Nathaniel Hawthorne

Passages from the English Notebooks Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the spring of 1853 Hawthorne received from his life-long friend, President Pierce, the appointment of United States Consul at Liverpool, then one of the most lucrative places in the gift of the Executive. He held the post for four years, but remained in England two years longer, leaving the country finally in 1859. Though the duties of his office could not have been much to his taste, he discharged them with exemplary diligence, and, we believe, to the satisfaction of all who did business with him. His will was strong, and his sense of duty was not less strong; and he had already been trained to do disagreeable work, for he had been for six years a measurer of coal and salt in the Boston Custom-House, and afterwards for three years surveyor of the port of Salem. But looking at the growth of his mind, these nine long years of enforced and against-the-grain work were precious to him. They took him out of the world of dreams into the world of life. They gave him subjects for reflection. They sharpened his powers of observation. They braced and gave tone to his intellectual fibre. They kept rust and mould from gathering on his mind. If they postponed for a time the act of writing, they supplied ample material for literary work in the future. It may be well doubted whether we should have had The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables but for the growth and discipline of the previous years of uncongenial drudgery and constrained contact with his kind. The iron of compulsion which entered into his soul became a tonic to his intellectual blood.