Franklin Benjamin Sanborn - The Personality of Emerson, 1903

LIBRARY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. "

V svt 0*5

THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON

THE PERSONALITY OF

EMERSON BY

SANBORN

F.

B.

T

OF TH

uwiv OF

BOSTON CHARLES E. GOODSPEED 1903

Copyright, 1903, by F. B.

D. B. Updike,

SANBORN

The Merry mount

Press, Boston

PREFATORY NOTE HAVING

determined

describing

the personal

guished authors

a series of volumes

to write

traits

whom I

/

close

tion

Em

intimately knew,

erson, Thoreau, Ellery Channing,

Alcott,

distin

of four

and Bronson

volume as the second. So

offer this

were the relations of these friends, that men of

all is

ing some

naturally

repetition.

with portraits, a

made

From

good

in each book, involv

these books, illustrated

conception

is

had of

the

Concord school of poets and philosophers, who were so

distinctly original.

A part of the plan best portrait, with

to

give in each book the

a facsimile of manuscript. The

portrait of Thoreau

Personality of

was

did not appear in

Thoreau"

"

The

but was reserved for

Channing s life. Emerson s portrait here given was painted by David Scott at Edinburgh in 1848, but reached America thirty years later,

was never well engraved it is

the best

before.

In some

and

respects

of many portraits. F. B. S.

CONCORD, February

14, 1903.

THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON

THE PERSONALITY OF

EMERSON IN writing of

my

comparatively short acquaint

ance with Henry Thoreau,

I

was

easily able to re

the circumstances under which I

call

first

became

acquainted, not only with his person, but with his

mind. It was not so in

my

relations with

Emer

son for so early did I begin to read his writings, ;

that I can hardly

them, at least

remember when

superficially.

I did

not

know

A natural affinity for

the school of thought which he most clearly rep resented,

and something akin to

my own way ters,

brought

fore I ever

his intuitions in

of viewing personal and social

me

into relations with

saw him, or heard that

which few who had listened to

him long be

thrilling voice

deeper tone

its

could ever forget. I was indeed as

mat

much younger

than Emerson as Persius was younger than his revered Stoic philosopher, Cornutus but I could ;

have

said,

and often did say to myself,

after

be

coming intimate with the Concord philosopher,

THE PERSONALITY OF what young Persius proclaimed

in lasting

Latin

verse: "

Nescio quod certe

T was

quod me

est,

tibi

sure some star attuned

temperat

my

astrum."

fate to thine.

must have begun to read Emerson before six teen for in my sixteenth year I remember perus I

;

Bo wen

ing with indignation Francis

the Poems, which

came out

can Review for 1847; and I first

made

Carlyle

s

Nature came

it

was soon

The second

in 1849,

teen; and at eighteen

North Ameri after that

acquaintance in his early

s

book, Sartor Resartus. erson

in the

review of

s

I

Em

edition of

when

I

was seven

had read the Essays, and

the remarkable biographical criticism of Plato,

Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Napoleon in resentative

Men. But the

born and spent

all

little

town where

Rep I

was

these earliest years, with the

exception of a few weeks at Boston in 1843,

though abounding

in

good books and

inspiring

teachers, hardly ever attracted a lecturer of

than local repute; and Exeter,

and

seat of learning,

Transcendentalists to

its

more

market-town

had no inclination to invite its

"Lyceum."

[8]

I

remember

EMERSON in

nineteenth year, as

my

was reading Greek

I

Hoyt of the Exeter Academy, he me how his classmates at Dartmouth

with Professor related to

Emerson

invited

1838 to give them that grand

in

discourse on Literary Ethics which

the

first

stood

of his orations I had read,

it,

how few under

and how Emerson repelled the proposal

of reporting gentle sage,

it.

"I

"I

curse the

curse

teacher reported that said to him. this

was one of

Reporters,"

them";

so, at least,

Emerson

But when, many

said the

my old

Hanover had

at

years after, I cited

remark to Emerson, he could not believe he

had made

it.

But

his opinion

that the casual reporter

sure to misunderstand

and he had suffered so often

and misreport, therefrom, that

is

was so constant,

I

never really doubted the exact

memory

of Professor Hoyt. Singularly enough,

Emerson

disliked even the exact reporter,

for a different reason, of course.

He

morbidly sensitive about repeating those

who had

prived

read

him of their

them

in full;

though

was almost

his essays to

thinking

fresh attention,

and

lost

it

de

them

the interest of surprise, on which his rhetoric so

[3]

THE PERSONALITY OF largely

depended

decade of his

life

at the first hearing.

In the

last

he gave in Concord that essay

on Eloquence which came out shortly before his death, in the volume called Letters and Social Aims,

a

him much

that gave

title

the definition of

trouble, like

"civilization."

It

was new to me,

knew

it

would be pleas

in February, 1875,

and

I

ing to readers of the Springfield Republican.

I

therefore took full notes, and spent the next day or

two

in looking

Lafayette,

up the

orators he

had quoted,

John Quincy Adams, and Canning,

and was fortunate enough to find the very page

from which he had copied a remarkable address

Chamber

of Lafayette to the

of Deputies (June

which he threw down the gauntlet

21, 1815), in

to Napoleon.

As Emerson, his

for

volume, and

some

at the

Concord

"Napoleon,

to

summon

a

it

as

from

it

be unknown to

may

it

readers, I will quote

reason, omitted

Emerson read

it

my

to us

"Lyceum":

returning from Elba, was obliged

Chamber

them came Lafayette.

of Deputies, and

among

When Napoleon came back [4]

EMERSON from Waterloo to this

Paris,

he resolved to abolish

Assembly. Lafayette heard of

it.

In the

first

session afterward he ascended the tribune with

out delay, and said:

many

years

the friends feel

When

I raise in this

of free

for the first

Chamber

time in

a voice which

institutions will recognize, I

myself called upon, Gentlemen, to address

you respecting the dangers of the country, which

you alone

are

now

able to save. Sinister reports

have been spread abroad they are ;

confirmed.

The moment has

now unhappily

arrived for rallying

around the old tri-colored standard of 1789, the standard of liberty, equality, and public or der. Permit,

cause, one faction, to

Gentlemen, a veteran

who was

ever a stranger to the spirit of

submit to you some resolutions,

necessity of which, I trust,

Let

this

session

;

in this sacred

Assembly declare

let it

you

the

will feel as I do.

itself in

permanent

send for the ministers of State, and

require of

them

of

The Assembly voted as Lafayette had Then Lucien Bonaparte, who was a

affairs.

proposed.

a report on the present aspect

deputy, rose in his place, bowed to Lafayette with

[5]

THE PERSONALITY OF profound respect, and

Napoleon sent

But five

to

days

my

in his

story.

after, in

and was grieved. said,

tions.

"You

left

the

hall.

In two hours

abdication."

When

this report appeared,

my newspaper, Emerson saw it He met me in the street and

should not have reported

Dog must not eat

dog."

I

my quota explained my rea

sons; but they did not convince him; he wished

to use that lecture again, and thought this report

hindered him.

was not

Harvard College, in the summer of 1852, that I had opportunities It

till

I entered

of hearing and meeting Emerson. I had heard

Theodore Parker 1851,

when

I visited

and Concord

my

addresses, in the

disposal;

;

but in April,

Boston for the second time,

for the first time,

making public at

in the year before

and though

I

Emerson was not week

or ten days

passed his house,

whose door stood invitingly open

(his

daughter

Ellen descending the stairway, reminding

me

some angel

I

in

Allston

s

not then the courage to the

first

Jacob s Dream], call

on him.

of

had

I did so for

time in July, 1853, after hearing him

[6]

EMERSON lecture occasionally, and after meeting Alcott,

Parker, Mrs. Cheney, and others of his friends. I

had walked up from Cambridge to Concord over the Turnpike, on my way to visit Henry Shaw, a former schoolmate, in Sudbury. Reaching son

s

Emer

house, at the corner where the Cambridge

Turnpike debouches into the Lexington road (now Massachusetts Avenue), about eleven in the morning, I rang the bell and was shown at

once into the study, where Emerson sat in his

accustomed

the Fates of Michel

chair, facing

Angelo over the mantel. or writing, as his

He

was either reading

morning habit was.

letter of introduction,

had no

I

but perhaps used the name

of some mutual friend, Alcott or Parker; was received graciously, and questioned about the

young men

my

in College,

Sophomore

distinction

where

year, with

among

giving

me

I

a Society

Poem,

observed that, after

one of those gently piercing glances

which took visitors,

had just ended

some small tokens of

classmates,

or something of the kind.

I

in so

much

of the character of his

he did not look directly at

m

me

in ques-

THE PERSONALITY OF tioning or replying; but gazed at one side, as his

withdrawing

mind from persons

What I remember ing to see a

best of his remarks

crop of mystics at

"good

the last place in which

Emerson was then

to ideas.

some

his

is

hop

Harvard,"

many of that

to be found, or had been, for

if

class

were

years.

in the vigor of

middle age,

good health and fine color, with abundant dark brown hair, no beard, but a

just turned of

slight

fifty,

in

whisker on each cheek, and plainly dressed.

His form was never other than

knew him, and

his shoulders, like

slender, after I

Thoreau

s,

had

that peculiar slope which had attracted notice in

England, where the

Norman was not

New England type of Anglo-

so well

known

as

it

has since

become. His striking features were the noble brow, from which the hair was carelessly thrown back, though not long, and the mild and penetrat

ing blue eye, smiling, in

its social

mood,

most friendly manner, but capable, on sions,

of

much

severity.

The

Scott, painted at

portrait

in the

rare occa

by David

Edinburgh five years before, erred by giving him a complexion and an eye too

[8]

EMERSON general expression was then al

dark; but in

its

most

and

perfect;

drew and threw

Rowse

five years later, in 1858,

aside an unfinished head which

best preserves the noble serenity of his gaze.

From

the date of this

visit,

saw Emerson but seldom, company, except

in those

although at

I felt at ease in his

moments which

intimates experienced (and

some of them

lamented and complained

of),

to be

removed to an

first I

all his

bitterly

when he seemed

infinite distance

from human

companionship, and hardly to recognize the pres ence of those with

whom

he seemed to be con

versing. This trait, or circumstance,

have been a part of

ment

his fate, rather

in his disposition,

for

it

must

than an ele

which was eminently so

was wont to explain by his superiority of nature, which of necessity isolated him from those around him, until by the force of cial

and

friendly,

I

and generosity he brought himself within the daily round of common thoughts and cares, in will

which he did not naturally belong. His was the higher poetic nature, to which the phenomenal world presents itself as a phantasm rather than a

[9]

THE PERSONALITY OF and from which the daily events and com panionships of life seem strangely averse and re fact,

mote.

The

ecstasies

and profundities of

religious

and philosophic meditation are akin to this poetic exaltation; and all were mingled and exemplified

some of those experiences which Emerson has himself narrated, and which appeared also in the

in

and thoughtful

solitary

spiritual life of his

eccen

Mary Moody Emerson. To her, as he was wont to say, he was much indebted for his

tric aunt,

early induction into the graver paths of self-cul ture.

The

erson

s

typical passage

books

is

on

this

matter in

that which occurs so early in the

first

one, his philosophic abridgment called

ture,

where he says of himself:

vanishes. I

all;

The name

Na

mean egotism

eye-ball; I

am

the currents of the Universal

Being circulate through of God.

"All

become a transparent

nothing, I see

Em

me

;

I

am

part or parcel

of the nearest friend sounds

then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, trifle

and a

master or servant,

is

then a

disturbance."

This abstraction and aloofness of mind,

[10J

if its

EMERSON powers are once turned toward

human

things,

gives extreme clearness of vision and apprecia tion.

Emerson

said of himself,

gift of perception";

him soon learned

"I

have the

fatal

and those who saw much of

to understand this, without al

ways knowing from what quality

in his nature

so remarkable a gift proceeded. Simplicity

something to do with

it,

had

and the poetic eye

much

more, George Chapman, himself a poet

of no

mean

Homer

to

order, in dedicating his version of

Lord Howard of Walden,

said well

of Poesy, personified: "

Virtue, in all things else at best, she betters,

Honor she She

is

heightens, and gives

the ornament and soul of letters

The world Simple she

is

s

death

;

;

deceit before her vanisheth

:

as doves, like serpents wise,

Sharp, grave and sacred

And

life in

things divining

fit

Accepting her as she

;

nought but things divine

her faculties, is genuine."

This saying could hardly be applied in

literal

any man; but it came near to the higher moods of Emerson. He had also a prac tical side, which often puzzled those who expected

strictness to

THE PERSONALITY OF him

to find

sage or

all

all

stead an unusual versatility

This

second

his

have been

said to

is

visit to

some years

Emerson

in 1847-48,

than

saw him;

I

by Lowell

nized, however,

of

less noticeable before

England

earlier

in the

and perceived in or even worldliness.

poet,

it

which was

was recog

in his clever portrayal

Fable for

Critics,

which

first

appeared in 1848: "

A

Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range

Has Olympus

A

for

one pole, for

t

other the Exchange ;

Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian

And

He

the Gascon

sits

And

in a

s

gold mist

shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist;

mystery calm and intense,

looks coolly around

When

s

I first

him with sharp

knew him,

common-sense."

in the years

1853-56,

the long conflict over the questions of American slavery

was shaping

itself for final decision

by

Emerson had taken

his

the ordeal of battle; and public attitude on fact

which

for a

some ten years

earlier,

a

time escaped the notice of

his

it

and correspondent Carlyle, who was inclin ing to the support of negro slavery, from his con tempt for the African, and his worship of force.

friend

[

EMERSON It

was about

this time, say in 1854,

become a frequent

visitor at

when

I

had

Theodore Parker s

hospitable house in Exeter Place, Boston, that he told

me

lyle

on

at

own

the story of his

this point, in the

colloquy with Car-

Chelsea house, in 1843,

an evening conversation when Doctor John

Carlyle was present, and several contemporaries

were discussed. Parker found the two Carlyles ting round the open

fire,

where on the hob was the

kettle heating for the Scotch beverage of

punch.

At

first,

sit

literature

whiskey

was the theme, and

Tennyson, then just rising into note

as a poet,

though he had been long known to Emerson,

in

the early edition of 1833, which, bound in red

morocco, used to

who was

lie

on Emerson

s table.

Parker,

not so good a judge of poets as of theo-

logues, began to give Carlyle his notion of

nyson, as an exquisite

who

Ten

arrayed himself for

writing verse in a silk-lined dressing-gown, and, seated at an inlaid table, with a gold-tipped quill,

would fairy

indite verses

Lilian"

the picture.

on

satin paper, like

"Airy,

or Claribel. Carlyle laughed loud at "Ow,

that

s

not so at

[13]

all,

Alfred

THE PERSONALITY OF comes here and drinks

his

pipe like the rest of us he ;

Carlyle began to Abolitionists,

against

his

no dandy nor milk for consideration,

"Quashee"

and the

whose cause Parker championed, of "Your

said,

neighbor

Emer

no Abolitionist; he thinks about these things

much "he

rail

But Carlyle

course. s

s

America then coming up

sop."

son

toddy and smokes

as I

do."

"On

the

said Parker,

contrary,"

no longer withdraws from association with

active reformers, like Garrison, but

en against negro believe

it.

"But,"

home

slavery."

said

is

outspok

Carlyle could hardly

Parker to me,

"when

I

and Emerson had printed that trenchant address on West India Emancipa reached

tion,

in 1844,

which Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Emerson, and the

Thoreaus made an occasion for him to give in

Concord (August

1,

1844), I

had the

satisfaction

of sending the pamphlet to Carlyle at It contained this passage, indicates

to

how

I

others,

the slave question addressed

Emerson when "As

among

Chelsea."

I first

which itself

knew him:

have walked in these pastures and along

the edge of woods,

I

could not keep

[14]

my imagina-

EMERSON on agreeable figures, for other images that intruded on me. I could not see the great vision tion

who have adopted

of the patriots and senators slave

No:

s

they turned their backs on me.

cause,

I see

the

of

other pictures,

mean men:

I see

very poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant men, not

surrounded by happy friends, black

men

to be plain, poor

of obscure employment as mariners,

cooks or stewards in ships, yet citizens of this

our Commonwealth,

freeborn as we,

whom

the

slave-laws of South Carolina have arrested in ves sels,

and shut up

these

men

Gentlemen, setts ship setts as

I see, I

was

in jails. This

man, these men,

and no law to save them.

.

.

.

thought the deck of a Massachu as

much

the territory of Massachu

the floor on which

as sacred as the

we

stand. It should be

temple of God. If such a

dam

nable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen with impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of the State; he bears the sword in

vain."

