Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 7

Not unless G.o.d made sharp thine ear With sorrow such as mine, Out of that delicate lay couldst thou Its heavy tale divine.

But I think that the life of his younger brother Charles, though he died so early, was felt as an even greater force in Concord than that of Waldo.

I hope I may be pardoned if I put on record here a slight and imperfect tribute to the memory of Charles Emerson, who was betrothed to my eldest sister. It is nearly seventy years ago. Yet the sweet and tender romance is still fresh in my heart. He was a descendant of a race of Concord clergymen, including Peter Bulkeley, the founder of the town. He was born in Boston, but spent much of his youth in Concord in the household of Dr. Ripley, who was the second husband of the grandmother of the Emersons. He studied law partly at Cambridge Law School, partly in Daniel Webster's office in Boston, and afterward with my father in Concord. When my father took his seat in Congress, in 1835, Emerson succeeded to his office, and if he had lived would have succeeded to his practice. Waldo Emerson had left it on record that he was led to choose Concord as a dwelling-place to be near his brother. Waldo's house had been enlarged to make room for Charles and his bride under the same roof. The house was ready and the wedding near at hand when, in riding from Boston to Concord on top of the stage, Charles took a violent cold, which was followed by pleurisy and death. He was of a very sociable nature, knew all the town people, lectured before the Lyceum, had a cla.s.s in the Sunday-school and used to speak in the Lyceum debates. He had a very pleasant wit. He was on the committee for the celebration of the settlement of the town in 1835, at the end of two hundred years, and about the same time was on a committee to attend the celebration at Acton, where the people claimed for themselves all the glory of the Concord Fight. He had thought it likely the Acton people would ask him to speak. But they did not. As he was riding back in the chaise, he said if they had asked him to speak, he had it in mind to give as a toast, "The blessed Memory of the Pilgrim Fathers, who first landed at Acton."

He was especially fond of boys, and they of him. When he died, every schoolboy thought he had lost a friend. One had a knife and another a book or a picture which he prized, and another a pair of skates which Charles Emerson had given him. It may be a fond exaggeration, but I think he was the most brilliant intellect ever born in Ma.s.sachusetts.

Mr. Webster, who was consulted as to where Emerson should settle, said, "Settle! Let him settle anywhere. Let him settle in the midst of the back woods of Maine, the clients will throng after him." Mr. Everett delivered an eloquent eulogy after his death, at the Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Harvard.

Dr. Holmes' exquisite tribute in his Phi Beta poems is well known:

Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now, The first young laurels on they pallid brow, O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down In graceful folds the academic gown, On thy curled lip the cla.s.sic lines that taught How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought, And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye, Too bright to live,--but Oh! too fair to die.

Dr. Holmes also says in his last tribute to Waldo:

"Of Charles Chauncey, the youngest brother, I knew something in my college days. A beautiful, high-souled, pure, exquisitely delicate nature in a slight but finely wrought mortal frame, he was for me the very ideal of an embodied celestial intelligence.

I may venture to mention a trivial circ.u.mstance, because it points to the character of his favorite reading, which was likely to be guided by the same tastes as his brother's, and may have been specially directed by him. Coming into my room one day, he took up a copy of Hazlitt's British Poets. He opened it to the poem of Andrew Marvell's, ent.i.tled, 'The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn,' which he read to me with delight irradiating his expressive features. The lines remained with me, or many of them, from that hour,--

Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within.

"I felt as many have felt after being with his brother, Ralph Waldo, that I had entertained an angel visitant. The fawn of Marvell's imagination survives in my memory as the fitting image to recall this beautiful youth; a soul glowing like the rose of morning with enthusiasm, a character white as the lilies in its purity."

The late Samuel May, who was in the cla.s.s after Emerson's at Harvard, told me that the impression his character and person made upon the students of his time was so great that when he pa.s.sed through the college yard, everybody turned to look after him, as in later days men looked after Webster when he pa.s.sed down State Street.

