 
 tain beautiful as the almost setting sun threw 
 
 over its western crags streams of fiery 
 
 light. If the Indians were very fond of 
 
 this part of the country, it is easy to see 
 
 why. Beavers, otters, and the finest fish 
 
 were abundant, and the hills and streams 
 
 furnished constant variety. I should 
 
 have made a good Indian if I had been 
 
 born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, 
 
 we " made " the old hemlock stub, at the 
 
 mouth of the Dingley Brook, just before 
 
 sunset, and sent a boy ashore with a 
 
 hawser, and were soon safely moored to 
 
 a bunch of alders. After we got ashore. 
 
 Firing Mr. White allowed me to fire his long 
 
 ^""^ gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, 
 
 and am not sure that I saw it at the 
 
 time the gun went off, but believe rather 
 
 that I was watching for the noise that I 
 
 was about to make. Mr. Ring said that 
 
 52 
 
 gun 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 with practice I could be a gunner, and 
 that now, with a very heavy charge, he 
 thought I could kill a horse at eight 
 paces ! Mr. White went to uncle Rich- 
 ard's for the night, and I went home, 
 and amused my mother with telling how 
 pleasantly the day had passed. When I 
 told her what Mr. Ring said about my 
 killing a horse, she said he was making 
 fun of me. I had found that out before. 
 
 SWAPPED pocket-knives with Robin- Swapping 
 son Cook yesterday. Jacob Ding- ''""'" 
 ley says that he cheated me ; but I think 
 not, for I cut a fishing-pole this morning, 
 and did it well. Besides, he is a Quaker, 
 and they never cheat. 
 
 [Robinson Cook and Jacob Dingley 
 were both living when this item was 
 printed. Mr. Cook wrote : " There can 
 be no doubt of the truth of Nat's rec- 
 ords, nor has he used any fictitious names. 
 S3 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 I did not at first distinctly recollect of 
 swapping knives with him, but, after con- 
 sidering, the whole affair is fresh in my 
 mind. I do not recollect how we traded ; 
 but as he and Jacob Dingley were great 
 cronies, and were ever trying in a jocose 
 manner to 'trig each other's wheels,' it 
 seems that Jacob tried to irritate Nat on 
 this occasion by telling him that he had 
 got cheated."] 
 
 King. 'TnWO kingbirds have built their nest 
 irds J_ between our house and the mill- 
 
 pond. The male is more courageous than 
 any creature that I know about. He 
 seems to have taken possession of the 
 territory from the great pond to the 
 small one, and goes out to war with 
 every fish-hawk that flies from one to 
 the other over his dominion. The fish- 
 hawks must be miserable cowards to be 
 driven by such a speck of a bird. I have 
 not yet seen one turn to defend himself. 
 54 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 CAPTAIN BRITTON, from Otis- Brittm^s 
 field, was at uncle Richard's to-/"'^ 
 day. Not long ago uncle brought here 
 from Salem a new kind of potatoes, called 
 "Long Reds." Captain Britton had 
 some for seed, and uncle asked how 
 he liked them. He answered, " They 
 yield well, grow very long; one end is 
 very poor, and the other good for no- 
 thing." I laughed about it after he was 
 gone; but uncle looked sour, and said 
 there was no wit in his answer, and that 
 the saying was stale. It was new to me, 
 and his way of saying it very funny. 
 Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his 
 favorite potato spoken of in that way, 
 and that if the captain had praised it he 
 would have been called witty. Captain 
 Britton promised to bring " Gulliver's 
 Travels " for me to read, the next time 
 he goes to Portland. Uncle Richard has 
 not the book in his library. 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 THIS morning the bucket got off 
 the chain and dropped back into 
 the well. I wanted to go down on the 
 Mother's stones and get it. Mother would not 
 fears consent, for fear the wall might cave in, 
 but hired Samuel Shane to go down. 
 In the goodness of her heart, she thought 
 the son of old Mrs. Shane not quite so 
 valuable as the son of the widow Ha- 
 thorne. God bless her for all her love 
 for me, though it may be some selfish. 
 We are to have a pump in the well after 
 this mishap. 
 
 An expert TT TASHINGTON LONGLEY has 
 drummer \\ ^^^^ ^^:^^ lessons of a drum- 
 ming master. He was in the grist-mill 
 to-day, and practiced with two sticks on 
 the half bushel. I was astonished at the 
 great number of strokes in a second ; 
 and if I had not seen that he had but 
 two sticks, should have supposed he was 
 drumming with twenty. 
 S6 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 MAJOR BERRY went past our Buyinga 
 house with a large drove of sheep ^^^ 
 yesterday. One, a last spring's lamb, 
 gave out, — could go no further. I saw 
 him down near the bridge. The poor 
 dumb creature looked into my eyes, and 
 I thought I knew what he would say if 
 he could speak, and so asked Mr. Berry 
 what he would sell him for. " Just the 
 price of his pelt, and that will bring 
 sixty-five cents," was the answer. I ran 
 and petitioned mother for the money, 
 which she soon gave me, saying, with a 
 smile, that she tried to make severe, but 
 could not, that I was "a great spend- 
 thrift." The lamb is in our orchard now, 
 and he made a bow (without taking off 
 his hat), and thanked me this morning 
 for saving him from the butcher. 
 
 [The late Hon. William Goold, of 
 
 Windham, the historian, wrote to me 
 
 this comment upon the above item : 
 
 " Major Berry, the drover, passed my 
 
 S7 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 home on his way to market with his 
 droves of tired lambs, in the heat of July 
 and August, regularly for several years. 
 I have often felt as Hawthorne did when 
 they gave out on the road, and would 
 have gladly purchased one if I had had 
 the money. Mr. Berry was a short, 
 fleshy man, and always rode horseback, 
 apparently suffering as much in the sun 
 as the lambs."] 
 
 Rattk. A yTR. MARCH GAY killed a rattle- 
 IVX snake yesterday, not far from his 
 house, that was more than six feet long, 
 and had twelve rattles. This morning, 
 Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near 
 the same place, almost as long. It is 
 supposed they were a pair, and that the 
 second one was on the track of its mate. 
 If every rattle counts a year, the first 
 one was twelve years old. Eliakim Max- 
 field came down to mill to-day, and told 
 me about the snakes. 
 S8 
 
 snakes 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 MR. HENRY TURNER, of Otis- B,ar 
 field, took his axe and went out ^*'^y 
 between Saturday and Moose ponds, to 
 look at some pine-trees. A rain had just 
 taken off enough of the snow to lay bare 
 the roots of a part of the trees. Under 
 a large root there seemed to be a cavity, 
 and on examining closely, something was 
 exposed very much like long black hair. 
 He cut off the root, saw the nose of a 
 bear, and killed him, pulled out the body, 
 saw another, killed that, and dragged out 
 its carcass, when he found that there was 
 a third one in the den, and that he was 
 thoroughly awake, too ; but as soon as 
 the head came in sight, it was split open 
 with the axe, so that Mr. Turner alone, 
 with only an axe, killed three bears in 
 less than half an hour, the youngest being 
 a good-sized one, and what the hunters 
 call a yearling. This is a pretty great 
 bear story, but probably true, and hap- 
 pened only a few weeks ago ; for John 
 Patch, who was here with his father, Cap- 
 59 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 tain Levi Patch, who lives within two 
 miles of the Saturday Pond, told me so 
 yesterday. 
 