No

doubt Emerson was thinking of the crest

and legend on the State

seal of

[15]

our State,

the

THE PERSONALITY OF arm with

uplifted sword grasped in a firm hand,

picturing the

of Algernon Sidney

first half-line

inscription in the table-book of the

promising freedom to our

King of Den

while the legend gave the other

mark,

all

s

line,

who might come under

flag: "

Ense

Manus

petit

hcec,

inimica tyrannis,

placidam sub

libertate

quietem."

This device and motto, selected by John Adams,

who framed sided at

its

our

first

State Constitution, and pre

revision, forty years after, I

once

translated thus: This hand, the tyrant

s foe,

Seeks peace, through freedom, with a manly blow.

Emerson had a great admiration for both the Adamses, John and John Quincy; he once told

me

that

John Adams was

est of the

in his

view the great

Revolutionary patriots,

superior to

Franklin or Jefferson, and, though not

ton

s

Washing

equal in moral qualities or military talent,

a far better writer. Washington, he said, was a

and against Jefferson he had re tained some of the prejudices of the Boston Fed-

heavy

writer,

[16]

EMERSON which he had grown up. His brother Edward, who died early in Porto Rico, was tu eralists, in

tor of

some of the

Waldo Emerson brothers

read

it

grandsons, and

two

the old statesman at Quincy he ;

me from

his journal of

before he included

They found the

Adams s

liked to relate the visit the

made to

to

elder

it

February, 1825,

in his essay

on Old Age.

old President in his easy-chair,

calmly awaiting the death that found him there the next year. son,

who had

When just

they asked him about his

been chosen President, he

praised the political prudence of

Adams, but will not

said,

come

"I

to

shall

never see

Quincy but

to

John Quincy him again he

my

;

funeral;

it

would be a great satisfaction to me to see him, but I don t wish him to come on my account."

He

lived to see his son

ninety years old in 1825.

more than once, though

When

I related to

erson a story of Adams in his old age, which

Em I

had

from Theodore Parker, and he from Reverend

Doctor Gray of Roxbury, he refused to believe it, such was his veneration for John Adams; though the anecdote was quite in keeping with his well-

[17]

THE PERSONALITY OF known

irascibility.

Doctor Gray was invited to

dine with the ex-President at the house of a pa rishioner, and, as

Mr. Adams was leaving

the Doctor stepped into the hall to help

early,

him on

with his overcoat. Then ensued this colloquy:

Adams. lite

thank you, Doctor Gray, for your po

attention.

Gray. tention

we

I

Do is

not mention

it,

Mr. Adams; no at

too great, no trouble

is

too much, that

of this century have the privilege of taking

for the patriots of the Revolution,

for General

Washington and yourself, Sir. Adams. Do not name Washington to me, Washington was a "No,"

story;"

thority.

said

dolt!

Emerson,

nor would he,

He

Sir!

"I

when

cannot believe that I

gave him

my

au

loved also to cite the eloquence of

John Quincy Adams, which he has described in one of his essays. Indeed, he was a follower of eloquent men, and once told a great speech of Harrison

oned Boston

by Otis on

s

Gray

that he reported Otis, then reck

and was complimented accuracy. He had in truth a re-

chief orator,

his

me

[18]

EMERSON markable verbal memory, as since

upon

much

all

poets should have;

of their easy writing of verse depends

it.

Quincy Adams was dead and gone before I ever saw Emerson so was Webster before I ever ;

conversed with him; but Emerson liked to

memorate those his

gran

earlier days, before

rifiuto,

in 1850,

com

Webster made

and went to

his

grave

heavy censure of the best sen Massachusetts. It was to Emerson that

in 1852 under the

timent in

Carlyle in 1839 wrote his remarkable word-por trait

of Webster in England, which the Concord

Webster s biographers to copy, and which disclosed the unhandsome as well as the

friend allowed

glorious features of his character. In 1845,

when

Webster and Choate came to Concord

week,

bank

to defend the fraudulent

for a

officer

(against

whose offence there was then no countervailing and got him acquitted, Mrs. Emerson, who remembered Webster in black dress-coat and

law),

small-clothes at the

1820, where he

Plymouth Pilgrim

made one

festival of

of his noblest orations,

gave a reception for Webster and the gentlemen

[19

J

THE PERSONALITY OF of the Middlesex Bar, of which the leader was

then Samuel Hoar of Concord, father of Senator

Hoar. Edward Emerson, before his health gave

way, and he went to the

West

Indies in the hope

of restoration, had been the tutor of Webster sons,

ton

and had studied law

But the flaw

office.

in the great

in the

s

man s Bos

metal of Webster

did not escape the piercing insight of Emerson,

long before he betrayed his trust on the slavery question.

He

told

Webster s chronic of honor where

me

one or two anecdotes of

insensibility to the

money was

demands

concerned,

one of

them dating back before 1830; and when the March speech of 1850 came to shatter the hopes of Webster

s

anti-slavery friends,

whom he should

have led instead of deserting, Emerson wrote his journal

:

"Why

He

in

did all

manly

gifts in

wrote on Nature

He also, just

before I

s

Webster

noblest brow,,

made

fail?

FOB

SALE."

his personal acquaint

ance, gave a public address, at

Cambridge and

elsewhere, in which he portrayed the scope of

Webster s mind, and the lack of moral greatness

[20]

EMERSON in the

man

so grandly

never publish

it,

and

it

endowed; but he would

has never appeared in

Of Waldo Emerson s

brothers, to

full.

whom

he

was most tenderly attached, I saw only William, the eldest, and Bulkeley, the "innocent,"- who, though a bright and capable of ten or twelve, then had

child

up to the age

mental growth

his

by some severe malady, and continued through a long life to be dependent on others for his care and comfort. While I knew him, he arrested

resided in Littleton, a few miles cord, adjoining Harvard,

where

w est of Con r

his father,

erend William Emerson, had his

Rev

first parish,

and

where many of the descendants of Reverend Peter Bulkeley, the founder of Concord in 1635, were then

William Emerson was a lawyer New York City, with a house on

living.

of success in

Staten Island before

I

knew him,

in

which Tho-

reau lived for a time in 1843, as the tutor of his three sons, and where Ellery Channing, during his short residence in

New York

as

one of the editors

of the Tribune, under Horace Greeley, used to visit. I

soon met William Emerson at his brother

[21

]

s

THE PERSONALITY OF house

in

Concord, and when

York, in the spring of 1856, house, and heard from

I first visited

I

New

dined at his city

him the

story of his in

terview with Goethe in 1825, or about that time.

Emerson had

when

early told

me

the young American,

of

this,

who was

the pulpit, like his ancestors for tions, laid before the

German

and

that,

destined for

many

genera

sage his religious

doubts, and sought counsel whether he should

preach or not, Goethe advised him to swallow his

and preach. The conscientious Christian could not do this; he returned to his mother s scruples

Roxbury home

in October, 1825,

and saddened

her by giving up his purpose of entering the min istry,

beginning the study of law soon

was a

faithful, courteous,

after.

He

but slightly formal gen

tleman, well read and affectionate, but rather anti pathetic to Thoreau and the scendentalists. I also

knew

more

eccentric Tran-

for a

few years that

noteworthy aunt of the Emersons, Miss Mary

Moody Emerson, the youngest child of Emerson s grandfather, who built the Old Manse, where she was born; and she used to say

[22]

"she

was in arms

EMERSON at

Concord

Fight"

because her mother (who had

a brother and cousins on the

Tory

side) held her

up at the window to see the redcoats as they marched past the Parsonage on their way to the North Bridge. She was therefore more

historic

than eighty when I met her at her nephew side,

means

a small, energetic, by no

person, but of singular talents and nality,

s fire

beautiful

much

origi

which had been of great service to the

children of her deceased brother, as they

grew up

under her eye. Like her nephew, she had great regard for beautiful persons, children,

men, women, or

and equally good esteem

for original

though they might hold opinions which she abhorred. Thoreau was such a person; and

persons,

her interest in him, which he reciprocated, gave a piquancy to their interviews, and to her

ments on him, made to

me and

others.

com

She did

not accept Bronson Alcott in the same way,

though admiring manners.

When

new system

his fine aspect

she

first

and graceful

heard him explain his

of instruction for children, which he

was then exemplifying

in Boston, she

[23]

wrote to

THE PERSONALITY OF him (October "

30, 1835)

While the form

dazzled,

while the speaker

the foundations of the

inspired confidence,

superstructure, gilded and golden,

the

am

I will tell

of,

depths

furnished

ciples. itself is

thus:-

No

in

you plainly what, when

more with terms

marvel that

was

Age

is

I

as well as prin

at a loss to express

about a system, theory or whatever, which

proposed for Infancy. If you will have the kind

me

ness to send tion,

and

as

a letter including the Conversa

much more

you can afford, I will, express myself more plainly, on

if

as

you give leave, a ground which now seems to give way to literality and common-sense philosophy. It

me

gratify for

you

you will read a book which I left Front Street, 13. It is an antidote to if

at

modern Unitarianism of a

your opinions, and

is

higher order; and I

know no one whom

read

it

more than

Having

my will

I wish to

yourself."

administered this courtly reproof, Miss

Mary gave

the needful sugar-plum at the close

of her letter:

"Mr.

Emerson came

to

welcome

me

home; but he talked of nothing but the pleasure

[24]

EMERSON of seeing you. Affectionate regards to Mrs. Alcott,

and hearty wishes

years later,

Emerson

as

when the styled

dress of 1838

it,

"

for

your

success."

tempest in a

Three

wash-bowl,"

over his Divinity Hall

was raging,

proud and loving,

this

but controversial, aunt of

Ad

wrote to her

his

half-

Reverend Samuel Ripley of Waltham (who had married her dearest young friend, Miss

brother,

Sarah Bradford), as follows: [No year

date, but

"BELFAST, ff

"

MY

be given you,

A

"

"

"

"

to

know

since

Sarah

about, with no

you preach as you write

forbid virtues

of those whose Christian faith

to

sheep into onefold!

s conversation in the

little interest.

And God

me, when expatiating on is

s virtues,

/ know and

Spinoza and Fichte and Kant the gifts

of that Being who may

To

of a holy

life

the

broken up into the glitter-

of a corrupted philosophy and pantheistic

Talk of Waldo

talk

arrangements by the Reg-

to unite the

that

ing fragments

"

I have waited

Vale [Old Manse]

"

ee

and how desirable

subject which

fe

clerical

week makes me write for very gladness. What time will

ister last

"

"

18 (Sabbath ev g) November.

DEAR BROTHER:

The pleasure of hearing of your

"

"

the postage six cents.]

presumably 1839,

[virtues].

respect them,

And

they were

specters! so

had

and are

be said to laugh at their chimeras.

and benevolence, as you

do, unless those

virtues are based on the personal Infinite, is like mistaking the

[25]

me-

THE PERSONALITY OF "

tears

"

bids

of night for

lamp of day. The

the

history proves

it,

"

the question to profess

"

stincts

"

"

tuted that

the only basis

"

of

sin,

is

its

"

the Infinite;

and on

that

know

it.

But

is it

not to obedience unto

we owe

conscience, that

this love

three divine attributes? Is

it

of not

ened,

and

derived ?

charms of these modern philosophers have been thus

the

I continue

to desire the

especially as

correspondence of Norton and

I have read Furness, and with

some glimpses he catches of our Master : while

He

upset by facts.

"

awful capacity for sin}

a personification of them in Jesus that we have been enlighl-

"

"

its

thro

Ripley,

"

to

Justice, Benevolence,

"

"

that divine phi-

highest state must always be, that one would not

His moral law guiding our

"

"

from

engrafted all benevolent principle: while the criterion

were the Deity never

"Truth,

"

in-

must be (so divinely consti-

all virtue

our poor nature, with all

is

virtue in

"

of

we are capable of loving supremely

"capacity

"

of

and

It is true that the Jine feelings

it.

losophy which they are outshining.

"

"

left out

prevail in the high and pleasant places for a time;

may

"No,

"

and Revelation must be

it,

but even these have received their charms

"

"

of man for-

constitution

what

tottling.

the Edin.

an

is

idealist,

And Wares

Review for

Oct.

books (modern} here. Let

ifyou chance

Waltham;

to see him.

the

his theory is often

perhaps, and must stand some-

sermon I should 1829. There

is

Waldo know of

And

delight, at

now, dear

like to

borrow, and

a woeful scarcity of the

means of sending,

S., farewell!

preach as at

day and the hour of Sabbath excitement I remember

with sad pleasure. Love to Sarah, whose brilliant and comprehensive subjects Lizzie [Ripley] tells "

Your

me

off. Sister,

[28]

about.

M. M.

E.

EMERSON not a word of the contents of this to Waldo, as you

"Say "

would be true

"mail,

was

It

to me.

and forgot

to

name

the

means of writing,

future

etc."

brilliant wit

not unlike her own, except that

fear he

"I

state."

is

said

not organized for a

Her nephew Waldo, whom

trained and inspired, and

whom

once said of her,

and only used to

"Her

she

she did not wish

Uncle Hipwit was so fertile,

by her censures written to

to pain

same

the

was crowded with devout imaginings,

with a sigh,

ley,

him by

also a letter to

who, admiring the

this lady

of Talleyrand, hers

/ have

strike, that she

his

never used

it

for

any more than a wasp would parade his He told me that "she was in her time the

display, sting."

best writer in Massachusetts"; and he gave this parallel in a public lecture, largely his

Aunt Mary s

"When I

writings :-

Dante the other day, and his signify with more adequateness

Christ or Jehovah, of?

eloquent

of

read

paraphrases to

minded

made up

whom

Whom

do you think

I

was

re

but Mary Emerson and her

theology?"

Twenty

years or so after this thrust at Al-

[27]

THE PERSONALITY OF v

and

nephew s Transcendental I saw her rise up in Emerson s parlor and in-

eott s theories

ism,

v righ

hear

with sudden vehemence and success against

what she thought the antinomian

by Henry James* Senior

declarations

setting at naught the

moral law* and replying to Alcott and Thoreau, in

a

set conversation, with some of his usual para

doxes. It

was

in

December* 1858, and Thoreau

thus sketched the scene in one of his tetters to

Harrison Blake:"I

met Henry James; the other night

at

Emer

son s, at an Alcottian conversation, at which* howcarer*

Alcott did not talk much, being disturbed

by James s

opposition.

enough, with torily*

Hie latter is a hearty man

whom you

can

differ

very satisfac

both on account of his doctrines and

his

good temper. He utters quasi-philanthropic dog mas in a metaphysie dress; but they are* for all practical purposes* very erode.

with

all

He charges society

the crime committed* and praises the

criminal for committing

it.

But

I

think that

the remedies he suggests out of his head*

goes no farther* hearty as he .

*

is,

all

for he

would leave us

EMERSON about where

we

are

now"

The question Is as new and fresh to-day as it was when Mary Emerson, 1 with her citations from the Bible and Doctor Samuel Clarke, denounced the smiling and

much -amused James

for his lax

clasping her hands and raising

notions,

above her head, with

worn to conceal a

its

scar.

odd

fillet

them

of black

silk,

Enthusiasm, tempered by

decorum, seems to have been the mark of the

Emerson Ripley

family; for I have beard Mrs. Sarah

tell

how, in the Boston house where the

clergyman s widow, assisted by Mary Emerson,

was feeding, clothing, and training her orphan sons, Charles

Chauncy Emerson,

low chair near

his aunt, while

ing,

would

cited

sitting in his

her caller was talk

up and interpose a remark, ex by the subject they were discussing, and start

would need to be quieted by the good lady.

Of

this brother Charles I

speak, but not so

much

have heard Emerson

as of his older brother

Edward, already mentioned, the handsomest and most brilliant (by report) of this noted family. Doctor Holmes,

in his first long

[29]

poem, read at

THE PERSONALITY OF Harvard College, mentioned Charles Emerson and his then recent death, and again, in address ing the Historical Society after

much

death in 1882, he said with "Of

my

delicate

a

nature, in

but finely wrought mortal frame.

me

knew

college days; a beautiful, high-

souled, pure, exquisitely

for

feeling:

Charles, the youngest brother, I

something in

slight

Waldo Emerson s

He

was

the very ideal of an embodied celestial in

telligence.

Coming into

my room one day, he took

up a copy of Hazlitt s British Poets, opened it to the poem of Andrew Marvell, The Nymph Com plaining for the Death of her Fawn, and read

it

to me, with delight irradiating his expressive fea tures. I felt, as

his brother

many have

Waldo, that

angel visitant. tion survives in

The Fawn

felt after

had entertained an

I

of Marvell

to recall this beautiful youth

acter white as the It

lilies

its

s

imagina

as the fitting

my memory

the rose of morning with

being with

;

a soul glowing like

enthusiasm,

in its

image

a char

purity."

must have been some three years

after this

that Charles Emerson, visiting his grandfather

[30]

s

v-

<->-/-

f

/ V +*

^

/t-<-7--

U^f^-C

/x>r</

X

-/A-J^M.^

P& s-c*^st*r

7^

t^^J ^Xr>x

t

a.

