Mr. Emerson's Wife

by Amy Belding Brown

  It was a love letter.

  I put my hand to my head. “I fear it makes little sense,” I said, “except as poetry.” It was the wrong thing to say. I knew it as soon as I spoke the words.

  “You know how fond I am of poetry,” my husband said. “Please read it, Lidian.”

  And so I read the letter aloud. It was one of the most difficult things I had done in my life. “‘My Very Dear Friend,—I have only read a page of your letter, and have come out to the top of the hill at sunset, where I can see the ocean, to prepare to read the rest. It is fitter that it should hear it than the walls of my chamber. The very crickets here seem to chirp around me as they did not before.’”

  I stopped and smiled. “A fine image,” I said. But Mr. Emerson did not return my smile. Nor did he even look at me. His eyes were focused on the wall above Cynthia’s head.

  “Keep reading,” he said.

  I did, though every nerve in my body protested. “‘It was very noble in you to write me so trustful an answer. The thought of you will constantly elevate my life; it will be something always above the horizon to behold, as when I look up at the evening star. I think I know your thoughts without seeing you, and as well here as in Concord. You are not at all strange to me.’”

  I closed my eyes. The room was ponderous with silence.

  “Is that all?” Mr. Emerson asked.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Then please continue.”

  I bent my head over the page, as if the words might fly off the paper into the room and be lost forever. “‘I cannot tell you the joy your letter gives me, which will not quite cease till the latest time. Let me accompany your finest thoughts.’”

  I paused and looked at my husband. I did not want to read the final words. There seemed no need to wound my husband with Henry’s probing wit. “There’s nothing more, save that he sends his love to you,” I said.

  “Does he indeed? And how does he turn that phrase?”

  I hesitated, then quickly read the words: “‘I send my love to my other friend and brother, whose nobleness I slowly recognize.’”

  Mr. Emerson surprised me by laughing.

  I folded the letter and fumbled it back into its envelope. I was aware of Cynthia’s gaze on me and forced myself to return it. “I don’t deserve such flattery,” I said. “He sets me higher than I am.”

  “Well,” Cynthia said crisply, “Henry was always tolerant.” She was flushed, and I knew it was not from the walking.

  Mr. Emerson rose. “I daresay he’s recovered his low spirits.” He gave me a blank smile, which in all my married years, I never learned how to read.

  The existence and contents of the letter quickly became known throughout Concord. I was sickened by the thought of the gossip’s tongues desecrating Henry’s words. Mr. Emerson said nothing further about it, perhaps thinking that the wound Cynthia had dealt me was sufficient.

  When I wrote again to Henry, I confessed what had happened, and begged him to keep in mind that everyone in Concord was eager for word of him. No letter of his could be considered private. It was many months before I again received such a warm letter from him. Indeed, his correspondence turned immediately cold and distant. I could tell only from certain private and familiar terms that he meant me to understand that his feelings for me had not changed.

  I was surprised, but relieved that Mr. Emerson had no private reaction to Henry’s letter other than mild amusement. Except for one curious thing. The night after the letter arrived, my husband, who had not touched me since Edith’s birth, asserted his marital rights in a most vigorous and insistent manner.

  THE NEXT LETTER from Henry was carefully addressed to Mr. Emerson and contained nothing of a personal nature. In fact, he made no mention of me at all, save in a brief addendum expressing polite concern for my health. His salutation was a simple Friends—a plain-enough signal that he’d received my message. And there was an alarming farewell tone in his words, as if he were settling his earthly estate. One section, in particular, struck me: “But know, my friends, that I a good deal hate you all in my most private thoughts, as the substratum of the little love I bear you. Though you are a rare band and do not make half use enough of one another.”

  I could almost hear the pique in Henry’s voice as I read the words. He had many times commented that my husband did not sufficiently appreciate the contributions of my intellect and loyalty. It was like Henry to veil his words in such a way that the reader would find them perplexing and be forced to work at them like a puzzle to extract their meaning. I do not think Mr. Emerson ever understood Henry’s intent.

