The next spring, we repaired the leaking roof over the back of the house, and finished a large bedchamber above the parlor for Mr. Emerson and myself. Henry’s chamber was opened into a hallway, leading from the front-stairs landing to the back of the house. The room Henry had occupied was gone.
THE ABOLITIONIST John Brown came to Concord in January of 1859 seeking funds. He was such a polite and gentle man I could not credit the rumors that circulated of his involvement in the atrocities in Kansas. I regarded him as the trumpet of God, calling the nation to righteousness.
I rejoiced when war came, convinced the beginning that it was a holy struggle and that God ordained its course. When the men who had enlisted left Concord, I was at the railway station to salute them. What courage they displayed! Their sacrifice for the grandest of causes stirred my heart. How much more valuable is a life lived for a noble purpose!
I believe that Henry would have volunteered to join the army had his failing body allowed it, for his hatred of slavery would have permitted him no other choice. But by the time the first shells fell upon Fort Sumter, he was already in the advanced stages of consumption. He still took long walks and frequented my parlor, but one look at his face told me how ill he was. His eyes were sunken and there was an ashen cast to his skin. He coughed incessantly and no longer went abroad in the early mornings. He grew a beard in emulation of John Brown, though I believe it was also an attempt to hide his wasted features. The gray and white tangle of hair gave him the appearance of a sage and, curiously, made him look older than my husband. Something in Henry seemed to soften and settle. He grew less combative, less judgmental of the opinions and actions of others. This was a phenomenon I’d observed before in the very ill. Usually I found it cheering, but in Henry’s case, it merely increased my sorrow.
THE LAST TIME I saw Henry was in January of 1862. I was putting linens away upstairs, and when I came down I found him standing quite still at the bottom of the stairs. It was typical for him to come unexpectedly and let himself in the east entrance, and so my only surprise was the advanced debilitation of his features. There was no denying the fact that he was dying. The bones of his wrists looked sharp and abnormally large beneath his thin skin. An incessant rattle came from his lungs, yet his face was remarkably peaceful.
After a moment he seemed to start awake, as if out of a dream, and, glancing up, he saw me. His gaunt features brightened. “Ah, Lidian! You look well.”
“And you?” The lace of my cap brushed my cheek. “How are you faring?”
“Let’s not talk of that.” He smiled. “I was just recalling one of our winter outings with the children, the year Waldo was in Europe. We skated on the river—do you remember? It was Eddy’s first—” He broke off to cough into his hand, then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it hard against his mouth. My stomach clenched, for the gesture reminded me of my mother in her last months. There was the same hectic flush in his cheeks, the same circle of ashen skin around his mouth. When his seizure subsided, he wiped his mouth carefully. I could see flecks of scarlet on his handkerchief. He caught my glance and stuffed the cloth quickly into his pocket.
“There’s no need for alarm. It’s as good to be sick as to be well. It makes no difference to my spirits.”
I studied him to determine if he were telling the truth, though I knew it was not in Henry to lie. The words he spoke were always sincere, if sometimes paradoxical. It was his silences that held the darkness.
“I assure you, it’s true—I enjoy life now, as much as ever, though I have little of it left.” He paused and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “So they tell me. But one never knows about these things, does one? I could live to be a hundred. It would not surprise me.”
It was a jest, and a dark one, yet I mustered the strength to join in. “Nor I.” I returned his smile. “I’ve always thought you are like one of your venerable and beloved trees—built to endure for generations.”
He shook his head. “It would be a curse to endure for more than one. I’m content to have lived where and when I have.” His gaze had softened though it still penetrated; his eyes that day were the hue of the sea before a storm. “Yet there are other lives I would willingly have lived,” he added quietly.
I sucked in my breath. “As would I,” I whispered.
He smiled and I tried to smile back at him, but my mouth would not work properly. Nor would my stinging eyes, for his face rippled and blurred.
“Lidian.”
