Henry David Thoreau
subject: Henry David Thoreau
description: By the late 1830s, Emerson had befriended Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Born in Concord, Thoreau was, over the course of his life, an author, lecturer, naturalist, student of Native American life and collector of Native artifacts, surveyor, pencil-maker, social critic and active opponent of slavery. He returned to Concord after graduating from Harvard in 1837. In 1841, he joined the Emerson household as a handyman and caretaker. He stayed with the Emersons from 1841 to 1843, and again in 1847 and 1848 (while Emerson made his second European trip). A close bond developed between the two men. Emerson—fourteen years older than Thoreau, much-demanded as a lecturer and well-known as a writer—filled the roles of teacher and patron as well as friend to Thoreau. As time passed, the master/pupil aspect of the relationship became less satisfactory and less appropriate. But in the early 1840s, it suited both of them. In the early days of their friendship, Emerson revealed in his journal obvious affection for and appreciation of Thoreau. On February 17, 1838, for instance, he recorded in his journal, “My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity & clear perception.” On September 1st of the same year, he referred to Thoreau in a letter to his aunt Mary Moody Emerson as “a brave fine youth.” Writing his brother William on June 1, 1841, he described Thoreau as “a scholar & a poet & as full of buds of promise as a young apple tree.” Later, he would write with regret of Thoreau’s failure to fulfill this promise. Whatever distance eventually grew between Emerson and Thoreau, Lidian and the Emerson children were always fond of Thoreau. In Emerson in Concord, his lengthy Social Circle biography of his father (published in 1888 in the Second Series of Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord; also published separately), Edward Waldo Emerson recalled Thoreau’s stable presence, his usefulness about the house and garden, and his particular …
creator: Samuel Worcester Rowse
publisher: Concord Free Public Library
date: 1854
rights: All materials courtesy of the William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library