Emerson at home and abroad

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Contents

Page

I. Mayflowerings 19

n. Forerunners 28

II. Forerunners

OF the founder of Concord, Peter Bulkeley, a very interesting account is given by Mr. W. Hale "White in the " Athenajum " of May 13, 1882 : — " He wi'ote Latin verse with ease, and yet he was as fervent as Bunyan in all matters touching the soul and the soul's welfare. He loved his learning, and never forsook it, but it was subdued into the service of a Divine Master. His neighbours observed of him that whenever they came into his company, no matter what the business might be, he would ' let fall some holy, serious, divine, and useful sentences on them ere they parted ; ' and it is also recorded of him that, ' by a sort of winning and yet prudent familiarity, he drew persons of all ages to come and sit with him.' There was a quarrel in the church while he was minister over it, but he healed it at last, and afterwards he told his friends that he ' thereby came — 1. to know more of God ; 2. to know more of himself; 3. to know more of men.' His contemporaries seem to have been impressed with his kindness to his servants, for it remains on record, although the details of his life are so few. When they had lived with him a number of years, it was his practice to dismiss them, and bestow farms upon them.

FOEERUNNEES. 29

' Thus he cast his bread both upon the waters and into the earth, not expecting the return of this his charity to a religious plantation until after many days.' "With all his culture and gentleness, it is distinctly said of him by Neal, in a chance notice of him in the ' History of New England,' that he was a ' thundering preacher.' In other words, although he had in him something of the ' Essays,' there was also in him something of the temper which more than two centuries and a half afterwards re-appeared in the ' Voluntaries ' of one who felt

' Only the flery thread Leading over heroic ground Walled with mortal terror round.'

" ' The Gospel Covenant,' the only book Dr. Bulkeley wrote, is a series of Puritan sermons on faith, justification, and the law. It is now almost unreadable, but I remember a passage in it which is a prophecy of what was to come. It is as follows : —

"'And hence, while the mind is possessed with these things, because so great a businesse as making a covenant of peace with the High God, and about so great an aflFair as the life and salvation of our soule cannot be transacted in a tumult, therefore, in the fourth place, faith takes the soule aside and carries it into some solitary place, that there it may be alone with God, with whom it hath to doe. This business and multitude of other occasions cannot be done together, and therefore the soule must be alone, that it may the more fully commune with itself, and utter itself fully before the Lord. Thus the poor Church in the time of her affliction, when the Lord seemed to hide himself from her, she sate alone, as she speakes Lament. 3, 28, 29, and Jer. 15, 17, I sate alone because of thy plague: TJie way of the Lord is prepared in the demrt, Esay 40. 3. When the Lord will come to the soule and draw it into communion with himselfe, he will have his way hereto prepared in the desart ; not in the throng of a city, but in a solitary desart place, he will allure us and draw us into the wildernesse from the company of men, when he will speak to our heart, and when He prepares our heart to speak unto Him."

Two centuries after the old pilgrim sailed to the American wilderness with these thoughts and hopes, his great descendant returned from a pilgrimage to teachers in the Old World with such melodies as these in his heart : —

" Whoso walketh in solitude, And inhabiteth the wood, Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird. Before the money-loving herd.

Into that forester shall pass Prom these companions power and grace ; Clean shall he be, without, within. From the old adhering sin."

Pi'ofessor Tyler (Hist. American Literature, i. 218) says of " The Gospel Covenant : " " The whole work can-ies momentum with it. It gives the impression of an athletic, patient, and orderly intellect. Every advance along the page is made with the tread of logical victory. No unsubdued enemies are left in the rear. It is a monumental book. It stands for the intellectual robustness of New England in the first age. It is an honour to that community of pioneers, drudging rORERUNNEES. 31

in the woods of Concord, that these profound and elaborate discourses could have been produced, and endured among them."

