2 Source: 1Myerson, Editor. 298 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 28 November: From Clifton Springs, New York, to Louisa May Alcott, Concord 27 December: From Concord to Ellery Channing, Concord* 1878 THE EMERSON-WARD FRIENDSHIP: 28? January: From Cambridge to Frances H. Prichard, Concord* ? March: From Cambridge to Ellen Tucker Emerson, Concord* IDEALS AND REALITIES 18? March: From Cambridge to Ellen Tucker Emerson, Concord David Baldwin R ALPH WALDO EMERSON'S FRIENDSHIP with Samuel Gray Ward, a Boston aristocrat fourteen years his junior, marks the balance Emer- son sought to keep in all things between his ideals and the world's realities. It was a balance he could not often maintain: his idealism kept tipping the scales. His adjustments, sometimes ambiguous, were not likely to serve as a model for others, since they depended more on a steady temperament than on his theorizing. Also, for that reason, they seem to have cost him little agony. The friendship itself, which blossomed in the 1840s, a key period for both men, grew from their common origins and from the social structure of upper-class New England. Ward and Emerson met infrequently. Seventeen miles separated Concord from Ward's elegant Park Street townhouse in Boston, the distance helping to stimulate a lively correspondence. Although Ward's have not survived, Emerson's letters contain much to indicate why the younger man was of spe- cial interest to him. Ward is of considerable interest in his own right, and will' first be introduced as one who, though from the same roots, found him- self first drawn towards but in the end away from Emerson's contemplative approach to living and back to his mercantile family. With him the balance tipped the other way, towards the worldly. From the first his was a far more wealthy, more cosmopolitan, more social world. Though they developed into close friends, Ward being as intimate a friend as Emerson ever had outside of Concord, their lives inevitably diverged after the 1840s. The greatest value in placing the two men side by side is that it illuminates Emerson's thought and behavior on the subject of human relations. Ward's origins, like Emerson's, were Puritan and patrician; but unlike his, they were entirely from business and financial occupations. In common also were parts of their schooling: Boston Latin School and Harvard College. From a family always wealthier through generations, Ward had enjoyed the 299 300 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 301 luxury of attending two private schools along the way, one of them the exper- and orientation were too strong to be thrown off even by a bonding with the imental Round Hill School in Lenox, Massachusetts. While both repre- older man. Ward was a man of superior intelligence, and while some of that sented elements of the ruling New England class back into the seventeenth was pragmatic, another part was imaginative. Reflecting on the past in an century, the differences in their income and occupational heritage placed exchange of letters with Charles Eliot Norton near the end of his life, he them in separate social groups. The Ward family was a member of Boston wrote that Emerson had attributed to him a literary gift he knew he did not society; Emerson's was not. have. He knew even then that what little gift he had was "artistic." Nor was This society was a tightly-knit group not unlike its counterpart in Phila- he ever attuned to the substance of Emerson's messages: "In leaving his lec- delphia in economic and social aspects. The Ward family had originated from tures I never asked myself what were the doctrines or opinions he supported. Salem, and Salem had fed certain families into the small elite that made up When he began to speak it was himself, Emerson, that was the new fact he Boston society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among those expressed." The listener had a "vision of higher life" that, although clear for from Salem, besides the Wards, were the Grays, Bowditches, Shaws, Cur- the moment, could not be sustained.6 wens, Brookses, Sturgises, Pickmans, Bigelows, Saltonstalls, Endicotts, Pea- During the 1840s and 1850s, Emerson plied Ward with advice on reading bodys, and Gardners. Ward's father, Thomas Wren Ward, held for many and with his own versions of the higher life. One of his recommendations is years the distinction of being American agent for Baring Brothers of En- especially noteworthy: "I have one more new book so extraordinary for its gland, an investment firm with as distinguished a record as the House of mental largeness of generalization, an American Buddha, that I must send it Rothschild in France. He served not only as treasurer of the Boston Athe- to you, and pray you look it over if you have it not. It is called Leaves of naum, an exclusive subscription library, but was appointed treasurer of Har- Grass." Some years earlier Ward had tried his hand at poetry, and had had vard in 1830, a post he held for twelve years. That there was then a marked four poems published in the first issue of the Dial, one of them on a painting division between the social and the intellectual upper class of the area is well by Washington Allston.8 Emerson later had included three of Ward's poems implied by Thomas Ward's condescending attitude towards what one might in his anthology Parnassus. But Ward's bent was always to be artistic, not think would have been a great honor: "The College treasurership gives me literary. In this regard he was considerably more sophisticated than Emer- little trouble, and is an agreeable relaxation at times and brings me among a son or other members of his circle. Characteristically, Ward, who had spent class of men who are educated and highly intellectual whenever I have the a Wanderjahr in Europe visiting centers of art after graduating from Har- time and inclination to be with them.' The son, Samuel Gray Ward, was vard in 1836, understood with grace Emerson's shortcoming in this respect. conscious of the gulf between the two halves of the Boston upper class, but He excused it on the grounds that there were few influences around Emer- considerably more sensitive. He had taken a course while at Harvard from son to aid him in aesthetic training, that a great man is never great on all George Ticknor, whom he admired, but whom he noticed was ostracized in sides, and that Emerson in fact did understand the "relation of art to thought" Boston society in later years, though Ticknor was from a prominent Boston better than many painters. family. Ward was not sure of the reasons for the coldness towards Ticknor, Nevertheless there was a central divergence in how the two approached but wrote: "It was in its way as curious an example of the prejudices of culture. For Emerson, everything of course revolved around the potential of my beloved native city at the conservative end of the scale as the non- the individual: "In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine; namely the acceptance of Margaret Fuller and Emerson at the other." infinitude of the private man." 10 That doctrine, here expressed just when Here is Ward showing his fine judgment and sense of fairness, and an un- Emerson and Ward were becoming acquainted, never changed. It was not derstanding of Boston society while part of it. He was always a man of de- suitable for Ward, either for his exterior or interior life. Ward was more cency and balance. His interest in Emerson had begun because of mutual modest about the potentials for self-knowledge and knowledge of others: friends, especially Margaret Fuller, but it soon grew because of what each "Myself I do not know, my friend I do not know, but the relations between saw in the other as stimulating. Ward's portrait will now be composed, from us I do know, and it is the only thing I know." Ward applied this view con- three elements: cultural interests, business activities, and social position, sistently to the nature and uses of art. In an unpublished statement titled the foundation for the other two. "Idealism and Realism," he concluded that human relations are the "subject From his letters to Ward, it is clear that Emerson would have been grati- of all the arts." "In the final analysis this is all there is of us; all other interests fied had Ward developed culturally into more of a follower of the Ideal than are of value only as they subserve this." Having this view, it is not surpris- he ever did. Ward always showed respect for Emerson, but his own roots ing that Ward had much less confidence than did Emerson that creative in- 302 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 303 spiration could be found in nature. His studies of European paintings both example, it would be difficult to picture Emerson reading aloud stories of in copies at the Boston Athenxum and later in Europe led him to desire the Boccaccio to his assembled family, but that is what Ward did with wife and human impress on nature that European landscapes provided as America's parents assembled in the Park Street town house. 19 In fact, Ward's first criti- did not. In an article on Hiram Powers' statue of a female Greek Slave (1847), cal essay had been a defense of Boccaccio's writing. 20 Ward foresaw the de- he explained that nature was no longer a rich source of inspiration for any of bilitating influence of the genteel outlook, predicting that Boccaccio would the arts. 13 With perception he complained that for poetry "all nature has not become more popular, "for the world grows more and more delicate as been ransacked" and that "the vocabulary being once adjusted, and the gen- it grows older, and Boccace is nature itself, and the most unclad nature eral tone of thought and sentiment prescribed, making poetry has become so withal." Sounding again more like Whitman than Emerson, Ward praised easy that it is done as a matter of course." In a customary touch of generosity, Boccaccio for his largeness of spirit, for finding in however low a condition of which allowed Emerson himself to be exempt from censure, Ward added human experience something of value. "Manliness, tenderness, nobleness, that despite a "false theory," the leaders of this school had been "good men" simplicity, nature, I find in Boccaccio." For over-refined moderns, a return who have "done good work in their time."14 to Boccaccio, a "true painter of man, the creature of passion and circum- Here Ward also indirectly challenged the Emersonian assumption that stance," is a refreshment, moderns who are "so busy in adjusting the drap- the individual consciousness was sufficient in the arts when he complained ery of feeling that the bone and sinew it should cover are well nigh forgot- that the American viewer of art asked but one question, How does this please ten."2 On the subject of morality in art, Ward had here first laid down a me? when his taste may be corrupted and his feeling "may demand some- principle: thing false and exaggerated.' 13 Nobody, he continued, wants to take the time to learn from and admire a work of art; criticism is always hasty. Elsewhere When we see a picture or statue, on what is our judgement of it to be founded? he scores the tendency to praise American works: "Grave men gravely vaunt We look to see if the sentiment is true to nature, if the drawing is correct, if the American productions in a way that to an uninterested observer, must seem nature is beautiful and true, if the spirit in which it is conceived be refined, and sadly absurd." 16 Ward's recognition of the need for relationships in cultural if we find these we are satisfied. But do we ask ourselves, when we see a drunken matters as in social is one that moves him closer to Whitman's than to Emer- and sensual form carved in Parian stone, whether the subject is moral, whether it is decent? Thank heaven! I believe not naturally when a Michelangelo son's perspective. "It is the greater or less certainty of an audience, and the carves a Bacchus (and his was no ideal Bacchus, but the deity of drunkenness) nature of that audience, which rule the forms of literature, and develop or do we ask such a question? Never. The art is its own reason. We recognize the suppress the poems of the poet," he maintained, adding that while the great presence of a wider law than that of our conventions and, self-forgetful, are lost artist will write for all time and any audience, the nature of the immediate in the power of design. We recognize in the artist, not a law-giver to man but a audience will be a shaping force.17 Yet with a conservative bent and a keen seer of the law of God. 4 sense of the history of the arts, he here scored the contemporary fashion to turn out formless "pieces" of poetry, unwilling to see, as did Emerson, that By contrast, Emerson's bias towards reading both nature and art for moral for good reasons the modern spirit must shed the old forms. direction is evident in much of his writing, none more obvious than here: Ward's inspiration for art came to be Goethe, and he was indebted to "You may chide sculpture or drawing, if you will, as you may rail at orchards Emerson for his encouragement to undertake an important translation of and cornfields; but I find the grand style in sculpture as admonitory and pro- Goethe's art criticism which he completed while living the life of a gentle- voking to good life as Marcus Antoninus. I was in the Atheneum, and looked man farmer in the Berkshires. Goethe was a point of real contact for the at the Apollo, and saw that he did not drink much port wine." interests of Emerson and Ward, but he was much less a Romantic critic than Ward also saw dangers in using art metaphorically. In his most original Emerson or Fuller, who scolded him for his worldliness, might have liked. article, on architecture, which contained many of the same notions expressed Ward had approached his translation of Goethe not as a creative or inter- by Horatio Greenough (whom he had met in Europe), Ward struck for sim- pretive task, but as one whose obligation it was to be classically correct in plicity and purity of form in buildings and monuments. Meanings and sym- respect to the original. bols were wearisome: "all sentimental monuments are bad and all conceits of There was another even more powerful divergence on art: Emerson saw every sort; as, a broken column, a mother weeping over her child, a watchful it through the lenses of morality, as indeed he saw all aspects of culture, dog, etc. They strike at first, but the mind wearies to death of them the mo- whereas Ward had freed himself from this side of his Puritan heritage. For ment they are repeated." Emerson might have agreed with Ward in that 304 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 305 view, but he was far more prone to see art as the manifestation of idea rather cisely the time when Emerson's influence on him was strongest, Ward be- than as something expressing a natural condition, and with his Puritan back- came SO restless that he had defected in the other direction, proposing to his ground the idea often was connected to behavior. The process was intel- father to go out to the Berkshires and establish himself as a sort of Emerso- lectual, self-generating. Emerson defining all art as "the conscious utterance nian American Scholar, Man on the Farm. He had begun an elaborate expla- of thought, by speech or action, to any end,' seems generous, but the nation for this shift to his father, who held the pursestrings, by stating that thought to be uttered was, in practice, to be filtered through only the high- except for the need to provide handsomely for a wife used to the best, which est mind using the highest moral principles. he wrongly believed a Berkshire farm would provide, he never would have A second aspect of Ward's personality, his business and financial side, re- entered business: "Long before I entered into trade, I had a disinclination moves him even more from Emerson's idealism, as would be expected. But for its pursuits. From a very early period, I looked upon myself as a student Ward did not give up interest in the arts. His life pattern had more of a unity and literary man, and so far as I had planned at all my views of life were of to it, more of a balance between the intellectual and the workaday, than did this complexion; 30 So much for the stability of a young man's plans. Emerson's. As late as the 1890s he was alert to new trends and new writers. The need for money five years later, when children had begun to arrive and He characterized Emily Dickinson with the penetrating phrase, "the articu- his wife's high social standards made more income imperative, coupled with late inarticulate" in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson that Higginson the opportunity to free himself from dependence on his father, meant that said was the best critique of her work he had seen. 28 But most of Ward's cul- Ward would have been foolish not to seize the opportunity Baring Brothers tural activity continued to center on the fine arts. He kept to his habit of offered him. Moreoever, Ward had within himself a cluster of the necessary sketching, especially landscapes. He developed a friendship with the Har- attributes for being a successful financial agent as Joshua Bates, from Salem vard art professor Charles Eliot Norton, and carried on an interesting ex- like the Wards, and then high in the directorship when he interviewed Ward, change with him on how to increase America's sophistication in the fine arts must have sensed. It helped of course that Ward's father had been the agent, through the public schools. And, after his relocation in New York following but the appointment of the son was no mere act of nepotism. In the years to the Civil War, a move he welcomed, he joined with other businessmen in follow it turned out that Ward performed the firm's duties even more ably founding the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ward had, nevertheless, turned than had his father. His trust and affability, his coolness under pressure, and away years before from a life modelled somewhat on Emerson's contempla- an innate knack for wise mercantile decisions combined to help both Baring tive life. It was clear that the older man had hoped he would join him, too; Brothers and his own fortunes prosper. He became a wealthy man in his own his annoyance at Ward's defection was expressed in a letter to Elizabeth right. And if most of his attentions had now to be given to business matters, Hoar in 1849 when he remarked that Ward was "very happy in his new posi- as he seemed to think they could have been given to studies before, he tion, which he justifies." But Emerson's good nature could not desert him maintained his interest in the latter and became an important steward of for long, and their relationship, though diminished by a key change in Ward's culture. life, continued. Like others of the Puritan experiment lucky enough to become wealthy This change was that Ward was chosen to succeed his father as American and well situated, Ward felt an obligation to support those who were at- agent for Baring Brothers, the English investment firm. By that time (May tempting to improve society or themselves. His generosity, which will here 1849), Ward and his beautiful wife, Anna Barker Ward, had established be only sampled, was impressive and Emerson himself was a recipient. After themselves in the social life of Lenox, Massachusetts, where they had Emerson's home was partially destroyed by fire, Ward contributed $500 to a bought, with Ward's father's help, an elegant farm whose soil Ward himself fund for its restoration, as much as anyone. 31 Ward acted as part-time busi- had learned to work, though "Highwood," as they called it, was by no means ness consultant to Emerson, too, and was put in charge of the investment self-sustaining. Anna, raised to enjoy an active and intricate social life, was fund Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had set up for the indigent extremely disappointed at the change and at having to sell the place in mov- Bronson Alcott. He responded twice when Emerson asked him to contribute ing back to Boston. But Ward, for all his enthusiasm as a gentleman farmer, to a fund for Thomas Carlyle, giving the amounts requested. His patience seemed to readjust with little difficulty to a role common to all Ward males with and generosity to the poet Ellery Channing, whom he introduced to for generations. His marriage in 1840 had been followed by three years of Emerson, and who seems to have lived off the cultural and financial savings desultory brokerage work in Boston, while living in fashionable Louisburg of others, was very great. Channing, who married Margaret Fuller's younger Square, thanks to his father's financial help. Under this routine, and at pre- sister, did have the decency to acknowledge one instance of charity, writing 306 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 307 Ward that his gift of $200 had saved him from bankruptcy. 32 Louis Agassiz and social grace more alluring than Fuller's mental stimulation; he wrote his poured out a tale of woe to Ward about his difficulties in financing his new father that he had seriously fallen in love with Anna.4 Anna's lineage was at museum at Harvard, and Ward responded with a check for $1,200 which least as impressive as Fuller's. Her father was a prominent and very pros- Agassiz expected would relieve him "of all anxiety for years to come. After perous businessman, Jacob Barker, the family originally being from New moving to New York, Ward's stewardship found wider applications. He Bedford, Massachusetts, and related to the Folgers, Benjamin Franklin's helped E. L. Godkin, editor of the Nation, with financial advice, for which mother's family. Barker had early amassed a sizeable fortune. It was said that the editor expressed gratitude. Godkin called his association with Ward he shrugged off a loss of $50,000 reported to him on his wedding day. He "more than forty-three years of friendship." Of all his charities and cultural maintained homes in New York, Boston, Newport, New Orleans, and at aids, none must have given Ward more satisfaction than his part in helping Bloomingdale on the Hudson, at various times. One sign that religious ori- to found the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1871 he gave a sum of money, gins now meant little to the moneyed class was that while the Barkers were by subscription, towards the purchase of a collection of paintings then in Quakers, there was not the slightest sign among the Wards that this affilia- Brussels that became the nucleus of the Museum's first holdings, and him- tion mattered. Nor did it matter to her husband later when Anna became so self went to Brussels to view the collection with the Museum's first presi- interested in the ecclesiastical antithesis of her own sect that she joined the dent, John Taylor Johnston, and trustee William J. Hoppin. Ward had been Catholic church and remained in it actively, bringing up their children, all of one of fifty citizens appointed to look into the founding of the Museum in whom married Catholics, in that faith. But it did matter to Emerson, on 1869, and had been elected the first treasurer, serving in 1870-71. For the whom Anna had made a great impression, as will be shown later: "I grieve next eight years he served as a trustee. This entire pattern of cultural stew- that she has flung herself into the Church of Rome. She was born for social ardship was consistent with his own interests and associations, and blended grace, and that faith makes such carnage of social relations!" 43 practical help with advice and encouragement. The social gulf between Ward and Emerson was always very wide. Types So much for Ward's business life and his patronage of the arts. The third and places of residence were an indicator. While Emerson's home in Con- element of his life's composition, running through the others, was his being cord was spacious, even elegant, and while he was always affluent enough to nurtured within the leading social class in Boston. It is easy to misread the keep servants, the Wards' addresses and domiciles always bespoke social social behavior of this group because of its Puritan origins. By the mid- leadership. The Park Street townhouse, opposite Boston Common, the nineteenth century it was acting in some ways more Cavalier than Puritan, Louisburg Square apartment that newlyweds Samuel and Anna were given as a knowledge of the social pattern of Ward's family shows. A few tart obser- by Ward's father, the Commonwealth Avenue townhouse built by the Sam- vations of Ward's sister Martha to her father may illustrate, though perhaps uel Wards as soon as Back Bay had been filled in, the two Berkshire country distorting unfavorably. From the Wards' vacation home in fashionable Nahant residences, and the Ward's Fifth Avenue New York address after the Civil on the north shore of Boston she wrote one summer that the social season War-all reflected a financial and social level Emerson had no desire or was so dull that "even scandal wearies." She wondered why the young ladies chance to aspire to. didn't get headaches more often, "they eat SO much and do so little." The The first Berkshire location, later to become the site of the land adjacent affluence of her circle is shown by an anecdote she recounts about the Jack- to the Tanglewood music center, was a place the newlywed Wards greatly sons, a prominent family, told to her by one of them. A young man of the enjoyed, Ward partly for the challenge of establishing his financial indepen- family was asked if he had ever been in England. No, he replied, but his dence (which he could not do), Anna for the brisk social life she and her hus- father had promised to bring him there and, if he liked it, he would buy it for band immediately found themselves in the middle of. The Wards hosted par- him.38 A couple's engagement brought forth this response from Martha: "I ties to which fifty or sixty came; they had come to the Berkshires with a should think it a very good match-he wants a dashing wife, and she wants complete social entrée, in particular to Charles Sedgewick, then the area's money." social leader, who came to admire the Wards. Sedgewick played a role in the Ward's own choice of wife reflected the power of his social heritage. He Berkshires roughly parallel to that of Emerson in Concord, except that the had had ample opportunity to be drawn to an intellectual woman in his composition and activities of the social groups differed much. During the friendship with Margaret Fuller, who at one point seems to have been ready five years they were there (1844-49), Emerson hinted to the Wards that to turn things into more than friendship. 40 But on a trip to New Orleans on he would enjoy visiting them; but it is well that he never did. Probably he business for his father in 1839, he had found Anna Hazard Barker's beauty sensed that he would have been out place. Berkshire County was gregari- 308 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 309 ous, busy, expensive, elegant, very social. The second Berkshire residence, in Washington, D.C., when Ward was seventy-two and in retirement; he Oakwood, which Ward built himself as a retirement home, was designed by wrote back to Boston that his host was "wonderfully young and like his for- the distinguished Boston architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White; for mer self. and his interest in good things is as lively as ever." Ward's his wife Ward had a Catholic chapel built on the grounds. social position had nurtured and steered him well all through his life. It was Ward's general approach to life, above all, especially after the Civil It is now possible to turn back to Emerson and pick up the story of his War when he had moved to New York, that shows him as much more cos- approach to Ward and Ward's circle, a story that illustrates Emerson's con- mopolitan and Cavalier than Emerson. When Emerson wrote what was to stant mediating between the ideal and the real. be the last personal letter to the Wards in 1866, in thanks for a picture of Emerson's views on Boston society walked a narrow line. He was not nearly themselves, he reminded them that "our intercourse with our friends (I as comfortable with it as had been his father, whose church depended on it. mean the tone of it), is sometimes no measure of our real delight in them." Yet he was not ready to reject it outright. Within two years of meeting Ward While the picture presented a serious image, Emerson added that such a he had published the first series of Essays (1841), among which was "Man- seriousness was more "becoming" to one who knew how to spend each day ners." In the third paragraph of that essay he had gone to much trouble to well "than any lights which wit or gaiety might lend to other hours." But by distinguish between the superficial idea of a gentleman and a deeper one. using this flattery, Emerson misjudged the usual stance Ward took, at least The latter must retain the heroic element, and rid itself of the idea of fash- the Ward of the years after 1850 when he began devoting his life to business. ion, "a word of narrow and often sinister meaning." The true gentleman, in- Business and an elegant social style were then naturally linked. dependent, able to meet all classes of men on his own terms in noble ac- Ward's wife is said to have remarked about her husband in later years that cents, is a rare person, Emerson admits. Manners do have their place, as when she first knew him when he was about twenty-one, he seemed pre- does fashion, but only if they are the outward manifestation of inner charac- maturely old, but that "he grew young, and has been growing younger ever ter. Such a view is traditionally Puritan. Social frivolity and play-acting with since. Such may have been more than a happy wife's tribute. Ward took one's personality are inadmissable. Public reputations don't matter. Degree much care with what he ate and what he wore. He once wrote out his views of wealth is immaterial. on dress and its importance.47 Among advice he set down was that "every Emerson once recorded in his journal that most aristocrats are "trifling day" should be considered "more or less a jour de fete." Referring to Goethe's and tedious company." But he singled out Ward himself for exception: approval of the role of appearance, he stated that proper dress is the most "Ward has aristocratic position and turns it to excellent account, the only universal "if the most superficial" entrée into all human societies, the letter aristocrat who does. 49 Yet Emerson could occasionally give in to the lure of of introduction "to all strangers and women," and "part of politeness and the the more obvious social graces: "Your name is forever commended to your desire to please." Ward's stress on human relations, always stronger than ear after it has been spoken by a man like Otis or a woman like Anna Bar- Emerson's, comes across in this document especially when he says: "Dress is ker." The man was Harrison Gray Otis, a prominent society gadabout. The part of the freemasonry of intercourse by which we slide into relations that woman was Anna Hazard Barker, known in Boston, Newport, and New Or- must otherwise be taken by storm, if taken at all." Ward also delighted in leans for her beauty and social graces, and the woman Ward was to marry a gourmet food, as he seems to have put some store by the fashionable The few weeks after Emerson named her here. In fact, for Anna Barker, Emer- Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1854). son worked up an enthusiasm that conveniently united his ideals about char- The Wards had a circle of friends large, varied, and distinguished. They acter to the realities of her manners. Here was a woman that could stimulate entertained often and kept up with many, as their correspondence between as no Margaret Fuller could stimulate. After a few meetings with her he 1850 and 1875 attests, peppered with thank-you notes and brief social letters wrote that her "miracle" was first the "amount" of her life and then the de- to and from those known as much for cultural as for social distinction. The gree of "intimacy" she could call forth: "The moment she fastens her eyes on network of relations was intricate and solid, as a sampling of correspondents' you, her unique gentleness unbars all doors, and with such easy and frolic names will attest: Edward Everett, George William Curtis, Thomas Baring sway she advances and advances and advances on you, with that one look, (from England), Jared Sparks, Richard Cobden, Richard Henry Dana, Wil- that no brother or sister or father or mother or life-long acquaintance ever liam Morris, John LaFarge, John Chandler Bancroft, Celia Thaxter, Wil- seemed to arrive quite so near as this now first seen maiden." He could not liam T. Blodgett, Henry James, Jr. Ward was able to handle his later years believe he had seen her only a few times: "I should think I had lived with her youthfully, much as his wife had suggested. James Russell Lowell visited him in the houses of eternity.' Here is Emerson bordering on the Cavalier. 