 [Robinson Cook informed me that the 
 bear story here related was true, in the 
 main. Turner went to the woods with 
 his oxen to get birch bark to make sap 
 buckets. His dog discovered the den of 
 bears, and two were killed with the axe. 
 The third was wounded with the same 
 weapon, and retreated to the farthest 
 side of the den, where he could not be 
 reached. Turner finally dispatched him 
 with a long, sharpened stake. His oxen 
 were so badly frightened, that he was 
 obliged to fasten them to a tree with 
 chains until he had loaded the dead bears 
 upon his sled. Then he let the oxen 
 loose, jumped upon the sled, and was 
 carried home at a furious pace by the 
 maddened animals.] 
 60 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 A YOUNG man named Henry Jack-- 
 son, Jr., was drowned two days ago, 
 up in Crooked River. He and one of his 
 friends were trying which could swim the 
 faster. Jackson was behind but gaining ; 
 his friend kicked at him in fun, thinking 
 to hit his shoulder and push him back, 
 but missed, and hit his chin, which 
 caused him to take in water and stran- 
 gle, and before his friend could help or 
 get help, poor Jackson was (Elder Leach 
 says) "beyond the reach of mercy." I 
 read one of the Psalms to my mother 
 this morning, and it plainly declares Elder 
 twenty-six times, that " God's mercy en- ^""'^ , 
 
 , , , ,, -r t/ criticised 
 
 dureth forever. I never saw Henry 
 Jackson, — he was a young man just 
 married. Mother is sad ; says she shall ' 
 not consent to my swimming any more 
 in the mDl-pond, with the boys, fearing 
 that in sport my mouth might get kicked 
 open, and then sorrow for a dead son be 
 added to that for my dead father, which 
 she says would break her heart. I love 
 6i 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 to swim, but shall not disobey my 
 mother. 
 
 iTind [Robinson Cook, upon the publication 
 
 heart q£ ^.j^g ^bovc item, wrote to me as fol- 
 creed ^°^^ • " ^ remember well almost every 
 circumstance related by Nat, and espe- 
 cially the death and funeral of Henry 
 Jackson, Jr. ; I was at the funeral. Elder 
 Leach preached the sermon, and such 
 were the circumstances of his death, that 
 he could not, according to his creed, find 
 a happy resting-place for poor Henry in 
 that country from which no traveler re- 
 turns. I helped carry the remains to 
 the silent grave, and very many hearts 
 were sad on considering, as Elder Leach 
 said, that he was ' out of the reach of 
 mercy ; ' hence the sadness of Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne, when she called upon her son to 
 read the psalm he mentions. Elder 
 Leach was a Freewill Baptist minister, 
 with a kind, sympathizing heart, and 
 ready on all occasions to visit the sick, 
 62 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 attend all funerals in his precinct, and do 
 this without pay ; but a hard creed lay- 
 in the way of his tender and Christian 
 emotions."] 
 
 I CAN from my chamber window look Betty 
 across into aunt Manning's garden, ^"''^''■^ 
 this morning, and see little Betty Tar- 
 box, flitting among the rosebushes, and 
 in and out of the arbor, like a tiny witch. 
 She will never realize the calamity that 
 came upon her brothers and sisters, that 
 terrible night when her father and mother 
 lay within a few rods of each other, in the 
 snow, freezing to death. I love the elf, 
 because of her loss ; and stUl my aunt is 
 much more to her than her own mother, 
 in her poverty, could have been. 
 
 [This item, if accepted as genuine, con- 
 clusively proves that the Hawthornes 
 were living in their house across the 
 creek from the Mannings in the sum- 
 63 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 mer of 1819. Nathaniel's chamber win- 
 dow did not look down into, but across 
 into, his aunt's garden. The residences 
 were separated by a narrow stream. I 
 have heard, but cannot now verify the 
 statement, that the ledger kept in a store 
 in that vicinity shows an account with 
 the Hawthornes, who must have been 
 keeping house by themselves in Ray- 
 mond, in the summer of 1822, the year 
 after Hawthorne entered college. At all 
 events, he spent his vacations here, either 
 with his mother or his uncle. There 
 were five children orphaned by the death 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox. The story of 
 the great storm, in which they lost their 
 lives, has in it such elements of pathos 
 that it is here given, to account for young 
 Hawthorne's deep interest, as shown in 
 this note and in the narrative by Sjnumes : 
 story of In the second week of March, 1819, a 
 Tarbox severe snowstorm began, which lasted 
 nine days, and the cold was intense. 
 There being no food in the house, Mr. 
 64 
 
 tragedy 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 Tarbox went five miles for a supply, and 
 upon his return found the drifts so deep 
 that he had not the strength to get 
 through them with his load. When not 
 far from his home he left the bag of pro- 
 visions upon a tree, and tried to reach 
 his door, but soon sank down exhausted. 
 His calls for help were heard by his wife, 
 who went to his assistance. She cov- 
 ered him with her shawl, and realizing 
 the necessities of her starving family, 
 attempted to get the food he had left be- 
 hind. But the drifts were too deep, and 
 the cold too intense. She sank down 
 and perished near the tree, while her 
 husband was dying close to their home. 
 Their bodies were found two days after- 
 ward. Mrs. Manning adopted Betsey, 
 the youngest of the orphaned children, 
 aged four.] 
 
 FISHING from the bridge to-day, I Biged 
 caught an eel two thirds as long 
 as myself. Mr. Watkins tried to make 
 6S 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 me believe that he thought it a water- 
 moccasin snake. Old Mr. Shane said that 
 it was a "young sea sarpint, sure." Mr. 
 Fickett, the blacksmith, begged it to take 
 home for its skin, as he said for buskin 
 strings and flail strings. So ends my 
 day's fishing. 
 
 Bricks . T T TENT over to-day to see Watkins 
 without VV make bricks. I have always 
 
 straw -' 
 
 thought there was some mystery about 
 
 it, but I can make them myself. Why 
 did the Israelites complain so much at 
 having to make bricks without straw.' 
 I should not use straw if I was a brick- 
 maker ; besides, when they are burned 
 in the kiln, the straw will burn out, and 
 • leave the bricks full of holes. 
 
 Polly TDOLLY MAXFIELD came riding 
 Maxjield £ jQ jjjju ^Q_^^y on horseback. She 
 
 rode gracefully as a trooper. I wish with 
 66 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 all my heart that I was as daring a rider, 
 or half so graceful. 
 
 [Robinson Cook says of the mill, so The 
 often referred to in these notes, that it ^'^^'y 
 was known as the old Dingley mill, and *"* 
 was built in 1772. A grant of one hun- 
 dred acres of land was made to Joseph 
 Dingley, its builder. His son, Samuel 
 Dingley, was the miller of Hawthorne's 
 time, and he was then old and crippled. 
 "This mill," says Cook, "was situated 
 near the home of Mrs. Hawthorne. To 
 this mill came all sorts of customers, 
 from a five franc piece to a fourpence 
 ha'penny, — men, women, and children, 
 some on foot, who would bring their grist 
 to mill ten miles. Nearly all came on 
 horseback. Polly Maxfield was the eld- 
 est daughter of her father's family, and 
 a sister of Eliakim, the well-known stage 
 driver from Waterford to Portland for 
 about thirty years."] 
 67 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 An ill- 'TpHIS morning I saw at the grist-mill 
 
 "" J- a solemn-faced old horse, hitched 
 
 horse ' 
 
 to the trough. He had brought for his 
 owner some bags of corn to be ground, 
 who, after carrying them into the mill, 
 walked up to uncle Richard's store, leav- 
 ing his half -starved animal in the cold 
 wind, with nothing to eat, while the com 
 was being turned to meal. I felt sorry, 
 and nobody being near, thought it best 
 to have a talk with the old nag, and said, 
 " Good-morning, Mr. Horse, how are you 
 to-day } " " Good-morning, youngster," 
 said he, just as plain as a horse can 
 speak, and then said, " I am almost dead, 
 and I wish I was quite. I am hungry, 
 have had no breakfast, and must stand 
 here tied by the head while they are 
 grinding the corn, and until master 
 drinks two or three glasses of rum at 
 the store, and then drag him and the 
 meal up the Ben Ham hill, and home, 
 and am now so weak that I can hardly 
 stand. Oh, dear, I am in a bad way," 
 68 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 and the old creature cried — I almost 
 cried myself. 
 
