Emerson : Liberal seer, popular speaker and quiet revolutionary

"Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors." shows that Emerson , libertarian, thinker and popular speaker well understood the wellsprings of politicians minds. Today however the Editors have been bought, and sing, like choristers the tune of the ruling elite, untroubled by conscience or philospophical rigour.

The far sighted author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born 203 years ago on Election Day, the 25th of May, 1803, the 4th child of Williamand Ruth Haskins Emerson a liberally minded minister, pastor of Boston's Oldest church (the First). His mother was the daughter of a successful distiller who no doubt brought prosperity to the marriage and the home.

The American Emerson family claim descent from the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, who left Bedfordshire, England, in 1634 and settled in Musketaquid (an original name of Concord).

Ralph was educated at Boston Latin School, Harvard College (1821), and had an interrupted year of divinity studies at Harvard troubled by eye problems.. Approbated to preach in the fall of 1826, he became pastor of Boston's Second Church two and a half years later, but left that post in the fall of 1832 because he could no longer serve Communion in god conscience.

Tragedy struck when his first wife Ellen Tucker died at the age of 18 of consumption / TB, he set off for Europe on Christmas Day 1832 and first visited Malta (which then did not have a written and codified language). He worked his way north Malta through Italy, Switzerland, France, England, and Scotland. He was fortunate to meet some of the currently admired writers / philosphers such as Walter Savage Landor in Florence, Lafayette in Paris, and visited John Stuart Mill in London, Coleridge in Highgate, and Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. H emt and retained a lasting friendship with Thomas Carlyle.

Returning to the US in late 1833 he soon remarried , had a substantial income of $1,400 annual income from his deceased wife's estate and had a son Waldo. He soon published the first of many books, Nature a collection of essays.

After receiving further settlements from his ex wife's estate and a row with the local Unitarians he set off on the road speaking - a career which ended in him receiving over $100 per lecture - on a par no doubt then with that received today by Cherie Blair as she goes round the world shaking her handbag to pay off the family mortgages.

Emerson went to Europe again in October, 1847, and left his affairs in the hands of his friend Henry Thoreau. A substantial amount of fame (indeed, notoriety) preceded him, and his lectures in England and Scotland were popular and generally well-received. He also managed a short trip to observe revolutionary Paris.

He published his best known (today) book The Conduct of Life in 1860. Emerson was concerned about the coming of Civil War, and saw it as a cleansing fire. lnitially put off by Lincoln's coarseness , Emerson later described him after his death as the "father of his country".

In 1872, after his house burned down in true Balzacian style, he set off with his daughter Ellen to Europe and Egypt, and returned just after his seventieth birthday to a cheering crowd and a restored home. A gentle decline into aphasia had begun. He died on April 27, 1882. Walt Whitman, in a graveside oration said "A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane and clear as the sun."

Much remebered for his many poenetrating quotations , he wrote in his journal in May 1849 " I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."... two memorable ones are ..."Children are all foreigners".. which foreshadows the comment of the 20th Century Iranian Mystic Kahlil Gibran .."Children are not of you, they are by you".

Another "The more he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons" is often quoted, especially about the more insincere and untrustworthy politicians like puffball alcofrolic buffoon Edward Kennedy.

More quotations Here