[HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864).] – [PULSIFER, David (1796-1867). "Old Mortality."] Inscriptions from the Burying-Grounds in Salem, Massachusetts. Boston: James Loring, 1837.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's copy of Salem's Old Burying-Grounds which memorializes the tomb of Nathaniel Mather, an important inspiration for Hawthorne. Signed on the front wrapper: "Nath. Hawthorne." In this book, the antiquarian David Pulsifer recorded the memorial words on Salem tombstones. Familiar names of old Salem are listed—Corey, Crowninshield, Ingersoll, Pickman, Ropes, as well as several of Hawthorne's own distant ancestors. But of greatest interest is the tombstone for Cotton Mather’s younger brother Nathaniel: “Mr. Nathaniel Mather. Dec’d. October y^e17^th, 1688.” The epitaph reads:
An aged person
that had seen
but nineteen winters
in the world. (p. 18)
What is fascinating here is that Hawthorne had mentioned this tombstone in describing that of his eponymous protagonist, Fanshawe, in his first novel, of 1828: “This [inscription] was borrowed from the grave of Nathanael Mather, whom, in his almost insane eagerness for knowledge and in his early death, Fanshawe resembled. 'The ashes of a hard student and a good scholar'" (CE 3:460). The quotation is actually from Cotton Mather’s words on his brother in Magnalia Christi Americana (CE 8:595).

In 1838, Hawthorne referred to the Nathaniel Mather grave again in his American Notebooks: “There, too, is the grave of Nathaniel Mather, the younger brother of Cotton, and mentioned in the Magnalia as a hard student, and of great promise. ‘An aged man at nineteen years,’ saith the grave-stone. It affected me deeply, when I had cleared away the grass from the half-buried stone, and read the name. An apple-tree or two hang over these old graves, and throw down the blighted fruit on Nathaniel Mather’s grave,—he blighted too” (CE 8:173).

The grave of Nathaniel Mather evidently stayed with Hawthorne, warning not only of death, but also, apparently, of a too-ardent quest for knowledge. David Pulsifer’s book was a reminder of what no doubt Hawthorne could not forget.

Octavo (228 x 138mm). Original printed front wrapper (lower wrapper lacking, a little dogeared, chipping to wrapper edges). Provenance: Nathaniel Hawthorne (ownership signature).