My Friend, My Friend
The Story of Thoreau's Relationship with Emerson
By Harmon Smith
University of Massachusetts Press
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.
This bracingly clear, humanely intelligent book has much to offer both professional and lay readers. . . . The narrative often represents the excruciating ambivalence of feelings Emerson and Thoreau had for one another in ways that assume a familiarity and comfort with 20th-century approaches to psychology. But Smith's skillful probing of each man's depths—through close attention to famous works, letters, and each writer's massive journal—is so sensitive, sympathetic, and gentle that he leaves the first law for all would-be healers, Do no harm, wonderfully unbroken. Highly recommended.'—Virginia Quarterly Review
'Smith is at once sympathetic yet balanced toward both his subjects, and he tells his story in more comprehensive detail and with a stronger sense of narrative than any previous work on this topic. . . . A compelling, balanced, and well-written study.'—New England Quarterly
'The classic literary mentoring tale is fully imagined, through graceful writing and the right amount of psychologizing. . . . Smith's gift is making the ambiguities, nuances, and importance of this friendship come alive.'—Kirkus Reviews
'[Smith] has admirably achieved his goal of recreating this turbulent relationship at the heart of American literary life.'—Boston Review of Books
'A remarkable book . . . about the most important friendship in American letters.'—Christopher Lydon, 'The Connection,' National Public Radio
'Smith brings Thoureau, 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 Thoureau 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
'Smith makes canny use of the voluminous personal journals of the two writers, weaving their published work with their personal jottings to track the constant oscillations of a problematic relationship.'—Yankee
'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.'—Library Journal
An independent scholar, Harmon Smith is actively engaged in the open space conservation movement in the Housatonic River Watershed.
