“Mon verre n’est pas grand
Mais je bois dans mon verre.”
Alfred de Musset
Chapter I: Making My Early History
Concord, Massachusetts
There may have been much distinction in living in Concord, Massachusetts, in the ’fifties, but to me, as a boy, the whole town was only a delightful playground and the people who lived there merely “home folks.” To be sure, I invested some of the great ones with halos of romance. This was not because I knew anything about their literary or artistic attainments, but rather because of the lack of heroic characters in the town. Had there been a Jesse James or a Charlie Chaplin anywhere round, I should probably have woven my dreams of adventure about them. But the jail was always singularly empty, and the movies had not been invented. I was forced, therefore, to pin my youthful imaginings upon a Hawthorne, an Emerson, or a Thoreau! I have always felt I was greatly cheated.
I lived in the Old Manse, from which Hawthorne plucked his mosses. It was built in 1760 by the Rev. William Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo, and was a delightful house for a boy to grow up in. There was a long hallway running from east to west, and from the stairway a line of grisly divines, framed in black, looked down. They were mostly ancestors, and they gave a terrible air of austerity to the interior; but below and above were many redeeming features.
One was the swing shelf in the basement, always covered with fascinating goodies. Here on Saturday night one might cut with one’s jackknife a hunk of juicy meat roasted ready for Sunday’s dinner, and wash it down with cream from the shining pan of milk next to it. Here were preserves, jellies, cakes, and pies just cooling from the oven; while over in the corner barrels of apples were stored away for winter consumption. I shall never forget the delights of the swing shelf.
The Old Manse was built in the manner of the eighteenth century—entirely of wood, the oaken timbers being held together with oaken plugs. We boys found it quite easy to draw these from place, and we used them for tholepins in our dory. Fortunately, the grown-ups got on to us or I believe the house would have eventually collapsed.
There was a gabled roof with chimneys at both ends, and, of course, all sorts of wonderful nooks and crannies to hide away in. It was up in this attic that my grandmother Ripley was found by a caller rocking a cradle with her foot and holding a book in her hand which she was intently reading. It was written in Sanskrit! She apologized because she needed a dictionary to read this language. This was not so of Latin and Greek, as she read them fluently; but she used to say, “I cannot think in Sanskrit.”
She whom the name, “Peasant Princess,” fits better than any other, was the wife of Emerson’s father’s half-brother, and therefore older than Emerson. He used to spend a great deal of his time with her at the Old Manse, and she had much to do with influencing his life. One can see this from his letters as a boy.