 Just then the miller went downstairs 
 to the meal trough. I heard his feet on 
 the steps, and, not thinking much what I 
 was doing, ran into the mill, and taking 
 the four quart toll -dish nearly full of 
 com out of the hopper, carried it out 
 and poured it into the trough before the 
 horse, and placed the dish back before 
 the miller came up from below. When 
 I got out, the horse was laughing, but he 
 had to eat slowly, because the bits were Relief 
 in his mouth. I told him that I was "ff'^^'^ 
 sorry, but did not know how to take 
 them out, and should not dare to, if I 
 did, for his master might come out of the 
 store suddenly and see what I was about. 
 "Thank you," said he, "a luncheon of 
 corn with the bits in is much better than 
 none. The worst of it is, I have to 
 munch so slowly, that my master may 
 come before I finish it, and thrash me 
 for eating his corn, and you for your 
 69 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 kindness." I sat down on a stone out 
 of the wind, and waited in trouble, for 
 fear that the miller or the owner of the 
 corn would come and find out what I 
 had done. At last the horse winked and 
 stuck out his upper lip ever so far, and 
 then said, "The last kernel is gone;" 
 then he laughed a little, then shook one 
 ear, then the other, then shut his eyes 
 as if to take a nap. I jumped up and 
 said, " How do you feel, old fellow ; any 
 better ? " He opened his eyes, and, 
 looking at me kindly, answered, "Very 
 much," and then blew his nose exceed- 
 ingly loud, but he did not wipe it; per- 
 haps he had no wiper. I then asked if 
 The iron his master whipped him. "Not much 
 lately ; he used to, till my hide got hard- 
 ened, but now he has a white oak goad 
 stick with an iron brad in its end, with 
 which he jabs my hind quarters, and 
 hurts me awfully." I asked why he did 
 not kick up, and knock his tormentor out 
 of the wagon. " I did try to once," said 
 70 
 
 brad 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 he, " but am old and was weak, and could 
 only get my heels high enough to break 
 the whiffletree, and besides lost my bal- 
 ance and fell down flat. Master then 
 jumped down, and, getting a cudgel, 
 struck me over the head, and I thought 
 my troubles were over. This happened 
 just before Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I 
 should have been finished, and ready for 
 the crows, if he had not stepped out and 
 told master not to strike again, if he did 
 he would shake his liver out. That saved 
 my life ; but I was sorry, though Mr. 
 Ham meant good." 
 
 The goad with the iron brad was in "Old 
 the wagon, and, snatching it out, I struck "^*" 
 the end against a stone, and the stabber ^" ^" 
 flew into the mill-pond. "There," says 
 I, " old colt," as I threw the goad back 
 into the wagon, "he won't harpoon you 
 again with that iron." The poor old 
 brute knew what I said well enough, for 
 I looked him in the eye and spoke horse 
 language. So he turned his long upper 
 7« 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 Up away back and laughed again, I 
 thought a little exultingly.. Very soon, 
 however, a tear came into his eye, and 
 he said, " My young friend, do you know 
 how long horses live ? " I answered that 
 I had heard that some lived thirty years. 
 " Oh, dear ! " said he, " I am sorry. I 
 am twenty-four, and have been hoping 
 that I should die before snow fell; it 
 does not seem that I can possibly go 
 through another winter," and the tears 
 began to run again. 
 
 At that moment the brute that owned 
 the horse came out of the store and down 
 the hill towards us. I slipped behind a 
 pile of slabs. The meal was put in the 
 wagon, the horse unhitched, the wagon 
 mounted, the goad picked up, and a 
 thrust made ; but Dobbin was in no 
 hurry. Looking at the end of his stick, 
 the man bawled, "What little devil has 
 had my gourd .' " and then began strik- 
 ing with all his strength ; but his steed 
 only walked, shaking his head as he went 
 72 
 
conscience 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 across the bridge, and I thought I heard 
 the ancient Equus say as he went, 
 "Thrash as much as you please; for 
 once you cannot stab." I went home Case of 
 a little uneasy, not feeling sure that the 
 feeding the man's com to his own horse 
 was not stealing, and thinking that if the 
 miller found it out he would have me 
 taken down before Squire Longley. 
 
 [Mr. Lathrop copies part of the above 
 extract in a sketch of his father-in-law, 
 and says of it that "it is the first in- 
 stance on record of a mild approach of 
 Hawthorne to writing fiction." Robin- 
 son Cook informs me that he recognizes 
 the portraits of the hard master and the 
 ill-used horse. Of the master, he says : 
 " He was a worthless, tyrannical, cruel 
 man, past middle age, with a large family 
 of boys and girls, who had to look out 
 for themselves when of age sufficient. 
 He and his son would come together to 
 mill. I have seen them occasionally at 
 73 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 the store. In bitter cold days the horse 
 would have to stand without covering, 
 while the northern blast was whistling 
 through his hair and over the chafed 
 places worn tender by the old harness. 
 Without food or shelter he would have 
 to remain, while father and son played 
 cards in the store to decide which should 
 pay for the drinks."] 
 
 At Pulpit ' I '•HIS morning walked down to the 
 Rock X Pulpit Rock hill, and climbed up 
 
 into the pulpit. It looks like a rough 
 place to preach from, and does not seem 
 so much like a pulpit when one is in it 
 as when viewing it from the road below. 
 It is a wild place, and really a curiosity. 
 I brought a book, and sat in the rocky 
 recess and read nearly an hour. This is 
 a point on the road known to all team- 
 sters. They have a string of names for 
 reference, by which they tell each other 
 where they met fellow - teamsters, or 
 74 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 where their loads got stuck, and I have 
 learned them from those who stop for 
 drmks at the store. One meets another 
 near our house and says, "Where did 
 
 you meet Bill ? " " Just this side 
 
 of Small's Brook," or "At the top of 
 Gay's Pmch," "At the Dry Millpond," 
 " Just the other side of Lemmy Jones's," 
 " On the Long Causeway," " At Jeems 
 Gowen's," "Coming down the Pulpit 
 Rock hUl," "Coming down Tarkill hill." 
 I have heard these answers till I have 
 them by heart, without having any idea 
 where any of the places are, excepting 
 the one I have seen to-day. While on 
 the bridge, near the pulpit, Mr. West, who 
 lives not far away, came along and asked 
 where I had been. On my telling him, 
 he said no money would hire him to go 
 up to that pulpit ; that the devil used Devil 
 to preach from it to the Indians long, P''<^<:f^" 
 long ago ; that on a time when hundreds J^.^Jj 
 of them were listening to one of his ser- 
 mons, a great chief laughed in the devil's 
 75 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 face, upon which he stamped his foot, 
 and the ground to the southwest, where 
 they were standing, sank fifty feet, and 
 every Indian went down out of sight, 
 leaving a swamp to this day. He de- 
 clared that he once stuck a pole in there, 
 which went down easily several feet, but 
 then struck the skull bone of an Indian, 
 when instantly all the hassocks and flags 
 began to shake, and he heard a yell as 
 from fifty overgrown Pequots; that he 
 left the hole and ran for life, and would 
 not go to the bog again for the best farm 
 Mr. in Raymond. Mr. West also said that 
 no Indian had ever been known to go 
 near that swamp since, but that when- 
 ever one came that way, he turned out 
 of the road near the house of Mr. West, 
 and went straight to Thomas Pond, keep- 
 ing to the eastward of the Pulpit Rock, 
 giving it a "wide berth." Mr. West 
 talked as though he believed what he 
 said. 
 
 76 
 
 Wesfs 
 legend 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 A PEDDLER, named Dominicus Jor- Aghast 
 dan, was to-day in uncle Rich- ■^'"0' 
 ard's store, telling a ghost story. I lis- 
 tened intently, but tried not to seem 
 interested. The story was of a house, 
 the owner of which was suddenly killed. 
 Since his death, the west garret window 
 cannot be kept closed, though the shut- 
 ters be hasped and nailed at night ; they 
 are invariably found open the next morn- 
 ing, and no one can tell when or how 
 the nails are drawn. There is also on 
 the farm an apple-tree, of the fruit of 
 which the owner was particularly fond, 
 but since his death no person has been 
 able to get one of the apples. The tree 
 hangs full nearly every year ; but when- 
 ever any individual tries to get one, 
 stones come in all directions, as if 
 thrown from some secret, infernal bat- 
 tery, or hidden catapult, and more than 
 once have those making the attempt 
 been struck. What is more strange, the 
 tree stands in an open field, there being 
 77 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 no shelter near from which tricks can be 
 played without exposure. Jordan says 
 that it seems odd to strangers to see 
 that tree loaded with apples when the 
 snow is four feet deep ; and, what is a 
 mystery, there are no apples in the 
 spring ; no one ever sees the wind blow 
 one off, none are ever seen on the snow, 
 nor even the vestige of one on the grass 
 under the tree ; and that children may 
 play under and around it whUe it is in 
 blossom, and until the fruit is large 
 enough to tempt them, with perfect safety. 
 Bewitched But the moment one of the apples is 
 apple-tree ggught for, the air is full of flying stones. 
 He further says that late one starlight 
 night, he was passing the house, and, 
 looking up, saw the phantom walk out of 
 the garret window, with cane in hand, 
 making all the motions, as if walking on 
 terra firma, although what appeared to 
 be his feet were at least six yards from 
 the ground, and so he went walking 
 away on nothing ; and, when nearly out 
 78 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 of sight, there was a great flash and an 
 explosion as of twenty fieldpieces — then 
 — nothing! This story was told with 
 seeming earnestness, and listened to as 
 though it was believed. How strange it 
 is that almost all persons, old or young, 
 are fond of hearing about the super- 
 natural, though it produces nervousness, 
 and often fear. I should not be willing 
 to sleep in that garret, though I do not 
 believe a word of the story. 
 
