My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau's Relationship With Emerson [Hardcover]

Harmon Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1999

Henry David Thoreau was a twenty-year-old scholarship student at Harvard when he met Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837. Emerson, fourteen years Thoreau's senior and independently wealthy, had recently shaken the intellectual world of New England with the publication of Nature. Despite the disparity in their circumstances, Thoreau and Emerson quickly formed a close relationship that lasted until Thoreau's death at the age of forty-four.

This book tells the story of their friendship. Harmon Smith emphasizes their personal bond, but also shows how their relationship affected their thought and writing, and was in turn influenced by their careers.

Without Emerson's interest and support, it is unlikely that Thoreau could have expended the energy on writing that enabled him to achieve greatness. By inviting Thoreau into his home to live during two different periods in the 1840s, Emerson effectively made Thoreau "one of the family." He provided him with work, lent him money, and allowed him to build a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. Emerson also broadened Thoreau's horizon immeasurably by introducing him to an ever-widening circle of friends and colleagues.

Although the bond between Thoreau and Emerson was strong, their needs were often greatly at variance. While this led to a prolonged period of estrangement between them, they were ultimately able to reconcile their differences. Many years after Thoreau died, Emerson could look back over his long life and say that Henry had been his best friend.

Since the thoughts and feelings of the two men are so well documented in their journals and letters, Smith is able to trace the pattern of their emotional involvement in great detail. What emerges is both a remarkable portrait of their relationship and an intimate look at the nature of friendship itself.

"Smith brings Thoreau, Emerson, and many others in their circle alive as rounded characters and sets them in the context of their times. His emphasis upon personal rather than intellectual relations between Thoreau and Emerson allows us to understand each man and his writing in a fresh way."--Shaun O'Connell, author of Imagining Boston: A Literary Landscape

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

From the day they met in 1837, an intimate friendship developed between Emerson and Thoreau despite a 14-year age gap. Independent scholar Smith draws deeply on their journals and letters to chronicle the evolution of their friendship. The two drew so close, Smith maintains, that Thoreau began to "talk like Emerson and to use the same gestures," while Thoreau declared that they were "like gods to each other." From 1837 to 1847, writes Smith, this camaraderie fueled the creative and intellectual fires of both men. In spite of their closeness, however, their friendship suffered as well. Thoreau tired of Emerson's insistence on mentoring him, and Emerson grew impatient with Thoreau's contentiousness. Moreover, Emerson's low opinion of Thoreau's writing fed Thoreau's animosity. The rift was healed, though, in 1858 when Emerson experienced a serious illness and Thoreau rushed to his side. Smith's study provides an instructive glimpse into the ways that the seeds of personal relationships produce the fruits of intellectual endeavor. Recommended for large public and academic libraries.AHenry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The classic literary mentoring tale is fully imagined, through graceful writing and the right amount of psychologizing. Although the American Renaissance is temptingly rife with material, independent scholar Smith never breaks his focus on Emerson and Thoreau's difficult three-decade friendship. Moving from the pair's meeting at Harvard, where Emerson was a teacher and Thoreau a young student, to Thoreau's residence at Emerson's home and year at the Emerson-owned Walden site, to Thoreau's death from consumption, Smith charts the men's lives and minds without inducing claustrophobia. Frequent quotes from Emerson's and Thoreau's journals provide psychological insights, and Smith's judicious interweaving of crucial characters like wife Lidian Emerson and competitors for Emerson's attention Waldo Giles and Ellery Channing provides relief. Smith's quiet takes on the familiar story are also refreshing, such as his assessment of daughter Ellen Emerson's fate as her parents' caregiver. The book vividly re-creates the hardscrabble life of the writer: familiar to many authors will be Thoreau's fruitless attempts to gain paying literary work (and his refusal to write for a ladies' magazine). Emerson's endless lecture tour of popular works provided income but left little time for new writing and made him so little seen by his young son that the boy asked Thoreau to become his father. Thoreau, with his periods of depression, reclusiveness, and ``fragile'' sexual identity, both complemented and was at odds with Emerson's drive, charisma, and ability to find solutions. Similarly, they learned from each other's writing styles, methods of observation, and literary aims. ``We are attracted toward a particular person, but no one has discovered the laws of this attraction,'' concluded Thoreau. Smith's gift is making the ambiguities, nuances, and importance of this friendship come alive. If only Emerson and Thoreau had been Edwardian women, Masterpiece Theatre would have its next miniseries. (10 illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr; 1ST edition (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558491864
• ISBN-13: 978-1558491861
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,586,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought Provoking - Biography at its Very Best, January 21, 2000

By 

A Lover of Good Books (Gill, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau's Relationship With Emerson (Hardcover)

This dual biography deserves far more attention than it is likely to get. That's a shame, because it skillfully explores not only the complex relationship between two great men, but the very nature of friendship itself.

