Lucy Larcom's labor of love

I find that people are imagining I have been very industrious this winter, by the way they talk about my new book, which they suppose is something original. I don't want to give wrong impressions in that way, as the selections are more valuable on their own account than mine.

So wrote Lucy Larcom to publisher James T. Fields from Beverly, Massachusetts on May 20, 1866. The book in question was already receiving a little hype, though not yet officially announced. Titled Breathings of the Better Life when published the next year, it was not a book written by Larcom, but edited by her. The book compiled several prose sketches and poems, including several anonymous works and a few traditional hymns. All the selections follow a theme: finding inspiration in saints and Biblical quotes to apply to contemporary life. As Larcom described it, these are "voices that cannot fail to inspire the traveller struggling upward to a better life." Still, she told Fields, "It has been altogether a labor of love with me."

In fact, Larcom wanted to remove herself from the book as much as possible in the hopes of letting the content speak for itself. In her letter to Fields, she asked her name by listed only as "Miss Larcom" — or, better still, even less obtrusively as "L. L." She also emphasized to Fields that the book had to have the lowest cover price possible. Though the final publication did include her full name, the preface in the book carefully ascribed its purpose: an inexpensive book for those who did not have a large library, in a portable size that could be taken to "the workshop, the camp, or the sick-room," and serve like "the presence of a friend." Larcom goes on:

The soul, cramped among the petty vexations of earth, needs to keep its windows constantly open to the invigorating air of large and free ideas: and what thought is so grand as that of an ever-present God, in whom all that is vital in humanity breathes and grows? The want of every human being is a wider expansion to receive from Him, and to give of His; fuller inspirations and outbreathings of that Spirit by which man is created anew in Him, a living soul.

Religion is life inspired by Heavenly Love; and life is something fresh and cheerful and vigorous. To forget self, to keep the heart buoyant with the thought of God, and to pour forth this continual influx of spiritual health heavenward in praise, and earthward in streams of blessing, — this is the essence of human, saintly, and angelic joy; the genuine Christ-life, the one life of the saved, on earth or in heaven.

The book includes both prose and poetry. Few of the listings include the full name of the author, but some are recognizable: Edmund Hamilton Sears, Henry Ward Beecher, and Larcom's friend John Greenleaf Whittier. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former minister, was represented by this excerpt from his long poem "Threnody":

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show,—
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned, —
Saying, "What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again."

There was no club in the strict sense

It all began on September 8, 1836, in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Four men — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Putnam, and George Ripley — discussed the formation of a new club which would meet officially for the first time 11 days later. It was initially known as "Hedge's Club," because they met only when Hedge could make the trip all the way from Maine to Massachusetts; it soon came to be known as the "Transcendental Club."

The beginnings of transcendentalism were rooted in this meeting (as well as Emerson's essay "Nature" published in the same month). Hedge himself admitted, "there was no club in the strict sense... only occasional meetings of like-minded men and women." Their like-mindedness, however, was equally questionable. These men and women gathered to discuss important issues of the day as well as more metaphysical or theological questions. The four original meeting participants each played their own role:
Emerson became the figurehead of the group and a sort of spokesperson. He became well-known as a public lecturer, traveling around the country promoting his ideas (and his questions). Though not all became followers of the philosophy, Emerson would count hundreds in attendance at his public readings. He also assisted in the creation of The Dial, the official journal of the movement.

Frederic Henry Hedge (who only occasionally used a "k" in his first name and is pictured above) used his scholarship and knowledge of German writings to influence the group's thinking. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School (like Emerson), he feared the slow development of American theology but joined the movement because he felt "there was a promise in the air of a new era of intellectual life." Even so, he drifted away from the group by the end of the 1840s, and refused to contribute to the The Dial for fearing of being associated with them in print.

George Ripley, who hosted the group's first official meeting, took their philosophical ideas and put them into practice as the founder of the communal living experiment Brook Farm. He also edited a collection of translations called Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature meant to show the breadth of interest in the group. After Brook Farm's dissolution, he led a more mundane life as a quiet literary critic in New York.

George Putnam, a Unitarian minister in Roxbury, Massachusetts, did not last long as a Transcendentalist. In fact, nearly a half a century later, Hedge dismissed him in a letter outlining the group's origins as someone "who so soon withdrew from the connection that 'tis not worth the while to mention his name."

What's most important about understanding Transcendentalism (an admittedly nebulous concept and movement) is that it began as a theological group — not as a literary movement. Most of its members were or had been religious leaders or religious thinkers (though there were exceptions).

