The adjoining parlor—a spacious, pleasant, home-like room, furnished forth with many mementos of illustrious friends and guests—is scarcely less interesting than the library. This house was the intellectual capitol of the village; to it freely came the Concord circle of shining ones,—Thoreau, Channing, Sanborn, the Alcotts, the Hoars,—less frequently, Hawthorne. For a long time Mrs. Samuel Ripley habitually passed her Sabbath evenings here. The Delphic Margaret Fuller, who was as truly the "blood of transcendentalism" as Emerson "was its brain," was here for months an honored guest. For long periods Thoreau, whose fame owes much to Emerson's generosity, was here an inmate and intimate. In Emerson's parlor were held the more formal séances of the Concord galaxy; here met the short-lived "Monday Evening Club," which George William Curtis whimsically describes as a "congress of oracles," who ate russet-apples and discoursed celestially while Hawthorne looked on from his corner,—"a statue of night and silence;" here were held many of Bronson Alcott's famous "conversations," as well as those of that disciple of Platonism, Dr. Jones.
Emerson belonged not to Concord only, but to the whole world,—"his thought was the thought of Christendom." To these plain rooms as to an intellectual court came, from his own and other lands, hundreds famed in art, literature, and politics. Here came Curtis and Bartol to sit at the feet of the sage; Charles Sumner and Moncure Conway to bear hence—as one of them has said—"memories like those Bunyan's pilgrim must have cherished of the Interpreter." Here "came Theodore Parker from the fight for free thought," and Wendell Phillips and John Brown from the conflict for free men; here came Howells, bearing the line from Hawthorne, "I find this young man worthy;" here came Whittier, Agassiz, Hedge, Longfellow, Bradford, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Elizabeth Peabody, Julia Ward Howe, as to a fount of wisdom and purity. In this unpretentious parlor have gathered such guests as Stanley, Walt Whitman, Bret Harte, Henry James, Louis Kossuth, Arthur Clough, Lord Amberley, Jones Very, Fredrika Bremer, Harriet Martineau, and many others who, like these, would have felt repaid for their journey over leagues of land and sea by a hand-clasp and an hour's communion with the intellect that has been the beacon of thousands in mental darkness and storm. With these came another class of pilgrims, the great army of impracticables, "men with long hair, long beards, long collars,—many with long ears, each in full chase after the millennium," and each intent upon securing the endorsement of Emerson for his own pet scheme. The wonder is that the little library saw any work accomplished, so many came to it and claimed the time of the master; for to every one—scholar, tradesman, and "crank"—were accorded his never-failing courtesy and kindly interest. Any one might be the bearer of a divine message, so he listened to all,—the most uncouth and outré visitant might be the coming man for whom his faith waited, therefore all were admitted.
Here all were "assayed, not analyzed." Emerson's habitual quest for only the divinest traits and his quickened perception of the best in men enabled him to recognize excellencies which were yet unseen by others. While Hawthorne, the shy hermit at the Manse, was unheeded by the world and thought crazed by his neighbors, Emerson knew and proclaimed his transcendent genius. He first recognized the inspiration of Ellery Channing, and made for his exquisite verse exalted claims which have been fully justified, and which the world may yet allow. While to others Henry Thoreau was yet only an eccentric egotist, Emerson knew him as a poet and philosopher, and made him the "forest seer, the heart of all the scene," in his lyrical masterpiece "Wood-Notes." He promptly hailed Walt Whitman as a true poet while many of us were yet wondering if it were not charitable to think him insane.
Emerson's cordiality won for him the honor which prophets rarely enjoy in their own country; the objects and places once associated with him here are still esteemed sacred by his old neighbors. We find among them at this day many who can know nothing of his books, but who, for memory of his simple kindness, go far from their furrow or swath to show us spots he loved and frequented in woodland or meadow, on swelling hill-side or by winding river.
To his home here Emerson brought his bride sixty years ago; here he lived his fruitful life and accomplished his work; here he rose to the zenith of poesy and prophecy; to him here came the "great and grave transition which may not king or priest or conqueror spare;" from here his wife, lingering behind him in the eternal march, went a year or two ago to rejoin him on the piny hill-top; and here his unmarried daughter—of "saint-like face and nun-like garb"—inhabits his home and cherishes its treasures.
Emerson's son and biographer some time ago relinquished his medical practice in Concord, and has since devoted himself to art. He has a residence a mile or so out of the village, but spends much of his time abroad. Last year he lectured in London upon the lives and writings of some of the Concord authors.
V
THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS