3 10 2124 https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/853e8b2b55344235dc871fca7bdd3439.jpeg 158cd1a37932abc8c27c64e02f298e0f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An Address delivered before the senior class, Divinity School, Cambridge Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource In March, 1838, a committee of three students at the Harvard Divinity School—George F. Simmons (who would later become a member of Emerson’s extended family by marrying Mary Ripley, a granddaughter of Ezra Ripley); Harrison Gray Otis Blake, who would become a major promoter of Thoreau’s work and the inheritor of the manuscripts he left at his death; and W.D. Wilson—wrote Emerson, inviting him to deliver the annual address before the graduating class at the school. Emerson spoke on July 15th before a full house. In the address, Emerson deplored the lack of vigor and meaning in established religion and urged a more direct, individual understanding of God. Man needed no “mediator or veil” between himself and God. Emerson proclaimed that the inherent unity of God, man, and nature—termed elsewhere in his writings the Oversoul—ensured each man’s potential for goodness and perfectibility toward divine virtue. Moreover, Jesus represented the highest expression of the divine spirit through the life and actions of a man, served as model and inspiration for other men, but achieved nothing beyond the capabilities of humankind in general. The Divinity School address was published in August, 1838, in an edition of one thousand copies. The entire press run was sold by the end of 1839. For obvious reasons, the address was regarded by some as a threat to established religion. It invited a more polarized response than did Emerson’s earlier offerings. Andrews Norton, a biblical scholar and professor at the Harvard Divinity School, was reactionary and vitriolic in a review for the Boston Daily Advertiser (August 27, 1838). He attacked Emerson’s insult to religion, inability to reason logically, poor taste, vagueness of expression and distortion of ideas, and the influence of the “German Barbarians” and Thomas Carlyle on his thought. Norton’s hostile criticism set off a volley of response and effected Emerson’s banishment from Harvard for decades. Even Mary Moody Emerson—the aunt who had a powerful formative influence on Emerson’s Transcendentalism, a woman of strong religious devotion and intellect, conservative in some ways and liberal in others—regretted the address. She wrote that it “should be oblivion’s, as under the influence of some malign demon.” On the other hand, some of the liberal thinkers who had been drawn to Emerson as spokesman and figurehead for Transcendentalism were deeply moved by the address. Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, present at its delivery, wrote in his journal on July 15th, “ … he surpassed himself as much as he surpassed others in a general way … So beautiful, & just, so true, & terribly sublime was his picture of the faults of the church in its present position … ” In 1839 and 1840, George Ripley—founder in 1841 of the utopian community Brook Farm—responded in a series of pamphlets to Andrews Norton’s Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity (1839), which was written in opposition to the ideas expressed in the Divinity School address. Emerson tried to remain above the controversy that the address generated. He continued lecturing and worked at pulling together his first collection of essays, which was published in 1841. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1838 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/153343847333a7086e2b7d7651c9bed3.jpeg 85fe88fb618837ab8915d3dd83dc3ff4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Dial Subject The topic of the resource The Dial Description An account of the resource Just as the Transcendental Club served as a forum for discussion by its members of religion, philosophy, literature, and society, the quarterly periodical The Dial also kept them in dialogue with one another. The practical details of its editing and publication required frequent communication among them regarding submissions, editorial decisions, production, and finances. Although The Dial never circulated widely, it was important to the Transcendentalists as a stimulus to and medium for their thought. Emerson was a founder of, a major contributor to, and (for two years) the editor of The Dial, and his home in Concord was therefore one of the places where its business was conducted. Conceived at a meeting of the Transcendental Club on September 18, 1839, named by Bronson Alcott, The Dial was issued between 1840 and 1844. It was published in Boston, first by Weeks, Jordan and Company, then (in 1842 and 1843) by Elizabeth Peabody, finally by Emerson’s publisher James Munroe. Margaret Fuller was its first editor; Emerson took over from her in 1842. On March 23, 1842, after agreeing to take over the editorship, Emerson wrote to Frederic Henry Hedge about the difficulties faced by the periodical: “Be it known to you that our poor Dial after staggering through two years of external weakness, friendlessness, publiclessness, and publisherlessness … threatened last Saturday on an inspection that was made of its accounts—to die of atrophy. The publishers, Weeks & Jordan, were not only extremely negligent but when they became bankrupt, were much in debt … to the little Journal. Margaret Fuller