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

E. P. Peabody, “Emerson as Preacher” (1885)

An educational and social reformer, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody assisted Bronson Alcott in the Temple School in Boston in the 1830s, began a book store and circulating library in Boston in 1840, and published several of her brother-inlaw Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works under her own imprint. In the late 1830s and early 1840s Peabody became active in the Transcendentalist movement. She joined the Transcendental Club, continued a sometimes strained friendship with Emerson’s aunt Mary Moody Emerson which began in the 1830s, published the Dial between 1841 and 1843, established friendships with Margaret Fuller (who conducted several “Conversations” at Peabody’s book store) and George and Sophia Ripley, and brought newcomers such as Jones Very to the attention of Emerson and his circle. In her middle and later years, Peabody continued to experiment with new pedagogical practices, opened the first Englishspeaking kindergarten in America in Boston in 1860, and wrote numerous articles for the Kindergarten Messinger. She lectured at Alcott’s Concord School of Philosophy in the 1880s, and her essay “Emerson as Preacher” was first delivered there as a lecture. Although they did not become formally acquainted until the 1830s, Peabody met Emerson in 1822, when he tutored her in Greek in his mother’s home; from the 1830s until his death, Peabody maintained a reasonably continuous relationship with Emerson. Once called Transcendentalism’s “Boswell” by Theodore Parker, in “Emerson as Preacher” Peabody demonstrates how she earned the title. Mixing family and social history with criticism in her reminiscence of Emerson, Peabody sympathetically portrays her subject in an account that is balanced in its judgments and extraordinary for its breadth of biographical detail about, among other things, Emerson’s family life, his relationships with fellow Transcendentalists, his emergence as a major challenger to the theological status quo in America in the late 1830s, his rise to international fame as an American intellectual of the first order in the 1840s and 1850s, and his interest in the poetic possibilities of Eastern religion and philosophy. [
] “Emerson as Preacher” (
) E. P. Peabody When Mr. Sanborn wrote to me that I was appointed to this lecture, he told me that the subject assigned to me was “Mr. Emerson as Preacher,”—not “Mr. Emerson in the Pulpit,” as it stands in the printed programme. But I hold on to what I had immediately agreed to do,for I think Mr.Emerson was always pre-eminently the preacher to his own generation and future ones, but as much—if not more—out of the pulpit as in it; faithful unto the end to his early chosen profession and the vows of his youth. Whether he spoke in the pulpit or lyceum chair, or to friends in his hospitable parlor, or tête-à-tête in his study, or in his favorite walks in the woods with chosen companions, or at the festive gatherings of scholars, or in the conventions of philanthropists , or in the popular assemblies of patriots in times and on occasions that try men’s souls,—always and everywhere it was his conscious purpose to utter a “Thus saith the Lord.” It was, we may say, a fact of his pre-existence. Looking back through eight generations of Mr. Emerson’s paternal ancestry, we find there were preachers in every one of them. . . . Considering these antecedents , it is not surprising that [Emerson and his] brothers all naturally gravitated to the profession of preacher. The outlook at the time, however, was not alluring. . . . Although William Emerson, the eldest brother, went to Germany to study for the Christian ministry, he had not the nerve of his great ancestor[s]; and, on his return, shrank from the battle that he had discernment enough to see was impending, and took up what he deemed the kindred profession of law. Edward and Charles also entered the latter profession , with the most serious conceptions of its ideal, and neither for fame nor fortune,—both being strong Christians of the heroic old type. Our Mr. Emerson always spoke of these brothers as his spiritual and intellectual superiors; but I was told, by one who knew them all intimately, that both of them regarded him as the high-priest of their Holy of holies, reverencing his every intuition as a sacred oracle. Mr. Emerson’s poem, entitled “The Dirge,” is the memorial of this rare fraternal relation. My own acquaintance with Mr. Emerson dated from , when I took a few private lessons from him in Greek,—a study that he was...