Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

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 Classics 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 God. 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 class and in the few classes following and preceding. I said that sometimes there would be several orators, or eminent men of science, or eminent classical 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 passage of great eloquence at the close of the lecture with the words,

"God 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 circumstance 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 Thoreau 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 Thoreau 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 Saturday afternoon and take them out in his boat, or for a long walk in the woods.