CONCORD, January 24, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right. I
had not spoken of writing to you, but as you say you are about to
write to me when you get my letter, I make haste on my part in order
to get yours the sooner. I don't well know what to say to earn the
forthcoming epistle, unless that Edith takes rapid strides in the arts
and sciences--or music and natural history--as well as over the
carpet; that she says "papa" less and less abstractedly every day,
looking in _my_ face,--which may sound like a _Ranz des Vaches_ to
yourself. And Ellen declares every morning that "papa _may_ come home
to-night;" and by and by it will have changed to such positive
statement as that "papa came home _larks_ night."
Elizabeth Hoar still flits about these clearings, and I meet her here
and there, and in all houses but her own, but as if I were not the
less of her family for all that. I have made slight acquaintance also
with one Mrs. Lidian Emerson, who almost persuades me to be a
Christian, but I fear I as often lapse into heathenism. Mr.
O'Sullivan[19] was here three days. I met him at the Atheneum
[Concord], and went to Hawthorne's [at the Old Manse] to tea with him.
He expressed a great deal of interest in your poems, and wished me to
give him a list of them, which I did; he saying he did not know but he
should notice them. He is a rather puny-looking man, and did not
strike me. We had nothing to say to one another, and therefore we said
a great deal! He, however, made a point of asking me to write for his
Review, which I shall be glad to do. He is, at any rate, one of the
not-bad, but does not by any means take you by storm,--no, nor by
calm, which is the best way. He expects to see you in New York. After
tea I carried him and Hawthorne to the Lyceum.
Mr. Alcott has not altered much since you left. I think you will find
him much the same sort of person. With Mr. Lane I have had one regular
chat _à la_ George Minott, which of course was greatly to our mutual
grati- and edification; and, as two or three as regular conversations
have taken place since, I fear there may have been a precession of the
equinoxes. Mr. Wright, according to the last accounts, is in Lynn,
with uncertain aims and prospects,--maturing slowly, perhaps, as
indeed are all of us. I suppose they have told you how near Mr. Alcott
went to the jail, but I can add a good anecdote to the rest. When
Staples came to collect Mrs. Ward's taxes, my sister Helen asked him
what he thought Mr. Alcott meant,--what his idea was,--and he
answered, "I vum, I believe it was nothing but principle, for I never
heerd a man talk honester."
There was a lecture on Peace by a Mr. Spear (ought he not to be beaten
into a plowshare?), the same evening, and, as the gentlemen, Lane and
Alcott, dined at our house while the matter was in suspense,--that is,
while the constable was waiting for his receipt from the jailer,--we
there settled it that we, that is, Lane and myself, perhaps, should
agitate the State while Winkelried lay in durance. But when, over the
audience, I saw our hero's head moving in the free air of the
Universalist church, my fire all went out, and the State was safe as
far as I was concerned. But Lane, it seems, had cogitated and even
written on the matter, in the afternoon, and so, out of courtesy,
taking his point of departure from the Spear-man's lecture, he drove
gracefully _in medias res_, and gave the affair a very good setting
out; but, to spoil all, our martyr very characteristically, but, as
artists would say, in bad taste, brought up the rear with a "My
Prisons," which made us forget Silvio Pellico himself.
Mr. Lane wishes me to ask you to see if there is anything for him in
the New York office, and pay the charges. Will you tell me what to do
with Mr. [Theodore] Parker, who was to lecture February 15th? Mrs.
Emerson says my letter is written instead of one from her.
At the end of this strange letter I will not write--what alone I had
to say--to thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long kindness to me. It
would be more ungrateful than my constant thought. I have been your
pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free as under the sky.
It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have
sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it,--I who have
failed to render even those slight services of the _hand_ which would
have been for a sign at least; and, by the fault of my nature, have
failed of many better and higher services. But I will not trouble you
with this, but for once thank you as well as Heaven.
Your friend, H. D. T.
Mrs. Lidian Emerson, the wife of R. W. Emerson, and her two daughters,
Ellen and Edith, are named in this first letter, and will be
frequently mentioned in the correspondence. At this date, Edith, now
Mrs. W. H. Forbes, was fourteen months old. Mr. Emerson's mother,
Madam Ruth Emerson, was also one of the household, which had for a
little more than seven years occupied the well-known house under the
trees, east of the village.