310 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 311 Moreover, to write such sentiments to another single young woman shows in the shaping of his ideals or the capturing of his loyalties. When the inten- Emerson's social naivete, and perhaps also his unwillingness to acknowledge sity of his connections to Ward and Anna Barker had subsided, he was able the sexual ingredient in attractiveness. His first journal entry on Anna Bar- to find his balance again. Though the lure the other way was sometimes ker had stressed that socially she was not of his class but of a higher, showing strong, the scales were to tip in the direction of cultivation of the ideal, and his acknowledgement of social realities beyond what might have been ex- of the self and friends closer to home: "-in reading Legere's journal, who pected. But she had dealt "nobly" with all. Her conversation was the "frank- seems to have seen the best company, I find myself interested that Ward est" he had ever heard; "She can afford to be sincere," he had continued, should play the part of the American gentleman well, but am contented that "the wind is not purer than she." He was willing to make allowances for he should do that instead of me-do the etiquette instead of me-as I am superficial social aspects more in women than in men, as when describing contented that others should sail the ships and work the spindles." ST another young woman of high class: "Miss Forbes gratified me very much in While Emerson did mainly separate himself from high society, then, by precisely the way I hoped. I delight in a lady, in the rare woman in whom origins, proximity, and more than might be expected, by inclination, he what talent, what genius they have, runs to manners. Again one may came in spirit quite close to it. His ideals by no means squared with certain question Emerson's tact in writing such a sentiment to a young woman, es- aspects of it, but special kinds of real people were something else. pecially to Margaret Fuller. As to Ward and Anna Barker, Emerson had be- In this connection there was a noticeable difference in how Emerson and come so impressed with both that he took the trouble to attend their wed- Ward responded to unfamiliar groups in America. Ward had taken a western ding on 3 October 1840, at Professor John Farrar's home in Cambridge, and southern tour of America shortly after his year in Europe, and recorded where Ward had boarded in college. "Farewell, my brother, my sister!" he his impressions richly in a series of letters home to Park Street. The letters had written them theatrically shortly before.5 A society wedding was a rare are brimming with enthusiasm for evidences he found of American ingenu- kind of event for Emerson to attend. ity, of the hospitality of frontier families, the enterprise of western farmers. Yet Ward as aristocrat was impressing Emerson more and more since their Not once does it appear that he is patronizing these people, as might be ex- meeting in 1838. By 1843 he was using superlatives to Carlyle: Ward was pected from one of his class and section. Instead, he entered into the spirit of "my friend and the best man in the city, and, besides all his personal merits, the places he visited with youthful gusto and great adaptability, aided much a master of all the offices of hospitality." Two years later he expressed to to be sure by carrying letters of introduction to leading citizens. Even in another correspondent the same kind of admiration in even more glowing small towns he maintained this tone: "In coming to one of these country terms: towns if you have any claim upon anybody you are received by open arms by the whole city, and though I was only one day in Huntsville, I saw as many Sam Ward came to see me on Monday and spent a night here. I was never so people and things as I could have shown a stranger in Boston in a week." much impressed by the finished beauty of that person. He was a picture to look By contrast Emerson has left behind a meagre record of people and places at as he sat, and his conversation was the most solid, graceful, well-formed, and visited on his numerous western lecturing jaunts. Nowhere does a sense of elevated by his just sentiment. What sincere refinement! What a master in life! the realities of American cities and towns take precedence over other matters, For his talk for the most part was of his new purchased farm [in the Berkshires], usually intellectual, recorded in letters and journal entries. Only in one of the house and buildings he is to raise, of his village neighbors, and of Massa- piece of writing, English Traits, does he exercise what is shown to be a re- chusetts and American politics. I compare this man, who is a performance, with markable talent for assessing the character of a country. Why he did not do others who seem to me only the prayers. How easily he rejects things he does SO with his own is puzzling, in view of his life-long preference for locating not want, and never has a weak look or word. He recommends by his facility and America's identity at home rather than across the seas. The best explanation fluency in it the existing world and society and Alcott and Fourier will find it the harder to batter it down. I found myself much warped from my own perpen- may be that he was too caught up in propagating his ideals. The message of dicular and grown avaricious overnight of money and lands and buildings, after self-reliance for his countrymen was so obsessive that the realities of his na- hearing this fine seigneur discourse so captivatingly of chateaux, gardens and tive surroundings and the precise nature of the common lives around him collections of art. 5 were neglected. When the focus is narrowed even more from social class to the two men, Emerson's habit of alternating between theory and reality, But this was as far as Emerson would ever go in allowing the ways of wealth between what might be and what is, shows its strength. He found both simi- and society to challenge eccentrics like Bronson Alcott and Henry Thoreau larities and contrasts useful as he thought about Ward and the subject of 312 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 313 friendship during the early 1840s. "The most arresting people," he recorded journal less in terms of intellect than of personalities when he wrote Fuller: in his journal in 1841, "are those who have genius by accident and are power- "We wish not to multiply books but to report life, and our resources are ful obliquely," adding in reference to Ward: "Beautiful to me among SO many therefore not SO much the pens of practical writers as the discourse of the mediocre youths as I see, was Sam Ward when I first fairly encountered him, living and the portfolios which friendship has opened to Emerson may and in this way just named." Here is no suggestion of social class whatever. well have been thinking of Ward's portfolio and Ward's friendship. Ward's quality, he told himself, was entirely innate, and his "genius" was his In May he wrote John Sterling in England, whom he had never met, that fascination. The idealism comes through even stronger once he began writ- he was a worshipper of friendship and could not find "any other good equal ing Ward: to To Fuller he wrote about Caroline Sturgis in June on the same sub- ject, stressing through hyperbole the slow ripening that true friendship You and I, my friend, sit in different houses, and speak all day to different per- needed. "We are beginning to be acquainted and by the century after next sons, but the differences-make the most we can of them-are trivial; we are shall be the best of friends. Being SO majestic cannot surely take less time to lapped at last in the same idea, we are hurried along in the same material sys- establish a relation. And to Ward he had written in January that discover- tem of stars, in the same immaterial system of influences, to the same untold ing friends "was the most attractive of all topics," a subject SO "high and sa- ineffable goal. Let us exchange now and then a word or a look on the new phases cred" that "we must saunter if we would find the secret." "If men are fit for of the Dream.60 friendship," he continued, "I think they must see their mutual sympathy across the unlikeness and even apathy of today.' Six weeks later he wrote Emerson is seeing their friendship as a part of the interlocking Platonic rela- him: "I find myself, maugre all my philosophy, a devout student and admirer tionships that he conceives the universe to have wisely established for some of persons. I cannot get used to them: they daunt and dazzle me still."7 benign purpose. Yet fifteen months earlier he had written Ward that the rea- It is by now possible to guess what the main lines of thought in "Friend- son he was interested in him was a matter of their differences: "-with tastes ship," published with the first series of essays in 1841, would turn out to be. which I also have, you have tastes and powers and corresponding circum- As with many of his essays, the organization follows roughly the pattern nor- stances which I have not and perhaps cannot divine."6 mally used in homiletics. Paragraphs one through five explore the health- Originally it had been Ward's studies in art that had started the relation- giving nature of friendship, counterpointing the ideal and the worldly as in ship. After visits to Concord in the fall of 1838, Ward had lent Emerson a this passage, where a reference to Ward seems possible: "Shall I not call God portfolio of copy sketches he had gathered in Europe. He gave Emerson one the beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, of them, a sketch of Raphael's Endymion, for which the older man expressed I embrace solitude, and yet I am not SO ungrateful as not to see the wise, the strong gratitude 62 It hung on Emerson's study wall thereafter. But the fine lovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate. Who arts were only a bridge between them. Emerson had, after all, himself been hears me, who understands me, becomes mine-a possession for all time" to Europe and visited many of the cultural centers; nor could his interest in (paragraph five). Paragraphs six through nine qualify this affirmation, show- art match Ward's. Besides, there was much else on his agenda at this time. ing how friendship, like love, can disturb and even blind the private self. During the winter months of 1839-40, he had delivered a series of lectures, Paragraph ten moves to balance the two sections by means of definition: the one of which, probably the one on "Love," served as a sketch for the essay highest kind of friendship consists of two central elements, sincerity and ten- "Friendship." The latter, he wrote Ward on 14 July 1840, was "now into derness. Emerson has trouble explaining what he means by tenderness. He some shape, not yet symmetrical but approximate to that." He would send it clearly considers it of great importance and, having found, he says, little in to him as he had wanted to earlier.64 On 22 June he had written Ward that he books that speak adequately to the word, returns to the old Puritan notion of was "just finishing" the essay derived from the winter lecture, on which he worth and purity as necessary conditions for exercising tenderness: "Can an- would like Ward's comments, adding: "I have written nothing with more other be so blessed and we so pure that we can offer him tenderness?" He pleasure, and the piece is already indebted to you and I wish to swell my goes no further with the subject. The long section following (paragraphs obligations." Further, in the early spring of 1840, he was planning the twelve through eighteen) lays down his stringent requirements and condi- main outline of "The Over-Soul," and wrote Fuller on 15 April that it was tions for achieving the ideal friendship. For example: "The condition which almost complete. He was also involved with long-delayed plans for publica- high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires tion of the Dial, the first number appearing in July. He thought of the new great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very 314 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 315 one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, love." When it comes to choosing, his solace is not instrumental but a further mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which, beneath flight of the imaginative ideal. these disparities, unites them" (paragraph sixteen). The conclusion (para- The dichotomy of ideal and real is even more evident in the cluster of graphs nineteen through twenty-two) admits to the rarity of the ideal friend- letters, earlier referred to, that Emerson wrote Ward between 1838 and ship, and circles back to the second section in which was stressed the protec- 1853 collected and published in 1883 by Charles Eliot Norton, professor of tion of the private self, leaving the subject in a condition of some ambiguity. art at Harvard. 72 Emerson's interest in Ward depended on Ward's combining Much of what Emerson is saying in "Friendship" could be referring to his the two polarities of dream or hope, and worldly effectiveness. Also central current relations with Ward, though there is no way of making precise con- to Ward's attraction was his active intelligence, for it was intelligence, in the nections. Probably the essay was indebted to a number of his associates at form of a lively imagination, that drew Emerson to those he called friends. the time, especially as he also says in the essay that he pleases his imagina- Where he found none he quickly lost interest. His enshrining of a particular tion "with a circle of god-like men and women variously related to each kind of intellect, the kind one would expect from a Romantic, in common other and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence" (paragraph fourteen). with such writers as William Wordsworth or Carlyle, presented him with a Despite his thinking in terms of numbers occasionally, parallels show that major dilemma that he never resolved, if indeed he was conscious of it. Emerson's friendship with Ward was typological, that it could stand for any Emerson was seeking to propagate a national creed through the regenera- friendship so long as it was of the highest sort. tion of the private self, but a regeneration depending on the imaginative ac- Nevertheless, certain ideas in the essay point more closely to Ward. A tivity of the mind. This activity is not something that can be implanted in "rare and costly" nature is essential, "each so well tempered and SO happily anybody from the outside. According to Romantic assumptions it is a gift, an adapted, and withal so circumstanced [he appears to be referring to eco- innate capacity that could rescue men from being the pawns of experience in nomic security and comfort] as to allow for the highest sort of meetings" a Lockean world. To his credit Emerson in his Americanism wanted to (paragraph fourteen). Also needed is a rare mixture between "likeness and extend his vision to all: "The perfect world exists to every the poor- unlikeness": "the only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is est drover in the mountains, the poorest laborer in his ditch. Quite indepen- mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance or at least a manly resis- dent of his work are his endowments. There is enough in him (grant him tance, to find a mush of concession" (paragraph sixteen). Further, a friend capable of thought and virtue) to puzzle and outwit all our philosophy." But must act magnanimously: "Friendship demands a religious treatment"; rev- the qualification about the need of having thought and virtue gives his posi- erence is essential (paragraph seventeen). "Treat your friend as a spectacle." tion away. Can most men practice virtue when it depends on the exercise of We should not get too close to a friend, meeting his relatives and going to his rigorous imaginative thought? Why should the practice of virtue depend SO home and he to yours too often: "Leave this touching and clawing. Let him heavily on the use of the mind? Emerson was too decent a man ever to pa- be to me a spirit" (paragraph eighteen). A letter from one to the other may tronize those whose weaker attributes left them outside the circle of saint- be enough. Do not hurry the process of making friends, which is largely un- hood or friendship, but the fact is he never did or could make close contact conscious and mysterious: "Let us be silent-so we may hear the whisper of with any but those with special intellectual powers, whether found in the the gods" (paragraph twenty). We must be perfectly self-possessed before- maverick intelligentsia such as Alcott, Jones Very, Fuller, and Thoreau, or hand. Emerson's inveterate habit of idealizing and symbolizing may have among more worldly and social types such as Ward. The reason he could not here used Ward's friendship for its exercise: "There can never be deep peace was philosophical as well as temperamental. While his generous spirit fre- between two spirits, never mutual respect, until their dialogue each stands quently called attention to this failure to warm up to people, his own princi- for the whole world" (paragraph nineteen). ples pulled him away from them anyway. They kept him from fashioning a Yet he had checked his idealism in this essay, too. He had starkly recog- reasonable unity of thought and experience, and unity was a central philo- nized the difficulties of actual friendship: "We walk alone in the world. sophical need of Emerson. He relied instead on that highly American solu- Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables" (paragraph twenty). With tion, a tone of hope and a trust in the future. He begged the question. characteristic good nature he added: "But a sublime hope cheers ever the With Ward, nevertheless, there was the present. In Puritan style, Emer- faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls son saw him as representative. Writing to Ward in 1848 on shipboard as he are now acting, enduring and daring, which can love us and which we can returned from England, and striking a curiously apologetic note, he ex- 316 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 317 pressed this kind of interest in him: "What is it or can it be to you that through the social amenities, their friendship blooming in the early 1840s and con- the long mottled trivial years a dreaming brother cherishes in a corner some tinuing strongly for about ten years, then diminishing after Ward joined the picture of you as a type or nucleus of happier visions and a freer life?" He business ranks. In 1838 Emerson had stressed the importance of the social reassures Ward that if his abilities fail to measure up it will not matter: "It is graces when he described kindness as "elegant" and "never vulgar." 77 He with good reasons that I rejoice in the token." He then reflects on what he explained in the introduction to his lecture series "Human Culture" that he tacitly admits is the paradox of the ideal and the real: "Strange that what is might join the idea of the "adoration of justice" to "the elegant accomplish- most real and cordial in existence should lie under what is most fantastic and ments of the gentleman." It seems clear that Emerson's friendship with vanishing. I have long ago found that we belong to our life, not that it be- Ward, always by birth and training the prototype of the best gentility, must longs to us, and that we must be content to play a sort of admiring and sec- have been sustained by the worldly and social as well as by Emerson's vision ondary part to our genius.' Such flights of rhetoric intermingle with more of the ideal. mundane references in the correspondence, but the thrust is definitely in Emerson's letters to Ward, while telling much about Emerson's effort to favor of the former. Ward was, like certain other young people, a kind of fix his thinking on friendship as an ideal, also show something about this hostage for Emerson's dream of what America might become. He turned out closer, more personal side of their relation. A common interest in art was not to fulfill Emerson's hopes for him, showing that the Boston world of only a bridge between them. Emerson was soon listening to Ward's mel- intellect and the Boston world of business and society remained two worlds. ancholy restlessness, probably about career choices, which, however, he It was only Emerson's good nature that allowed him to accept Ward's apos- turned aside: tacy in leaving his group to follow his father as American agent for Baring Brothers. But I will not understand an expression of sadness in your letter as anything but Ward had come to Emerson well recommended, and well equipped intel- a momentary shade. For I conceive of you as allied on every side to what is lectually. Under no financial strain, as Emerson had been while there, he beautiful and inspiring, with noblest purposes in life and with powers to execute was graduated from Harvard in 1836 where he had sat, by the accident of your thought. What space can be allowed you for a moment's despondency? The alphabetical listing, next to the strange Jones Very in class after class. Yet the free and the true, the few who conceive of a better life, are always the soul of two remained strangers; Ward as worldly and normal as Very, whom Emer- the world.79 son also admired, was transcendental and peculiar, the two the polar ex- tremes of those to whom Emerson was attracted. It had been in the summer Such idealizing must have been cold comfort to Ward. Also troubling may of 1838 that Fuller had spoken to Emerson with enthusiasm about Ward, have been Emerson's disparaging reference to business life in the same letter, whom she described as being sophisticated about European art. She also since Ward knew that all other influences pointed him to a life of finance. must have recommended Ward as good company, too, since she had already The concept of the saving remnant, a Puritan legacy running counter to the found him so. Emerson invited Ward to Concord for a weekend, and Ward expansive ideals of Transcendentalism, is also given explicit voice in this had made the trip from his elegant Park Street home in Boston. 75 Boston and letter: "With a few friends who can yield us the luxury of sincerity and of a Boston gentry were not strange to Emerson, of course, since his first thirty- manly resistance too, one can face with more courage the battle of every one years had been spent there; his congregation of the Second Church, his day-and these friends, it is a part of my creed, we always find; the spirit father's Boston church, was not economically or socially much different from provides for itself" (pp. 16-17). Such an aspect of his creed would tend to those people he would later encounter in Concord, also a location where he create coteries, as indeed it did, rather than to improve the world. Ward's had roots. The sense of being rooted was always strong in Emerson: "What own vision of social usefulness went well beyond coteries. are my advantages? The total New England," he had catechised himself be- But even Emerson needed the intimacies of normal friendship to some fore beginning a series of lectures on human culture during the winter of degree, as his reaching out to Ward demonstrates. He began advising Ward 1837-38.76 But just as he found common people difficult or useless to ap- on books, and Ward showed his willingess to follow the older man's lead, proach closely, Emerson did not often find the mercantile wealthy easy or once sending him a critique of Antigone that pleased him (p. 19). In a few valuable to know, as has been shown. Ward was both a type in the ideal months, characteristically, he was disparaging reading to Ward: "it is a foolish sense and an exception in the real world of society and business. conformity and does well for dead people" (p. 24). Clearly he was trying to The more practical side of the relationship depended on observation of stimulate in Ward what he called in the same letter "The old creative force." 318 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 319 Meanwhile he assured him that he "had set [his] heart" on Ward's reading his tion which every journey makes to my exaggerations, in the plain facts I get, and in the rich amends I draw for many listless days, in the dear society of here essay on friendship; a week later he sent it on (pp. 23, 26). Emerson must and there a wise and great heart. I hate the details, but the whole foray into a again have received some despondent inquiries from Ward a year and a half city teaches me much. (pp. 51-52) later. Again he turned them aside: "My friend shall solve his own questions, as I suppose whoever makes a wise inquiry only announces the problem on This is a portrait not of the serene sage of Concord but of one needing human which he is already busy and which he will be the first to dispose of, and I response, even reassurance. The world might need redeeming, but it must shall gladly attend all the steps of the solution" (p. 35). 