has never had a penny for all her time & toil; & now J F Clarke & E P Peabody discovered that they could rely only on 300 subscribers … Very unwillingly I assume the load for a time until a better person appears, more fit for this service & more fond of it … Poor Dial! … I dare not let it perish without an effort. It wants mainly & only, some devotion on the part of its conductor to it, that it may not be the herbarium that is of dried flowers, but the vehicle of some living & advancing mind.” Despite Emerson’s hope of keeping it going, however, The Dial ceased publication with the issue for April, 1844. Emerson was a prolific contributor of poems, essays, lectures, and reviews—a total of more than seventy-five pieces—to The Dial over its four-year run, and particularly during his editorship. Other contributors included Bronson Alcott, Ellery Channing, Lydia Maria Child, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Margaret Fuller, Frederic Henry Hedge, James Russell Lowell, Charles King Newcomb, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Peabody, Caroline Sturgis, Henry Thoreau, and Jones Very. One of the pieces by Emerson published in The Dial was “The Transcendentalist” (Myerson E75). Originally delivered as part of a lecture series at the Masonic Temple in Boston in 1840 and 1841, the piece—shown here—was published in the January, 1843 issue of the periodical. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Dial Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1840-44 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson The Dial https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/2a2958e511fb0f71c10b86b0537cd4d2.jpeg 20335cdc0f548a6781a41549b14bda18 https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/40f4865173036cb4250f020b1db2e3f9.jpeg a5733fc472f5a8a634bfbdc57238e723 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Letters Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Letters to Charles King Newcomb Subject The topic of the resource Charles King Newcomb Description An account of the resource In the 1840s, Emerson encouraged a number of young men in whom he saw literary promise, Henry Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Jones Very, and Charles King Newcomb among them. As editor of The Dial, he was in a position to give exposure to the work of unknowns who might otherwise not have had opportunity for publication. Through Emerson’s agency, Newcomb’s “The First Dolon”—part of his “The Two Dolons. From the Ms. Symphony of Dolon”—appeared in the issue for July, 1842. Charles King Newcomb (1820-1894) was raised in relative affluence by a doting mother after his father’s death in 1825. He graduated from Brown University in 1837. From 1841 to 1845 he boarded at Brook Farm, and from 1845 to 1865 lived primarily in Providence. He joined the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers in 1862 and was sent to defend Washington from possible Confederate attack. He lived in Philadelphia from 1866 to 1871, in Europe from 1871 until his death in Paris in 1894. Newcomb was a diarist, an admirer of Swedenborgian philosophy and at the same time of the trappings of Catholicism, a poet, and a protégé and correspondent of Margaret Fuller as well as of Emerson. His “First Dolon” was his only published work. Emerson first met Charles King Newcomb in Providence in 1840. After he began to edit The Dial, he corresponded with Newcomb, urging him to submit pieces for publication and to visit Concord. In his letters to the young man, he presented an enticing picture of Concord as a place of charming natural appeal, enlivened by the comings and goings of a variety of interesting people. He wrote of Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Elizabeth Hoar, Bronson Alcott, Caroline Sturgis, Elizabeth Peabody, George Bradford, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edmund Hosmer, and Ellery Channing. Newcomb visited the Emersons in Concord on June 19, 1842. Although the two remained in contact, Emerson’s enthusiasm for Newcomb cooled over time. By 1848, he referred to him as “the spoiled child of culture.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1842 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/21/2028/56e8cd9de411784922e690bce86067b5.jpeg d7e1d9fb1a884a3e4113813f2bf707eb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Carte de visite photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photograph of Ralph Waldo Emerson Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource In the 1840s, Emerson encouraged a number of young men in whom he saw literary promise, Henry Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Jones Very, and Charles King Newcomb among them. As editor of The Dial, he was in a position to give exposure to the work of unknowns who might otherwise not have had opportunity for publication. Through Emerson’s agency, Newcomb’s “The First Dolon”—part of his “The Two Dolons. From the Ms. Symphony of Dolon”—appeared in the issue for July, 1842. Charles King Newcomb (1820-1894) was raised in relative affluence by a doting mother after his father’s death in 1825. He graduated from Brown University in 1837. From 1841 to 1845 he boarded at Brook Farm, and from 1845 to 1865 lived primarily in Providence. He joined the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers in 1862 and was sent to defend Washington from possible Confederate attack. He lived in