?uu^

EMERSON Old Manse before Waldo went there to write first

to

his

book, Nature, wrote the accompanying letter

Doctor Ripley, whose house had been the and

sort of the brothers in their youth,

warm

they cherished a

from the

whom

affection. It will interest

rarity of his writings, of

have been printed by

for

re

his

which but few

more famous

and from the allusion made

in

it

brother,

to the teaching

of Greek to girls at that early date in Concord.

One

of the

"young

Elizabeth Hoar, to

was

ladies"

whom

was doubtless Miss

in after years Charles

affianced.

This acquaintance begun with in the

summer

became intimacy. In

of 1853 soon

college with me,

though

in

Waldo Emerson

an

earlier class,

were

the son of his boy-companion and schoolmate, the late Doctor Furness of Philadelphia,

Shakespearian scholar and edi

illustrious as the tor,

Doctor Horace Furness,

and

his

mates, Charles Russell Lowell, better

two

in 1864,

s

and the

famous late

as

who

fight near Winchester,

John Bancroft,

[31

class

known

General Lowell, the nephew of the poet, died in Sheridan

now

]

elder son

THE PERSONALITY OF Emerson

of Bancroft the historian. four of us to dine with

we

him

in

invited the

Concord in May,

town together for that purpose. The occasion was a very pleasant social one; but what dwells most in my recollection, 1854, and

visited the

from the oddity of the incident, on our way through the residence

we found

is

the fact that

village to the

Emerson

the dead walls near the old

tavern (Middlesex Hotel) placarded with carica tures and inscriptions derogatory to lett,

the good old physician

Doctor Bart-

who was

ing total-abstinence citizen, and

the lead

who had been

prominent in a recent closure of the hotel

bar,

where liquors were dispensed contrary to law. This

would not have been so that

among the

noticeable,

caricatures

were

it

not

and opprobrious words

was one great sheet attacking "Rev. R. W. who had been a supporter of Doctor Bartlett

E.,"

his procedure.

This was the day,

it

in

seems, which

Doctor Edward Emerson, who succeeded Doctor Bartlett for a few years as the village physician,

commemorates

volume, Emerson in Con

in his

cord, as the only instance of [

32]

any

incivility offered

EMERSON Emerson

to

his residence for

Emerson

town which he honored by nearly half a century. Doctor

in the

says:

was the practice of the bar-room wits to revenge themselves for Doctor Bartlett s coura"It

geous and sincere war upon their temple, by

lampooning him in doggerel verse. One morning there was a sign hung out at the Middlesex stable with inscription insulting to Doctor Bartlett. Mr.

Emerson came down

to the Post Office, stopped

beneath the sign, read spot

till

he had beaten

the afternoon ber

when

and did not leave the

it,

down with

it

went

I

my mortification at

to school I

seeing a

ing there, with a painting of a hat, long nose, lest

his cane.

In

remem

new board hang

man

with a

and hooked cane raised

aloft;

tall

and

the portrait might not be recognized, the

inscription ran,

the Sign.

W.

Rev. R.

As Edward Emerson was old, his

E. knocking

down

"

memory may be

a

then but ten years

little

at fault; for the

was a rough charcoal sketch, and the Bartlett inscriptions, which had caricature, as I recall

it,

[33]

\

THE PERSONALITY OF been renewed, were on pasteboard, nailed to the side of the tavern stable

sidewalk across the "Mill

which abutted on the

Dam,"

as the short street

of shops was then called, because laid out over

what had been the in

village miller

Revolutionary days.

s

grist-mill

Of course, we

dam

college stu

dents respected the village lampoon.

There had been an

from Cambridge

earlier

in the

gathering of students

Emerson drawing-room

in October, 1853, to listen to a conversation, in

which, I believe, Bronson Alcott was the leader, as he

was

May, 1854, when a

in

gathered there.

Of

this

similar

company

October conversation

I

have but a dim remembrance, having made no record of

it,

as I did in the

one following. In May,

1854, while most of the party

by

train, four

went to Concord

of us walked up along the

Cam

bridge Turnpike, and this walk and the follow ing talk I reported, a few days

Miss Walker, then at Keene,

who was

as ardent

as myself. It

later, in

New

writing

Hampshire,

an Emersonian and Platonist

was on a Saturday, and the record

runs thus:

[34]

EMERSON morning we started from the Colleges to walk up. It was hot at first, and we went with coats and cravats off until we "At

half-past nine in the

got within two or three miles of the house of

The

who once

Sage, as Frank Barlow,

Concord,

calls

We

Mr. Emerson.

lived in

walked

fast,

through a beautiful country (Cambridge and Lex ington mostly), on a lonely road, passing near the birthplace of Theodore Parker,

and beguiling the thirteen miles, and

way with talk. The distance is we were four hours on the road. By one

o clock

our stomachs began to hint of dinner, and, as

we

had not been thoughtful enough to bring any luncheon, and there were no taverns since stage coaches ceased to run there,

we

fell

to asking for

food at the farm-houses in Concord. Three times

we were

refused; but at

last,

Emerson house, we came tage,

within sight of the

to an Irishman

s

cot

which had been the home of Ellery Chan-

ning ten years before, where the

woman

of the

house was busy painting her kitchen with her

own

hands.

We wished

tioned

by Mr. Emerson, that we had dined; and

to be able to say,

[35]

when ques

THE PERSONALITY OF as this

was our

last

we urged

opportunity,

our re

was at great incon the good woman (Mrs. Shan

quest there; and, though

venience to herself,

it

non) gave us a meal of bread and butter and milk, the milk, she told us, from the

We

Emerson

cows.

ate heartily with

young appetites, while she was lamenting she had no better fare to offer. I

m shure, boys,

a mess here, with the paintin

walkin so

far, said

We told her

it

so all in

and you been

,

she with the kindest of smiles.

was

all

we

needed,

going on to Mr. Emerson

Ah

am

dreadful that I

it is

s,

that

we were

a neighbor of hers.

and the best neighbor I ever had he is and went on to praise him in good earnest.

yes!

too,

Hawthorne she remembered, two back,

when he

lived at the

or three years

Wayside but she did ;

not speak so highly of him. Coming away, fered to

pay

her,

but she refused, and when

were going to give fused the money.

upon the lad

it

to her

We left

said with as

it

little

money on our table,

I [

of

we

boy, he also re

on the table where

much

;

dignity as an earl

could show, Mother, the gentleman has

it s for.

we

left

some

m sure I don t know what 36

]

EMERSON two o clock we got

"By

Emerson s

to Mr.

past the hour set for the conversation,

and

it

began at once, Emerson being fond of punctual ity.

At first it was

about Cambridge and Harvard

College and the choice of a profession Could :

erature be a

son said:

that this articles,

young man s occupation? Mr. Emer

It has formerly

literature

been the opinion that

by itself will not pay but it seems now omnivorous passion for lectures, review ;

and other things within the capacity of

scholars, has at last

made

it

easy for a

man in Eng

land or America to be a scholar and nothing as

lit

Thomas

originality make their for example,

is.

Carlyle

All

men

else,

of power and

own profession nowadays,

Theodore Parker, Mr. Alcott,

here,

Charles Brace, with his practical philanthropy,

and even Albert Brisbane of lieves in stellar duties,

New York, who

and introduced Fourierism

into this country, after aiding

be released from ago.

He

told

me

his

Doctor

Howe

to

Prussian prison twenty years

once that he had the good for

tune to silence Carlyle, true,

be

but Carlyle

a great thing,

may have been [37]

if it

were

only bored by

THE PERSONALITY OF our countryman, railway train

where time

Then we

is

is

who

is

a sad button-holder.

the place to talk with Brisbane, long,

and at your own

disposal.

talked of the Cambridge professors,

of Longfellow and his destined successor,

Lowell, son

The

who had become

when he was

acquainted with

rusticated

from the

R.

J.

Emer

class of

1838, and studied in Concord with Reverend Mr.

and of the Harvard

Frost, the parish minister,

system of instruction and thinks rhetoric

is

restriction.

Emerson

now too much neglected there

;

it

was better taught under Professor Edward Channing, who trained a whole generation to be good writers,

and sometimes good speakers,

Wendell

such as

Something led the talk toward Shakespeare, and then it became more deeply in Phillips.

teresting to me. I spoke of the deep mystery of

Shakespeare

s

so

genius,

much

poetry and phi

losophy and dramatic power, in one of whose

and training we know so the sayings of

Emerson

Some one brought out

little,

life

quoting some of

in Representative

Men.

the curious fact that,

though he uses the language of Christianity a few

[38]

EMERSON times, as in

there

is

so

Measure for Measure and Henry IV, little Christianity in him you would

hardly guess from his plays and poems that he lived

and

among Christians,

lowe was denounced in ist.

Emerson

his short life as

(the religious

I

I

and quoted Jones devotee, who wrote a remark

move

can

If I can

the world,

begin to see him shake a "Mr.

who was

Alcott,

an athe

;

able essay on Hamlet) as saying,

Shakespeare

Mar

Shakespeare was a pagan in

said

the best sense of that word

Very

his dear friend

move

and already

little.

visiting

Emerson,

his

home now being in Boston, had sat in silence all this time; but now Mr. Emerson asked his view of Shakespeare

s religion.

a Socratic question,

Is

Mr. Alcott began with not the reason

why we

of this day see no religion in him, because he was

the only religious race (not

much

duced among an alien religion

man whom

the Anglo-Saxon

addicted to religion) has yet pro

its

religion,

writers?

Many

others have had

have ingrafted the Hebrew

upon themselves,

as our Puritans did,

wherefore Jewry yet leads us in chains. But in

[39]

THE PERSONALITY OF Shakespeare Jewry has no share; his religion of the blood and the race, and so will only be

is

un

derstood by such as are fine enough to appreci ate

him

"This

in this matter.

was a thought wholly new to us

all,

pecially to three or four students of divinity

the Hall where

Emerson

ity School Address.

1838 gave

in

given, peculiarly

its

But

this

now

as

it.

The

man nowadays

is

in

all

have a Bi

mankind,

-

sayings will have a large place in

led naturally to

preachers.

shall

seeking,

ethics of Shakespeare are vast

"This

same

Emerson followed

ble which can unite the faiths of s

tem

was the Hebrew

When we

thought up by saying:

Shakespeare

its

and we of the Anglo-Saxon

waiting for ours.

got what every

Divin

a religion

these race-religions are the

their great essentials,

race are

is

own, and modified by

perament and experiences, faith.

from

Mr. Alcott went on to expand

that to each race there

his idea,

his

es

Emerson

some

said,

talk

and

rich.

on pulpit

In Great Britain

I

heard no preaching to compare with ours in

America; they have no

man

[40]

there like our Chan-

EMERSON ning,

who was

the king of preachers.

He

did not

hear Chalmers, the great Scotch preacher,

he was

in

in

Edinburgh

when

1847-48; but had heard

Edward

and posi tively disliked him. Again we talked of poets and other authors, of Beaumont and Fletcher, the Carlyle

s

early friend,

Irving,

English metaphysicians, and of Charles Kings-

and

ley

Hypatia. Mr. Alcott

his novels, chiefly

introduced that topic; but

it

seems Mr. Emerson

does not admire Kingsley, though he has not read

him much. His reading

in novels

is

not extensive,

and he does not always read what Hawthorne writes. Of poesy he said, We do not expect poets to

come from

culture; they

and he proceeded to inquire in college, thus

in

from Cambridge,

number, of whom,

after fifty years,

Philadelphia, Mr.

now

:

Mr. B.

S.

Lyman

of

James Hosmer, the well-known

of Minneapolis, myself, and another

whose name escapes me. The

my

have seen

this occasion,

only three or four survive

author,

whom we

sent."

Our party on was ten

come from Heaven,

dear friend,

latest to die

Edwin Morton, [41

]

was

of Plymouth, a

THE PERSONALITY OF townsman of Mrs. Emerson, a musician and

who

poet,

spent his last quarter-century in Switzerland,

and died at Morges on Lake Geneva

When Emerson

in 1900.

asked that searching question

about college poets, Morton was friendly enough privately to

name me

as

one whereupon ;

son expressed a wish to see some of

with which Morton supplied him. written at Exeter, printed in a

which teen,

I occasionally wrote,

except one

poem

verses,

They had been

two or three years

New Hampshire

my

Emer

before,

newspaper,

and for

from the age of eigh

called Patience,

which a

had caused to be printed in a Bos ton journal. He had seen these before this May party, and was good enough to speak kindly of those he had seen, and to request me to send him partial friend

others.

He

praised an invective appeal to Daniel

Webster, urging him to atone for

his apostasy

on the slavery question of March 7, 1850, which must have been written that year, before I was nineteen. It was in the iambic measure of

Pope

and Dryden, and was praised by Emerson for what, I do not now recall. Another was in praise

[42]

EMERSON when

of Kossuth,

visiting

written a year or two

New

later,

England, and was

perhaps about the

time Emerson was welcoming the Hungarian leader in April, 1852, to the

an address

of the Revolution

known,

which Emerson

in

"The

first

battle-ground

now but

little

said:

people of Concord share with their coun

trymen the admiration of valor and perseverance they, like their compatriots, have been see the

hungry to

man whose extraordinary eloquence is sec

onded by the splendor and But, as

;

it is

hallowed

the privilege of this town to keep a

mound which

has a place in the story of

the country; as Concord

of freedom

not go by

;

solidity of his actions.

is

one of the monuments

we knew beforehand

us.

You

that

could not take

in the pilgrimage of

American

all

you could your steps

liberty, until

you

had seen with your eyes the ruins of the bridge where a handful of brave farmers opened our Revolution. Therefore

We

we

sat

and waited

for you.

think that the graves of heroes around us

throb to-day with a footstep that sounded like their

own:

[43]

THE PERSONALITY OF The mighty

tread

Brings from the dust the sound of Liberty.

Far be

it

from

any tone of patronage; we

us, Sir,

ought rather to ask yours. You, the foremost freedom

dier of

your judgment. tate to

affirm

home.

in this

Who

age

are

we

sol

it is

for us to crave

that

we should

dic

You have won your own. We only You have earned your own nobility at

you ?

it.

We

at college.

without

admit you ad eundem, as they say

We

new

admit you to the same degree,

You may well Liberty. You have

trial.

the college of

right to interpret our

sit

a doctor in

achieved your

Washington.

And

I

speak

the sense not only of every generous American,

but the law of mind, when those

who

not

live idly in the city called after his

name, but those who,

and act

I say that it is

like

him,

all

over the world, think

who can

claim to explain the

sentiment of Washington. "We

Sir;

you may be

perity.

and

are afraid that

you are growing popular,

called to the dangers of pros

Hitherto you have had in

in all parties only the

men

[44]

all

countries

of heart. I do not

EMERSON know but you

will

have the million

yet.

But

remember that everything great and excellent in the world is in minorities. Whatever obstruc tion from selfishness, indifference, or from prop

erty (which always sympathizes with possession)

you may encounter, we congratulate you that you have known how to convert

calamities into

powers, exile into a campaign, present defeat into lasting

My

victory."

verses, in their small youthful

way, ex

pressed the same sentiment as this master of elo

quence did soon

after;

and they had

his approval

for that, if not for their form.

On

he made this single criticism;

began

In the high Heaven,

home

Sits a bright angel at the

it

the Patience

of endless glee,

Father

s

knee;

upon which touch of affectation he said, "Your use of glee and knee in the beginning was hardly like

enough of

me

Michel

Angelo."

my versification

He

remembered

two years

after to ask

to write for the dedication of Sleepy

Cemetery plied.

"an

Twenty

ode that can be

sung,"

and

Hollow I

com

years later, in 1875, he printed in

[45]

THE PERSONALITY OF his

Parnassus

this ode,

and

River Song, to

my

gether with two sonnets describing his daughter Ellen, and taking for their text

Emerson s own

sentence, addressed, I have heard, to Caroline

Sturgis

amid her

port bravely, or

suitors, sail

with

verses described with

War,

The only

I

may

title I

the

seas."

fidelity a

remarkable

of the years before our

gave them, when sending them

Shrine), he asked

Anathemata (Offerings at a

me when

about to print them

what meaning

Greek word, and

I

I attached to the

gave that above. I

With

joys unknown, with sadness unconfessed,

The generous heart

accepts the passing year,

Finds duties dear, and labor sweet as

And

for itself

rest,

knows neither care nor

fear.

