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Emerson, Barzillai Frost, and the Divinity School Address

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Conrad Wright
Conrad Wright
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The Reverend Barzillai Frost, minister of the Unitarian church in Concord from 1837 to 1857, does not loom large in the biographies of Emerson. Cabot does not even mention him; Rusk refers to him but once. His name seldom appears in the Journals, and in the published letters there are only a few unimportant allusions to him.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , January 1956 , pp. 19 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1956

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References

1 Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston, 1909–1914), IV, 188–189.

2 Emerson himself regarded Ware as one of the most eloquent of the Boston preachers. See Journals, VI, 455–456; VII, 170.

3 Concord Yeoman's Gazette, Feb. 4, 1837.

4 Frost, Henry, “Barzillai Frost,” in Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord, 3rd. Ser. (Cambridge, 1907)Google Scholar; also Miles, Henry A., A Sermon Preached in the First Parish Church, Concord, December 10, 1858, at the Burial of Rev. Barzillai Frost (Cambridge, 1859)Google Scholar.

5 Concord Freeman, March 11, 1837.

6 Emerson's manuscript “Preaching Record” shows that he preached in East Lexington in February, March, and April, every Sunday except as follows: Feb. 19, at Waltham, William Silsbee at East Lexington; Feb. 26, C. A. Bartol at East Lexington; March 19, at Waltham; March 26, at Lowell; April 16, in the afternoon at West Lexington; April 23, at Wayland; April 30, at Watertown. The “Preaching Record,” like the manuscript Journals, is deposited in the Harvard College Library; both have been used by courtesy of Mr. E. W. Forbes and the Emerson Memorial Association. See also Rusk, R. L., The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York, 1939), II, 68, 71–72, 73Google Scholar.

7 Journals, IV, 232. Although citations will be made to the printed Journals, all quotations in this paper have been corrected, and when necessary enlarged, by reference to the original manuscript.

8 Journals, IV, 229–230.

9 Ibid., IV, 232–233. With this passage, compare the corresponding part of the Divinity School Address in Works (Boston, 1903), I, 138.

10 Journals, IV, 244.

11 Miles, Sermon at the Burial of Barzillai Frost, 9, 11; Journals, IV, 244.

12 Miles, op. cit., 16.

13 Ibid., 10, 12–13, 14.

14 Emerson, Works, X, 282.

15 “Preaching Record”; Rusk, Letters, II, 79–81, 83, 85, 88; Williams, Stanley, “Unpublished Letters of Emerson,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XXVI (1927), 476Google Scholar; Yeoman's Gazette, July 8, 1837. The “Preaching Record” shows that Emerson was at East Lexington every Sunday except as follows: July 23, at Framingham; Aug. 13, when Hedge preached for him; Aug. 20, at Waltham; Aug. 27; Sept. 3 (?); Oct. 1, Richard Austin at E. Lexington; Oct. 8, at Waltham; Oct. is, at Billerica; Nov. 12, at Waltham; Nov. 19, at Concord; Nov. 26, at Weston.

16 Journals, IV, 300–301, 324.

17 Miles, Sermon at the Burial of Barzillai Frost, 10–11.

18 McGiffert, A. C. Jr., Young Emerson Speaks (Boston, 1938), 120–126Google Scholar; Rusk, Letters, I, 412–413; Cabot, J. E., A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston, 1887), II, 726–728Google Scholar.

19 Miles, Sermon at the Burial of Barzillai Frost, 6.

20 Rusk, Letters, II, 103; Emerson, Journals, IV, 377, 379. Compare Works, I, 143. In the printed Journals, the paragraph beginning “Whilst meditating on the ideal” is incorrectly dated December 8 instead of December 3. In the manuscript Journal, the name of Emerson's uncle has been expanded at a later date to read: Mr S. Ripley.

21 Rusk, Letters, II, 108, 113.

22 Rusk, Letters, II, 114; Journals, I, 363. See also Smith, Henry Nash, “Emerson's Problem of Vocation,” New England Quarterly, XII (1939), 52–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Whicher, Stephen E., Freedom and Fate (Philadelphia, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Rusk, Letters, II, 120; Journals, V, 280–281.