Emerson: we will speak our own minds

Delivered as an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College on August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson's speech "The American Scholar" was hailed almost immediately as a turning point in American cultural history. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who witnessed Emerson's speech that day, called it the "intellectual" Declaration of Independence (others, incidentally, were not as impressed right away).

Emerson begins by noting the group is made of lovers of letters, who seldom have time to write. The "sluggard intellect" of the continent has been hampered, but he foresees that poetry and other intellectual pursuits will be revived and lead the country into a new age. Put into categories like "farmer," men lose the sense that they are men. In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. But, he says, "In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking."

The speech details the education of the scholar as in three parts: nature, books, and action. He also breaks down the duties he expects of the American scholar. Even if he is shunned from society and becomes stricken with poverty and solitude, Emerson insists his role is too important:

He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, — this he shall hear and promulgate.

To be imaginative is a part of being intellectual, Emerson says, and he demands a new importance be granted to individuals as part of the larger whole. Further, he says that intellectualism in this country must stay true to America: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe." The assumption is that the American mind is too tame, timid, or imitative. With the next generation of intellectuals before him, Emerson predicts, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds."

Alcott and Fuller: some conversation

On August 2, 1836, A. Bronson Alcott recorded in his journal that Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him in Boston. The two then went to Concord "to pass the day." At Emerson's house, Alcott noted, "I met Margaret Fuller (I had seen her once before this), and had some conversation with her about taking Miss [Elizabeth Palmer] Peabody's place in my school."

The school Alcott referenced was the Temple School, founded in Boston in 1834. With the help of Peabody, his assistant, he practiced an unconventional method of education using conversation with students to determine truth. He also often focused on the Gospel, which became controversial. Peabody published a book, Record of a School, in 1835 expounding on their methods. By the time their second book on the school was published, Alcott and Peabody had a falling out, and Alcott was searching for a replacement.

Fuller was a logical choice for many reasons, not merely her experience as a teacher. She also needed the money, as her father had died the previous year, leaving the family in debt. Alcott was quite impressed by her, elsewhere noting, "she strikes me as having the rarest good sense and discretion." At the Temple School, no doubt Fuller utilized her natural ability for conversation — a skill she would further develop by leading informal educational and philosophical gatherings among women in Boston which she called "Conversations."

By 1837, however, Fuller left Alcott's school and moved to Providence, Rhode Island. The Temple School closed amid the added controversy of Alcott's acceptance of an African-American student. Fuller later served as editor of The Dial and published many of Alcott's (comically absurd) "Orphic Sayings." Alcott's contributions became the most-criticized aspect of the journal.

Bread that nourished the brain and the heart

Writing to a friend on May 2, 1848, Henry David Thoreau theorized what humanity needs to sustain itself:

"We must have our bread." But what is our bread? Is it baker's bread? Methinks it should be very home-made bread... Man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow... I have tasted but little bread in my life... Of bread that nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any.

Bread, Thoreau says, varies based on the person: a laborer and a scholar sustain themselves on different types of bread. In the letter, he also tells his friend he has moved:

I do not write this time at my hut in the woods. I am at present living with Mrs. [Lidian] Emerson, whose house is an old home of mine, for company during Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson's absence.

Thoreau first moved into Bush, as the Emerson family called the home, in 1841. There, he served as a handyman and companion to the Emerson children. After his two years at Walden Pond, as early as September 1847, he moved back and stayed through July 1848 (with the exception of that night he spent in jail). During that period, Ralph Waldo Emerson toured through Europe, mostly England, Scotland, and Ireland. Thoreau and Lidian Emerson built a particularly close friendship during this time. While in Europe, Mr. Emerson wrote to his friend Thoreau: "It is a pity that you should not see this England, with its indescribable material superiorities of every kind." Upon his return, Thoreau found Emerson a changed man and soon their friendship dissolved. Thoreau referred to their friendship as a cherished flower, "till one day my friend treated it as a weed."

*This letter is collected in Letters to a Spiritual Seeker (2005) edited by Bradley P. Dean. See also The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau (1995).

Thoreau: Nature does not recognize it

"I begin my letter with the strange sad news that John Thoreau has this afternoon left this world," wrote Lidian Emerson, wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson on January 11, 1842. "He died of lockjaw occasioned by a slight cut on his thumb." John, age 27 at the time, was the older brother of Henry David Thoreau. The two shared a love of the outdoors and spent a week together traveling along the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (the younger Thoreau later wrote about it while living at Walden Pond).