80 Here is a logical also be taken on its own terms, however profane, so long as one could find extension of self-reliance, but again one may wonder how useful the ap- here and there a kindred soul. horism was for Ward. As a kindred soul, Ward provided a pipeline to the practical world for There were a few more visible and more practical signs of their close rela- Emerson as well as a listening post when the older man sat down at his writ- tionship in the letters. Emerson commiserates with a slight illness of Ward ing desk in visionary moments. In other letters he shares with Ward such (pp. 21-22). He not only recommends books but lends him some, such as St. real topics as his townsman Samuel Hoar's moral behavior in South Carolina, Augustine's Confessions (p. 23). He shows great warmth to Ward at the time which he admired, a visit with Nathaniel Hawthorne to the nearby Shaker of his engagement to Anna Barker, adding an appreciation on a personal village, the wealth of talent among the English leaders (but their complete level: "Your frank kindness has been a bright sign in my firmament,- lack of imagination), and his effort to defend America from their indifference few beams were ever so grateful" (p. 33). He is pleased to hear of the birth of (pp. 56-58, 63, 66-70). He also reports that Thoreau "is building himself a the Wards' first child (p. 38). But he would break out with observations, as solitary house by Walden Pond," generously omitting that it would be on his when in the same year (1841) he confesses to the primacy of humans over own land.8 The final subject in this sequence of letters was worldly: his ideas for him. Here the attraction of the confession is diminished by his mak- effort, with Ward, to establish a social club of likeminded men, an effort that ing moral distinctions: "I see persons whom I think the world would be did bear fruit in the Saturday Club which met monthly in Boston for a number richer for losing; and I see persons whose existence makes the world rich. of years. The paradox at the heart of Emerson's position on human relations But blessed be the Eternal Power for those whom fancy even cannot strip of is seen in his urging that for membership they accept "the broadest demo- beauty, and who never for a moment seem to me profane" (p. 32). He wanted cratic basis" but also that the practice of blackballing be retained (p. 77). He Ward to show him some sign that he was "an elector and rejector, an agent, would have it both ways: invite all to join, but allow for exclusiveness at the an antagonist and a commander," and urged him to send him news of real life same time. To be sure, other clubs he belonged to did operate with such in the city: "I wish to know how the street and the work that is done in it look restrictions. But such was a sign of the difficulty at the heart of his hopes for to you" (pp. 36-37). A year and a half later, from Philadelphia, he wrote the improvement of mankind. Although every man and woman would be in- Ward another more personal confession on how people affected him: "It is vited to partake of the process, few could in fact be expected to measure up. strange how people act on me. I am not a pith ball nor raw silk, yet to human The gap between his ideals and the real world could never close. electricity is no piece of humanity SO sensible. I am forced to live in the Still, Emerson did not mind. Platonic dualism joined to the principle of country, if it were only that the streets make me desolate. Yet if I talk with a unity provided him with a method for reading all aspects of the universe. man of sense and kindness, I am imparadised at once" (p. 51). Further on he These words from "Plato; or, the Philosopher" suggest the focus of his analy- develops this theme, showing his struggle with himself in the face of realities: sis in that essay and his way of approaching all subjects: "Oneness and other- ness. It is impossible to speak or to think without embracing both" (para- It is because I am so idle a member of society: because men turn me by their graph thirteen). Comfortable with this method, he tended to move from fact presence to wood and to stone; because I do not get the lesson of the world towards idea, from material towards spiritual, seldom in the reverse direc- where it is set before me, that I need more than others to run out into new tion. Materials, facts, things, bodies, were lesser orders of being. Such a places and multiply my chances for observation and communion. Therefore, whenever I get into debt, which usually happens once a year, I must make the tendency of mind worked against his reaching out as one human to another. plunge into this great odious river of travellers, into these cold eddies of hotels Yet at the same time he recognized the need for balance: "Solitude is im- and boarding houses-farther, into these dangerous precincts of charlatanism, practicable, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our namely, lectures, that out of all the evil I may draw a little good in the correc- hands in the other. The conditions are met if we keep our independence, yet 320 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 321 do not lose our sympathy."82 In his alternating between the ideals and reali- ever virtue is in us? We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of ties of friendship, there is illustrated this same habit. life." Another habit was just as powerful, and that was the tendency to see all Yet the difficulties Emerson must have always felt in his social dealings things in terms of growth and progress. Had he been formed in the next sprung in large measure from his impossibly high level of expectation, evi- generation, Emerson would eagerly have embraced many (though not all) of dent in this passage from "Character" (1844): the social analogies possible to draw from Darwinian science. He wrote Ward in 1841: "We are all dressed out in tendencies, and are loved or rather If it were possible to live in right relations with men! If we could abstain from tolerated for the hopes we awaken" (p. 38). His support of a kind of dualistic asking anything of them, from asking their praise, or help, or pity, and content development is suggested to Ward two years later: "Is [a man] at the same us with compelling them through the virtue of the eldest laws! Could we not time both flowing and fixed? Does he feel that Nature proceeds from him, deal with a few persons-with one person-after the unwritten statutes, and make an experiment of their efficacy? Could we not pay our friend the compli- yet can he carry himself as if he were the meanest particle? All and nothing?" ment of truth, of silence, of forbearing? Need we be so eager to seek him? If we (p. 49). Emerson once used his faith in the value of growth and change as an are related, we shall meet. excuse for not answering Ward's worried inquiries: "Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great, and the truest state of mind rested in becomes Emerson knew such hopes were seldom realized. In his own relations with false" (p. 30). Samuel Gray Ward, as with others who interested him, he made a strong What little Emerson had said in his 1836 essay Nature about man's rela- effort, at least, to translate into action what he had found essential in his tion to other men foreshadowed his later position. At the end of the section speculations. "Discipline" he sees the human forms, "male and female," as "the richest informations of the power and order that lie at the heart of things." Although every human form is "defective" (his ancestors would have called it original NOTES sin), the "sea of thought" awaits it as an aid and minister. In our childhood and adolescence we have no choice but to love those who help us grow. But when we are mature, we can choose-and if wise will choose as a friend he 1. Materials on Samuel Gray Ward and, for the most part, on Emerson's friendship with him, are taken from my dissertation, "Puritan Aristocrat in the Age of Emerson: A Study of Samuel who is "an object of thought." Through his character we will convert that Gray Ward" (University of Pennsylvania, 1961), based on the following manuscript collections: thought to our wisdom. But once that friend has so served us, we can then Thomas Wren Ward Collection (MHi), which includes all the letters between Ward and his fam- let him go. We will want to let him go. ily (except as noted), as well as the diary of Thomas Wren Ward; Samuel Gray Ward Collection Such is the chilly theoretical base for Emerson's early public thinking on (MH), which includes letters from Emerson to Ward, many letters of a social nature to the Sam- friendship. Its justification is that it is all for the enrichment of the self, the uel Gray Wards, Ward's unpublished poems, and Anna Barker Ward's diary of 1845-1852; and Ward Family Papers, collected and privately printed by Samuel Gray Ward (Boston: Merry- potential self always being at the center of his concerns. It is consistent and mount Press, 1900), a collection of Ward documents, the major one being Ward's "Long Letter reasonable, but in practice nobody of decency could tolerate its egocen- to His Grandchildren." tricity, certainly not Emerson. Fortunately these generalizations were not 2. "Long Letter to His Grandchildren," Ward Family Papers, pp. 173-74. the sum of his reflection on men's relations, as has been shown. And in his 3. Thomas Wren Ward to Joshua Bates, Boston, 4 September 1832. person Emerson was by all reports a kind and gentle man to everyone. In 4. "Long Letter," p. 136. 5. Ward to Charles Eliot Norton, Washington, D.C., 3 April 1899. "Friendship" and in his letters to Ward he called for anti in his life practiced 6. "Long Letter," p. 164. tenderness, sincerity, loyalty, consideration, and patience. There were many 7. Emerson to Ward, Concord, 10 July 1855. This was eleven days before he wrote his famous other places where he struck the same notes. In "The Over-Soul" (1841) he letter of greeting to Whitman. had called for men to find and nourish the best in themselves, not selfishly 8. "To W. Allston, On Seeing His "Bride"; see also "Come Morir," "The Shield," and "Song," but as Christ had done. In "The Uses of Great Men" (1850) he had stressed Dial, 1:83, 84, 121, 123. 9. Ward to John Jay Chapman, Washington, D.C., 5 January 1899. the more generous impulses: "There is a power in love to divine another's 10. April 1840, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Wil- destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him liam H. Gilman, Ralph H. Orth, et al., 16 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to what- 1960-82), 7:342; hereafter cited as JMN. 322 Studies in the American Renaissance-1984 The Emerson-Ward Friendship 323 11. "Long Letter," p. 205. 43. Emerson to Arthur Hugh Clough, 17 May 1858, Emerson-Clough Letters, ed. Howard F. 12. This manuscript, written on notepaper in Ward's handwriting, is undated, although as Lowry and Ralph Leslie Rusk (Cleveland: Rowfant Club, 1934), letter no. 31. Ward mentions impressionism it is probably a late document (in the possession of Dr. Anna 44. See Richard D. Birdsall, Berkshire County (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), Ward Perkins). The statement reflects Goethe's central notion of the artist's need of a strong pp. 323-38, for a complete account of Ward's role in Berkshire life. unconscious or daemon. Ward stresses the unconscious for being the source of an artist's power 45. Emerson to Anna Barker Ward, 4 August [1866?]. if wedded to "the gift of representation." Such an approach shows his modernity. Emerson per- 46. Edward Waldo Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club, 1855-1870 (Boston: haps was too early to stress the relation between the conscious and the unconscious, although Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 111. Anna was about five years older than her husband. he might not have wished to do so anyway, since the primacy of will was central to his position. 47. Undated manuscript in Ward's handwriting owned by Dr. Anna Ward Perkins. 13. "Powers' Greek Slave or Thoughts on Art," Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 1 (De- 48. James Russell Lowell to Charles Eliot Norton, 15 February 1899, The Letters of James cember 1847): 54-62. Russell Lowell, ed. Norton (New York: Harpers, 1893), 2:364. 14. "Powers' Greek Slave," 59. 49. February 1847, JMN, 9:390. 15. "Powers' Greek Slave," 60. 50. 15 July 1840, JMN, 7:383. 16. "Criticism," Aesthetic Papers, ed. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (Boston: E. P. Peabody, 51. Emerson to Caroline Sturgis, 13 September 1840, Letters, 2:320. 1849), pp. 5-25. 52. 7 October 1839, JMN, 7:260. 17. "Criticism," p. 10. 53. Emerson to Margaret Fuller, 27-28 July 1840, Letters, 2:320. 18. Essays on Art (Boston: James Munroe, 1845). Ward's was the first published translation of 54. Emerson to Ward and Anna Barker, September 1840, Letters, 2:338-39. This letter is these essays, later republished in New York in 1862. remarkable for its warmth of affection and respect, and for Emerson's anxious desire to be liked 19. Anna Barker Ward's diary, 27 February 1850. in turn by them. 20. "Letters from Italy on the Representatives of Italy," Dial, 1 (January 1841): 386-400. 55. 31 December 1843, The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Joseph Slater (New 21. "Letters from Italy," 387. York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 354. 22. "Letters from Italy," 399. 56. Emerson to Caroline Sturgis, February[?] 1845, Letters, 3:278-79. 23. "Letters from Italy," 400. 57. February 1847, JMN, 9:242-43. 24. "Letters from Italy," 387. 58. Ward to Mrs. Thomas Wren Ward, Northern Alabama, fifty miles south of Florence, 2 25. May 1855, JMN, 13:446. December 1838. 26. "Notes on Art and Architecture," Dial, 4 (July 1843): 112. 59. 29 April 1841, JMN, 7:432. 27. "Thoughts on Art," Dial, 1 (January 1841). 60. Letters from Ralph Waldo Emerson to a Friend, 1838-1853, ed. Charles Eliot Norton 28. Ward to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Washington, D.C., 11 October 1891, quoted in (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), pp. 40-41. Millicent Todd Bingham, Ancestor's Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson (New 61. Letters to a Friend, p. 27. York: Harpers, 1945), pp. 169-70. 62. Letters to a Friend, p. 15. 29. Emerson to Elizabeth Hoar, Concord, 27 July 1849. 63. For parallels, see "Love" in The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Robert E. 30. Typed statement dated 2 December 1843, signed "S.G.W." Spiller, Stephen E. Whicher, and Wallace E. Williams, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University 31. George S. Hillard to Ward, Boston, 30 August 1872. Press, 1959-72), 3:51-67, and Letters, 2:266. A sensible appraisal of Emerson's approach to 32. Ellery Channing to Ward, 20 May 1853. friendship is in Edward Wagenknecht, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Portrait of a Balanced Soul (New 33. Louis Agassiz to Ward, 24 December 1860 and 2 May 1861. York: Oxford University Press, 1974), Chapter 4. 34. Edwin Lawrence Godkin to Charles Eliot Norton, 21 July 1897, in Godkin, Life and 64. Letters to a Friend, p. 26. Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 1:236. 65. Letters to a Friend, pp. 21-22. John Bard McNulty, in "Emerson's Friends and the Essay 35. Godkin, Life and Letters, 1:166. on Friendship," New England Quarterly, 19 (September 1946): 390-94, stresses that the cen- 36. Letter to the author from Natalie F. Schwarz, Assistant to the Secretary, Archives Depart- tral influence for this essay was Margaret Fuller. The evidence does not support this claim, ment, 21 August 1960. although among others Fuller undoubtedly played an important role. 37. Martha A. Ward to Thomas Wren Ward, Nahant, 19 August 1836. 66. 15 April 1840, Letters, 3:282. 38. Martha A. Ward to Thomas Wren Ward, [1828]. 67. 27[?] April 1840, Letters, 2:292, 292n198. 39. Martha A. Ward to Thomas Wren Ward, Boston, [1835?]. 68. 30 May 1840, Letters, 2:299-300. 40. Ward's letters to Fuller have not survived. There is scattered evidence that taken to- 69. 7-8 June 1840, Letters, 2:304. gether shows conclusively that she was for a time in love with Ward. For example, her letter to 70. 17 January 1840, Letters to a Friend, pp. 19-20. Emerson during the summer before Ward's marriage not only suggests her emotional entangle- 71. 1 March 1840, Letters to a Friend, p. 32. ment with Ward but her admiration for the way he behaved (see The Letters of Ralph Waldo 72. Norton often deleted passages from the letters he printed, and some letters were omitted Emerson, ed. Ralph L. Rusk, 6 vols. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1939], 2:327.) completely; full texts of all of Emerson's letters will appear in Eleanor M. Tilton's forthcoming 41. Ward to Thomas Wren Ward, 1 November 1839. supplemental edition of his letters. 42. "Long Letter," p. 157. 73. Quoted by Alfred J. Kloeckner from Young Emerson Speaks, ed. Arthur Cushman McGif- 324 Studies in the American Renaissance 1984 fert, Jr. (1938), p. 209, in his "Intellectual and Moral Sentiment in Emerson's Opinions of The Meaner Kinds' of Men," American Literature, 30 (November 1958): 322-38. The quote is from "The Miracle of Our Being," written and delivered after Emerson had resigned from Boston's Second Church in 1832. Kloeckner argues convincingly that Emerson's position forces him into excluding the very mass of men he would include in his vision of betterment. Kloeckner's con- HAWTHORNE'S UNCLE JOHN DIKE clusion is sobering: "It does not seem very probable that Emerson ever struggled wholeheart- edly against his deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the majority of men" (332). 74. Letters to a Friend, pp. 71-72. 75. Letters to a Friend, p. 9. 76. Early Lectures, 2:211. 77. "The Heart," Early Lectures, 2:282. Emerson's long affable relation with Longfellow il- lustrates that he could easily like someone both literary and gentlemanly. 78. Early Lectures, 2:216. Margaret B. Moore 79. Letters to a Friend, p. 16. Further references to this book are incorporated into the text. 80. Written from Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts, July 1841. The tone here echoes the tone of this sentence from the introduction to Nature: "Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable." S INCE ARLIN TURNER SUGGESTED IN 1972 that more ought to be known about Nathaniel Hawthorne in relation to his family, it may be 81. Unpublished section of letter of 30 April 1845 in Letters, 3:283. appropriate to learn more about John Dike (1783-1871) who married his 82. "Society and Solitude," Society and Solitude (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904 [1870]), p. 15. aunt, Priscilla Manning. 1 Dike has been neglected, for the most part, in Hawthorne scholarship. He is occasionally referred to as "a coal and wool merchant," "keeper of a cloth shop," or as "Uncle" John Dike. He was more substantial a figure than these shadowy references imply, and he was, I sus- pect, a source of affectionate stability. Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, he was the son of Deacon John and Abi- gail Stephens Dike. 3 One sister, Nancy, married John W. Ellingwood, who was minister of the First Congregational Church in Bath, Maine.4 His brother Nathaniel, a Yale graduate, studied law before he moved west to be- come a merchant, in which enterprise John Dike's son was later to join.3 John Dike, Jr., as he was known as long as he lived in Beverly, married Mercy Wood, daughter of Joseph Wood, on 3 January 1805. From this union were born two children: Mary Wood in 1805 and John Stephens in 1807.6 Dike was that sort of all-purpose merchant SO plentiful in Salem and envi- rons who bought and sold cargoes and ships, sealing wax and strings. Be- fore the War of 1812 he owned shares in two schooners named Abigail, the schooner Joanna, the brigantine Prudent, and the schooner Sally. He was sole owner and master of a brig Betsey in April 1812, but there is no informa- tion on where he sailed her.7 One of the Abigails was used primarily for fish- ing. The Prudent traded in South America and Europe. Dike sold flour, coal, tar, and turpentine from ships at the Beverly wharves.8 In 1809 his wife died, and in July 1812, Dike's creditors were requested to meet at the house of John W. Ellingwood who was then a silversmith in Beverly. All his property was conveyed in trust to his creditors. Sometime during or just after the War of 1812 John Dike moved with his two children the short distance to the slightly more prosperous Salem. Both 325 Ed. Foel maproom (Enfire, u. S. cooling Studies in the American Renaessance 1987. THE TRUE ROMANCE OF ANNA HAZARD BARKER AND SAMUEL GRAY WARD Eleanor M. Tilton PROLOGUE I' N 1850 WHEN THE MANUSCRIPTS OF MARGARET FULLER came into his hands, Emerson wrote on 17 November to Caroline Tappan of the thoughts they evoked: I grieve to find in them so much grief, belief in a bitter destiny, & which her clear mind & great heart should not have admitted, though the head ached & the knees shook. But she used her gifts so well & against so much resistance, that almost none has the right to blame her.-Yes, - it is too obvious that all her estimates of men, books, pictures, were distorted a little or much by her highly refracting atmosphere, & therefore her statement is never catholic & true. (MH) The story of Anna Barker and Samuel Gray Ward has been told for the most part in footnotes to works about Emerson or Margaret Fuller. The prin- cipals have not been called upon to speak for themselves. This article pro- poses to let them do SO in the hope that fictions created by Margaret Fuller will not be indefinitely perpetuated. What we lack is first-hand knowledge of what in fact happened, and that story I give here. My hope is not only to eradicate fictions but also to demonstrate the danger in reliance on the testi- mony of only one witness and that witness not altogether independent, though guiltless of any sin more grievous than that common human failing- self-deception. Margaret Fuller was not the confidant of either of the principals; Ward's confidant was his father; Anna Barker's was her brother Thomas. Late in the course of events, it was to Emerson not Miss Fuller that Anna Barker con- 53 54 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 55 fided. A sharp observer was Professor George Ticknor; and knowledgeable, Barker, pursuing his flamboyant way, was resiliant and pugnacious, but dis- if not always accurate, were the Wards of New York. But it is correspondence cretion was no part of his valor. His career and reputation were facts Samuel in the family papers of the Wards of Boston that gives us a straight story and Gray Ward would have to take into account. illuminates ambiguous passages in Emerson's journals. From their own letters Very different was Ward's father the circumspect Boston banker Thomas we can extract the order of events and the characters of the principals. Wren Ward (out of Salem) whose honor would never be impugned. He was The heroine is not accurately described as a "southern belle." Her parents known and respected, but he kept out of the newspapers, seeking no pub- were New England Quakers: her father out of Nantucket and her mother out licity by word or deed. The elder Ward was well-to-do, but the pursuit of of Newport.2 The Barker children were all born in New York City where the riches was not all-in-all to him. Though "at times severe," he was an affec- family lived until 1834. In that year, Jacob Barker moved his family to New tionate and devoted father. He bequeathed to his oldest son the habit of reti- Orleans; his fifth child and first daughter Anna was then twenty-one years cence. The younger Ward would be chided by a friend as the "incarnation of old. Her father had just lost a fortune, not the first he had won and lost. secretiveness." No more than his father could he ever be described as im- Iacob Barker dearly loved a profit and was proud of his early "predisposi- pulsive. Both were given to taking forethought, carefully setting down points tion to commercial pursuits." He made his first profit-o two cents-at the to be considered before decision and action. age of fourteen. Quite rightly he called himself an "adventurer." He was Mrs. Ward, also of Salem, is even more shadowy than Mrs. Barker. There always very much in the public eye; he put himself there. He admitted is reason to believe that her time was much taken up by her first-born child cheerfully to being impetuous and vain. In the prolonged "Conspiracy Martha, who, never strong, was very ill for more than two years and appar- Trials" of 1826-28, employing no counsel, he defended himself with vigor rently never fully recovered. It appears to have been a close-knit and stable and persistence and even brought four of his sons into the courtroom with family in which responsibilities were affectionately shared. The second child him, the oldest twenty-five (Thomas) and the youngest fifteen.4 He had the and first-born son of four took his middle name from his maternal grand- unwavering loyalty of his employees, chief among them the poet Fitz- father. Both the Grays and the Wards were a good deal less peripatetic than Greene Halleck whose scurrilous "Billingsgate McSwell," circulated in the Barkers, and very much more discreet. manuscript, attacked the district attorney who had made certain of Barker's Well-educated at the Round Hill School in Northampton, Ward acquired indictment for fraud. 5 there a taste for German and Italian literature. The school was experimental, An ardent democrat, Barker had supported the War of 1812 and vigorously founded by Joseph Green Cogswell and George Bancroft, Cogswell the raised money for it. Needless to say he was persona non grata in Federalist prime mover. Both had studied at Göttingen, along with George Ticknor and Boston. His democratic principles did not prevent him from suing the gov- other Americans inspired by Mme. de Staël's De L'Allemagne. From this ernment to recover the losses he suffered in that war; he had been a large school, Ward entered Harvard as a sophomore in 1833 shortly before his six- ship-owner at the time. teenth birthday. For all three years he lived at the home of Professor John In New Orleans, Barker was quick to defend free blacks abused by the Farrar whose second wife Eliza (Rotch) Farrar was Anna Barker's cousin. police, and he challenged in the newspapers those who would limit the And at the Farrars' Margaret Fuller met Anna Barker. After the move to rights of citizens of foreign birth.6 He bragged of being related to Benjamin New Orleans, Jacob Barker followed the southern practice of sending the Franklin through their common descent from the Folgers of Nantucket. It women-folk north to escape the worst heat of a southern summer. As north- pleased him to believe that he resembled his famous and patriotic ancestor. erners, Mrs. Barker and her daughters were "unacclimated" and therefore, It is fortunate that Anna Barker had the good looks of her mother. The it was thought, the more susceptible to yellow fever. With relatives in New shadowy figure of Anna's mother is made a little clearer by Fitz-Greene Hal- York City, Philadelphia, Newport, and Cambridge, the ladies need not wear leck who remarks upon her looks, her bearing, and her taste in clothes, these out their welcome in any one place. The visits were usually brief. of Quaker simplicity but nevertheless elegant.7 With nine surviving children The friendship between Miss Fuller and Miss Barker had to have been and a husband constantly on the go, she must surely have been well- maintained chiefly by correspondence. In 1835 Margaret Fuller was only occupied at home. What effect the fluctuating fortunes of her husband had briefly in Newport and Miss Barker did not visit Cambridge; in 1836 "there we cannot know, but her son Thomas and her daughter Anna were known to was little chance for conversation" (1:261). From May 1837 through De- be "spiritually-minded." No hint of scandal touches any of her children. Mr. cember 1838, Anna Barker was in Europe; it was there she met Ward. In 56 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 57 1839 she did not come north until October. By October 1839 it was public was sympathetic; again she may have read more into his kindness than was knowledge that Samuel Gray Ward was courting Miss Barker. Margaret there. Fuller would see even less of Ward, if less is possible. Absence may indeed As it turned out, the passengers were more than usually disagreeable, and make the heart grow fonder but perhaps only because absence may leave it the voyage was more than usually long. The travellers, however, found two fertile for fantasy. welcome additions to their party. One of them, welcome particularly to the In 1836, it was known that Ward carried on a "brisk correspondence" with professor, was Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, at that time head of the Depart- Miss Fuller; the friend who used the phrase thought it a joke; he was clearly ment of Charts and Maps, and preparing his famous exploring expedition. not among those who took Miss Fuller seriously. 10 Emerson would not meet The other was welcome to Mrs. Farrar and Ward; he was an elderly Scot either of the principals until 1839; he merely heard about them from Mar- whose extensive acquaintance with English poets and painters gave them garet Fuller. What he heard was what she imagined. In vain, Emerson would pleasure. Miss Martineau obliged the party with a lecture on Kant. 13 often warn her of the dangers of the "Superlative." Ward's letters from England, where his trip began, are not those of a young In 1835 Miss Fuller anticipated with excitement a trip with the Farrars up man deprived of the company of a woman he regarded with more than admi- the North River and across to Trenton Falls. Her letter to her father about ration. With letter to his sister Mary he sends sketches and gives her per- her desire to make the trip has a tone of disconcertingly girlish rapture mission to show them to "my friend Miss Fuller" (8 November 1836, MHi). (1:230). At the end of the seventeen-day journey, 12 she wrote her parents a He values them chiefly as a "faithful" record of his travels. He has heard that hasty summary of the events of the last week. In New York she stayed at the Miss Fuller is to give classes, and he urges his sister to attend them and to home of Sigourney Barker, her friend's brother, and learned that Anna was at follow her guidance in reading. Miss Fuller has read more than anyone else Newport. "My disappointment was great-but Mr Ward, (who has been all he knows. Before he left home he had spoken to his father about providing kindness throughout) offered to stay with me at Newport as long as I pleased" someone to take charge of Mary's education. It was for her knowledge of (1:232-33). Well-brought up, "Mr Ward" would know that ladies did not books that the young man valued Miss Fuller and was happy to repay her by travel alone. Miss Fuller read more into the boy's kindness and courtesy than teaching her something of art. could have been there. He was seventeen; Miss Fuller was twenty-five. In Paris in early 1837 Ward fell in with young Bostonians who had joined Margaret Fuller would all her life remember the excursion of 1835, her first with him to hire a teacher that they might study-Animal Magnetism.14 By meeting with Ward. She would call it the "last period of tranquillity in my April he was in Rome now travelling with the Ticknors. By July the Ticknors life." The letter quoted is of 25 February 1850, written from Florence, to were in Munich, the professor giving thought to Ward's plan for study. On Samuel Gray Ward (MH). 20 July, Ticknor wrote Thomas Wren Ward that his son would need a quiet In 1835 when Mrs. Farrar invited Margaret Fuller to accompany the Far- winter in Germany to master the language (MH). The young man's health has rars to Europe in 1836, she was looking for companionship. She was not improved but might be improved still further if he spent the summer in match-making. As a seasoned traveller (this would be her fourth trip) Mrs. Switzerland. "He is certainly an excellent, well-principled young man, Farrar knew that the Atlantic crossing on a sailing vessel depended on one's whom you may wholly trust." Ticknor hopes Ward will be able to join the having good company, the more varied the better. Young Ward, to be grad- Farrars so that he will be with a family and not travel alone; Ward hopes so uated in August, was going in any case on something like the Grand Tour and too, and for the same reason. This is "a sign of right feeling" that Ticknor hoped to continue his study of German in Dresden or wherever Professor hopes the father "will not overlook." A postscript calculates the slight addi- George Ticknor, already in Europe, might advise. Mrs. Farrar was assured of tional expenses staying longer will entail. 