Solid Seasons: The Friendship of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Jeffrey S. Cramer

Overview

A thoughtfully researched, movingly presented dual–biography of two iconic American writers, each trying to find the ideal friend with whom they could share their journey through our imperfect world.

Any biography that concentrates on either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson tends to diminish the other figure, but in Solid Seasons both men remain central and equal. Through several decades of writing, friendship remained a primary theme for them both.

Collecting extracts from the letters and journals of both men, as well as words written about them by their contemporaries, Jeffrey S. Cramer beautifully illustrates the full nature of their twenty–five–year dialogue. Biographers like to point at the crisis in their friendship, focusing particularly on Thoreau's disappointment in Emerson—rarely on Emerson's own disappointment in Thoreau—and leaving it there, a friendship ruptured. But the solid seasons remained, as is evident when, in 1878, Anne Burrows Gilchrist, the English writer and friend of Whitman, visited Emerson. She wrote that his memory was failing "as to recent names and topics but as is usual in such cases all the mental impressions that were made when he was in full vigour remain clear and strong." As they chatted, Emerson called to his wife, Lidian, in the next room, "What was the name of my best friend?"

"Henry Thoreau," she answered.
"Oh, yes," Emerson repeated. "Henry Thoreau."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640091313
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey S. Cramer is the editor of Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition, winner of a 2004 National Outdoor Book Award, and The Quotable Thoreau, recipient of an Umhoefer Prize for Achievement in Humanities. In 2017, Cramer was the historical consultant for the Ken Burns–produced documentary Walden, created for the Walden Pond State Reservation during the Thoreau Bicentennial. Cramer is the curator of collections at the Walden Woods Project’s Thoreau Institute Library. He lives in Maynard, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Part I Solid Seasons

A Biography of the Friendship of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson 5

Part II Thoreau

Friendship: (from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers) 107

Selected Writings on Friendship 138

Thoreau on Emerson 191

Part III Emerson

Friendship (from Essays: First Series) 209

Selected Writings on Friendship 227

Emerson on Thoreau 247

Thoreau 292

Acknowledgments 315

A Note on the Texts 317

Abbreviations Used in the Notes 319

Notes 321

Bibliography 345

Editorial Reviews

12/24/2018

Cramer (The Quotable Thoreau) intelligently examines the bond between two famous authors in an admirable volume that mixes biography with selections of their writing. Cramer, curator of collections at the Walden Woods Project’s Thoreau Institute, makes his way surely through the “intricacies and intimacies” of their sometimes fraught but ultimately rewarding quarter-century of friendship. They met in 1837 after Thoreau graduated from Harvard, and ever-generous Emerson, 14 years older, almost immediately began to mentor the younger man. Cramer draws generously on primary documents, such as a vivid description by Sophia Hawthorne, Nathaniel’s wife, of a skating party in which Thoreau “made dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps—very remarkable, but very ugly, methought” while a “weary” Emerson went “pitching headforemost, half lying on the air.” After the book’s narrative section, which takes up about one-third, Cramer presents two sections, approximately equal in length, devoted to, respectively, Thoreau and Emerson’s writings on the theme of friendship, ending with Emerson’s remarkably evocative and loving eulogy for Thoreau, in which he remarks, “It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him.” The 19th-century language is not always easy to parse, but the words offer inquisitive readers encouragement to refresh their acquaintance with Emerson and Thoreau through this “new view of an old story.” (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

An engaging account of the friendship between Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson—his mentor, friend and fellow writer.” —Danny Heitman, The Wall Street Journal

“Jeffrey S. Cramer describes how, as in all long friendships, the pair had their sunny and overcast days as well as periods of revelation and frustration . . . Each helped the other see himself—both strengths and limitations—more clearly.” —Bob Blaisdell, The Christian Science Monitor

