Who Knew? Ralph Waldo Emerson Lived In Waltham

"At Waltham, last Sunday, on the hill near the old meeting-house, I heard music so soft I fancied it was a pianoforte in some neighbouring farmhouse, but on listening more attentively I found it was the church bells in Boston, nine miles distant, which were playing for me this soft tune.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s life, his writing and beliefs are as valid now as they were in the 19^th century. He challenged the way people think about and approach life, then and now. Once again we learn that Waltham played a large part in those beliefs.

Emerson’s father died when he was about 8. Poor and sickly, he and his siblings were farmed to various relatives. Our Ralph spent a lot of his time and a great many summers in Waltham with Rev. Sam Ripley and his wife, Sarah Alden Ripley.

Alex Green is putting Emerson’s early life back into history – and Waltham is front and center in his book, The Shaking Tent, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s First Sermons from the First Industrial Town in America.

Last week, Green, a Waltham resident, author and member of Waltham’s Historical Society and Historic Commission, spoke about Emerson to a full audience in a conference room in the RTN Federal Credit Union building on Main Street. Ironically, that building is across the street from the spot where Rumford Hall once stood – another place where Emerson spoke. 

As Emerson grew up, he taught students at the Ripley’s home and eventually accepted the mantle of minister, just as his father, his grandfather and his great grandfather before him. 

But, this transcendentalist philosopher, writer and orator had another more esoteric view of life. In his writing and speeches, he asked people to think outside the box, at a time when everyone lived and thought inside a constrained mental cabinet. 

He gave two sermons at his uncle’s First Parish Church in Waltham – and they show the first real signs of transcendental seeds. He stood at the pulpit in mid-October of 1826 with his first: Pray without Ceasing. The second was called, The Uses of Unhappiness.

Green’s book provides the full text of both sermons – and Christianity and God don’t play a role in either, although he does talk about the self and the soul.

Pray without Ceasing’s smacks of the talks that occurred in Concord’s transcendental circles: “…because we are not able to discern the processes of thought, to see the soul – it were very ridiculous to doubt or deny that any beings can. It is not incredible that the thoughts of the mind are the subjects of perception to some beings …”

“Transcendentalism is evident in the preamble of that first sermon as much as it is in any of his secular writing,” Green said.

I’ll say. It must have been pretty radical for those who heard something that wasn’t bible-based. Some of Emerson’s Waltham messages suggest the world reflects back on us and that we need to be in tune with our form of perception, Green said. Sounds a bit like the 1960s and 1970s, doesn’t it?

Why isn’t any of this in all those books we read about Emerson’s life? Green tells us, and it’s pretty evident, Emerson kept his early years private.

“He wanted to hide the fact that he was a minister,” Green said. “He worked very hard to try and get around his upbringing.”

Eventually Emerson walked away from ministry and, back in Concord, walked toward the philosophical life most of us already know. But, he took Waltham life with him. And Waltham, at the time, was half agricultural and half industrial. Emerson witnessed both. He taught the mill children and saw the difficulties they faced and saw the bucolic farm life too.

Green suggests that those interactions and Sarah and Sam Ripley’s kindnesses affected how he thought and who he became. After reading the sermons, I’d have to agree and would be curious to learn what you think.

Once happily entrenched in Concord, Emerson didn’t spend much time in Waltham, although he did return to speak at Rumford Hall for “$5 and four quarts of oats for his horses.”

It’s exciting to know that Waltham and Ralph Waldo Emerson are connected and that we can claim a small piece of him. It’s even more exciting to know that Concord has asked for a few copies of Green’s book.