15 the company of Harriet Martineau who with her companion would be re- When young Ward reached Interlaken early in August, he found that the turning to England. It was reasonable that they all sail in the same ship. Mrs. Farrars had acquired a charming young companion, Miss Anna Barker. Mrs. Farrar, I suspect, wanted a hedge against being limited to the companion- Farrar would later print an account of the miracles attendant on travelling ship of the lady with the ear-trumpet; Miss Fuller's conversational gifts with a beautiful enchantress. A customs officer would ignore their luggage; a would make her good company, reason enough for Mrs. Farrar to suggest prospective landlord would lower the rent; the best seats at the opera were that she sail with them. Margaret Fuller did not conceal her acute disap- available to them; and doors ordinarily closed were opened. The sculptor pointment when she found she could not make the longed-for journey. Ward Thorwaldsen would give Miss Barker a medallion portrait of himself. The 58 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 59 American sculptor Hiram Powers asked to take her bust. Considerations of of the scenery. She is writing her favorite brother, the serious Thomas. modesty and propriety made her hesitate, but Mrs. Farrar was persuasive. Whether Ward got to Antwerp or not, we do not know. Miss Barker sought her brother Thomas' approval. He gave it with delight, On 1 November he is in Dresden, relieved to find letters, the more SO that and her brother Sigourney concurred. Miss Barker was beautiful to the f they tell him Martha is slowly recovering. He(tells Mary nothing of his stud- young sculptor's eye. As a man, Powers found her sympathetic as well and ies but has a good deal to say about hers. A letter of 29 November to him wrote her of his joy in the birth of his son and his grief at the baby's death. 16 from Ticknor complains of not hearing from him, but he has heard from In the early spring of 1837, Mrs. Farrar had invited Miss Barker to join her Ward's father of "his satisfaction at your staying in Europe. But where are in Europe. Her letter from Paris of 29 April is a delighted acknowledgement you and what are you doing? I doubt not that he has later news from you of a "winning" letter from Miss Barker and repeats the invitation: than I have." Even the Paris banker finds his silence "inscrutable" (MH). With a secret to keep, Ward may not have trusted his pen. Whenever I have spoken of it to Mr Farrar, he has sympathized with my longing Ward was back in the States early in 1838. After a reunion with his family for your companionship & then a fit of prudence has come over him & he has in Boston, he began at once in the New York office of Jonathan Goodhue to said, "but should you like the responsibility of chaperoning such a belle. I am afraid I should not be able to protect her sufficiently against the knight errantry by make himself a business man. The choice was his own and surprised his fa- of Europe" but today after reading to him your sweet effusions of affection, he ther who perhaps supposed that his son with his taste for art and literature exclaimed, "dear child, let her come, & I will get a pair of pistols & begin prac- might pursue a different course. Not until 1839 would the father learn that ticing at once." (MH) his son's effort to learn a business was calculated as a necessary step for a young man who already had marriage in his mind. Independence was his This charmer would have an instant and permanent effect on young Ward, object, but with banking he was not at all happy. and he was not unpleasing to her. From Interlaken on 21 August, Anna Bar- On 10 April 1838, he wrote Mrs. Farrar of finding more "vexation" in the ker wrote her brother Thomas: "Mr. Ward joined us here, a very agreeable life he had chosen than he had ever expected, but he does not wish to write a acquisition to our party" (MH). Mr. Ward had already written Ticknor of dreary letter (MH). "My propects as they call them are bright-as to my life what a good time he was having in Interlaken, but Ticknor would not hear that is rather my death-I do not care to speak of it." He allows himself to again for a disturbing number of weeks nor could inquiry at likely banks pro- imagine the Farrars in Rome. It is Holy Week, and he can summon his recol- duce a forwarding address. The young man was indeed having a good time. lections of the city and follow them in imagination to the places he had seen. For this interlude there are no surviving letters from Ward, but Anna Bar- Miss Barker is certainly a figure in his revery. He breaks out in exclamation: ker helps us out. On 12 September still from Switzerland, she writes her "The bust-I long to see it-must this too be denied me-But o what can a brother: "Mr Ward and I went out to gaze at this wondrous place by moon- bust be?" When at the conclusion of his letter, he crosses his first page, he light. It was almost too fearfully wild 'The place was the Hospice on exclaims again: "Remember me Remember me-oh why should I repeat it to the Great St. Bernard Pass. Evidently Miss Barker admired the dogs. The all that are dear to me and again to all to whom I am dear." Miss Barker is letter, continuing the next day, reports that "Mr Ward bought a young son of surely included in the first "all." " this intelligent race to whom I have given the name of 'Alp.' Our affections His letters to his sister Mary are somewhat bleak/P wishes it were fea- today having been divided between the wild and affecting scenery that has sible to have Alp with him. He neither reads nor sketches; he can only hope burst upon us at every step & this young saint who is particularly interest- his sister does. He hears some good music at the New York Wards; the sisters ing" (MH). Apparently the antics of a Saint Bernard puppy provided as all sing, and so does Emily Astor, Sam Ward, Jr.'s wife, (So did Anna Barker.) useful a topic of conversation as the sublimity of the landscape. He goes rowing on the bay and so does their father, often in New York on More than a month later Anna Barker wrote her brother Thomas on 19 business. He enjoins Mary to see that "Alp is taught manners." The letters October: "Our charming friend Sam Ward has left us last Monday for Dres- reflect not merely the trying probation he has put upon himself and his con- den where he goes to study German through the winter & to return to stant thought of Miss Barker but the anxieties of the times. On 23 April, he America in the Spring. He may pass through Antwerp & has promised to see is more cheerful. He writes to his sister Mary? you if he can. Draw him out dear Tom and you will find a great deal in him It is a busy day, and if Commerce be really the goddess they say she is this is the after your own heart & that will interest you much" (MH). It is safe to infer proudest day in her annals-and the two steam ships that have come up this that Ward and Anna Barker had found topics more serious than the grandeur morning will change her whole face sooner or later- 60 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 61 We were on board the Sirius this morning and have been watching the Great ing thought not in laboring for clothes, furniture, and houses. I breathed my Western come up; she is four-masted & bigger than a frigate and it is a curious proper atmosphere and preened my ruffled pinions. [Raffaello] when he came sight to see her move along so steadily through the water, all sails furled-the did not seem to be more disposed to observe than myself. But I had not the more that at a distance she looks like a sailing vessel- benefit of his exquisite taste. But perhaps there was nothing worthy of its Mr. King is in-we dined with him yesterday and all that my father has been exercise. labouring so hard for seems to be coming right-and the world coming back to What a drive we had that afternoon! It was one of those soft gloomy times the honesty-(MHi) sun is wearied out, he is asleep; and you feel a right to rest also. Gleams of [brassy] light succeeded a gently pattering shower and we sped homeward by In Munich in 1837, Ticknor and young Ward had talked of the disastrous the palest starlight. Nature seemed to sympathize with me today. She was not 1837 too bright, she was not too wild and I was with the only person who ever under- panic of May when banks suspended specie payment and some states repudi- stood me at once in such moods. ated their debts. Both were aware that the elder Ward was in for much anxi- ety as well as hard work. It was in this atmosphere of continuing alarm and Romantic reveries and the ride with the sympathetic Ward could apparently uncertainty that young Ward had begun his effort to be independent. Of assuage but not cure the "sickly sensitiveness." On her way to Groton course he had heard of nothing but banks and banking. The Great Western and her family, Miss Fuller visited the Emersons (1:340). From a letter she on this her maiden voyage had brought the gold that would stave off further writes to Lidian Emerson, it can be inferred that a chance word evoked again disasters. The elder Ward had worked hard to secure a saving loan from Bar- the pain and melancholy (1:340). The visit occurred shortly after she had ing Brothers. In New York, the twenty-third of April 1838 was a day of great seen Ward; she brought with her a portfolio of engravings belonging to him excitement and relief. Young Ward looked more happily to the future. For all (JMN, 7:46). Encouraged by Miss Fuller, Emerson invited Ward to Con- his distaste for business, he could see in the maiden voyages of the two cord. Failing to secure the visit, he wrote a second time in hopes of seeing steamships, as others did, the prospect of great changes in commerce. Ward in Cambridge on Phi Beta Kappa Day, a gathering time for friends. In the summer after an excursion in the Berkshires with his mother and Ward evidently did not show up, but Miss Fuller did and talked with Emer- his sister Martha and a visit to the New York Wards in Newport, he returned son of her despondency. Her responsibility to her family and her obligation home to Boston late in July, as Miss Fuller reported to Caroline Sturgis to return to school-teaching in Providence gave her less time in Boston than (1:339). From Providence, Miss Fuller went to Boston in August. A fragment she'd have liked. The little that she saw of Ward must have shown her that of manuscript clearly of August 1838 is telescoped and quoted in the Mem- three years had changed the boy she had met in 1835. On 3 October he oirs, and a proper name appearing twice is heavily deleted in the manu- would come of age. script. 21 It appears to be "Raffaello," the name Miss Fuller and, after her, On the nineteenth of that month, Ward consulted Amos Lawrence on the Emerson used in referring to Ward. The whole passage is revealing of her best way to travel to the western cities in Pennsylvania and Ohio and then state of mind. She has apparently seen nothing of Ward since his return from south to New Orleans. 4 He could not have known when Anna Barker was to Europe. If he paid her a visit in Providence, as he could easily have done return home. His principal source Mrs. Farrar did not know; a letter of Oc- from Newport, there is no record of it. The manuscript passage reads: tober to Anna from Mrs. Farrar shows that the date is still uncertain (MH). Miss Barker is in Paris with her brother Thomas. Mrs. Farrar teases her I left for Boston in August. How wearied I was, how tossed to and fro what an young friend on the gaiety of her life in Paris, hopes she is not leaving a trail agonizing conflict between duty and my nature. At such times my only way is to of broken hearts, and warns her away from a particular "pet" the medical seek some influence which might draw me from myself-I am in a state of sickly student George Cheyne Shattuck. Mrs. Farrar need not have worried; Miss unresisting sensitiveness such as I do not remember in myself before-I despise Barker would go to Antwerp for a quiet two months with her brother before but cannot conquer it. I want to lean my head on some friendly bosom I went to the Athenaeum [to meet Raffaello] He had not yet come-I sat returning to the States in December. She was in New York by the twenty- third. Ward had arrived in New Orleans on the seventeenth. down in the gallery, looked at the Judith, a Madonna (called a Carlo Manetti) beautiful but not to my taste, though brightly tender beyond compare. But its His letters recounting his journey make good reading. 25 He is genuinely beauty may all be seen at a glance. I did [not] however, feel in a critical mood. I interested in all he sees and hears. The crowded Pennsylvania canal boats sank into soothing reverie and felt the [blessed inffluence of the ideal world brought him in touch with a variety of fellow countrymen to whom he talked once more. I am surrounded by records of lives which were passed in embody- readily. From his travels in Europe he had acquired the habit of close obser- 62 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 63 vation of everything from wayside flowers to social conditions. New Orleans For her reading he recommends biography and autobiography. "As I grow was very different from smoky Pittsburgh, grimier than any English city, and older I like infinitely better to read the lives of actual people than romances" different too were the southern cities of Nashville and Mobile where there (MHi). He begins to find the truth more interesting than over-heated ro- was no need to be "energetic" as one certainly had to be in New Orleans. mantic fiction. The liveliness of that city was striking whether one went to a ball or the Ward would paint and sketch all his life, suggest the design for his own cotton market. He is there to learn the business of being a cotton broker and to house, and try his hand at landscape gardening, but he did not think of him- consider what occupation is best for him. To his surprise he finds that business self as an artist. Miss Fuller is of the "modern school" as he describes it begins to be exciting. His letters to his father show him to be thoughtful, here. Ward has outgrown this earlier mentor who is meanwhile asking Caro- cautious, and bent on being well-informed. In February 1839 Thomas Wren line Sturgis to make a pretty box that she may put in all she has and may Ward would write happily about his son to his friend and partner Joshua Bates: have from her friend "Raphael"-poems letters, and sketches (2:49). 'I shall not be surprised if he should prove to be a clever man" (MHi). The On 4 March, from New Orleans Ward writes his father a letter marked young man for his part had rarely had such feelings of exhilaration as in the "Private." He can no longer keep a secret from his father especially on "a sight "of the wonderful fertility and promise of some parts of this Western subject more interesting to me than any other" and announces that the sub- valley!" He recalls Thomas Biddle's saying: "You can't over-estimate the vi- ject is a lady to whom he has been "long attached": tality of America." He thinks his father would feel years younger if he made a visit to the lively city of New Orleans. This lady is Miss Anna Barker daughter of Jacob Barker & formerly of New York. many? In a letter to his sister he is sorry that Alp has run away, but does not give I first became acquainted with her in Europe, where she was travelling with Mr. him up entirely-"I should be able to recognize him again at any distance." & Mrs. Farrar at the time I joined them in Switzerland-I was then with them In one happy letter he chides her for not reporting on "Assemblies"; he con- about two months, and in the freedom of travelling companions soon became fesses to a delight in dancing and thinks New Orleans may be gayer than intimate with Miss Barker. You will excuse my awkwardness in speaking on the Paris (MHi). Miss Barker is surely home. In December in New York she had subject of my feelings toward her, and I will only say that from the first I loved sampled the opera; it seemed a "burlesque" she wrote her brother and her, and that every day added to my happiness in making me acquainted with a added sensibly: "It is sad to be spoiled but I suppose we will all be spoiled character that more than met all my hopes and wishes. You will not be surprised to hear that when I left her it was with the hope of being in a few years able to back again" to become content with American versions of opera (MH). establish myself independently, and to have earned the right of asking her hand On 1 March, Ward writes a letter to his sister that clearly shows he had in marriage. Having these feelings and knowing that a long time must pass at never seriously considered being a painter, a myth propagated by Miss any rate before I could look to my hopes being fulfilled, I did not think it right to Fuller: seek to enter into any engagement or that the intimacy should continue till the fit time arrived-Besides that I shall always want your full knowledge in what- I am very glad you draw-and that you put your standard high-I don't value soever I may do, and that you be hand in hand with me in this as in all other drawing as an accomplishment any more than any other mere accomplishment, things. (MHi) but as a means of cultivation. The man who can use his pencil like an artist has acquired a new sense-The sight becomes more acute; we notice a thousand This confidence seems to have been prompted by his seeing Anna Barker beautiful things, harmonies of color & forms that would have escaped our notice again and finding that his feelings for her have deepened and that his wish to otherwise-then, you learn to appreciate much more the work of other minds marry her is more firmly fixed. He continues this letter, now clearly anxious He who has never painted a tree does not know how the mind of the artist has dwelt on and studied every part-there is a natural appreciation of beauty-if that the reputation of her father may be a barrier. No young man was less you have it, cultivate it, and it will be to you the most valuable acquisition you inclined to precipitous action than Samuel Gray Ward. He was perhaps more can make-But this must come about by studying the great works there are in acutely aware of his youth than anyone else was. the world, seeing how and why they are beautiful, and not by dwelling upon our sensations till they become morbid-which is perhaps the fault of the modern Most unexpectedly to me, after I had been here some time I heard that Miss school-And remember too that it is a false beauty if it does not appear in our Barker was expected home this winter-And in spite of the pleasure I had in actions and everyday life, and among people, just as much as in our thoughts seeing her again and with even stronger feelings that before, I would rather it and pursuits- had not occurred till I felt established and independent-As circumstances are 64 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 65 now I have thought it right to follow the same line of conduct I had marked out before for myself, and to avoid both the appearance and the reality of more inti- Ward made a solitary journey to the White Mountains, where by accident macy than in the usual intercourse of society-and I shall continue to do so till Emerson met him. In September Miss Fuller wrote Ward an extravagant you become acquainted with Miss Barker and until I have your full & entire letter. It exists only in a partial copy she made and kept. One would like to approbation. That you should find in her all that you could desire or wish for in think that she had the wit not to mail it or that this portion of it did not get your daughter and your son's wife I have never had a moment's misgiving. But I into the final letter. It begins: "You love me no more-How did you pray me have had much anxi[ety] knowing the opinion you have of Mr. Barker, thinking to draw near to you! What words were spoken in impatience of separation! that there would be anything in such an alliance that would not be agreeable to How did you promise me, ay, and doubtless to your own self too, of all we you-and I can not tell how far this may affect your feelings-Tell me plainly might be to one another Ward had never regarded her as anything but your whole mind-I write you as my best friend, not to seek your permission or an older woman; if far from being Eliza Farrar's contemporary, still like her, a concurrence in any thing, for I am not yet prepared to do anything, and I shall surrogate mother. He so addressed them both. Miss Fuller finds little com- continue in the same course which I am sure is all you could expect or ask, and fort in the "sacred name" of mother (2:90-91). which my own feelings and sense of right dictate but to possess you fully of my (most)feelings and conduct, in a subject deeply interesting to me-Have no Miss Barker's visit in October made all clear. Emerson met her at Margaret anxiety on my account but be assured I shall do nothing you would not entirely Fuller's on 4 October and enjoyed "the frank and generous confidence of a approve I need not add that what I have said is of course only for yourself & being so lovely, so fortunate, & so remote from my own experience." The my mother. visit entailed his driving Miss Barker to Newton and back, and on that drive, Miss Barker confided in him. What she said he never repeated. A year later He sends his letter by Express Mail. he would tell Miss Fuller just that in a firm letter of 8 July 1840 (Letters, In Havana on 12 April, he received his father's reply of 18 March for- 2:313) after she had charged him with betraying Anna Barker's confidence in warded from New Orleans, and answered at once, happy that he has in his talk with Caroline Sturgis 147). The ride to Newton he refers to in the father "a friend toward whom I need have no reserve." He had been silent reply to the charge could have taken place only in 1839 and only on 4 or 5 before because he had known "that it must be long before intimacy could be October. A long eloquent journal passage is a record of this meeting with renewed & that so many things might occur meantime that it would have Anna Barker (JMN, 7:260). It concludes: seemed like speaking of a mere imagination" (MHi). Not returning to New Orleans, he came home from Havana to wait pa- She does not sit at home in her own mind as my angels do, but instantly goes tiently for Miss Barker's visit to the north. It was a long wait. In the interval abroad into the minds of others, takes possession of society, & warms it with we hear a good deal of Miss Fuller's feelings and Emerson's, but nothing of noble sentiments. Her simple faith seemed to be that by dealing nobly with all, Ward's. As Emerson's letters to Miss Fuller show, Anna Barker is expected in all would show themselves noble, & her conversation is the frankest I have ever June, in July, in August, in September. She did not appear until October. heard. She can afford to be sincere. The wind is not purer than she is. There is no record of any anxiety on Ward's part, but he asks his sister to inquire at the Newport post office for a letter from Mrs. Farrar marked "Pri- Something of what Miss Barker confided to Emerson is inferable from vate" (MHi). Ward's October letters to his father, then in New York. Shortly after the Bar- The tenor of Ward's letters to his father shows him to be cheerful. The kers (mother and daughter) left for New York, Ward wrote on 8 October: "My friendship with the Wards of New York had grown with the engagement of relation to Miss Anna Barker has not changed-yet her stay here and the Mary Ward to Henry Ward of New York. Mary Ward is spending a good deal renewal of our old intimacy has given me great happiness in confirming all of the summer in Newport where her brother visits to go boating and riding my early feelings, and in convincing me that it is not a vain hope nor an ideal with his prospective in-laws. Ward is certainly waiting, but in a hopeful state object I pursue" (MHi). Ward had never been looking for the blue flower of of mind, perhaps from having told his father what he has so long wanted. He Novalis. He joined Miss Barker in New York for the remainder of her visit to is not however seeking company that might demand more of him than he is the north. From New York, he writes on the thirty-first: "My time has been prepared to give. spent with Miss Anna, whom every day has made me love better, and not In July Miss Fuller with characteristic hyperbole would charge him with only love but respect and esteem." He has a message for his father; she is neglecting her (2:80-81). In late August avoiding Phi Beta Kappa day again, "glad" that the elder Ward in sending her his love "had given her the right to return it-" (MHi). 66 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 67 Missing his father in New York, he missed him again in Boston and wrote a delicate can be relied on like a principle for the wear and tear of years" longer letter on 1 November (MHi). His mother had given him the impres- (JMN, 7:274-75). What her story had been about was her own feelings and sion that his father is worried about him. There had been talk of the couple in manner and matter possibly like her October letter to Ward. It is only in as "engaged" and perhaps the gossip had been troubling. 26 In his letter of the her version of the story that there is room for "magnanimities." Her air of thirty-first Ward had left the question of his "prospects" for later discussion. detachment is carried over to her letter of 24 November with which she sends "My mind has been very much occupied, not frivolously, but most seriously, Emerson passages from her journal: "I thought this poetical journal might about this affair with Miss Anna Barker which has been the boundary of my interest you now all the verses bear some reference to Anna, W. and my- hopes and exertions for so long a time." And he reminds his father of his two- self. I see the journal is very sickly in its tone. Now I am a perfect Phe- year probation, motivated by no "sickly or sentimental feeling." In his con- nix compared with what I was then and it all seems Past to me" (2:98-99). duct toward his father, he has "endeavored that there should be nothing Meanwhile in this interval, Ward saw a good deal of Emerson. Emerson unworthy of so honourable a passion." Miss Barker had given him for the awakened his original desire for the life of a literary man. What he saw in first time "permission to correspond with her." He assures his father that Concord he wished for himself. When he left for New Orleans on 24 March, there was never an engagement between them, "but we understand each he had much to think about. He chose to go by a sailing ship. The voyage was other completely. She knows how entirely my strong affections are hers, and comfortable. but, delayed by unfavorable winds and calms, took twenty- her feelings for me are deep and strong in return-I wish that her longer stay seven days. He had ample time to reflect and to prepare his proposal. had made me quite sure, but the next time we meet will, I am confident, News was eagerly awaited in Concord. Emerson inquires of Miss Fuller solve the question, and make us one, or else say that it can never be." Ward who replies on 25 April, leaving a blank for Ward's name :123). By the was never in any danger of confusing fact and fiction. twenty-eighth of May, Emerson knows that Miss Barker has refused Ward's At the end of October Miss Barker returned to New Orleans by the over- proposal and that the rejected lover is travelling home by an overland route land route, stopping in Louisville where she received a gift that attests to her that will bring him to Crystal Lake where he hopes to find Ellery Channing magic. The giver was George Keats who inscribed it: "Original manuscript of in his new prairie home (Letters, 2:297-98). In a letter of 31 May, Margaret John Keats' Poem to Autumn-Presented to Miss A. Barker by the poet's Fuller writes: "I cannot write down what the southern gales have whis- brother Nov. 15, 1839." 27 pered" 135). Either Emerson received the news before she did or she is In Boston, in the interval between October 1839 and Ward's departure for referring to some other letter. She would receive one from James Freeman New Orleans on 24 March 1840, relationships shifted and the supporting Clarke, written 24 May and reporting that Anna Barker and her mother are characters altered roles. Recovering in part from the shock of the truth, Mar- on their way to Niagara, and have passed through Louisville on the twen- garet Fuller seems to be assuming an air of mature wisdom, and the ac- tieth without stopping. She would have a letter also from Ward written quaintance between Emerson and Ward grew to friendship. Miss Fuller's from Springfield, Illinois. letter of 15 October to Ward is radically different from the dramatic letter of From New Orleans on 1 May, Ward had written two letters to his father, September (2:96). She revises the text of the story so that it now appears one marked "Private" (MHi). In this letter he says: "I no longer have any that if the boy of 1835 had loved her, she had known all along that he would expectation of making Anna Barker my wife," and says he has known the an- change. Presumably quoting Ward, she begins a paragraph: "the world has swer from the moment of his arrival. He is departing immediately. The re- separated us as intimates and may separate us more'-'tis true, but no more jected lover is a good deal calmer than the spectators of this little drama. than I expected though you, dear friend, were most hopeful as became the Ward goes about his travels with characteristic observant eyes, taking in a sweetness of your earlier years." The tenor of the whole letter rests on the part of the country new to him, encountering a hurricane on the Mississippi assumption of her superior wisdom and disinterested affection. River, finding in Illinois that his "bird has flown," the restless Channing al- Six days later she visits Emerson and tells "a tale of sweet romance, of love ready en route east. In a letter of 30 May from Chicago he writes his mother: & nobleness which have inspired the beautiful and the brave." The tale was "I have nothing to do but get home as fast as I can which I shall do-. I long "for his ears alone" (JMN, 7:273). Emerson has, however, second thoughts. to be home among you (MHi). He arrived in Boston in early June, ill He has heard this tale with "joy mingled with discontent." Although he can- and feverish, "ague" is Emerson's diagnosis. Presumably Ward talked to his not "doubt the sterling sincerity of the mood & moment" described and is parents. To his friends he was silent. Jonathan Goodhue wrote on 13 June: "I "cheered" by "these dear magnanimities," he cannot "believe that a mood so hope your late jaunt has had its share of agreeableness & made up for dis- 68 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 69 agreeables which appear to have befallen a long passage out and entry in Emerson's Journal E (JMN, 7:383) which would seem to be of July hurricane on the river and I know of what else besides" (MH). On 3 August 1840, but it ends with the impossible name Anna Ward. In the manuscript Edward Austin, from whom Ward had learned the cotton trade, enjoined the entry appears at the top of p. [187]; it falls between entries dated 13 him- "don't shut yourself off in your shell SO entirely" (MH). (manuscript p. [184]) and 17 (manuscript p. [188]). The editors of the printed It is only from Ward's long letter to his father on 2 December 1843 that we journal supply the month "July" and Emerson had inserted "1(4)5". The en- learn that in New Orleans Ward had told Anna truly that the life he pre- try simply could not have been written in July. In July Emerson is sending ferred was that of a scholar and literary man; that is, a life like Emerson's the ailing and rejected lover a copy of St. Augustine's Confessions and hoping (MHi). And it is only from Jacob Barker's letter of 28 September 1840 to to send him the manuscript of the essay on Friendship (CU-SB). It is in July Thomas Wren Ward that we learn that Barker has told all his children that that Margaret Fuller is allowed to call on him. The oddity of the journal en- they had no expectations of a fortune and that married life required that a try cannot be explained as a slip of the pen and the name does not appear to husband have an occupation (MHi). Perhaps for Anna Barker this knowledge have been added later. The whole entry must have been added later.