Philadelphia from 1866 to 1871, in Europe from 1871 until his death in Paris in 1894. Newcomb was a diarist, an admirer of Swedenborgian philosophy and at the same time of the trappings of Catholicism, a poet, and a protégé and correspondent of Margaret Fuller as well as of Emerson. His “First Dolon” was his only published work. Emerson first met Charles King Newcomb in Providence in 1840. After he began to edit The Dial, he corresponded with Newcomb, urging him to submit pieces for publication and to visit Concord. In his letters to the young man, he presented an enticing picture of Concord as a place of charming natural appeal, enlivened by the comings and goings of a variety of interesting people. He wrote of Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Elizabeth Hoar, Bronson Alcott, Caroline Sturgis, Elizabeth Peabody, George Bradford, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edmund Hosmer, and Ellery Channing. Newcomb visited the Emersons in Concord on June 19, 1842. Although the two remained in contact, Emerson’s enthusiasm for Newcomb cooled over time. By 1848, he referred to him as “the spoiled child of culture.” Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/cac7d95f087f0d9aae9aaa4fcf044286.jpeg a0c75acf100683d5db5302940af6cdc8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nathaniel Hawthorne Subject The topic of the resource Nathaniel Hawthorne Description An account of the resource Salem-born author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) lived in Concord at three different periods of his life—from 1842 to 1845, from 1852 to 1853, and from 1860 until his death in 1864. On July 9, 1842, Hawthorne married Sophia Amelia Peabody in Boston and brought her to the Manse in Concord to live. At the urging of Elizabeth Hoar and Emerson, he had rented the old house, which stood vacant following the death in 1841 of Ezra Ripley. Before the newlyweds moved in, Elizabeth Hoar and Cynthia Thoreau (Henry’s mother) prepared the house for their arrival. The Hawthornes were blissfully happy in the Manse. They delighted in the beauty of the Concord landscape and in the amusements it offered. Una, the first of their three children, was born here in 1844. Moreover, although shy, Hawthorne enjoyed the company of Thoreau, Ellery Channing, and other local residents, and of visitors as well. Emerson and Hawthorne did not readily warm up to one another. The two were temperamentally and intellectually dissimilar. Hawthorne’s reticence made him difficult to get to know. Furthermore, Emerson did not particularly admire Hawthorne’s writing, which he felt lacked substance, going so far as to describe it in one journal entry as “not good for anything.” For his part, Hawthorne was impatient with the mystical vagueness of Transcendentalism and its chief proponent. He wrote in his journal on August 15, 1842 of Emerson as “the mystic, stretching his hand out of cloud-land, in vain search for something real … a great searcher for facts; but they seem to melt away and become unsubstantial in his grasp.” In an effort to break down the barriers that hindered their friendship, Emerson asked Hawthorne to make a two-day walking trip to the Shaker village in Harvard, Massachusetts, in October of 1842. If forging a close relationship was the object of the excursion, it was a failure. However, it did provide an opportunity for the two to come to a better understanding of one another. Despite Emerson’s opinion of Hawthorne’s work, between leaving the Manse in 1845 and returning to Concord in 1852, Hawthorne finally achieved recognition as a major American author. Until 1850, he had served a long, slow literary apprenticeship and made a modest reputation based on stories first published in gift books and periodicals and then collected in book form. His situation changed radically when Ticknor, Reed and Fields (later Ticknor and Fields)—America’s foremost literary publishers—added him to their stable of New England authors. With the publication of The Scarlet Letter, his first romance, in 1850, they became his primary publishers. Early in June of 1852, Hawthorne moved his family back to Concord, where he and Sophia had bought and refurbished the Alcotts’ first house on Lexington Road. Formerly called Hillside, the house was renamed the Wayside. In 1852, Franklin Pierce, the Democratic nominee for the presidency and Hawthorne’s friend from Bowdoin College days, asked Hawthorne to write a campaign biography. Hawthorne complied. Pierce won the election in November, 1852, opening up the possibility of political appointment for Hawthorne. The Senate confirmed Pierce’s appointment of Hawthorne to the American consulship at Liverpool on March 26, 1853. This post was particularly attractive because it offered the greatest financial remuneration of all the offices that Pierce might have bestowed—a benefit that Hawthorne acknowledged without embarrassment. Hawthorne’s campaign biography of Pierce and subsequent involvement in Pierce’s administration disturbed Emerson and others in Concord who objected to the slavery interests with which Pierce was allied. Hawthorne died in May of 1864. Although repelled by Hawthorne’s personal and political loyalty to Franklin Pierce, Emerson served as a pallbearer at his funeral on May 23rd. In the journal entry for the following day, he revealed sorrow over never having gotten close enough to Hawthorne truly to appreciate him: “I have found in his death a surprise and a disappointment. I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power … It would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him … only, he said so little, that I talked too much … Now it appears that I waited too long. Lately, he had removed himself the more by the indignation his perverse politics and unfortunate friendship for that paltry Franklin Pierce awaked,—though it rather moved pity for Hawthorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive it, and come out right at last.