Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
Conduct of Life lectures, 1860

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Perhaps America’s best known thinker,  Ralph Waldo Emerson led a renaissance in American ideas in the 19th Century: a search to realize the high potential of the individual person, to understand the proper role of the individual in society, and to discover and celebrate the interrelation and sacredness of all life.  He was a pragmatist and an idealist, a lecturer, a prolific writer and a poet.

In July 1835 Ralph Waldo Emerson purchased his Concord home, proclaiming it was “the only good cellar that had been built in Concord.”  Along with the house, there was a sizable barn, on two acres of land.  In addition to housing various animals, the barn was used for over a year as a schoolroom for Miss Foord’s school. The Emerson children attended the school along with Lizzy and Abby Alcott, Lizzy and Barry Goodwin and Caroline Pratt, all from Concord.

The house Emerson brought his bride Lidian to on September 15, 1835 became that "sylvan" home where they would live together for the next forty-seven years.  The Emersons had four children.  Their home became not only a place for Emerson's study and writing, but a literary center for the emerging American Transcendentalist movement.

In the early years the Emersons referred to their home as Coolidge Castle, a reference to the Boston Coolidges, who had it built as a summer house.  In the family the house became known as Bush, and it remained Emerson's "home front" for the rest of his life. 

When I bought my house, the first thing I did was plant trees.

In November 1836, after the birth of his son Waldo, Emerson planted six hemlocks.  In 1837 he planted thirty-one pine and chestnut trees. The chestnuts fronted the house, the last one coming down in a storm in 2012. In 1838 he wrote to Thomas Carlyle, "I set out on the west side of my house forty young pine trees."   Soon the two acres grew to nine and in 1847 Emerson had enough land to plant 128 apple, pear and plum trees.

The house contains Emerson’s original furniture and objects, much as he left it. The Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association (RWEMA), formed in 1930 by family members and others associated with Emerson’s library and work, owns the Emerson House and the Emerson family papers, and is responsible for maintaining the house and for promoting interest in Emerson’s literary works. The RWEMA is a private non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation.

Looking Back …

Emerson and The Atlantic Monthly

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.

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After he purchases his house a relieved Emerson writes to his brother William:

Concord 27 July 1835
Dear William

Has Charles told you that I have dodged the doom of building & have bought the Coolidge house in Concord with the expectation of entering it next September. It is a mean place & cannot be fine until trees & flowers give it a character of its own. But we shall crowd so many books & papers & if possible, wise friends, into it that it shall have as much wit as it can carry.

Waldo E