³1 and her father's history would be considerations; she was old enough to have The spacing on the page as printed does not represent the manuscript known of the scandals of 1826-28 as well as of the failure that had brought page. In the manuscript there is a clear space between the entry at the top- the Barkers to New Orleans. All her sisters had married; she may have the entry we are concerned with-and the entry at the bottom of the page. thought that duty to her parents required her to remain single. Her father The latter is plainly a continuation of a topic begun on p. [186] and con- admits to Mr. Ward that he had hoped she would. tinued, after a note on the weather, on p. [188]. In Emerson's journals, dated What was in Miss Barker's mind while she lingered on her way to Boston entries cannot be relied on to give us a date for matter falling between them. we cannot know. The only clue is in a passage Miss Fuller quotes in a letter In this case, it can be established beyond any doubt that Anna Barker, who to Caroline Sturgis of 12 July. Miss Barker had written that she is giving all would not arrive until the sixth of August, did not become engaged until her time to her brother Tom: after 16 August when she left Margaret Fuller's to go to Mrs. Farrar's in Cambridge. "We will hope to detain him a little longer-life seems to me all adieus, this last There on the twenty-second of August Emerson, who had already col- will be grief indeed-I love him very much; there is something so deep and lected Margaret Fuller and Caroline Sturgis, called for Anna Barker to bring stern about him. Once I wanted you should know each other, now I am careless the trio to Concord. The plans for this visit had been made before the six- about it could you be together as we are here looking on the mountains teenth. Emerson did not hear of the engagement until after the Harvard Phi that have become to me most beloved and blessed friends-so calm, so ma- jestic, as if waiting God's word." Beta Kappa cermonies on 27 August when Miss Barker told him privately. He was flabbergasted. He concludes a letter of 28 August to Caroline Sturgis Of Ward Miss Fuller reports that he has written; she had not seen him, with "I only hasten to write admonished by the strange news I found at Cam- however, until this week: bridge" (MH). On the sixth of September he explains his astonishment: "I thought the whole spirit of our intercourse at Concord implied another solu- I never saw any one so reduced he is even emaciated. he has lost all his tion" (MH). The rest of the letter is another story, but it is plain that he had beauty for the present, but was the more dear. I had a most happy time with been completely taken aback by the news, the more SO when he learned at him. He was most happy, leaning on his own thoughts, gentle, celestial, not Mrs. Farrar's the next day that the two had become engaged the week before hopeful, but faithful. He was delighted to find me in so quiescent a mood. He the Concord visit. He reports: "There was no compunction in either of their begged me to stay so, as long as he did. May our relation remain as sweet and brows." Why should there be? Apparently even Emerson could entertain untroubled as at present! "a mere imagination" and an absurd one: that his four friends Miss Fuller, Miss Sturgis, Miss Barker, and Mr. Ward would remain forever celibate, de- Margaret Fuller's juxtaposition of these two portraits leaves a curious im- votees of "Celestial Love," perhaps. pression. It is hard to believe that all parties to this romance are in such a Quite properly Miss Barker had said no word of the engagement at Con- state of celestial tranquillity. cord; nothing was said until relatives and friends at a distance had been noti- What is clear is that Anna Barker and Samuel Gray Ward are not engaged. fied. She wrote her grandmother, Anna Hazard, on 25 August (MH). As pro- The letter and all the correspondence of July 1840 call attention to a puzzling priety required, Miss Barker and Ward would have to write her father before 70 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 The True Romance 71 the public announcement could be made, as it was, at Mrs. Farrar's on the Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph L. Rusk, 6 vols. (New York: Columbia University wenty-eighth. Apparently on that date Thomas Wren Ward wrote Jacob Press, 1939), and The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Barker (MH). The few letters of acknowledgement that survive are dated be- William H. Gilman, Ralph H. Orth, et al., 16 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960-82), are noted in the text. tween 27 August and 2 September (MH). 2. Information about Jacob Barker comes largely from his own rambling Incidents in the Life In the last week of September, the couple went to New York. Mary Ward's of Jacob Barker of New Orleans, Louisiana from 1800 to 1855 (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for fiancé Henry Ward, of the New York Wards, was seriously But Ward Libraries Press, 1970 [1855]). His name did not appear on the title page for 1855, but the matter wrote his father very firmly that his wedding "must" take place on 3 October in the book has to be his. Other sources are James Grant Wilson, The Life and Letters of Fitz- (his birthday) whatever happened. "Our wedding will not be an occasion of Greene Halleck (New York: Appleton, 1869), and Nelson Adkins, Fitz-Greene Halleck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930). gaiety-but private and solemn-and even under the saddest circumstances 3. Barker, Incidents, p. 11. must take place" (MHi). He has said the same to Anna and her mother. The 4. Barker, Incidents, pp. 150ff. invitations must go out to the family. Emerson was invited; Miss Fuller was 5. Wilson, Fitz-Greene Halleck, pp. 313-19; Adkins, Fitz-Greene Halleck, pp. 162-72. 6. Barker, Incidents, pp. 221, 244. not. Ward carried his bride off to the White Mountains, not much like the Alps 7. Wilson, Fitz-Greene Halleck, p. 109. 8. Edward Austin to Ward, 3 August 1840, MH. but having their own beauty on clear October days. In an affectionate letter 9. Martha Ward's severe illness is referred to in several letters of 1837-38, MHi. to her father-in-law, Anna Ward would describe her happiness and the 10. Henry Lee to Ward, 21 February 1837, MH. beauty of the season, concluding: "The sky will not always be blue." Nei- 11. Her friend James Freeman Clarke would warn her against "extravagance" of language. ther Samuel Gray Ward nor Anna Barker was inclined to cherish "a mere 12. Ward's letter to his father of Tuesday, 28 July (MHi) is dated from West Point as they go up the river on the first leg of their journey. The letter shows that the trip began a week later than imagination." Miss Fuller cherished a great many. originally planned. It took altogether seventeen days. 13. Eliza Rotch Farrar, Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), pp. 257-69, tells the story of this fourth of her trips, the most interesting of the nine voyages. EPILOGUE 14. The tone of this letter of 10 January 1837 (MHi) is noticeably lighter than his letters from England had been; he tells his sister of Mary Appleton's presentation at court, where Louis On 11 August 1882, replying to a letter from James Elliot Cabot, Samuel Philippe, mistaking her for a married woman, actually talked to her. He even describes Miss Appleton's dress. He is still giving her advice about reading, but apologizes for giving in to his Gray Ward wrote of Margaret Fuller: "itch" to do so. Perhaps the company of Miss Appleton's witty brother Tom may be having an effect. Her literary insight and power of assimilation were something astonishing (& 15. Ticknor is answering questions Thomas Wren Ward had put to his son. There is no direct based on a solid classical learning her father gave her). I have never known a evidence that Ward had heard that Anna Barker was travelling with the Farrars, but Ticknor in woman her equal in these respects & as so much of it lay in the direction of my September 1840 would claim he had thought so at the time. Miss Barker arrived in Liverpool interests it was a great stimulus to me & I have no doubt it was so to Emerson. early in July escorted by her brother Sigourney; she was to join the Farrars in England or in We have yet to look at Emerson's works with reference to its effect on him & not Antwerp where her brother Thomas was the American consul. 16. Farrar, Recollections, pp. 273-75. Mrs. Farrar does not name her but the allusion to to its abstract value (though I do not mean to diminish her real value. She never Hiram Powers identifies her. Powers would ultimately do it all over again when Ward wished to had a fair chance) (CU-SB) acquire it; the marble of the original turned out to be defective. Powers' letters to Anna Barker are in the Ward papers, MH, and include his request for a life mask. The doors were opened by churchmen to whom she had letters of introduction from the Ursuline convent near New Or- leans where she had been a student. She wrote her brother Tom that they saw her as a prospec- NOTES tive convert, as ultimately she was. 17. ALS, MH. Ticknor, from Heidelburg, 21 August, says he has received "this morning" Ward's letter of the tenth from Interlaken and that he had written Ward on 5 August, care of a 1. Manuscripts from the Thomas Wren Ward papers in the Massachusetts Historical Society Geneva bank (MH). It is in a letter of 6 November to Ward's father that he complains of not are noted in the text by MHi; those in the Ward papers in the Houghton Library by MH; and having heard from Ward since 11 September (MHi). those in the Ward-Perkins papers in the University of California at Santa Barbara by CU-SB. 18. Ward had travelled with the Farrars and Miss Barker for at least eight weeks, possibly Quotations from The Letters of Margaret Fuller, ed. Robert N. Hudspeth, 3 vols. to date nine, long enough certainly for them to become well acquainted. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983- ), are noted in the text by volume and page number. 19. He imagines that the travellers may be exploring the outskirts of Rome with "my Inter- Emerson's letters to Caroline Sturgis are in the Tappan papers at MH. Quotations from The laken papers for your guide." The last portion of the letter is written "Some days later." 72 Studies in the American Renaissance 1987 20. Of the two steamships The Great Western, starting out later than the Sirius, made the Atlantic crossing in the shorter time. James Gore King was the banking partner of Samuel Ward, Sr., in the New York firm of Prime (Nathaniel), King, and Ward. 21. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, ed. William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols. (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1852), 1:189. The pas- sage as printed has been revised as well as drastically cut. The manuscript is in the Fuller THE SELECTED SERMONS OF CONVERS FRANCIS papers, MB. 22. There is no record of any kind that Ward accepted this invitation. It seems clear that (PART ONE) Emerson did not meet Ward until the summer of 1839 and then twice by accident. See JMN, 7:221, for his seeing Ward and others at the Allston Gallery. The second meeting, also acciden- tal, was at the end of August or beginning of September in the White Mountains. The tone of a letter of 9 July to Margaret Fuller is suggestive; the letter begins: "It occurs to me that from what you said at the Allston Gallery I may look for the descent of Mr Ward on mere Concord earth one of these Sundays" (Letters, 2:208). Their friendship cannot be said to have begun until October 1839. Guy R. Woodall 23. See Emerson's letter to her of 1 September, Letters, :155. 24. Lawrence's directions are at MHi. 25. He wrote every fourth or fifth day (MHi). C JONVERS FRANCIS LEFT MANY REMINDERS of his active intellec- 26. The source of the gossip could have been Francis Marion Ward of New York who was then a student at Harvard. tual and spiritual life, among which were a large number of published 27. A facsimile of the manuscript appears in The Odes of Keats and Their Earliest Manu- historical and religious books, sermons, and essays. One important legacy scripts, ed. Robert Gittings (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1970), pp. [57, 59]. Mrs. Ward which he left that has heretofore received no attention by scholars is a large presented it to her granddaughter Elizabeth Ward, 14 May 1896 (see notes, p. 74). Amy Lowell and rich collection of manuscript sermons. At the Free Public Library at Wa- subsequently acquired it. tertown, Massachusetts, there remains this extensive collection of sermons 28. The Letters of James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller, ed. John Wesley Thomas (Ham- burg: Cram, de Gruyter, 1957), pp. 137-38. written and preached over a period of nearly fifty years. When Francis first 29. Margaret Fuller prints this letter in Summer on the Lakes (Boston: Charles C. Little and wrote these sermons he assigned a number to each one. About one thousand James Brown, 1844), pp. 74-76, 78-79. The date and the terrain described make it certain that sermons have survived and bear numbers that fall between one and 1140. this letter is from Ward. She has used what is plainly a letter from Channing before it and makes The missing sermons cannot be accounted for, but quite likely they were the transition by referring to the one as a poet and the other as a painter. missing long before Francis' daughter, Abby Bradford Francis, gave the col- 30. In the letter the passages are interrupted only by a sentence reporting a caller's interrup- tion (2:150). lection to the library a short time before her death in 1886.3 These sermons 31. Although the name does not look as if it alone were added later, and such a supposition form a spiritual autobiography of their author, and, of equal importance, doesn't help much; there is, however, another oddity to be observed. In a letter of 27, 28 July, provide a wide range of significant commentary on the religious, social, and, Emerson would use of Margaret Perkins Forbes who visited the Emersons in July virtually the now and then, political activities of his time and place. They reflect the same phrase. Of Miss Forbes he writes: "There is blandishment in her naming of your name" erudite minister-professor's feelings about such matters as the Unitarian- (Letters, 2:320). If the journal passage had no name, or if the name could be provided to have been added later, it could be assumed to have been written with Margaret Forbes in mind. Orthodox Congregational schism and the controversies among the Uni- Whatever explanation the reader accepts, the passage cannot be used as evidence. tarians themselves over the miracle question and Transcendentalism, aboli- 32. Emerson may have read Drayton's sonnet, echoed here, in 1831, when he borrowed from tionism and other social reforms, and scientific and political changes. the Boston Athenium volume three of Dr. Robert Anderson's Works of the British Poets; the Francis, like many other preachers of his time, wrote his sermons in a volume contains poems by Drayton and probably this one, the best known of his sonnets, standard octavo composition book which contained about fifteen to eighteen no. LXI, "Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part." The whole sonnet is certainly appro- priate to our story. pages. Each sermon averaged about thirty-five hundred words and filled a Henry Ward died on the second. The wedding took place as planned on the third at Mrs. book. Occasionally he extended the sermon to the inside of the front and Farrar's. back covers, and now and then additional notes or a written prayer necessi- 34. Since it had rained and Mr. Ward knew it from his son's letter of 14 October, he would tated Kis inserting an extra sheet. The sermons were invariably written out know that she writes figuratively here. In her postscript to the letter of the fourteenth, she had said "reality is the better part of romance." in full to be read, for Francis never cultivated the habit of speaking from ab- breviated notes or an outline. In the body of the sermons he seldom used abbreviations, clipped forms of words, or word symbols except for the follow- 73 May 22, 1938 Subject: Country home at Canton. The old Nichols ho. se at Canton where my grand- mother lived was a pleasant 6x$ house of the old Salem type fronting sunnily to the south over the meadowland below and with a cocl veranda on the north which in the #11,116 Nichols' time opened directly onto the level garden where the old climos of perennial flowers I have spoken of came up through the grass to which the garden had been sowed down when a new and larger one was made for my grandmother at the head of the. meadow and the foot of a bank some twenty five or thirty feet in heighth which slored southward from the level on which the house was placed. The eastern side of the house, fronting toward Pleasant Street had at its center a trellis perch covered with fragrant honeyauckle which was the true entrance to the house opening onto a wide, straw-matted hallway with the dining and sitting room opening onto it and a broad, easy stairway to the floor above. It was really delightfully planned but It needed the lost garden to give full meaning to the plan and a larger living than my grandmothers' was [remainder in Carton Note: G.B.D. may have visited Canton on May 7, 1933 file] when the diary of Louis aT Endicott notes a visit to Canton-nomention of C.BD. Endicott Family Rapers. (No. 341) A Plan of the Estate of the Lote 65 Thomas W. Ward SCALE OF INSPLAN C A N T 0 N Containing 38 Acres I Quarter Endicoit. 34 Rods. Surveyed April, 1675 Scale so feet to by an inch Frederick Copied by fuller and Whitney Boston March 20, 1882. - nb Draper to Ward LIB.258 FOL.53. Drape to Ward LIB.376, FOL.19. PLEASANT STREET Nichols Heirs and Executors to Ward (SKETCH Sade LIB.225, FOL. 148. Gill to Ward LIB.255, FOL227 157.999 Draper Ward L18.376. FOL1 STREET Note: See Canton file. Re: Mr. Dorr Again Page 1 of 2 0.2 Epp, Ronald From: Nini Gilder [cbg@gilder.com] Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 3:53 PM To: Epp, Ronald Subject: Re: Mr. Dorr Again My reply yesterday was hurried as I was preparing to give a lecture, by now I have had a chance to reread your e-mail and digest it more carefully. The house in Canton, Massachusetts may have been called by Samuel Gray Ward "Bywood". In the early 1850s he writes his tenant at the house in Lenox seeking items in the attic - archery equipment etc - which he says will be useful at Bywood. Mr. William Curtis established the brick hotel in the center of the village which grew throughout the nineteenth century as the resort prospered. He was a great promoter of Lenox, helped newcomers with real estate deals, knew everyone's name and was a born innkeeper. Fanny Kemble was a noted English actress who became one of Lenox's great characters. She began visiting Lenox in the 1830s as a guest of the Sedgwicks and generally stayed at the Curtis Hotel, until she bought her own house in 1849. She gave brilliant one-woman Shakesperean readings in NY, London and in Lenox drawing rooms and the Lenox Library, she was a daredevil on a horse, and a writer of note in her day. The two references you mention are very interesting and I would love to have them in full. Did I give you my address? Cornelia B. Gilder, P.O.Box 430, Tyringham, MA 01264. Many, many thanks !! From: "Epp, Ronald" Note: Charles Pickaring Buwdited Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:11:58-0400 lived as a child near the shores To: Cc: "Epp, Ronald" of Porkapoag. Evidence? see Subject: Mr. Dorr Again Hoorhead storey's memoir of C.P.B. I - Haroachesetts Historical Dear Cornelia, Society Proceedings, 3rd Series, V.26 (1923) 306 f. Yesterday I was reading for the first time documents copied from the Dorr Papers, microfilms at the Jesup Library in Bar Harbor. These few undated pages were likely written in the late 19301s and discuss his pre-college school years. I came across two statements that I thought would interest you (and l'll photocopy the full text if you like and mail it to you). I 1. In referring to a summer home outside Boston where his maternal grandmother lived, he says that his grandfather had built himself a country home 3alongside the Nichols homestead, which first my uncle, Samuel Gray Ward, on coming from Lenox, bought and occupied, then we, when business took him to New York to live.2 12/1/2003 Ms.Am. Rates, Joshua, 1708-1841. 1. 1/1/17 9 A.LL,S. to Samuel 0. Ward on building Boston Public Library and on personal affairs; London, 1853-1864. 95. (22 p.) Courtesy of Kim Reynolds, Curator of Howescript Boston Public Library. 4/9/2018. [circa 1852] HATHI TRUST A Memoried bfToshua Bates, from th City of Boston, Boston : Boston City Council, 1865 LETTERS RELATIVE TO THE LIBRARY. 47 LETTER FROM MR. BATES TO SAMUEL G. WARD, ESQ. LONDON, 10 March, 1853. My DEAR SIR: I return you many thanks for your kind letter of the 22d ult. I have written to the Mayor, as suggested, and enclose the letter, which please deliver. I rejoice that my contribution to the Library has had the effect to start the Institution on a scale that will do honor to the citizens of Boston. I am glad to see that Mr. Ticknor's views accord perfectly with my own; and, with the earnestness and spirit with which he enters into the matter, I have no doubt he will accomplish everything desired. Pray present my kindest regards to him, and believe me, My dear Sir, always truly yours, JOSHUA BATES. FROM A LETTER TO MR. TICKNOR. LONDON, 10 February, 1854. My DEAR SIR : I have to thank you for your kind letter of the 12th ult. and for the details you are SO obliging as to give me in relation to the Free Library. I am very glad to observe that your views are to have it one of the best libraries in the United States. I can assure you that there will be no want of funds to buy the books nec- essary to make it so. Only see that the building is such that, when filled with books, every Bostonian will feel proud of it ; besides, to make it successful, it must be worth seeing. The books will come fast enough. I agree Digitization Support by Original from MICROSOFT YALE UNIVERSITY pg. I of 2 Five Emerson Letters SGW) HOWARD M. FISH, JR. Edinburgh, Scotland thing TH HE FIVE unpublished Emerson letters herein contained are found the libraries of Edinburgh, Scotland. That four of them are mentioned and dated approximately in The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson1 is an unmistakable tribute to the editor of that work, Ralph L. Rusk. To him I acknowledge my debt in presenting these new Emerson letters. They are published with the kind permission of the owners, the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh Library, and Edward W. Forbes, President of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association. I The first letter2 was written to Dr. Samuel Brown (1817-1856), an eminent Edinburgh scientist and philosopher. Emerson spent some time as the guest of Dr. Brown in Edinburgh in 1848, and his praise of the "new Paracelsus" was great. In this letter the date line and signature have been cut out, presumably by Dr. Brown, taking with them a part of the manuscript. That portion in parentheses Dr. Brown added in the place of the cut-out words. The approximate date of the letter has been determined by Rusk as September I, 1843, using for evidence letters from Brown to Emerson.4 My DEAR SIR, I received two or three weeks ago, your letter & the accompanying tracts, & soon after a letter from Mr Russell, in Rochester, N. Y., an- nouncing, to my regret, that he would not come into Massachusetts. I have no right to any of the fine things you tell me, but can very well appreciate their sincerity & eloquence. And your account of your own devotion to pursuits such as you describe, I must read with joy & reverence. 1 The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York, 1939). Six volumes. Hereinafter referred to as Letters. 2 MS in the National Library of Scotland. 8 For Emerson's account of Brown, see Letters, IV, 17-24. . Letters, III, 205. 5 Francis Russell, Esq. See Letters, IV, 21. American Literature 27(1955):25-30. This content downloaded from 137.49.1.13 on Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:38:35 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Five Emerson Letters Author(s): Howard M. Fish, Jr. Source: American Literature, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 1955), pp. 25-30 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2922308 Accessed: 24-10-2017 23:38 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Literature JSTOR This content downloaded from 137.49.1.13 on Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:38:35 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms pg.20P2 Five Emerson Letters 29 [Letter 4] IV The fourth letter17 was addressed to Jane Welsh Carlyle (180I- 1866), wife of Emerson's Scottish literary friend. Emerson first met the Carlyles on August 25, 1833, when he searched out his "Germanick new-light writer"18 among the desolate farmlands of southern Scotland. He visited them again in their London home during his lecture tour of Great Britain in 1847-1848. CONCORD, 6 May, 1856 My DEAR MRS CARLYLE, Will you let me recall my old name to your remembrance, on the oc- casion of the visit of a dear & honored friend to London, Mrs Ward19 sew of Boston, whom I especially wish to present to your kind regards. Mrs Ward is the wife of my friend Sam. G. Ward, Esq.20 whose name I know is known to your husband,-though they have never met,- & is herself the most beloved & valued of all American women. I shall not trust my- self to say the least of all the good I know of her, since we at home here who have seen her through many brilliant years may easily doubt whether the new friends she may meet in passing can feel as we do. But I send her to the best, & I shall gladly know that you who know all that is excellent in English Society, have seen our joy & pride. (Her health is bad, her physicians advise travel, I wish neuralgic pains were not permitted to assail such goodnesses.) Mrs Ward is on her way to Switzerland, where her son is at school, & stops in London a few days. I trust you shall not be ailing, nor in the country, as I have set my heart on her seeing you. And so, with best thoughts & grateful remembrances, I remain your affectionate servant, R. W. EMERSON. Mrs Jane Carlyle. V This testimonial ² was written on behalf of James Hutchison Stirling (1820-1909), at the time a candidate for the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Emerson enclosed the MS in the National Library of Scotland. See Letters, V, 20. Emerson, Journals, ed. Edward W. Emerson and Waldo E. Forbes (Boston, 1909- 1914), II, 515. Anna Barker Ward. See Journals, V, 278-280, and Letters, II, 228, 244, 338-339. Ac- cording to Rusk (Letters, V, 21), the New York Daily Tribune of May 9, 1856, listed Mrs. S. Gy Ward as a passenger on the Arabia from Boston to Liverpool. saw Samuel Gray Ward and Anna Hazard Barker were married on Oct. 3, 1840. A printed copy of this testimonial, but not the MS, is in the University of Edinburgh Library. See Letters, V, 462. This content downloaded from 137.49.1.13 on Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:38:35 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 28 American Literature of these latter poems were among those mentioned in the letter to Miss Barland. 142 STRAND LONDON 2 April 1848 My DEAR MISS BARLAND, I should have sent an earlier reply to your note received the other day, but that it found me just leaving town for two or three days, nor was I, in the mean time, in circumstances to write. I hasten now to say, that I was touched & gratified by the kind confidence with which you honour me. But I ought perhaps to advertise you, that, in all questions touching life & affection, I am reckoned a little stoical,-not a good sympathizer. I could heartily wish you more peace than you seem yet to have found; but that is never far off from a strong mind. Health is more natural, & far more common than sickness, and, at some rate, we must have it. And I cannot but observe that the feeling is spreading through all society, that we are somehow acountable for our distempers, & must blush for our rheumatism & typhus. Why not then for moral infirmity of every shade? But I have to say-that I found in my readings in your little book of Poems, such indisputable evidence of good sense, & of all those fine gifts that go to make a good ear, & metrical talent, that I should be forced, if I were within reach of your conversation, to speak to you as to one who need suffer no longer than she liked, since the finest works & pleasures are open to you; & the same power that enables you to succeed in them, qualifies you to exert yourself with security in many other directions. Perhaps now I am less disposed than ever to concede any point to our domestic foes-that I have lately been making some sketches towards a chapter on the Culture of the Intellect. That is a chapter in our mysteri- ous Book of Life, which draws on all our means physical & metaphysical, -on our science & on our tears,-and the attraction of the subject for me is the lofty invitation which it at all times sends into our low & squalid indolence, summoning us to a kingdom of inspiration & miracle without end. I wish you would yourself look that way. The very topics that will first arrange themselves in your mind will nerve you, & lead you on; and, strange to say, it is still new & unexplored ground. But I am outrunning all limits of a note, & yet could not say less. Thanks for the verses, too; though you have written many better. With my best wishes & assurances of your restored & augmented health & happiness, I remain Yours, R. W. EMERSON This content downloaded from 137.49.1.13 on Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:38:35 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Hathi Tiest Procesdays th Occusion of Laying the Concestive of the Public Labay of to. City of Boston, 17 September 1855 36 Bughn. Moore * Crosby, 1855 The Corner-Stone of a Building for the Public Library of the City of Boston, Laid on the 17th day of September, A. D. 1855. It being the 225th Anniversary of the day on which Trimountaine was first called Boston,- In presence of the City Council, at the request of The Commissioners on the erection of the Building, By His Honor, JEROME V. C. SMITH, Mayor. Commissioners for the Building. Trustees of the Library. