Emerson: The Mind on Fire V

I'm finally approaching the end of the book, and am looking forward to that, since I haven't become a convert to transcendentalism. For me, this is light historical reading, which is useful for understanding earlier periods and the contexts in which people lived, but, in this case, with Emerson as a popular figure of his time, it stands out to me that very little of this has filtered down to the present. Rather than discussing that now, I'll wait until my next post.

Richardson provides a good account of Emerson's life, and the point that Emerson was primarily a lecturer is significant:

Over his active career of four decades, Emerson gave some 1,500 public lectures. Lecturing was a major part of his life and a major source of income. For twenty-five years he was out and away from home lecturing for four, five, or even six months out of each year, every year. He traveled as far west as St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and eventually California; he gave 17 lectures in Canada but almost none south of the Ohio River. He delivered the great majority of his lectures in Massachusetts. He gave 157 lectures in New York State. He gave more lectures in Maine than in New Hampshire (35 to 27) and many more in Illinois (49), Ohio (56), Pennsylvania (42), and Wisconsin (29) than in Connecticut, the land of steady habits, where he spoke only 18 times in his entire career.

Throughout his life, Emerson also went on reading binges, sometimes in exotic areas. In 1846 he became obsessed with the Persian poet Hafez, who was a Sufi. This inspired him to write Hafez-like poems and translate Hafez into English. Of what I've seen so far, I'm not inclined to read Emerson's poems. Also that year, the Emersons decided to convert their house into a boardinghouse. This may have been because Lidian's health had declined, and she had difficulty doing all of the housework. They hired a woman to run the boardinghouse and continued to live in part of the house. He took up horticulture and planted many fruit trees, as was popular at the time. By then he had also published four books. But he became restless at home and planned another trip to Europe.

The trip lasted from October, 1847 until July, 1848, and he did a series of lectures at the Mechanics' Institute in different locations. While he was away, Thoreau moved in with Lidian and the children. This is the trip in which he met George Eliot. She was 27 at the time and hadn't started her literary career. Later, Emerson told Carlyle "That young lady has a calm, clear spirit." George Eliot wrote a letter to her friend, Sara Hennell, saying "I have seen Emerson – the first man I have ever seen." He also met previous acquaintances, Wordsworth and Harriet Martineau. New acquaintances included Thackeray, Tennyson, Disraeli, Dickens and Leigh Hunt. He spent time with Carlyle again, but they had some strong disagreements. Apparently, in his later years, Carlyle became reactionary and supported slavery. They both liked the "great man" theory, but Emerson disliked authoritarianism and Carlyle didn't. Even so, they remained cordial, in that they had each assisted the career of the other on their respective continents. During this trip, he briefly visited France and witnessed the revolution in which King Louis-Phillipe was deposed.

When he returned home, Emerson seemed a little disoriented and depressed. His driving idea had been to show the English how competent the Americans are, but he was concluding that the English were in fact superior to the Americans. He wanted to be a "great man," but how could he if he were hanging out with a bunch of losers? A conflict emerged with Thoreau. Thoreau had enjoyed the children and Lydian, and he may have preferred it if Emerson hadn't returned. Thoreau was also in a bad mood because he was unable to find a publisher for A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which was later printed at his expense but never sold well. Thoreau was in fact stubborn, churlish and lacking in social graces, but their friendship survived.

Emerson gradually readjusted to life in Concord. He went on long walks with Ellery Channing, the "ne'er-do-well" poet. The equanimity in his relationship with Lidian was restored. He began writing again and took up Hegel and Swedenborg. On July 19, 1850, Margaret Fuller died in the shipwreck off Fire Island while returning from Italy, and Emerson was shocked and saddened.