December was an Eventful Month for Mr. Emerson

In the nineteenth century as it is today, December was a time of celebrations and gatherings. For Emerson it was also a month when he experienced many life changes.

On Christmas day in 1827, 25-year-old Emerson met 17-year-old Ellen Louisa Tucker in Concord NH and promptly fell in love. He found “nothing but light & oxygen” in New Hampshire and returned several times to see her. The following December they became engaged, Emerson declaring, “now as happy as it is safe in life to be.” They married on September 30, 1829 but sadly she succumbed to tuberculosis in early 1832.

By then Emerson was serving as minister of the Second Church in Boston. After Ellen’s death he continued his duties, but was grieving. In December of 1832 he resigned his position at the Second Church and on Christmas day sailed for Europe. He embarked in Malta, traveled through Italy, Switzerland and France. In July he arrived in England and met with writers Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle, who became a lifelong friend. These meetings had a profound effect on Emerson.

December was often the month when Emerson started his lecture series and as his speaking tours were a major source of income, it was often a very busy month.

In December 1845, Emerson purchased forty-one acres of land at Walden Pond. He let Henry David Thoreau build his cabin on land that Emerson owned. That stay resulted in Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854.

Emerson’s Poems was published in December, 1846. A young Emily Dickinson received a copy of Poems when she was 20 and wrote, “Ralph Waldo Emerson has touched the secret spring.” After hearing Emerson’s lecture, The Poet, a young Walt Whitman wrote, “I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil.” Whitman was so inspired by Emerson’s words that he went on to later write Leaves of Grass. In December 1862 Whitman wrote to Emerson requesting a letter of reference as Whitman sought employment working within President Lincoln’s cabinet.

The first meeting of The Saturday Club, cofounded by Emerson, was on December 16, 1854. Early members included scientist and educator Louis Agassiz; Judge Rockwood Hoar; author Nathaniel Hawthorne; poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; poet James Russell Lowell; and others. The group met monthly and a form of The Saturday Club still exists today in Boston.

Emerson certainly also partook of the season to be with friends and family. In December 1846, for example, the Emersons’ rode to the Alcotts’ via horse-drawn sleigh to enjoy a festive Christmas dinner that included individual notes enclosed in pieces of pie. One can imagine that the Alcott and Emerson children provided joyous entertainment.

Emerson Meets Lincoln

Ralph Waldo Emerson met Abraham Lincoln on two occasions. Emerson was lecturing in Springfield, Illinois on January 10, 1853 and a then unknown Lincoln was in the audience. It was Lincoln who reminded Emerson of that prior meeting when they met again at the White House.

Emerson was in Washington on January 31, 1862 to deliver a lecture titled, “American Civilization” at the Smithsonian Institution. Through his colleague, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, Emerson was introduced to most of Lincoln’s cabinet and on February 1 and 2, to President Lincoln himself. Upon meeting, Lincoln mentioned, “I once heard you say in a lecture, that a Kentuckian seems to say by his air and manners, ‘Here am I; if you don’t like me, the worse for you.’ ”

Emerson wrote of their meeting, “The President…[is] a frank, sincere, well-meaning man with a lawyer’s habit of mind, good clear statement of his fact, correct enough, not vulgar, as described; but with a sort of boyish cheerfulness…”. He later wrote about Lincoln, “A great style of hero draws equally all classes, all the extremes of society, till we say the very dogs believe in him.”

A bit unsure of his feelings for the President at first, Emerson was completely won over by Abraham Lincoln’s motives and methods when Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Emerson lectured on the Emancipation Proclamation on October 12, 1862 in Boston and that address was published in the Atlantic Monthly in November 1862.

Two days after President Lincoln was assassinated, Emerson delivered his eulogy in Concord, MA on April 19, 1865. The moving remembrance captured the country’s shock and mourning, “I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to mankind as this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement…”

Emerson addressed Lincoln’s many attributes, “A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended him. He offered no shining qualities at the first encounter; he did not offend by superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty, which it was very easy for him to obey.”

“He was the most active and hopeful of men; and his work had not perished: but acclamations of praise for the task he had accomplished burst out into a song of triumph, which even tears for his death cannot keep down.”

Gift Giving

Following a long tradition, December was a time of giving and receiving in the Nineteenth Century. Gifts among the Emerson’s might range from fruit (pears in particular), to poems. Fifteen-year-old Ellen Emerson received an unexpected gift on December 21, 1854, Louisa May Alcott’s first published book, “Flower Fables.” The Emersons and the Alcotts were neighbors at various times and the families close. Louisa had created stories for Ellen to keep her amused, while the Alcotts were living at Hillside (now called Wayside).

Ellen wrote of her present, “So this morning I saw a bundle on the entry directed to me. I opened it and found the “Flower Fables” all bound and printed very nicely with pictures, but on turning it over I saw my name in large letters and discovered that ‘twas dedicated to me! Of course, I fell down in a swoon since I could not express my emotion, there being nobody in the house….”

The Emerson family typically exchanged gifts at New Year’s. Emerson favored giving books as a gift. He wrote on December 22, 1840, “Some books leave us free and some books make us free.” In 1844 Emerson struggled with what would be the right gift (as we all do). He wrote, “Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.” He continues, “The only gift is a portion of thyself…the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn;…this is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to the primary basis, when a man’s biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man’s wealth is an index of his merit.”