What the Friend said of Forgive ness. - The noblesse oblige principle is often most cruel and unrelenting in its constructions and applications, and perhaps never more so than in the current distribution of forgiveness. I see that we are forgiven by our friends only for what is adjudged by them to be our own class of failing, our individual bent in sinning. To illustrate the habitually careful and trusty are not easily pardoned even a single lapse into carelessness, while some notorious disregarder of every charge given him is pardoned seventy times seven times. Again, any one instance of disingenuousness in the habitually truthful is never even forgotten, while the pleasant liar pursues his profession with no reprimand beyond the genial recognition of his mendacity. If gentleness becomes violent or good nature becomes irritable, on some occasion of great stress, what a miracle of apostasy! Yet violence and irritability, unchecked, keep their own seats in the chimney-corner. From all which might be deduced a rule advantageous to self-seeking humanity only insist sufficiently upon your own special and favorite fault by its familiar repetition, or by defending it as a matter of "temperament" or in some way of individual prerogative, and by so insisting you shall find that any special instances of your baseness, treachery, abuse of power, or aught besides will be treated to a palliation never accorded to the one-time offender in the same line of misconduct. The so-regarded "faultless character" is ever at a great disadvantage in this one respect so sensitive are his associates for the preservation of their criterion (himself) that they cannot endure disappointment in the least article of the catalogued virtues which they have set to his credit, oftentimes despite his honest protest against apotheosis at their hands. What is the result if any little human deflection is discovered in him? "So good that we cannot forgive him!" might be the summing-up expression of their attitude towards any such sporadic and unaccountable case of error or of failure. Is it that as one's excellence is great, so is the degree of his chance offense great and unforgivable, although in the inveterate practicer the offense would be scarcely an appreciable fact? I dare say there is some adroit sophistry which would explain why the springs of charity should flow with lethean tenderness over the transgression of the perpetual offender, whilst these same springs congeal and hold in merciless crystalline display the occasional lapses of the habitually upright, generous, and just. That Florentine potentate quoted by Bacon in the essay on Revenge seems to whisper significantly in my ear, as he observes that whereas we are commanded to forgive our enemies, we are nowhere commanded to forgive our friends. I cannot help thinking that the sacred Word which tells us there is more joy over the one returning sinner than over the ninety and nine that went not astray is often sadly strained to indulge the sinner, while the balance is kept by showing, in a corresponding degree, austerity towards the ninety and nine. ATLANTIC MONTHLY: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics. VOL. LXIX.-MAY, 1892.- No. CCCCXV. THE EMERSON-THOREAU CORRESPONDENCE. THE DIAL PERIOD. In reading the invaluable Memoirs of Emerson by Mr. Cabot, those who knew how intimate were the relations between the Concord poet - philosopher and his younger neighbor, the poet-naturalist, must have been surprised to see how little Thoreau is mentioned there. Only two pages out of eight hundred treat distinctly of Henry Thoreau and are specified in the index; and though Dr. Emerson's pleasing volume concerning his father and his Concord friends deals more liberally with Thoreau and his brother John, yet no hint is given that a copious and important correspondence went on between Emerson and Thoreau at two different periods, in the year 1843, when Thoreau assisted in editing the Dial, and in 1847-48, when Emerson was in England, and Thoreau, dwelling in the Emerson family at Concord, entertained the traveler with domestic news very dear to the affectionate husband and father. These letters have been in my hands for ten years past, and there seems to be no reason now why they should not be given to the 1 The earliest note which I find from Emerson to Thoreau bears no date, but was doubtless written in 1840 or 1841, for at no later time could the persons named in it have visited Concord together. Thoreau must have been living with his father and mother in the Parkman house, where the Library now stands. MY DEAR HENRY,- We have here G. P. Bradford, R. Bartlett, G. W. Lippitt, C. S. public. They will, I think, open a new view of Thoreau's character to those readers fancy him a reserved, stoical, and unsymperhaps the majority — who pathetic person. collection of Thoreau's letters which he In editing the small made in 1865, three years after the writer's death, Emerson included only one of the epistles to himself in the year 1843, though several of those addressed to Mrs. Emerson from Staten Island ed letter, while giving Emerson's letter were published. I shall omit this printto which it is a reply.1 In the early part of 1843 Thoreau was still living in