Fresh as the morning, earnest as the hour

That

Our

calls

silent

the noisy world to grateful sleep,

thought reveres the nameless Power

That high seclusion round thy life doth keep So, feigned the poets, did Diana love

To

As my

be pardoned for quoting them.

to Emerson, being

in his collection,

Maiden! come into

God

some

among maidens

character Civil

"O

smile upon her darlings as they slept;

[46]

:

EMERSON Serene, untouched, and walking far above

The narrow ways wherein

the

many

crept,

Along her lonely path of luminous air She glided, of her beauty unaware. II

Yet

if

they said she heeded not the

hymn

Of shepherds gazing heavenward from the moor, Or homeward sailors, when the waters dim Flashed with long splendors, widening toward the shore

;

Nor wondering eyes of children cared to see; Or glowing face of happy lover upturned, As

late

he wended from the trysting-tree,

Lit by the kindly

lamp

And heard unmoved Or

consecrated maiden

Believe

For

them not they !

so

it

Her heart was gentle

At

s

heaven that burned

;

holy vow,

sing the song in vain

never was, and

With grace and

But

in

the prayer of wakeful pain,

is

;

not now.

as her face

was

fair,

love and pity cloistered there.

to return to our

May

(May

party

20, 1854).

the close of our formal conversation, tea was

served by Mrs. Emerson, after which six of the

party were taken by that lady to her

"pleached

where she showed her blossoming flowers, and gave us bouquets of them. Near by we saw

garden,"

the famous cott while

Summer House

built

Emerson was abroad

[47]

by Bronson Al-

in

1847-48, then

THE PERSONALITY OF good condition, with its harp-adorned gable, and its upper room, to which you mounted by a in

rustic stairway,

side ;

winding round the west end,

and which stood

in

for perhaps ten years after

and was sketched by Miss Sarah Clarke, Allston s one pupil, from the interior. It was a our

visit,

picturesque addition to the orchard and garden.

Delaying too long lost

in this delightful spot,

we

our train on the Fitchburg railroad, and, be

ing unable to find a carriage to take us to the

College that evening, the six of us separated,

Morton and Lyman waiting while Barlow,

Barker,

home down what

is

for a later train,

Carroll,

now

and

I

walked

Massachusetts Avenue,

leaving Barker, a divinity student (afterwards

an army chaplain), at East Lexington, where his friend Clarke (a pupil of

mine

in

Greek) was to

preach the next day in Doctor Follen

and reaching our rooms I

day

church,

after midnight.

have dwelt at some length on in our college year, because

well the unselfish interest which in the

s

young men who found

[48]

it

this

golden

illustrates so

Emerson took

in his writings in-

and

spiration

perhaps

ity,

EMERSON solace. We were in a feeble minor fifty

among

the five hundred

who

then were registered at Cambridge as students of Harvard,

the medical students, of

elder brother, the late

New Hampshire,

Doctor C. H. Sanborn of

was then one, being lodged and

taught in Boston exclusively.

that

world

is

in

"everything minorities."

that Oxford scholar,

who had come to

We could therefore

Emerson s dictum

cordially agree with suth,

whom my

to Kos-

great and excellent in the

Among

us for a time was

Matthew Arnold s

New England

"Thyrsis,"

for relief

from

the distresses and conformities of England, and

was editing Plutarch and teaching a few pupils advanced Greek among them Professor Good win,

now

the veteran Greek scholar of America.

Arthur Clough had a second home at Emerson s house in Concord, but I only met him in Cam bridge.

sation

Immediately

after this

came the excitement

arrest of the fugitive slave

in

Concord conver Boston over the

Anthony Burns, and

was present at the great meeting in Faneuil Hall, where an unorganized attempt was made I

[49]

THE PERSONALITY OF to rescue Burns from the Court

House near the

City Hall, where he was confined under guard.

Not being informed

of the plan of rescue,

had

I

placed myself so near the platform in the hall

was impossible to get through the crowd to the door, and thence to Court Square, until the unsuccessful attack had been made and foiled, that

it

with one

fatal

that given

wound,

by one of the

rescuers with a sword-cane, unsheathed, to Bachelder,

one of the slave s guard.

to the Court

As

House and ran up the

I finally

got

steps, there

stood Mr. Alcott, calm and brave, his cane under his

It

arm, ready to

was the

first

make another time

philosophic seance in

and study, a week took

me

I

attack, if needful.

had seen him since our

Emerson s drawing-room

before. Pressing personal

duty

the next day to Keene, whence I wrote

to Emerson,

May 31, to

his courtesies,

express our gratitude for

but beginning with an acknowl

edgment of our mortification at being seen by his family on our walk back to Cambridge at sunset. "We

were sorry the other night to expose our

[50]

EMERSON you by passing your house on our way to Lexington but there was no other way

ill-fortune to

;

;

turned out, however, to be good fortune

it

I

thought

it so.

pay that price

At any

rate,

for our

we

or

could afford to

afternoon

s

enjoyment,

which we agreed was incomparable. The whole day was to me one of the greatest delight. We

would be glad to return your hospitality by invit ing you to Cambridge, to meet there a roomful

young men, and pass the afternoon with

of

Would

me it,

such an arrangement be agreeable to you,

any time during

at

last

this

term ?

I

think you told

year that there was an inconvenience in

which

among

us.

may

still

be the

the Cheshire

hills,

case. I write this

from

not far from your

Mo-

nadnoc, which I climbed our eastern

hill

this

morning to see. Coming here from the conten tion and noise of Boston, it seems like stepping into a church It in

so

still

must have been

and cool

is it

here."

in response to this request,

which Moncure Con way of Virginia, then about

graduating from the Divinity School, cordially joined, that

Emerson did [51

visit ]

Divinity Hall in

THE PERSONALITY OF June, and read to a score of us in

Conway s room

on Poetry, which was not printed till many years later. It was a distinguished audience of our elder friends; for Arthur Clough came, his lecture

shortly before his return to England, Longfellow

and

his wife

were there, and Charles Lowell came

with his mother, Mrs.

Anna Lowell and ;

bly Charles Norton and William there, if in

America, though

I

proba

Goodwin were

do not

recall

them.

In the conversation which followed the reading,

Clough took no marked part; he was extremely modest, even shy.

Many

sad events for

me

followed these happy

May and June: I was called away to Peterboro, New Hampshire, by the increasing ill ness of Miss Walker, to whom I was engaged and days of

;

this only

terminated with her death in August.

We were

married upon her death-bed, and I re

mained with her aged and lonely father for a month or two, and did not return to college until October. I was invited to Concord by in

November

my first

(the twenty-first), 1854,

Emerson and took

long walk with him through his

[52]

Walden

EMERSON woodlands, on both sides of the pond

meeting,

thither, Thomas Cholmondeley, an Oxford scholar, who had followed dough s

on our way other

example, though for different reasons, and come to spend

from

some months

New

New

England.

He

was

Zealand not long before, whither he

had gone to aid

in the colonizing career of a rela

had raised sheep

tive,

in

there,

and written a book

Ultima Thule by name.

about the island

Emer

son introduced him to Thoreau, at whose father

s

house Cholmondeley lived while in Concord, and

where he afterwards the last illness of

visited in 1858-59, during

John Thoreau.

Emerson, who had dined alone that

Novem

ber day, was just returned from a lecture in

Hampshire

;

it

being his habit then, and for more

than twenty years the

after, to

give a good part of

autumn and winter months

New

England,

land States,

Michigan,

New

to lecturing in

York, Canada, and the Mid

then called

Illinois,

and Missouri

New

and

"the

finally

West,"

Wisconsin, Iowa,

going only at intervals to

Jersey, Pennsylvania,

and

at last to

[53]

Ohio,

New

Washington

THE PERSONALITY OF and Virginia, from which his pronounced antislavery opinions had long excluded him. In these tours he

was often absent from Concord weeks or

months, and encountered

interesting per

me of an Illinois by name, whom he had met,

sons. This particular theorist, Bassnett

many

day he told

and whose book, Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms, Emerson lent me. It proved to be

Newtonian system of and, though readable from its start

totally at variance with the

gravitation,

ling theses, very slenderly supported

of nature. It attached

by the

much importance

influences, exerted, as Bassnett held,

of

"a

facts

to lunar

by means

vorticose motion in the luminiferous

ether,"

which he took to be the same thing, under an other name, as the electric fluid.

Emerson did

not accept his conclusions, but found the author entertaining, as he often thought those

a

new path

in science,

track of the professional

away from the beaten scientist, whom he was as in that first

apt to

criticise

ter of

what was to have been

humorously

The Natural History of

who break

his great

Intellect.

[54]

chap

work on

The page was

EMERSON written, I suppose, before

my

acquaintance with

him began, perhaps suggested by the controver which

sies in

his brother-in-law,

Doctor Charles

T. Jackson, the famous Boston chemist and early geologist,

time.

found himself involved from time to

Emerson

"Go

there said:

into the scientific club

and hearken. Each

savant proves in his admirable discourse that he,

and he

only,

knows now

thing on the subject.

or ever did

know any

Does the gentleman speak

Anatomy? Who peeped into a box at the Custom House and then published a drawing of

of

my

rat?

quite

Was

Poor Nature and the sublime law are

omitted in this triumphant vindication.

when we came

to the philosophers

who found everybody wrong?

acute and ingenious

it

better

themselves to lampoon and degrade

Emerson,

in all

my

conversations with him, as

in his published writings, did not,

scoffingly said of Bacon,

Lord

Chancellor";

mankind."

"talk

as

Harvey

of science like a

but held himself modestly a

listener at the shrine of

Nature

s

oracles,

and

re

ported faithfully, without ostentation or parade,

[55]

THE PERSONALITY OF what she

said in his hearing. Already, before

and

since his death, foremost thinkers in science

and

philosophy have found themselves anticipated by this subtile intelligence,

Concord and

little

;

that

musing is

in the

woods of

obsolete or obsolescent

appears in the bright circle of his intellectual

il

lumination. Ambitious systems, Positive, Cosmic, Psychical,

etc., arise

and vaunt themselves

for a

time, only to be laid aside in a few years; while

the

vital, spiritual

strength by mind"

philosophy of Emerson gathers

"years

to those

that bring the philosophic

who have been

tem and a dead-and-alive dent,"

mind.

to appreciate

"learn

He

come

shall

that in seeing, and in no tradition, he

what truth

is;

to cleave to

God

he has once priest:

and

He

direct

On

shall

come

to trust

against the

known

the stu

"Let

logic.

he says somewhere,

this miracle of the

the slaves of sys

name

it

to

know

must

find

entirely,

of God.

When

the oracle he will need no

from whose hand

it

came

will guide

it."

the Saturday after this Concord walk (No

vember

25, 1854), I dined with the Alcotts at

[56]

EMERSON their

Pinckney

Street, Boston, house,

host, in his study afterwards,

count of Emerson

s

method of

was generally, but not absolutely,

He puts down in

"

day to day, as

I

do

thinks worthy; and

his

in

me

gave

and the this ac

writing,

which

true:

common-place book from my Journal, whatever he

when preparing

his lectures,

or writing or editing his book, he goes over these diaries, notices

his

what

topic has been

uppermost

in

thought for the time covered by the writing,

and arranges

Does

this

method

his passages

with reference to that.

not account for the want of formal

in his

works? They are crystallizations of

earlier material.

We hold that a theology infused

your mind, as in Emerson s books,

into

is

better

than one more directly taught. The best men,

when they

teach theology directly, are

get harsh and narrow; the indirect

wont

way

is

to

the

best."

But ings,

in his style, apart

Emerson was

tolerate in others

At

this

same

from the subtler mean

direct enough,

what he avoided

date,

and did not for himself.

Mr. Alcott showed

[57]

me

the

THE PERSONALITY OF letter of

Emerson, written more than a dozen

years before, criticising sincerely the language of his friend in that mystical reverie of his

which

he called Psyche, but which he never printed: "I

think

it

possesses, in certain passages, the

power to awaken the highest faculties, to waken the apprehension of the Absolute. It is al rare

most uniformly elegant, and contains many beau tiful and some splendid pages. Its fault arises out of the subtlety and extent of grapples with an Idea which

and present

in just

it

want of compression,

But

its

it

The book

us.

capital fault

is

a

a fault almost unavoid

which not be

able in treating such a subject,

ing easily apprehensible by the

we

subject;

does not subdue

method before

has a strong mannerism.

its

human

faculties,

tempted to linger round the Idea, in the hope that what cannot be sharply stated in a few words, may yet chance to be suggested by are

many. course,

page

is

.

The prophet should speak a clear dis straight home to the conscience but your .

.

;

often a series of touches.

the thought,

You

play with

never strip off your coat, and dig

[58]

EMERSON and

strain,

and drive into the heart of the matter.

See what a style yours expectation

To

!

no go. If there are so *

to balk and disappoint

use a coarse word, s

and

t is all stir

a good thing, say

it

out! there

few in the world, we can t wait a minute.

we have had

Gaberdine

Lunch Tavern"

"If

is

*

before;

say

frock.

vulgar, and reminds one of the Bite

is

Boston).

(in

there

is

Alcott once,

one thing more than

"that

we

another,"

said

for, it is

the

should pray

boon of a severely candid friend." Such did he and others find in Emerson; as those who knew

him most intimately would

all

witness.

And

his

censures were so friendly that, where criticism of writings was concerned, he was entitled to the praise

Pope gave "Who

to the fair Belinda:

oft rejects,

but never once

offends."

A week after this visit to the Alcotts, I

met with

Emerson, Alcott, Cholmondeley, John Dwight, the musical appreciator, George Calvert,

had lived

and

in

who

Germany with William Emerson,

others, at

an Albion dinner

[59]

in

Boston, and

THE PERSONALITY OF the conversation turned on literary matters and

Emerson was

authors.

and blamed with equal

D wight then

sincerity.

to print, as a publishing venture, the

new

Reade;

and praised He urged Mr.

in full force,

it

novel of Christie Johnstone by Charles

ought to be printed in Boston,

for

it

was much better than Jane Eyre. It was soon after published by Mr. Fields, of the firm of Tick nor. George Bancroft, whose son John had lately lege,

graduated at Harvard,

was mentioned,

his

father

in connection with

s

col

an ad

had recently given in New York, in which he lauded Calvinism, and larded his page

dress he

with phrases like Athanasius,"

"Arrogant

and the

being a Unitarian, son,

who had

God"-

"Devout

-Bancroft

anything, in religion.

if

first

"Triune

Arius,"

met Bancroft

Harvard, in 1818, and

Emer

as a Senior in

who had known him

well

almost ever since, told us: "Mr.

Bancroft

is

hardly a religious man: his

Trinitarianism was perhaps assumed out of def

erence to the sentiment of

now

lives,

and which

is

New

York, where he

mainly Presbyterian and

[60]

EMERSON Episcopalian. In conversation he will take any side,

and defend

tune, as

we

it

see

skilfully

by

;

he

is

a soldier of for

his political connection.

His

profession of Jacksonian

democracy in Boston, where he was ostracized for it, was rewarded by

appointment to

office;

been more tolerant of

American minister

in

but Boston should have political differences.

London he was

a credit to

our country; and his speech some years at a

As

earlier,

Phi Beta dinner in Cambridge, where Lord

Ashburton,

who

negotiated with Webster the

Maine Boundary treaty, was feted, was the best of the oratory on that occasion. The elder Quincy and Judge Story had spoken, but rather coldly and ence.

stiffly;

but Bancroft warmed up the audi

Edward Everett was not

present, having

preceded Bancroft, under Tyler s presidency, as minister to Saint

Soon

after

James

s."

Mr. Alcott came into the Albion

dining-room, he being the oldest person present,

though only tion turned

fifty-five at that time,

on old age; and Mr.

our conversa

D wight said he

could not understand why, in this earthly course

[61

]

THE PERSONALITY OF of ours, youth must be

left

deed, incomprehensible and

man

"this

here"

to assure us,

"I

said

in

Emerson;

(turning toward Alcott)

"used

what every day s experience

have the

man

every

sad,"

"That is,

is

dis

that the beauty of youth turned in

proving, ward."

behind.

trick,"

I talk with,

he added,

whatever

"of

believing

be at

his age, to

warn you all, young question was the age of

least as old as myself; so I men."

The

point then in

Charles Sumner, ster in the

who had

succeeded Daniel

Senate at Washington.

As we

Web

left

the

Albion, I walked with Alcott and Cholmondeley

James Munroe on Washing who had been Emerson s publisher for

to the bookstore of

ton Street,

some ning s ley,

and who had published Ellery Chanvolumes of poems, which Cholmonde

years, first

who had met Channing at Concord, wished to

purchase and take back to Shropshire with him.