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mayall Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1860 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson Hawthorne https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/38b494da2362162002f5411644d954dc.jpeg 6a9810fda89a551e5faac28f3755b422 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Elizabeth Hoar Subject The topic of the resource Elizabeth Hoar Description An account of the resource Emerson regarded Elizabeth Hoar (1814-1878) as a member of his family as well as of the thoughtful circle of individuals drawn to his home for discussion and friendship. She was the daughter of lawyer Samuel Hoar and sister of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (lawyer, judge, Massachusetts senator, Attorney General of the United States in the cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant, representative in the United States Congress, and Emerson’s friend), of George Frisbie Hoar (lawyer and representative and senator in Congress), and Edward Sherman Hoar (Thoreau’s friend and traveling companion). Educated at the old Concord Academy, she was learned—a proficient Greek scholar—and a woman of powerful intellect, deep religious sensibility, and reform sympathies. Elizabeth Hoar was close to many with whom Emerson associated. An intimate of the Thoreaus, Channings, and Hawthornes, she was a friend of Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller (whose Boston conversation series she attended), of Fuller’s brother Richard, Caroline Sturgis (later Tappan), and Anna Barker (Ward). While abroad, she met Thomas Carlyle and other literary people whom Emerson knew from his European trips. In 1833, Charles Chauncy Emerson—Waldo’s younger brother, a lawyer—and Elizabeth Hoar became engaged. Charles managed Sam Hoar’s Concord law office while the Squire served in Washington as a representative in Congress, beginning in 1835. The couple made plans to marry in September, 1836. The Emersons renovated their home in anticipation of the newlyweds living with them. Emerson and Elizabeth Hoar were both dealt a severe personal blow in May, 1836, when Charles died of tuberculosis. Elizabeth continued to live in her parents’ Main Street home. Emerson expressed the profound respect he felt for Elizabeth Hoar many times—for example, in a letter he wrote her on November 23, 1839: “Where is my letter to which I give you fair challenge? You are a sovereign woman & shall do as you choose, but in some hour of benevolence you may remember those who are bound in the bonds of analyzing the Age. I do not wish to know the opinions of celeb[ra]ted reformers or celebrated conversers, or indeed of celebrated leaders of either sex. They are all officers & through their lips I hear always Mr Million speak. But you are queen of yourself & in your privacy & detachment possess a superiority to which we must all defer. Always I gladly hear what you say as the sentence of an intelligent umpire, and, so pedantic are my habits, should gladlier read what you write.” Although the opportunity to become a member of the Emerson family was denied to Elizabeth Hoar, Emerson confided in her throughout their lives and referred to her as his sister. His mother, Lidian, and the Emerson children all felt deep, abiding affection for her. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Public Library Concord Emerson Hoar https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/273d5bb3b16102a8198afbcdfb1fe103.jpeg 18da84dc688591d629ed6877a5acd922 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Henry David Thoreau Subject The topic of the resource Henry David Thoreau Description An account of the resource By the late 1830s, Emerson had befriended Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Born in Concord, Thoreau was, over the course of his life, an author, lecturer, naturalist, student of Native American life and collector of Native artifacts, surveyor, pencil-maker, social critic and active opponent of slavery. He returned to Concord after graduating from Harvard in 1837. In 1841, he joined the Emerson household as a handyman and caretaker. He stayed with the Emersons from 1841 to 1843, and again in 1847 and 1848 (while Emerson made his second European trip). A close bond developed between the two men. Emerson—fourteen years older than Thoreau, much-demanded as a lecturer and well-known as a writer—filled the roles of teacher and patron as well as friend to Thoreau. As time passed, the master/pupil aspect of the relationship became less satisfactory and less appropriate. But in the early 1840s, it suited both of them. In the early days of their friendship, Emerson revealed in his journal obvious affection for and appreciation of Thoreau. On February 17, 1838, for instance, he recorded in his journal, “My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity & clear perception.” On September 1st