Emerson's family, of which he became an inmate in April, 1841, and to which he returned in the autumn of 1847, after closing the chapter of his Walden hermit-life. In the first of the following letters he returns his thanks to Emerson for the hospitality thus afforded; and I have no doubt that a beautiful poem called The Departure, which I first printed in the Boston Commonwealth in the year following Thoreau's death, was written twenty years before-in 1843-to commemorate his first separation from that friendly Wheeler, and Mr. Alcott. Will you not come down and spend an hour? Thursday, P. M. Yours, R. W. E. There is also a brief note asking Thoreau to join the Emersons in a party to the Cliffs (Fairhaven hill), and to bring his flute. Living near each other, the two friends did not often write until 1843. household when he went, in the spring of 1843, to reside as tutor in the family of Mr. William Emerson, at Staten Island, N. Y. The letter numbered I., however, was written by Thoreau in the Emerson household at Concord to Emerson at Staten Island, or perhaps in New York, where he was that winter giving a course of lectures. In explanation of the passages concerning Bronson Alcott, in this letter, it should be said that he was then living at the Hosmer Cottage, in Concord, with his English friends, Charles Lane and Henry Wright, and that he had refused to pay a tax to support what he considered an unjust government, and was arrested by the deputy sheriff, Sam Staples, in consequence. I. THOREAU TO EMERSON. - CONCORD, January 24, 1843. DEAR FRIEND, The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right. I had not spoken of writing to you, but as you say you are about to write to me when you get my letter, I make haste on my part in order to get yours the I don't well know what to say to earn the forthcoming epistle, unless that Edith takes rapid strides in the or music and natuarts and sciences ral history as well as over the carpet; that she says "less and less abpapa stractedly every day, looking in my face, sooner. 66 which may sound like a Ranz des Vaches to yourself. And Ellen declares every morning that "papa may come home to-night;" and by and by it will have changed to such positive statement as that "papa came home larks night." Elizabeth Hoar still flits about these clearings, and I meet her here and there, and in all houses but her own, but as if I were not the less of her family for all that. I have made slight acquaintance also with one Mrs. Lidian Emerson, who almost persuades me to be a Christian, but I fear I as often lapse into heathenism. Mr. O'Sullivan was here three days. I met him at the Atheneum [Concord], and went to Hawthorne's [at the Old Manse] to tea with him. He expressed a great deal of interest in your poems, and wished me to give him a list of them, which I did; he saying he did not know but he should notice them. He is a rather puny-looking man, and did not strike me. We had nothing to say to one another, and therefore we said a great deal! He, however, made a point of asking me to write for his Review, which I shall be glad to do. He is, at any rate, one of the not-bad, but does not by any means take you by storm, which is the best way. no, nor by calm, He expects to After tea I car see you in New York. ried him and Hawthorne to the Ly ceum. Mr. Alcott has not altered much since you left. I think you will find him much the same sort of person. With Mr. Lane I have had one regular chat à la George Minott, which of course was greatly to our mutual grati- and edification; and, as two or three as rega lar conversations have taken place since, I fear there may have been a precession of the equinoxes. Mr. Wright, according to the last accounts, is in Lynn, with uncertain aims and prospects, ing slowly, perhaps, as indeed are all of how I suppose they have told you near Mr. Alcott went to the jail, but I can add a good anecdote to the rest. When Staples came to collect Mrs. Ward's taxes, my sister Helen asked him what he thought Mr. Alcott meant, what his idea was, and he answered, "I vum, I believe it was nothing but principle, for I never heard a man talk honester." us. - - matur There was a lecture on Peace by a Mr. Spear (ought he not to be beaten into a ploughshare?), the same evening, and, as the gentlemen, Lane and Alcott, dined at our house while the matter was in suspense, that is, while the consta ble was waiting for his receipt from the jailer, we there settled it that we, that is, Lane and myself, perhaps, should agitate the State while Winkelried lay in durance. But when, over the audience, I saw our hero's head moving in the free air of the Universalist church, my fire all went out, and the State was safe as far as I was concerned. But Lane, it seems, had cogitated and even written on the matter, in the afternoon, and so, out of courtesy, taking his point of departure from the Spear-man's lecture, he drove gracefully in medias res, and gave the affair a very good setting out; but, to spoil all, our martyr very characteristically, but, as artists would say, in bad taste, brought up the rear with a "My Prisons," which made us forget Silvio Pellico himself. Mr. Lane wishes me to ask you to see if there is anything for him in the New York