Dr. Bulkeley, it is to be feared, was over-logical when the "prophetess" Anne Hutchinson came to New England with her transcendentalism about the real presence of the Holy Spirit in true believers. He was Moderator of the Boston Synod, which immoderately drove her away to Rhode Island, where the Naragansett Indians permitted her to set up her community, in which no one was accounted a delinquent for doc^- trine.

Thomas Emerson emigrated from England to America in 1635. It may have been from York, where a Ralph Emerson was knighted by Hem'y VIII. (1535), or from Durham, where the mathematician of that name lived, whose heraldic arms were the same as those of the knight. The lions from this coat of arms are still traceable upon the tomb of Nathaniel (son of Thomas) Emerson at Ipswich, Massachusetts. Thomas became a farmer and baker at Ipswich. He was thrifty and made money. His wUl, dated May 31, 1653, distributes a large property among his family. He gives to his "loving wife" Elizabeth the annual rent of his farm and six head of cattle ; and if she shall maiTy again, she is to have six pounds annually (a considerable sum in that time and place), also " the little feather-bed, and one bolster, and two pairs of sheets, and two cows," and half the fruit of the orchard. The loving wife is also appointed sole executrix, while Lieutenant-Governor Symonds and General Dennison are to be overseers of the estate.

His son John, who married the Lieutenant-Governor's daughter, went to Harvard College after his marriage, and there graduated in 1656, having earned the money to pay for his own education. He became minister at Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Q-om him descended the anti-slavery orator, Wendell PhiUips ; the most eloquent American clergyman, Phillips Brooks ; and the Hon. Alphonso Taft, sometime Attorney-General of the United States, and now American Minister at Vienna.

For James, a son in England, the wiU of Thomas Emerson provides that he shall have forty pounds if he shall come to America, or send a certificate of his being alive within two years after his mother's death. The house of Thomas is still standing at Ipswich, near '' Labor-in- vain" Creek. His son Joseph, born in England the year that the "Mayflower" sailed, maiTied Miss Woodmancy, and settled at "VVeUs, Maine, as a teacher. He was a distinguished citizen of that place, and when the Massachusetts Commissioners went to settle the rule of their colony over Maine, they were received in his house. About fourteen years after settling in WeUs, Joseph became the preacher there ; but under his ministi-y occurred a schism, the cause of which is unexplained ; and in 1667 we find him preaching at Milton, Massachusetts. Meantime, in 1665, he had married Elizabeth Bulkeley of Concord, gi-anddaughter of the founder of that town. In 1669 he became the minister of Mendon, in the same State. This Joseph, the great-great-gi-andfather of 'Ralph Waldo Emerson, was the first minister at Mendon, and there is something notable in his contract with the

FOREEUNNEES. 33

people there. The township had been partitioned by the settlers in estates of forty acres each. The minister is to become an equal citizen by having also his forty acres, on which they are to build him a house. And it is contracted that if for any reason he should be dismissed from or compelled to separate from the church, this property was to continue his possession, or, if he should die, belong to his family. There may have been some reminiscence of experiences in Maine which led to this carefulness, but there is also in it that substantial relation with affairs which Lowell recognized in Joseph's great descendant —

" A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange."

The Emersons were always as generous as they were thrifty ; and, securing their independence aa to means, they returned more to their fellow-citizens than they got. It was the rule in the family to distribute theu" possessions equally between the members of their families, and so no large Emerson fortune was accumulated. When Mendon was destroyed in King Philip's war, the Rev. Joseph Emerson moved to Concord, where he died in 1680. His son Edward became a merchant at Charlestown, Boston. He was born in 1670, and in 1697 married Rebecca Waldo of Chelmsford, Massachusetts. This lady, a descendant of a family of the Waldenses who had become London merchants, was some years older than her husband, and outlived him, reaching a great age. His son Joseph, minister at Maiden, Massachusetts, mamed Mary Moody, daughter of a minister. They had ten childi-en, of whom two became ministers. Joseph, the second child, became minister of Pepperell ; and the ninth of the family, William, was pastor of Concord when the Revolution began.

