Franklin Pierce – His Best Friend Nathaniel Hawthorne

Best Friends

I had lots of friends when I was younger. It’s not that I was all that popular, I just lived in the right place. I had a cute sister and there were a couple of cute girls that lived next door to each other across the street. I guess my senses were a little dulled by the fact that I grew up with them all and just thought of them as friends and my sister. But a lot of “friends” would want to come over to visit me just to see the females that lived nearby.

I was the type of friend that was great to be around. I didn’t shine in the spotlight and I was a lot better at being the second fiddle. I was easy to talk to and not too many other guys thought of me as a threat. In fact, very often when I took an interest in a girl they were far more likely to make a move on her than I was.

Later, in my teenage years, I got a lot better at finding what I would call true friends. True friends were friends you could be yourself around. True friends were the ones that almost encouraged you to be goofy. True friends were the ones you could share your feelings with and you never had to worry about them embarrassing you by exposing them.

School and church supplied most of my friends. There were groups that I hung out with. A lot of my friends and I were involved in sports. My Dad built a basketball goal in the backyard and he poured some concrete to make a court. My Dad, my friends and I would spend hours outside playing basketball. I would also bowl with a group of friends on Friday nights.

I also had a few girls that I would associate with, but I was usually scared and intimidated by girls, so it usually worked better for me to just be friends. I’m not real sure if that was my choice or theirs.

I had some really good friendships in high school. I remember so many of them fondly. They helped me grow. They gave me confidence. They let me try new things without the fear of failure holding me back. They helped me learn that I was an okay person to be around and I could contribute to others’ lives, too.

When you move on to a work life and eventually a family of your own, the role of friendships seems to change. Maybe there is just less free time to invest. Maybe you just come home too tired to invest in another relationship. Maybe people just move in and out of your life more often. But the ability to have those close, non-family types of relationships seems to fade a little.

If you’re lucky, like me, you marry a companion who seems to be on the same page as you are. You find that you have a lot of interests in common, and even the ones you don’t have in common, you seem to enjoy those, too, because you are with the other person you love so much. You can almost complete each other sentences. It is a much better friendship than you have ever enjoyed before.
Real friendships don’t come about by waving some magic wand. When someone walks into your life for the first time you never know the impact they will have on you or you will have on them. The next time you see them will it bring a smile to your face or will you be reaching for the aspirin bottle? You just don’t know.

I can’t think of one time that I thought, of someone on the first visit, “Wow, this is going to be my best friend.” But with each great friend I have ever earned, I have looked back, down the road, in amazement at how far we have come together. We had fun together. We talked. We shared. We learned to trust each other. Then there we were, friends.

No real deep friendship is a one way street. Both need to participate. Both need to trust. Both need to talk. Both need to help the other when times get hard for them. It’s not just what I want. It’s not just what you want. Sometimes it’s not even what either one of you wants. It’s about being a team and teammates, good teammates, working well together.

It was a brisk spring day at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. The apple blossoms were in full bloom. Many of the soft pedals had fallen to the ground. The sad former President bent over and filled his hands with their beauty. Like life itself, he must have wondered how something so beautiful could be here one day and gone the next.

The former President’s best friend had passed away and he stood on the edge of the grave as the casket was slowly lowered into the ground where it would permanently reside. As the service ended, and the casket rested at the bottom of the grave, he opened his hand and let those blossoms drift onto the casket below. Sadly, he turned and walked away.

Just a few days before his best friend’s, Nate’s, wife had asked the former President to spend some time with her husband because she was so worried about his health. So in early May, the former President met up with his best friend and it was decided they would do a little tour of New England. When his best friend arrived, the former President was shocked by the wasted figure that stood before him.

On the third day of their tour, they had reached the Pemigeswasset House in Plymouth. They decided to retire for the night. The former President left the door open between their rooms just in case his friend would be called in the middle of the night for help. The normally restless friend seemed hardly to move. The former President went to check on him and that was when he noticed he was dead.

Nate had met the former President a long time ago when he was headed off to Bowdoin College. The two quickly developed a close relationship that would last Nate’s whole lifetime.

Nate had never really wanted to attend college, but his uncle, Robert Manning, provided the funding, so he couldn’t really turn it down. While at Bowdoin, Nate would meet the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. After graduating, Nate would serve as editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. He was then offered, and accepted, an appointment as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House. This gave him a much better salary.

It was about this time that Nate started writing. He only wrote a little bit at first. He started writing little short stories for magazines and annuals. A few years later he would take a job as the Surveyor for the District of Salem and Beverly. This job slowed down his writing greatly.

Four years later Nate would return to writing. He would write his most famous work at this time. In its preface he would refer to his time at the Custom House. The book would become a best seller in the United States.

About this time, Nate would met and become friends with fellow author Herman Melville. Melville was writing his famous Moby-Dick at the time. Melville would dedicate Moby-Dick to Nate. Nate was now turning out writing works left and right.