John's lockjaw came from accidentally cutting himself on New Year's Day. The cut, bandaged without initial concern, soon became infected. His death within ten days was anything but peaceful: he suffered violent muscle spasms and his body stiffened in painfully difficult positions. It is said that he finally died in the arms of his younger brother, who soon developed what he called "sympathetic lockjaw" and showed similar symptoms to his brother, despite never suffering any cut. "It is strange — unaccountable," Emerson wrote in a letter. Just as Henry recovered, the Emersons' son Waldo died of scarlet fever.

Though observers called him calm, Henry David Thoreau stopped recording in his journal for a time and temporarily lost interest in the natural world he loved so much. "How plain that death is only the phenomenon of the invidividual or class," he mused. "Nature does not recognize it, she finds her own again under new forms without loss." Soon, however, the death of his brother inspired him to embrace his own life more.

The death of friends should inspire us as much as their lives. If they are great and rich enough they will leave consolation to the mourners before the expenses of the funerals. It will not be hard to part with any worth, because it is worthy. How can any good depart? It does not go and come, but we. Shall we wait for it? Is it slower than we?

This journal entry was later re-worked into a passage from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Here, Thoreau concluded, "our Friends have no place in the graveyard."

*For this post, I must acknowledge Jeffrey S. Cramer's I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (2007) and Robert Sullivan's The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant (2009).

John Greenleaf Whittier's 70th birthday

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in the family homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. As was traditional in the 19th century, his 70th birthday party in 1877 was a major event — in more ways than one.

The party was thrown by the Atlantic Monthly at Boston's Brunswick Hotel. Guests included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, Richard Henry Stoddard, and about fifty others. Speeches were presented in Whittier's honor, and Oliver Wendell Holmes presented a poem. Perhaps out of place among these New England literary giants was Mark Twain — who ended up stealing the show.

Twain, invited by his friend and Atlantic editor William Dean Howells, presented a speech intended to be humorous. He described a man he met while traveling who had recently hosted Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow. According to Twain, the man referred to Emerson as "a seedy little bit of a chap," while Holmes was "as fat as a balloon... and had double chins all the way down to his stomach," while Longfellow had "cropped and bristly" hair "as if he had a wig made of hair brushes." The three men start quoting obscure passages of poetry to the man, who clearly does not understand.

The man tells Twain that he now plans to move, saying, "I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." Twain responds by telling him they must not have been the true "gracious singers" but imposters. When the newspapers reported the speech as an "attack," Twain sent letters of apology to Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow and Whittier. Longfellow responded that the newspapers were responsible for the "mischief" and that everyone else recognized the "bit of humor." Longfellow concluded: "It was a very pleasant dinner, and I think Whittier enjoyed it very much." No response from Whittier regarding Twain's speech is known.

Dana and a "select company"

In his journal entry for December 16, 1854, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. noted his dinner plans. The author of Two Years Before the Mast, a novel published in 1840, was among a "select company" that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, A. Bronson Alcott, and a young Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. Presumably with restraint, he concluded, "It was very agreeable."

Of Emerson, Dana recorded he was "a gentleman, never bores or preaches or dictates... and has even skill and tact in managing his conversation." He said the same of Alcott and noted, "it is quite surprising to see these transcendentalists appearing well as men of the world."

Perhaps more interesting, however, is that all these gentlemen were anti-slavery men. Dana himself had only recently defended the fugitive Anthony Burns in a trial meant to challenge the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Dana also paired with Robert Morris, an African-American lawyer; their efforts, however, were unsuccessful.

Emerson was a strong voice against slavery in the 1850s through his speeches; Lowell used his pen. For a short time, he edited an apolitionist newspaper in Pennsylvania but focused his poetic voice on the cause in poems like "The Present Crisis" and "On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves Near Washington." Alcott hosted at least one man escaped from enslavement in his Concord home years earlier and was part of a crowd that attempted to free Anthony Burns from a Boston courthouse. Dana referred to the young Sanborn, then a Harvard student, as "clever and promising." Only a few years later, Sanborn funded the radical abolitionist John Brown in his raid on Harper's Ferry as a member of the so-called "Secret Six."

We set down our Dial on the earth

The members of the Transcendental Club all supported the establishment of a new journal for their cause; as Ralph Waldo Emerson called it, "an organ of our own, wherein we can have entire freedom; in which the purest thoughts and tastes may be represented." But who would run it? Bronson Alcott — a vocal supporter for "a free Journal of the soul" — was not an option, nor was Frederick Henry Hedge, then living too far away in Maine. George Ripley had his own projects (though he would serve as business manger for The Dial). Emerson himself refused, writing that "we all wish it to be, but do not wish to be in any way personally responsible for it."

