A VISIT TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Among the students at Harvard Law School in 1855 was William Emerson,
from Staten Island, New York, nephew of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He
asked me one day if I would like to know his uncle. I answered that
his uncle was the one man whom I most wished to meet, and, with a
word of surprise at my fervour, he offered to arrange it.
In these days his surprise may not readily be understood. Emerson
has long since taken his place among the Immortals. But at that time
his place was still uncertain. The number of his followers was
limited; or, as Carlyle said, fourteen years earlier, "Not the great
reading public, but only the small thinking public have any questions
to ask concerning him." The growth of the thinking mind toward
Emerson had, during those fourteen years, been considerable, but it
was still, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, only the Remnant to whom
Emerson was a prophet or an inspiration. To the majority he was a
riddle, and there were not a few of the solid men of Boston who
thought him a child of the Devil. The Whigism of Massachusetts had
its religious {52} side. To be a good Whig and one of the elect you
must be an orthodox Unitarian.
The days when Unitarianism was to be a fashionable religion in Boston
were still distant. Emerson was not even a Unitarian; he was an
Emersonian. He not only thought for himself, but announced his
thought from the housetops; and to think for oneself was, in those
conservative days, a dangerous pastime. He came of a race of
preachers on both sides, an academic race, six generations of them.
For some three years he was himself a preacher, but presently found
he could no longer administer the Holy Communion to his congregation,
and therefore resumed his place as a layman. The platform superseded
the pulpit. His sermons became lectures and essays. He said
himself, "My pulpit is the lyceum platform." He became a
transcendentalist, as his enemies said, a name he repudiated,
preferring to call the transcendental journal he edited _The Dial_.
It was no less an offence to Boston when Emerson's intellectual
independence led him into the company of the Abolitionists, though he
never wholly identified himself with that rebellious band. His first
series of Essays had been published as long ago as 1841, in America,
and in the same year in England with a rather patronizing Preface by
Carlyle. The second series appeared in 1840, and the _Poems_ in 1846.
In the 'fifties, therefore, Emerson's ideas had had time to become
known to those who liked them least. I fell into deep disgrace with
a Boston {53} uncle, a lawyer whose office I afterward entered, first
as student and then as practitioner, when he heard that I had read
Emerson. There was, moreover, an accomplished young lady who asked
me if it was true that I believed in Emerson, and then desired to be
told what in fact Emerson believed and taught; one of those appalling
questions which women sometimes put lightheartedly. I answered as
briefly as I could, and she retorted "I think it perfectly horrid."
And if that friendship did not come to an end it grew cold, which I
then thought a misfortune, and perhaps still do. But society was
then intolerant of anything which menaced its foundations, or was
thought to. Rightly, I suppose. Since all societies in all ages
have wished to live, and not die.
In the Law School we did not discuss Emerson; we ignored him. I can
think of no student at that time who had come under his influence.
They were busy with the law; what was a prophet to them? If he had
readers they kept their reading to themselves. The nephew himself
was more a nephew than a disciple. He told me I should find his
uncle delightful to know. Presently, to my delight, he brought me an
invitation to Concord for Saturday to Monday. We walked the thirteen
miles from Cambridge to Emerson's home, arriving in the middle of
Saturday afternoon. Photographs have long since made the house
familiar, whether in its original state, or after the fire in 1872,
and the restoration of it by his fellow townsmen of Concord, and
their {54} honourable gift of it to him. A broad gateway led to it
from the road, pine trees standing sentinel on either side. Square,
with a sloping roof, a porch in the centre, two windows on either
side, two stories in height; simple almost to bareness, devoid of
architectural pretence, but well proportioned. There was, I think,
an ell which ran back from the main building. Inside, your first
impression was of spaciousness; the hall and rooms of good size, not
very high, and furnished with an eye mainly to comfort; and an easy
staircase.
We were taken first into a parlour in the rear of the library which
filled one side of the house. Emerson's greeting was something more
than courteous--friendly, with a little element of surprise; for
though he had long been used to pilgrimages and visits from admiring
strangers, to whom his house was a Mecca, there was, perhaps, a
novelty in the coming of a law student. A pleasant light, and a
strong light, in his fine blue eyes, yet they looked at you in an
inquiring, penetrating way as if it was their duty to give an account
of you; impartial but sympathetic. You could perceive he was
predisposed to think well of people. I had seen Emerson on the
platform, but there his attitude was Hebraic: inspired and apostolic.
