Abstract
In the summer of 1852, allies and detractors alike believed Hawthorne to be writing the biography out of desire for political appointment, a possibility that seems more confirmed than dispelled by the angry denials of his sister Louisa and wife Sophia.20 Hawthorne himself disavowed self-interestedness, but even before Pierce had won the election, Hawthorne was eyeing the consulship at Liverpool - the most lucrative appointment the new president would have at his disposal - and maneuvering on behalf of friends for other appointments.21 The consulship would afford prestige and income enough to yield relief from the ever-present need to publish, a demand Hawthorne had felt all the more keenly since the birth of his third child in May 1 85 1 .22 Concerned about sales even as he wrote, Hawthorne prodded his publisher, William Ticknor, to promote the Life aggressively: "I think you must blaze away a little harder in your advertisement," he insisted before delivering exact advice about the wording and arrangement of future ads. Since Hawthorne frequently articulates the moral lessons readers are to glean in The Tanglewood Tales (one of its aesthetic failings according to recent critics), we might expect an explicit reproach for the Pygmies' truculence; but, while the tale lampoons their self-assuredness and their grandiloquence, no such direct censure is forthcoming.30 In the Life of Pierce, Hawthorne represents political oratory as inherently corrupt, and as Michael Gilmore has argued, he accordingly portrays his candidate as "a man of deeds, not words." [...]Hawthorne attributes Hercules's forbearance to the "brotherhood" that he perceives himself to share with his defiant enemies, "as one hero feels for another" (7:233). [...]Hercules, while exercising a peaceful restraint in his treatment of the Pygmies, is himself no pacifist, having quite casually provoked Antaeus into their fatal brawl. Leading children's authors, including Goodrich and Jacob Abbott (author of the prolific Rollo series) and editors of juvenile magazines instead preached the virtues of sober sketches and moral parables featuring everyday protagonists who would be rewarded for their adherence to conventional antebellum social norms and punished for their failures at self-regulation.33 Moralistic tales promoting temperance and pacifism were especially pervasive in children's literature of mid-century.34 As Goodrich was among Hawthorne's earliest supporters, having supplied him with the opportunity to publish in his gift-book, The Token, and for the Peter Parley series in the 1830s, Hawthorne was certainly well- versed in the Goodrich school of juvenile literature.