On October 20, 1839, the role of first editor of The Dial was accepted by Margaret Fuller. She wrote in her journal: "It is now proposed that I should conduct a magazine which would afford me space and occasion for every thing I may wish to do." Work began a couple months later; its first issue was in print by April 1840. Its introduction, likely a combined effort by Fuller and Emerson, read:

And so with diligent hands and good intent we set down our Dial on the earth. We wish it may resemble that instrument in its celebrated happiness, that of measuring no hours but those of sunshine. Let it be one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics. Or to abide by our chosen image, let it be such a Dial, not as the dead face of a clock... but rather such a Dial as is the Garden itself, in whose leaves and flowers the suddenly awakened sleeper is instantly apprised not what part of dead time, but what state of life and growth is now arrived and arriving.

Though she would use the magazine as an outlet for her own reform ideas (including her feminist essay "The Great Lawsuit"), Fuller was instantly frustrated with her editorial duties. For one, her promised salary of $200 was likely never paid. Hedge, one of the strongest supporters of the idea of a journal, suddenly refused to contribute, worrying about his reputation. Alcott's contributions, his "Orphic Sayings," were incoherent and embarrassing. Orestes Brownson called the journal "vague" and "aerial," lacking focus in the real world. Worse, despite his refusal to be titled as editor, Emerson became a micro-manager. Fuller left the magazine two years later.

*A solid source for the information in today's entry is the first volume of Charles Capper's monumental Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life.

Sleepy Hollow: so fitly named

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts was a smaller version of Mount Auburn Cemetery in nearby Cambridge. The ground was consecrated on September 29, 1855 in an afternoon ceremony.

The day began with an opening prayer, followed by the singing of an ode by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. One of Concord's most well-known names, Ralph Waldo Emerson also gave a speech in which he notes that "the whole life of man... was ponderously determined on death." He then gave a short history of the way people dispose of the dead, with the landscape cemetery movement the latest trend.

A simultaneous movement has in a hundred cities and towns, in this country, selected some convenient piece of undulating ground, with pleasant woods and waters; every family chooses its own clump of trees; and we lay the corpse in these leafy colonnades... In all the multitude of woodlands and hillsides, which, within a few years, have been laid out with a similar design, I have not known one so fitly named. Sleepy Hollow. In this quiet valley, as in the palm of Nature's hand, we shall sleep well, when we have finished our day.

Emerson also acknowledged that the cemetery played two roles: a final resting-place for the dead, as well as a place to benefit the living. After Emerson's speech, local poet William Ellery Channing contributed an original poem, "Sleepy Hollow" (in part):

No abbeys gloom, no dark cathedral stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pine delights, the aspen droops
Along the modest pathways—and those fair,
Pale asters of the season spread their plumes
Around this field, fit garden for our tombs.

Here shalt thou pause to hear the funeral bell
Slow stealing o'er thy heart in this calm place;
Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell,
But in its kind and supplicating grace
It says: "Go, Pilgrim, on thy march! be more
Friend to the friendless than thou wast before..."

After their respective deaths, Channing, Sanborn, Emerson (and his family) were buried at Sleepy Hollow, along with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Daniel Chester French, Bronson and Louisa May Alcott and other members of the Alcott clan (just to name a few).

The pleasures of getting lost in the woods

Margaret Fuller was visiting Concord, Massachusetts, staying at the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She paid a visit to Nathaniel Hawthorne, recently married to Sophia Peabody, at what is now called The Old Manse. Fuller later noted that, while the two were walking together, they paused to look at the moon: "H[awthorne] said he should be much more willing to die than two months ago, for he had had some real possession in life, but still he never wished to leave this earth: it was beautiful enough." She accidentally left a book at Hawthorne's house, however.

The next day, August 21, 1842, she went to retrieve her book (though she got sidetracked). Hawthorne had already returned it to Emerson's house by then. Returning home, he came upon Fuller herself, sitting in Sleepy Hollow (not yet a cemetery). Despite Hawthorne's characteristic shyness and general avoidance of other people, he decided to join her.

They talked "about Autumn," Hawthorne recorded, "and about the pleasures of getting lost in the woods... and about other matters of high and low philosophy." Another voice interrupted them, and Emerson emerged from the trees. The conversation did not continue for too long after. "It being now nearly six o'clock, we separated," wrote Hawthorne, "Mr. Emerson and Margaret towards his house and I towards mine." Fuller's version of the day: "What a happy, happy day... all clear light. I cannot write about it."

