The Great Man

Jan 31, 1852

            Emerson is too grand for me.  He belongs to the nobility and wears their cloak and manners. . . I am a commoner.  To me there is something devilish in manners.  The best manners is nakedness of manners.

          When Thoreau returned to Concord after graduating from Harvard, he began to spend a lot of time with Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson was already a renowned essayist, the nominal father of the Transcendental Movement.
           At first the general impression of HDT was that he was Emerson's "Mini-Me" (if you'll pardon the expression).  Not only did he espouse the same philosophy as Emerson, but apparently he adopted some of Emerson's mannerisms, as well.  But to Emerson, Thoreau was always the real deal.


At the beginning of the relationship, Emerson noted in his journal that "my young friend. . . seems to have as free and erect mind as any I have ever met."  In July 1852, Emerson more or less cops to the charge that Thoreau makes above.

          Thoreau gives me, in flesh and blood and pertinacious Saxon belief, my own ethics.  He is far more real, and daily practically obeying them, than I; and fortifies my memory at all times with an affirmative experience which refuses to be set aside.

          Thoreau's cabin at Walden was built on Emerson's land.  HDT tutored RWE's son, and his brother's son, and once stayed with Emerson's family as RWE went on a lecture tour to England.  Late in his life, as his brilliant mind was slipping away, he would ask his wife

                   "What was the name of my best friend?"
                   "Henry Thoreau," she would answer.
                   "Oh, yes. Henry Thoreau."