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“House burned, Wednesday, 24 July” (Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, 16:278). With these few words entered into his journal, Emerson recorded the most traumatic experience of his later life. It was an experience from which neither his body nor his mind ever fully recovered. The fire, which may have been caused by a defective chimney flue or a kerosene lamp left burning in the attic, began in the early morning hours, and it was only due to the speed with which his Concord neighbors came to his aid that, as Ellen and others report, a goodly portion of Emerson’s books and manuscripts and some of the family’s clothes, furniture, and other household items were saved. The house was valued at $5,000, but Emerson had insured it for only $2,500. Although he was hardly in need of money at this point in his life, Emerson was astonished by the generosity of his friends who came forward to assist in the rebuilding of the house. Within days of the fire, as Ellen writes to her brother Edward, Frank Lowell brought a check for $5,000 as a gift from friends, and Caroline Sturgis Tappan offered another $5,000. In August, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar told Emerson that a company of friends, headed by LeBaron Russell, had deposited $10,000 in an account in Emerson’s name at the Concord bank, which was to be drawn upon to rebuild and refurnish the house and to pay for a recuperative journey to Europe (see Ellen Tucker Emerson to Haven Emerson, 16 August 1872, Letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson, 1:685). Between 17 and 23 August, Ellen accompanied her father on a short trip to New Hampshire and Maine, during which Emerson finally acknowledged the toll that the fire had taken on him. In a long letter to her sister Edith written from Waterford, Maine, which she captioned “Read to yourself,” Ellen reported that their father had told her where all the family’s money was—“in case I roll into the water”—and she shared with Edith his detailed instructions about the disposition of his manuscripts. According to Ellen, her father wanted all of his early manuscripts burned; she also said he dreaded that either Moncure D. Conway or Frank Sanborn should ever get their hands on his papers, and he regretted that his son Edward, to whom he would otherwise happily entrust his [ ] [“House burned, Wednesday,  July ( )”] Anna Alcott Pratt, Louisa May Alcott, and Ellen Tucker Emerson Fragment of a letter by Anna Alcott Pratt; addressee and date unknown You ask about the fire. Well—they had a funny time in spite of the dreadfulness of it all. It is supposed to have caught or rather “growed” in a closet in the attic, a sort of a spontaneous combustion, as no one had been there, or any light or matches. Mr E. awoke early in the morning to find the garret all in fire.The alarm was given.All the neighbors flocked in,and before the roof fell, all the books, pictures & valuable furniture was removed. I believe nothing was lost, but a few papers & manuscripts from the attic. Louisa & May found the Poet of America wandering forlornly about in an old muddy coat, & no stockings smiling serenely if any one spoke to him, & looking calmly on the wreck of his home as if it were a matter of no special [ ] Anna Alcott Pratt, Louisa May Alcott, and Ellen Tucker Emerson manuscripts, was not “a scholar by profession.” At the close of her letter, Ellen remarked that their father had rejected her suggestion that James Elliot Cabot be asked to take over control of his papers (see Ellen Tucker Emerson to Edith Emerson Forbes, 22 August 1872, Letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson, 1:690–93). Between 23 October 1872 and 27 May 1873, Emerson and Ellen traveled to England, the Continent, and Egypt. Ellen’s personal diary of their travels and her detailed letters home at this time reveal that, while her father seemed to enjoy the opportunity for one last visit to old friends such as Thomas Carlyle and the chance to finally see Egypt, the journey was not the complete recuperative cure from the shock of the fire that friends and family had hoped it might be (see Letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson, 2:3–91). On their return home, the townspeople of Concord gathered to greet its most famous citizen, and in the months that followed Emerson settled into...

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