 [Dominicus Jordan was a peddler who 
 made his circuit in Cumberland County. 
 After acquiring a small fortune at this 
 business, he went west, became wealthy, 
 and died in Wisconsin in 1869. In his 
 story of " Mr. Higginbotham's Catastro- 
 phe," Hawthorne introduces the character 
 of Dominicus Pike, the Yankee tobacco 
 peddler, whose name, unusual in New 
 England, was evidently suggested by that 
 of the Raymond peddler whose story of 
 the bewitched apple-tree is here recorded.] 
 79 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 Lumber- 'T^HE lumbermen from Saccarappa 
 men on X. are getting their logs across the 
 J^" , Great Pond. Yesterday a strong north- 
 west wind blew a great raft of many thou- 
 sands over almost to the mouth of the 
 Dingley Brook. Their anchor dragged 
 for more than a mile, but when the 
 boom was within twenty or thirty rods 
 of the shore, it brought up and held, as I 
 heard some men say who are familiar 
 with such business. All the men and 
 boys went from the mill down to the 
 pond to see the great raft, and I among 
 them. They have a string of logs fas- 
 tened end to end and surrounding the 
 great body, which keeps them from scat- 
 tering ; and the string is called a boom. 
 A small strong raft, it may be forty feet 
 square, with an upright windlass in its 
 centre, called a capstan, is fastened to 
 some part of the boom. The small raft 
 is called "head works," and from it, in 
 a yawl boat, is carried the anchor, to 
 which is attached a strong rope half a 
 80 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 mile long. The boat is rowed out the 
 whole length of the rope, the anchor 
 thrown over, and the men on the " head 
 works" wind up the capstan, and so 
 draw along the acres of logs. After we 
 got down to the shore, several of the men 
 came out on the boom nearest to us, and 
 striking a single log, pushed it under and 
 outside. Then one man, with a gallon 
 jug slung to his back, taking a pickpole, 
 pushed himself ashore on the small single siding a 
 log, — a feat that seemed almost miracu- ""S^' 
 lous to me. This man's name was Reu- "^ 
 ben March, and he seemed to be in no 
 fear of getting soused, though the top of 
 the log was but just out of water. This 
 masterly kind of navigation he calls 
 " cuffing the rigging." Nobody could 
 tell me why he gave it that name. 
 March went up to the store, and had the 
 jug filled with rum (the supply having 
 run out on the head works), and made 
 the voyage back in the way he came. 
 His comrades received him with cheers, 
 8i 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 and after sinking the log and drawing it 
 back under the boom, proceeded to try 
 the contents of the jug, seeming to be 
 well satisfied with the result of his expe- 
 dition. It turned out that March only 
 rode the single log ashore to show his 
 adroitness, for the yawl boat soon came 
 round from the head works, and brought 
 near a dozen men, in red shirts, to where 
 we were. I was interested listening to 
 their conversation, mixed with sharp 
 Nick- jokes. Nearly every one had a nick- 
 names name. March, who came after the rum, 
 was " Captain Snarl ; " a tall, fierce look- 
 ing man, who had just filled my idea of a 
 Spanish freebooter, was " Doctor Goo- 
 die." I think his real name was Wood. 
 The rum seemed to make them crazy, 
 for one who was called " Rub-a-Dub " 
 pitched Doctor Coodle, head and heels, 
 into the water. A gentlemanly man 
 named Thompson, who acted as master 
 of ceremonies, or Grand Turk, interfered 
 and put a stop to what was becoming 
 82 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 something like a fight. Mr. Thompson 
 said that the wind would go down with 
 the sun, and that they must get ready to 
 start. This morning I went down to 
 look for them, and the raft was almost 
 to Frye's Island. 
 
 I HAVE read "GuUiver's Travels," Lies too 
 and do not agree with Captain Brit- f*^^' 
 ton that it is a witty and uncommonly 
 interesting book. The wit is obscene, and 
 the lies too false. 
 
 [The extracts given above were all that 
 were ever received directly from Symmes. 
 But nearly two years after his death we 
 received from one Dickinson, of Alexan- 
 dria, a package which he informed us was 
 found among the papers of Symmes, left 
 behind when he went to Pensacola, where 
 he died. He had copied out a longer 
 sketch than any previously furnished, 
 which is given below, and it is the only 
 83 
 
corre- 
 spondent 
 
 HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 one of the whole series which is dated 
 Dickinson was as provokingly careful as 
 had been Symmes to give no address by 
 Another which we could reach him. His note 
 Virginia indicated that he was a friend of Symmes, 
 but whether or not he was of the same 
 race could not be ascertained. Hoping 
 that we might learn from him still more 
 about the journal, no effort was spared 
 to find him; but Dickinson proved as 
 elusive as his friend, and we never again 
 heard from him. If Hawthorne's style 
 had not been so evident in every one 
 of these notes, if other internal and ex- 
 ternal evidence had not been so strong, 
 the mysterious avoidance of our two Vir- 
 ginia correspondents of everything that 
 might have given a clue to their person- 
 ality would have been regarded as fa- 
 tally suspicious. But the hand of the 
 young master, as revealed in these lines, 
 was one that could not be counterfeited 
 by comparatively illiterate men. Some 
 one wrote these notes who was not only 
 84 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 thoroughly familiar with Raymond and 
 its people, but who was already in com- 
 mand of a literary style decidedly Haw- 
 thornesque. The entry in the journal 
 now to be given is full of allusions to 
 people well known in Cumberland 
 County. Several of them were person- 
 ally known to the present writer, and the 
 characteristics recorded fit them remark- 
 ably well. It is not an unnatural sugges- 
 tion, considering the elements of mystery 
 surrounding the matter, that some one 
 was for two years engaged in working up 
 a literary hoax But if that were the 
 case, it is evident that a person capable 
 of writing these notes, expecting to get 
 any sport or reputation out of his work, 
 could have attained his object only by 
 eventually showing his hand. No money No money 
 was ever called for, though offered in '^I'^'^Jo^ 
 many ways and at many times. More 
 than a quarter of a century of silence 
 and corroboratory circumstances without 
 number force the conclusion that we 
 85 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 have before us a genuine work of one 
 of the greatest artists in words of his 
 time. The letter from Dickinson, men- 
 tioned above, I have mislaid, and his 
 Christian name I have forgotten, but 
 have the impression it was Charles. I 
 remember that it claimed to be from a 
 friend of Symmes, and it mentioned the 
 fact that S)rmmes died in Florida, prob- 
 ably having the notebook with him. 
 Who was Dickinson also said that when S)aiimes 
 Dicktn- ^ag copying the extracts from the note- 
 book, his right arm was disabled, and 
 that he (Dickinson) had acted as his 
 amanuensis. This accounted for the 
 fact, which otherwise would have puzzled 
 us, that the handwritings of Symmes and 
 Dickinson were so much alike as they 
 certainly were. They both wrote with 
 pencil and not with ink, and the chiro- 
 graphy was remarkably good. I mention 
 this singular circumstance in order to 
 include every element of suspicion. My 
 present belief is that Dickinson was as- 
 86 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 sociated with S)mimes as a member of 
 Baker's detectives, not in the regular 
 force, but employed to spy upon the reg- 
 ulars. In this occupation they made 
 enemies, and felt obliged to keep in hid- 
 ing, even after the war was over. This 
 is hinted at in the obituary notice of 
 Symmes given in the Postscript. This 
 notice was probably written by Dickin- 
 son, whoever Dickinson might be.J 
 
 DAY before yesterday, Mr. Thomas Invited 
 Little, from Windham Hill, Mr. to sail on 
 M. P. Sawyer, of Portland, Mr. Thomas ^'^''^'' 
 A. Deblois, a lawyer, Mr. Hanson, of 
 Windham, and Enoch White, a boy of 
 my own age, from White's Bridge, came 
 up to the Dingley Brook in a sailboat. 
 They were on the way to Muddy River 
 bog, for a day's sport, fishing and shoot- 
 ing ducks. Enoch proposed that I should 
 go with them. I needed no urging, but 
 knew how unwillingly my mother would 
 87 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 consent. They could wait but a few 
 minutes, and uncle Richard kindly wrote 
 a note, asking her to be willing to gratify 
 me this time. 
 