of the same year, he referred to Thoreau in a letter to his aunt Mary Moody Emerson as “a brave fine youth.” Writing his brother William on June 1, 1841, he described Thoreau as “a scholar & a poet & as full of buds of promise as a young apple tree.” Later, he would write with regret of Thoreau’s failure to fulfill this promise. Whatever distance eventually grew between Emerson and Thoreau, Lidian and the Emerson children were always fond of Thoreau. In Emerson in Concord, his lengthy Social Circle biography of his father (published in 1888 in the Second Series of Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord; also published separately), Edward Waldo Emerson recalled Thoreau’s stable presence, his usefulness about the house and garden, and his particular rapport with children. Under Emerson’s influence, young Thoreau increasingly turned his thoughts to writing. While living in the Emerson house in the early 1840s, he enjoyed Emerson’s encouragement, support, and advice. He also benefited from access to Emerson’s library, which included works of Oriental literature of great interest to Thoreau, books not readily available elsewhere. And when members of the Transcendental Club came to visit, Thoreau was welcome among them. Thoreau contributed to The Dial during this period, and edited the April, 1843 issue for Emerson. His first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, appeared in 1849, his Walden in 1854. Emerson and Thoreau shared the common bond of grief from January, 1842, when Thoreau’s brother John died of lockjaw and Emerson’s first child, Waldo, died of scarlet fever. By 1850, the friendship between the two was strained. Despite their respect for one another, Emerson’s early sense of Thoreau’s literary promise and Thoreau’s initial idealization of Emerson did not quite match the reality of how each conducted his life. Thoreau did not vigorously pursue the visible success as a writer of which Emerson thought him capable. Emerson increasingly became a man of the world and traveled in literary and social circles that Thoreau disdained. When Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862, Emerson delivered his eulogy at the First Parish. It was later expanded for publication in the August, 1862 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The piece, titled “Thoreau,” clearly conveyed Emerson’s sense of disappointment in Thoreau. Emerson commented, for example, on Thoreau’s combativeness: “There was somewhat military in his nature not to be subdued; always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself except in opposition … It cost him nothing to say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes. It seemed as if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social affections … ” Emerson’s final judgment on what Thoreau had achieved affected his friend’s reputation well into the 20th century: “Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life, but with his energy and practical ability he seemed born for great enterprise and for command; and I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting that, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry-party.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Samuel Worcester Rowse Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1854 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Emerson Thoreau https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/7e4a7efe3e0baba0718480d280a45438.jpeg 9eb0967d6dbc7c1b465d323082901b07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ellery Channing Subject The topic of the resource Ellery Channing Description An account of the resource Poet William Ellery Channing (1817-1901)—nephew of minister William Ellery Channing, the “father of Unitarianism”—was one of those bright young men in whom Emerson found genius and whose writing he published in The Dial in the 1840s. The two became friends in 1842, when Channing stayed with the Emersons while looking for a home in Concord for himself and his wife Ellen (Margaret Fuller’s sister). After the Channings moved to Concord and became Emerson’s neighbors in 1843, Ellery and Waldo grew close. Channing also became a particular friend of Thoreau, the first biography of whom he would later write (Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist, published in 1873) and a friend of Bronson Alcott and Hawthorne. Emerson was an early champion of Channing’s poetry. He wrote on June 21, 1840, to Margaret Fuller, “Ellery Channing has granted the verses [for The Dial], which fills me with joy. They are what I wanted the Journal for.” He soon saw Channing’s inconsistency and weaknesses as a poet, but continued to admire his talent. He wrote to Margaret Fuller on December 12, 1842, “A true poet that child is, and nothing proves it so much as his worst verses: sink or swim,—hit or miss, he writes on, & is never responsible.” To Caroline Sturgis, he wrote in August of 1842, “He (Ellery) has great selfpossession, great simplicity & mastery of manner, very good sense, & seems to me to be very good company to live with … If he could only master his negligent impatient way of writing—this impatience of finishing, his sweet wise vein of thought & music would have no rival.” Others were not so generous in their estimation of Channing’s work. Edgar Allan Poe cuttingly reviewed his first published volume of poetry (Poems, 1843): “His book contains about sixty-three