It is pleasant enough to believe that the vigorous English stock which had given intellectual and moral leaders to seven New England towns, and to several their founders, was meanwhile represented in the mother country by that William Emerson whose marble efHgy remains in St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, and Thomas, his grandson, whose charitable bequest (1620) still brings comfort to twelve aged pensioners in London. The epitaph on the tomb is, "Here under lyeth the body of William Emerson, who lived and died an honest man. He departed out of this life the 27th of June anno 1575, in the year of his age 92. Ut sym sic eris." The pensioners sit together every Sunday in St. Saviour's, in seats marked "Emerson's Pensioners," and after the morning service receive from one of the wardens each their weekly three-and-ninepence. With this same old church was connected Mr. Harvard, who was a Governor of its Grammar School, and father of the founder of Harvard University. Lately I walked from St. Saviour's to the old Emerson estate iu the Borough, passing along Park Road to Summer Street, and there found Emerson Place and Emerson TeiTace, the quietest spot of that crowded region. All Boston names ! Yet the helpful chaplain of St. Saviour's cannot find the family arms of this benefactor, and one can only conjecture that the recurrence of the names "William" and " Thomas" and the name of the estate (" God's Prov-

FOEERUNNERS. 35

idence ") , indicate a cprnmon origin with the American family.

There is less reason to doubt that the Emersons who gave America the fii'st of that name also gave England the famous Durham mathematician, William Emerson (1701-82), whose arms were the same. When I mentioned this to Emerson he said, " Then he must have appropriated all my mathematics, for I can't multiply 7 by 12 with security." To which I returned a sentence spoken by him many years before — ' ' The vine which intoxicates the world is the most matheraatical of plants." Some characteristics of the Durham mathematician were certainly Emersonian ; notably his fondness for the solitude of his paternal estate, his severe independence, and his exceeding care about the proof of his books. Having walked all the way from Durham to London, when he had a work in press, he revised every sheet as it appeared, and could not endure an error. He was suspected of familiarity with the black art. Carlyle told me the story of a poor woman whose husband had not returned from sea at the usual time, and who went to consult William Emerson. He happened to meet her at the door, and when with a ::urtesy she asked where her man might be, "/n hell," sv^as the old man's answer, emphasised by his door's sharp slam.

Ralph Waldo was more courteous when he was supposed to be dealing in uncanny knowledge.

William Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo, ivas the first with whom liberal religious ideas may be jlearly connected. It was at the end of a controversy in Concord over the theolosrv of Jonathan Edwards that the Arminians found themselves strong enough to elect an opponent of exti-eme Calvinism, and as the result "William Emerson was chosen minister of the church. There are, however, indications that the Emersons had historically represented the vanguard of the pilgrimage from Puritanism. William Emerson was born in 1743, graduated at Harvard in 1761, settled over the Concord congregation in 1764, and, having married in 176G, built the famous Old Manse for his residence, in 1767. He was chaplain of the Continental Congress in the Revolution, and in that war he did great service, arousing the people by his eloquence and fine enthusiasm. He died of a fever caught while accompanying the army in 1776.

The next minister at Concord was Dr. Ezi-a Ripley. He married the widow — and, so to say, the church — of William Emerson, and occupied the Old Manse. He lived long enough to be a bridge between the Arminian and the Unitarian doctrine, with which last the church became identified during his ministry. He was especially remarkable for his personal and patriarchal relations with every man, woman, and child in Concord, ai>d not one of them could be afflicted without being prayed for by name. An anecdote related by Dr. George Ellis shows that the old man must have been a sort of "survival." "Dr. Channing told me expressly always, in the public prayer of the church, to recognise the afflicted. 'Afflicted and sorrowing persons are always around us. Make reference to them as tenderly as you wish, but never specify any case,' was his advice. Very shortly after I was settled — it must have been forty years

