Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet, essayist, and philosopher, is widely regarded as one of New England's best known and beloved 19th-century personalities.
While most of his adult life was spent in bucolic Concord, Emerson had many connections to the North Shore. In fact, he was actually descended from an early settler of Ipswich; his ancestor, Thomas Emerson, had settled in the then-infant North Shore community by 1638. Thomas later built the house near the Green Street Bridge that would serve as the home of Ipswich artist Arthur Wesley Dow's summer school in the 1890s and early years of the 20th century.
Partly because of his connections to the literary stars and other intellectual giants of his time, the Concord writer-philosopher was drawn to the North Shore. Historian Joe Garland has Emerson visiting and walking the beaches of Nahant with the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, while Herb Kenny calls attention to the parallels between Emerson's writings and Gloucester artist Fitz Henry Lane's paintings. Emerson spoke on at least one occasion, and maybe others, at the Gloucester Lyceum during the painter's years of residence in the seaside community. Even if he didn't attend, Lane certainly was aware of the philosopher's writings and views on nature and divinity.
Emerson was an early tourist in neighboring Rockport. In August of 1855 he visited the quiet village with his friend, the Rev. Mr. Bartol. He returned a year later with his family, and fell in love with Pigeon Cove. Today, an inn in the neighborhood bears his name.
The Concord man was also friendly with the poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier of Haverhill, Amesbury and Danvers. He sometimes visited Whittier in his Amesbury home, and Whittier hung a portrait of the Sage of Concord in his beloved "garden room."
But it was Salem, more than any other North Shore community, that held the strongest attraction for Emerson. During his lifetime, the philosopher would travel to Salem more than 30 times to speak at the Salem Lyceum on Church Street. These lectures would be a barometer for Emerson as to whether or not the topic covered in his talk was worth writing about.
On one of these occasions, Emerson was invited to speak by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of the just-published romance, "The Scarlet Letter" and one of three Salem natives with whom he would develop a deep personal and professional relationship during his lifetime.
The two men had been introduced by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, the first of the three to be drawn into Emerson's orbit. While a young divinity school student, Emerson had tutored Elizabeth, then living in Boston, in Greek, and refused to accept payment for his services.
Peabody was an early convert to the Boston transcendental movement in which Emerson played a leading role. He and the other transcendentalists often gathered at the Boston bookstore that Elizabeth operated in the mid-1840s on West Street. She also served for a time as editor of "The Dial," a transcendental journal founded by Emerson and Margaret Fuller.
Peabody tried to interest Emerson in the writings of Hawthorne, her former Salem neighbor, but he dismissed the fledgling author as a "fiction-monger."
The two men, however, would eventually get to know each other well, as Hawthorne and his new bride, Sophia Peabody (Elizabeth's sister), rented the Emerson family's Old Manse in Concord from 1842 until 1845. While his opinion of Hawthorne's work was slow to change (he would be effusive in his praise of "The Scarlet Letter"), Emerson was a bit awed by Hawthorne the person. His new neighbor's independent, self-contained nature appealed to the poet, and Emerson went to great lengths to draw Hawthorne into his inner circle.
Elizabeth Peabody was at the Salem Lyceum one night in 1837 to hear the young Salem scholar and poet Jones Very read his Bowdoin Prize-winning essay, "Epic Poetry." Impressed by the intensity and religiosity of Very's verse, she brought him to Emerson's attention as well.
When the two men met, Very was showing the early signs of a nervous breakdown brought on by his own intense personality and heavy workload at Harvard. He told Emerson that his sonnets were now being channeled to him directly from the Holy Spirit, and shortly thereafter was committed to McLean Hospital in Charlestown.
The poet continued writing religious verse during his 31-day stay at McLean and after he was released as well. In late 1839, with great difficulty, Emerson edited and arranged for the publication of "Essays and Poems," a small booklet that included 65 of Very's poems and the poet's treatises on epic poetry, William Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's play, "Hamlet."
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Jim McAllister of Salem writes a weekly column on the region's history. Contact him at culturecorner@gmail.com.
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