“You would like to see some autographs?” he generously asked.
“Yes, indeed, but I am afraid there is not time now. Tell me about some of your most interesting ones.”
Then it proved that Doctor Hale had advantages in the line of presidential autographs, because of his eminent and political ancestry. His collection in this respect is complete, and in this way, he says, he began it.
“I was sitting one evening tearing up old papers, after my father’s death, and among them noticed a letter on the character of Washington. Not considering it worth keeping, I took it to tear it up, when out dropped a yellow paper, ancient and faded. It proved to be a letter of George Washington himself, which had been enclosed in the other letter by my father, evidently to illustrate a point in character which the writer had raised. Then and there I resolved to make a collection of presidential autographs. I don’t dare to tell you how many family commissions I hold in my portfolio. To me the collection is almost the history of my family. I have been tempted to publish a couple of volumes of national history of the nineteenth century, to be taken bodily from my own portfolio of autographs. It might be rather interesting.”
“Changing the subject, when did you first meet Emerson?”
“Let me see, I first heard Emerson when I was eleven years old. He was delivering his lecture on Mohammed. I first spoke to him in Harvard College chapel, when a mutual acquaintance had just taken the highest honors. Emerson said of him, with his keenest look:
“‘I didn’t know he was so fine a fellow. Now, if some misfortune could only happen to him; if he could be turned out of college, or could be unpopular in his class, or his father could fail in business, all would be well with him.’
“This seemed at the time cynical, but when I read of the hardships of Emerson’s early life, and heard of the unhappy end of the man of college honors, I understood it and was astounded at his penetration.
“I have a letter of Emerson’s (and you can take a copy of it if you like) 294 which cleared up an anecdote that was told of him at the time. It was said that on one of his ocean trips he committed ‘Alaric’ or some other long poem to memory, in order to while away a few otherwise unprofitable days. It proved to be ‘Lycidas,’ and I never heard of any one else who has committed ‘Lycidas’ to memory on an ocean trip for pastime. Who else but Emerson would have thought of it?”
Concord, January 26.
My Dear Hale:—I know by much experience of my own what it is to have Everett on the brain, and you, who have it in the blood, may easily believe that it could only be “Alaric” that I was crooning at sea. But it was not that, but Milton’s “Lycidas,” which I told of in a lecture on Memory, to which I must think you refer; though nothing of it was ever printed or reported that I know, and it must have been read (i.e., the lecture) when you were very young. I ought to be proud that the anecdote could reach you, but the mystery of the memory interested me much.
I wrote you yesterday about Stirling’s pamphlet, which I hope will come speedily to you. I do not recall the title, but it was, perhaps, “Remarks on Mr. Huxley’s Protoplasm.”
Yours,
R. W. Emerson.