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The inclusion of the entirety of Lidian’s “Transcendental Bible” illustrates the complex picture
Ellen wanted to create of her mother. Lidian wrote this brief, revealing document circa 1841.
Scathing and funny, it mocks the solipsism inherent in Transcendentalists’ worst excesses. After
offering a satirical series of commandments, she concludes, “If you have refused all sympathy to the
sorrowful, all pity and aid to the sick, all toleration to the infirm of character, if you have condemned
the unintellectual and loathed such sinners as have discovered want of intellect by their sin, then are
you a perfect specimen of Humanity.” 14 Written while visiting her brother Charles, Lidian may have
been responding to the stream of eccentric visitors who found their way to her husband’s study in
the first years of their marriage, and whom she found it exhausting to entertain. It also appears to be
a response to growing differences in ideas about religion between Lidian and Waldo, as Lidian
conformed to more traditional vision of Christianity. Ellen emphasizes, however, that the document
“pleased Father” and “He always laughed when he thought of it.” 15 Through the inclusion of the
“Transcendental Bible,” then, Ellen underscores her mother’s intelligence and independence, while
also stressing the affection in her parent’s marriage.
That emphasis on affection between her parents is at odds with how many Emerson and
Transcendentalist scholars interpret Lidian and Waldo’s relationship. Emerson, often seen as
emotionally distant and cut off from his family, did make statements about marriage that are hard to
interpret as that of a loving husband. To Margaret Fuller, he proclaimed, “Ask any woman whether
her aim . . . is to further the genius of her husband; and she will say yes, but her conduct will always
be to claim a devotion day by day that will be injurious to him, if he yields.” 16 There was also the
formal way in which Lidian addressed her husband, calling him “Mr. Emerson,” while he called her
“Queenie” or “The Queen.” In Ellen’s writings, though, the tensions between them are often
depicted as moments of amusement in a loving and respectful relationship.
Ellen not only portrayed Waldo as a loving husband, but also as a devoted parent. In her memoir
about him, “What I Remember About Father,” she takes pains to portray him as caring and involved
with his children. She writes, “His way of taking hold of our hands was not by the hand but round the
arm just above the wrist with a very firm, strong hold and he always did the same as long as he lived
in guiding one through a crowd or across a brook or a plank or any such passage. It always felt very
good.” 17 She also described him helping her with her schoolwork in his famous study. “We never
stopped till we had hunted out the subject in every book that bore on it. Perhaps this didn’t happen
more than two or three times but it has given me a feeling that it was a custom and is my happiest
association with the study.” 18
Given the emphasis on the distant “Sage of Concord” in so many biographies of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, it has been difficult for me to know how to interpret Ellen’s very different vision of him as a
father and husband. Her depiction of her caring relationship with her father was one of the first
elements that drew me to Ellen’s story, as I am interested in the relationship between 19 th ‐century
fathers and daughters, which I think is understudied and was a major focus in my biography of
Hosmer. At first I envisioned much of the biography of Ellen focusing on her relationship with Waldo,
in part to highlight how her work made his possible. I also thought I might find a different Emerson
than the one I saw in the existing scholarship, who did care deeply for his family and enjoyed their
company, despite the sober face he presented to the public.
But the story has become more complicated by sources that present a darker picture of Emerson
as a father. For instance, in the fall of 1854, Ellen left the Sedgwick School to take over running the
house from her mother. Ellen’s letters depict this is as a change she is anxious to make. To her
mother, she wrote, “I am still gladder that I may not go to school this winter, but stay at home and
keep house. I am going to try very hard to learn soon, that I may be a wonder of a housewife for
you.” 19 I had first been confounded by Ellen’s enthusiastic embrace of the role of family caretaker;
she in fact, in her letters, seemed almost to beg for the role of housekeeper while studying at the