office, and pay the charges. Will you tell me what to do with Mr. [Theodore] Parker, who was to lecture February 15th? Mrs. Emerson says my letter is written instead of one from her. At the end of this strange letter I will not write-what alone I had to say to thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long kindness to me. It would be more ungrateful than my constant thought. I have been your pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free as under the sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it, I who have failed to render even those slight services of the hand which would have been for a sign, at least; and, by the fault of my nature, have failed of many better and higher services. But I will not trouble you with this, but for once thank you as well as Heaven. Your friend, H. D. T. Mrs. Lidian Emerson, the wife of R. W. Emerson, and her two daughters, Ellen and Edith, are named in this first letter, and will be frequently mentioned in the correspondence. At this date, Edith, now Mrs. W. H. Forbes, was fourteen months old. Mr. Emerson's mother, Madam Ruth Emerson, was also one of the household, which had for a little more than seven years occupied the well-known house under the trees, east of the village. No reply to this letter is in my hands. II. THOREAU TO EMERSON. 66 CONCORD, February 10, 1843. DEAR FRIEND, I have stolen one of your own sheets to write you a letter upon, and I hope, with two layers of ink, to turn it into a comforter. If you like to receive a letter from me, too, I am glad, for it gives me pleasure to write. But don't let it come amiss; it must fall as harmlessly as leaves settle on the landscape. I will tell you what we are doing this now. Supper is done, and Edith the dessert, perhaps, more than the desert—is brought in, or even comes in per se; and round she goes, now to this altar, and then to that, with her monosyllabic invocation of “oc,” “oc.” It makes me think of "Langue d'oc." She must belong to that province. And like the gipsies she talks a language of her own while she understands ours. While she jabbers Sanscrit, Parsee, Pehlvi, say "Edith go bah!" and "bah" it is. No intelligence passes between us. She knows. It is a capital joke, that is the reason she smiles so. How well the secret is kept! she never descends to explanation. It is not buried like a common secret, bolstered up on two sides, but by an eternal silence on the one side, at least. It has been long kept, and comes in from the unexplored horizon, like a blue mountain range, to end abruptly at our door one day. (Don't stumble at this steep simile.) And now she studies the heights and depths of nature On shoulders whirled in some eccentric orbit And how she runs the race over the carpet, while all Olympia applauds, mamma, grandma, and uncle, good Grecians all, and that dark-hued barbarian, Partheanna Parker, whose shafts go through and through, not backward! Grandmamma smiles over all, and mamma is wondering what papa would say, should she descend on Carlton House some day. "Larks night 's abed, dreaming of "pleased faces" far away. But now the trumpet sounds, the games are over; some Hebe comes, and Edith is translated. I don't know where; it must be to some cloud, for I never was there. Query: what becomes of the answers Edith thinks, but cannot express? She really gives you glances which are before this world was. You can't feel any difference of age, except that you have longer legs and arms. Mrs. Emerson said I must tell you about domestic affairs, when I mentioned that I was going to write. Perhaps it will inform you of the state of all if I only say that I am well and happy in your house here in Concord. good. It would be sufficient employment only to cultivate true ones. The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand. A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remote parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me. When such divine commodities are SO near and cheap, how strange that it should have to be each day's discovery! A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me. I am no more of this earth; it acts dynamically; it changes my very substance. I cannot do what before I did. I cannot be what before I was. Other chains may be broken, but in the darkest night, in the remotest place, I trail this thread. Then things cannot happen. What if God were to confide in us for a moment! Should we not then be gods? It should be life, — which How subtle a thing is this confidence! Nothing sensible passes between; never any consequences are to be apprehended should it be misplaced. Yet something has transpired. A new behavior springs; the ship carries new ballast in her hold. A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused. cause to lay down one's would not be to lose it. Can there be any mistake up there? Don't the gods know where to invest their wealth? Such confidence, too, would be reciprocal. When one confides greatly in you, he will feel the roots of an equal trust fastening themselves in him. When such trust has been received or reposed, we dare not speak, hardly to see each other; our voices sound harsh and untrustworthy. We are as instruments which the Powers have dealt with. Through |