  “I sent Henry to New York to further his career,” he complained one day. “But he shows next to no ambition. What does he do in his free time? Walk on the beach?”

  I listened in silence for I could neither contradict him nor explain. The truth was that Henry was never at ease in New York. In every letter, in every report of him I heard, he made it plain that he wished to return to Concord. How I wished for the freedom to write to him and openly tell him how desperately I missed him! I wanted him to return at once, but knew I couldn’t risk the chance that my letter might be discovered by William Emerson or his wife.

  IN EARLY NOVEMBER, after a long Sunday morning service, Cynthia Thoreau happily informed me that she was expecting Henry for Thanksgiving. “He’ll only stay a few days,” she said, her bonnet strings flapping in the cold wind.

  “Well, I trust he will pay his respects to us at Bush.” It was all I could do to contain my hands within their gloves. “My husband will wish to know how he fares.”

  “No doubt he’ll stop in.” Cynthia gave me a cold smile. “He’s well aware how much he owes Mr. Emerson—in both currency and kindness. Yet he has other obligations, you know. He’s scheduled to lecture at the Lyceum on the ancient poets.”

  “A lecture! I did not realize.” I smiled broadly. “When is it to be? I’ll make a point of attending.”

  “Wednesday the twenty-ninth.” Cynthia gave me a slight bow and turned to give her attention to Mary Brooks. But my excitement was too high to be dampened by bad manners.

  For the next two weeks I went about the house singing. My daily toil felt effortless, and tending the children no longer wearied me. Mr. Emerson commented on my changed demeanor and though he did not ask its cause, it seemed to light some dormant fire in him, for he again claimed his role of husband in our bed. On the fifteenth, Nancy came back from the market with the news that Henry had returned.

  “He came in the coach late last night,” she said, as we chopped sausage for a pie. “Flora—she’s Mrs. Thoreau’s new kitchen girl—Flora says he looks fit enough. Don’t sound like the city’s harmed him one whit.”

  The flutter in the pit of my stomach reminded me of a quickening child. I kept my eyes on the bits of pink sausage beneath the blade of my knife.

  “Though he complains about it enough,” Nancy went on. “So I hear. All he talks about is how dreadful ‘tis, Flora says. He calls all those fine city museums ‘catacombs of nature.’ What do you make of that? Can’t see why he went in the first place if he feels that way. Now I’d trade places with him in a minute. What I wouldn’t give for a chance in a big city like New York.”

  The early afternoon light was coming in through the southern window, lying in a long sword across the table. I felt something deeply sorrowful in that light. Perhaps it was the effect of the bare trees, or the ivory quality the sunlight had in November—I wasn’t certain of its cause. It struck me as odd that I would notice, for it was in such direct contrast to my joy.

  I could hardly restrain myself from running to the Thoreau boardinghouse that very instant and seeing Henry. When I answered the knock at the east entrance late that afternoon and found him standing there, I began to tremble so violently that I had to grasp the doorframe for support. I croaked his name and stood gazing at him, believing that I’d never looked upon a fairer smile or nobler visage. In truth, he was pale and fatigued, wea
ry from his journey, and harried by his many weeks in the city. Yet my spirits rose so to see him that I overlooked the strain on his face, and drank in the sight of him—to me it was as water to a man dying of thirst.

  “Lidian!” He smiled.

  “Henry, how are you?”

  “Well enough, now that I’m back in Concord. May I come in?”

  “Of course!” I flushed. “Come in, come in!” And I backed away from the doorway to allow him entry, though I wanted to draw close against him.

  “I brought the tulip tree I promised you from Staten Island.” He stepped into the entry and stood looking about. “I just finished planting it in your garden.” For a moment I did not comprehend his meaning, but then I recalled his mention of a tree by that name.

  “The tulip tree! I’d forgotten!” I said.

  A pleasant satisfaction played on his face and I was no longer able to check my joy. I took his hand in mine.

  “Thank you! It’s so good to welcome you home again! How I’ve missed you!”

