Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

This predisposition to inwardness was favored by the long seclusion of Concord, which kept Emerson aloof from the world and prevented the friction which is so damaging to serenity. He saw those only who respected, loved, honored, and revered him. He came into collision with none. Men of thought, unambitious men, students, farmers, were his fellow-townsmen. Several hours in each day he was alone with his books or his mind. When he visited the city it was for an intellectual or social purpose, as one who had dropped from a star and was soon to vanish. His contact was with men of letters, clergymen, publishers, friends, gentlemen interested in mental pursuits who had left their business in order to disport themselves in the fields of thought. These added to his stores of wisdom, and sent him home replenished rather than drained. The gains of his day were not dissipated either by business occupation or pleasure.

Then, whether from disposition or philosophy we cannot tell, this man avoided everything dark, evil, unwholesome, unpleasant. Sickness of all kinds, complaint, depression, melancholy, was an abomination to him. He turned away from ugly sights and sounds, thus evading conflict. He never argued, never discussed, but said his word as well as he could, and encouraged others to say theirs, in this way hoping to get at the truth. By this course he escaped the usual provocations to ill-temper, and was forced upon an undisturbed equipoise of mind. Nothing helps serenity so much as avoidance of contest, and when one can thoroughly convince himself that there is no rooted evil in the world to be fought against, an even condition of soul is not hard to maintain; optimism is proverbially cheerful, but an optimism that is grounded in principle must be unconquerable by any force that circumstances can bring against it.

It must be remembered that Emerson was not a man of warm temperament, not tropical in color or in heat; more like the morning, cool and breezy, than like the sultry noon-day, or the glowing evening; more like the dewy spring, than the effulgent summer or the fruit-bearing autumn; not a child of the sun, rather suggesting the still, white, imaginative moonlight. There was an air of remoteness about him. His remark to the inn-keeper,—"heat me red-hot," tells the story. Simple habits kept his frame wiry, and a New England nurture saved his mind from luxuriant uncleanness. By nature he was passionless. The beautiful "Threnody" on the death of his boy, reveals the sorrow of a soaring mind rather than the grief of a crushed heart. To command one's self enough for such an effort evinces a rare power of rising above mortal conditions. Such a constitution finds solitude congenial and is calm by force of inclination. Friendship seems an emotion better suited than love to that ethereal soul, which was always radiant but seldom burning, benignant, seldom craving, always gracious in imparting, seldom hungry for receiving. One might walk in his illumination, but one could hardly bask in his heat, or lie on his bosom, or nestle near his heart. They that knew him at home may speak more warmly of him, but thus he appeared to people outside; thus he appeared to many who had admired him as I did and tried to get close to him.

The love of wild, untrimmed nature, the want of interest in cultivated gardens, was part of his theory of the universe as the expression of God; the richer, the less it was interfered with. He would approach as near to the Creator as possible, listening for the divine voice, which was most clearly heard in the wilderness. To the same source must be ascribed his partiality for wild, untrained men,—foresters, hunters, pioneers, trappers, back-woodsmen. He sought everywhere after originality, freshness, power, in individuals and in groups. He hailed a genius, however rough. Unconventionality excited his enthusiasm to such a degree that he could scarcely contain himself, but said the most extravagant things in the ecstasy of his hope. Men of polished outside he did not care for; mechanical men, however successful, politicians, however popular and adroit, were his aversion. Accomplishments, however great, scholarship however finished, he did not respect. He wanted the rough, uncut gem. Genius of whatever description, in whatever class, whatever its order or grade, was his joy. In him the love of truth predominated. He submitted to the inconvenience of imperfect opinion, but respected the highest law of his being. He believed in the eternal laws of mind, in the self-existence of right, in purity, veracity, goodness. He was one of the most honest of men, one of the cleanest, and he did his utmost to bring his life into correspondence with his best thought. That all created things must be imperfect was part of his creed; that this imperfection ran through human character he was as much convinced as any man; and his efforts were unceasing to turn men's eyes towards the beauty "ancient but ever new," which he in his moments of insight beheld. No one lives up to his most exalted faith. No one ever endeavored to do so more sincerely and humbly than Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In my early ministry, the discourses of Dr. Orville Dewey on "Human Nature," "Human Life," "The Nature of Religion," seemed all-sufficing. I read them over and over again with increasing admiration, and his solutions of spiritual problems were accepted as final.