 She said, "Yes," but I was almost 
 sorry, knowing that my day's plea;sure 
 would cost her one of anxiety. How- 
 ever, I gathered up hooks aind lines, 
 with some white salted pork for bait, and 
 with a fabulous number of biscuit, split 
 in the middle, the insides well buttered, 
 then skillfully put together again, and all 
 stowed in sister's large work-bag, and 
 Bet with slung over my shoulder, I started, mak- 
 Enoch jjjg ^ wager with Enoch White, as we 
 walked down to the boat, as to which 
 would catch the largest number of fish. 
 
 The air was clear, with just breeze 
 enough to shoot us along pleasantly, 
 without making rough, waves. The wind 
 was not exactly after us, though we made 
 but two tacks to reach the mouth of 
 77ie Muddy River. The men praised the 
 scemry grand view, after we got into the Great 
 
 88 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 Bay. We could see the White Hills to 
 the northwest, though Mr. Little said 
 they were eighty miles from us, and 
 grand old Rattlesnake to the northeast, 
 in its immense jacket of green oak, 
 looked more inviting than I had ever 
 seen it, while Frye's Island, with its close 
 growth of great trees, growing to the 
 very edge of the water, looked like a 
 monstrous green raft, floating to the 
 southeastward. Whichever way the eye 
 turned, something charming appeared. 
 
 Mr. Little seems to be familiar with 
 every book that has ever been written, 
 and must have a great memory. Among 
 other things, he said : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, do you know that this Mr. Lit- 
 should be called the sea instead of the *^^^ *'^^^ 
 Great Pond ; that ships should be built 
 here, and navigate this water } The sur- 
 face of the Sea of Galilee, of which we 
 read so much in the New Testament, 
 was just about equal to the surface of 
 our sea to-day." 
 
 89 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 And then he went on to give a geo- 
 graphical description of the country about 
 the Sea of Galilee, and draw parallels be- 
 tween places named in the Testament 
 and points in sight. His talk stole my 
 attention until we were fairly at Muddy 
 River mouth. 
 
 Muddy Muddy River bog is quite a curiosity. 
 
 River bog "pj^g j^^g^ empties into the pond between 
 two small, sandy capes or points, only a 
 short distance apart ; but after running 
 up a little between them, we found the 
 bog to widen to fifty or sixty rods in 
 some places, and to be between two and 
 three miles long. People say that it has 
 no bottom, and that the longest pole that 
 ever grew may be run down into the 
 mud, and then pushed down with an- 
 other, a little longer, and this may be 
 repeated till the long poles are all gone. 
 
 Coarse, tall water-grass grows up from 
 the mud, over every part, with the ex- 
 ception of a space five or six rods wide, 
 running its whole length, and nearly in 
 go 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 the middle, which is called the channel. 
 One can tell at first sight that it is the 
 place for pickerel and water-snakes. 
 
 Mr. Deblois stated something that I 
 never heard before as a fact in natural 
 history : that the pickerel wages war on 
 all fishes except the trout, who is too ac- 
 tive for him ; that he is a piscatorial can- 
 nibal ; but that under all circumstances, 
 and in all places, he lives on good terms 
 with the water-snakes. 
 
 We saw a great many ducks, but they 
 seemed to know that Mr. Sawyer had a 
 gun, and flew on slight notice. At last, 
 as four were flying, and seemed to be en- 
 tirely out of gunshot, he fired, saying he 
 would frighten them, if no more, when, 
 to our surprise, he brought one down. 
 The gun was loaded with ball, and Mr. 
 Deblois told him that he could not do it 
 again in a million times. Mr. Sawyer 
 laughed, saying that he had always been 
 a votary of chance, and that, as a general A votary 
 thing, she had treated him handsomely, of chance 
 91 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 We sailed more than a mile up the 
 bog, fishing and trolling for pickerel, and 
 though we saw a great many, not one 
 offered to be caught ; but hornpouts 
 were willing, and we caught them till it 
 The Jews'- was no sport. We found a man there 
 harp man ■j^^ho had taken nearly two bushels of 
 pouts. He was on a raft, and had walked 
 from near the foot of Long Pond, in Otis- 
 field. Mr. Little knew him, arid intend- 
 ing to have some fun, said : — 
 
 "The next time you come to Port- 
 laiid I want half a dozen of your best 
 jews'-harps ; leave them at my store 
 at Windham hill; I need them very 
 badly." 
 
 The man deliberately took from the 
 hook a large pout that he had just pulled 
 up, and, laying his fishing-pole down, be- 
 gan to explore solemnly in his pockets, 
 and brought out six giant jews'-harps 
 carefully tied to pieces of corncob. Then 
 he tossed them into our boat to Mr. Lit- 
 tle, saying, "There they are, Tom, and 
 92 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 they are as good ones as I ever made ; I 
 shall charge you fifty cents for them." 
 
 Mr. Little had the worst of the joke, 
 but as the other men began to rally him, 
 he took out the silver and paid the half- 
 dollar; but they laughed at him till he 
 told them if they would say no more 
 about it, he would give them all the 
 brandy they could drink when they got 
 home. 
 
 Mr. Deblois said he would not be Too good 
 bribed, and that he must tell Peter '"'^^'5^* 
 White, when he got to Windham hill. 
 
 Mr. Little said he would not have 
 Peter White know it for a yoke of steers. 
 
 After fishing till all were tired, we 
 landed on a small dry knoll, that made 
 out into the bog, to take our luncheon. 
 The men had a variety of eatables, and The 
 several bottles that held no eatables. ^«»'^'^«<'» 
 The question was started whether Enoch 
 and I should be invited to drink, and 
 they concluded not to urge us as we 
 were boys, and under their care ; so Mr. 
 93 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 Deblois said, " Boys, anything to eat that 
 is in our baskets is as much yours as 
 ours, — help yourselves ; but we shall not 
 invite you to drink spirits." 
 
 We thanked them and said we had 
 plenty of our own to eat, and had no 
 relish for spirits, but were very thirsty 
 for water. Mr. Little had been there be- 
 fore, and directed us to a spring of the 
 best of water, that boiled up like a pot 
 from the ground just at the margin of 
 the bog. 
 Settling Before starting to return, the bet be- 
 the bet tween Enoch and myself had to be set- 
 tled. By the conditions, the one who 
 caught the largest number of fish was to 
 have all the hooks and lines of the other. 
 I counted my string, and found twenty- 
 five ; Enoch made twenty-six on his. So 
 I was about turning over the spoils 
 when Mr. Sawyer said my string was 
 the largest — that there was a mistake. 
 So he counted and made twenty-six on 
 mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We 
 94 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 counted again, and found it was as he 
 said ; and Enoch prepared to pay the 
 bet, when Mr. Sawyer again interfered, 
 saying that Enoch's string was certainly 
 larger than mine, and proposed to count 
 again. This time I had twenty -four, 
 and Enoch twenty-seven. All the men 
 counted them several times over, and 
 until we could not tell which was which, 
 and they never came out twice alike. 
 
 At length Mr. Deblois said with so- Sawyer's 
 lemnity, " Stop this. Sawyer ; you have ■f^«^'*' "f 
 turned these fish into a pack of cards, 
 and are fooling us all." The men 
 laughed heartily, and so should I if I 
 had known what the point of the joke 
 was. Mr. Deblois said that the decision 
 as to our bet would have to go over to 
 the next term. 
 
