EMERSON AND OHIO
A New Emerson Letter1
by N. C. DAVIS
Graduate Assistant in English, Ohio
State University
The following excerpt is from the
editorial columns of the
Cleveland Herald for March 2, 1852:
RALPH W. EMERSON
Writes from Concord, Feb. 26th, to one
of our citizens who had written
to him when recently in Buffalo, to come
here and lecture:
"Your letter I found on my road,
but it offered me fruit which I could
not eat, however fair. All my days were
promised, for the Lyceums along
the Albany and Buffalo road now act in
concert, and when they send to us,
eastern demagogues, arrange a series of
engagements for us. Yet I was glad
to be asked-glad to be remembered."
Our Ohio Institutions at Cleveland,
Columbus, and Cincinnati, must
"arrange a series of
engagements" for this brilliant Lecturer, next winter.
We are happy to know that the Cleveland
Library Association intends acting
in season in this matter, and that the
providing of a good course, especially
as to Eastern lecturers, is in charge of
Mr. H. M. Chapin,2 of this city, whose
enterprize and experience had in such
matters East, ensure us the best
material to be got from that quarter.
This letter, written nearly two years
after Emerson's first, and
nearly a year before his second, lecture
tour in Ohio,3 is perhaps
his first letter to a Cleveland
correspondent concerning his lectures.
The earliest letter recorded by Rusk was
written in May 1852 to
Charles Herrick,4 corresponding
secretary of the Cleveland Mercan-
tile Library Association. The letter
quoted above cannot be sim-
1 This letter was included by Carl David
Mead in an unpublished dissertation,
Eastern Lecturers in Ohio, 1850-1870
(Ohio State University, 1947), 62.
2 H.
M. Chapin came to Cleveland in 1848 at the age of twenty-four. He was
a partner of Charles Bradburn in the
wholesale grocery business until 1852 when he
formed another partnership and entered
the beef and pork packing business. He was
president of the Cleveland Library
Association in 1854. See Cleveland, Past and
Present, published by Maurice Joblin (Cleveland, 1869), 71-74.
3 For full information on Emerson's
lecture tours in Ohio, see Mead, Eastern
Lecturers in Ohio, passim.
4 Ralph L. Rusk, ed., The Letters of
Ralph Waldo Emerson (6 vols., New York,
1939), IV, 293.
101
102
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ilarly attributed, since Herrick did not
take office until April 1852,5
and since the editorial comment seems to
indicate that it was the
Cleveland Library Association which
first negotiated with Emerson.
Until the manuscript of Emerson's letter
or that of the Cleveland
citizen is turned up, it seems
impossible to identify Emerson's
correspondent.
5 According to Knight and Parsons'
Business Directory of the City of Cleveland,
1853 (Cleveland, 1853), 67-68, the Cleveland Mercantile
Library Association was
formally organized on December 1, 1851,
and held a new election in April 1852.
The society had a growing library and
150 members. It was this group which arranged
for Emerson to come to Cleveland (Rusk,
IV, 315fn.; Cleveland Herald, December
14, 1852, January 7, 1853). But when
Emerson appeared on January 20 and 22,
1853 (Mead, 368-369), the brief life of
the association was over. The group handed
over its library of 130 books (receiving
58 shares of stock in exchange) to the older
Cleveland Library Association (Cleveland
Herald, January 12, 1853). It was before
the combined group that Emerson appeared
(ibid., January 20, 1853).