My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau's Relationship with Emerson

by Harmon Smith

Henry David Thoreau was a twenty-year-old scholarship student at Harvard when he met Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837. Emerson, fourteen years Thoreau's senior and independently wealthy, had recently shaken the intellectual world of New England with the publication of Nature . Despite the disparity in their circumstances, Thoreau and Emerson quickly formed a close relationship that lasted until Thoreau's death at the age of forty-four. This book tells the story of their friendship. Harmon Smith emphasizes their personal bond, but also shows how their relationship affected their thought and writing, and was in turn influenced by their careers.Without Emerson's interest and support, it is unlikely that Thoreau could have expended the energy on writing that enabled him to achieve greatness. By inviting Thoreau into his home to live during two different periods in the 1840s, Emerson effectively made Thoreau "one of the family." He provided him with work, lent him money, and allowed him to build a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond. Emerson also broadened Thoreau's horizon immeasurably by introducing him to an ever-widening circle of friends and colleagues.Although the bond between Thoreau and Emerson was strong, their needs were often greatly at variance. While this led to a prolonged period of estrangement between them, they were ultimately able to reconcile their differences. Many years after Thoreau died, Emerson could look back over his long life and say that Henry had been his best friend. Since the thoughts and feelings of the two men are so well documented in their journals and letters, Smith is able to trace the pattern of their emotional involvement in great detail. What emerges is both a remarkable portrait of their relationship and an intimate look at the nature of friendship itself.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Alan Rohwer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a while ago but missed dates

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable and knowledgeable account of the relationship between Thoreau and Emerson, with their agreements and disagreements and the emotional responses to the same. Here is a good quote (p.141). "While Thoreau ultimately was forced to construct a mythology of his own to express himself adequately, Emerson had slowly evolved a philosophy to incorporate his ideas." For Thoreau experience led to understanding; for Emerson it was transcendental ideas drawn from nature. Thus there were tensions in the relationship.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A treatment of Emerson and Thoreau that weaves their two biographies together, casting light on the nature of Transcendental friendship. A motif is the ideal of friendship and the failure of their lived experience to meet their hopes and expectations of themselves and each other. My only qualm was the author's assumptions, unfounded for the most part, that Thoreau's supposedly Oedipal relationship with his mother was the source of his relational troubles. It struck me as projection masquerading as scholarly fact, a move that is dangerous to readers using the book for research purposes.