"Let me do nothing smale": Mary Moody Emerson and Women's "Talking" Manuscripts

I am not on the whole sure, that it would not be a very excellent mode of keeping up correspondence, if friends would transmit to one another the pages of their common place books . . . & thus give one another faithful & unaffected representations of the intellectual life . . . . [Y]ou will see that a scrap from your day-book must always have the worth & the effect of a letter; for it is as much like conversation, in the true sense of the term, if it is not so much like How do you do &c.

—Edward Bliss Emerson to Mary Moody Emerson, 29 June 1830

A few single grand ideas, which become objects, pursuits, & all in all!!

—Mary Moody Emerson, 1830 Almanack

If not superficial chitchat, such as the polite "How do you do &c," what was "conversation, in the true sense of the term," for Mary Moody Emerson and her several literary circles? In June 1830 nephew Edward Emerson suggests that the circulating leaves from her commonplace books converse with their readers. For him, these "faithful" and "unaffected" "scraps" communicate more effectively than a letter, seemingly because they embody Mary Emerson's intellectual endeavors with the authenticity of verbal discourse. Contemporaries from Henry James Sr. to Henry Thoreau and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody similarly acknowledge Mary Emerson's striking intellectual force and pursuit of a "few single grand ideas" as the "object" of life. It is Edward, however, who astutely finds a vital connection, characterizing his aunt's "representations of the intellectual life" as "talk" nearly a decade before Margaret Fuller advocated vocational self-culture in her Boston Conversations. ¹

Edward's observation invites further inquiry into the "talking" manuscripts of Mary Moody Emerson and genre's role in these conversations. ² A brilliant single woman and intellectual mentor to nephew Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863) published epistolary and occasional essays early and late in life, but she dedicated her intellectual maturity to a series of unpublished fascicles that she called her "Almanacks" (c. 1804-55), as well as her "pole star," "home," and "the only images" of self-existence. ³ The product of fifty years and running to over one thousand pages, Emerson's handmade booklets are constructed of letter paper bound with thread, and they combine the features of commonplace books, spiritual journals, letters, critical reviews, and original compositions. As Edward Emerson implies, the Almanacks are thoroughly dialogic; they display actual conversations with readers and include direct addresses to the authors of Emerson's own reading. Moreover, in these manuscripts and in advance of Fuller's practice of orchestrating "pacquet" writings as an "intertextual conversation" among intimates, ⁴ Emerson actively juxtaposes genre, as when she begins a letter on a partially completed Almanack leaf. Beginning as reflections of her eclectic reading, these material forms of discourse foster self-cultivation for Emerson and her fortunate interlocutors.

Neither salonnière, apt subject for a pious memoir, nor transcendentalist, Emerson nonetheless eagerly surveyed their diverse conversational cultures in her Almanacks. Commenting on these wide-ranging intellectual investigations, Thoreau observes rightly in 1851, "In spite of her own biases [Emerson] can entertain a large thought with hospitality." ⁵ This broad-minded desire to acquire and disperse knowledge uniquely enabled Emerson to influence different communities, connecting the cultures of eighteenth-century transatlantic women's coteries, salons, and generic conventions with nineteenth-century feminist and transcendentalist pursuits. Acting as a bridge between generations and in advance of the more feminist Fuller, Emerson experimented with diverse conversational media in order to achieve mutual self-cultivation, enlightened truth, and even professional opportunity. ⁶

In this essay, I first examine the flourishing manuscript culture of Emerson from the perspective of book history, focusing on the commonplace book. Next, I consider her commonplace writing within a circle of women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The interaction between coterie writing, print publication, and conversation, standard to transatlantic eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women's salons, was significant for these early American women writers. Finally, I explore the scope and variety of dialogic...