Munroe himself was

at the shop, and, being ques

tioned, told us that three-fourths of

all

Ameri

can poetry was then published at the poet s ex pense. This

was true of Emerson s volume of 1847,

and Channing s poems of the same year;

[62]

his first

EMERSON volume, issued by Munroe in 1843, was paid for

by Channing s friend, S. G. Ward. It seems that the custom of poetry-printing has not much va ried since 1854; in spite of the popular success of

Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier, and finally of

Lowell and Whitcomb Riley.

December

12, 1854,

our College to

call

Mr. Alcott came out to

on Morton and myself, and we

went together to Morton s room in Massachusetts Hall, where we found him writing his paper on Thoreau, which

Magazine

I

printed for him in the

for January. This led

Harvard

Alcott to talk of

Thoreau: "It

is

a pity that he and

same age; both

Emerson

are original, but they

live in

the

borrow from

each other, being so near in time and space. Rich ard

Dana

says he has not read Thoreau, but

ways supposed him to be a man of

On

al

abstractions.

the contrary, your old Librarian in the Col

lege,

Doctor Harris, told

Emerson had not

me

with a groan,

spoiled him,

have made a good entomologist.

Thoreau would "

This same month of December, in

[63]

If

my

Senior

THE PERSONALITY OF college year, proved to be full of serious events in

my

youthful

life.

Toward the end of

it

my

father-in-law, worn down with age and sorrow, felt his death approaching, and I was sent for

him

to be with

in the last hours.

thither (to Peterboro in

On my way

New Hampshire)

I

passed

through Boston and bade farewell to our friend

Cholmondeley, who hastily decided to go home

and

company of volunteers

raise a

War

as

he

did.

And

it

was

for the

in this

Emerson formed the purpose

Crimean

month

of inviting

that

me

to

take charge of a small school in Concord, mainly his children

and those of Judge Hoar

his neighbors, in a

schoolhouse built by the

devoted to

and

Judge, and not far from his father s house

Hon

Samuel Hoar s, who had married a daugh of Roger Sherman, and was, in my time, that

orable ter

Dantesque

figure in the village streets

could see without respect.

At

which none

his death, in

No

vember, 1856, Emerson wrote his eulogy, and

adorned

it

have in

its

with a quatrain of his verse, which first

form

I

perhaps not inferior to

that which the poet afterwards printed:

[64]

EMERSON With beams that

"

stars at

Christmas dart

His cold eyes truth and conduct scanned

;

July was in his sunny heart, October in his liberal

Here the

hand."

allusion to Christmas suggests the old-

fashioned religion of this aged Christian, a true follower of Emerson It

was

after

s

one of

grandfather, Parson Ripley. his lectures in

East Boston,

but whether in December or January certain, that

Emerson proposed

to

me

I

am

not

this task,

or rather privilege, of educating his children and

had gone with a few of

their playmates. I

classmates, Bliss,

among whom

now of Rosemond,

one chapter in

his

I

my

remember Willard

Illinois,

to hear

him read

forthcoming English Traits to

a small audience in that island ward of Boston.

At

the close, as

we came forward

to express our

pleasure at the reading, he said to me, after a few

words to

my

you get into my carriage, and let me take you to the American House in Hanover Street, where I pass the night?" comrades,

"Will

I accepted the favor, and, while

we

East Boston

me the

ferry,

he unfolded to

[65]

crossed the

plan he

THE PERSONALITY OF had formed.

I

was to get leave of absence from

and open the duties would not keep college,

school in March;

little

me

from pursuing the Se

nior studies in their last three months, and I

was

then to continue the school after graduation,

mutually

The

satisfactory.

its

salary offered,

not large, was ample for

my

if

though

single needs,

and

might be increased if the school grew in numbers, as he was kind enough to say it would, under my direction. I

make my I

was to have a month or

my

Walker, then at

my studies

weeks to

and when

decision and arrangements;

found that

let

six

kinsman by marriage, President the head of the College, would

go on

at Concord, I lost

no time

in

deciding to take the place offered. Early in March, 1855, I visited the village, to call on the families

of

my

expected pupils, and to secure rooms for

myself and be

my

my

sister,

assistant, at

who,

I stipulated,

my own

escorted

me on these visits

where

could find rooms, he

I

;

expense.

and when said,

I

should

Emerson asked him

"Mr.

Ellery

Channing has a large old house, with no inmates but himself and his housekeeper; we will go and

[66]

EMERSON see if he will take you We went to the house, in."

opposite the residence of the Thoreau family;

knocked, and were answered by Mr. Channing

in

person, wearing the oldest dressing-gown I had

seen up to that time

down

(I

have since seen him come

my own

to tea in an older one in

house),

who

received us courteously, and was willing to

lease

me

three furnished rooms, and to allow the

who was

service of his housekeeper,

rather his

tenant than his servant. That point settled, and the terms agreed on, I returned to take tea with the Emersons, and a

week

with seventeen pupils,

later

girls

began

my

school

and boys together

(always the Concord custom), three of whom were

Emerson s own

children.

Having no previous experience with a school, though I had taught Latin and Greek pupils pri

much margin and

vately,

lowed

for

my

courtesy must be al

mistakes; but

received from

I

all

the families the kindest consideration, and was at

home

One

in the village

and the woods from the

of our earliest callers was

whom

I

had met at Emerson

[67]

s

;

first.

Henry Thoreau,

and with

his close

THE PERSONALITY OF friend,

C banning,

I

soon introduced at

became very intimate. I was the Old Manse, then occupied

by that gentle scholar and excellent housekeeper Mrs. Sarah Ripley, the widow of Reverend Sam uel Ripley, ters, all

Emerson s

half-uncle,

agreeable ladies, of

and her daugh

much

culture.

From

that acquaintance to weekly Greek readings with

Mrs. Ripley was but an easy step, and thus interest in that

studies

language was kept up.

came out

class-rank but

my

My college

well; indeed, though I valued

little, I

believe

my

"marks"

were

higher, from infrequent examinations, than if I

had been at the daily

recitations

;

and

I

graduated

seventh in a class of eighty.

This

is

a good place to pause and speak of the

scholarship of

He

Emerson and

his

Concord

friends.

entered Harvard at the age of fourteen, and

graduated at eighteen, in 1821. In those days, and with his slender constitution, this did not im ply

much

reading either in Latin or Greek, and

French was then but

little

taught. In his

own

school-keeping, for a few years after graduation,

and

in his theological studies,

[68]

Emerson extended

EMERSON his use of Latin,

and acquired both

New Testament Greek difficulty;

but

his familiarity

was never so great Miss Hoar s,

more

so as to read

as Mrs.

classic

it

little

with the language

Ripley s, or

who had been

(I

fancy)

better taught

diligent in reading the originals.

the Attic cast of his genius,

with

and

and

But from

Emerson entered

into

the spirit of Greek thought and literature more

profoundly than scholars

many

better-equipped technical

more even than Thoreau, who was a

thorough Greek and Latin scholar. Emerson early acquired French, both for reading and speak ing,

though not very fluent

French.

German he learned

in conversation in

later, for

the sole pur

pose of reading Goethe in the original. Italian

he read, and had some knowledge of Spanish. Persian and Sanscrit he never attempted; but

made

from the German version

his translations

of Oriental authors, or such English or French versions as were

more

language but his

accessible.

own and

a

Alcott read no

little

French; but

Channing was versed in Latin, Greek, and all the modern tongues of Europe, though not critically

[69]

THE PERSONALITY OF a scholar. Fuller,

The same could be

whom

said of

Margaret

never knew.

I

Emerson had

at all times the habit of a scholar,

(

Wordsworth, made the open

but one who,

like

air his library

much

of the time.

Though not

so

thorough a walker and investigator of nature as

Channing and Thoreau, who would spend whole days and nights in the forest or among the mountains, he had similar tastes, and his friends,

youth had much practised upon the scale they afterwards followed. When I once remarked to in

him that the passage "And

A

such

I

in his Woodnotes,

knew, a

forest-seer,

minstrel of the natural

year,"

etc.)

was generally thought to be aimed at Henry Thoreau, Emerson rather sharply negatived that notion,

and told

me

the whole remarkable pas

sage was conceived, largely from his ence,

and mainly written

own

experi

out, before he ever

Thoreau, except as a promising boy. miliar with the near forests of

He

knew

was

Maine and

fa

New

Hampshire, and had early seen the forest scenery of the Carolinas and Florida. In later life, when

[70]

EMERSON knew him,

I first

day

custom was to walk every some hours, and in these walks I was

for

his

made acquainted with several of his favorite haunts in Concord: the Walden woods, Baker

first

Farm, Copan, and Peter s Field, leading there one of several crags thus to, Columbine Rock, and the Estabrook country.

named,

composed much of field and woodland,

his verse in these as,

him

him

their favorite

had

walks

his friends

were often

in his excursions, or to resorts.

show

Alcott enjoyed the

converse thus promoted, but hardly the walk self; for

Emerson

a farmer

would

s

in

indeed, the verse itself

sometimes declares; and invited to join

He

told me,

it

whenever they came to

fence or a convenient seat, his friend

halt, to

continue their philosophic debate

at rest. Alcott, at eighty-two, thus described in his

Sonnets and Canzonets these early walks, forty

years before: "

Pleased

I

recall those

hours so

fair

and

When, all the long forenoons, we two From lip to lip, in lively colloquy, Plato, Plotinus, or

famed Schoolman

s gloss,

Disporting in rapt thought and ecstasy

[71

]

free,

did toss

;

THE PERSONALITY OF Then by the

And

sally

tilting rail

through the

There plunging

Millbrook we cross,

fields to

Walden wave,

in the Cove, or

swimming o er. wood he with gesture quick Through paths wending,

Rhymes

deftly in mid-air with circling stick,

Skims the smooth pebbles from the leafy shore,

Or deeper

These

ripples raises as

lines well picture

we

lave."

Emerson s

habit of fore

noons in the study and afternoons in the woods, together with his manner of twirling his walkingstick,

customarily carried, and his fondness for

Walden, or skating there in winter. skated with him, and have swum there

swimming I

have so

in

when he was approaching his eigh tieth birthday. The Concord authors, except Thowith Alcott,

reau,

who

inherited a tendency to consumption

and had weakened ships,

his

frame by outdoor hard

were robust comrades as

Emerson, in 1833,

knew them

;

for

in his first Atlantic voyage, to Sicily,

was

dency to

I

said to

have overcome

phthisis, of

which

his early ten

his brothers died.

He

was not expert at manual labors, as Alcott, Channing, and Thoreau were, and for that reason em ployed them occasionally in such tasks: Tho-

[72]

EMERSON reau in his gardening and tree-planting, Channing

from which experience came

in wood-cutting,

Channing s poem The Woodman, printed in his Poems of Sixty-five Years, and Alcott in choos

summer house

ing crooked sticks and making a of them,

for

which quaint

satirized

task,

by

Channing and Thoreau in their letters to Emer son in England, he was paid fifty dollars.

Emerson s

relations with Alcott are to the last

ing honor of both. other; but

Each saw the

Emerson, aware,

as

defect of the

few others could

profound originality of Alcott

be, of the

s

mind

and the nobility of his character, at which the worldly mocked, and even friendship sometimes wearied, never failed to stand by his friend, while

dealing frankly with his foibles.

more than once, Powers to

let

biography; for

any

one."

It

biographer

me I

"I

hope

it

He

said to

may

me,

please the

survive Alcott, and write his

think I can do that better than

was not so ordered, and the task of

fell

mainly to

me

;

for

Louisa Alcott

died but a day or two after her father.

minded Doctor Emerson of what

[73]

I

then re

his father

had

THE PERSONALITY OF me

told

traits

of the records he had

and

copy out

and he was good enough to me, from the diaries, most of the

for

Among them

which makes the attraction of some

men, and which Emerson,

was

literary

like Carlyle, recognized

Doctor Johnson: "The

attitude

is

the main thing. John Brad-

shaw, as Milton says, was sitting in all

s

statement of the intrinsic manliness of char

acter

in

of Alcott

felicities,

entries that concerned Alcott. this

made

men

tude in

judgment on

in

all

his life a consul

kings. Carlyle, best of

England, has kept this manly

his time.

His

atti

errors of opinion are as

nothing in comparison with this merit, in opinion. If I look for a counterpart in

my

my

neigh

borhood, Thoreau and Alcott are the best; and in

majesty Alcott excels. This aplomb cannot be

mimicked."

Had Emerson

looked in his mirror, he would

have seen the face of as marked an example of this quality as

Alcott was

in aspect, nor so graceful in

Cholmondeley

yet not so majestic

manners. Our friend

said of Alcott,

[74]

"He

has the man-

EMERSON ners of a very great

Peer"-

the highest compli

ment an English Squire could son said of Bacon, that

God would

he could not said of

aid

As Ben Jon-

In his adversity I ever prayed

give

want";

him so

strength, for greatness his friends

might

have

Bronson Alcott. Emerson stood ready to

him

"With

"

pay.

way; yet said of him, hatred of labor and his command

in every available his

ing contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, Alcott

makes good

to this nineteenth century

the Stylite, the Thebais, and the

Simeon

first Capuchins."

This hatred of labor was only of intellectual bor; for Alcott, like ancestral acres in

of manual it

toil,

la

many men brought up on

New

England, had a

real love

and often exhausted himself with

in his old age,

when Louisa s

success had

made

hand-labor needless at the Orchard House, which

Emerson had helped him purchase. Yet there was a certain humorous truth, as often in Emerson s compliments, in another entry in the diary about 1840,

when

day-labor in "Alcott

was supporting himself by the Concord grain-fields:

his friend

astonishes

by the grandeur of

[75]

his angle

THE PERSONALITY OF of vision, and the heaps of particulars. I

he

tell

him

the Bonaparte of speculators [speculative

is

philosophers], born to rout the Austrians of the

But

soul.

his day-labor has a certain

the annual plowing of the

air, like

emblematic

Emperor of

China."

Ten

years or

s

my

early

weeks

in

I

in his diary 44

after

was present at a conversation of Alwhich drew from Emerson these comments

Concord, cott

more

(1866):-

Last night in the conversation Alcott ap

peared to great advantage, and I saw again, as often before, his singular superiority. tellect I

with

As

pure

in

have never seen his equal. The people

whom

he talks do not ever understand him.

They interrupt him with clamorous dissent, or what they think verbal endorsement of what they fancy he

may have been

you know, Mr. Alcott,

whim

I

or sentimentalism

saying; or with

think so and ;

so,

Do some

and do not know that

they have interrupted his large and progressive statement; do not their

baby brains

is

know

that

all

they have in

incoherent and spotty; that

[76]

EMERSON he sees and says

all

is

like

astronomy, lying there

and every part and fact in eternal connection with the whole and that they ought real

and vast

;

to

sit

in silent gratitude, eager only to hear more,

to hear the whole, and not interrupt their prattle.

His

activity of

mind

is

him with shown

in

the perpetual invention and felicity of his lan

guage the constitutionality of ;

parent

his

is

thought

in the fact that last night s discourse

ap

only

brought out with new conviction the fundamental thoughts which he had

The moral

To and

this

when

benefit of such a

I first

mind cannot be

high conception of Alcott

intellect

Emerson was

and Alcott was one of the

s

him.

told."

character

faithful to the last,

friends to

bade a characteristic farewell on in 1882.

knew

whom

he

his death- bed

Recalled for a few moments from that

wandering of mind which prevailed in the

last

hand warmly, saying, "You have a strong hold on life; be firm!" It was true, but the weight of years and the loss of

days, he grasped Alcott

his best friend

but

six

months

s

weakened that after

hold,

and

Emerson s death

[77]

it

was

that the

THE PERSONALITY OF illness

of which he died six years later

fell

upon

the vigorous frame of Alcott.

One

of the

first

of

Emerson s volumes which

read in youth was that reprint of Nature, dresses

and Lectures appearing

in the

I

Ad

summer

of 1849, and directly followed by Representative

Men

While these books were

later in the year.

going through the press in Boston, Alcott had

fre

quent colloquies with Emerson on their theories of "Genesis" (as Alcott styled what

is

now termed

Evolution), and one of the most distinct expres sions of the evolutionary theory

Emerson to Alcott

in

was handed by

August, 1849,

who pasted

into his diary the remarkable verse, about to be

used as the te

new motto

A subtle

for

chain of countless rings

The next unto the The eye

And And,

speaks

known; but

all

it

;

goes,

languages the Rose ;

striving to be

earlier it

farthest brings

omens where

reads

Mounts through

How much

Nature:

all

this

man, the worm the spires of

form."

was written

is

yet un

was the conclusion to which Emer

son had been coming for a dozen years, helped by

[78]

EMERSON the discoveries and theories of Oken, Goethe, and

Swedenborg. In 1855, when I was one day with

Emerson

in his study,

and asked

me how

I

these lines,

should interpret them:

among the blackberry

"Caught

me

he read

vines,

Feeding on the Ethiops sweet, Pleasant fancies overtook me. I said,

What

f

Elect, to

The

vines replied,

No wisdom I hardly

influence

me

preferred,

dreams thus beautiful?

