“Sea-born Treasures”
Visitors often ask about the handsome shells over several of the fireplaces in the Emerson House. In the Study, two rather skull-like helmet conches flank a small framed silhouette of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s younger brother, Edward Bliss Emerson (1805-1834). In the Nursery, a pair of castellated and pink-lined queen conches adorn the mantel. In the northwest bedroom, originally occupied by Emerson’s mother Ruth, a second pair of helmet conches sit amid a display of pictures anchored by a bas-relief of Emerson’s youngest brother, Charles Chauncy Emerson (1808-1836). The distinctive seventh shell, smaller and more deeply colored than the others, has come to rest on the mantel in the “Red Room,” across the hall from the Study.
Recently, an Emerson scholar confirmed that these shells were brought home from the Caribbean by Charles after visiting Edward in Puerto Rico. [1] Like many 19th-century New Englanders, Emerson and his younger brothers Edward and Charles all suffered from tuberculosis (abbreviated as TB and formerly called “consumption”). They were among those who sought respite in warm climates with hopes of arresting or curing the contagious, life-threatening bacterial disease which was the leading cause of death in Emerson’s time. [2]
In November of 1826, shortly after being certified to preach, Emerson sailed to Charleston, South Carolina and then on to St. Augustine, Florida, for his health, returning to Boston the following June. By the spring of 1831, after a winter sojourn in St. Croix, his brother Edward had left the Virgin Islands for San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he resided until his death from TB on October 1, 1834, at the age of 29. Brother Charles spent the winter of 1831-1832 visiting Edward in San Juan, apparently the source of the conch shells now at the Emerson House.
TB would ultimately claim Charles too, at the age of 27, on May 9, 1836 in New York City; he died at the home of his older brother William (1801-1868), the eldest of the five Emerson children who lived to adulthood. Despite displaying symptoms of tuberculosis, Emerson outlived all his siblings, and was only a month shy of his 79th birthday when he passed away in the spring of 1882, at home in Concord. [3]
Silhouette of Edward Bliss Emerson on the mantel in the Emerson House Study, flanked by helmet conches. Photo by R. Davis.
One of a pair of queen conches which adorn the Nursery mantel in the Emerson House. Photo by R. Davis.
Sophia Peabody Hawthorne’s bas-relief sculpture of Charles Chauncy Emerson on the mantel in the northwest bedroom, between helmet conches. Photo by R. Davis.
This glossy, cameo-colored helmet conch over the “Red Room” fireplace served as a decorative doorstop in Emerson’s day. Photo by R. Davis.
In his famous 1847 poem, “Each and All,” Emerson characterized shells on the beach as “sea-born treasures,” secondary tokens of the primary experience of being at the ocean. [4] As a philosopher, he may have considered the mollusk skeletons as memento mori, reminders of our shared mortality. As a brother, it is more than likely the natural specimens on his mantels reminded him of the untimely losses of Edward and Charles. A seeker of beauty as well as truth, no doubt Emerson also admired the expression of the infinite in the marble coils of the shells.
— R. Davis, Emerson House guide
WORKS CITED OR CONSULTED:
Emerson scholar Kate Culkin recently confirmed the provenance of the shells while reading Ellen Tucker Emerson’s unpublished memoir of her father, a work now shelved at Harvard’s Houghton Library. Culkin’s research culminated in her recent dual biography, Emerson’s Daughters: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and Their Family Legacy (U. Mass., 2025).
Manoli-Skocay, Constance. “A Gentle Death: Tuberculosis in 19th Century Concord.” https://concordlibrary.org/special-collections/essays-on-concord-history/a-gentle-death-tuberculosis-in-19th-century-concord. Accessed 12 December, 2025. Web.
Detailed chronology of the Emerson brothers’ lives and travels was drawn from Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson’s The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters (Oxford UP, 2006).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Each and All.” In Collected Poems & Translations. Harold Bloom and Paul Kane, eds. NY: Literary Classics of the United States. Library of America, Vol #70. Page 9. 1994. Print.