Something broke inside me. I turned and rushed up the stairs, no longer able to bear the sight of his sad expression, knowing as I fled that I would never see him again in this life. Knowing that he did not believe in another.
For the last three months of his life, Henry was confined to his house under the scrutiny of his mother, while his sister Sophia ministered to him as tenderly as a wife. On the afternoon of May sixth, Mr. Emerson came home at midday with the news that Henry had died that morning around nine o’clock. He stood in the hallway with his head bowed—I could not see his eyes. “I called at the house and Sophia met me at the door. She said it was very beautiful.” He hesitated and took a long breath. “There were birds at the window, and spring sunshine pouring over him.”
I said nothing, but bent my head away from him and shortly retired to my chamber. I stood at the window, staring out at the garden, where the lilacs were budding, though they would not bloom for another three weeks. My hands found their way to my heart and rested there, one on top of the other, as if their weight might still the incessant beating that would not give me rest.
Mr. Emerson insisted that Henry’s funeral be held in the First Parish Church. This over my objection and the puzzlement of Henry’s friends, who quickly perceived the irony in it. More curiously, Mr. Emerson took charge of all the arrangements. I never learned how my husband wrested that right from Cynthia and Sophia. Perhaps he appealed to Cynthia’s vanity. By that time my husband had become so famous that wherever he turned his regard, attention followed.
The funeral was held at three in the afternoon on the ninth of May. The weather was mild and the air redolent with flowers. Birds sang as the church bell tolled once for each of Henry’s forty-four years. I leaned on Mr. Emerson’s arm as we walked near the head of the long mourning procession. Henry’s coffin stood in the church vestibule, covered in wildflowers. I stood a moment, gazing down at it and, without pausing to consider the significance of my gesture, I stepped to the coffin and caressed it. How I longed to raise the lid and look once again on Henry’s dear face! But the coffin was closed, as Henry himself had requested. What was death to look upon? he had said. It was life one must be about.
The service began with the reading of selected Bible passages, and then the choir sang a hymn written by Ellery Channing. Bronson Alcott read a few passages from Henry’s own writings, and my husband delivered a eulogy that moved many to tears. Then Henry’s body was carried to the graveyard at the end of Bedford Street. A long procession followed, including hundreds of schoolchildren bearing armfuls of flowers.
The coffin was lowered and more prayers spoken. As the first shovelful of earth dropped into the grave, I let out a small gasp. But that was all. I shed no tears, spoke no memorable words. My body felt as cold as a corpse.
I looked down at the grass by my feet, where early violets were blooming.
As my husband turned away from the grave, he spoke the words I’d so often spoken in private, but with which he had never before concurred, “He had a beautiful soul.”
Within days of the funeral, Mr. Emerson had appropriated Henry’s letters and journals from Sophia and locked himself away with them in his study. For weeks he pored over the papers, reading them with the concentration of a hunter. What was it that he sought? Was it—as he encouraged his friends to believe—a simple thirst for wisdom? Did he mean to ferret out proof of his influence over Henry? Or—and this was my fear—was he searching for evidence of my intimacy with Henry? If so, he rem
ained unsatisfied, for all mention of me had long since been torn from Henry’s journals.
The only record of our affection lay in the small garret room above my bedchamber. There, hidden under a floorboard, resting in a wooden box Henry had given me one Christmas, were the letters he had written me. They were filled with all the tenderness and devotion I’d longed to receive from my husband. I read them over in times of loneliness and despair, climbing the attic steps as one might climb the stairs to heaven, for my heart always lightened, knowing what I would find.
There were sixteen letters, written over the course of nearly twenty years, and I’d read every one so many times I knew them all by heart. Yet my pulse still quickened when I unfolded one and held the yellowed pages, clasping them with as much tenderness as I’d once held my babes. No matter how many years passed, Henry’s words never failed to bring both pain and solace. The script had faded on the page, but the words were branded into my heart.
