In An Unpublished Letter to His Cousin, Ralph Waldo Emerson Praises Henry David Thoreau’s School, And In Seeking Its Replacement After It Closed, Outlines His Vision of a Successful Education

The only letter of Emerson referencing Thoreau or his school we can find reaching the public market in decades

If Henry David Thoreau was the heart of the Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson was its mind.  A Unitarian minister, Emerson rebelled against the institutional thinking of the establishment, authoring essays that embraced nature, independent thought, and God.  He spent a lifetime developing and encouraging others to develop a purely American body of literature, recognizing the talent of a young Thoreau and Walt Whitman, of whose work he wrote, “I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion.”

After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William in a school for young women established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his brother William went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School.  This was in the 1820s.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".

Meanwhile, in 1838, Henry David Thoreau, who also went to Harvard, and brother John Thoreau, were engaged with their own school, the Concord Academy, which opened in 1838.  There they taught the English disciplines, as well as Latin and Greek.  They rented the Academy House and managed to fill it with students.  During this period, Henry met and befriended Emerson, who had a special place in his heart for Thoreau’s school. They both, after all, had started their careers as schoolmasters.

1841 was a monumental year in the lives of both Thoreau and Emerson. In March of 1841, Emerson published Essays, the First Series, which put in print many of his great speeches, among them the Divinity School Address. It was only his second publication and a major step forward in his career and notoriety.  In early April, Thoreau closed his school because his brother John got sick, an illness that would kill him.  This would devastate Henry and he never re-opened the school.  For Emerson, the Academy’s closure represented both a sad step for his friend but also a reason for concern, as this former schoolmaster saw that the town was left with no place for proper education.  Emerson took it upon himself to attempt to fill the void left by Thoreau and set about looking for a schoolteacher.

Emerson’s mother’s maiden name was Haskins.  He had a cousin named David Haskins Greene, who also took an interest in Concord’s schoolmaster search.

Autograph letter signed, Concord, April 12, 1841, to his cousin, David Haskins Greene, written just weeks after the closure of Thoreau’s Concord Academy, praising Thoreau’s success at attracting students and outlining what a successful school might look like. "My dear Greene, Mr. Russell declines to accept our proposition as he has just begun a new term at Plymouth.  If you think Mr. Jewett would like to try his fortune here, and will bear out the good name you gave him, I wish you would tell him that our people here have from twenty to thirty pupils ready for him, say at an average of $5.00 per quarter (our custom being to charge $4.00 for the English branches, 6.00 for Latin and Greek) with a power of gradual indefinite increase in the number of pupils.  Mr. Thoreau who left us now 3 weeks ago had 40 scholars and might have reopened his school with 45. The Academy House is usually let to the teacher at $60.00. I wish Mr. Jewett if he inclines to come would come up hither say in the coach which leaves Earl Tavern Hanover Street every morning at 6 and arrives here at 8 1/2 o'clock.  He can make all inquiries and see the facts and persons for himself, perhaps make a better arrangement than to pay so high a rent.  He shall give me the pleasure of his company to dine at 1, and then he can, if he wishes, take the PM coach at 4/12 o'clock to Boston.  Your affectionate cousin, RW Emerson.  All this in the supposition that you will not come yourself.  If you will it were more welcome to us.” The Russell referred to was likely the scholar Le Baron Russell, a Harvard graduate and Plymouth schoolteacher at the time.

Just days after writing this letter, Emerson would tender an invitation to Thoreau to live with him and Thoreau would accept it.  The two lived together for years, a formative period in the younger man’s life.  The relationship between the two is an iconic one in the history of American literature.

As for the schoolmaster, one would arrive a couple weeks later but it would not be either of the men mentioned in Emerson's letter.