Photo of Bas Relief of Charles Chauncy Emerson
Title
Photo of Bas Relief of Charles Chauncy Emerson
Subject
Charles Chauncy Emerson
Description
“And so, Lidian, I can never bring you back my noble friend who was my ornament my wisdom & my pride.—A soul is gone so costly & so rare that few persons were capable of knowing its price and I shall have my sorrow to myself for if I speak of him I shall be thought a fond exaggerator. He had the fourfold perfection of good sense, of genius, of grace, & of virtue, as I have never seen them combined. I determined to live in Concord, as you know, because he was there, and now that the immense promise of his maturity is destroyed, I feel not only unfastened there and adrift but a sort of shame at living at all.”—RWE to Lidian Emerson, May 12, 1836
“In Charles, I found society that indemnified me for almost total seclusion from all other. He was my philosopher, my poet, my hero, my Christian. Of so creative a mind that … yet his conversation made Shakspear more conceivable to me; such an adorer of truth that he awed us, and a spirit of so much hilarity & elegancy that he actualized the heroic life to our eyes … I cannot tell you how much I miss him I depended on him so much. His taste & its organs his acute senses were our domestic oracle. His judgment, his memory were always in request. Even his particular accomplishments, who shall replace to me? He was an excellent Greek scholar and has recently read with me, more properly to me, a dialogue of Plato & the Electra of Sophocles. But why should I pore over my vanished treasures when I ought rather to remember the happiness … in which light I certainly do regard his life even whilst I deplore him—viz as in the whole a Vision to me out of heaven and a perpetual argument for the reality& permanence of all that we aspire after … I can gather no hint from this terrible experience, respecting my own duties I grope in greater darkness & with less heed.”—RWE to Harriet Martineau, May 30, 1836.
“In Charles, I found society that indemnified me for almost total seclusion from all other. He was my philosopher, my poet, my hero, my Christian. Of so creative a mind that … yet his conversation made Shakspear more conceivable to me; such an adorer of truth that he awed us, and a spirit of so much hilarity & elegancy that he actualized the heroic life to our eyes … I cannot tell you how much I miss him I depended on him so much. His taste & its organs his acute senses were our domestic oracle. His judgment, his memory were always in request. Even his particular accomplishments, who shall replace to me? He was an excellent Greek scholar and has recently read with me, more properly to me, a dialogue of Plato & the Electra of Sophocles. But why should I pore over my vanished treasures when I ought rather to remember the happiness … in which light I certainly do regard his life even whilst I deplore him—viz as in the whole a Vision to me out of heaven and a perpetual argument for the reality& permanence of all that we aspire after … I can gather no hint from this terrible experience, respecting my own duties I grope in greater darkness & with less heed.”—RWE to Harriet Martineau, May 30, 1836.
Rights
All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library
Source
Amelia Forbes Emerson
Publisher
Concord Free Public Library
Date
Undated
Collection
Citation
“Photo of Bas Relief of Charles Chauncy Emerson,” William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library, accessed December 23, 2024, https://sc.concordlibrary.org/items/show/2066.