And

did st thou

to our berries went?

knew what

to reply,

deem

"

where several mean

ings were possible; but said that he

must have

meant that Nature does not leave her ticle

without a lesson for

Man

;

least par

that the moral of

the delicious flavor of the low blackberry was, "Even

tiny

so,

what seems black to you

may have

as fair an issue as ;

"The

bud may have a

But sweet

in

Man s des

Cowper

says

:

bitter taste,

will be the

flower."

Without commenting on this, it seemed to please him; and I inferred it was an illustration of his philosophic principle: "The

eye reads omens where

[79

]

it

goes."

THE PERSONALITY OF It

may have been

this incident that

me, the next year, to reading Emerson

girls little

s

advanced

my

set

determined

Poems of

class of

1847, then but

known, and commenting on them myself,

by way of know, the

interpretation. This was, so far as I

first

example of what has since become

a frequent practice, in which

Malloy of Waltham

is

my

a past master

older Emersonian than myself.

commented

his

own

friend Charles ;

he being an

Emerson seldom

verses, except

by way of cor

rection of a mistaken reading; and, like

he did not always

know which

Thus, when he read which, at

me

all

the best word was.

that fine group of

much urgency on

poets,

their part, he

poems

gave to

the beginners of The Atlantic Monthly for their first

number, the best of them

and so he printed

it

in

me

The Atlantic, a year

with

"Damsels

"damsels"

is

it,

after

the be

its

of

a good

:

Days;"

But when he afterwards printed

ginning shocked

Now

Days, began

of Time, the hypocritic

"Daughters

wards.

all,

Time."

word

[80]

in

some connec-

EMERSON tions,

but not in a grave, finished Greek epigram,

which

this

poem

is;

just as

Thoreau s Smoke

is,

graceful as Meleager, and profound as Simonides.

The

better reading

now

is

restored in the

posthumous volume of Poems. But omissions oc curred there which

I

cannot quite understand.

In that strangely admirable Woodnotes a slight

change

is

made

in the lines,

"He

shall see the speeding year

Without wailing, without

by altering less

"see"

to

perhaps to

"meet"-

apparently a version (a

make

much improved

of those lines of Horace which

me

fear,"

it

one)

Emerson once

told

were the grandest of that smiling poet: "

Hunc

solem

et Stellas et

decedentia certis

Tempora momentis, sunt qui,formidine nulla Imbuti,

spectent"

(Epistle VI.

To Numicius.)

Horace gave us the majestic Lucretian rhythm, and, like Dante, introduced the stars effectively;

but the pith of the passage couplet. It

is

in

Emerson s

short

might be rendered without so much

compression:

[81

]

THE PERSONALITY OF Sun

"Yon

There

arid Stars,,

are,

my

and

fatal flight of days,

who view with

Friend,

fearless

gaze."

But the Greeks would have shortened the expres sion as Emerson did. In the same Woodnotes de scribing the

same

"Whom

"coming man,"

Nature giveth for defence

His formidable

this

so

hyperbole

much

is

is

omitted, perhaps wisely, where

hyperbole: "He

Nor

But why

innocence,"

shall

never be old,

his fate shall be

foretold."

leave out this magical sketch of the sor

ceress ? "

The robe of silk It

And

in

which she shines,

was woven of many sins ; the shreds which she sheds

In the wearing of the same, Shall be grief on grief and

There

is

thought picted

;

shame on

an imperfect rhyme, to be is

but so

incoherent

and

like to like

is

is

shame."

sure,

and the

the creature de

good, to say nothing of

the pleasing rhythm. I

have mentioned hyperbole. It was Emerson

most

familiar trope

and prevailed

[82]

s

in his speeches

EMERSON and

his daily conversation.

In

fact,

Concord might

be styled the land of Hyperbole and so

abundant are they

famous authors

Humor,

in the writings of all the

there, except

Hawthorne, who

substituted a rhetorical vitascope. In the

summer

of 1856 I was mostly engaged in visiting Middle sex towns, holding meetings, and raising to keep

Kansas

free

from negro

slavery.

money Our col

lege tutor in elocution, Mr. Jennison, for a

bridge committee, arranged a meeting in

Cam

Lyceum

Hall, opposite the Colleges (September 10, 1856), at

which Emerson consented to speak, so much

was he concerned tion.

In

for our national political situa

his speech,

a passage, not set

which

down

I heard,

he introduced

in his notes,

and which

does not appear in the printed report. Speaking of the anti-slavery opinions of the founders of

the Republic (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin,

Madison), and the absence of such

men from

the

ranks of the conspirators against liberty to-day,

he quoted the antithesis of Tacitus, remarking on the absence of the busts of Brutus and Cassius

from the funeral procession of Junia, who was

[83]

THE PERSONALITY OF wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus:

"Sed

prse-

fulgebant Cassius atque Brutus, eo ipso, quod

eorum non

effigies

fulgebant,"

cried

"Eo

visebantur,"-

Emerson,

"quod

Yes, they glared out of their

ipso prae-

non visebantur!

Here was

absence"

hyperbole again, and compression of the already concise

Roman

annalist.

In conversation

it

was the same.

tea one evening at the

I

was taking

Emersons before the Civ

War, when Mrs. Emerson, just returned from Boston, where some of her friends were ardent

il

Episcopalians, had been ruffled by the spiritual

some dignitary of Henry the Eighth s church, whose quoted remark implied there was

pride of

no true side of

capital

religion

in

anywhere

New

England out

what he styled "The Church," with a C. She was telling us what her reply had

been to the lady quoting the dictum.

you

tell her, Queenie"

for his wife),

donkeys in smile.

Now

"that

it

America?"

"And

(Emerson s domestic is

the church of

all

did title

the

with his most benevolent

he did not mean that

of our people were Anglicans,

[84]

all

only to

that class satirize a

EMERSON sect

which at that time had not

its fair

share of

the ideas and scientific truth of the American people; but was

was an

still

apt to think that geology

atheistic attack

on Moses and the Book

of Genesis.

Without being a partisan in his turn of mind, as the brothers Hoar of Concord were, Emerson was frank and

direct in his

advocacy of what he

thought the national cause at any time; and

made him

earnest in behalf of Charles

this

Sumner

and the exclusion of slavery from Kansas. spoke warmly at the meeting in Concord

He

Town

Hall (where he must have read lectures or made speeches

fifty

times from 1852

till

his death, thir

ty years later) to protest against the assault on

Massachusetts through her senator,

when he was

almost assassinated by Brooks of Carolina. wiien, a

was held

few days

later,

our

first

And

Kansas meeting

there, resulting in a general subscription

money to aid the Emerson was one of

of

Free-State

men

the large givers.

in Kansas,

As

secre

tary of the meeting, I retained the subscription paper, and

some of the names may be mentioned.

[85]

THE PERSONALITY OF Concord was then a town of present population,

less

than half

its

not twenty-three hundred

and contained few persons of wealth, the largest property not exceeding two hundred in 1855,

and

thousand dollars probably. Yet the

fifty

first

was nearly one thousand and there were four givers of one hun

subscription for Kansas dollars,

dred dollars each Samuel Hoar, and his son Judge :

Hoar, John

gave

S.

Keyes, and F. B. Sanborn. Four each R.

fifty dollars

:

W.

Emerson, Colonel

Whiting, Nathan Brooks (father-in-law of Judge Hoar), and Ozias Morse; six gave twenty-five dollars each

:

John Brown, and

"A

George M. Brooks, Samuel Jr.,

Staples,

Daniel B. Clarke, Reuben Rice, probably either Mrs. Emerson

Lady"

or Miss Hoar; then followed

subscriptions of

twenty, ten, and five dollars; while a few

dren and poor dollars each.

increased

by

men gave from

lar

cents to

two

These subscriptions were afterwards gifts

of money, clothing,

before a year passed they had or quite

fifty

chil

two thousand

amounted

dollars

each for every inhabitant.

[86]

etc., until

to nearly

or almost a dol

When

in the

sum-

EMERSON mer following

became a member and secretary

I

of the State Kansas Committee, and in that ca

Committee s

pacity visited the National

office in

Chicago, and then went further west, to

call

on

the Governor of Iowa, and traverse that State

Nebraska City on the west of the Missouri River, I corresponded with Emerson.

as far as to

The next

winter, he

made

John Brown, the Kansas to visit

him

me

in Concord,

the acquaintance of hero,

who had come

and Emerson invited

to his house for a night. In this visit

was ac

knowledge of Brown s character (though not of his secret plans) which enabled Emerson at the time of the Virginia foray and

quired that

full

capture of Brown, to

tell his

fore large audiences in

Alcott, in 1878, gave

son

s

and Thoreau

Harper s Ferry "When

s

s

Boston and Salem. Mr.

me

this

the tidings

it

Emer

news of the

affair.

came that John Brown was

Henry Thoreau

house. It was startling to

spoke of

account of

reception of the

captured, I was with

son

story effectively be

then

much

as

all

at

Emer

of us. Thoreau

he soon afterwards did

[87]

THE PERSONALITY OF publicly vestry,

addressing his

townsmen

in the parish

and the people of Worcester and Boston,

with his Plea for Captain John Brown. [Mr. Al-

Thoreau rang the bell himself for Concord address, but he probably confounded

cott thought this

the occasion with that in August, 1844,

Emerson was

when

to give his address on West India

Emancipation, mentioned

earlier in this book.

that time Thoreau not only rang the

bell,

At but

previously had gone about the village, giving notice at the house-doors that

speak at the vestry.]

would be a new fact of

Emerson would

I said that

crucifixion,

Brown s death

and dwelt upon the

Brown s martyrdom. Emerson

said little

seemed to be a painful subject to him. Some weeks after, when he had returned from

then;

it

Salem, where he in praise of

made

Brown

that much-quoted speech

(of

which he gave you the

manuscript), he said to me, with an air of

We

have had enough of

relief,

this dreary business.

But when we were making arrangements, with Thoreau and yourself and others, for that Ser vice for the

Death of a Martyr which we held

[88]

EMERSON Concord

at the

execution,

Brown s

of the best se

and read them himself at the meet

Thoreau did

ing, as

Hall, the day of

Emerson made some

lections used,

and

Town

his selections

from Mar veil

Tacitus."

In truth, as Hazlitt says of Sir Francis Burdett, there

was no honest cause Emerson dared

not avow, no oppressed person forward to succor.

He

whom

he was not

did not wholly agree with

the Garrisonian Abolitionists, but he supported their

main

cause,. as

he did Brown

s.

was during my first residence in Concord, and while Hawthorne was our consular represen It

became acquainted through Emerson with the theories and caprices tative at Liverpool, that I

of Miss Delia Bacon, of said to

New Haven, who may be

have invented, as much as any one person

did, that craze

now grown

to such magnitude,

Bacon of Saint Albans wrote the plays and poems of Shakespeare. This was not exactly Miss

that

Bacon s

first

whim, but that the plays came

product of a court,

circle of great

men

as the

of Elizabeth

s

Raleigh, Bacon, and others a theory that ;

[89]

THE PERSONALITY OF some countenance, though very slight, in John Toland s odd letter of two centuries ago finds

declaring that there was such a circle, and that

Giordano Bruno, then in England, belonged to in 1585.

Bruno dedicated one of

to Sidney,

whom Toland

his quaint

it

books

thought one of the com

pany; and there are certain faint indications that Shakespeare had read and understood Bruno ideas.

Miss Bacon, a

brilliant,

s

unhappy person,

came to Emerson with her theory in 1852; he

lis

tened to her with patience and interest, though not persuaded. of

New York

When

she was aided by a citizen

to pursue her inquiries in England,

Emerson gave her letters to Carlyle, Doctor Chap man, and other English titution

friends,

and

in her des

he commended her to Hawthorne at

Liverpool.

He

procured for her

first

essays on

the subject a publisher in America, as Carlyle did in

London. Putnam s Magazine, then

flourishing,

and having among its contributors Henry James, G. W. Curtis, and (rarely) Thoreau and Emerson himself, accepted

Bacon.

an

article or

One such appeared [90]

two from Miss

there; another, in a

EMERSON manuscript or half-printed

way from New York

state,

lost

on the

to Concord, intrusted to a

Emerson. This

relative of

was

loss, later, led

to re

proaches from Miss Bacon which Emerson did not

wholly escape. Her proud and whimsical char acter, verging

toward insanity, made these favors

from her friends useless to her; and when she turned upon him these reproaches,

not resent

it.

upon Hawthorne) with Emerson s angelic patience did

(as later

Finally, her insanity declared itself

without disguise, and she was committed to an

from Shakespeare s grave. It fell to Emerson to communicate this dismal fact to asylum not

far

her brother, Reverend Doctor

Haven, who had been ties

Bacon of

less tolerant of

New

her infirmi

than the Concord authors had. Here

is

his

noble letter: "CONCORD, "DEAR "

"

"

"

"

I have

February 18, 1858.

SIR: received from

closed note, which

Mrs. Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, the en-

I hasten

to

forward

wish that I had very different news

to

to

you.

I could

heartily

send you of a person who

has high claims on me, and all of us who love genius and elevation

of character. These

qualities have so shone in

[91

]

Miss Bacon

that,

THE PERSONALITY OF "

"

t(

"

"

while their present eclipse

is

the greater calamity,

seems as if the

care of her in these present distressing circumstances ought not to be at private, but at the public charge

learning and truth. to her,

you

If I can

will please to

serve

of scholars and friends of

you

in

any manner

With great "R.

DR. LEONARD

"Osman,"

in relation

command me. "

"

it

respect,

W. EMERSON.

BACON."

said

Emerson, sketching himself,

whether consciously or not,

"had

a humanity so

broad and deep that, although his speech was so bold and free with the Koran as to disgust

all

the

was never a poor outcast, ec some fool who had cut centric or insane man,

dervishes, yet there

off his beard, or

who had been

mutilated under

a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, fled at

but

once to him. That great heart lay there so

sunny and hospitable in the centre of the coun try that it seemed as if the instinct of all suf ferers

drew them to

his side.

which he harbored he did not

And

the madness

share."

Instances confirmatory of this might be multi plied.

The milder

his friends Alcott,

eccentricities of genius, seen in

Thoreau, and Channing, were

[92]

EMERSON of course more easily borne with, and were only

spoken of by Emerson for instruction to a younger

He told his

friend, or for a harmless smile.

ter Ellen that if

he should die

daugh before Alcott and

Channing "two good books will be formed the acquaintance with the three

lost."

order followed above,

Alcott

me

ning third. Mr. Alcott told

had bathed together day, that he

first

first

He

in the

and Chan

in 1878, after

we

Walden, one hot August heard Emerson preach in Doc in

Channing s church in Federal Street, Boston, 1829, on The Universality of the Moral Senti

tor in

ment.

"I

was greatly struck with the youth of

the preacher, the beauty of his elocution, and the direct, sincere

hearers.

But

I

manner

Philadelphia (where

when

Boston.

We

which he addressed

his

did not become acquainted with

the young clergyman

in 1834,

in

till

after

my

return from

Anna and Louisa were

I established

became

born)

my Temple School

intimate,

and soon

in

after, I

went with Emerson to hear him read a Phi Beta

poem

at

Harvard College,

in

which was a

ing passage about Washington.

[93]

As

strik

the proces-

THE PERSONALITY OF was forming to enter the church where the oration and poem were to be given, Emerson took sion

arm

my

not being a

(I

member

of the Society,

nor even a graduate of Yale) and saying, Come, *

we

mince matters, stepped briskly along

will not

with

me

at his side into the church.

When

his

time came to read the poem from the platform,

Emerson read smoothly for a while; then, not feeling satisfied with what he had written, closed his

reading abruptly and sat

The next to entertain

down."

day, as I was sitting with

Emerson

him while Wyatt Eaton was sketch

ing his portrait for Scribners Magazine, I asked

poem. He said he had composed such a poem, and it may have had a passage in it about Washington; but he had quite forgotten

him about

this

the facts about

its

his father s death,

this it

poem was

delivery in Cambridge. After

Doctor Emerson told

me

that

written for delivery in 1834; that

contained two striking passages, one on

Wash

ington and another on Lafayette, besides the lines

on Webster which are printed among the posthu

mous poems

(edition of 1884).