The incident is certainly an obvious exception to Hawthorne's reclusive reputation. Fuller, renowned for her natural ability for conversation, must have been equally impressed by Hawthorne (who, you'll note, referred to her by her first name). It has been suggested that Hawthorne based the character of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter at least partially on Fuller; a character in The Blithedale Romance is more obviously inspired by her. In fact, Fuller is mentioned in that 1852 novel:

"Priscilla," I inquired, "did you ever see Miss Margaret Fuller?"
"No," she answered.
"Because," said I, "you reminded me of her, just now..."

The author's wife, Sophia, was a participant in Fuller's "Conversations" (held at the bookstore owned by her sister Elizabeth Peabody; the Hawthornes were married in the same place) and was strongly impressed by her. In fact, Hawthorne got a bit jealous that his "Dove" (as he called his wife) was listening to Fuller more than himself: "Would that Miss Margaret Fuller might lose her tongue! — or my Dove her ears."

Speaking of wives, Emerson's wife Lidian grew to be concerned over how much time her husband spent with Fuller. She burst into tears at one point while hosting Fuller at the house. Fuller calmed her down by assuring her: "He has affection for me, but it is because I quicken his intellect."

*Much of the information from this post comes from Hawthorne in Concord by Philip McFarland and Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller by Joan Von Mehren.

Brownson: But we give it up

The literary societies at Dartmouth College gathered to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson speak on July 24, 1838, about a year after Emerson's "Divinity School Address" at Harvard. "Literary Ethics," as the speech was titled, was soon published in pamphlet form, eliciting a critical response from fellow Transcendentalist Orestes Brownson (who, famously, later converted to Catholicism).

Brownson begins his review by attempting to summarize the speech. Realizing he was failing due to Emerson's own meandering thoughts, his review turns to parody. His attempt at summary ends abruptly:

But we give it up. We cannot analyze one of Mr. Emerson's discourses. He hardly ever has a leading thought, to which all the parts of his discourse are subordinate, which is clearly stated, systematically drawn out, and logically enforced. He is a poet rather than a philosopher —  and not always true even to the laws of poetry.

Emerson's speech was really about the role of the scholar in society. He suggests a form of asceticism or personal sacrifice. He says, for example, a "lust of display" is "fatal to the man of letters." And, as always, Emerson says humankind has not progressed as far as it should intellectually. He concludes:

Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another's dogmatism... Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not takeaway your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

*The above image of Brownson depicts him in his later years, as painted by George P. A. Healey in 1863. The original is in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian.

Fuller: that the anguish may be brief

Their trip was full of problems from the beginning. To save money, the family chose to leave Europe in a merchant freighter, the Elizabeth, with a crew accustomed to transporting cargo, not people. First delayed by rain, the ship was also delayed by an outbreak of smallpox which claimed the life of the captain, who was replaced by an inexperienced first mate. Then, within 100 yards of the shore of Fire Island, New York, the Elizabeth hit a sandbar and was heavily damaged. It was July 19, 1850, about 3:30 or 4:00 a.m.

It was there that, within sight of shore, the critic/feminist/reformer/editor/travel writer Margaret Fuller died, along with her husband Giovanni Ossoli and baby Angelino. Most of the crew survived and onlookers on shore waited patiently for cargo from the ship to arrive on shore for their plundering. The bodies of Margaret Fuller and her husband were never found, despite a search by both William Henry Channing and Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was sent by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who years earlier hand-picked Fuller as the first editor of The Dial, the official journal of the Transcendentalists. Thoreau wrote back what some of the witnesses saw of the ship as it broke apart. He also noted how little of the family's belongings were found: "the broken desk... a large black leather trunk... a carpetbag... and one of his shoes are all the Ossoli effects known to have been found." The wreck of the Elizabeth would be sold for scrap the day he wrote the letter.

Fuller had ominous premonitions about her trip. She wrote at the time about "praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves." In fact, Angelino contracted smallpox at the same time as the Elizabeth's captain. If the boy did die, however, she asked that the whole family "may go together, and that the anguish may be brief." While delayed by rain, Fuller wrote to her mother back in Massachusetts, who she hadn't seen after a few years living in Europe (primarily Italy):

Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty.... I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise, here and hereafter, my dearest mother, [I am] your loving child, Margaret.