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, EDWARD EVERETT, President; President; SAMUEL G. WARD, GEORGE TICKNOR, GEORGE TICKNOR, JOHN P. BIGELOW, NATHANIEL B. SHURTLEFF, NATHANIEL B. SHURTLEFF, CHARLES WOODBERRY, THOMAS G. APPLETON, JOSEPH A. POND, JOSEPH STORY. EDWARD F. PORTER. Librarian. EDWARD CAPEN. Architect. CHARLES K. KIRBY. 2. Act to authorize the City of Boston to establish a Public Library, approved by the Governor of the Commonwealth, 18 March, 1848; accepted by the City Council, 3 April, 1848. (Doc. 15.) 3. Report of the Committee on the Library in relation to the donations received from the City of Paris, 22 September, 1849. (Doc. 46.) 4. Communication to the President of the Common Council from His Honor John P. Bigelow, Mayor, transmitting a letter from Hon. Edward Everett, covering a catalogue of books and documents contributed by him to the Public Library, 19 June, 1851. (Doc. 51 ) Digitized by Original from INTERNET ARCHIVE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Thomas W. Ward to John G. Ward Canton, (Mass.) July 13, 1855. Friday. My dear John, Your mother and myself are anchored here in the country now, and well. Mr. Abcot Lawrence is very ill and is not expected to recover. Mrs. Frank Appleton is to marry Mr. Henry Saltonstall, only son of Mrs. Nath'l Saltonstall. Sam is very busy in the agency, and for his friends. We have done our work on our farm here, and have nothing now to do but to carry it on, and this your mother does mainly with the gardener, taking great satisfaction in her country life. We shall be very glad to have you make us a visit. It is really nothing to cross and recross. John M. Forbes has just returned from a trip abroad and I hardly missed him. We have had a photograph made of our Friday Night Dining Club, 13 members sitting and standing together, which is very well done, and each member will have a copy framed. M (July 10, 1854) 2. I have been so much occupied with the work going on at the farm that I have been hurried more than I like and rarely come to town; and time flies with increased rapidity. There is no getting a round turn to hold on Farm by and all the world seems to be on the race. We rise cycle at 6 and breakfast at 7, dine at 12, tea at 7, and to bed at 9. I am often on my feet for 12 or 14 hours in the day. The country never has looked more beautiful than now, but we keep our house open in Park Street, as we always have done, and it is not easy to find a more pleasant place. Elias and Cynthia take care of Park Street; Ann Quinn and Mary at Canton. Sam's place next ours at Canton is really beauti- ful and both Anna and himself are perfectly satisfied and pleased with it. Your mother likes hers best, SO all are pleased. I find time to read a good deal and am now on Lockhart's Life of Scott. It recalls former times when we were looking for every new Waverly novel, and the kindliness of Scott's nature is brought fresh before me. Biography is always pleasant to me, and voyages and travels, but I am surprised at the number of books I have not found time to read. (July 13, 1855) 2. The Chief Justice* always inquires after you with kind interest. Our kind regards to Mrs. Haggerty and her daughters, should they be near you. Ever truly yours, T. W. Ward. To John G. Ward, Paris. Lemuel Shaw. ** It was from the Haggertys in Paris the following winter that word came of John's serious condition with consumption, of which he died the following spring. His memory remained green with the Haggertys so long as they, any of them, lived, who spoke of him always with affection. Edward Walds Emerson on SAMUEL GRAY WARD VT has been shown in the initial chapter of this chronicle how his much-valued younger friend, Ward, made Emerson's long cher- ished hope of a club attractive and practicable. Ward's tactful suggestions of including in the, at first, small membership some brilliant persons in whom the social gift prevailed over the specu- lative or reforming, and of the importance of a dinner, put the project into a form which the accident of Woodman's informal lunches at once made a fact. Ward was a man of good birth and breeding, with artistic tastes and gifts, and practical business talent; these struggled in him for the mastery. His father, Thomas Wren Ward, was a merchant in Boston with his home in Park Street, where Samuel was born in 1817. At Round Hill School, where he went later than John Forbes and Tom Appleton, but probably when Ben- jamin Peirce was the mathematical teacher there, he had the great good fortune, for a boy, of having classical studies well pre- sented, so that he could then, and more in after years, find joy in them. In his old age he wrote, "One cannot have mastered the Latin Grammar at any early age without a speaking ac- quaintance, at least, with Virgil and Horace and Cicero, a single line of one of whom makes all educated men kin and establishes a free-masonry like no other." While he was at Harvard he lived in the house of Professor and Mrs. Farrar, a centre of culture and refinement. Two fortunate chances befell him. There he met Margaret Fuller; the eager young girl of astonishing scholarship and intellectual power, not attrac- tive, and an invalid, became his friend. He said he owed to her a great debt for introduction to the new world of literature and thought, and an intellectual impulse that was of great value to him. Mr. Ward's other and greater good fortune in the Farrar home was the meeting there a young visitor, Miss Anna Barker. A few years later she became his wife, and, though she became an invalid, her always beautiful presence was spared to him until they were both very old. The Early years of the Saturday Club 855 -1870 Edward Walds Emerson. [Saturday Club established in 1855] Boston: Houghtor Hifflin, 1918. IIO The Saturday Club After graduating, young Ward went abroad for more than a year. He had the luck to travel first with the Farrars, then to go to Italy with Mr. George Ticknor in his carriage; also to study the best art and the noble landmarks of the past, with natural xesthetic sense and eager zeal. On his return he began life as a broker, but the financial de- pression of 1837, continuing long, gave him a reason for leaving State Street to try his fortune and strengthen his constitution by farming. He had a passion for gardening and manfully ploughed and planted in the beautiful surroundings of Lenox, then a simple and remote village. He had married Anna Barker before the move to Berkshire. They loved the country, but for both of them it was struggling against manifest destiny to live a rustic life, far hid- den away from cultivated society. They were born to live in it and adorn it. In a letter, written by Mr. Norton to his old friend in the last years of their lives, is this pleasant recollection: "As, the other day, I was passing the Farrar house [on Cambridge Common] with which you were once so familiar, I recalled that the first time I ever saw you was one Sunday morning as I was going to church with my mother. As we passed the gate she said to me, 'There is young Mr. Ward going up the steps, to see the beautiful Miss Anna Barker.' I suppose the little incident impressed itself on my memory, because the beautiful Miss Barker had been at our house and had made me, a boy of ten or twelve, captive by her charms." No wonder, for young or old who had the privilege of meeting Mrs. Ward during the next sixty years felt, in varying degrees, the spell of her beauty which, being intrinsic, shone out undimmed by long years of invalidism. Instead of becoming thereby self-absorbed, she kept until the end the rare power of lending herself with sure, winning sympathy to those whom she received by her bedside. The untutored and shy young people found their tongues. They left her room astonished, happier and higher than when they went. The natural, masterful brusqueness and rather exacting social standards of her husband were surely sweetened by her. He had a way of correcting crude behaviour or obvious remarks by young 112 The Saturday Club vantages of remoteness. As a matter of duty and affection he yielded to his father's wish for him and straightway showed him- self a sound and capable business man. The firm's great credit business doubled and tripled during the twenty years after he succeeded to the management. Yet one must believe that in those years, when confined and tired, the mood returned often which inspired his poem, written anonymously, in the Dial in the days of his short business trial before the Lenox venture. THE SHIELD 1 The old man said, "Take thou this shield, my son, Long tried in battle, and long tried by age, Guarded by this, thy fathers did engage, Trusting to this, the victory they have won." Forth from the tower Hope and Desire had built, In youth's bright morn I gazed upon the plain, - There struggled countless hosts, while many a stain Marked where the blood of brave men had been spilt. With spirit strong I buckled to the fight, - What sudden chill rushes through every vein? Those fatal arms oppress me - all in vain My fainting limbs seek their accustomed might. Forged were those arms for men of other mould; Our hands they fetter, cramp our spirits free; I throw them on the ground, and suddenly Comes back my strength, returns my spirit bold. I stand alone, unarmed, yet not alone; Who heeds no law but what within he finds; Trusts his own vision, not to other minds; He fights with thee. Father, aid thou thy son. And yet Ward, in turn, placed a Pegasus "in pound" in the next generation. After all, his unsuspected business talent and success had been a source of some gratification to him. Mr. Ward made several contributions in prose or verse for the Dial, and the following passage from a letter written to him by 1 Published in the Dial about 1843. Samuel Gray Ward 113 Emerson in 1843 shows that he had promised to write for the next number a paper (on poetry?) in dialogue form: "Your letter and the fine colloquy make me happy and proud. I shall print it, to be sure, every syllable, and the good reader shall thank you, or not, as God gives him illumination." A few years after their first acquaintance, in July, 1840, Emerson wrote: "The reason why I am curious about you is that with tastes which I also have, you have tastes and powers and corresponding circumstances which I have not and perhaps cannot divine, but certainly we will not quarrel with our companion, for he has more root, subterranean or aerial, sent out into the great Universe to draw his nourishment withal. The secret of virtue is to know that, the richer another is, the richer am I; - how much more if that other is my friend." For Ward was one of Emerson's brightest "Sons of the morning," and though far from setting in eclipse, like many of these, and by Emerson always loved and valued, yet the morning ideal was perhaps a little dimmed by life's experiences. I remember that he said in his mature life, "Show me a radical over forty, and I will show you an unsound man." Mr. Ward was a man remarkable for his many-sidedness, an able man of affairs, public-spirited citizen, possessed of talent, social position and aplomb, accomplished, masterful, an intelli- gent and hospitable householder, a good but sparing writer, wide and critical reader in various languages, well versed in art and an admirable amateur draughtsman. The elder Ward was Treasurer of the Boston Athenxum, then the small oasis in which Art was struggling to light in Massachusetts, and the son, who had, in his eighteen months in Europe, fed his eyes and soul in the galleries, with inborn taste thus instructed, brought home in his portfolios the best prints and drawings then attainable. As Ward was stirred by the courage and elevation of thought of his older friend; Emerson in his quiet country life was very sensible of the charm of the social culture and manners of Ward and his wife, and was glad to avail himself of his knowledge of art and discernment in collecting. There was always a certain spell felt by the quiet scholar when such people were in company with him and afterward, yet his ancestry and his solitary genius showed 114 The Saturday Club him that his path was not theirs. His poem "The Park" records this feeling: - "The prosperous and beautiful To me seem not to wear The yoke of conscience masterful Which galls me everywhere," etc. Ward sent his portfolios to Concord for Emerson to enjoy, telling him to keep a delicate copy in some reddish medium of the relief of Endymion in the Capitoline Museum. It was thus acknowl- edged: "I confess I have difficulty in accepting the superb drawing which you ask me to keep. In taking it from the portfolio I take it from its godlike companions to put it where it must shine alone. I have been glad to learn to know you through your mute friends [the drawings]. They tell me very eloquently what you love. This beautiful Endymion deserves. to be looked on by instructed eyes. 1 "I conceive of you as allied on every side to what is beautiful and inspiring, with noblest purposes in life and with powers to execute your thought. What space can be allowed you for a moment's despondency? In this country we need whatever is generous and beautiful in character, more than ever, because of the general mediocrity of thought produced by the arts of gain. Friends, it is a part of my creed, we always find; the Spirit provides for itself. If they come late, they are of a higher class." In 1847 Mr. Emerson notes of his friend in his journal: "Ward has aristocratical position and turns it to excellent account; the only aristocrat who does. I find myself interested that he should play his part of the American gentleman well, but am con- tented that he should do that instead of me, - do the etiquette instead of me, - as I am contented that others should sail the ships and work the spindles." Ward with his family lived in Louisburg Square for many years, and had a pleasant summer home in Canton, once the home of the great mathematician Bowditch, where still stood his tower with a travelling observation-dome. On the death of Thomas 1 The Endymion hung in Emerson's parlor all through his lifetime and still hangs there. Samuel Gray Ward 115 Wren Ward in 1858, his son became the sole representative of the Barings in this country until, nine years later, his brother, George Cabot Ward, was associated with him. Just before this occurred, the task fell on Mr. Sam Ward of effecting the purchase of Alaska from Russia for the United States; the price paid being seven and one half million dollars. About this time the firm moved to New York. Early in the war of secession Mr. Sam Ward, in company with other patriotic supporters of the cause of Union and Free- dom, felt the need of, and founded, the Union Club there; also with good Bostonians, many of them members of the Saturday Club, established the Union Club here. More than that, he took a prin- cipal part in superintending the alterations of the Lawrence and Lowell houses on Park Street from the combination of which the Union Clubhouse was formed. The Saturday Club has, now for many years, dined there. Later, Mr. Ward took an active interest in establishing the Nation newspaper, whose high and independ- ent tone had a great influence in enlightening the people and spreading and sustaining a patriotism pure of mere partisanship. Many persons have confounded our Samuel Gray Ward; because of his later living at Newport, with Mr. Samuel Ward, a resident there, brother of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, but with quite other sym- pathies and attitude in the war, as his sister in her noble poem "The Flag" scrupled not to show. When the Back Bay began to be reclaimed and the Public Garden emerged from the muddy water, Mr. Ward was one of the pioneer residents. He built a stately house, Number One Commonwealth Avenue, next to that of Mr. Joshua Bates on Arlington Street, and, not long after, a beautiful summer house on the cliffs at Newport weaned his family from the Canton home. Mr. Ward's love for the best French literature and habitual entertainment at his home of guests and correspondents from the Continent, perhaps was a cause of his rather epigrammatic little utterances over which he often chuckled. He liked to let the guest talk, and then, instead of sustained comment or argument, would interject a shrewd or witty sentence. He would have made a good diplomatist. He was very fond of a work by Brillat de Savarin, La Physiologie du Goût, to which he introduced Emerson. The 116 The Saturday Club latter, à propos of this, noted in his journal; "Longfellow avoids greedy smokers. A cigar lasts one hour; but is not allowed to lose fire. 'Give me the luxuries, the necessities may take their chance'; and the appendix to this, is Sam Ward's rule, that the last thing an invalid is to give up, is, the going out to places of amusement,- the theatre, balls, concerts, etc. And Sir George Cornwall Lewis's saying, that 'Life would be tolerable, if it were not for the pleasures.' Ward said, and admitted, the best things. He had found out, he said, why people die; it is to break up their style." In 1870 Mr. Ward withdrew from active business, went abroad with his family and lived there, mainly in Rome, for nearly three years, but yielded, on his return, to the urgency of the Barings that he should again superintend their affairs here. He built a house in Lenox. After his final withdrawal from business, he made his home in Washington, coming northward in the summers. Of course he came seldom to the Club, for he had outlived all but one or two of his early friends. Emerson, in a letter to Mrs. Ward acknowledging her gift of her husband's photograph, says: "In this picture he who knows how to give to every day its dues, wears a seriousness more be- coming than any lights which wit or gaiety might lend to other hours." Mr. Norton's daughter speaks of the "fortunate circumstance of a late ripening friendship, chiefly expressed through correspond- ence, with Mr. Ward in Washington. The intercourse between them was like that of two seafarers who had sailed in youth from the same port, and, meeting near the end of life, sat down to bridge the intervening years and weigh the new against the old." Mr. Ward grew feeble, but his faculties seemed hardly im- paired during his seven years of life in a new century. He died in November, 1907, having been a member of the Saturday Club which he had helped into existence, for fifty years. E. W. E. THE EARLY YEARS of the SATURDAY CLUB 1855-1870 By EDWARD WALDO EMERSON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 1918 Essay Index Reprint Series BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. FREEPORT, NEW YORK V1 Preface we owe free quotation from Miss Hale's "Memoir of Thomas Gold Appleton," and leave to reproduce the best portrait of him; to Messrs. CONTENTS G. P. Putnam's Sons, use of much matter from Dr. James K. Hos- mer's 'Last Leaf"; to The Macmillan Company, the use of passages INTRODUCTORY xi from the "Life of Edwin L. Godkin"; to Messrs. Harper and Broth- I. THE ATTRACTION I ers, quotations from Horatio Bridge's "Recollections of Hawthorne," and passages from some others of their older publications. Messrs. II. 1855-1856. THE SATURDAY CLUB IS BORN: ALSO THE Charles Scribner's Sons have most courteously given permission for MAGAZINE OR ATLANTIC CLUB II many extracts from Henry James, Jr.'s, "Memories of a Son and Brother." We are grateful to Mr. John Jay Chapman for much III. 1856 21 charming material taken from his "Memories and Milestones." LOUIS AGASSIZ 30 This wide quotation was essential in the production of this work RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 39 and we hope that the younger generation may, perhaps, by these ex- JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT 46 tracts, be drawn to the original sources. RALPH WALDO EMERSON 53 To Mr. Herbert R. Gibbs we owe the careful Index to this volume, and great pains have been taken by the Art Department of The River- EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR 63 side Press in securing and reproducing the portraits in our gallery. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 72 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 82 EDWARD WALDO EMERSON Concord, November, 1918 BENJAMIN PEIRCE 96 SAMUEL GRAY WARD 109 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 117 HORATIO WOODMAN 124 IV. 1857 128 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 135 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 143 CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON 159 V. 1858 166 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 180 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 188 VI. 1859 197 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 207 THOMAS GOLD APPLETON 217 JOHN MURRAY FORBES 227 V111 Contents VII. 1860 234 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 238 VIII. 1861 249 ILLUSTRATIONS JAMES ELLIOT CABOT 260 LOUIS AGASSIZ SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE Frontispiece 269 LOUIS AGASSIZ AT THE BLACKBOARD FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE 30 277 ESTES HOWE RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 40 282 JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT 46 IX. 1862 287 RALPH WALDO EMERSON CHARLES SUMNER 54 297 EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR 64 X. 1863 309 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 72 HENRY JAMES 322 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 82 XI. 1864 334 BENJAMIN PEIRCE 96 JOHN ALBION ANDREW 357 SAMUEL GRAY WARD IIO MARTIN BRIMMER 366 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 118 JAMES THOMAS FIELDS 376 HORATIO WOODMAN 124 SAMUEL WORCESTER ROWSE 388 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 136 XII. 1865 392 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 144 XIII. 1866 CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON 407 160 JEFFRIES WYMAN THE ADIRONDACK CLUB 420 170 From the painting by William J. Stillman XIV. 1867 428 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 180 EPHRAIM WHITMAN GURNEY 442 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 188 XV. 1868 447 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 208 XVI. 1869 456 THOMAS GOLD APPLETON 218 WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT 465 JOHN MURRAY FORBES 228 XVII. 1870 474 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 238 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 484 JAMES ELLIOT CABOT 260 INDEX SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE 503 270 FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE 278 ESTES HOWE 282 CHARLES SUMNER 298 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi, CHAPTER I Quique sacerdotes casti dum vita manebat, THE ATTRACTION Quique pii vates et Phabo digna locuti, Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes, Redeunt saturnia regna. VIRGIL, Eclogues Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo; Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempora vitta. I' the middle of the last century a constellation, which - as VIRGIL, AENEID, BOOK VI separate stars of differing magnitude, but all bright - had for twenty years been visible, at first dimly, in the New England heavens, ascending, was seen as a group, gave increasing light and Here the heroes abide, war-mangled in cause of their country, cheer here and to the westward-journeying sons and daughters; Here men holy, spotless in life till its pilgrimage ended, reached our zenith; even began to be reported by star-gazers be- Loyal bards anigh them sang true to the song of Apollo, yond the ocean. Wise men also, helpers by wit of man in his toiling, These brave illuminators, - poets, scholars, statesmen, work- They who, faithful in life, made others mindful of duty; ers in science, art, law, medicine, large business, and good citizen- Lo! the fillet gleams snow-white on each forehead immortal." ship, - by the fortune of the small area of New England and its few centres of ripening culture, were more easily drawn together. (In the summer of 1855, eleven of these agreed to meet for monthly dinners in Boston. They soon drew friends with genius or wit into their circle. When the often asked question comes up, - Why did SO many men suddenly appear in that generation, eminent in their various callings, using their gifts nobly for the public good, simple livers withal; and why, with another half century's immense advantages and opportunities, nothing like it has appeared in this country? - an answer might be hazarded something like this: The struggle for existence, in the new country, with untamed nature and man in the seventeenth century; in the eighteenth, the first only les- sened and the second increased by the French and Indian neigh- bours, and later, by the oppression of the mother country; then, early in the nineteenth, a modified repetition of the latter, and the 2 The Saturday Club The Attraction 3 general poverty resulting from both. Over and above all this the air, gained force from this enlightening influence. Eager study, struggle for life and scant comfort, leaving no time for literature, more valiant and original writing, combinations for discussion be- science, and art, not only did the prolonged danger and the expense gan; communities gathered in brave hope to make life more sen- of crossing the ocean forbid enlightening travel to all except a sible, many-sided, higher in its plane; reforms of every sort were few merchants and statesmen, but villages and smaller towns were urged and tried, the fruitful one of which was that against Slavery. practically shut off from the larger centres, now cities. But concerning the New Englanders born in the first third of the But at the time when most of these gifted men of the Eastern nineteenth century, it is essential to keep in mind this fact, that, States were growing boys, the years of danger, famine, and ex- to these more cheerful and independent descendants of Pilgrims or treme struggle had gone by, a moderate prosperity had come, Puritans, life was still serious, amusement occasional and second- stage-lines were established on the roads, ships were better, schools ary; they still lived in the presence of the unseen; they worshipped, and colleges were improved and the latter not regarded mainly as and went apart for solitary thought; many of them came, in con- training places for ministers and teachers; religion was assuming tact with life's stern conditions, largely served themselves and a milder and more human form, which softened life in the homes. practised self-denial and were familiar with economic shifts; they Some good libraries, beside those in the colleges, were established, were hardier than we, and the few rich ones would be now deemed - the fame of new books, and then the books, crossed the sea, only in very moderate circumstances. Duty walked beside them there was time to read, also eager appetite, only sharpened by from childhood. The struggle against the then aggressive and ad- indulgence and by the references to other authors in Great Britain vancing institution of Slavery, and the vast war in which this culmi- and on the European continent. Through Coleridge, attention nated, sobered and yet inspired, in its later days, that generation. was turned to German philosophy, and Schiller's and Lessing's On that crisis followed the growth of the country, its prosper- verse, and, through Carlyle, to Goethe. ity, the miracles wrought by Science in every occupation, and in Aspiring young scholars - George Ticknor, the Everetts, Ban- the house, - also wider relations. We all know too well the re- croft, Cogswell, Frederick H. Hedge, Charles T. Brooks of New- sulting hurried and complicated life, the high pressure in work and port - went to pursue their studies in Germany, while students in play, favourable to quick wits and athletic bodies and great na- of medicine and natural science - as Holmes, Bigelow, Charles tional achievement, - unfriendly to the higher promptings of the T. Jackson - went to Paris, as also did art students like William Spirit in solitude, and the finer perceptions guiding life and colour- Morris Hunt, - and others, like Crawford, Powers, and Story, ing production. The later generation does its task bravely, but it is to Rome - visiting England on the way. Others went for gen- of a different kind, and does not meet the same wants. The old eral culture, like Prescott, Sumner, Longfellow, Cabot, and Park- ground now lies fallow. In time its better crop should spring up. man. Their horizon and their field of literature were broadened. They had seen art and culture; also oppression, and brave men But, to go back a little, in "the thirties" and "the forties," as struggling towards liberty. Full of new emotions, they returned part of the general awakening, revolution began to appear here home, now aware of America's deficiencies, but exulting in her and there in education, religion, social and political institutions, opportunities. They became teachers in various fields, and their for new questions and impulses came to the consciences of the influence, reinforced by many patriot refugees from Germany, wise, and also of the unwise, and these had to be considered and like Dr. Follen and Francis Lieber, was inspiring to the young perhaps tried. Such times are uncomfortable, but had to be gone generation. through, for insistent propagandists thronged the roads of New A general spiritual and intellectual awakening which seemed in England, and John Baptist voices would be heard. 