Imbrication at the Old Manse

On a trip to Lexington and Concord last Fall, a bit disoriented about how to get to the next historical site — back and forth on the one road several times in the car — I finally found the wonderfully converted mansion of the North Bridge Visitor Center far from the parking lot. On a clear warm day I walked the dirt path from the back of the mansion, down the still green hill, looping round and with yellow/gold leaves falling, to the famous, albeit rebuilt, bridge crossing the Concord River.

North Bridge

Following the first skirmish at Lexington on 19 April 1775, this was where approximately 100 British Regulars met Captain James Barrett and his Concord militia, reinforced by neighboring militias that totaled 400 men, to engage in a battle that left five dead and at least a 17 wounded. As Ralph Waldo Emerson memorably put it, it was the shot heard ’round the world.

Very nice to see it. Very nice to get a sense of the geography. Seeing it reset my imagination. And yet ...

About a quarter mile away, and not really on my list of American Revolution sites, was the Old Manse, built in 1770. And so why not? I walked over.

So named because Nathaniel Hawthorne inhabited it and there wrote most of the stories in his second collection of tales, Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), the house is living history. Wood, paint, landscaping have no doubt changed many times. But the foundation, supporting (wood) beams, placement of the windows, room size and function, fireplace, and more, are all intact. History; but now. A thing not recreated but actually existing during the Battle of Lexington / Concord.

The Old Manse

Built in 1770, the Georgian clapboard two-story house was built for William Emerson (1743 - 76), a Unitarian minister, and his family. Reverend Emerson served as chaplain to the Provincial Congress when it met at Concord in 1774 and was chaplain to the Continental Army. On Wednesday morning, 19 April 1775, at least some of the family — maybe all — were at the house and would have witnessed the militia falling back from Concord town to the other side of the North Bridge (a quarter mile away). About 9:30 there was the sound of musket fire; three Regulars and two militia men lay dead; more than a dozen British and four Americans were wounded.

William Emerson, Jr. (1769 - 1811), the only son of the Reverend and Phebe Emerson, was almost six at the time — so he certainly would have remembered the event and grown up celebrating it. He too became a Unitarian minister, a prominent one, and he certainly shared the experience with his own son, Ralph Waldo (1803 - 82), the future essayist, poet, and lecturer. After all, the shot heard ’round the world is from Emerson’s poem, Concord Hymn, sung by the assembled townspeople on 4 July 1837 at the dedication of the monument standing east of the Concord River, townward, on the shore of the no-longer-existing North Bridge.

Monument with North Bridge, c. 1910

After the untimely death of William, Sr. (at age 33 from camp fever while returning from Fort Ticonderoga), Phebe remarried and the Emerson house became the property of her husband, Reverend Ezra Ripley (1751 - 1841). He was the step-grandfather that Ralph Waldo Emerson knew, and he stayed with him while writing his founding transcendentalist work, Nature, published in 1836.

Windowpane inscribed by the Hawthornes

On 9 July 1842 Nathaniel Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in Boston and moved into the Emerson/Ripley house the same day. Emerson, not yet quite sure of Hawthorne’s talent, nevertheless had arranged to have it rented to him for $100 a year. As a wedding gift, Henry David Thoreau (prior to his two years at Walden Pond) planted an extensive vegetable garden for the couple. A delighted Sophia cataloged the bounty in August: peas, beans, beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, cabbages, corn, and tomatoes.

Despite the dark themes in much of Hawthorne’s work, the newlyweds were extraordinarily happy during their three years at the Manse. One can still see the desk that Hawthorne used in the second-floor study, day-lit by the original windowpanes. One day in 1843 the couple used Sophia’s diamond wedding ring to take turns etching into one of them. In small but very clear script Sophia scratched —

To which her husband responded, as if permanently marking his turf —

Sophia next wrote this —

Hawthorne clarified —

But not to be outdone (after all the ring was hers) Sophia closed their alternating playfulness with —

In tactile ways such as this, years overlap and history becomes layered with human patterns we try to discern. Events of global consequence mix with personal — trifling — things which can mean so much.