On Franklin Pierce and his new office as U.S. Consul - photo 1
On Franklin Pierce and his new office as U.S. Consul - photo 2

On Franklin Pierce and his new office as U.S. Consul

Starting price
$ 1 000
Auction dateClassic
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
Event location
USA, New York
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ID 967629
Lot 110 | On Franklin Pierce and his new office as U.S. Consul
On Franklin Pierce and his new office as U.S. Consul

Nathaniel Hawthorne, [c. March-July 1853]

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Portion of an autograph letter to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, [c. March-July 1853].



Two pages on recto and one page on verso of a single leaf with a small strip of paper affixed to the verso at lower margin, 110 x 125mm. With extensive annotations on verso by Elizabeth Palmer PEABODY (1804-1894).



Hawthorne writes to his sister-in-law on his friendship with Franklin Pearce and the impact his salary as the newly-installed U.S. Consul at Liverpool would have on the family finances. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s campaign biography helped to win the presidency for his lifelong friend Franklin Pierce, and Pierce rewarded him with the consulship at Liverpool. In this letter to his sister-in-law, Elizabeth P. Peabody, Hawthorne reflects on the financial implications of the office: “Here it lies in a nutshell – Our gross income for the four years will be about what you supposed our net income for one year to be; but I am not in the least disappointed – having had reliable information as to the value of the office, from the moment when it was first proposed to me. Still, I expect and fully intend that it shall yield us what, with our moderate ideas, will prove a competence.”



The present letter fragment was sent as a sample of Hawthorne’s writing by his sister-in-law, who has written in the margin next to Hawthorne’s words: “Nathaniel Hawthorne’s autograph addressed to me Elizabeth Peabody.” The manuscript is further annotated on the verso by Peabody: “This is part of a note to me. In my letter to him I told him that it was said the income of the Liverpool Consulship was 40,000 dollars a year! He says in another part of the letter that he saw by the books that Crittenden did get 13,000 some years, the greatest income ever realized from it. It was a great annoyance to him that the consulship was reputed so wealthy. He did not like to take the office at all under Pierce because it seemed as if he had written the Life to get it. But as his books never brought him on an average $1000 a year, his duty to his family compelled him to put aside his pride after a long struggle with it, and accept the office after Pierce had explained to Ticknor that he was bitterly disappointed to find him feeling [these doubts]. He wrote the Life because Pierce made it (very indelicately I think) a test of his true friendship that he should do so.” Sophia first met Nathaniel Hawthorne through her sister, Elizabeth. When the author came to visit, Elizabeth is said to have reported, “He is handsomer than Lord Byron!” When she urged Sophia to come downstairs to meet him, she laughed and said, “If he has come once he will come again.”



Apparently unpublished and unknown. In June 1853, Nathaniel referred to the destruction of family papers in his journal: “I burned great heaps of old letters and other papers, a little while ago, preparatory to going to England. Among them were hundreds of Sophia’s maiden letters.”

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