4 The Saturday Club The Attraction 5 But in the early "fifties" times were pleasanter to live in. The Dwight, and Cabot, beside his philosophy, was interested in art reforms had been sifted. Questions like Fourierite community- and in natural history, one feels that the metaphysical fencing was life, extreme vegetarianism and avoidance of slave-labour prod- sometimes tedious to all but the swordsmen, and that Alcott's ucts, abolition of domestic service, - even of money, and of lofty and long flights out of sight from the plane of the under- marriage, - had been considered and dismissed. Temperance standing, and ignoring its questions, might have vexed these; had met with a gratifying degree of success. Conscience had won that the aggressive Parker's blows at beliefs as they were must away from the old Whigs a large and strong party, Anti-slavery have troubled the more delicate Ephraim Peabody and George people were no longer despised, and imperious Southern rule was Bradford, and Emerson too, in spite of his respect for him. In now realized and increasingly opposed. All this made for peace short, that such a group needed lightening, dilution, lubrication and more genial social relations here when the new ideas had passed by wit, humour, belles-lettres, art, the advance of science, and to the crude stage. And yet to have been born and to have come be more in touch with the active life of the world. into active thought and deed in those years of strong and conflict- At about the time when the Symposia languished, perhaps ing tides of intellect and conscience, surely moved and strengthened about 1844, Emerson wrote in his journal, "Would it not be a good the characters of many of the men of whom this story treats. cipher for the seal of the lonely Society which forms SO fast in these days, - two porcupines meeting with all their spines erect, THE DESIRE AND THE FORESHADOWING and the motto, 'We converse at the quills' end'?' Certain foreshadowings of our Club appear by 1836. Mr. Emer- From perhaps too constant association with philosophers and son's and Mr. Alcott's journals during this period record frequent reformers, Emerson, about the time when the Symposia ceased, gatherings at private houses in Boston, Concord, or Medford for was finding great refreshment and pleasure in a friendship with interchange of thought, apparently without regular organization, Samuel Gray Ward, a young man of high aspirations, careful -friends meeting and inducing other friends to come,- yet the breeding, much natural gift for and knowledge of art, and en- name "Symposium" seems to have been used for such a gather- tirely at home in society and literature. one of the things that makes life worth living," Ward said in a Septem Stillman dedicated the book to Norton, who was the "sole survivor of that 1898 letter. At the time this letter was sent, thirty-nine years had elapsed si luminous circle in which once shone Lowell, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Stillman, Ward, his son, and Edward Emerson camped at Ampersand Po Agassiz, etc.-circle to whose intellectual hospitality I owe my imprimatur Ward also told Stillman that he had always believed his fellow Amperzan for American letters." 16 would reach a high level of distinction, whether he devoted himself to art For the first time, this book paired Stillman's two Adirondack essays that to literature. But, Ward added, "You chose wisely.'19 recounted his 1857 camping trip to Big Tupper Lake with Lowell, John As always, Stillman received encouragement from Norton. "You are o Holmes, and Howe ("The Subjective of It") and its sequel at Follensby with of the new products of the western world to which there is nothing quite o a much larger and more eminent party a year later ("The Philosophers' respondent in the other hemisphere. Lowell might have described you, Camp"). "A Few of Lowell's Letters" served as a supplement to these Adiron- I know no one else who could do it," Norton told Stillman in June 1898. St dack essays. Unlike the 1858 Atlantic Monthly version of "The Subjective of man was a unique American, indeed, but the America in which he had gro It," The Old Rome version identified Lowell and Holmes by name, though up was rapidly disappearing. It appears Norton had become disillusioned Howe remained the anonymous "doctor." Stillman included in this version the United States' declaration of war on Spain on April 25, 1898, follow more details on the rise and fall of the Adirondack Club. The revised essay the destruction of the Maine battleship in I lavana, Cuba. He said, "It see on the Philosophers' Camp featured it new introduction in which Stillman to me as though I were witnessing the end of the America in which we l recounted Ruskin's opinion that "the character of the American landscape lived." le added. "A new America is beginnings she has mnounced the it pg.loft -arvard university. PORCELLIAN CLUB CENTENNIAL 1791-1891 - 18241 1832- S.G.Was. ET FIDE AMICITY VIVIMUS VIVAMUS CAMBRIDGE Printed at the Aiberside Press 1891 98 PORCELLIAN CLUB 1875 Francis Randall Appleton, LL. B. Columbia 1877; D. M'll New York, N. Y. Sidney Williams Burgess, Boston. Henry Sargent Hunnewell, Boston. *Abbott Lawrence, LL. B. 1877, Boston. Frederick Richard Sears, Boston. Francis Shaw, L. P. C. Boston. Samuel Gray Ward, New York, N.Y. Samuel Dennis Warren, LL. B. 1877; A. M. 1878, Boston. 1876 Harcourt Amory, Brookline. Thomas Trueman Gaff, Cincinnati, O. Edward Cunningham Hall, Hon. Mem. Kingston. Charles Isham, L. P. C. New York, N.Y. Samuel Sherwood, LL.B. Columbia 1878; D. M'l, New York, N.Y. 1877 Frederic Tilden Brown, 1878; M. D. Columbia 1880, New York, N.Y. Nathaniel Curtis, Boston. Arthur Briggs Denny, Boston. Truman Heminway, LL. B. Columbia 1880; L.P.C. New Rochelle, N. Y. *Edwin Hayden Herrick, LL. B. Columbia 1879, New York, N. Y. Henry Thomas Kidder, Boston. Edward Sandford Martin, Auburn, N. Y. George Barnewell Ogden, New York, N.1 Y Augustus Clifford Tower, Lexington. *Henry Upham, 1878; D. M'll, Boston. John Russell Wright, Boston. 1878 Hubert Engelbert Teschemacher, San Francisco, Cal. Emmons Blaine, L.P.C. Augusta, Me. Philip Van Rensselaer Ely, Marquette, Mich. Edwin Denison Morgan, New York, N.Y. James Parker, D. M'll, Boston. John Homans, M. D. 1882, Hon. Mem. Boston. 110 INDEX Dillon Chapin Coolidge Dana 1864 John Alvarez *1823 Charles *1817 *1796 Francis Joseph *1808 Richard Henry Dixwell Chapman *1819 Thomas Bulfinch *1827 Francis 1827 Epes Sargent *1849 *1823 Henry Grafton Joseph Swett 1850 *1828 Joseph Williams *1825 Jonathan Thomas Jefferson *1837 Richard Henry Dodge 1855 John Templeman 1873 Joshua Cleaves *1828 George *1832 Richard Miller Cooper Danforth Dorr 1883 Henry Grafton *1824 Samuel Adams *1839 Joseph Lewis *1819 Edward 1884 John Jay Cox Daniels *1824 George Bucknam Chase *1846 Augustus Enoch *1832 James Augustus *1826 Benjamin *1818 George Downes Crafts *1818 Philandor Darling *1812 George 1853 Theodore 1833 George Inglis *1822 Timothy Du Bignon 1856 George Bigelow Crocker Dart 1892 Samuel Thompson *1830 Charles *1801 Samuel Mather *1820 John Sanford Chauncey 1855 Dumont George Gordon 1844 Henry Charles 1890 Robert Ives Davis *1824 John Thomas Philip *1796 Charles Cheever Crowninshield *1804 Nathaniel Morton Dunbar *1813 Charles Augustus *1823 Jacob *1810 Israel W. *1820 Archibald *1827 Benjamin Varnum *1810 John Watson *1823 Robert Thomas Cheves *1829 Francis Boardman *1827 Thomas Kemper *1824 Alexander Clarke *1826 Joseph Heatly *1832 George Caspar *1838 Wendell Thornton Dunn 1858 Benjamin William *1844 Henry Tallman Child 1860 Caspar William Nye *1819 James Cutler *1851 1846 Francis James 1866 Frederic Davison Dunning Chipman Cummens Edgar Mora *1802 James Skidmore 1874 *1805 Ward *1814 William Dawes Durant Christy Cunningham *1824 Rufus *1841 Henry Fowle *1839 George William *1814 Ephraim May Dean Dutton *1823 John A. *1839 Enos Williams *1831 Francis Lowell Clark *1825 Francis *1866 Edward Henry Edward Linzee Dearborn Dwight 1829 *1845 Frederick *1825 William 1874 Louis Crawford 1857 John Langdon Frank Haven *1853 *1827 Francis 1884 William Henry 1886 David Crawford Curtis Deering *1827 Thomas *1820 James Ferdinand *1834 Frederick Clarke *1811 Charles Pelham *1857 Howard *1829 Dehon 1866 Thomas *1803 Ray Benjamin Robbins 1844 James Gordon 1877 Nathaniel *1833 William 1883 Charles Pelham Clay 1885 Hamilton Rowan Denny Eames 1877 Arthur Briggs *1819 Thomas Savage *1809 Theodore Cushing Clifford Derby Earle *1796 Charles 1871 Walter *1798 Isaiah *1814 George *1834 John Tilghman *1874 Arthur *1817 *1829 Nathaniel Foster Caleb *1855 John Gardner 1864 Richard Henry Eckley Cobb *1856 Arthur Amory Cutler Devereux *1820 Frederick Augustus *1793 Charles *1816 John James Edmands Codman *1829 George Humphrey 1867 Thomas Sprague *1802 John Cutting Dewey Edmunds *1808 Henry 1851 William John Amory *1854 Brockholst *1825 Edward 1883 William Otis *1846 1858 1854 Edward Wainwright Robert Livingston Dexter Eggleston 1864 Richard *1859 Heyward *1810 Thomas Amory *1815 George Washington Coffin *1821 George M. Elgee 1845 Edward *1808 Isaac Foster Dabney 1846 William Sohier *1856 Charles Le Doux *1815 Thomas Aston *1828 Frederick 1854 George Eliot *1821 William Parker *1844 Charles William 1887 Gordon *1815 William Harvard Cogswell *1851 Francis Oliver Dickey *1817 Samuel Atkins *1797 Stephen Dall 1839 Samuel *1806 1882 Charles Denston Joseph Green *1819 John R. 114 Elliott Fiske *1836 John William Tudor Greene *1802 James Henderson *1798 Isaac *1852 John Sylvester *1800 David Ireland *1809 William *1818 Ralph Emms Fitzhugh Gardner *1812 Benjamin David *1824 *1841 William Addison *1828 John Singleton Copley Stephen *1793 Francis *1825 Stephen Flagg *1821 John Lowell Greenleaf Ellis *1829 1887 Elisha, 2d George 1866 Richard Cranch *1847 Joseph Peabody *1855 Payson Perrin Forbes *1862 Francis Lowell Greenough Ely *1805 David Stoddard 1861 William Hathaway Garrow 1837 William Whitwell 1878 Philip Van Rensselaer 1866 James Murray *1825 William M. *1842 James Emerson Forrester *1817 George Barrell *1801 John Gates Griswold *1828 Charles Chauncy *1803 Simon 1835 Charles Horatio 1880 George 1882 Frederick Ware Foster Gay Guild Endicott *1799 Freeman *1810 George *1804 Benjamin *1822 William Putnam *1813 John *1823 Martin 1847 William Crowninshield *1825 Charles Phineas English *1830 George James Geyer Habersham *1807 George Bethune Fox *1794 Thomas *1831 Robert 1836 William Neyle Erving *1822 George Gibbes 1845 John Rae Freeman *1812 Allston *1851 Alexander Telfair *1855 Langdon *1813 Eustis *1800 Samuel Dean Washington *1824 Benjamin S. Hall *1804 Abraham French *1820 David Priestly Gilchrist *1815 George *1798 Rodolph Hill 1856 Rowland Minturn *1830 Horace Sprague 1857 Francis Ormond *1828 John James 1858 William Payne Everett 1885 Amos Tuck 1876 Edward Cunningham Gilman *1806 Alexander Hill Frick *1818 Joseph Hallowell *1811 Edward 1835 William Frederick *1819 Samuel Taylor 1861 Norwood Penrose *1815 Stevens *1853 William *1816 Thomas H. Gilmore Halyburton Friese *1818 John *1828 Robert *1823 James Dandridge *1832 Oliver Capen *1831 Henry Frederick Gordon Hamilton Frost *1806 William *1798 John 1886 Frank Ravenel Fales Gorham Hammond *1802 Nathaniel Frothingham 1893 Louis Adams *1795 Benjamin 1881 Samuel *1803 Henry *1801 John 1881 Samuel, Jr. *1806 William Augustus Fuller *1821 David Wood 1883 Charles Mifflin Fargues 1850 Robert Barnwell *1831 William Cabot Harper *1797 Thomas Fulton *1832 John Warren *1823 Charles Carroll Farrar *1828 Samuel Gould Harris *1803 John Furness *1861 James Reeve *1802 Richard Devens Fay 1820 William Henry Gourdin *1807 William Coffin *1798 Samuel Phillips Prescott 1868 Dawes Eliot *1830 *1821 John Gaillard Keith Benjamin Gwinn *1831 Charles *1829 Charles *1821 Robert Marion 1881 Dudley Bowditch Gadsden Grant Haseltine Fearing *1818 Thomas 1828 Patrick 1854 William Stanley 1893 George Richmond 1860 Frank Gaff Gratz 1863 Albert Chevalier Fellowes 1876 Thomas Trueman *1827 Simon Haskell *1837 Louis Salvador Gallison Gray *1799 Elnathan Fessenden *1807 John *1809 Francis Calley *1823 Charles Thompson *1817 Benjamin Gambrill *1811 John Chipman *1825 Benjamin B. *1819 Horace Haslett Fincke *1872 Richard Augustine *1824 John Henry *1819 John Gardiner 1829 William 1873 Frederick Getman *1801 Robert Hallowell *1833 Henry Yancey Hathaway Fisher *1816 William Howard 1836 John Thompson *1818 Nathaniel *1825 John Francis *1830 Robert Hallowell 1859 John Chipman 1849 Francis 1889 Gerald Hull 1850 Horatio 122 INDEX INDEX 123 Trimble Ward Wetmore Willing 1879 Walter *1809 Samuel Dexter *1797 William *1825 Charles 1880 Richard *1816 Henry Artemas Tucker *1829 Joshua Holyoke Wheatland Willis 1836 *1820 Gideon Samuel Gray 1844 Stephen Goodhue *1813 William *1843 *1824 Charles Church Chandler George Cabot Alanson 1875 Samuel Gray Wheelwright Williston *1832 *1824 William Wilson 1865 William Lawrence Ware *1799 Joseph *1834 Charles Henry 1872 Alanson *1813 John 1844 Edward Wilson Tuckerman *1816 William 1847 Andrew Cunningham 1860 James Henry Waring 1887 Arthur William *1837 John Francis 1886 William Reynolds 1868 Leverett Saltonstall 1882 Guy White Wingate 1874 Charles Sanders Warner 1860 John Corlies *1796 George Tudor 1884 John Allison *1815 William Augustus *1796 William Whitman Winthrop *1800 John Henry Warren *1817 Francis William *1846 Bernard Crosby *1810 Henry James *1800 Ebenezer Tucker *1825 George Edward *1824 Henry Samuel *1813 Henry Whitney 1828 Robert Charles 1867 Frederick *1813 Winslow 1828 Benjamin Duick 1854 Robert Charles *1871 William *1815 Pelham Winslow *1846 Henry Austin 1856 Thomas Lindall *1817 Charles Henry 1863 John Tufts Wickham *1832 James Sullivan 1885 Egerton Leigh *1794 Hall 1863 John Collins *1824 John H. 1886 Grenville Lindall Turnbull 1875 Samuel Dennis Wickliffe 1891 Frederic Bayard *1797 Robert Washburn *1834 Robert Wister *1821 Andrew *1816 William Rounsville Peirce Wigglesworth 1882 Owen Turner Watriss *1831 Samuel Wood *1826 George Franklin Wikoff *1814 David 1892 Frederic Newell 1888 John Walter Watson *1822 Daniel Upham *1815 John Lee Willard Wright *1877 John Russell *1795 Joshua *1820 Adolphus Eugene *1816 Joseph 1879 James Anderson *1819 Henry *1821 Charles Wentworth Wayne Williams Wyeth *1877 Henry *1834 Henry Constantine *1797 John Shirley 1854 Leonard Jarvis 1881 George Phinehas Webster *1818 Robert Breck Garven *1820 *1833 Fletcher Francis Henry Wyman Van Rensselaer *1830 Joseph Barney *1799 Rufus Welch 1834 Joseph Hartwell 1879 William Bayard *1837 1833 Charles Alfred Edward Pinckney Vincent *1837 William Pinckney Yates *1840 Edward Holker 1879 Otho Holland *1822 William *1859 Strong Weld *1826 Stephen Minot Wadsworth *1872 Francis Minot *1848 Alexander Scammell 1880 Christopher Minot 1870 William Austin Welles Waight *1796 Samuel *1818 Robert *1800 Benjamin *1827 Arnold Francis Wainwright 1866 George Derby *1812 Jonathan Mayhew Wellford Walker *1828 William Nelson *1814 James *1814 Julius Henry Welsh *1818 Charles *1798 Thomas *1825 George Augustus Beverly *1849 John Stewart West Walley *1807 Nathaniel *1808 David 1864 William Phillips 1872 George Webb Walter Weston *1797 Arthur M. *1829 Ezra 84 PORCELLIAN CLUB *Robert Wickliffe, Lexington, Ky. JOSEPH HARTWELL WILLIAMS, 1835; LL.B.1837; Gov. Maine; L.P. C. Augusta, Me. 1835 William Henry Allen, A. M. ; D. M'l, New Bedford. William Frederick Frick, L. P. C. Baltimore, Md. Charles Horatio Gates, 1873, Montreal, L.C. *Daniel Jones, Nantucket. *Nemèse Harmogène Labranche, St. Chas. Par., La. *Amos Adams Lawrence, Treasurer ; Overseer ; Memb. Mass. Hist. Soc. Boston. Charles Henry Parker, Boston. *Thomas Pinckney Rutledge, D. M'l, Charleston, S.C. 1836 *Samuel Cabot, A. M. ; M. D. 1839 Fellow Am. Acad. Boston. *John William Tudor Gardiner, Gardiner, Me. John Thompson Gray, A. M. 1871; LL. B. 1839 ; D. M'l, Louisville, Ky. William Neyle Habersham, Savannah, Ga. William Minot, LL. B. 1840, Boston. *Grenville Tudor Phillips, L. P. C. Boston. *John Harleston Read, A. M. Charleston, S.C. Samuel Gray Ward, A. M. Boston. 1837 *Simon Forrester Barstow, LL. B. 1841, Salem. *Richard Henry Dana, A. M.; LL. B. 1839; LL. D. 1866, Hobart (N. Y.) 1853; Instr. Elo- cution; Overseer; Memb. Mass. Hist. Soc.; Fel- low Am. Acad. Boston. *Louis Salvador Fellowes, Havana, Cuba. William Whitwell Greenough, Boston. *Samuel Tenney Hildreth, Instructor Elocution, Gloucester. HATHI Annual Report of te t ssex Institute Salem the Institute 1910. NECROLOGY OF MEMBERS. 27 MRS. CHARLES B. FOWLER of Salem, Mass., was elect- ed a member Jan. 1, 1906, and died Nov. 29, 1908. Miss GRACE A. GLOVER of Los Angeles, Calif., was elected a member Feb. 6, 1888, and died Feb. 3, 1909. MRS. GEORGE M. HARRIS of Salem, Mass., was elected a member Mar. 16, 1898, and died Jan. 31, 1909. WILLIAM P. HAYWARD of Salem, Mass., was elected a member Sept. 6, 1854, and died Feb. 7, 1909. MRS. NATHANIEL A. HORTON of Salem, Mass., was elected a member Jan. 16, 1899, and died Aug. 29, 1908. FREDERICK A. LAMSON of Salem, Mass., was elected a member Feb. 8, 1865, and died April 3, 1909. BENJAMIN J. LANG of Boston, Mass., was elected a member Aug. 6, 1894, and died Apr. 4, 1909. CHARLES H. NEWHALL of Lynn, Mass., was elected a member Feb. 4, 1895, and died Apr. 22, 1908. HOWARD MUDGE NEWHALL of Lynn, Mass., was elect- ed a member July 2, 1894, and died Dec. 25, 1908. MISS ELIZABETH B. OSBORNE of Salem, Mass., was elected a member July 2, 1894, and died Jan. 13, 1908. HENRY W. PEABODY of Montserrat, Mass., was elected a member Aug. 25, 1864, and died Dec. 7, 1908. EDWARD PRINCE of Quincy, Ill., was elected a member Jan. 7, 1895, and died Dec. 5, 1908. FREDERICK P. RICHARDSON of Salem, Mass., was elected a member June 21, 1881, and died Dec.1 3, 1908. TRISTRAM T. SAVORY of Salem, Mass., was elected a member July 6, 1864, and died Feb. 14, 1909. ARTHUR S. TEMPLE of Salem, Mass., was elected a member May 7, 1894, and died April 16, 1909. SAMUEL G. WARD of Washington, D. C., was elected a member Mar. 4, 1895, and died November, 1907. Digitized oy Google Original from NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 4/25/2015 Athena Holdings Information Need help locating a book? Guide to Cutter Books I Guide to Library of Congress Books Log in to your account ATHENA THE BOSTON ATHEN/EUM CATALOG Search My Searches My List My Account Help = = = New Search : Author Go Search History Titles Authors Prev 2 of 2 This item Ward family papers / Record View Staff View Main Author: Ward, Samuel Gray. Ward family papers / collected and written by Samuel Actions Title: Gray Ward. Make a Request Print Contributors, etc.: Angier, A.A. Merrymount Press, printer. Export Email Club Bindery, binder. Publishing Details: Boston : Merrymount Press, 1900. Add to My List Description: xii, [2], 209, [7] p., [13] leaves of plates : ports. ; 23 Google Books: cm. Notes: "Twelve copies of this book were printed December, "About This Book" 1900." "Privately printed." Binding of full green morocco signed [Grolier] Club Bindery, 1901. Ms. note on p. [215] : "The photographs in this volume are originals made by A. A. Angier." Local Notes: Athenaeum has copy no. 7 for George Cabot Ward. References: Smith & Bianchi. Merrymount Press (1975), 67. Subjects: Ward family. Provenance/Publisher/etc.: Bookbinding--United States--New York--New York--1901 Ward, George Cabot, former owner Call Number: Rare (Cutter) (Appointment required) $XD .M55 no. 67 Number of Items: 1 Status: Not Charged Reference URL: http://catalog.bostonathenaeum.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibld=27073 https://catalog.bostonathenaeum.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchld=212&recCount=50&recPointer=1&bibld=27073&searchType=7 1/2 of 4 LETTERS FROM RALPH WALDO EMERSON By Ralph Waldo Emerson. TO A FRIEND COMPLETE WORKS. Riverside Edition. With 2 Portraits. 12 vols., each, 12mo, gilt top, $1.75; the set, $21.00. I. Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (formerly 1838-1853 known as Miscellanies). With a Portrait. 2. Essays. First Series. 3. Essays. Second Series. 4. Representative Men. 5. English Traits. 6. Conduct of Life. 7. Society and Solitude. 8. Letters and Social Aims. 9. Poems. With a Portrait. 10. Lectures and Biograph- ical Sketches. II. Miscellanies. 12. Natural History of Intellect, and other Papers. With a EDITED BY General Index to Emerson's Collected Works. Little Classic Edition. 12 vols., in arrangement and contents identical with above. Each, 18mo, CHARLES ELIOT NORTON $1.25; the set, $15.00. POEMS. Household Edition. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. $1.50. For the single volumes of Emerson's works and the various Memoirs and Letters, see catalogue. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, BOSTON AND NEW YORK. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (Che Riverside Press, Cambridge 1899 THE LIBRARY COLBY JUNIOR COLLEGE NEW LONDON, N. H. 20F4 PS 1633 AS INTRODUCTION THE letters and fragments of letters here printed are part of the early records of a friendship which, beginning when Emerson was thirty years old, lasted un- COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON broken and cordial till his death. In ALL RIGHTS RESERVED his well-known essay, Emerson has set forth his conception of friendship in what, with no derogatory intention, he 14141 called "fine lyric words," and his ideal- izing genius is nowhere more manifest than in his depicting of it. For its per- fection it must be free from the limita- tions inevitable in all human relations. It was never to be completely realized. " We walk alone in this world," he says; 3 3 of INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION "friends such as we desire are dreams tinguish him from all other men in his and fables." But though the ideal was generation, and to give him place with not to be attained, he prized, as few men the few of all time who have had native have prized, the blessing of such imper- force sufficient to enable them to be fect friendship as the artificial order of truly themselves, and to show to their society and the weakness of human na- brother men the virtue of an independ- ture allow to exist, and rejoiced in it as ent spirit. the symbol, at least, of that select and The friend to whom the letters in this sacred relation between one soul and an- little volume were addressed was younger other "which even leaves the language than Emerson by nine years. At the of love suspicious and common, so much 14 years beginning of their friendship he had for is this purer, and nothing is so much lately returned from Europe, where he S. .C.Ward divine." had spent a year and a half under fortu- It is thus that his letters to his friends nate conditions. Europe was then far may show Emerson in a clearer mirror more distant from New England than it even than his poems and his essays. is to-day, and more was to be gained from They are at times his most intimate a visit to it. The youth had brought expressions, the most vivid illustrations back from the Old World much of which of his essential individuality, an individu- Emerson, with his lively interest in all ality so complete and absolute as to dis- things of the intelligence, was curious 4 5 4 d 4 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION and eager to learn. His own genius was but which he held in high respect. I say never more active or vigorous, and his fortunately deficient, in so far as they young friend's enthusiasm was roused by might have detracted from that pure the spirit of Emerson's teaching as ex- idealism in which lay the unique charm pressed in the famous Phi Beta Kappa of Emerson's nature, and the originality discourse in 1837, the lectures on Cul- and permanence of his work. ture, delivered in Boston in the win- These were happy conditions for the ter of 1838, and the address before the relation to which they led. The friends Cambridge Divinity School in July of did not meet or correspond often enough the same year. He did not fall into to dull its edge. the position of a disciple seeking from C. E. NORTON. Emerson a solution of the problems of life; but he brought to Emerson the MAY, 1899. 7 highest appreciation of the things which Emerson valued, and knowledge of other things of which Emerson knew little but for which he cared much. He pos- sessed, moreover, the practical qualities and the acquaintance with affairs in which Emerson was fortunately deficient, 6 238 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1896 1896] FRIENDS AND COUNTRY 239 A fortunate circumstance of the final years of about all. The one comfort in these last weeks has Norton's life was the late ripening of a friendship, been the manner in which English public men and the chiefly expressed through correspondence, with Samuel English press have treated our provocation. It is an G. Ward of Washington, the friend and correspondent encouragement as regards the real progress of civiliza- of Emerson. The intercourse between him and Norton tion. But on the other hand it brings home the con- was like that of two seafarers who had sailed in youth trast which the manners and temper of our govern- from the same port, and, meeting near the end of life, ment and people exhibit to it sat down to bridge the intervening years and weigh the new against the old. To Leslie Stephen SHADY HILL, 20 March, 1896. To S. G. Ward It is too long since I last wrote to you, but I get no SHADY HILL, CAMBRIDGE, 16 February, 1896. time for letter-writing. Every day my heart bids me No letter for a long time has given me so much plea- write, but the cares of this world choke the word. One sure as yours, and yet it gave me a fresh sense of loss in of the great evils of Democracy is that everybody your being SO far away. Years have not filled the gap thinks he has a right to put what questions he pleases you left. The younger generation is a good one, but the to anybody, and to devastate his day. Here is a man interests and convictions of most of the younger set are who writes from Osceola, Missouri, on a sheet with a different from those of us who were born in the first half printed heading, Solum sapientem esse divitem, asking of the century. The change from '46 to '96 is not the about Latin versions and comments on the "Divine natural change wrought by any fifty years, it is the Comedy"; here is a poor schoolmistress in Texas change of an era. (perfect strangers both) writing to enquire about the Brimmer's death takes away almost the last of the best historical manuals, and the best way of teaching men who remained to me as real companions. I send English; and here another woman in Alabama wanting you a few words about him which I wrote for the to know the proper pronunciation of Hiawatha, Trustees of the Museum. and SO on ad infinitum. As I look up, my eye catches Your approval of my paper in "The Forum" isla an immense roll of proofsheets, sent to me by my friend great satisfaction to me. I might be tempted to write Furness, the editor of Shakespeare, which he wants me more, if I could convince myself that it would be of ser- to look over. I ought to be reading them now, but vice. But work of this kind is like Mrs Partington's they shall lie over. broom. One can note the rising of the tide, and that is The days have run quietly with us. For a fortnight 1 "Some Aspects of Civilization in America." The Forum, Feb. 1896. in February we had a pleasant, accomplished young Notz: Harvard holds 130 letters to Charles Eliot Norton from Sam ward (MSAM 1088. 