Lidian and Edward Emerson
Title
Lidian and Edward Emerson
Subject
Lidian and Edward Emerson
Description
“One of my wise masters, Edmund Burke, said, ‘A wise man will speak the truth with temperance that he may speak it the longer.’ In this new sentiment that you awaken in me, my Lydian Queen, what might scare others pleases me, its quietness, which I accept as a pledge of permanence. I delighted myself on Friday with my quite domesticated position & the good understanding that grew all the time, yet I went & came without one vehement word—or one passionate sign. In this was nothing of design, I merely surrendered myself to the hour & to the facts. I find a sort of grandeur in the modulated expressions of a love in which the individuals, & what might seem even reasonable personal expectations, are steadily postponed to a regard for truth & the universal love. Do not think me a metaphysical lover. I am a man & hate & suspect the over refiners, & do sympathize with the homeliest pleasures & attractions by which our good foster mother Nature draws her children together. Yet am I well pleased that between us the most permanent ties should be the first formed & thereon should grow whatever others human nature will.”—RWE to Lydia Jackson, February 1, 1835
“My wife Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity,—I call her Asia—& keeps my philosophy from Antinomianism.”—RWE to Thomas Carlyle, May 10, 1838
“Blessed be the wife that in the talk tonight shared no vulgar sentiment, but said, In the gossip & excitement of the hour, be as one blind & deaf to it. Know it not. Do as if nothing had befallen. And when it was said by the friend, The end is not yet: wait till it is done; she said, ‘It is done in Eternity.’ Blessed be the wife! I, as always, venerate the oracular nature of woman. The sentiment which the man thinks he came unto gradually through the events of years, to his surprise he finds woman dwelling there in the same, as in her native home.”--RWE, journal, September 29, 1838
“Queenie (who has a gift to curse & swear) will every now & then in spite of all manners & christianity rip out on Saints, reformers, & Divine Providence with the most edifying zeal. In answer to the good Burrill Curtis who asks whether trade will not check the free course of love she insists ‘it shall be said that there is no love to restrain the course of, & never was, that poor God did all he could, but selfishness fairly carried the day.’ ”—RWE, journal, September?, 1841
“Queenie’s epitaph: ‘Do not wake me.’ ”—RWE, journal, March?, 1843.
“Education. Don’t let them eat their seed-corn; don’t let them anticipate, or ante-date, & be young men, before they have finished their boyhood. Let them have the fields & woods, & learn their secret & the base & foot-ball, & wrestling, & brickbats, & suck all the strength & courage that lies for them in these games; let them ride bareback, & catch their horse in his pasture, let them hook & spear their fish, & shin a post and a tall tree, & shoot their partridge & trap the woodchuck, before they begin to dress like collegians, & sing in serenades, & make polite calls.”—RWE, journal, April-May?, 1856
“I am very happy to hear of your mending health, which you must carefully respect over all the studies & professors in the world, since it has been once so severely shaken, & you the only male heir of your line … ”—RWE to Edward Waldo Emerson, December 17, 1871.
“My wife Lidian is an incarnation of Christianity,—I call her Asia—& keeps my philosophy from Antinomianism.”—RWE to Thomas Carlyle, May 10, 1838
“Blessed be the wife that in the talk tonight shared no vulgar sentiment, but said, In the gossip & excitement of the hour, be as one blind & deaf to it. Know it not. Do as if nothing had befallen. And when it was said by the friend, The end is not yet: wait till it is done; she said, ‘It is done in Eternity.’ Blessed be the wife! I, as always, venerate the oracular nature of woman. The sentiment which the man thinks he came unto gradually through the events of years, to his surprise he finds woman dwelling there in the same, as in her native home.”--RWE, journal, September 29, 1838
“Queenie (who has a gift to curse & swear) will every now & then in spite of all manners & christianity rip out on Saints, reformers, & Divine Providence with the most edifying zeal. In answer to the good Burrill Curtis who asks whether trade will not check the free course of love she insists ‘it shall be said that there is no love to restrain the course of, & never was, that poor God did all he could, but selfishness fairly carried the day.’ ”—RWE, journal, September?, 1841
“Queenie’s epitaph: ‘Do not wake me.’ ”—RWE, journal, March?, 1843.
“Education. Don’t let them eat their seed-corn; don’t let them anticipate, or ante-date, & be young men, before they have finished their boyhood. Let them have the fields & woods, & learn their secret & the base & foot-ball, & wrestling, & brickbats, & suck all the strength & courage that lies for them in these games; let them ride bareback, & catch their horse in his pasture, let them hook & spear their fish, & shin a post and a tall tree, & shoot their partridge & trap the woodchuck, before they begin to dress like collegians, & sing in serenades, & make polite calls.”—RWE, journal, April-May?, 1856
“I am very happy to hear of your mending health, which you must carefully respect over all the studies & professors in the world, since it has been once so severely shaken, & you the only male heir of your line … ”—RWE to Edward Waldo Emerson, December 17, 1871.
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
Tags
Citation
“Lidian and Edward Emerson,” William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library, accessed December 22, 2024, https://sc.concordlibrary.org/items/show/2068.