Dall: When friendship is a passion

Caroline Healey Dall was one of the few women to gain any influence in the circle of mostly-male Transcendentalists. She was involved with several reform movements, particularly abolitionism and women's rights. In 1860, for example, she held a women's rights meeting in Boston that included James Freeman Clarke, Harriet Tubman, and others. Historians appreciate Dall particularly because of the detailed journals she kept for several decades.

Dall took an interest in fellow female Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller and attended her "Conversations" in Boston in 1841. She found the older woman "more agreeable — modest — than I anticipated." Dall later wrote a biography of Fuller. Some suggested Dall had picked up where Fuller left off but, in her modesty, Dall disagreed. "How unfit I am to be named with Margaret," she wrote, "but it was pleasant to find one person, inclined to throw her mantle over me — and it brought a tear of strong resolve to my cheek."

On June 3, 1841, Miss Healey (she did not marry Charles Henry Appleton Dall until 1844) wrote in her journal about Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (she had seen him speak as early as when she was 12 years old). She noted her impression:

That on Compensation is the finest thing upon the subject... but the views advanced in that upon self reliance — are extravagant and unsafe. When I read the essay upon Friendship, I was moved to find a man — who had gone through the world — feeling — like a girl — under the first development of her passions — for there is a time when friendship is a passion.

Dall noted that she had not yet read the essay "Love," but noted its first sentence  — "Each soul is a celestial Venus to every other soul" — as "peculiar." A male friend of hers noted that "if Mr Emerson had ever seen his soul" he would not have written that.

Bicentennial of William Henry Channing

William Henry Channing is probably not as well-known as his uncle, one of the foremost Unitarian preachers, or even as famous as his brother, the much-maligned poet Ellery Channing. W. H. Channing was born 200 years ago today on May 25, 1810.

After graduating from Harvard Divinity School, Channing was ordained at a church in Cincinnati. While there, he succeeded his colleague James Freeman Clarke as editor of the Western Messenger. Already floating in the circle of Transcendentalists, Channing had previously been asked by Orestes Brownson to review an essay called "The American Scholar" by one Ralph Waldo Emerson (who shares his birthday). Channing concluded that Emerson's points were "hinted, without the progressive reasonings through which he was led to them." (He later was more openly laudatory; in a private letter in 1842, he writes of Emerson's "fineness of touch about all he does, and such a genuine appreciation of everything! ...I thank Heaven I was born in the same day with him.")

Later, while in New York, Channing became interested in the Associationist movement, the same reform ideas that inspired Brook Farm, and issued a journal, The Present, to promote it. His theories eventually evolved into, what he called, "Christian Union," the idea that a fervent faith among the masses could fix society's problems and lead to greater equality. More than just a theory, Channing put his beliefs into practice, emphasizing that Christians were obligated to work for the good of neglected or abused segments of the population. By 1847, he termed it "Church of Humanity."

One of those inspired by Channing was fellow obscure Transcendentalist Christopher Pearse Cranch. As Cranch later recalled, "He always took an intense interest in the spiritual elevation of the people, but no less in establishing a high standard of morality for the cultured classes." Cranch noted Channing's opposition to slavery, the Mexican War, the annexation of Texas. "It is difficult to describe a man so perfect... He held an ideal standard in everything," he wrote.

Channing was also a lifelong friend of Margaret Fuller. "She was peerless," he wrote of her. After Fuller's death in 1850, he visited the wreck at Fire Island where she died, spending two days there talking to survivors. Channing, Clarke, and Emerson collaborated on her biography. Channing sought out a man named James Nathan (with whom Fuller may have had a romantic relationship) for his relevant letters. He refused (and friend told Emerson that a biography could not be written without them; his letters were later edited and published, in small part, by Julia Ward Howe).

Emerson in particular rushed the project and controlled its direction. Channing wanted to take his time, particularly in the section about Fuller's marriage and pregnancy (still somewhat confusing today). Channing believed that Fuller, on principle, would never legally marry and privately told Emerson as much. Emerson was unconcerned and made up a wedding date, apparently out of thin air. The book, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, remains controversial and has been blamed for much of the 19th century's judgment of Fuller as an abrasive, arrogant, "unwomanly" figure.

Death of Jones Very

Perhaps the most Transcendental of the Transcendentalists was Jones Very, a Salem, Massachusetts-born poet/prophet. He revealed to Ralph Waldo Emerson that his poems were written while he was in a sort of divine trance (which Emerson did not believe, noting that God would have helped him with his poor spelling). Then, one day while tutoring Greek at Harvard, Very began his transformation into a prophet. "Flee to the mountains," he shouted to his surprised students, "for the end of all things is at hand!"

