Happy Father’s Day
Ralph Waldo & Lidian Emerson with their children and grandchildren at the Emerson House in 1879. Standing, L-R: Edward Emerson, Edward Forbes, Ellen Emerson, Edith Forbes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cameron Forbes, Lidian Jackson Emerson, Don Forbes, Ralph Forbes. Seated, L-R: Annie Keyes Emerson, Charles Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes holding Waldo Forbes.
O dearest, dearest boy! My heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn—from “Anecdote for Fathers” by William Wordsworth, whom Emerson met while touring Europe in 1833.
While Father’s Day did not officially commence until 1910, fathers have always been an important part of the family unit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was descended from strong and committed men. His grandfather William Emerson Sr. was a minister who watched the battle unfold at the North Bridge in Concord in 1775 and became a chaplain to the Continental Army. His father, William Emerson, was also a minister, serving at the First Church in Boston from 1799 until his death in 1811. Emerson’s step-grandfather, Ezra Ripley, was the minister in Concord and, as a boy, Emerson often stayed with Ripley and his grandmother at the Old Manse.
Emerson was only eight years old when his father died. The family’s long history influenced his decision to join the ministry himself in 1828, and his father’s preaching and literary efforts certainly also had an effect on him.
Emerson fathered four children with his wife Lidian: Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward. He was a devoted father who always had time for his offspring. Waldo, the first born, unfortunately succumbed to scarlet fever at the age of five. As a little boy he often would follow Emerson into the garden and watch him struggle to work with tools effectively. On one occasion, Waldo told his father, “Papa, I am afraid you will dig your leg.”
Ellen recalled, “By the time I was eleven I began to ask questions…I remember not only the immense pleasure I was having…and how good it was of Father to go into the business so minutely and faithfully, and evidently to have as good a time as I did over.”
“I have always thought my Father was very wise in his dealing with children,“ Edith wrote. “…if at table we were disputing, not quite pleasant, silly or giggling, my Father used to say ‘Edith, run out to the front gate and look at the clouds.’ It was a charming diversion.” On Sundays, Emerson took his children on long walks in the woods, pointing out flowers and tree types and sharing the names of the birds and their songs.
Edward remarked that his father “…had the grace to leave to his children, after they began to grow up, the responsibility of deciding in more important questions concerning themselves, for which they cannot be too grateful to him; he did not command or forbid, but laid the principles and the facts before us and left the case in our hands.”
“His written and spoken words reached young people...and often brought them to him for counsel, and it was this:
‘Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.’”
— B. Ewen, Emerson House guide
