RALPH WALDO EMERSON
1803-1882
Walking the streets of Boston, in the days when old-fashioned
gambrel-roofed houses and gardens filled the space now occupied by
dingy warehouses, might be seen a serious-eyed boy who, whether at
work or at play, seemed always to his companions to live in a world
a little different from their own. This was not the dream-world so
familiar to childhood, but another which few children enter, and those
only who seem destined to be teachers of their race. One enters this
world just as the world of day-dreams is entered, by forgetting the
real world for a time and letting the mind think what thoughts it
will. In this world Milton spent many long hours when a child, and
Bunyan made immortal in literature the memory of these dreams of
youth. Never any thought of the real world enters this place, whose
visitors see but one thing, a vision of the soul as it journeys
through life. To Bunyan this seemed but a journey over dangerous
roads, through lonely valleys, and over steep mountain sides;
to Milton it seemed a war between good and evil; to this little
New-England boy it seemed but a vision of duty bravely accomplished,
and in this he was true to the instincts of that Puritan race to which
he belonged. The boy's father was the Rev. William Emerson, pastor of
the First Church in Boston, who had died when this son, Ralph Waldo,
was in his ninth year; but for three years longer the family continued
to reside in the quaint old parsonage, in which Emerson had been born.
The father had left his family so poor that the congregation of the
First Church voted an annuity of five hundred dollars to the widow for
seven years, and many were the straits the little family was put to
in order to eke out a comfortable living. The one ambition was to have
the three boys educated. An aunt who lived in the family declared
that they were born to be educated, and that it must be brought about
somehow. The mother took boarders, and the two eldest boys, Ralph and
Edward, helped do the housework. In a little letter written to his
aunt, in his tenth year, Ralph mentions that he rose before six in the
morning in order to help his brother make the fire and set the table
for prayers before calling his mother--so early did the child realize
that he must be the burden-sharer of the family. Poverty there was,
but also much happiness in the old parsonage, whose dooryard of trees
and shrubs, joined on to the neighboring gardens, made a pleasant
outlook into the world. When school work was over, and household duty
disposed of, very often the brothers would retire to their own room
and there find their own peculiar joy in reading tales of Plutarch,
reciting poetry, and declaiming some favorite piece, for solitude was
loved by all, and the great authors of the world were well studied by
these boys, whose bedchamber was so cold that Plato or Cicero could
only be indulged in when the reader was wrapped so closely in his
cloak that Emerson afterward remarked, the smell of woollen was
forever afterward associated with the Greek classics. Ralph attended
the Latin Grammar School, and had private lessons besides in
writing, which he seems to have acquired with difficulty, one of his
school-fellows telling long afterward how his tongue moved up and down
as the pen laboriously traversed the page, and how on one occasion he
even played truant to avoid the dreaded task, for which misdemeanor
he was promptly punished by a diet of bread and water. It was at this
period that he wrote verses on the War of 1812, and began an epic poem
which one of his school friends illustrated. Such skill did he attain
in verse-making that his efforts were delivered on exhibition days,
being rendered with such impressiveness by the young author that his
mates considered nothing could be finer.
From the Latin school Emerson passed to Harvard in his fifteenth year,
entering as "President's Freshman," a post which brought with it a
certain annual sum and a remission of fees in exchange for various
duties, such as summoning unruly students to the president, announcing
the orders of the faculty, and serving as waiter at commons.
At college Emerson was noted as a student more familiar with general
literature than with the college text-books, and he was an ardent
member of a little book club which met to read and discuss current
literature, the book or magazine under discussion being generally
bought by the member who had the most pocket-money at the time. But
in spite of a dislike for routine study, Emerson was graduated with
considerable honor, and almost immediately afterward set about the
business of school-teaching.
But Emerson was not able to take kindly to teaching, and in his
twenty-first year began preparations to enter the ministry. These were
interrupted for a while by a trip South in search of health, but he
was finally able to accept a position as assistant minister at the
Second Church. A year or two later he was again obliged to leave his
work and go abroad for his health. After he returned home he decided
to leave the ministry, and he began that series of lectures which
speedily made him famous and which have determined his place in
American literature.
From this time Emerson began to be recognized as one of the
thought-leaders of his age. To him literature appealed as a means
of teaching those spiritual lessons that brace the soul to brave
endurance. While Hawthorne was living in the world of romance, Poe
and Lowell creating American poetry, and Bancroft and Motley placing
American historical prose on the highest level, Emerson was throwing
his genius into the form of moral essays for the guidance of conduct.
To him had been revealed in all its purity that vision of the perfect
life which had been the inspiration of his Puritan ancestors. And
with the vision had come that gift of expression which enabled him to
preserve it in the noblest literary form. These essays embrace every
variety of subject, for, to a philosopher like Emerson every form of
life and every object of nature represented some picture of the soul.
When he devoted himself to this task he followed a true light, for he
became and remains to many the inspiration of his age, the American
writer above all others whose thought has moulded the souls of men.
Much of Emerson's work found form in verse of noble vein, for he was
a poet as well as philosopher. He also was connected with one or two
magazines, and became one of the most popular of American lecturers;
with the exception of several visits to Europe and the time given
to his lecturing and other short trips, Emerson spent his life at
Concord, Mass. To this place came annually, in his later years, the
most gifted of his followers, to conduct what was known as the Concord
School of Philosophy. Throughout his whole life Emerson preserved
that serenity of soul which is the treasure of such spiritually gifted
natures.
He died at Concord in 1882, and was buried in the village cemetery,
which he had consecrated thirty years before.