  He smiled and I could have drowned in his gray eyes, for they seemed to draw me into their depths almost against my will. His head bent slowly to me as if to inhale the air from my lungs.

  Suddenly he straightened and stepped back, withdrawing his hand. I turned to find my husband framed in the doorway to the Red Room. He was looking at Henry, his mouth holding the implacable smile I had come to mistrust.

  “Henry!” he said. “How good to see you, my boy! New York has served you well by the look of you!”

  This was patently untrue. Henry’s color was gone; he hardly seemed the same man. New York had aged him by several years. Yet I did not contradict my husband—nor would he likely have heard me if I had, as he clapped Henry on the shoulder and drew him into the parlor.

  There they talked for the rest of the afternoon. I went in and out, offering tea and cake, in the midst of tending my household tasks. I hoped my husband would invite me to sit with them, but his annoyed expression made it all too plain that he regarded each entry as an intrusion. I stood in the hall outside the parlor, my eyes closed, listening as Henry related his New York adventures to my husband. Life there, he said, was superficial and hectic.

  “The atmosphere of the apartments—there are no spirits in them and only the echoes of real voices. Even the children cry with less inwardness and depth than in a Concord cottage. William’s sons are only average scholars. They cannot hold a candle to their cousin Ellen’s brilliance.” He announced he did not think he was made to be a tutor, but must find some other occupation that better suited his nature.

  I could no longer restrain myself. “The only occupation that truly suits you,” I said, stepping boldly into the room, “is poet and philosopher. You are a true observer of nature. Are you not happiest when you’re tramping through someone’s field or strolling in Walden Woods?”

  He did not laugh, as I expected—he didn’t even smile. He glanced at me quickly, then looked away.

  “Lidian,” Mr. Emerson said, “Henry needs peace rather than advice for now.”

  I left the room without complaint—how well I held my tongue that afternoon! —but not happily. I retired to my chamber and opened my Bible, trying to find some means of mastering my anger, but though I read psalm after psalm, not one offered relief. In fact, their repeated references to persecutions merely reminded me of my situation and increased my rancor. I tried to pray, but my words were hollow shells in my mouth. Finally I rose and paced back and forth in an attempt to subdue my emotions, but it was no use. The injustice of my situation overwhelmed me. My husband had denied me—and apparently meant to continue denying me—what I valued most in the world—conversation with my dearest friend.

  In a fury, I dashed off a note. “I need to meet with you alone,” I wrote. “I long for your company! I’ll go tonight to the low place by the riverbank where we used to take the children to play. Mr. Emerson has claimed your afternoon. Let me claim your evening.” When I heard the study door open, I swept downstairs and slipped the note to Henry as he passed on his way out.

  That evening, as a pale moon rose over Concord’s harvested fields, and a light frost touched the sheaves of corn bundled for winter storage, I complained of a headache and excused myself from the overheated parlor to get some fresh air. Mr. Emerson, who was elaborating his thoughts on the nature of experience to Ellery Channing and Elizabeth Hoar, merely nodded in response to my declaration, and as I wrapped up in my warmest shawl, I reflected that his lack of feeling did much to spare me from a proper guilt.

  I glided out the kitchen door and into my garden, where I quickly followed the path down to the river. The thickets and brambles bordering the path caught at my dress and tore my petticoat. Yet I hurried along, for only rapid movement could govern my agitation.

  As I approached our rendezvous spot, my fear grew that Henry would not be there, that either his family obligations or his own judgment would keep him from leaving home that night. Then very softly, and at first, almost inaudibly, the notes of a flute were borne to me on the wind.

  PERHAPS IT WAS the cover of the darkness, or the soft mystery with which the moon illuminated the familiar landscape, but what occurred that night between Henry and me seemed to take place in a realm not of this world. It was as if I’d stepped across an invisible boundary between earth and heaven into a place where the old laws no longer applied.

  As I approached the riverbank, Henry, who’d had been seated on a rock, rose, put away his flute, and extended his hands. In an instinctive and most natural gesture, I clasped them and drew him close.