FOEEEUNNEES. 37

ago — I went up to exchange witli Barzillai Frost, who was the colleague of the good and venerable Dr. Ripley, who, of course, followed the old ways. He was very marked for the quality of specific personal references in his prayei's. Some of you may remember that Ml'. Emerson, in paying his tribute to Dr. Ripley after his death, spoke of that quality of individualising in prayer. A man had died in his parish who did not bear a very good name, but was a very strong man ; and on two occasions he had been of service at fires, and saved life or furniture. At the funeral Dr. Ripley prayed, ' We thank thee, O Lord, that thy departed servant was good at fires.' I had an experience with this Dr. Ripley. I went, as I say, to exchange with Mr. Frost. It was a great breach of courtesy on my part that I did not go to the home of the aged pastor to attend him to meeting ; but I accompanied Mi's. Frost, and got into the pulpit fii-st. After a while I heard the steps of the venerable man slipping along ; and, as he got toward the stairs of the pulpit, he asked aloud, ' Has the minister gone up yet ? ' I stood up and opened the door to welcome him in. He handed me two notes. They had no names attached, but referred to families in the congregation. I, of course, knew nothing about them. I followed my rule in the prayer of general reference. Dr. Ripley was hard of hearing, and leaned up against me, with his hand behind his ear, while I prayed, making me very uncomfortable. The ' Amen ' was scarcely out of my mouth before he said aloud, 'You said nothing about our afflicted friends.' I had to raise my voice to make him hear, as T renlied. ' I make it a rule not to make anv special references in prayer.' ' It's a very poor rule, and the sooner you change it the better ! ' he sliouted in answer. I told Mr. Frost that, so long as Dr. Ripley lived, I must decline going into that pulpit again."

" He seemed," said Emerson of Dr. Ripley, who died in 1841, "in his constitutional leaning to thenreligion, one of the rearguard of the great camp and army of the Puritans ; and now, when all the platforms and customs of the church are losing their hold in the affections of men, it was fit that he should depart ; fit that, in the fall of laws, a loyal man should die."

William Emerson, the father of Ralph Waldo, was born in the Old Manse in 1769. He was six years old when the shuddering family gazed upon the Concord fight beneath their windows. He was an only son, and at eleven years of age, by his mother's man-iage with Dr. Ripley, came under the care of that kindly old minister. The Old Manse was the seat of a fine hospitality, and William was able to listen to the best conversation. His career, which would probably have added a shining name to American letters had he not died prematurely, singularly coincides with that of his son Ralph. He graduated at Harvard at seventeen with a similar reputation for excellence in composition, rhetoric, and classical studies. He taught school, studied theology irregularly, and as a preacher made a strong impression. He was the most liberal preacher who had yet appeared in Boston, when he was installed there over the First Church (1799), and devoted himself to what was universal and ethical in Chiistianity.

FORERUNNERS. 39

He is described as a blond, handsome man, graceful and benignant, with a melodious voice, and in every respect simple and scholarly. In a sketch of "William Tudor, in Duyckinck's " Cyclopsedia of American Literature," we have a remarkable anticipation of the time of the Transcendental Club and the "Dial." This journal, which bore the name of " The Monthly Anthology," was originally commenced in November, 1803, by Mr. Phineas Adams, a graduate of Harvard, and at the time teacher of a school in Boston. At the end of six months it fell into the hands of the Eev. William Emerson, who, joining a few friends with him, laid the foundation of the " Anthology Club." The magazine was then announced as edited "by a society of gentlemen." By the theory of the club every member was to write for the "Anthology," but the rule was modified, as usual, by the social necessities of the company, and the journal was greatly indebted to outsiders for its articles. The members, however, had the privilege of paying its expenses, which in those days could hardly have been expected to be met by the public. In giving an account of this work subsequently, Mr. Tudor remarks : " Whatever may have been the merit of the ' Anthology,' its authors would have been sadly disappointed if they had looked for any other advantages to be derived from it than an occasional smile fl-om the public, the amusement of their task, and the pleasure of their social meetings. The publication never gave enough to pay the moderate expense of their suppers, and through their whole career they wi-ote and paid for the pleasure of writing." Whereon we mav reflect in the saving of one born in the same year as his father's "Anthology" — " Sport is the sign of health." The magazine enlisted the best pens, John Quincy Adams, Chauning, George Ticknor, Richard H. Dana, Andrews Norton, and Buckminster. It died in 1811, when its editor died, his son, Ralph "Waldo Emerson, being then eight years old.