 After starting for home, while running 
 down the bog, Mr. Sawyer killed three 
 noble black ducks at one shot, but the 
 gun was not loaded this time with ball. 
 Mr. Hanson struck with his fishing-pole 
 9S 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 Pf^atir- and killed a monstrous water-snake. Mr. 
 
 snakes Little measured a stick with his hands, 
 and, using it as a rule, declared him to be 
 five feet long. If I thought any such 
 snakes ever went over to Dingley Bay, 
 I never would go into the water there 
 again. 
 
 When we got out of the bog into the 
 open water, we found a lively breeze 
 from the northwest, and they landed me 
 at the Dingley Brook in less than an 
 hour, and then kept on like a great 
 white bird down towards the Cape and 
 for the outlet. I stood and watched the 
 boat till it was nearly halfway to Frye's 
 Island, loath to lose sight of what had 
 helped me to enjoy the day so much. 
 
 A string Taking my fish, I walked home, and 
 
 of worth- greeted mother just as the sun, went out 
 of sight behind the hills of Baldwin. 
 The fish were worthless, and it made me 
 sweat to carry them; but I thought I 
 must have something to show for the 
 day spent. After exhibiting them to 
 96 
 
 less fish 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 mother and sister, and hearing the com- 
 ments as to their ugliness, and much spec- 
 ulation as to what their horns were for, I 
 gave them to Mr. Lambard, who said 
 pouts were the best of all fish after they 
 were skinned. 
 
 I have made this account of the expe- Written 
 dition to please uncle Richard, who is >^«»<^^' 
 an invalid, and cannot get out to enjoy 
 such sport, and wished me to write and 
 describe everything just as it happened, 
 whether witty or silly, and give my own 
 impressions. He has read my diary, and 
 says it interested him, which is all the 
 reward I desire. And now I add these 
 lines to keep in remembrance the pecu- 
 liar satisfaction I received in hearing the 
 conversation, particularly of Mr. Deblois 
 and Mr. Little. 
 
 Raymond, August, 1818. 
 
 [There were curious facts not known 
 to Hawthorne which give peculiar inter- 
 est to some particulars in the above 
 97 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 sketch. The present writer had some 
 personal acquaintance in later years with 
 both Thomas Amory Deblois and Mat- 
 thias Plant Sawyer, and knows a good 
 reason why the men laughed at the sally 
 about "turning the fish into a pack of 
 cards," — a joke of which Hawthorne 
 could not see the point. "Plant" Saw- 
 yer, as he was always called, was a rich 
 bachelor, who was said to have acquired 
 much of his wealth as "a votary of 
 chance," to use his own expression. He 
 had drawn large prizes in lotteries, and 
 was reputed a most skillful card-player. 
 He might well say that "chance had 
 treated him handsomely." In the ma- 
 nipulation of cards he had the skill of a 
 professional juggler; and a similar dex- 
 terity no doubt he displayed in puzzling 
 the boys by changing the fish from one 
 string to the other. The men in the 
 party knew of his skill with cards, and of 
 course understood and laughed at the 
 allusion made by Deblois. About twenty 
 98 
 
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY 
 
 years after the expedition so graphically 
 described by Hawthorne, Mr. Sawyer, 
 then an old man, removed to Boston, and 
 became a State Street broker. He 
 owned and occupied the mansion at the 
 corner of Beacon and Park streets. De- 
 blois was afterward a partner in the law 
 firm of Fessenden, Deblois and Fessen- 
 den, the junior partner of which was the 
 statesman, William Pitt Fessenden. As 
 to the jews'-harp man, the late Hon. Wil- 
 liam Goold informed me that he was a 
 blacksmith named Goodrich, who made 
 clumsy harps at his forge. If the harps 
 the Jews hung on the willows were as 
 large as his, Goold thought "one to a 
 willow was sufficient ! " In reference to 
 the invalidism of "uncle Richard," it 
 may be said that Mr. Manning had been 
 disabled by a carriage accident, and was 
 for a long time obliged to get about his 
 house in a wheel-chair.J 
 99 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 Story of C* HORTLY after the death of Syitimes 
 William O the following notice of him ap- 
 Symmes ^^^^^ -^ ^he Georgetown (D. C.) "Cou- 
 rier." It is full of curious information, 
 and suggests reasons for the mystery he 
 observed in communicating the extracts 
 from the diary he claimed to have in 
 his possession. I am informed that the 
 names of persons and places he assumed 
 as aliases in his detective work are all 
 recognized at Otisfield as real men and 
 localities he must have been familiar with 
 in his youth. In our search for the diary 
 an appeal was made to the government 
 detectives, and perhaps this was check- 
 mated by him by means of his familiar- 
 ity with that department, of which we 
 then knew nothing. The obituary notice 
 is here given in full, as it may help in 
 the finding of the long-lost book. It was 
 published early in November, 1871 : — 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 "Died at Pensacola, Florida, on the Obituary 
 28th ultimo, William Symmes, aged sixty- ""^^^ 
 six years. He was a mulatto, bom in 
 Portland, Maine, his father having been 
 a white man and a lawyer, the late Wil- 
 liam Symmes; his mother a pure Afri- 
 can. His father was in early life a tu- 
 tor in Virginia, and was never married. 
 When three years old the son was 
 adopted by the late Captain Jonathan 
 Britton, of Otisfield, Cumberland County, 
 Maine, and by him given a good common 
 school education. At the age of twenty- 
 one he became a sailor, following the sea 
 for twenty-five years, and visiting every 
 part of the globe. In 1852 he drifted 
 into California, remaining there eight 
 years, and getting acquainted with the 
 late Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, and 
 was with him, under half a dozen names, 
 in and about the District of Columbia 
 during the war. Soldiers and others 
 will remember the darky who used to 
 hang around Baker's office, and call him- 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 self at different times by the following 
 names : ' Asa Hicks/ ' Thad. Turner,' 
 'Caswell's Corner/ 'Deacon Lovell/ 'Col- 
 lege Swamp/ 'Deacon Hancock/ etc. 
 He kept a journal during his connection 
 with Baker, which will perhaps be a cu- 
 riosity. His foster father. Captain Brit- 
 ton, was intimate with the late General 
 Samuel Fessenden, father of the late 
 senator, and also with the family of the 
 Two late Nathaniel Hawthorne ; and Symmes 
 
 ^TT... "S^'^ *° P^^y "^'^^ William Pitt Fessen- 
 den and Nathaniel Hawthorne when they 
 were striplings. He boasted within a 
 few years that he was the only man at 
 the seat of government with whom Sen- 
 ator Fessenden would laugh and joke 
 familiarly ; and that he and Hawthorne 
 were the only two white boys and men 
 who never by word or look offended him 
 in the matter of his color. Symmes did 
 not belong to the regular force of detec- 
 tives, but Baker kept him as a kind of 
 detective on his own men. The last two 
 
 playmates 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 years of his life he became a devoted 
 Methodist, and would repeat by the half 
 hour hymns from the old 'Bridgewater 
 Collection,' that he said his foster mo- 
 ther, Beulah Britton, taught him in his 
 youth. He was also a constant reader 
 of the Bible. Poor Symmes has gone. 
 Since the war he has lived secluded in 
 Alexandria and Georgetown, not daring 
 to face openly the enemies he made 
 under Baker. May he rest in peace." 
 
 Of his life as a boy at Otisfield, Robin- 
 son Cook says : " Billy was reared in 
 this neighborhood, from the age of three 
 to twenty years, and was a boy of fair 
 intellect. He attended school at the old Symmes 
 schoolhouse near the parsonage, but was '^ "^"^ 
 too full of his joking to make any re- 
 markable proficiency in his studies. 
 When he had done going to school he 
 could write a fair hand, and read and 
 spell tolerably well." 
 