24 The manuscript “Preaching Record” shows that Emerson preached in 1838 and 1839 as follows: Feb. 4, 1838, Concord; Feb. 11, Concord; Feb. 18, E. Lexington; Feb. 25, E. Lexington; March 25, E. Lexington (Sermons 154, “Duty,” and 87, “Self-Culture,” enlarged by lecture on religion); April 5, Fast Day at E. Lexington and Concord (“Peace Lecture”); April 8, New York (Sermons 154 and 87 enlarged); April 29, Waltham (Sermons 37 and 87 enlarged); Aug. 15, Watertown (Sermons 154 and 87 enlarged); Jan. 13, 1839, Concord (Sermons 101 and 87 enlarged); Jan. 20, Concord (Sermon 169). January 20, 1839 is the last entry in the “Preaching Record.” Several of these sermons, preached at the close of Emerson's pulpit activity, are among those reprinted in McGiffert, Young Emerson Speaks.

25 Journals, IV, 402, 412–413; compare Works, I, 137–139, 145.

26 For the letter from the committee to Emerson, see Rusk, Letters, II, 147. Rusk does not list Emerson's reply, but it was copied into “The Records of the Theological School” (the “Student History”), MS, Andover-Harvard Library. In later years, Emerson took pains to reject the title of “Reverend” when correspondents mistakenly used it. See Rusk, Letters, IV, 115, 173; V, 183.

27 Journals, IV, 420, 423, 427–429.

28 Ibid., IV, 4S4–45S; compare Works, I, 146.

29 Journals, IV, 455; compare Works, I, 146–147.

30 The manuscript as well as the printed Journals date this entry May 26. For about three weeks, Emerson was mistaken as to the date. The entry describing “our pretty country church music” is given in the manuscript under date of June 9, instead of June 10; and the pages beginning with the entry on Napoleon and means and ends are dated “16 June, Sunday” instead of June 17. By the following Saturday, June 23, he was back on the right calendar again. See Journals, IV, 457, 468, 477, 491.

31 Journals, IV, 457. Hedge was one of Emerson's close friends, yet Emerson somehow felt that “there is always a fence betwixt us.” See Rusk, Letters, II, 270; III, 53.

32 Journals, IV, 234, 478, 480–81.

33 Journals, IV, 494, 496; compare Works, I, 137, 139.

34 Journals, V, 4.

35 McGiffert, Young Emerson Speaks, 39–45, 265.

36 Journals, IV, 454; Works, I, 137, 145.

37 See my chapter in Williams, G. H., ed., The Harvard Divinity School (Boston, 1954)Google Scholar.

38 Journals, V, 7, 9–10.

39 Greenslet, Ferris, James Russell Lowell (Boston, 1905), 23Google Scholar; Higginson, T. W., Old Cambridge (New York, 1899), 156–157Google Scholar; Hale, E. E., James Russell Lowell and His Friends (Boston, 1899), 42Google Scholar.

40 Lowell to G. B. Loring, July 8, 1838, MS, Harvard College Library, also in Norton, C. E., ed., Letters of James Russell Lowell (Boston, 1904), I, 28Google Scholar; Scudder, H. E., James Russell Lowell (Boston, 1901), I, 54Google Scholar; Storey, Moorfield and Emerson, Edward W., Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (Boston, 1911), 30–32Google Scholar.

41 Nathan Hale, Jr., to Lowell, July 9, 1838, MS, Harvard College Library.

42 Hale to Lowell, June 29, 1838, Harvard College Library; see also Hale, James Russell Lowell, 47. Frost was married on June 1, 1837, in Framingham to Miss Elmira Stone of that town; see Yeoman's Gazette, June 3, 1837.

43 Lowell to G. B. Loring, July 1, 1838, Harvard College Library; also Scudder, Lowell, I, 51–52; Hale, Lowell, 46.

44 Hale, Lowell, 45.

45 Whicher, Freedom and Fate, 73.

46 Journals, V, 20, 28, 45, 160, 167, 171, 173, 180–182, 197, 200.

47 Journals, V, 265, 269, 271,407.

48 Emerson, Edward Waldo, Emerson in Concord (Boston, 1889), 169Google Scholar; Rusk, Letters, IV, 289, 326, 339.

49 Frost to Emerson, June, 1839, MS, Harvard College Library, summarized in Rusk, Letters, II, 207n–208n; Frost to Emerson, April 17, 1841, Harvard College Library; Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The American Notebooks, ed. Stewart, Randall (New Haven, 1932), 165Google Scholar; Frost to Emerson, Jan. 5, 1847, Harvard College Library; Rusk, Letters, IV, 125, 405, 426.

50 Miles, Sermon at the Burial of Barzillai Frost, 17–22; Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord, 56–58. Frost's will, signed on Feb. 4, 1856, was witnessed by Samuel Hoar, John Thoreau (the father), and Henry D. Thoreau.

51 E.W. Emerson, Emerson in Concord, 191.