I cannot tell where you leave off and I begin. I love you as I love my own flesh, for I have annexed your soul to mine, as a man annexes a new field and it becomes part of his farm … I can love you purely, knowing you will demand of me only my best self. You complete me … My heart will always answer to your heart. Your presence enhances my entire life, and makes tbe flowers bloom and the birds sing with new delight. All the days of the year are fair because of you …
Tucked in the folded page of one letter was a sprig of dried andromeda. It was Henry’s favorite plant. He admired its delicacy of form, the elegant narrow leaves and pure white blossoms, shaped like tiny bells. For years, he had brought me small bouquets of it from his woodland excursions. Now, one dried ivory floweret was all that remained.
THE YEARS BURST around me, like pods of milkweed in late August, erupting in filaments that sailed past on the wind of time. In 1862, my husband traveled to Washington, met President Lincoln, and delivered a speech urging the immediate emancipation of the slaves. A year later, Mr. Lincoln proclaimed that emancipation and I celebrated that Day of Jubilee as I had no other. When the president was assassinated, I mourned with the rest of the Union. In 1865, Edith married Will Forbes, who had courted her for seven long years. The next year my husband woke me one morning to announce that I was now a grandmother. Edith had given birth to a son. Little Ralph was followed in 1867 by Violet, and eventually by seven others, three of whom died while still children. Life always brings endings as well as beginnings. In 1868, Louisa Alcott published the book that made her famous, while I nursed my sister through her final illness. Lucy went to her rest as quietly as dark shadows leave a room at dawn. In 1871, Edward became engaged to Annie Keyes and my husband traveled to California. Then, one spring afternoon in 1872, Mr. Emerson returned from his walk with soot in his hair and the news that the grove of trees Henry had planted by Walden Pond had burned.
“The pines?” I recalled Henry’s bright smile the evening he returned from planting the seedlings.
“Yes,” Mr. Emerson said, nodding. “All gone. A few may survive. Three or four. Perhaps half a dozen.”
I pictured the low hillside in flames and my stomach twisted. “I cannot bear it,” I said aloud.
Mr. Emerson looked at me. “You cannot bear it? It’s not your land, Lidian. It’s mine. When was the last time you even set foot near the pond?”
“There are things you do not know.”
“I know you spend weeks at a time in Plymouth. I know you putter in your garden as if the quantity and size of your roses made some difference in the world. I know you fret endlessly for the children’s welfare, and not at all for mine.” He rose slowly. “I know enough, I think.” And then he walked past me and into his study, where he firmly shut the door.
Something in me released when that door shut. It was as if a hidden cyst burst open, expelling years of pain. I followed him and, without knocking, thrust open the door. He was seated in his rocking chair at the table, shuffling papers.
“Care not for your welfare!” I stood in the doorway, bracing one hand on each side of the frame. He scowled up at me. “Why do you imagine I have stayed with you all these years if it was not because I care for you?”
He dropped the papers and leaned back in his chair, which rocked gently beneath him. “Why? Because you believe God will punish you if you leave me.”
“No,” I said. “You are wrong, Mr. Emerson! I no longer worship the chastening God of my childhood. It’s because I love you that I stay married. Love you despite all the disappointments and deficiencies in our union.”
He looked stricken, his countenance unnaturally pale, his mouth open, waiting for words he could not find. For a terrible moment I wondered if he’d fallen into an apoplectic fit. I went to him and reached to touch his face, but he caught my hand and rocked back in his chair, making me lose my balance. I fell against the table and, putting out my free hand to steady myself, caught up a sheaf of papers. I looked at them as I righted myself, and my eyes caught the words: I have no facility for society or love, nothing but a bleak determination.
Startled, my gaze flashed to meet my husband’s and I perceived what I never had before: Mr. Emerson’s lack of confidence, his childlike yearning for approval and admiration. I saw the boy he had been—had never ceased being—beneath the familiar lines of his aging face. I dropped the papers.
