Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

Yours of 5th inst. is before me; and I am glad to remember my classmate 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 class 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 class, and was much esteemed and beloved by all. I think the impression he made upon all who knew him was that of a classical 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 assistance, 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 illustration 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 manuscripts 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 association 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."