This was the private Emerson, the citizen of Concord, and first of
all the host; intent before all things on hospitality. The tall,
twisted figure bent toward us, the grasp of the hand was a welcome;
the strong face had in it the sunshine of kindliness; the firm lips
{55} relaxing into a smile. Delicacy went with his strength, and
with the manliness of the man was blended something I can only call
feminine, because it was exquisite. Distinction in every line and
tone; a man apart from other men. Free from all pretence; of
pretence he had no need; he was absolutely himself, and that was all
you wanted. There was at first something in his manner you might
call shyness or uncertainty, as of a nature which might be
embarrassed in unfamiliar company but would go gaily to the stake.
I suppose I am collecting the impressions of this and many later
meetings with Emerson, but I cannot distinguish between them, and it
does not matter. What was, however, peculiar to this visit was
Emerson's almost anxious sense of his duties as host; which seemed
not duties, but the inevitable expression of a loving nature. When
he heard that we had walked from Cambridge he said we must be tired
and hungry and thirsty. We were to sit down there and then, we were
to eat and drink. The philosopher bustled gently about, seeking wine
and food in the cupboards, and presently putting on the table a
decanter of Madeira and a dish of plum cake. He was solicitous that
we should partake of both; and to that end set us the example,
saying: "I have not walked thirteen miles, but I think I can manage
to keep you company at the table." Then he bethought himself that he
seldom touched wine; "and indeed I sometimes neither eat nor drink
from breakfast to supper." He began at {56} once with questionings
about the law school and our way of life and study.
Then to our rooms, plain, pleasant rooms, and then tea in the
library. Among the books he seemed more at home than anywhere else;
they had been his lifelong friends, for whom he had an affection. He
asked again about law and the law school. "A noble study," he said,
"one to which you may well devote a great part of your life and mind.
As you have chosen it for your profession I am sure you will master
it; a man must know his trade or he will do nothing. But law is not
everything. It does not perhaps make a demand upon all the resources
of the intellect, nor enlarge a man's nature." Which was almost a
paraphrase of Burke's famous sentence on the wall in his eulogy on
Mr. Grenville:
One of the first and noblest of human sciences; a science which
does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all
the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt,
except in persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize
the mind exactly in the same proportion.
Then Emerson, who seemed always to be seeking the final word, and to
condense the whole of his thought into a sentence, added:
"Keep your mind open. Read Plato."
Those half-dozen words he uttered in the resonant tones of the
platform; tones which came when he was deeply stirred and desired to
stir his audience. They vibrated through the room as {57} they
vibrated through a great hall; tones which were meant to find their
way, and did find their way, to the hearts of his hearers; an appeal
to the emotions, to the conscience, to whatever there was in these
thousands, or in the single individual, sympathetic to the speaker.
I have never forgotten them. If I have not followed Emerson's advice
as he meant it, or in full, I have followed it to a certain extent;
desultorily, inadequately; and certainly with no settled purpose to
become a Platonist, or even an Emersonian. But it had an effect and
the effect has been permanent.
One other great thinker, Pascal, has given the same counsel; not in
words, but by his perpetual example. You cannot read Pascal without
seeing that he never states one side of a case, but always two sides.
Even in matters of faith he keeps an open mind. In matters of
science it is equally open; and in all other matters. To this day,
it is disputed whether Pascal was a believer. He himself believed
that he was, but he was a pupil of Montaigne, and Montaigne's motto,
"Que sçais-je?" is inwoven in every sentence of Pascal's speculations
upon matters of faith; and upon all _les choses de l'esprit_. So I
put these two influences, Pascal and Emerson, side by side.
If this were the place, a parallel might be drawn. The Church, and
for good cause, held Pascal for an enemy; and the Puritanism of New
England, as well as orthodoxy in Old England and elsewhere, held
Emerson for an enemy; also {58} with good cause. Yet were they two
of the most devout souls of all time. Why should the churches of
France and of New England array against themselves the two finest
minds of those two communities, centuries apart? Pascal's voice
comes softly down the intervening generations--"Keep your mind
open"--and Emerson's is the clear echo of Pascal's, as Pascal's was
of Montaigne. Emerson, too, sat for a time at the feet of Montaigne,
chose him as one of his "Representative Men," and said of Montaigne's
Essays: "It seems to me as if I had myself written the book in some
former life." Pascal had already said: "Ce n'est pas dans Montaigne
mais dans moi que je trouve tout ce que j'y vois."