THREE FATES. 4i in.

THEEE FATES.

A FINE copy of the famous picture long ascribed -^ to Michael Angelo, the " Parcse," hung over lie fireplace in Emerson's study, a work of art mysicaUy associated with him by his friends. Sometimes e wove the thread spun and clipped by the old women nto his conversation. It meant many things to him, nd it used to warn some of his friends not by any idle isit to clip the golden thread of thought which ran hrough the morning that always shone in that study. >ut gradually, as I learned the story of Emerson's arly life, the three formidable faces softened to those f the young and fair women who had presided over is destinies, and who remained young and fair even 1 old age.

The mother of Emerson, who had been Ruth Haskins f Boston, was a lady of refined culture, of gracious nd religious nature, with the blended sweetness and ignity of manner so characteristic of the son. She uilded her household in beauty and wisdom when it 'as left to her on her husband's death. Five sons 'ere thrown upon her care, of whom Ralph was the Bcond. He was born in that happy and cultured ome in Boston, and was eight years old when his father died. Mary Emerson was second of the fostering Fates, having devoted herself to the assistance of her brother's widow in bringing up her children. Besides being of an earnest and conscientious nature, she must be described as a woman of some genius. With a rather formidable eye for all social shams and pretences, a lively interest in all large subjects, and an individuality that verged on eccentricity, her influence was a stimulant to self-reliance. She was almost passionately fond of philosophical studies and well acquainted with the chief European works of that character. There was a considerable survival of the ascetic temper in her, and of theological bias, though she did not accept traditional views in the traditional way. In the discussion of metaphysical problems she had few equals, and her criticisms were often quoted in the controversies which attended the development of heresy in New England. She used to claim that she was "in arms at the battle of Concord," being two years old at the time, and held up by her mother to see it ; but in the theological struggles of a later period her share was less equivocal.

The third of Emerson's Parcse was Sarah Bradford. She was as fine a Greek scholar as America has produced, an accomplished mathematician, and possessed scientific attainments of which professors were glad to ask aid. Of this wonderful woman — not less admirable for her simplicity and womanly charm than for her scholarship — more will be said hereafter; it may be mentioned here, that when Emerson, just after his father's death, entered the grammar school, and afterward when he was studying in the Latin School at

THREE FATES. 43

ioston, she corresponded with him about every book md lesson, and revised hie translations. From this )eriod she accompanied his entire progress in culture, md to the last was the intimate friend of his thought.

These three women, all refined and cultivated — repesenting the religious sensibility, the self-reliance, and he philosophical thought and scientific scholarship of he New England renaissance, so to say — had charge if the Emerson boys. Never were maternal Parcae aore triumphant. The annals of Harvard may be earched in vain to find more brilliant careers than hose of several of these youths. It was even for a ime doubtful which of them was to be " the coming Qan." Affectionate with each other, sympathetic in heir studies and opinions, devoted to their mother and ler two friends (of whom indeed any youths might lave been proud) , they were born free of the besetting ices of young men, while full of humour and enteririse.

The family, without being straitened in circumstances, ad to observe strict economy for the supreme object f education, and when the elder had graduated they lught school to pay the way of the younger through oUege. William was to have entered the ministry, nd went to Germany to pursue his studies for that nd. He there formed the acquaintance of Goethe, nd studied German criticisms until his opinions ecame sceptical concerning Christianity, and he was ompelled to disappoint his mother in his selection of

profession. He died a few years ago, after a suc- 3ssful career in New York as a barrister. It required good deal of moral courage in the elder son to disappoint his mother and the eminent clergymen around her, who were looking forward to another William Emerson, to make good the promise of the brilliant father.