The Rev. Joseph H. Cross, now (1903) still living, the oldest graduate of Harvard, was his cla.s.smate. I received this letter from him a few years ago:

66 BRADFORD ST., LAWRENCE, January 8, 1897.

HON. G. F. h.o.a.r,

_Dear Sir:_

Yours of 5th inst. is before me; and I am glad to remember my cla.s.smate Emerson and answer your inquiries. I knew that he studied law in your Honored Father's office, and was betrothed to your eldest sister.

Your first inquiry is "as to his looks." He was above medium height, well proportioned and straight as an arrow, brown hair and clear blue eyes, with fair complexion and handsome features. "His scholarship and talents," both of the highest order. The cla.s.s regarded him as the first and best scholar, dignified and refined in manners, courteous and amiable in spirit. He had great influence in his own cla.s.s, and was much esteemed and beloved by all. I think the impression he made upon all who knew him was that of a cla.s.sical scholar and a perfect gentleman.

Dr. Channing said when he died that all New England mourned his loss.

Although Charles was seven years the younger, his brother Waldo speaks of him as his own master and teacher. The following letter was written by Waldo to his aunt Mary just after Charles's death. A part of it is printed in Cabot's Biography. Waldo and my sister, Elizabeth, heard of the extremity of his danger, and were on their way to see him, but arrived too late to find him alive.

"12 May.

"You have already heard that E. and I arrived too late to see Charles. He died on Monday afternoon, immediately after returning from a ride with Mother. He got out of the coach alone, walked up the steps and into the house without a.s.sistance, then sat down upon the stairs, fainted and never recovered.

Yesterday afternoon we attended his funeral, and that is the end on this side Heaven, of his extraordinary promise, the union of such shining gifts,--grace and genius, and sense and virtue. What a loss is this to us all--to Elizabeth and Mother and you and me. In him I have lost all my society.

I sought no other and formed my habits to live with him. I deferred to him on so many questions and trusted him more than myself, that I feel as if I had lost the best part of myself. In him were the foundations of so solid a confidence and friendship that all the years of life leaned upon him.

His genius too was a fountain inexhaustible of thoughts and kept me ever curious and expectant. Nothing was too great, nothing too beautiful for his grasp or his expression, and as brilliant as his power of ill.u.s.tration was, he stuck like a mathematician to his truth and never added a syllable for display. I cannot tell you how much I have valued his conversation for these last two or three years, and he has never stopped growing, but has ripened from month to month. Indeed, the weight of his thoughts and the fresh and various forms in which he constantly clothed them has made Shakespeare more conceivable to me, as Shakespeare was almost the only genius whom he wholly loved. His taste was unerring. What he called good was good, but so severe was it that very few works and very few men could satisfy him, and this because his standard was a pure ideal beauty and he never forgot himself so far as to accept any lower actual one in lieu of it. But I must not begin yet to enumerate his perfections. I shall not know where to stop, and what would be bare truth to me would sound on paper like the fondest exaggeration.

"I mourn for the Commonwealth, which has lost before it yet had learned his name the promise of his eloquence and rare public gifts. He blessed himself that he had been bred from infancy as it were in the public eye, and he looked forward to the debates in the Senate on great political questions as to his fit and native element. And with reason, for in extempore debate his speech was music, and the precision, the flow and the elegance of his discourse equally excellent.

Familiar as I was with his powers, when a year ago I first heard him take part in a debate, he surprised me with his success. He spoke so well that he was impatient of writing as not being a fit medium for him. I never shall hear such speaking as his, for his memory was a garden of immortal flowers, and all his reading came up to him as he talked, to clear, elevate and decorate the subject of his present thought.

But I shall never have done describing, as I see well I shall never cease grieving as long as I am on the earth that he has left it. It seems no longer worth living in, if whatever delights us in it departs. He has quitted forever the apparent, the partial. He has gone to make acquaintance with the real, the good, the divine, and to find mates and co-operators such as we could not offer him."