Shortly after announcing he was the Second Coming of Christ, Very was committed to an in insane asylum. After his release, however, Very calmed down considerably, telling others that his role as a prophet was meant to be short-term only. Emerson helped him publish a book of poems and essays and Very committed himself as a relative recluse with family in Salem.

Most of the last four decades of Jones Very's life are unclear or entirely unrecorded. He died May 8, 1880 and was buried at the Old South Cemetery in what is now Peabody (pictured). Bronson Alcott wrote of him as "spectral" with a "ghostly air," but someone he was fortunate to have known.

Very's poems were mostly sonnets, including this one, "The New Birth":

'Tis a new life; — thoughts move not as they did,
With slow uncertain steps across my mind,
In thronging haste fast pressing on they bid
The portals open to the viewless wind
That comes not save when in the dust is laid
The crown of pride that gilds each mortal brow,
And from before man's vision melting fade
The heavens and earth; — their walls are falling now. —
Fast crowding on, each thought asks utterance strong;
Storm-lifted waves  swift rushing to the shore,
On from the sea they send their shouts along,
Back through the cave-worn rocks their thunders roar;
And I a child of God by Christ made free
Start from death's slumbers to Eternity.

The shot heard round the world

The morning after Paul Revere's famous ride marked the first real battle of the American Revolution. April 19, 1775 was later commemorated by several Massachusetts poets who looked back at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

 "Concord Hymn" (1836) by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Some of Emerson's words were engraved at the base of a statue by Daniel Chester French at the Old North Bridge in Concord. Across the river is a small memorial to the British soldiers who were killed which quotes from Emerson's friend James Russell Lowell:

"Lines [Suggested by the Graves of Two English Soldiers at Concord Battle Ground]" (1845)

The same good blood that now refills
The dotard Orient's shrunken veins,
The same whose vigor westward thrills,
Bursting Nevada's silver chains,
Poured here upon the April grass,
Freckled with red the herbage new;
On reeled the battle's trampling mass,
Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain; — that sturdy blood
Was meant to make the earth more green,
But in a higher, gentler mood
Than broke this April noon serene;
Two graves are here: to mark the place,
At head and foot, an unhewn stone,
O'er which the herald lichens trace
The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true,
To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed;
What brought them here they never knew,
They fought as suits the English breed:
They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne;
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan.

The turf that covers them no thrill
Sends up to fire the heart and brain;
No stronger purpose nerves the will,
No hope renews its youth again:
From farm to farm the Concord glides,
And trails my fancy with its flow;
O'erheard the balanced hen-hawk slides,
Twinned in the river's heaven below.

But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs,
Proud of thy birth and neighbor's right,
Where sleep the heroic villagers
Borne red and stiff from Concord flight;
Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun,
Or Seth, as ebbed the life away,
What earthquake rifts would shoot and run
World-wide from that short April fray?

What then? With heart and hand they wrought,
According to their village light:
'T was for the Future that they fought,
Their rustic faith in what was right.
Upon earth's tragic stage they burst
Unsummoned, in the humble sock;
Theirs the fifth act; the curtain first
Rose long ago on Charles's block.

Their graves have voices; if they threw
Dice charged with fates beyond their ken,
Yet to their instincts they were true,
And had the genius to be men.
Fine privilege of Freedom's host,
Of humblest soldiers for the Right! —
Age after age ye hold your post,
Your graves send courage forth, and might.

Emerson enters and leaves the ministry

After Ralph Waldo Emerson's graduation from Harvard Divinity School, he preached in various churches throughout New England until Boston's Second (Unitarian) Church invited him to serve as its junior pastor. Emerson accepted and was ordained on March 11, 1829. Only a few months into the job, however, senior pastor Henry Ware resigned to teach at Harvard. Emerson took over and his salary jumped to a substantial $1800.* He was 26 years old.

The timing was good for the young minister, who had been courting the ill Ellen Tucker. After his appointment, he married the 18-year old woman; their marriage would last only two years before her death.

Her death may be what inspired Emerson to return to the radical theology he considered as a student. "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry," he confided in his journal. "The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." Emerson questioned parts of the Bible that many interpreted literally and struggled with traditions and rites which seemed to have no basis. His biggest concern was the Holy Communion, which he believed Christ never intended to be a ritual. He did not see the importance or value in it. He concluded: "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it."