  “I have missed you so!” I whispered. “I could hardly bear it this afternoon—to see you and yet not be able to talk with you!”

  “It was the same for me.” He put his arms around me, pressing me to him.

  A sensation of absolute peace flowed through me. I felt in that moment as if I had finally come home after wandering for years. My head perfectly fitted the hollow of his shoulder and my breasts conformed to the contours of his chest. The scent of dry leaves poured over me. I breathed his name.

  “You’re shivering!” he said, and indeed, I was trembling lightly but not from cold. He insisted on leading me back up the path and into the barn, where we climbed into the loft and arranged ourselves amid the heaps of warm straw by spreading out one of the horse blankets piled there.

  We sat for some time, simply talking, with a deep and abiding joy in each other’s presence. Then, as the moon rose higher and disappeared from the small window that overlooked the nest we had made, a kind of darkness overtook us, and we fell into a profound silence.

  I do not believe I intended our encounter to lead where it did. Sitting with Henry in the darkness of the barn loft, enfolded in the sweet hay, warmed by the proximity of our bodies, having discovered anew the supreme satisfaction of our conversation, I was chiefly aware that the grief that had overwhelmed me for months was gone. My pleasure—my rising delight—stemmed as much from pure relief as from any animal attraction.

  Perhaps it was the same for him. When we leaned close to each other at the same moment, it seemed both wondrous and inevitable. I opened my arms eagerly and moved against him.

  He kissed the top of my head; his hand stroked the length of my back and found its way to my neck. I caught my breath; he murmured my name. Then, in a fluid motion that seemed as inevitable as sunrise, he covered me with his body.

  For one timeless and inexpressible moment, I was flooded with joy. I felt supremely, astonishingly cherished. I had not imagined that a man’s body could elicit such a powerful sensation. For the first time in my life I understood that in sanctioning intimacy between man and woman, God had ordained joy.

  It was only later, when we lay side by side in darkness, Henry dozing with his head on my breast, that I woke to the full burden of what I had done.

  23

  Transgressions

  Love is the profoundest of secrets.

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU
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  I slid my arm from beneath Henry’s head and reached for my clothes. I still felt his warmth and weight along the length of my body, as if his skin had left an indelible impression, a memorial to our passion. Yet as soon as I began to rise the pleasure faded—too frail to withstand even the trivial reality of buttoning my bodice and skirts around me. I recognized a third presence beside us there in the hayloft, a presence no more substantial than a word, but as real as a guest I had invited—adulteress.

  The word spoke over and over in my heart as I gathered my hair, pushed the pins back into it, and tucked it into my cap. The straw that had been beneath our blanket only moments before now stabbed my arms and legs. A wintry wind had invaded the loft during our embrace, a cold that I would normally have welcomed but that now turned my skin hard and coarse. I pulled my shawl around me but its extra weight did not warm me.

  Henry lay naked on his back, one leg crooked out and bent at the knee, his arms angled as well, curved upward beside his head. He looked appallingly young.

  I closed my eyes and bent my face into the darkness of my hands. Not only had I betrayed my husband, I had corrupted a man who I was certain had lived a life of virtue and chastity until that evening. A man whose soul was purer than any I’d encountered. I had deliberately seduced him—had arranged our meeting, accompanied him into the loft, and leaned into his body as eagerly as a harlot. I had erred wantonly and knowingly and God would not offer pardon to such a sinner.

  I covered Henry with one of the heavy horse blankets. I did not know how long he might sleep, but if he were like Mr. Emerson in his intimate habits, he would slumber soundly for some time. I thought it strange that the act of passion so completely exhausted a man. I found myself invigorated, profoundly awake.

  I longed to wake Henry, to again press my face into the hollow of his shoulder, to obtain from him the relief of affection, if not absolution. But I swallowed my impulse, knowing that doing so would only compound my guilt. I was solitary in my sin, utterly alone as I’d been the night my mother died.