Living in an age that obsesses about sexuality in all relationships, it is hard for us to understand the place that the concept of mystical friendship held for tne intellectual rebels of the early 19th century. Emergson, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and the rest of their circle explored this theme over and over--in platonic love affairs that crashed and burnt on the rocks of sexual attraction, in attempts at communal life that foundered when individuals could not give themselves to the needs of the group, and as we see so clearly in this biography, in negotiating the shoals of the mentor/protege relationship.

The focus of the book is the mentor role that was so comfortable for Emerson and increasingly frustrating to his protege, Thoreau. Emerson, whose fame grew throughout the period of this friendship never truly respected Thoreau's achievements, particularly not his masterwork, Walden, though he was instrumental in supporting Thoreau through the many years it took to produce that masterwork. It is ironic that in our time Thoreau's work still sells and still maintains its relevance to new readers while the once famous Emerson is now only a dim presence of interest only to scholars of American Intellectual History.

Smith does the biographer's job masterfully, drawing heavily on primary sources to give the reader enough information to draw his own conclusions about what might have been going on inside both men as their friendship evolved. He has plowed through mountains of source material--as just about everyone involved in this high octane intellectual circle Concord left multivolume memoirs, journals and letters--and distilled out the truly important quotations and details that show us the subtle developement of this friendhsip.

That said, I did not personally agree with Smith's own opinions about the psychological factors at work. My biggest complaint, as someone who has also spent significant amounts of time with the primary sources here (in my past life as a history Ph.D. candidate) is that Smith ignores the extent to which Emerson's character was formed by the death first of his father and then of his beloved first wife, who was dying of TB even as they wed. Early life taught Emerson that to feel love was to feel pain. So he spent the rest of his life barricading himself behind the intellectual defenses that kept him from feeling anything too deeply. Emerson's tragedy was that he sent out strong tendrils of love and affection throughout his life, and then coldly cut off everyone--not just Thoreau--who responded. But it is hard today, when we are largely sheltered from such things, to imagine what it would be like to live in a world where your father, wife, and oldest child each died just as you had come to love them.

Smith also describes Thoreau as someone who never separated from his mother and saw her in the inaccessible women he got attached to, using this to explain his failure to ever form an adult relationship with a woman. I think he misses the far more likely explanation that like many men who never came to terms with their natural homosexuality, Thoreau found himself attracted to the women who were the sexual objects of the men who were the focus of his true attraction--be it his brother's sweetheart or Emerson's wife--because this was a way to get closer to these men who were actual objects of his love. But again, it would be a grave mistake to try to cast Thoreau as a 19th Century Gay poster boy. It is quite likely, given the culture he lived in, that Thoreau himself never much a clue of what it is he was truly attracted to.

But it is when considering issues like this, that the true value of this book emerges: because the author gives you enough data to let you draw your own conclusions, without cloying analysis or politically correct projections of the concerns of our generation on these people of another age.

I hope this book gets noticed by those who nominate books for one of the prestigeous literary prizes it so clearly deserves, bringing it to the notice of more readers!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing Biography of a Friendship Requires Some Cautions, December 19, 2000

By 

Larry R. Smith "Midwest Reviewer" (Huron, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau's Relationship With Emerson (Hardcover)

Harmon Smith has provided us with an engaging story of a friendship between two of America's leading thinkers and writers of the 19th century--Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Friendship was central to the Transcendental Movement, a platonic ideal that never quite materialized, so it is here as Smith puts their lives under the microscope. He captures their humanity in a way no other biographers have, because he is able to separate the mythic "Henry David Thoreau" from the human. The cautions come when Smith turns away from the microscope to record a narrative that often includes his own projections into the minds and hearts of his subjects. Worst of all is his use of the old Oedipal complex of Freud projected onto Henry and his mother Cynthia. There is little to no substantiation for such a supposition, and so one must realize where the book fails to use a wise discretion. It is, nevertheless, a wise and wonderful portrait of a friendship that lasted three decades.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Venn diagram drawn through text, May 10, 2003

By 

Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau's Relationship With Emerson (Hardcover)

Casual readers should not be put off by the academic or esoteric treatment suggested by the title of this book. For _My Friend, My Friend_ serves as a good overall biography of both Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and describes in understandable terms the transcendental movement as well. The added focus is what each man thought of friendship in general and how it pertained to his relationship with the other. Newbies to the works and lives of these two men would do well to start their education with this volume. Ardent fans of either writer will find they disagree with some of the author's suppositions, though, especially in the discussion of how the men's real lives differed with the public personas they each created. Even so, it's an engaging read.