[94]

The whole poem

EMERSON is

measure of Pope and Dryden, with an

in the

occasional Alexandrine; and I fancy that the re

markable ee

lines in

In unplowed Maine he sought the lumberers

were intended

for this

gang,"

poem, which has never

Channing entered Harvard year (1834) and Thoreau had entered the

been printed this

Woodnotes beginning

entire.

year before.

At

various dates from 1860 to 1880,

spoke to

me

"He

things:

of Thoreau, saying,

was a person who

his

way of

life.

other

among

said

surprising things, not accounted for in his antecedents,

Emerson

and wrote

by anything

his birth, his education, or

But why

he never frank ? That

is

was an excellent saying of Elizabeth Hoar s about him:

What

I is

love Henry, but I can never like him. so cheap as politeness? I have

pleasure with Henry, though best conversation. Yes, I

ing and care. Yet

we are

so driven with our

care

own

social

more than once the

know he

who can

no

and

needs cherish cherish,

affairs

?

Longfellow

and Lowell have not appreciated Thoreau

[95]

when

as a

THE PERSONALITY OF thinker and writer, and Judge

them

Hoar has confirmed

Henry makes an instant impression, one way or the other. He met Thomas in their scepticism.

met

my

in

Cholmondeley

house, in 1854,

you

also

that singularly verdant Englishman there,

who was

so pleased with the nonchalant

man

ner of Thoreau that he went at once and engaged to board at Mrs.

of

Henry grew

did not at

Thoreau s, where

greater

first

by

his admiration

daily contact.

Thoreau

appreciate his Shropshire friend,

but came to value him

highly."

In 1874-75, Emerson was printing Thoreau

s

much

in favor of

journals entire, particularly the

natural history in them.

He

said that he advised

Miss Thoreau (who died in 1876) to put the jour nals in

my

charge, as they had been for a time,

while I was living in her house, where the scripts

death.

remained for

He

many

manu

years after Thoreau

s

told her that I could well select the

passages for printing, and could call on Mr. Chan-

ning to aid in editing them, as she had done, soon after

Henry s

death.

The mention

displeased her; she told

Emerson

[96]

of Channing that,

without

EMERSON asking her consent, or giving her knowledge of

what he was to do with them, Channing had gone to Henry s room in the west attic, taken the

some of them, and kept them for a Fearing that he would have access to them

journals, or

time. in

my

custody, she had requested

have them removed to the town death she

left

them

Emerson

library.

to Mr. Blake.

At

Emerson

gretted this; he had read the selections

to

her re

made by

Mr. Blake and printed in The Atlantic^ and did not think the best selections had been made, or the best arrangement followed.

He

said he read

Channing s Thoreau, the Poet- Naturalist when it came out in 1873, but did not wholly like it; he

would read

it

again, since I praised

When Emerson s

edition of

it.

2

Thoreau

s

Letters

and a few poems came out, I remonstrated with him for printing so few of the verses. He replied that he had chosen the best, and that

do Thoreau no gested,

every

credit to print line,

them

some points

would

as I sug

whether good or bad, as we

do with the verse of the Greeks, in

all,

it

so resembled.

[97]

He

whom

Thoreau

remained firm

THE PERSONALITY OF in his view,

Thoreau

and afterwards told

best

s

poem was

pathy, published

in

first

me

(in

1878) that

the earliest one,

The Dial

Sym

in 1840.

In his early relations with Alcott in Concord (1840-41), there were incidents that have escaped notice,

think.

I

Soon

after the Alcott

reached Concord, spending the

first

family

night at the

Middlesex tavern, Mr. Emerson was summoned there to perform the wedding ceremony for the

landlord

Sam

daughter, Miss Wesson,

s

Staples, then

an assistant

but afterwards deputy this

ceremony Mr. Alcott was a

jailer;

witness.

Emerson s own Plymouth wedding in as the stable boy, had taken to him

Manse the

sion for the ceremony.

mother

at

week

at

He sum

s,

At Mr.

1835, Sam, at the

Old

the parlors, and

Winslow Man living with

and was paying

fire

when both were

together in one of

when Mr. Emerson was

[98]

for

of eight dollars only

with a stipulation that

home, they should have a

s

was then

Doctor Ripley

the board of both the a

and at

horse and chaise which was to convey

the bridegroom to Miss Jackson

his

married

in the tavern,

and

sheriff

who

absent,

EMERSON his

mother should have a

her

fire in

own chamber.

Considering that he was thus the more expensive of the two, he proposed to his grandfather that he

should pay five dollars of the eight, and his moi

ther but three. In 1841, before the Alcotts had i

Emerson proposed, with

been in Concord a year,

the approval of his wife, that Mr. Alcott and his family (a wife and four children) should occupy "half

to

our house and store-room

work

in the garden,

free";

Mr. Alcott

and Mrs. Alcott to share

the household labors with Mrs. Emerson. families

and tables were to be separate,

The

"save

oven to bake our puddings and the same pot

one for

our potatoes; but not the same cradle for our babies."

Mrs. Alcott had the practical good sense i

to decline this generous but embarrassing offer;

which was

as near as

to the project of a It

was a

had formed

Emerson ever came,

community

little earlier

than

his friendship

1 think,

for himself. this that

Emerson

with the shy and capri

cious poet Ellery Channing.

They were brought

together in Boston, in December, 1840, by the

good

offices

of Samuel

Gray Ward of Boston

[99]

THE PERSONALITY OF (now of Washington), who had

for

some years

shared with Miss Caroline Sturgis of Boston the

hazardous position of Channing s intimate. erson,

who had

Em

seen some of his early verses, and

even printed them in the October Dial, had long been eager to meet the poet; but he was either

on the

prairies of Illinois, or

on the road to or

from the West, or shunning society at

Curzon

s

Mill, or at

"Aunt

in

Boston, or

Becky Atkins

s"

in

Newburyport. Finally they came together, these

two

and each enjoyed the other. Their correspondence, fitful and moody on Channing s poets,

part, brief

and wise from Emerson

s

pen, displays

a singular friendship, extending over

Emerson

forty years, and, so far as

is

more than concerned,

justifying his sweet verse in the Essays: "I

fancied he was fled,

And,

after

many

a year,

Glowed unexhausted kindliness Like daily sunrise

there."

On Channing s part the conditions vary greatly. He never loses his admiration for Emerson s genius, nor quite fails in gratitude for the con-

[

100

]

EMERSON Emerson

stant services which

moods of a disappointed man

renders; but the

are hard to restrain.

That remoteness and aloofness of Emerson

at

times, of which I spoke early in this book, gave

Channing

agony; he was formed for the

real

closest intimacy

with a very few persons, he had

fixed his affection

upon Emerson, and

seem to him to be returned. he

this,"

strikes

It

a

is

said, in

it

did not

"Unappreciated! It is

a letter to another friend,

through the soul of a

man

"which

like a slow

fire.

no longer Nature persons begin to assume ;

terrific

persons. year."

value to me.

No

But

long friendship. part, there

was

is

thought

I

had done with

and tear me, year after only one of the phases of this

they

this

I

At

rise

other times, and for the most

cordiality in

Emerson, and a nearer

approach to sympathy than with a somewhat so cially

rude nature, such as Thoreau

trast with

Emerson s

Channing s

s

was, in con

centuries of social culture.

special gift

was

aesthetic

;

he could

take his friends, and he often took Emerson, to scenes in the landscape which opened art,

and new views of Nature. In [101

]

new ideas in

literature, too,

THE PERSONALITY OF as in art, his scope

was wide and

his

judgment

manly and delicate. His humor was suffusing and irresistible the wretchedness of which he so ;

often spoke, and which indeed haunted him, was

soothed and often dispelled by his love of Victor

Cousin

s trinity:

the Good, the Beautiful, and the

True. These abstractions, as with Shakespeare

and Homer, floated

in a sea of

ing or noisily mirthful, of a Greek poet.

humor,

softly laps

the anerithmon gelasma

To Emerson, whose

study was

Man and Nature, and whose life craved variety, C banning furnished that element of the unex pected which

is

so apt to be lost in a long friend

and perhaps was finally lost in this one. Thus, about 1878, w hen I was relating to Em

ship,

r

erson what constant topics of enlivening conver

Channing brought with him to his walks and talks with me, Emerson sighed and said, sation

"It

used to be so with me, but of late he says or nothing, and I do not find in

little

him that

exhaustible fund of good fellowship

of which

Thoreau told Ricketson, and which was once him."

Probably there was a [

102]

fault

in

on both

in

sides,

EMERSON a after

lack of confidence on

little

Emerson s

part,

Channing had printed, without consulting

him, some passages copied with his consent from

Emerson s

journals, years before;

and on Chan-

ning s part some grief at this withdrawal. Thoreau, in a similar experience,

had confided to

journal the suffering he

but Channing,

felt,

his

who

kept journals but semi-occasionally, had no such resource.

served,

His

and

letters to

may some

Emerson which

are pre

time be published, contain

many passages showing deep

insight and frequent

grace of expression. During his short residence in

New York

in 1844-45,

he thus described his way

of letter- writing, and his preference for the coun try over the city

(December

God

19, 1844):

had something to tell you worth your hearing! Don t thank me in any of "Would

to

I

When I am at home I run into your house; when I am away I run in by means of a letter. Do not look upon it in any your

letters for

other light, for

mine.

Heaven s

sake. I

have no idea of

from your house by coming a few paltry hundred miles and taking up my being estranged at

all

[

103

]

THE PERSONALITY OF quarters here. I fear I shall have a barren winter in

New

tug on

York.

do not require the

I

It does

my faculties.

in the hard,

country,

tug

still,

me

city; it

many

to live in the

severe, iron-bound

a day, treading wearily the lone avenues of

the silent woods, sustained only in breath of the sky.

and reduce

tary, severe

There

Few many

all

life,

not a

is

watered

it

of

of

with

To

dwell there

is

life

by the

sufficient to

the powers of a man,

a

soli

a time of wailing and barrenness. field in that village

my

but

I

have

tears."

Emerson s

letters

them should

these pages will tain.

no

of New England. There, in solitude, I paced

fields

test

is

have been published;

Those which appear in indicate what treasures they con

That which

I

be.

am now

to give illustrates his

constant generosity toward other authors, and his

high appreciation of this poet of

been hearing. It

whom we

relates to the incomplete

have

manu

Channing s "colloquial poem," as he quaintly called it, The Wanderer, which had been in my hands some months when I submitted it script of

to Emerson, a year before [

104

it ]

was printed by Os-

rff~~

fjt_&^^

<^

jX^^ /

x^

//

/

y^ ^X

^^

^^

/

^^

/\

A

^^ / I

/**

^

r

/

EMERSON in Boston.

good

weeks, with this I

He returned

some

to me, after

it

letter, sent to Springfield,

was living from 1868 to 1872,

in

where

which year

I

returned to Concord. "

"

I ought

"careful "

to lend

ishing the same. Indeed, things,

"justice

and as to that

"with

to

be more busy there injtnlately with

I have

sick hack, too, that

my

not done

in all this time.

power and

the fidelity

of the

I

think, to all

of nature

immense vacation

good

is

so active

so incessant, that

it

and read

The

"read

it

must be

solitariness,

well spent.

by showing that

What botany and

it

being, as

seemed

I have

said,

Sea I did notjtnish, to

me

it

perhaps did not

myself preoccupied, I did not return

with loud joy.

I [

and

not nearly so happily written;

not resist the showing

who read

ornito see

fair print.

third part, the

far,

I could

all in

and

readers. It absolves the writer in-

of idleness or

is all

When

writing.

thology and wonderful eye for landscape he has ! I long

"

"

Manuscript

stantly from the charge

"his

"

Boston,

I have been such a hack

original, the observation attractive,

"

to

happened, a

it

surprise at the

"

"

and

so good

I was busy with work which I was

note,

can see through the handwriting, the thought

"you

"

you were

Yet I read the twojirst parts not only with great pleasure, but

"

"

1870.

me, without special acknowledgment. But on the

carry in the morning

"

"

not to have returned the Manuscript

day when I received your

"to

"

CONCORD, 13 November,

DEAR SIR:

"MY

Monadnoc

to

to

Ellen and Edward,

heartily hope that the book can

105

]

it.

and

THE PERSONALITY OF te

will be printed, as

(l

lie,

and thereby

"

good

it

will,

I think, conquer

to itself a valuable

essentially benejit the author in

sale. "

With great regard yours, "R.

"F.

B.

SANBORN,

children here mentioned as read

ing the descriptions of

Emerson

W. EMERSON.

ESQ."

The Emerson

as

pub-

more ways than a

"Cheshire s

styled his

haughty favorite mountain in the

hill,"

Concord prospect, had themselves spent days and nights on Monadnoc with Channing and their younger friends; and a part of the poem dealt with them and their adventures there.

The

plea

sure they took in the reading had one inconven

ience for me.

ing some of

They could not refrain from quot his own verses to the author, when

taking tea at the Emerson house, and this re vealed to the quick-witted poet that his script,

which he had intrusted to

a publisher, had been in

whom it

me

manu

to find

Emerson s hands,

he had not himself intended to show

should appear

stantly wrote to

"in

fair

me

him

print."

He

to

it till

therefore in

in Springfield, asking the

return of the sheets. I had got a part of

[106]

them

EMERSON copied, but not

all,

and

I replied that I

would

bring

them with me

when

the copy was completed; and this I did,

to Concord at an early date,

without explaining to him what use Emerson had

made

of the

first

part of the poem. Afterwards,

when we had found a that

Emerson should

publisher,

it

was agreed

write a preface, as he did

using some of the same expressions found in the above

letter.

their long familiarity Ellery

During

Channing

noted down a few of the remarks which Emerson

made

in a

thousand conversations, and Emerson

by Channing. Some of these appear the chapters of Channing s Thoreau which he

did the like in

and

called

"Walks

others

w ill be given

Talks"

T

comments came out

here.

in

and

Some

"Characters";

of

Emerson s

The Atlantic Monthly

last

July (1902), but with misprints that injured their effect.

The passage dated

in 1859, for instance,

Channing s poem of Near

where

it

Home,

printed in 1858, should read thus:

relates to

"Channing,

who

writes a

begins to help us. That

is

poem

for our fields,

construction,

[107]

and better

THE PERSONALITY OF than running to Charlemagne and Alfred for sub jects.

Near Home

is

a

poem which would

delight

the heart of Wordsworth, though genuinely ori

and with a simplicity of plan which allows

ginal,

the writer to leave out

all

the prose.

T is

a series

of sketches of natural objects such as abound in

New

England, enwreathed by the thoughts they

suggest to a contemplative pilgrim, Unsleeping truths by which wheels on Heaven

There

prime.

a neglect of superficial correctness which

is

looks a

s

little

studied, as if perhaps the poet chal

lenged notice to his subtler melody; and strokes of

skill

which

recall the great masters.

There

nothing conventional in the thought or the

is

illus

tration; but (

Thoughts that voluntary move

Harmonious numbers

and pictures seen by an instructed In

his

mention of

"two

of mine, not else to be

eye."

notable acquaintances

approximated,"

Emerson

mind, I suppose, Henry Thoreau and Wil liam Tappan, in whose acquaintance "W. E. C.

had

in

[

108

]

EMERSON served as a companion of

of

Channing."

This, at

Again, in the

earliest

H. D.

any

and Tappan what occurred.

T.,

rate, is

mention of Channing

in

these Atlantic passages, the date should be 1840,

not 1841, and the remark,

human

pliment to the

"C.

race,"

s

eyes are a

etc.,

com

was meant to

whom Channing wrote some of his best early poems. On this point Emerson said to me in 1874, and sub apply to Caroline Sturgis, to

whom

and of

Channing s earliest friends were Caroline Sturgis and S. G. Ward, by whom sequently:

"Ellery

he was introduced to printed

Poetry.

some of

in 1840, after I

his verses in

You know

Channing;

me

his uncle,

The Dial

his father,

as

had

New

Doctor Walter

Doctor Channing the min

was the patron of my early studies in divin He was one of three persons whom I have

ister,

ity.

heard speak more eloquently than any others; and

hymns what I heard Doctor Channing read from them in his high I

never could find in the

mother dying early [in 1822, while Doctor Channing was in England], he was

pulpit.

Ellery

s

brought up for a while by [

his

109]

mother s aunt, Mrs.

THE PERSONALITY OF Bennett Forbes,

who

sister

lived at Milton

of Colonel T.

H.