1058.14 7, # 7701-7831, written over 47 year span (1859-190 252 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1897 1897] FRIENDS AND COUNTRY 253 as ever, and I am taking again to writing with my own those of most travellers. His insight is less penetrating, hand. and his perceptions less quick and delicate than These years have gone quietly and quickly with me. Bourget's, - but his keen and clear intelligence, his I do not resent the approach of old age. Old age has, intellectual principles and discipline, his strong moral indeed, its advantages, provided the mind remains convictions, would give value to his estimates of the vigorous, and the body be free from pain. One gathers significance of conditions SO novel to him as those in in the late harvest; there is the calm and the clear light which he found himself here. His lectures on Molière of evening, the winds have sunk, and the sun does not which he gave at Cambridge were excellent, but I wished that he had taken a topic of the day. Any CBD. dazzle as at mid-day. There is, indeed, one irremedia- ble sorrow - the narrowing of the circle of the friends accomplished man can lecture well on Shakespeare and who have given support and charm of life. A year ago Molière. I saw him often while he was at Boston, and the last was taken of those friends who had been dear should have been glad to see more of him. He is of a to me and intimate with me from boyhood - almost type of Frenchman whom one rarely meets, but who the last who called me by my Christian name. You are of more interest and importance than the commoner knew him of old, I think, Child, the most learned of the sort. scholars of English, the most faithful of Professors for There is nothing good to say of public affairs. I fifty years, one of the sweetest and soundest-hearted fancy that it will be long before a thoughtful man, a men, a lover of all good things, a humourist, genial, lover of his kind, will find the time in which he is living CEN. original, excellent in talk, a most constant friend. I other than disappointing. I should like to be sure that can meet with no other such loss. Fortunately he had the world were growing a happier place to live in sew. completed his great collection of the "English and Scotch Ballads," - a work of immense research, and To S. G. Ward of widest range of learning. Only the general introduc- ASHFIELD, 14 July, 1897. tion remained to be written: he was just beginning Undoubtedly you are right. Men are not worse than upon it when death stopped his hand. they have been; and if we could reckon the gain and If you have seen Brunetière since his return home loss in our time, the sum of gain would, I believe, be the you will have heard much of America, and, perhaps, larger. But then there are many incommensurables in something of Cambridge from him. It that this reckoning, and the gain and the loss are not evenly he could not speak or readily understand English, distributed. You and I, and men like us, have experi- but, in spite of this drawback, I inclined to believe enced some losses which nothing can make good, - that his impressions of America were more just than mainly losses to be classed as disappointments, but 254 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1897 1897] FRIENDS AND COUNTRY 255 others of actual blessings. There was great truth in of most Americans, are too full of occupation to leave Talleyrand's saying, that no one had had experience of much time for the quiet and continuous thought which the best of life who had not lived before the French takes account of what has been going on in the subcon- Revolution. So we might say, mutatis mutandis, of scious regions of one's own mind. Still, Imanage, from those who have not known the New England of our time to time, to take new bearings, and plot my course boyhood. There were fine ideals partially realized over the uncharted sea. The further I sail, the less I then, of which scarcely a trace remains. I fancy that have to do with any of [the] metaphysical systems of there has never been a community on a higher and navigation, or of explanation of the marvels which pleasanter level than that of New England during the daily meet me. Prince Kropotkin has lately been here, first thirty years of the century, before the coming in of the mildest and gentlest of anarchists, and one day, Jacksonian Democracy, and the invasion of the Irish, talking of metaphysics, he said, "Yes, your meta- and the establishment of the system of Protection. It physician is a blind man hunting in a dark room for a is a fortunate thing for America that that time was black hat which does not exist." We have had George productive of Poets, and that its spirit has found Darwin, too, an admirable Darwinian, who has expression in their verse. Longfellow, Emerson, and made one of those big generalizations in regard to gravi- Lowell show what it was, and their verse eternizes its tation, as exemplified in the action of the tides, by spirit and its influence, each expressing a different ele- which our knowledge of the structure of the stellar ment in its composition. Such homogeneousness as universe is indefinitely increased. He told a story of existed in New England then exists nowhere in the his own boy of eight years old who asked him what United States now. Are we too big territorially, and too Metaphysics was. He tried to explain to the child, various in blood and tradition ever to become a nation? who, after listening to him, said, "Yes, papa, I under- I should like to come back some centuries hence and stand; you think, and you think, and you THINK, and see. Meanwhile I believe in the law of general, but not then you say that two and two make about five." particular, compensation. As Stendhal says on one of Lgrow more and more contented to accept the fixed his title-pages, professing to cite from Shakespeare, limitations of human nature, and find room enough for J'ai connu la beauté parfaite de trop bonne heure." the highest and longest flight of human wings within the vast spaces legitimately open to man. What you To S. G. Ward say of our real existence being in our relations with SHADY HILL, 28 November, 1897. other men, seems to me admirably true. It is the Your letter of two months ago was very interesting. achievements of good men that give shape to our own It has been much in my thought. My days, like those ideals, and the little which anyone of us can do for his 256 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1897 1897] FRIENDS AND COUNTRY 257 fellows (that is, the true end of life) consists in his curian things, for he speaketh of every matter doubt- attainment of such relations to them as may enable fully with diligence and of set purpose; his words are him to contribute his mite of individuality to the wavering, or (as wee use to say) screwed words which he improvement of the common ideals. It is the poets who may construe as he pleaseth, which beseemeth not a help us most, through the arts; their contribution is the Christian, yea such words, equivocating, beseem no largest and the best. honest, humane creature." 23d. I forget what interrupted my letter the other To Leslie Stephen day. I am not sorry for the interruption, for it is SHADY HILL, 20 December, 1897. pleasant to talk with you, as it were, from day to day. The time is too long since I last wrote to you, but, as Since I wrote last to you I have passed my seventieth usual, the days are too short for the doing of half what birthday. It surprises me to find myself so old in one intends and desires to do. The main difficulty lies years. And I am surprised, too, with so many years to in the multitude of unauthorized letters which inter- my count, to feel still SO young. To be sure at times I rupt with pertinacious insistence, Against the let- seem to myself older than Methusaleh. I suppose the His explane ter there is no protection; it invades privacy, it dis- paradox is to be explained that each year but increases tion is turbs work, it spoils leisure Against the living bore the sense of ignorance, of the little that one knows com- there may be defences, but when he incarnates himself pared with the vast sum of the knowable; one is still half had. in a letter there is no escape. Forgive me for this dia- sitting on the schoolboy's bench. While, on the other tribe. The mail has just brought me five letters, all of hand, one seems to have gone the whole round of expe- which I must answer and no one of them need have rience, SO that there can be nothing novel, nothing been written. And SO it is every day. But "Silence!" strange in the course of the days. One has lived the as the great Thomas says. full circle of life, - per tutto il cerchio volto. I do not My last missive from you, I think, was the "Na- regret the approach of the end. I am not impatient for tional Review" with your excellent article on Jowett. I it; I do not care whether it come soon or late, - pro- found it extremely interesting, - altogether fair in its vided only it come before I become a burden to others. estimate, and full of insight into a perplexed and com- There is a good deal which I should like to do, but I plex nature. I was reading the other day in shall not be much disappointed if I have not time to do Luther's "Table Talk," and in what he said of Eras- it. At seventy one must begin to furl the sails, and I mus was reminded of Jowett, and of Carlyle's saying have just resigned my Professorship. I am to be made about him. "I regard not his words, indeed they are Professor emeritus, and I shall keep up my relations well adorned, but they are merely Democritical Epi- with the University by still carrying on, at my will, a 288 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1899 same circles in America is what makes society in the higher sense impossible. Not even in Cambridge can I now get together half a dozen men or women round a table, who have a large common background for their thoughts, their wit, their humour. Literature in the best sense used to supply a good deal of it, but does so no longer. My fair neighbour asks, "What are Pericles?" But as Emerson says in one of his letters which I will tell you of, "I find I am writing sentences, not a let- ter." Let me stap. A month or two ago Sam Ward sent to me copies of some of Emerson's letters to him and asked me about publishing them. They were, as I thought, full of Emerson at his best, and SO they are to ssw/ be published in a little volume which one may read through in half an hour. It is to be issued at the end of Emerser September; but you may like to read it now in advance, and SO I send to you a set of the proof-sheets. Ward letters. does not want his name to become known to the pub- lic, SO that not even the publishers are aware who the friend is to whom the letters were addressed. Of course it will leak out. The actual condition of our affairs is as bad as can be, but the signs of discontent and reaction increase, and I am not wholly without hope that we shall stop fighting the poor Filipinos. But we are such a new thing in history that prediction is more difficult than ever. Just now we are getting hysterical, and mock- hysterical, over Dewey. And who is Dewey, and what E. L. GODKIN, 1889 has he done for a nation to go wild about him? 1899] ACTIVITIES OF RETIREMENT 289 To S. G. Ward ASHFIELD, 21 September, 1899. I am sorry that your summer is over, - mine too is near its end, and in a few days I shall be again in Cam- bridge, more solitary even than I am here, for in the crowd of men few old friends are left, and there are no new ones to take their places. You ask me about accounts of the great Unitarian movement in the early part of the century. There are two books which treat of it and I believe, for I have read neither of them, treat of it well, one by Octavius Frothingham, the other by J. H. Allen. I do not recall the exact titles of them; I will send the titles to you when I get to Cambridge, but if you are in haste for them, an enquiry at the Library of Congress would be readily answered. You will find a good deal bearing on the matter as seen from the Orthodox side in the "Life of Lyman Beecher," a very interesting book in its pre- sentation of a strong character, and of a condition of society which has wholly passed away. Something there is too in Weiss's "Life of Theodore Parker," and perhaps in the "Life of Channing." Your little volume of "Letters" will be published, I suppose, on Saturday. I have written to have five copies sent to you. I hope that it will please you. I do not believe that you will find yourself in the papers, though unquestionably some of the writers for them will get hold of your name. Nothing now-a-days is secret or sacred to the purveyors to the press. 318 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1902 1902] ACTIVITIES OF RETIREMENT 319 finished what he would like to do. I have work laid A work of another woman of genius has been excit- Wharbon out which would take up many more years than can ing my admiration during these last days, and when remain to me, and SO it would be were I to live to be as you read Mrs. Wharton's "Valley of Decision," you old as Methusaleh. A little more done, or a little less will not, I believe, wonder that it has done so. She is, however, of no consequence. The balance-sheet of calls it "a novel," but it is rather a study of Italian life was practically made up long since. I hope only thought and life during the latter part of the eight- that death may come before decay, - nothing else is eenth century, in the form of a story. The material and of much concern. spiritual scene and its significance are more interesting than the individual characters of the personages who To S. G. Ward are the actors in the drama. These are, indeed, not SHADY HILL, 2 March, 1902. without interest, but they are not convincingly alive. I have been reading of late a good deal in The intellectual element in the book is stronger than Donne's Sermons. They are as unlike any other ser- the emotional and passionate, and Mrs. Wharton's mons as his poems are unlike any other poetry. In imagination has fused her material of reflection, learn- sermons and poems the same temperament is manifest, ing, and personal experience into a wonderfully com- and in the sermons are passages of fine imaginative plete and vivid picture of the Italy of the period, and conception, and of passionate emotion expressed in exhibits its power in this more than in the creation of that noble Elizabethan mode which was the appanage the men and women whose conditions and characters of even inferior men in those days. And, as for learn- are the result of the long course of Italian history. Her ing, Donne hardly has an equal among English men of knowledge of Italy is that of a (scholar and a lover of learning. Icannot read a modern sermon with patience, "that pleasant country, and her book is one to be and I find even Jeremy Taylor tedious, but Donne prized most by those who know Italy best and most is interesting in spite of his theology, the superfluity love it. It is a unique and astonishing performance, of of his citations, and his long-winded subtleties. which the style is not less remarkable than the sub- stance. It is too thoughtful and too fine a book to be To S. G. Ward popular, but it places Mrs. Wharton among the few SHADY HILL, 10 March, 1902. foremost of the writers in English to-day tuff Mrs. Gardner knows what I think of her achieve- Harvard did SO well by Prince Henry that it seems a ment,1 but I owe you no grudge for letting her know little hard that her reward is to be a great herd of white what I had said of it to you. of elephants, presented by the Emperor, in the form of five 1 In Fenway Court. hundred thousand marks worth of casts from German 1902] ACTIVITIES OF RETIREMENT 327 this honour affection will be so mingled that the two will be indistinguishable. Affectionately Yours, C. E. NORTON. To S. G. Ward ASHFIELD, 19 August, 1902. Your letters are wonderful and a source of great pleasure to me, alike in what they contain and in what they give proof of. If I sometimes seem remiss in acknowledging them, it is not that I am ungrateful, or unmindful of you, but the remissness is due altogether to the inertia which results from having too many let- ters to write to people toward whom I am indifferent, and on matters of merely transient or remote interest. To-day, for instance, I have had to write a long letter concerning the care of the fund of our little Academy here, of which I am one of the Trustees; another to a boy who was fitted for College at the Academy (a great feat for such a little country high-school) and is now working his way through Amherst. The old type of the poor New England student, such as was familiar to us in our College days, still survives, in spite of the changes in the ambitions of youth and in the general standards of living. This boy - one of the State- boys so-called - without known parents, writes to me: "Last year my expenses amounted to $160. I earned my board by washing dishes. This year my ex- penses will probably amount to $100, as I shall earn my room and board." Of this sum he tells me that he has already earned during the summer more than half. 328 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1902 1902] ACTIVITIES OF RETIREMENT 329 He stands well in his studies. Here is Spartan iron banker and broker in Colorado who had stood alone against the Persian old-(Persicos odi apparatus)- there in resistance to the silver craze, and had main- of the many boys at Harvard and Yale spoiled by the tained his position not only with courage but with money which they squander unusual ability. This was Mr. L. R. Ehrich August 25. My third guest, Mr. Burritt Smith, is of a different I was interrupted here the other day, and had no order - an excellent specimen of the best class of chance to resume my letter before the arrival of "self-made" men of the Middle West, beginning life three interesting guests who came from Colorado as a poor boy, a Methodist, and now at fifty, one of the Springs, from Chicago, and from Alabama (by way of leading lawyers of Chicago, the President of the Chi- Cambridge) to take part, on last Thursday, in our cago Literary Club, the head of their Civic Reform Annual Dinner. I have sent to you a report of the Association, interested in all good things, a free- speeches on that occasion, and, though you will not thinker, large-framed, tall, simple in heart and manner, approve altogether of their doctrine, you will be inter- a true democrat, a sort of man whom Lincoln would ested in the manner in which it is set forth, and espe- have trusted and Theodore Parker liked. He had cially in the substance of the speech (which was not come a thousand miles and more to make his speech delivered) of my young friend, Mr. Garrott Brown, of at the Dinner, and yesterday afternoon he left us to go Alabama. Perhaps you have seen some of his recent back. That shows the kind of man. articles in the "Atlantic" and other magazines, or his lately published volume on "The Lower South in To S. G. Ward American History," a volume well worth reading. SHADY HILL, 18 December, 1902. He is a man of refined nature, sensitive, modest, of You have a precious possession in your Greek, high character, and a strong and cultivated intelli- - but what a rare blessing to recover it for easy and gence. His studies of the South have special value delightful use after years of infrequent enjoyment of it! from his intimate knowledge of the field, from his There is no later poem to compare with the Odyssey in inherited sentiment for the old conditions, and his healthiness of spirit. Have we gained in our modern clear appreciation of the new. He is greatly hampered civilization an equivalent for what the Greeks pos- in social relations by deafness, but he is SO entirely a sessed and what is not ours? We seem to have eaten of gentleman that his disability stands little in his way. the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and to have lost I commend his book to you. Paradise thereby. And, worse than this, the apples of Another of my guests was a man whom I had never the Tree are no better than apples of the Dead Sea. before seen, and of whom I knew little save as the They turn to dust and ashes in the mouth. The know- 330 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1903 1903] ACTIVITIES OF RETIREMENT 331 ledge we acquire gratifies curiosity, but answers none work than which there can be little doing in the world of the deeper questions which perplex the souls of most of greater concern in itself, or of more interest to one thoughtful men. Here for instance is Herbert Spencer who is engaged heartily in it. The questions with whose last word, at the end of his long life, is of shrink- which you have to deal are perhaps the most important ing, appalled and troubled, at the conceptions of Space with which this generation has to occupy itself, and it which the advance of knowledge opens to us. This is plain that on their satisfactory solution depends the strikes me as an example of the common experience of welfare of our great modern industrial and commer- men who have for a time advanced before their fel- cial communities. The methods that you have put in lows, and who have set up their pillars with the Ne plus practice in the settlement of labour disputes seem un- ultra upon them questionably the best yet devised, but their success- While you have been reading the Odyssey, I have ful application depends largely upon the character, the been reading "Paradise Lost," with renewed admira- judgment, and the tact of the adviser, or arbitrator, tion of Milton as poet, and wonder at him as theolo- as he may be. Knowledge of men, judgment and tact gian. I cannot agree with Leslie Stephen that "the are not SO frequently combined that we can hope that first book of P.L. holds the very first place in English, what might be called individual arbitration would gen- if not in all existing, poetry" I am surprised that so erally be successful, as in the cases in which you have excellent a critic should ever make this sort of asser- dealt. On the whole, no method of dealing with these tion. He should leave it to the penny-a-liners. In its labour disputes seems to me to promise better than the kind the first book may have no superior; but there plan urged by Mr. Charles F. Adams in a recent are other kinds. address, a copy of which, I am glad to learn from him, he has sent to you.1 To W. L. Mackenzie King 1 Whatever may be the evils attending the great coal SHADY HILL, 26 January, 1903. strike, it was almost worth while that the community Your long and interesting letter of three weeks ago should experience them, for the sake of the increase of gave me much pleasure. Iam much obliged to you for it, interest and of knowledge concerning the matters in and for the volumes of your "Labour Gazette" which dispute between the workers and the operators which you were good enough to send to me, and which I have the community have been forced by the strike to ac- looked over with great interest. You are engaged in quire. The discussion which has been actively going 1 Canadian Deputy Minister of Labour, 1900-1908. Minister of Labour on now for many months concerning the rights, the in the Laurier administration, 1909-1911. While he was a graduate stu- On Dec. 8, 1902, Mr. Adams read before the American Civic Fed- dent at Harvard, 1897-98, Norton had come to know him, and to have the eration a paper on Investigation and Publicity as opposed to 'Compul- highest regard for him. sory Arbitration.'" 354 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1905 1905] ACTIVITIES OF RETIREMENT 355 Journal" containing a more than usually interesting To S. G. Ward article by Mr. Edmund Gardner upon Dante, and I ought long since to have thanked you for it. It gave me ASHFIELD, 19 June, 1905. much pleasure to receive such a token of your remem- After all, our meeting would be but for a mo- brance. ment, for the sake of the touch of the hand and of an I should be glad indeed, if, instead of such a token, affectionate glance. We have no special message, one I could have the greater pleasure of seeing you here to the other, to communicate by word of mouth. We once more, and of learning, from you concerning the have no new thought about the quatuor novissima, no course of thought in England in regard to the topics explanation, or expectation of explanation, of our of highest permanent interest. The "Hibbert Jour- whence and wherefore. On the whole, as, soon to quit nal" affords me, indeed, from time to time the measure the scene, I look back over the vast stage of life on of the current of the stream of thought. Both in Eng- which we have played our little parts, the futility of land and in this country the disintegration of the old the whole drama is what strikes me most. The plot is foundations of faith proceeds steadily until no part of intricate and quite unintelligible, now comic, now them seems to be secure. But, although this has pro- tragic, generally dull, but with innumerable episodes ceeded SO far, there is a very general refusal to recog- of pleasant interest. Each performer seems to himself nize the fact on the part of those who through tempera- of importance, which consoles him for not understand- ment or position are disposed to maintain, SO far as may ing the play in which he bears a part. Now and then be possible, the old order. The whole condition is novel. come crises in the drama as a whole which make for Never before has there been such a widespread actual apparent change of scheme, but the change affords no skepticism combined with so much external regard for solution of the plot. We are witnessing one of these traditional beliefs. great scene-shifting changes now in the victories of The effect of this conflict cannot but be injurious to Japan. The East is at last claiming her rights in the the finer moral sense of those who recognize the differ- fields which the West had fancied was for her own ence between their actual and their professed beliefs, occupation. At last the wisdom of the East has applied and the effect upon the great mass of the mere confor- itself to practical affairs, and even in the realm of mere mists without conviction is, I believe, to produce a con- knowledge and facts, - the very chosen ground of the dition of moral indifference to which we may ascribe a West, - displays an astonishing mastery. considerable part of that reaction against the best re- How interesting it all is! how humiliating to our sults of our civilization which has of late years been so special national conceit! conspicuous. I wonder if you have read Santayana's interesting 356 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON [1905 1905] ACTIVITIES OF RETIREMENT 357 book, "The Life of Reason"? I have a profound dis- With love from us all to you and the little boy, trust of most metaphysical speculation, and here and I am, as always, there in Santayana's work are arguments which seem Affectionately Yours, to me needlessly metaphysical. But nothing could be C. E. NORTON. better as a corrective of the barrenness of pure meta- physics than the general intent of Santayana's book, To S. G. Ward and the turning of his speculative enquiry to moral ASHFIELD, 13 September, 1905. ends, - in other words to the uses of life. How has the summer gone with you? I hope that Swampscott has been pleasant and kind to you, and To Mrs. Eliot Norton that you have enjoyed the neighbourhood of the sea. ASHFIELD, 14 July, 1905. The sea is richer in suggestions to the imagination and My DEAR MARGARET, and her little girl the intellect, and in its appeal to sentiment than the came to us a week ago, and we are greatly enjoying everlasting hills. It does not minister to rest as the their visit. I wish (as I have often said) that you and mountains do. Its superficial restlessness suits the Tatoo 1 were here too. He and his cousin are different restless American temperament. It is not surprising enough to set each other off and to get along well to- that the Western millionaire, who has lived half his life gether. She is much interested, as he would be, in without one invigorating breath of salt air, is buying the various opportunities afforded by the barn, - the up our coast for his summer home. playing on the haymow, the feeding of the cows in the But what interesting weeks these last have been! late afternoon, theriding on Betty the farmhorse's broad The ill-mannered Witte may boast of his skilful bluff, back, and the giving her a lump of sugar to pay for the and of Russian triumph in the negotiations, but the ride. Denis had made for her out of two big boxes the victory - the diplomatic no less than the moral vic- most lovely barn that ever was, with real stalls and tory at Portsmouth - belongs to the silent and self- creatures (bought at the Falls) which move their respectful and subtle Japanese. The giving up of the heads in the stalls, and a hay loft with real hay in it, demand for compensation in money was no hasty and other enchanting devices. I wish I could send stroke, but as long-considered as it was far-sighted. one like it to Charles. It was a piece of wisdom to spare the Russian pride Have you had any novel lately as good as "The from further humiliation. Howells, who has his sum- Magnetic North," or "The Sacred Flame" (or was the mer home at Kittery Point, wrote to me a day or two title "The Divine Fire"?)? since: "I have seen much of the unbottled diplomatists, 1 Norton's little grandson. with a growing aversion for both sides. Witte strikes 3/30/2020 Lydia Gray Von Hoffman (Ward) (1843 - d.) - Genealogy Home People Projects Genealogy DNA Tests Search People Log In Lydia Gray Von Hoffman public profile Lydia Gray Von Hoffman (Ward) Is your su Hoft Also Known As: "Lily" Birthdate: 1843 Research the V Death: Start your fa Immediate Family: Daughter of Samuel Gray Ward and Anna Hazard Ward Wife of Richard Freiherr Von Hoffman Mother of Philip Maria Ward Von Hoffman Lydia Gray Von Hof Sister of Anna Barker Thoron; Thomas Wren Contact profile ma Ward and Elizabeth Barker Schoenberg View family tree Problem with this Managed by: Private User Last Updated: January 19, 2018 Share your f View Complete Profile photos with know i Richard Alien 1963 Matching family tree profiles for Lydia Gray Von view all matches > Hoffman Build your famil Share photos a Smart Matching Free! Lydia Gray Von Hoffman Lydia Gray Von Hoffman Get s (born Ward) in (born Ward) in MyHeritage FamilySearch Family Tree family trees (Gardner Web Site) Immediate Family view all Richard Freiherr Von Hoffman Philip Maria Ward Von Hoffman Samuel Gray Ward husband son father Anna Hazard Ward Anna Barker Thoron Thomas Wren Ward mother sister brother Elizabeth Barker Schoenberg sister Lydia Gray Von Hoffman's Timeline view all 1843 1843 Birth of Lydia ???? Birth of Philip Maria Ward Von Hoffman By using Geni you agree to our use of cookies as identifiers and for other features of the site as described on our Privacy page. 3/30/2020 Century Archives - The Century Association Archives Foundation (multi THE CENTURY ASSOCIATION WBC ARCHIVES UNDATION 1997 About the CAAF CENTURY ASSOCIATION BIOGRAPHICAL ARCHIVE Important Materials Earliest Members of the Century Association Publications View all members Online Reference Shelf Collection Access RICHARD VON HOFFMAN Board of Trustees How to Donate Banker/Nobleman Centurion, 1861-1876 Century Association Biographical Archive Born 2 May 1837 in Leipzig, Germany Died 28 November 1909 in Austria Finding Aid to the Collection Proposed by William Aufermann Finding Aid to the Platt Elected 4 May 1861 at age twenty-four Library Centurions on Stamps Archivist's Note: Son-in-law of Samuel G. Ward; brother-in-law of Thomas Wren Ward FDR: A Man of the Century (Audio File) Hot Buttons: Questions, comments, corrections: email caba@centuryarchives.org Presidential Campaigns © 2012-2020 Century Association Archives Foundation and the Century Association Century Association Nobelists When the Clubhouse Was New (Photo Gallery) 3/30/2020 Richard Freiherr Von Hoffman (1837 - 1909) - Genealogy Home People Projects Genealogy DNA Tests Search People Log In Richard Freiherr Von Hoffman public profile Richard Freiherr Von Hoffman Is your su Hoft Birthdate: May 02, 1837 Death: November 28, 1909 (72) Research the V Immediate Family: Husband of Lydia Gray Von Hoffman Start your fe Father of Philip Maria Ward Von Hoffman Managed by: Jeffrey Edwards Cohen Richard Freiherr Vc Last Updated: December 23, 2018 Profile Contact profile ma View Complete Profile View family tree Problem with this Matching family tree profiles for Richard Freiherr view all matches > Share your f Von Hoffman photos with know - Richard Alica Loweke 1683 Richard Freiherr Von Richard Von Hoffman in Richard Freiherr Von Build your famil Hoffman in FamilySearch MyHeritage family trees Hoffman in MyHeritage Family Tree family trees (Familienseite Share photos a (Gardner Web Site) Annette Terwey) Smart Matching Free! Immediate Family view all Get s Lydia Gray Von Hoffman Philip Maria Ward Von Hoffman wife son Richard Freiherr Von Hoffman's Timeline view all 1837 May 2, 1837 Birth of Richard 1909 November 28, 1909 Death of Richard Age 72 ???? Birth of Philip Maria Ward Von Hoffman Genealogy Directory: A B By using Geni you agree to our use of cookies as identifiers and for other features of the site as described on our Privacy page.