Charles Emerson entered with zeal and sympathy into the daily life of the people of Concord. He delivered a few lectures, which were quite celebrated. Some of his ma.n.u.scripts are in existence, and there is a boyish essay or two in the _Harvard Magazine,_ one on Conversation and one on Friendship, which show a singular charm and simplicity of style. He wrote the epitaph on the tomb of Professor Ashmun at Mount Auburn, and a tribute to his friend, James Jackson, Jr., which is preserved in Jackson's memoir by his father.

Miss Martineau, in a chapter of her autobiography written in 1836, describes the feeling in Boston in regard to the opposition to slavery, which seems now incredible even to those who remember it. She says:

"The Emersons, for the adored Charles Emerson was living then, were not men to join an a.s.sociation for any object . . . . But at the time of the hubbub against me in Boston, Charles Emerson stood alone of a large company in defence of free thought and speech, and declared that he had rather see Boston in ashes than that I or anybody should be debarred in any way from perfectly free speech."

Robert C. Winthrop, who was Charles Emerson's intimate friend in boyhood, wrote for the _Advertizer_ a beautiful obituary notice. He says: "Emerson was eminently a man of genius.

We know not that in his riper years he ever wrote a line of poetry, but no one could have listened to him, either in private or public without feeling that he had a poet's power; while his prose composition was of so pure and finished a style as to show plainly that close perusal of the English Cla.s.sics in which he so much delighted . . . . One opinion which Mr.

Emerson had early formed, and which had he been spared to mature life might have contributed much to his eminence may, in the sad event which has occurred, have contracted the circle of his fame . . . . He had formed in his own mind a standard of education far beyond that which can be completed, even by the most faithful application, within the ordinary rounds of school and college--an education in which every man must be mainly his own master. In the work of this enlarged self- education he was engaged, and, until it was finished, he shrunk from the appearance of attempting to instruct others. He had in him all the elements which would have insured the success of early efforts at display--a fluent speech, a fine elocution, quick conception, a brilliant fancy. But his ambition, . . .

while it aspired to a lofty eminence, was content to see that eminence still in the distance." Mr. Winthrop adds, "Principle, unyielding and uncompromising principle, was the very breath of his soul, and pervaded and animated his whole intellectual system . . . . He openly professed what he believed, and he acted up to his professions. He not only held conscience the guide of his life, but he took care to school and discipline that conscience so that its dictates should always conform to truth, to duty, to the laws of G.o.d. He was an honorable, high-minded, virtuous man--a sincere and devout Christian . . . . He has fallen at the very gate of an honorable and eminent career, and a thousand hopes are buried in his grave."

A few years before Mr. Winthrop died I met him in Cambridge, at the Peabody Museum, of which we were both trustees. The trustees were gathered in their room waiting for the meeting to be called to order. Mr. Winthrop was talking about his college days. I asked him how it happened that there were so many distinguished persons, in various departments of excellence, who were graduated from Harvard about his time, in his cla.s.s and in the few cla.s.ses following and preceding. I said that sometimes there would be several orators, or eminent men of science, or eminent cla.s.sical scholars, or eminent teachers, graduated about the same time, and their excellence would be attributed to some one instructor; but that in his time there seemed to be a crop of great men in all departments of life--in natural history, in the pulpit, the bar, in oratory, in literature, and in public life. Mr. Winthrop rose to his feet from this chair and brought his hand down with great emphasis on the table as he answered: "It was the influence of Charles Emerson, Sir."

Charles Emerson delivered just before his death a very beautiful and impressive lecture on Socrates. It was long remembered by the people of Concord. It is said that they who heard it never forgot his beautiful figure and glowing countenance as he ended a pa.s.sage of great eloquence at the close of the lecture with the words,

"G.o.d for thee has done His part. Do thine."

Mr. Hawthorne had published some short stories which had already made his name quite celebrated, but his great fame was still to be gained. He was poor and had a good deal of difficulty in gaining a decent living for himself and his young wife.