Joseph M. Scriven was an Irish poet. He was born to prosperous parents in Banbridge, County Down, Ireland. He would graduate with a degree from Trinity College in Dublin. His life seem to offer many troubling events.

Right before he was to be married, Joseph’s fiancée drowned. Religious persecution was one of the main reasons he would flee to Woodstock, Ontario a few years later, but I’m sure he was still feeling the effects of losing his fiancée so close to their wedding, too. Shortly after he arrived in Ontario, he got very sick and had to return home to Ireland.

When Joseph healed, he again returned to Canada. Shortly after his return he received word that his mom was terribly ill. It was then that he would pen his most famous work, a poem called: “Pray Without Ceasing.”

When one hears Scriven’s poem, one has to be reminded of the source of its words. It’s about a man who was a friend. This man really understood what it meant to be a true friend.

Some might call Scriven’s Bible character a fool. After all, the friendship that his Bible character displays is often one-sided, and not usually to the Bible character’s benefit. The friend seems like he is doing most of the work in the relationship. Yet, speaking for us in his poem, Scriven seems to suggest that it is okay that the relationship is that way. He even encourages us to keep taking advantage of this relationship with the Bible character.

Nate would write the campaign biography for his friend, the soon to be President. Despite the country’s deep divide at the time, he described his friend as “a man of peaceful pursuits.” His friend would be elected President.

While serving as President, his friend was given the opportunity to appoint several of the diplomats. He appointed Nate to the position of consul to Liverpool. Although the salary was decent, the job did offer the extra benefit of receiving fees from every ship coming to Liverpool from the United States or leaving from Liverpool to go to the United States.

When the former President was actually serving as President, the party he belonged to had decided they didn’t want him to be their nominee in the next election. So after serving just one term, he was turned out of office, not by a defeat in an election, but by the people of his own party. The humiliation was devastating. A few months after his termed ended the former President and his wife decided to take a tour of Europe to get their minds off things.

Nate was still serving in Liverpool about this time. He was waiting for his replacement to arrive. Nate’s oldest daughter, Una, had been seriously ill for months with malaria. While in Europe, cheering up Nate would get the former President’s mind off his own depression of not even being his party’s nominee in the next Presidential election.

When Una recovered, Sophia, Nate’s wife, would credit the former President with keeping her husband out of a deep depression. That episode was one of the reasons Sophia asked the former President to spend some time with her husband just before he died. A little part of her thought that being with the former President might snap him out of his illness.

Joseph Scriven’s poem, “Pray Without Ceasing,” was never intended to be made public, but in the 1880s Scriven was given full credit for the poem. Shortly thereafter Charles Crozat Converse would create a tune to go with the words. The title was changed to “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

Scriven would fall in love again while he was in Ontario. But as luck would have it, this fiancée would also pass away before they were married. She would die of pneumonia.

Scriven would devote the rest of his life to tutoring, preaching and helping others. He would also publish a collection of 115 Hymns and other verses. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” was not one of the 115 hymns.

Years later Scriven became very depressed. He drowned in 1886 and there are questions as to whether the death was an accident or a suicide. He was buried next to his second fiancée.

Even in his darkest days as President, Franklin Pierce had a fan, a defender and a true friend in Nathaniel Hawthorne. Theirs was a friendship that lasted a lifetime. It was not a friendship that was one sided. It was a friendship that helped the other person when they needed it and accepted the help that was offered when they needed it.

When Pierce’s critics surrounded him, the author of the Scarlett Letter, Hawthorne, was always there to defend his good friend. When Pierce became President, Hawthorne would sometimes get sad because his friend would be so busy with “official” business that he wouldn’t have time to sit down and chat with him like they used to. But the friendship survived and the sorrow Pierce felt in Hawthorne’s passing was genuine.

As we go through life, we can’t help coming in contact with people. We can, if we choose, just keep it casual with everyone. After all, if we remain private with our thoughts and feelings, no one can abuse them. And boy does it hurt when those feelings get abused.

But what happens when we do share parts of ourselves with others? Others learn from our mistakes. Others see us as genuine. Others start trusting us with their feelings. Others have smiles on their faces when we enter the room. Others start to realize they aren’t alone in this world. Others start to realize they aren’t trapped by their situation.

But it is not just others who gain when we invest in a friendship. We learn we are loved despite our imperfections. We learn that others are interested in us. We learn it is okay to be ourselves. We learn that we aren’t the only ones who fear things. We learn new thoughts and ideas. We learn that opposing opinions don’t have to hurt.

There is an old expression: “To have a friend, you have to be a friend.” The thought is so true. True friendships don’t expect anything. True friendships love unconditionally. True friendships invest in the other person. True friendships follow the lead of what a friend we have in Jesus.

Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Thank you for all the friendships you have placed in my life. Thank you for teaching me what it really means to be a friend by sending Your Son to show me what a true friend really is. Amen.

“What a Friend We Have In Jesus” video