 The fact that General Fessenden was 
 an acquaintance of Captain Britton may 
 103 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 account for the adoption of young 
 Symmes; for Fessenden came to the 
 Cumberland bar before the death of the 
 older Symmes, and may have taken an 
 interest in the orphaned mulatto boy. 
 His own son, William Pitt, was one year 
 younger than Symmes, and as they grew 
 up, they had many opportunities of play- 
 ing together. Not only did young Fes- 
 senden often visit the Sebago Lake re- 
 gion, but Captain Britton represented his 
 town in the Maine legislature, which 
 then held its sessions at Portland, the 
 home of the Fessendens. 
 His an- Zechariah Symmes, the first of the 
 cestry American ancestors of the subject of this 
 sketch, was son and grandson of clergy- 
 men who suffered in the Marian perse- 
 cution. He was bom in Canterbury, in 
 1599, and his father was Rev. William 
 Symmes, who was ordained in 1588. He 
 was first a lecturer at Atholines, London, 
 but, being harassed for nonconformity, 
 removed to Dunstable in 1625. In 1634 
 104 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 he came to this country in the same ship 
 which brought the noted Anne Hutch- 
 inson. He became pastor of the first 
 church in Charlestown, Massachusetts, 
 and had for assistant no less a personage 
 than John Harvard, the founder of the 
 college which has immortalized his name. 
 He died in 1671, and for epitaph has this 
 couplet : — 
 
 " A prophet lies under this stone : 
 His words shall live, though he be gone." 
 
 His son, Zechariah, was a graduate of A race of 
 Harvard, class of 1657, the first scholar '^^^'SJ"»^» 
 of his class, and was a tutor in the col- 
 lege for three years. He became first 
 pastor of the church in Bradford in 1667, 
 and died in 1707. He is spoken of as a 
 man of rare ability and great physical 
 endurance, as he could preach and pray 
 four or five hours before an audience 
 of equal "staying power." He was fol- 
 lowed in the Bradford pastorate by his 
 son, Thomas, who also graduated at Har- 
 vard at the head of his class, in 1698, and 
 los 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 was tutor for three years. He preached 
 the "election sermon" at the Old South 
 in 1720. It is said of him that in preach- 
 ing he magnified his office, "lifting up 
 his voice like a trumpet, and preaching 
 with all his might." He raised a mutiny 
 in his church by insisting that the sing- 
 ing should be by note and in parts, and 
 carried his point. The objection was 
 that the Papists sang by note, but this 
 and other objections he riddled with 
 satire. The excitement ran so high, we 
 are told, that women fainted away when 
 singing by note was first heard in the 
 meeting-house. He died in 1725. The 
 next Harvard graduates in the family 
 were Timothy, 1733, William, 1750, and 
 William, Jr., 1780, — this last being the 
 Portland lawyer, whose ancestors, for six 
 generations, were Puritan clergymen. It 
 must be allowed that our colored friend, 
 William Symmes, fourth of the name, 
 the playmate of Hawthorne, came of 
 good stock, and there is no occasion to 
 106 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 wonder that with little schooling he at- 
 tained the literary skill shown in the let- 
 ters of his given in this volume. For 
 three centuries his ancestors of the name 
 of Symmes were all college graduates. 
 
 RICHARD MANNING, of Salem, iTie 
 the father of Mrs. Hawthorne, -^"""'"^ 
 toward the close of the last century, ac- "j^J^ 
 quired possession of several thousands 
 of acres of land in Cumberland County, 
 Maine, mostly in what are now the tOTvns 
 of Raymond and Casco. He also owned 
 land in Bridgeton, Westbrook, and Port- 
 land. At his death this land was not 
 divided among his family, but in 1813 his 
 son Robert was made attorney of the 
 beirs for the management of the estate. 
 His brother Richard became a resident 
 jf Raymond and married Susan Dingley, a 
 daughter of Captain Samuel Dingley, the 
 miller mentioned in the Hawthorne notes, 
 ivho was a son of the first settler in the 
 107 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 town. The management of the Manning 
 lands was then given to Richard, who 
 acted as attorney for all the heirs, until 
 about 1 830. He died in 1 83 1, aged forty- 
 seven years. 
 
 I find by reference to the records in 
 the registry of deeds in Portland that 
 between the years of 1813 and 1840, 
 about twelve thousand acres of land were 
 sold to settlers, in lots averaging one hun- 
 Deeds dred acres each. All the deeds given 
 signed by between the dates mentioned were signed 
 by Elizabeth C. Hathorne, as one of the 
 heirs. In all cases her name is spelled 
 without the " w." In the deeds given in 
 1820 and 1 82 1, she is described as a resi- 
 dent of Raymond. In earlier deeds she 
 is made a resident of Salem, even in 
 1818, when all the biographies place her 
 in Raymond. Probably her residence in 
 the Maine wilderness was not considered 
 permanent until 1820. 
 
 The other heirs of the estate, as shown 
 in the deeds, were Miriam, Mrs. Haw- 
 
 Mrs. 
 Hathorne 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 thome's mother, who lived until 1831 ; 
 Mary and Priscilla, her sisters, described 
 as " single women," until Priscilla be- 
 came the wife of John Dike ; Robert and 
 Samuel, her brothers, "stage proprie- 
 tors ; " and Richard Manning, " trader," 
 of Raymond. Nearly all the names men- 
 tioned by Hawthorne in his first note- 
 book are found in these deeds. Domini- 
 cus Jordan, the peddler, who told the 
 ghost story, pp. 77-79, bought no less 
 than seven hundred acres of the estate 
 at various times. His wife was Kezia 
 Dingley, a relative of Hawthorne's aunt, 
 Susan Manning. The father of unfortu- 
 nate Henry Jackson, Jr., who was put 
 " out of the reach of mercy " by having 
 his mouth kicked open (see pp. 61, 62), 
 bought one hundred acres of land of 
 the Manning estate in 1808. The good 
 Elder Zachariah Leach, who had such 
 dread forebodings as to the future of 
 Jackson, was also a purchaser of these 
 
 lands. 
 
 109 
 
HAWTHORNE'S FIRST DIARY 
 
 The Manning brothers owned an im- 
 portant line of Eastern stages, and the 
 horses of this line were at the service of 
 Hawthorne in his joumeyings back and 
 forth between Salem and his Maine 
 home. 
 
 Served in T X 7ASHINGT0N LONGLEY, men- 
 TsTz tioned by Hawthorne on page 56, 
 
 was an expert drummer and a teacher of 
 the art, at the time when he came to the 
 grist-mill. He served as drummer in a 
 company, enlisted at Waterford, Maine, 
 in the war of 18 12. After the war he 
 settled at Raymond, on a lot purchased 
 of the Mannings on the shore of Panther 
 Pond. This was in the year 18 17, which 
 is the probable date of the entry in the 
 note-book. His son, who now lives in 
 the house built by his father, informs me 
 that he remembers the colored man, Wil- 
 liam S)ntnmes, who called at his father's 
 house in 1840. He has a more distinct 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 memory of him because, as a boy who 
 had never before seen a black man, he 
 was frightened. His mother lived in the 
 family of Captain Jonathan Britton at the 
 time when Symmes had a home there, 
 and the sailor came to talk of old times. 
 He is described as a man of average 
 height, strongly built, and of dark color 
 for a mulatto. 
 
 The only person I find in Raymond Oneiiv- 
 who remembers Hawthorne is Hezekiah '"■? '^'"' 
 Lombard, who was born in i8i6,and was ^^^^ 
 six years old when Mrs. Hawthorne gave 
 up her residence in the town. He says 
 she returned to Salem in January, 1822. 
 He also remembers Symmes, who was 
 in the vicinity for some years after the 
 Hawthornes left. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Alexandria, Va., 21, 26, 34, 
 
 47- 
 Allen, William, 20. 
 " Asa Hicks," 102. 
 Atholines, London, 104. 
 
 Baker, Lafayette C, 26, 42, 87, 
 
 loi, 102. 
 Baldwin, Maine, 96, 
 Berry, Major, 57. 
 Bewitched Apple-tiee, The, 77- 
 
 79- 
 Bolster's Mills, Maine, 38. 
 Bowdoin College, 3, X2, 20, 21. 
 Bradford, Mass., 105. 
 Bradley, Caleb, 46. 
 Brandy Fond, 10. 
 Britton, Mrs. Beulah, 103. 
 Britton, Jonathan, 24, 25, 55, 
 
 83, loz, 102, 103, 104. 
 Brunswid^, Maine, 12. 
 