The irony was that Emerson's predecessor, Henry Ware, had drawn large crowds for his monthly lectures on the Lord's Supper. This may be why the church's governing board was reluctant to accept Emerson's proposals to alter the ceremony, including the removal of the Eucharist and wine. His "indifference & dislike" to the tradition culminated in a sermon on the subject in which he explained why he believed Jesus had not intended a permanent religious institution when he celebrated Passover with his disciples.

Emerson was very well-liked by his parishioners but he no longer felt he could carry on there. The proprietors who had a say in the matter voted 30 to 24 to accept his resignation. He decided to break away for a time and traveled to Europe, setting sail on Christmas Day in 1832.

*This translates to roughly $22,000 today. Not much by our standards but, consider, that the average magazine editor was making $800-$1000 annually.

Emerson's first wife and Wild Apples

The death of Wallie, son of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was not the first loss in the life of the Concord Sage. Eleven years earlier, his first wife Ellen Tucker succumbed to tuberculosis on February 8, 1831.

The couple met in Concord, New Hampshire when she was 16. She was an intelligent young woman who enjoyed reading (she named her dog Byron). She did not hold back her affection for the slightly-controversial young minister. "I am entirely yours now and ever shall be," she wrote to him. Emerson took a full-time job, soon earning a whopping $1800 salary at the Second Church in Boston. Emerson and Tucker were married in 1829, two years after meeting, and they settled in Boston. She was already quite sick with the disease that would kill her.

Emerson was riding a wave of success and living a life of luxury thanks to his high salary. And, yet, he wrote of "a fair counterbalance to the flatteries of fortune." The counterbalance came in the form of Ellen's death at 9 o'clock in the morning on February 8, 1831. Her last words were recorded as, "I have not forgot the peace and joy." She was just under 20 years old.

Emerson's grief over the death of Ellen Tucker lasted a long time. He often visited her grave, wrote to her, and, most infamously, entered her tomb and opened the coffin in 1832. He began questioning his role as a minister and started thinking radical thoughts about religion. He also eyed Ellen's money. She had left him a fair amount of wealth, but her family did not want to pass it on. Emerson sued them and, in July 1837, the court granted him $11,674.79, making him an incredibly wealthy man.

Emerson later married again (to Lydia Jackson), and the new couple named their first daughter Ellen (allegedly at Jackson's insistence).

Exactly 29 years after Ellen Tucker's death, Emerson's protege Henry David Thoreau presented a lecture at the Concord Lyceum on February 8, 1860. In "Wild Apples," Thoreau praised the natural qualities of the fruit. "They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at," he noted. Though wild apples are spicy or tart, Thoreau spoke of how much he enjoyed them, and suggested a brisk walk in the November air might make them more palatable. Emerson's daughter Ellen Emerson wrote "there were constant spontaneous bursts of laughter and Mr. Thoreau was applauded."


*Image of Ellen Tucker Emerson from "The Living Legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson," Harvard Square Library.

Emerson's hyacinthine boy

The so-called "Concord Sage" was only just beginning to make his mark as the figurehead of Transcendentalism when, in 1842, his son died. Young Waldo Emerson was the first son of Ralph Waldo Emerson and succumbed to scarlet fever on January 27, 1842. "Wallie," as he was nicknamed, was five years old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was deeply affected by the death of his son, who he referred to as the "world's wonderful child." He was an intelligent and precocious child and, as his father said, "too precious & unique a creation to be huddled aside into the waste & prodigality of things." Emerson spent much of that spring composing a memorial poem to his son. The poem, "Threnody," serves as a biography of the boy's short life and particularly of the potential wasted by his death.

Not mine — I never called thee mine,
But Nature's heir, — if I repine,
And seeing rashly torn and moved
Not what I made, but what I loved,
Grow early old with grieft that thou
Must to the wastes of Nature go, —
'Tis because a general hope
Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope.

Wallie was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. His gravestone bears an inscription which quotes the poem's second stanza:

The hyacinthine boy for whom
morn well might break and April bloom
The gracious boy who did adorn
the world where into he was born

Scholar Philip F. Gura noted that Wallie's death was "an event that marked a decisive shift in [Emerson's] philosophy." At the time, Transcendentalism was a still-new, often-mocked ideology, only recently defined in Emerson's essay "The Transcendentalist. The Dial, the movement's magazine, was in trouble; and only a few years earlier, his "Divinity School Address" got him banned from speaking at Harvard. His next major work was his Essays: Second Series, which included "The Poet" (a direct inspiration to Walt Whitman) and "Character."