Miss Mary Dewey, in the admirable memoir of her father, lays great stress on his affectionate qualities. These cannot be too emphatically asserted; yet they probably had more scope than even she suspected. Indeed, unless I am much mistaken, they formed the basis of his character. He was a most deep-feeling man. He loved his friends in and out of the profession, with a loyal, hearty, obliging, warm, and even tender emotion, expressing itself in word and deed. It was overflowing, not in any sentimental manner, but in a manly, sincere way. He was a man of infinite good-will, of a quite boundless kindness. His voice, his expression of face, his smile, the grasp of his hand,—all gave sign of it. He felt things keenly; his sensibilities were most acute; even his thoughts were suffused with emotion. He could not discuss speculative themes as if they were cold or dry. Nothing was arid to his mind. In prayer it was not unusual for his audience to discern tears rolling down his cheeks. One day, in his study, on speaking about the intellectual implications of the "Philosophie Positive," he dropped his head and seemed for a moment lost in reverie largely made up of devotion. In him, heart was uppermost; intellect, conscience, were of subordinate value when taken alone; in fact, they were incomplete by themselves, and wanted their proper substance. He said once that his skin was so delicate that the least soil on his hands was felt all through his system and prevented him from working. This excessive sensibility, which could not be understood by the world at large, was at the bottom of his likes and dislikes, of his personal fears and hopes. Excitement drained off his strength. He exhausted himself physically, and fell into ill-health by exertions that would not have taxed an ordinary constitution. It cost him a great deal to write sermons, to visit the sick or sorrowing, to conduct public services. At the same time, he was disqualified, by a certain want of steel in his blood, for any but the clerical profession, where qualities like his are of inestimable value, and of the rarest kind. He was a minister from the beginning, always profoundly interested in questions of the interior life, and though he early left the orthodox communion and became a preacher of Unitarian Christianity, making it his work to apply religious ideas to all the concerns of the natural world and the secular life, he retained all the fervor of spirit that charaterized the most devout believer. A vein of passionate feeling ran through all his discourses, and while his themes were taken from daily existence, his thoughts were fixed on eternity. He was absorbed in the destiny of the human soul, of the individual soul, bringing all discussions to that point, and trying to make lasting impressions on the spiritual natures of men and women.

When I first knew him he had the reputation of being a self-indulgent man. This was a great mistake. His way of life was exceedingly simple, and his habits were almost abstemious. In fact, neither his physical nor his mental constitution allowed of any indulgence in eating or drinking. Still the impression was a natural one, for a certain amount of ease, exemption from care, gayety, was necessary to him. The society of elegant, accomplished people was indispensable to his recreation and rest. His motive for seeking such was not the love of luxury so much as a demand for recreation and a craving for repose. He was not, in any sense, an earthy man or one who loved sensual delights. On the contrary, he was always mindful of his calling, always intent on high subjects, always ready to lead intercourse upwards, always, to the extent of his power, interested in the moral aspect of current discussions; over-anxious, if anything, to approach speculative themes. He possessed an eager, unresting, questioning mind. He was always thinking, and on great subjects of theology or philosophy, and he put into them an amount of feeling that is extraordinary with intellectual men.

That he should have been so sensitive as he was to the words and suspicions of anti-slavery men who charged him with being an advocate of a fugitive-slave law, an apologist for slavery, a ready tool of the inhuman, reactionary party of the country, is not surprising. His dread of pain, his hatred of falsehood, his horror of injustice, his love of fair play, will sufficiently account for this; while the impossibility of explaining himself kept the wound open. That for thirty years the sore should have bled, shows the delicacy of his temperament and the shrinking nature of his will. To speak of him as a friend of slavery is absurd. No one can read his sermon on "The Slavery Question," preached shortly after the annexation of Texas and at a moment of great excitement at the North in regard to the advances of the slave-power, and not perceive that he was deeply moved.

"Are these people men?" he said; "that is the question. If they are men, it will not do to make them instruments for mere convenience,—for the mere tillage of the soil;—if they are men, it is not enough to say that they have a sort of animal freedom from care, and joyance of spirits. If they are men, they are to be cultivated; their faculties are to be regarded as precious; they are to be improved.... If he is a man, then he is not only improvable and ought to be improved, but he will improve in spite of all we can do." And a great deal more to the same effect. He indignantly protested against treating "an intelligent creature, a fellow-being, a brother-man, a being capable of indefinite expansion and immortal progress," as one would treat a tree, a flower, an ox, or a horse. "Grant that the African of the present generation cannot be raised to our stature; yet if in the course of ages he may be, and if it is our policy systematically to arrest or to retard his growth, does the case materially differ from what I have supposed?" Namely that of a child. Dr. Dewey visited slave-States and talked with slave-holders in order to make himself fully acquainted with the condition of opinion and of feeling about the case, and he took occasion everywhere to argue the Northern side. This ought to be enough in the way of vindication of his personal sentiments.

At the same time, he was a Unionist of the Webster school. His attachment to the Union was intense. Disunion in his judgment meant ceaseless discord, the end of republican institutions, the arrest of civilization, the indefinite postponement of progress, the hopelessness of education and uplifting for the slave, the withdrawal of Northern influence, the final overthrow of government by moral powers. A long reign of anarchy, in the course of which the lovers of the race must see their visions of good disappear, would supervene, and this he could not contemplate with equanimity.