 Canterbury, Eng., 104. 
 " Captain Snarl," 82. 
 " Caswell's Comet," 102. 
 Charlestown, Mass., 105. 
 " College Swamp," 102. 
 Cook, Robinson, 13, 38, 53, 60, 
 
 62, 67, 73, I03- 
 Crooked River, 49. 
 Cumberland County, 85. 
 
 "Deacon Hancock," 102. 
 " Deacon Lovell," loz. 
 Deblois, Thomas Amory, 87, 
 
 9'i 93-95, 2'-59' 
 Dickinson, Charles (?), 83, 84, 
 
 86, 87. 
 Dike, Mrs. Friscilla, 18, 109. 
 Dingley Bay, 7, 10, 52, 96. 
 
 Dingley Brook, 7, 10, 80, 87, 
 
 96. 
 Dingley, Captain, 15, 49, 50. 
 Dingley Islands, 7, 49. 
 Dingley, Jacob, 46, S3i 54- 
 Dingley, Joseph, 49, 67. 
 Dingley, Samuel, 67, 69, 107. 
 " Doctor Coodle," 82, 
 Dry Mill Pond, 75. 
 Dunstable, Eng., 104. 
 
 Fessenden, William Pitt, 99, 
 
 102, 104. 
 
 Fessenden, Samuel, 99, 102, 
 
 103, 104. 
 Fickett, Mr., 86. 
 Fields, James T., 6. 
 Frye, Captain, 9. 
 
 Frye's Island, 8, 10, 83, 89, 
 96. 
 
 Gay, March, 58. 
 Gay's Pinch, 75. 
 Georgetown, D. C, " Courier," 
 
 TOO. 
 
 Goodrich, Mr., 99. 
 Goold, William, 57, 99. 
 Gorham, Maine, 30. 
 Gowen, James, 75. 
 Great Bay, 89. 
 Great Fond, 49, 51, 80, 89. 
 Great Rattlesnake Pond, 7. 
 Griffith, George Bancroft, 
 
 29. 
 " Gulliver's Travels," 83. 
 
 Ham, Ben, 68, 71. 
 Hanson, Mr., 87, 95. 
 Harvard College, 105. 
 Harvard, John, 105. 
 
 "3 
 
INDEX 
 
 Hawthorne's Cave, lo, 51. 
 
 Hawthorne, Elizabeth, 16, iS. 
 
 Hawthorne, Elizabeth C, 11, 
 12, X4, 20, 38, 8S, loS. 
 
 Hawthorne, Julian, 5, 43. 
 
 Hawthorne, Louisa, 19. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, auto- 
 biographical sketch, 4, 5 ; boy 
 life, 14; early letters^ 15-21 ; 
 college life, 20, 21 ; nrst hint 
 of i£ary, 22, 23 ; meets 
 Synunes in Liverpool, 26, 
 31-33; his verses, 29, 30; 
 change of name, 33 ; receives 
 note-book, 37 ! time spent in 
 Maine, 45; studies with Caleb 
 Bradley, 46 ; extracts from 
 diary, 49-97 ; sails on lake, 
 52 ; buys exhausted lamb, 57 ; 
 criticises Elder Leach, 6z ; 
 relieves ill-used horse, 68- 
 73 ; his excursion to Muddy 
 River Bog, 87-97. 
 
 Horsebeef Falls, 30. 
 
 How diary was lound, 35, 36. 
 
 Hutchinson, Anne, X05. 
 
 Images, The, 3, g, 49, 50, 51. 
 Indian Graves, 29, 33. 
 
 Jackson, Henry, Jr., 6z, xog. 
 Jones, Lemuel, 75. 
 Jordan Bay, 7. 
 Jordan, Dominlcus, 77-79, 109. 
 
 Knight Tragedy, 29, 31. 
 
 Lambard, Mr., 97. 
 Lathrop, George P., 45, 73. 
 Leach, Zachanah, 61, 62, xog. 
 Legend of Bevil^s Sermon, 75, 
 
 76. 
 Little Rattlesnake If'ond, 7. 
 Little, Thomas, 87, 89, 92, 94, 
 
 96,97. 
 Lombard, Hezekiah, xix. 
 Long Fond, 92. 
 Longley, Washington, 56* i^o. 
 Lumbermen's Raft, 80-S3. 
 
 Manning, Miriam, x6, 19, 108. 
 
 Manning, Miss, 18, 109. 
 
 Manning, Richard, 8, 11, 12, 
 20, 25, 28, 32» 37* 88, 97, 99. 
 
 Manning, Mrs. Richard, 29, 
 34» 39, 63, 65, 107. 
 
 Manning, Richard C, v, 14, 
 41. 
 
 Manning, Robert, 3, 11, 14-17, 
 19, 107, 109. 
 
 March, Reuben, Si, 82. 
 
 Mitchell, Jacob,. 58. 
 
 " Mr. Higginbotham's Catas- 
 trophe," 79. 
 
 Muddy River, 8, 10, 88, 90. 
 
 Muddy River Bog, 87, 90. 
 
 Nat's Rock, 8. 
 
 Old South, 106. 
 Otisfield, Maine, 34, 92, 100, 
 xoz, X03. 
 
 Panther Pond, 7, 110. 
 Patch, John, 59. _ 
 Patch, Capt. Levi, 60. 
 Fensacola, Fla., 26, loi. 
 Pike, Dominions, 79. 
 Portland, Maine, 24, 27, 55, 
 
 10 1, 104. 
 " Portland Transcript," 22, 26, 
 
 Presumpscot River, 30, 
 Fulxiit Rock, 8, 74, 75, 76. 
 
 Radoux, Francis, X2, X3, 35, 
 
 39» 41. 
 Rattlesnake Mountain, 7, 33, 
 
 52, 89. 
 Raymond, Maine, x, 3, 6, 11, 
 
 rs, ifr-19, 24, 27, 33-35, 40, 
 
 50, 107. 
 Raymond Cape, 6, 15, 961 
 Ring, Mr., 49, 50, 53. 
 " Rub-a-dub," 82. 
 
 Salem, Mass., 3, 4, xi, x2, X4- 
 
 19. 
 Saturday Pond| 60. 
 
 114 
 
INDEX 
 
 Sawyer, Matthias Plant, 871 
 91. 94. 95. 98. ?9. 
 
 Scnbner, Col. Eben, 32. 
 
 Sebago Lake, 2, 4-101 49, 104. 
 
 Shane, Mrs., 56. 
 
 Shane, Samuel, 56, 66. 
 
 Shaw, Daniel, 29. 
 
 Small, Edmund B., 35, 40, 41. 
 
 Small's Brook, 75. 
 
 Songo River, 10, 49. 
 
 Stroudwater, Westbrook, 45. 
 
 Symmes, Thomas, 105. 
 
 Symmes, Timothy, 106, 
 
 Symmes, William, ist, 104. 
 
 Symmes, William, 2d, io6. 
 
 Symmes, William, 3d, 24, 106. 
 
 Symmes, William, 4th, 8, 9, 
 22-24 ) his first letter to 
 "Transcript," 27-33; meets 
 Hawthorne in Salem and 
 Liverpool, 31; 34 ; second 
 letter to "Transcript," 35- 
 39 ; obtains diary, 36 ; ef- 
 forts to find him, 41 ; he dies 
 and the book is lost, 43 ; 
 
 third letter to " Transcript,** 
 
 47, 48; 84, 86, 87, loo-iii. 
 Symmes, Zechariaii, ist, 104. 
 Symmes, Zechariah, 2d, 105. 
 
 Tarbox, Betsey, 29, 32, 34, 63, 
 
 65. 
 Tarbox Tragedy, The, 9, ig, 
 
 29,64, 65. 
 Tarkill Hill, 75. 
 " Thad. Turner," 102. 
 Thomas Fond, 7, 8, 27, 28, 32, 
 
 Thompson, Mr,, 82, 83, 
 Turner, Henry, 59. 
 Twenty-Fifth Maine, 35. 
 
 Watkins, Jacob, 27, 65, 66. 
 
 West, Mr., 75, 76. 
 
 White, Enoch, 87, 88, 93, 94, 
 
 White, Petei\ 49, 50, 51-53. 93- 
 Windham, Maine, 30, 49, 87. 
 Windham Hill, 87, 92, 93. 
 Wood, Mr., 8z. 
 
 115 
 
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