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Anglo-American Memories

<h3> CHAPTER VI A VISIT TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON </h3> 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 The platform superseded the pulpit.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. {62} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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