Emerson Ralph



Ralph Waldo Emerson Entreats Substitute Lecturer "in the name of literature, mercy, + peace!"







4pp ALS inscribed overall and signed by American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) as "R.W. Emerson" at the top of the last page. Written in Concord, Massachusetts on November 10, 1852. On cream laid paper. Expected wear including paper folds. Professionally repaired closed tear running along a fold on the first/second pages. Isolated stains and mounting traces verso. The gutter has been reinforced. Else near fine. 5" x 7". See DAB and Ralph L. Rusk, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), Vol. 4, p. 332 for a listing of this letter.







Emerson begged friend Thomas Starr King (1824-1864) to substitute for him at lectures scheduled in Syracuse, New York in late November 1852. Emerson explained that he had already unsuccessfully lobbied Edwin Percy Whipple (1819-1886) and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) as replacements.







In full:







"Concord } 10 Nov.r 1852


Mass }








My dear Sir,







The necessity of waiting at home for my English friend Clough, (who has unexpectedly changed his time for sailing as for arriving here) has made me suddenly beg to be released from an engagement to go to Western N.Y. in certain days from Nov 24 to Dec 1. The Lyceums there entreat me to supply my place. Whipple cannot go. I have seen Holmes, who cannot go. Cannot you go? I enclose the letter of the Syracuse Secretary which tells all the details. I suppose you are going, in the cause. If not, then go now, in the name of literature, mercy + peace!







Please to send me back a favorable answer, which, I know, I have only a right to expect from that magnanimity which removes mountains. And, also, please send me back the Secretary's letter.







In the best hope,







R.W. Emerson







T. Starr King."







In spite of Emerson's eloquent persuasion, King turned him down. Emerson's winter of 1852 schedule reveals that he ended up going himself, after all. Clough, Emerson's tardy overseas guest, had arrived in the United States by November 20, 1852, in time for Emerson to host a dinner in his honor at Boston's Tremont House. By November 25, Emerson was on the road, touring eight cities in New York before December 3rd. This was the same time slot that Emerson had begged King to fill.







As the mouthpiece of the American transcendentalist movement, Emerson took advantage of the lyceum circuit, first established in the mid-1820s, to further disseminate the movement's key tenets. The lyceum format, in which lectures were given by notable authors, ministers, artists, and philosophers of the day, were designed to educate and uplift listeners. In this way, the lyceum lecture circuit is credited with popularizing the Transcendental Movement.







Emerson began lecturing in the mid-1830s. Over his 40+ years as a lecturer, Emerson gave an average of 40 lectures per year, and was away from Concord between 4-6 months of the year. There were many difficulties presented by such an itinerant lifestyle, but it provided Emerson with his largest source of income. Emerson's lecture territory extended from New England to California, and all points in between.







Emerson's correspondent Thomas Starr King was one of the most celebrated Universalist and Unitarian ministers in New England. It is probably for the better that King was unable to oblige his friend back in 1852, for, twelve years later, he died of exhaustion, pneumonia, and diphtheria following a crushing lecture schedule.







Arthur Hugh Clough was an English-born Oxford-educated poet, tutor, and wandering scholar who grew up in the United States. He traveled to Concord at Emerson's invitation in 1852, and eventually stayed there for several months lecturing and book editing.







Edwin Perry Whipple, the lecturer and literary critic, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the physician poet, were two other fixtures of the mid-nineteenth-century American intellectual firmament. Whipple, Holmes, and Emerson would serve as pallbearers at their friend Nathaniel Hawthorne's burial.







Ralph Waldo Emerson became a literary celebrity following the publication of two essay collections in 1841 and 1844. In addition to writing essays, Emerson also wrote poetry and frequently gave speaking engagements. Emerson was one of the leading thinkers of the Transcendentalist movement in the United States, a philosophy which celebrated humanism, individualism, and nature.







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