Emerson had other stimulating suggestions ready; his talk overflowed
with them, yet was never didactic. It was as if the suggestions
presented themselves first to him and then to you; as if he shared
his thoughts with you; so far was he from the method of the pulpit.
Some errand called him away. He took down a volume and put it into
my hand, saying: "Some day I hope you will learn to value this
writer. He has much to say, and he says it in almost the best
English of his century. He is a Greek born out of due time"--a
remark he has somewhere made about Winckelmann. It was Landor; a
volume of the _Imaginary Conversations_. I read a dialogue there and
then. I have read him ever since. I do not suppose anybody cares
what I have read or not read. But I wish to give you Emerson's {59}
opinion; the advice he thought best for a boy studying law; and the
effect of it upon the boy.
For he would not talk of what he thought unsuited to us two, or to
me. In a reminiscence or two of his tour in England in 1846 or 1847
he mentioned a visit to Coleridge. I had read the _Table Talk_ and
the _Biographia Literaria_, and I asked Emerson to tell me what he
and Coleridge had discussed. "No," he said, "it would not interest
you." In the same way next morning when he took me to Walden through
the woods, he began upon trees and squirrels and other forest-lore;
then stopped and asked: "But do you know about trees and animals? Do
they interest you?" I had to confess they did not; upon which he
began again on books and matters of literature; and upon Thoreau. Of
Thoreau he did not seem to care to say very much. But he showed me
the lake, and where Thoreau lived, and what he related of him, though
his appreciation was critical, was touched with the kindness habitual
to him. I had read the _Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers_--or
perhaps read it later--and _Walden_, which is thinner, and I had
heard, then or since, that some of Thoreau's admirers accused Emerson
of borrowing from him. But there was not much to borrow; nor, for
Emerson, anything. The friendship between the two men was close and
lasted long, but if there were any question of borrowing or lending
in the books of either, the debt was not on Emerson's side.
Now and then as we walked in the forest, or {60} through the streets,
we met a farmer or other resident of Concord, and it was pleasant to
see their greetings to their great townsman. On the heights he trod
no other set foot, but in the daily business and intercourse of life
he was each man's friend, and each was his. One of them told me--it
was Rockwood Hoar, afterward Judge of the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts and United States Attorney-General--that half the
affairs of Concord were on Emerson's shoulders. He was the chosen
adviser, peacemaker, arbitrator between these hard-headed, practical
people of Concord; the man to whom they went with their troubles; the
man whose decision in difficult disputes was accepted without demur.
"I don't suppose," said Mr. Hoar, "that Emerson ever opened a law
book or the Revised Statutes. But he had a native shrewdness, an eye
for the points of a case, a sense of equity, and a willingness to
take pains which made him an ideal referee." I once told an eminent
Whig who had been abusing Emerson as a mere visionary, that his
neighbours, who knew him best, trusted him in this way. "They are
welcome to him," growled the eminent Whig.
He also was welcome to them. He was the possession and pride of
Concord; beloved by the people among whom he lived his life. I
suppose his lines about the embattled farmers who fired the shot
heard round the world, are better known and have thrilled more hearts
than any others he ever wrote. They seemed to be always on {61}
Concord lips. Yes, but Emerson himself had fired another shot heard
round the world; or round so much of it as speaks the English, or
Anglo-American, tongue. So when misfortune befell him and his house
was half burnt, and his health failed, they besought him to go abroad
for rest; and while he was gone they rebuilt his house for him in the
exact similitude of the old. He was gone a year, all but two months,
with his daughter Ellen, the true child of her father and his most
faithful and helpful friend. When Emerson returned, Concord turned
out to greet him, built a triumphal arch beneath which he had,
perhaps reluctantly, to pass; and so reinstalled him in his old-new
home.
This, of course, was long after the time of which I am writing; in
1872-3. But when he came to England, he knew that his friends in
Concord were rebuilding his house. He could not speak of it without
emotion. His state of health was such that emotion was hurtful to
him, and his daughter used to ask us not to refer to the house. But
whether we did or not, Emerson brooded over it, and was better and
happier in the thought of his friends' friendship for him.
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