I will not undertake to repeat the story of his life which Hawthorne has told so beautifully in his "Mosses from an Old Manse." I knew Mrs. Hawthorne very well indeed. She was a great friend of my oldest sister and used to visit my father's house when I was a boy, before she was married. It was owing to that circ.u.mstance that the Hawthornes came to live in Concord.

She was quite fond of me. I used to get strawberries and wild flowers for her, and she did me great honor to draw my portrait, which now, fortunately or unfortunately, is lost.

I went up to the house while they were absent on their wedding journey when I was a boy of fourteen or fifteen to help put things in order for the reception of the young couple.

The furniture was very cheap; a good deal of it was made of common maple. But Mrs. Hawthorne, who was an artist, had decorated it by drawings and paintings on the backs of the chairs and on the bureaus and bedsteads. On the headboard of her bed was a beautiful copy, painted by herself, of Guido's Aurora, with its exquisite light figures and horses and youths and maidens flying through the air.

I never knew Hawthorne except as a stately figure, whom I saw sometimes in Concord streets and sometimes in his own home. He rarely, if ever, opened his lips in my hearing.

He was always very silent, hardly spoke in the presence of any visitor with whom he was not very intimate. So far as I know he never visited at the houses of his neighbors and never went to town-meeting. The latter was a deadly sin in the eyes of his democratic neighbors. Mr. Emerson induced him, one evening, to be one of a small company at his house.

But Hawthorne kept silent and at last went to the window and looked out at the stars. One of the ladies said to the person next her: "How well he rides his horses of the night." He was very fond of long walks, and of rowing on the river with Th.o.r.eau and Ellery Channing.

The Old Manse was built in 1759 by the Rev. Daniel Bliss for his daughter Phoebe on her marriage to the Rev. William Emerson. She was grandmother of Waldo Emerson. Her second husband was the Rev. Dr. Ripley.

I knew Henry Th.o.r.eau very intimately. I went to school with him when I was a little boy and he was a big one. Afterward I was a scholar in his school.

He was very fond of small boys, and used to take them out with him in his boat, and make bows and arrows for them, and take part in their games. He liked also to get a number of the little chaps of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon and take them out in his boat, or for a long walk in the woods.

He knew the best places to find huckleberries and blackberries and chestnuts and lilies and cardinal and other rare flowers.

We used to call him Trainer Th.o.r.eau, because the boys called the soldiers the "trainers," and he had a long, measured stride and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure.

He had a curved nose which reminded one a little of the beak of a parrot.

His real name was David Henry Th.o.r.eau, although he changed the order of his first two names afterward. He was a great finder of Indian arrow-heads, spear-heads, pestles, and other stone implements which the Indians had left behind them, of which there was great abundance in the Concord fields and meadows.

He knew the rare forest birds and all the ways of birds and wild animals. Naturalists commonly know birds and beasts and wild flowers as a surgeon who has dissected the human body, or perhaps sometimes a painter who has made pictures of them knows men and women. But he knew birds and beasts as one boy knows another--all their delightful little habits and fashions. He had the most wonderful good fortune. We used to say that if anything happened in the deep woods which only came about once in a hundred years, Henry Th.o.r.eau would be sure to be on the spot at the time and know the whole story.

It seemed that Nature could not raise A plant in any secret place, In quaking bog or snowy hill, Beneath the gra.s.s that shades the rill, Under the snow, between the rocks, In damp fields known to bird and fox, But he would come in the very hour It opened in its virgin bower, As if a sunbeam showed the place, And tell its long-descended race.

It seemed as if the breezes brought him; It seemed as if the sparrows taught him; As if by secret sight he knew Where, in the far fields, the orchis grew.

Many haps fall in the field Seldom seen by wishful eyes, But all her shows did Nature yield, To please and win this pilgrim wise.

He saw the partridge drum in the woods; He heard the woodc.o.c.k's evening hymn; He found the tawny thrushes' broods; And the shy hawk did wait for him; What others did at distance hear, And guessed within the thicket's gloom, Was shown to this philosopher, And at his bidding seemed to come.