“Waldo,” I whispered, surprising myself as well as my husband by using the name I’d forsworn. I put my arms around him and pressed his puzzled face to my breast. “Oh, Waldo, how could you not have known?”
I heard a sound come from him—a strangled moan—and then his arms went around me and he pulled me down onto his lap. He pressed his face to my breast and I cradled him there as naturally as I would a babe. After some time, he raised his head. I saw that he was as astonished as I by this new and unfamiliar intimacy. His expression was so unguarded—so utterly defenseless—that I could not stop myself from kissing him on the mouth—a liberty I’d not taken in years. He murmured my name and put his hand to my cheek, the tenderest of gestures.
We sat in mutual silence for a long time. Finally I slid off his lap and left him to his papers. I went out to the garden, feeling less encumbered than I had in years.
That night, after Mr. Emerson retired, I burned Henry’s letters in the kitchen stove. The little packet, tied with a blue ribbon worn to shreds, recorded Henry’s generous love in bold handwriting that marched across the pages as vigorously as he had marched through my life.
One by one, I opened the letters and read them. One by one, I dropped them into the flames.
I was free.
FOR MR. EMERSON, the end came in 1882 with merciful simplicity. On the nineteenth of April, he came home from his afternoon walk drenched by a cold rain. The next morning, as Ellen helped him descend the stairs, he cried out and staggered as if he had been struck a blow. He began to experience pain early on the evening of the twenty-seventh. Edward gave him ether, for nothing else would calm him. I sat beside him and stroked his hand, determined to watch through the night. He died just before nine, with a slow and gentle exhalation, much as Henry had described Wallie’s death so many years ago—like mist rising from a pond.
I did not weep. I rose and went down the hall and into the room that had been my bridal chamber, where I stood at the window staring out at the night sky. There were no stars. The church bell began to toll out my husband’s death. Seventy-nine long peals, one for each year of his life. The chimes seemed to go on forever in the April darkness.
IT SNOWED during the night. I rose just before dawn and went to the window where I’d stood the night before. Ice crystals frosted the lower pane, forming tiny white ferns. I looked down at the rhodora blossoms, drooping under their burden of snow. How perfectly the snow symbolized God’s mercy, falling unnoticed through the darkness, transforming everything.
I touched the frosted glass with the tip of my finger. The edge of a fern instantly dissolved into silver beads of water, and I saw how plainly the
lesson was writ—that I could destroy a thing of beauty with thoughtless ease. I was no different from anyone else, despite the many years I’d striven for perfection. The more I strove, the more deeply I’d become mired in sin. My life had been fixed on coupled stars—from my double baptism and two names, and my twofold home of Plymouth and Concord, to the twin constellation of my attraction to Mr. Emerson and Henry Thoreau.
Yet God had set only one North Star to guide the sojourner, fixed a single design at the heart of creation.
I gazed out at the yard where my snow-shrouded garden lay in shadow, waiting. A tongue of pink light licked the horizon and glimmered over Bris-tor’s Hill. Soon the sun would rise and fill the tracks of rabbits and birds with light; the snow would melt and the rhodoras would open their petals. Each day there was this gift of possibility, this emblem of mercy, showing that forgiveness is the North Star of the soul. The only warranty of love.
She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.
If aught she missed in her new day
Of amplitude, or awe,
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away,
It lay unmentioned, as the sea
Develops pearl, and weed,
But only to himself is known
The fathoms they abide.
—EMILY DICKINSON
Author’s Note
Lidian Jackson Emerson survived her husband by nearly ten years. She died on November 13, 1892, at the age of ninety, having outlived nearly all the members of her social circle. Although I have included many real events from Lidian’s life in the novel, her motivations, perspective, and personality are my invention. History, tethered by fact, cannot probe very far into the dark fissures and bright voids of life. Mr. Emerson’s Wife explores the “cracks” in the historical record, the places we do not—cannot—know. It tells what “might have been.” Like all fiction, it is an attempt to explore not merely the truth of chronology, but the truth of the human condition.
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