things, which he calls poems, and which he no doubt seriously supposes them to be. They are full of all kinds of mistakes, of which the most important is that of their having been printed at all.” Even Channing’s good friend and traveling companion Thoreau characterized his work as “sublimo-slipshod.” Son of physician and Harvard Medical School professor Walter Channing, Ellery lost his mother when he was five. He was raised by an aunt in Milton, sent to the Round Hill School in Northampton, and later to the Boston Latin School. He entered Harvard in 1834 but, unable to submit himself to college regulations, left after a few months. His father’s continuing financial support made it unnecessary for Channing actively to pursue a career. He wrote poetry, homesteaded for a while in Illinois, and moved to Cincinnati, where he met and married Ellen Fuller. The Channings settled in Concord in 1843 specifically to be near Emerson, who had already seen some of Ellery’s work into print in The Dial. Channing was as unwilling to accept the financial and emotional responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood as he had earlier been to fit into life at Harvard. Although he and Ellen had five children, he was absent from the family for long periods of time. In 1844 and 1845, he lived in New York and worked at the Tribune. In 1845, he traveled to Europe through the largesse of friends. In Concord, the Channings lived first on the Cambridge Turnpike, then moved to Lexington Road, later to Punkatasset Hill, and after that to Main Street. From 1855, while Channing edited the New Bedford Mercury, they lived away from Concord. Ellen died in 1856, not long after the birth of their fifth child. Channing returned to Concord after his connection with the Mercury ended in 1858. He lived here for the rest of his life, spending his final years in Frank Sanborn’s home. He remained intimate with Emerson, who never ceased to value his friend’s judgment of literature and character. On April 11, 1850, Emerson expressed his feelings for Channing in a letter to Margaret Fuller: “I go home tomorrow & the next day … I shall find, I trust, Ellery full of thoughts, if fitful & moody as ever. I could only wish he were born as much for his own happiness, & for yours, as he is for mine. To me, he is from month to month, from year to year, an incomparable companion, inexhaustible even if it be, & more’s the pity, the finest luxury, rather than a necessity of life.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alfred Winslow Hosmer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1896 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Channing Concord Emerson https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/710591db5fe402ff47f6323d2755e55a.jpeg 4fdccf5bca6f6322e3aea32b216ff94f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronson Alcott Subject The topic of the resource Bronson Alcott Description An account of the resource Educator, philosopher, lecturer, poet, essayist, diarist, and reformer Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) was Emerson’s close friend for more than forty-five years. Emerson valued Alcott from their first acquaintance. Long after he had realized Alcott’s impracticality, he was still invigorated by the man’s idealism. Judging Alcott a “world-builder” and “Genius,” Emerson wrote Margaret Fuller in May, 1837: “ … he has more of the godlike than any man I have ever seen and his presence rebukes & threatens & raises. He is a teacher. I shall dismiss for the future all anxiety about his success. If he cannot make intelligent men feel the presence of a superior nature the worse for them—I can never doubt him. His Ideal is beheld with such unrivalled distinctness, that he is not only justified but necessitated to condemn & to seek to upheave the vast Actual and cleanse the world.” Even though he was sometimes skeptical of the efforts into which Alcott threw his energies, Emerson supported him emotionally and often financially through periods of turmoil and despondency. Born at Spindle Hill near Walcott, Connecticut, Alcott was largely self-educated. As a young man, he made his living as a peddler in New York and Pennsylvania. He traveled south, where he observed slavery first-hand. In 1823, he began teaching in Connecticut, in 1828 moved to Boston, and in 1830 married Abigail May. The couple moved to the Philadelphia area, where their first two daughters, Anna and Louisa, were born. Back in Boston in 1834, Alcott—with the help of educator and reformer Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—established a progressive school in the Masonic Temple building. At the Temple School, rather than attempting to impose knowledge on his students, he employed the Socratic conversational method to draw from them the spiritual and moral truth that he felt they possessed innately. With Elizabeth Peabody and (later) Margaret Fuller as his assistants, he operated the school until 1838. Its closing was forced by the withdrawal of students by parents alarmed at his teaching methods and at some of the subjects he broached. The publication of Alcott’s Conversations with Children on the Gospels (1836-1837)—Alcott’s edited record of his dialogues with his pupils—had made him a target for criticism. In 1840, Alcott moved his wife and growing family into the “Dovecote,” a Hosmer family cottage in Concord. His plan was to support the family by farming and day labor. Emerson