CHAPTER VI
A VISIT TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON
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 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 The platform superseded the pulpit.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 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 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 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 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.