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

Ellen Tucker Emerson, [Emerson’s Death] (1882)

Emerson’s final illness occurred over the brief span of about ten days. The earliest notices of his illness and death were published in newspaper reports of the “human interest” variety with which we are familiar today. Successive headlines ran, “Ralph Waldo Emerson Sick,” “Mr. Emerson Somewhat Better,” “No Hope for Emerson,” “Mr. Emerson Dead,” “Into the Unknown, of Which He Spoke So Grandly, Ralph Waldo Emerson Has Passed,” “Ralph Waldo Emerson ’s Funeral,” “Emerson at Rest,” and so forth. Accounts appearing under headings such as these originated in the Boston press and were immediately reprinted in other newspapers; many were supplemented by an editorial on Emerson’s significance or with reminiscences of Emerson by persons who knew him well. Between 24 and 25 April 1882, when notices of Emerson’s final illness first appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser, New-York Daily Tribune, New York Evening Post, New York Herald, and New-York Times, and the close of that year, more than two hundred such reports appeared in America and abroad. In all, Emerson’s biography and a near-uniform set of remarks on the significance of his passing dominate the prose. Reference is typically made to his New England lineage and character, his prominence as an author of many volumes of prose and occasional poetry, his years of service as a lecturer on the lyceum circuit , and his association with virtually every American luminary of his time and with international figures such as Thomas Carlyle. Several reports also contained poignant and sometimes hyperbolic expressions of what America’s imminent or realized loss of Emerson meant for the nation. When on 27 April— the day that Emerson died—the Boston Evening Transcript reported that hope for his recovery had entirely faded, the paper rehearsed one of the more common laments heard in the days immediately following. According to the Transcript ’s reporter, Emerson was “the teacher, the inspirer, almost the conscience . . . of his countrymen.” On the day after his death, the Boston Daily Advertiser considerably extended that lament, declaring America’s loss of Emerson to be the loss of “the most philosophical mind and temper of this century.” Emerson’s death marks a major point of transition in his recorded reputation as that reputation has been set forth thus far in the reminiscences, [] [Emerson’s Death] () Ellen Tucker Emerson Ellen Tucker Emerson to Clara Dabney, 
and  May  Dear Miss Clara. I know you will all have heard that my Father has died,and I have been wanting to write you all about him.It has seemed to me that in this last year he has lost a little faster than in former years. Last summer I noticed it, and much more this winter. It had even become hard for him to understand common things that were said to him, and it was very little that he could say himself. But he was particularly strong and well and much enjoyment was still possible for him.I think I have told you that church-going was a delight lately,and many little club entertainments, readings of papers & discussion afterwards, memoirs, and other personal writings printed in this volume. From April 1882 onward, the durability of Emerson’s reputation, and his position as an intellectual and literary figure who is central to the telling of any history of the evolution of American thought or literature, are simply assumed. At the same time, however, one begins to see a different kind of personal Emerson developed in some of the writings that follow; indeed, one begins to see an Emerson in two parts. On the one hand, there is the Emerson who grows out of and extends the generally positive depictions of his character and his contributions to American culture that had been dominant up to this point; on the other hand, here and there a significantly more realistic Emerson emerges, an Emerson whose tendency to “coldness”—as it is sometimes described—is addressed, whose lack of philosophic “system” is not only acknowledged, but also seriously critiqued, and whose late-in-life infirmities are described and documented —all, really, for the first time. For those interested in the circumstances that contributed to Emerson’s emergence so quickly at the end of the nineteenth century as a fully formed canonical figure, the account of his death by his daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson is highly instructive. In her letter to her longtime friend Clara Dabney, written on 13 and 19 May 1882...