paid Edmund Hosmer the rent. That year, his “Orphic Sayings”—described by Emerson as “a string of Apothegms”—appeared in The Dial. Emerson had mixed feelings about them,” but nevertheless found merit in some, and felt they should be published. On April 8, 1840, he wrote Margaret Fuller of the “Orphic Sayings,” “ … what he read me this P.M. are not very good. I fear he will never write as well as he talks.” Late in 1840 and into early 1841, the Emersons gave some thought to having the Alcotts live with them, but—probably for the best—nothing came of the idea. In January, 1841, Alcott was jailed for nonpayment of his poll tax, a form of protest against slavery for which Thoreau also was later jailed. In 1842, Alcott traveled to England, where he found support for his educational theories. The trip was financed largely by Emerson. Alcott returned to America with reformer Charles Lane, with whom he founded Fruitlands, a utopian community in Harvard, Massachusetts, in 1843. The Alcotts moved there in June. The Fruitlands experiment focused on manual labor, vegetarianism, religious harmony, education, and the balanced development of the individual. Relying on highly idealistic, relatively ineffective methods of farming, the reformers found it difficult to sustain the community, in consequence of which Mrs. Alcott and her children suffered considerable hardship. Moreover, Lane’s subordination of individual to community did not sit well with Bronson Alcott’s Transcendental individualism and conflicted with the needs of his family. The Alcotts left Fruitlands in January, 1844. Bronson was deeply depressed over its failure. In 1845, partly with funding provided by Emerson, the Alcotts bought a house in Concord, on Lexington Road. They called it Hillside. (Later, under Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ownership, it would be renamed Wayside.) Alcott made repairs and improvements to the old place and, together with Thoreau, built Emerson a Gothic summerhouse. The Alcotts remained at Hillside until 1848, when they moved to Boston, where Bronson offered conversational series and Abba did missionary work among the urban poor. They returned to Concord in 1857 and settled in the Orchard House. Bronson’s particular talents were locally recognized between 1859 and 1865, when he served Concord as Superintendent of Schools. In the mid-1850s, Alcott began to make conversational tours out west and to receive some of the positive public attention that had eluded him. He wrote and published volumes of prose and verse, including Emerson (1865). The success of his daughter Louisa as a popular author finally provided some financial stability for the family. Bronson Alcott founded the Concord School of Philosophy in 1879. Held summers between 1879 and 1888, the school was managed with the assistance of Frank Sanborn and William Torrey Harris, who ran it after Alcott suffered a debilitating stroke in 1882. In 1884—two years after Emerson’s death—the program of lectures was devoted in part to Emerson’s thought and work. Alcott died in 1888. Emerson never lost his appreciation of the best in Alcott. He wrote of Alcott in a letter to Emily Mervine Drury on November 23, 1853: “ … there are few persons so well worth seeing. I am very sensible of the defects of his genius & character, but he is a rare piece of nature, and is a man who stands in poetic relations to his friends & to the whole world.” Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Bronson Alcott Concord Emerson https://www.sc.concordlibrary.org/files/original/27cf220c9a4479bbcddb39369ac3dbb2.jpeg f83fc89da059321ad7c981da1329ad22 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Emerson in Concord Subject The topic of the resource Ralph Waldo Emerson Description An account of the resource Materials for the exhibit Emerson in Concord Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Concord Free Public Library Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived CFPL web exhibit: Emerson in Concord Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Language A language of the resource English Middlesex Hotel A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Charles King Newcomb Subject The topic of the resource Charles King Newcomb Description An account of the resource “ … I wish you to know that I have Dolon in black & white, & that I account Charles K a true genius: his writing fills me with joy, so simple so subtle & so strong is it. There are sentences in Dolon worth the printing the Dial that they may go forth."—RWE to Margaret Fuller, June 9, 1842 “Charles Newcomb … proves the rich possibilities in the soil, tho’ his result is zero.”—RWE to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, October 13, 1857 “Thanks for your note … & for the surprising news of St. Charles—I had thought he would content himself with dreaming, that is creating his Europe, without descending to the vulgar method of eyes. But he actually went to war, & why not now to London? But being there, I doubt his early return. Nothing but bad news from his bankers would bring him home, him for whom old civilization has an endless charm, & America onl[y] a solitude.”—RWE to Benjamin B. Wiley, December 29, 1871 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Concord Free Public Library Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Undated Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library Concord Emerson Newcomb