“Solid Seasons is the patient mastery of an enormous body of work . . . The book slowly sifts and sorts and reshapes how we understand each man . . . It’s an idiosyncratic book, a minimalist history, Thoreauvian in its desire to be just as it is, generous in the way it bares itself, full of trust that readers are smart enough to spin conclusions for themselves, and intense in its demand that they elevate themselves to the task.” —Daegan Miller, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Cramer’s lucid, spare writing and deep knowledge join one quotation to the next without seeming effort. The book’s two primary characters become familiars, each one easily approached, often via the observation of the other. Cramer has a knack for choosing and integrating his subjects’ words, and from that you get sentences and stories that are easy walking. That sums to a wonderful read, both for the general reader interested in Emerson and Thoreau, and for those who feel themselves academic family to these two famous 19th–century thinkers and writers.” —Sandy Stott, The Roost

“A balanced account of the relationship between these two great writers . . . Cramer’s attention to detail is clearly in keeping with his excellent reputation as a curator and research librarian.” —Barry M. Andrews, Journal of Unitarian Universalist History

“Cramer (The Quotable Thoreau) intelligently examines the bond between two famous authors in an admirable volume that mixes biography with selections of their writing . . . The words offer inquisitive readers encouragement to refresh their acquaintance with Emerson and Thoreau through this 'new view of an old story.'“ —Publishers Weekly

“Editor of many works by Emerson and Thoreau and curator of collections at the Walden Woods Project's Thoreau Institute, Cramer brings both authority and sensitivity to his biographical overview and to a judicious selection of excerpts from the men's prolific writings . . . A deeply sympathetic dual biography.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The abiding strength of the tie between the two writers emerges as an animating presence in both men’s journals and correspondence, which Cramer mines for quotations that allow each writer to give his own unmediated account of their friendship . . . An illuminating history of an exceptional friendship.” —Booklist (starred review)

“This is a rich cornucopia for Emerson and Thoreau enthusiasts, who will feel the pulse of each man’s heart beat through the words as they come alive on the page.” —Cynthia–Marie Marmo O'Brien, America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture

From the Publisher

2019-01-13

The intellectual and emotional bond between two major 19th-century writers is revealed in their own words.

When they first met in 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was the acclaimed author of Nature, his first essay collection, and had launched his career as a public lecturer; Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), just graduated from Harvard and living in Concord, Massachusetts, soon was pulled into Emerson's orbit. The two men took long walks together, and Thoreau often was found at Emerson's dinner table. The connection between them was noticeable: Friends commented on Thoreau's "unconscious imitation" of the cadences of Emerson's speech. "Mr. Emerson does talk like my Henry," Thoreau's mother remarked. For the next 25 years, they enjoyed a rare, fertile friendship. "Their influence was, from the very beginning, mutual," writes Cramer (editor: Essays by Henry D. Thoreau: A Fully Annotated Edition, 2013, etc.). Editor of many works by Emerson and Thoreau and curator of collections at the Walden Woods Project's Thoreau Institute, Cramer brings both authority and sensitivity to his biographical overview and to a judicious selection of excerpts from the men's prolific writings. Emerson thought Thoreau "uncommon in mind and character"; Thoreau's praise of Emerson was effusive: "More of the divine realized in him than in any," he wrote in his journal in 1846. Both men prized friendship as a meeting of minds and as emotional sustenance. "Friendship," Emerson wrote, "should be a great promise, a perennial springtime." From Thoreau, he received a gift: "in flesh and blood and pertinacious Saxon belief, my own ethics." Despite shared admiration, their friendship was not without tensions. Thoreau often was unsatisfied, "discouraged so far as my relation to him is concerned." At times, he felt unrecognized and disappointed. "Talked, or tried to talk, with Emerson," he complained in 1853. Emerson found Thoreau lacking drive—"instead of being the head of American engineers, he is captain of a huckleberry party"—and often reticent, even cold. Thoreau, he remarked, after the younger man died, "was with difficulty sweet."

A deeply sympathetic dual biography.

Kirkus Reviews