Perkins,

and was the mother of our

John Murray Forbes. Mrs. William Hunt of the painter], who was herself a Perkins,

friend,

[wife

ascribes all Ellery

s

peculiarities to the Perkins

blood, of which she tells sad stories. His father,

Doctor Walter Channing, went abroad medical education; when he went again time, and, returning from Russia,

Concord to see

his son,

up

him

He

house where you once

tain himself as he I

came here

might with

to

start

did not give

for the sake of seeing his father,

in the

in our

he found Ellery just

ing out for an afternoon walk. it

for his

but

left

lived, to enter

his grandchildren.

have seldom heard Ellery speak of Mr. Al-

cott otherwise than as a fool; yet he has written

me some

of the best things in praise of Alcott. I

do not remember hearing of Major Leviticus, a long prose sketch, in which Alcott is satirized; but

I

now have

in

my

possession a thick prose

manuscript which Channing brought

me many

years ago, but which I did not think good enough to print,

and

in

which probably Alcott

[110]

is

men-

EMERSON tioned. Ellery

began by being very intimate with

Miss Elizabeth Hoar; then suddenly broke off the acquaintance, and would not look at her

when he met her

but he has re

in the street;

cently [1874] renewed his intimacy with

In

this conversation,

said to

die

me

first,

added

"

:

"I

it

hope

among

will please

so that I can write his I

I

Emerson

Mr. Alcott to

biography."

He

formerly and usually took the greatest

pleasure in his conversation. It

but

others,

her."

suppose that

my own

is

is

no longer

fault. I

habit of saying that he cannot write this gift of conversation,

guished manners.

Of

;

am

in the

but he has

and the most

this I

so,

distin

have seen surprising

instances at his conversations, in meeting the an

noyances of unappreciative interrupters; Alcott parrying their frivolous questions with great wit

and delicacy of

tact."

In 1878,

when Emerson was

asked to send verses to be printed anonymously in

to

A

Masque of Poets, which Roberts was soon publish, I told him that Mr. Alcott had some and that he had before printed sev poems; to which he replied, "Mr. Alcott is

verses there, eral

[

111

]

THE PERSONALITY OF a brilliant talker, but he cannot write anything; I

know he

should It

verse."

assured

was

me

it

in this conversation that

was

self write poetry;

added,

could never write a line of

"Others

Emerson

settled that he could not

and a few moments

have found

this

could have told them so long

out at

him

after

he but

last,

His daugh ter whispered that he had taken this idea from something Carlyle had said about John Sterling, I

whom

ago."

he would not allow to be a poet, though

he had written some fine verses. It was soon after this that

Alcott began to compose those Sonnets

and Canzonets published erson

s

in 1882, just before

Em

death, which disprove the absolute nega

tive of this friend

on

his

power of writing

for these octogenarian sonnets

merit, not

often found in

metrical form.

The

book came to

my

have a peculiar

portrait-sketches in

earliest of the

poems

in this

notice under affecting circum

stances, as this entry

(Sunday, January

from

my journal

4, 1880.}

to-day, Mr. Alcott called at river, to

verse;

shows

"At

half-past three

my

house by the

spend the afternoon, and read

[112]

:

me some

EMERSON notes as he said. These proved to be the stanzas

new poem on the death of his daughter May (Madame Nieriker, the wife of Ernst Nieof a

riker of

Baden

ing in Paris), 30, 1879.

in Switzerland, temporarily resid

who

died near Paris, on

She had been absent from Concord

nearly three years, and was married in

year ago. it

December

The poem he

calls

for

London

a

Love s Morrow and

has been written in the nights and mornings

had tidings of this youngest daughter s death, on the last day of the old year. He was since he

himself eighty years old on the twenty-ninth of

November

last; his

daughter Louisa forty-seven

on the same day, and May thirty-nine years old last July. It seemed to me the finest of Mr. Al-

many poems which

have seen expressing with simplicity and pathos the grief he now feels. cott

He

s

desired

me

certain lines,

I

to counsel

;

him

as to the

form

and the use of particular words;

some of

these, at his suggestion or mine,

changed.

He

nation of

May;

than that of

in

were

spoke touchingly and with discrimi saying that he

his wife

two years

[113]

felt

her loss more

before.

There was

THE PERSONALITY OF an earthly future for May, with her

none

As

for Mrs. Alcott at her

I

was making

for

but

age (seventy-seven).

him a copy of the poem,

who had

with the changes, Mr. Emerson, at

child,

called

Mr. Alcott s house near by, to sympathize with

him

in his bereavement, finding

came

over,

he was with me,

and they had a long conversation by

themselves. "

It

was now

and more, and,

five o clock

some urging, he stayed

to tea,

who had

daughter Ellen,

also stayed,

general,

and with him

called to escort

home, at the other end of the

after

village.

his

him

Mr. Alcott

and the conversation soon became

and reminiscent,

son of late years.

He

as

it

often

is

with

Emer

said that a classmate of his

brother William, John Everett, a younger bro ther of

Edward and Alexander

superior person, with as

much

Everett, was a

genius as Edward,

and of a more imposing appearance. He was noted in College, as Edward had been, for eloquence in declamation, uttered all

and

Byron s

knew by

I

remember exactly how he

lines in Childe

heart then:

[114]

Harold, which we

EMERSON "Three

hosts combine to offer sacrifice,

Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high,

Three gaudy standards

The

shouts are France

The

foe, the victim,

When often,

Spain

Albion

!

and the fond

he yet said

was printed of writing.

me

it

Victory

magnificently.

at the time,

and

Edward Hale,

his

a copy, and I read

He

is

;

!

etc.

say,

to his classmates,

with new pleasure.

!

ally,"

Byron had nothing to

ett s address

sent

flout the pale blue skies !

which was

John Ever

on graduating,

a very good piece

nephew, has

it,

after

many

became a tutor

lately

years, in the

Transylvania University in Kentucky; but in a visit

to Boston in 1826, after speaking eloquently

in Faneuil Hall, he

went home to a house where

Miss Ellen Tucker was then

him "

fall

living,

dead in a room over

and she heard

hers.

William Emerson, after graduating and teach

ing a school in Boston, went to

Germany to com

plete his studies for the ministry; but

opinions so

much

had

his

modified by what he learned

there that he had doubts of his fitness for the pulpit.

He

went to

see

Goethe at Weimar, to

ask his advice about preaching, and the old poet [

THE PERSONALITY OF urged him to conform to custom and preach in

My

spite of his doubts.

brother could not do

that; he returned to Boston in Chelmsford,

that for I

as

"he

where

had a school,

I

could not be a

knew how much

it did.

We

were

it

all

me telling me

and came to see

minister."

I

was very

would grieve

sad,

my mother,

ministers for generations.

She was a lady of the old stock, my mother, had been a member of Doctor Gardiner s Epis copal Church in Boston, and was converted to

Unitarianism by her husband,

my

father.

Mary Emerson was a genius and a great Afterwards, when I was studying

Aunt

writer.

for the

"

ministry at Divinity Hall in Cambridge, Profes sor

Andrews Norton was

allowed me,

but

little,

who

lecturing there

for a year could use

;

and he

my

eyes

to hear the lectures without being ex

amined on the

subjects. If

they had examined

me, they would perhaps not have let me preach at all. Professor Norton was then a scholastic per son,

who had

Shady

the

air

of living

among

Hill, near the College;

of society, as I think.

Edward [116]

his

books at

he was not a

man

Everett, a younger

EMERSON scholar,

who had

mired by

all

studied in

Germany, was ad

men when he

the young

taught

Cambridge; we were sorry when he went into political life, and was sent to Congress, for which he was not fitted. Alexander Everett

Greek

at

seemed to

me

a heavy person; his brothers had

genius, but he had only talent.

At

this date, little

his death,

"

more than two years before

Emerson seldom took

part any longer

in public conversations, being distrustful of his

memory; which, however, was good

for

events, such as those above mentioned.

spoke of

remote

He

often

and on one occasion

his college days,

related to Elizabeth Peabody, in the presence of his brother Charles,

an incident of

his intercourse

with the professor of rhetoric, Edward Channing, a brother of the preacher, for

who had

improving the style of

a great

his pupils.

name

Emerson

had written a poem for a college exhibition, and, being required to submit it to Professor Chan ning, got only this remark "You

by way of

had better write another

a useless remark that

was!"

[117]

said

criticism,

poem."

"What

Emerson;

"he

THE PERSONALITY OF might have pointed out to me some things in my work that were better than others, for all could not have been equally "He

I

did not treat

me

bad."

so

Charles

Emerson

unhandsomely

;

said,

when

for

took him a prose exercise once, he said to me,

Emerson,

if

Burke had wished

to express such a

thought as yours, he would have written so-and"

so.

son,

"That

"for

was much

the very

better,"

name

said

of Burke

is

Waldo Emer inspiring;

and

what you had written could not have been wholly worthless, if Burke."

suggested any comparison with

it

He was

sure he had got

instruction

little

or criticism from his professors that

was of

value,

/

but he ascribed

much

ample given by

his

to the stimulus and ex-

Aunt Mary.

A

friend once

would have happened in the development of your mind if you had been born and grown up in the small town of Harvard, asked him,

"What

where your father was ister?"

little

"That

me."

min

parish

circumstance would have

difference;

been with

first settled as

made

Nature and books would have "But

had not taken part

in

what your

[118]

if

your Aunt Mary

training?"

"Ah,

that

EMERSON would have been a

ment

in

my life

as

loss

!

she was as great an ele

Greece or

once that she was never

Rome."

He

fairly just to

told

me

her step

father,

Doctor Ripley, because he could not write

well,

being so good a writer

herself.

Emerson had preserved the only mention

I

ever heard of a college duel fought by his uncle,

Daniel Bliss Ripley, the doctor

which caused his

his expulsion

s

younger

from Harvard, and

withdrawal to Alabama, where, at a town

called Saint Stephens, he lived

and

returning to his native land.

once saw a

said

son,

Emerson,

son, to

my

"from

"I

father,

George Cabot, the

died,

without letter,"

William Emer

senator,

and friend of

Washington, asking him to interpose and pre vent the duel between his half-brother, Ripley,

and young X. But

was impossible to prevent the meeting; they fired one shot each, and the 3 consequence fell heavily on my grandfather."

He

it

added that he had once dined at Waltham

with Governor Gore, a

"great

gentleman,"

and

Doctor Ripley s classmate. I have thus given many samples of Emerson [

119

]

s

THE PERSONALITY OF table-talk,

and

will only

add here those which

Ellery Channing noted down:

Foreign Travel. "It

it is

is

the American malady,

lues

the cholera. I have been visiting in the coun

try, as I

and behold, a lady, a profes

thought,

sor s wife in a little college,

me

Americana;

began to talk to

about the Bernese Alps! The Americans are

wretched, go where they

was miserable

George Bradford Europe; he had left Rome and

in

will.

gone to Paris without a reason, save that others were going; and now he wished to go back. I do not know that he should have gone even to

Rome

;

that

is

not seem good

something exceptional. Paris does till

you have

left

it."

George Sand. "I

have already

lost

her.

According to

my

comprehension, good taste does not consist in

magnifying the selection of

little,

as she does,

but in the

good things that can be properly

magnified."

[

120

]

EMERSON Burns.

was greatly surprised at the applause that greeted my speech at the Burns dinner in Boston "I

the other day.

Not having had

a very good opin

ion of this Scottish songster, I renewed

my

ac

quaintance with him by a fresh reading, and to a better purpose.

But

to prepare myself for

I

had only a few moments

speaking."

Tennyson. "Walking

out in the autumnal woods this after

noon with George Bradford, he thought that all Maud was filled with descriptions of these golden colors

;

but when he looked in the book he found

only these two

lines,

And

out he walked when the wind like a broken worldling wailed,

And

the flying gold of the ruined woodlands drove thro the

air.

Tennyson has not the fulness of Wordsworth. Milton would have hardly lifted his eyelids to see such things as Maud. Yet these Idylls of his show that the Ideal

may

still

be built in

England."

Reading. "I

like reading as well as ever

youth. That

is

one thing that has

I

did in

lost

my

no charm

THE PERSONALITY OF for

me. Give

me my book

alone with the

and candle, and

I

am

universe."

Writing (Said of a course of Lectures repeated). "All

a

I

have learned of writing

little. I

is

to scratch out

have learned to omit the word very.

These published discourses of mine do not read as they did when they were delivered, so many fourteen years,

years ago,

vanity of Doctor Ripley,

is it?

Yes, I have that

who used without

fail

to read his sermons over to the family after the service in the afternoon.

And

so I repeat

my

old

discourses."

Future Life. "I

think well of Goethe

s

saying,

that

if

ture has given us these faculties, and I have

Na em

ployed mine well, and faithfully to the end, she is

bound

still

which they

Of a "She

Little is

further to explain the questions

put."

Lady.

such a perfect

rene Lowness,

little

we might

call

Serenity! her."

Her Se

EMERSON Parker Pillsbury,

the Abolitionist Orator.

New Hamp shire namesake, and has much of the New Hamp shire vigor about him. He talks well in his chair, "He

lives in the other

Concord, our

but does not read as well from his

paper."

Richard Cobden. "I

dined with Mr. Cobden at John Forbes

Milton the other day, but he did not speak

saw he had the true English

directly. I

s

in

much

feeling,

and was talking aside about his six per cents. He spoke interrogatively, and I thought was grow I

ing seedy.

make an

asked him

why he

did not let us

him to speak but he said when he came over it was to keep his ears open and

his

occasion for

mouth

shut."

;

4

Nirvana. "Different

persons

among

the Buddhists take

their special views of the

meaning of the doctrine of Nirvana. They have their Kants and Hegels,

of course,

who make each his own

interpretation."

Sickness. "James

Burke,

man, when he

my [

123

]

is

sick

is

THE PERSONALITY OF He

spleeny.

thinks he shall die, that he cannot

earn half his wages, must go to his it

is

very dreadful. Strange

all

people view their

colics

and

sister,

how

differently

and belly-aches! Some

laugh at their dumps, and see the joke, as they

A

should. Mrs.

they are

and

ill;

and Mrs. I

B

really believe that

have no doubt

it

is

true for

the moment. But let anything occur to tempt

Mrs.

B

out,

and she goes

at

once."

Debt.

my

"When

debts begin to

grow clamorous

I

think I must take some means of satisfying them. I

have

now in my pocket

terfeit

half-dollar."

To

Publisher

his

(On being paid "Mr.

I

three cents and a coun

same Essay).

twice for the

Fields! I ought not to take this

money; but

was a thief from the foundation of the

world."

South Carolina. of a country where there

"Think ,

opinion where there !

was right

is

is

but one

no minority. Fisher

Ames

in saying that the best majority

was

EMERSON where there was but one over, opinion was most evenly

that

is,

where

divided."

This remark about South Carolina, of which used to be said that

"when

Calhoun took

was not made

it

snuff,

the whole State

sneezed,"

at the time of

Samuel Hoar s expulsion from

in 1844,

Charleston, but later, in connection with the out

break of the Civil War, in which, from

Emerson took the

last,

erty.

But

a characteristic

citation

Channing, writing from

Mr. Hoar s

"old

New York

Squire"

affair,

be given. Ellery

may

in the

had inquired of Emerson

ter of 1844-45,

conduct of the

Union and Lib

side of

in connection with

to

first

(as

win

if

the

he was called

in

Concord) had been quite brave enough in with

To

drawing.

this

Emerson gave

substantially the

same reply which he gave to Channing s S.

G. Ward, as printed in the

ters

from Emerson

to

He

said

17,

"Mr.

(December

Hoar

and gave

me

has just this

little

friend,

volume, Let

a Friend, four years ago.

1844):-

come home from

Carolina,

morning a narrative of

his visit.

THE PERSONALITY OF He has

behaved admirably

well, I judge.

One ex

pression struck me, which he said he regretted a

ing.

might sound a little vapor gentleman who was very much his friend

afterwards, as

little,

A

called

him

it

into a private

room

to say that the

danger from the populace had increased so that he

must now

the city at

much

on Mr. Hoar s leaving once; and he showed him where he insist

might procure a carriage, and where he might safely stop on the way to his plantation, which he

would reach the next morning. Mr. Hoar thanked him, but told him again that he could not and would not go,

and that he had rather

his

skull should be carried to Massachusetts

body

else,

than to carry

whilst his duty required

it

him

home

broken

by some

safe himself

to remain.

He

did

not consent to depart, but in every instance re fused, friends,

to the sheriff, and acting mayor, to his

and to the Committee of the South Caro

and only went when they came in crowds with carriages to conduct him to the lina Association,

boat,

and go he must. Then he got into the coach

himself, not thinking

it

proper to be

[126]

dragged."

EMERSON must be remembered that

It

this venerable

gentleman was in Charleston as the envoy of Massachusetts, to protest against the imprison

ment of her

free colored

sel lay in port,

seamen, while their ves