The third son, Edward Bliss, also studied law, and in the office of Daniel Webster ; but lost his health in early life, and went to Porto Eico, where he died. " The Last Farewell," written by him in 1832, while sailing out of Boston harbour on the voyage from which he never returned, was printed in the first number of the "Dial," and is included in "May Day, and other Poems," followed by Emerson's " In Memoriam." Robert Bulkeley was enfeebled by scarlet fever, and died in middle life.

Charles Chauncy died in 1836. This was a particularly heavy bereavement, not only to the family, but to a large circle of friends. He was betrothed to Elizabeth Hoar of Concord, then as afterwards an intimate and cherished friend of Emerson.

In the "Dial" some literary fragments left by Charles Emerson were published as " Notes from the Journal of a Scholar," preceded by lines from Persius —

Those who read these casual but most suggestive paragraphs concerning Homer, Shakespeare, Burke, will not wonder at the enthusiasm of his friends, which anticipated for him a brilliant career. Dr. Oliver Wendell

THREE FATES. 45

holmes, who was his class-mate, wrote concerning harles Emerson these beautiful lines : —

" Thou calm, chaste scholar ! I can see thee now. The first young laurels on thy pallid brow ; O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down In graceful folds the academic gown ; On thy curled lip the classic lines, that taught How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought. And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye, Too bright to live, — but oh, too fair to die! "

I quote a passage from Charles Emerson's journal, om which one may gather that he did not die, but was lught up into the spirit of the brother who mourned :s loss so profoundly.

" This afternoon we read Shakespeare. The verse ) sank into me, that as I toiled my way home under le cloud of night, with the gusty music of the storm ■ound and overhead, I doubted that it was aU a reembered scene ; that humanity was indeed one, a )h'it continually reproduced, accomplishing a vast •bit, whilst individual men are but the points through tiich it passes.

' ' We each of us furnish to the angel who stands in e sun a single observation. The reason why Homer

to me like dewy morning is because I too lived while foy was, and sailed in the hollow ships of the Greans to sack the devoted town. The rosy-fingered iwn as it crimsoned the top of Ida, the broad seaore dotted with tents, the Trojan hosts in their tinted armour, and the rushing chariots of Diomed id Idomeneus — all these too I saw ; my ghost animated the frame of some nameless Argive. And Shakespeare in ' King John ' does but recall me to myself in the dress of another age, the sport of new accidents. I, who am Charles, was sometime Romeo. In Hamlet, I pondered and doubted. We forget what we have been, drugged with the sleepy bowl of the present ; but when a lively chord in the soul is struck, when the windows for a moment are unbarred, the long and varied past is recovered. We recognise it all. We are no more brief, ignoble creatures ; we seize our immortality, and bind together the related parts of our secular being."

It will be seen that the elemental Fates did but partially second the faithful and wise human Providences which had watched over these young men. It may partly have been the pain suffered in the loss of his brothers which taught Emerson his peculiar horror of ill-health, which he spoke of as a ghoul, and dreaded as the hermits did any sign of a demon invading their solitude, It may also have been in part the love, wisdom, and character represented in his three Fates — Ruth, Sarah, Mary — which made him among the earliest to demand that the equality of woman with man should be represented in politics and the laws.

A BOSTON BOY. 47

IV. A Boston Boy

^HE later life of Emerson furnishes various foregrounds fi-om which his early life may be seen in ht perspective. That which I select is the great w Year's Day of 1863, which brought Pi-esident icoln's proclamation of freedom to the American ves, when Emerson read to a large assembly his 3le Boston Hymn.

The proclamation found the people assembled in 3ton and Emerson reading to them his Hymn : — ■

" The word of the Lord by night To the watchmg Pilgrims came As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame.