Emerson in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, F

Bronson Alcott, “Fuller,Thoreau, Emerson. . . . The Substance of a ‘Conversation’ ” (1871)

In this estimate of the character of his friends Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Emerson, and his weighing of their relative merits as lecturers, conversationalists, and writers, Bronson Alcott praises Fuller as an “imperial” conversationalist who “carried her head as a goddess,” and he credits Thoreau as “the most original mind the country has produced.” By contrast, Alcott characterizes Emerson as a “simple man” with “graceful manners,” “fine culture, and modesty becoming his eminent talents.” In treating Emerson, Alcott reveals the “secret” of his method of composition and touches on his enduring popularity as a lecturer; he also argues for the cohesiveness of Emerson’s thought and says that his thought and style defy imitation. Praising Emerson as “a university to our people,” Alcott concludes that he possesses a “grand mind which is pretty nearly divinized.” Alcott’s positive estimate of Emerson in this article printed in 1871 anticipates his glowing account of Emerson as a lecturer and writer in his Concord Days (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872), pp. 25–40. In the later piece, however, Alcott unexpectedly chides Emerson for the secretiveness of his thought process and the impersonal quality of his conversation. Likening him to Plutarch, Montaigne, Coleridge, Goethe, and others, he writes: We characterize and class [Emerson] with the moralists who surprise us with an accidental wisdom, strokes of wit, felicities of phrase, . . . with whose delightful essays, notwithstanding all the pleasure they give us, we still plead our disappointment at not having been admitted to the closer intimacy which these loyal leaves had with their owners’ mind before torn from his note-books, jealous, even, at not having been taken into his confidence in the editing itself. . . . I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books—shall I say his conversation?—gives me,—his pains to be impersonal or discrete, as if he feared any the least intrusion of himself were an offence offered to self-respect, the courtesy due to intercourse and authorship; thus depriving his page, his company, of attractions the great masters of both knew how to insinuate into their text and talk without overstepping the bounds of social or literary decorum. (pp. 30, 35–36) [
] “Fuller, Thoreau, Emerson. . . . The Substance of a ‘Conversation’” ( ) Bronson Alcott We come now to Mr. Emerson, . . . our central figure. I suppose the present company have all seen Mr. Emerson; perhaps not any of the others I have mentioned. He is a very plain, simple man, graceful manners, and fine culture , and modesty becoming his eminent talents. A scholar by genius, culture and habit, his books are more read, perhaps, by thoughtful persons all over the country than those of any other author; and it would not be an unfair test, in my judgment, if one were to go into any city and take the census of the readers of his books to find the number of thoughtful and earnest people. I will tell you a secret about his method of composing books, since it will explain what a great many people have not comprehended, and will really show them how to read his books. It makes no difference, they say, whether you begin at the last paragraph and read backwards, or begin at what he meant for the beginning. There is some principle in that. There is, nevertheless , a thread running through all his writings; it takes a very subtle, fluent, and ingenious reader to find that thread; but be assured there is a thread on which he strings all his pearls; it is not accidental. He is a man who lives for thought,and who is a thinker.He is a benevolent man, since, on all occasions when the town of Concord wishes his aid, Mr. Emerson is ready to perform any service for his fellow towns-people. On many great occasions, . . . he has given his voice to determine questions which arose in the history of our country, and if the speeches were collected which he made we should see how much he contributed in that way,perhaps more than any other person except Mr. [Theodore] Parker. He lives for thought, which means life, since those who do not think do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man. How does he live, and what are his habits? Imagine a man who says: “Here is a day now before me; a day is a fortune and an estate; who loses a day loses life.” Therefore he is...