Notes from our July 17, 2024 Walking Book Tour
We had a lovely afternoon rambling around the neighborhood surrounding the Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum to walk in the footsteps of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was in the middle of a heat wave and, for those who couldn't make it because of the weather, we gathered our notes so that you can give yourselves a self-guided tour.
INTRODUCTION/STOP 1 at ROTCH-JONES-DUFF HOUSE & GARDEN MUSEUM (“RJD”), 396 County Street
Rick Finneran is the gardener at the RJD. He is also a wealth of information about the neighborhood and its connection to the transcendentalists.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” embodies some of the most prominent themes of the transcendentalist movement in the 19th century. First published in 1841, “Self-Reliance” advocates for individualism and encourages readers to trust and follow their own instincts and intuition rather than blindly adhere to the will of others.
Next to the rose garden, we read a selection from Self-Reliance:
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose “ These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the fullblown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.
STOP #2: Mary Rotch's home, corner of S. 7th Street and Gonsalves Way
Mary Rotch’s home is just across the street, on the corner of S. 7th and Gonsalves Way. Ms. Rotch bequeathed it to the Unitarian Church. Originally on 47 S. 6th Street, it was moved back to its current location to make way for Our Lady of the Assumption that currently sits on the original space. Her home is now the rectory for the church.
Who was Mary Rotch? Mary Rotch was a leading intellectual of her time. She never married and everyone called her “Aunt Mary.” She was friends with both Emerson and Fuller.
From local historian Peggi Medeiros:
Emerson was wont to quote the words of Mary Rotch whenever conversation threatened to become theological. On one occasion after an interval of silence he said Mary Rotch told me that [a] little girl one day asked if she might do something. She replied What does the voice in thee say? The child went off and after a time returned to say Mother the little voice says no. That, said Emerson, calls the tears to one's eyes.
Self-Reliance is all about listening to that inner voice.
Rotch’s friendship with Margaret Fuller lasted until Mary died. She was introduced to Margaret by her niece, Eliza Rotch Farrar, who married a Harvard Professor and took Margaret under her wing. Charles T. Congdon famously quipped, “Eliza Farrar taught Margaret Fuller how to enter a room; and Mary Rotch taught Emerson how to save his soul.”
Margaret Fuller visited Mary Rotch at 47 South Sixth St. It was Mary’s first real home of her own.
On June 23, 1842, Fuller wrote to Emerson from the house.
Dear Waldo,
I feel like writing to you, yet cannot perceive that there is much of a letter lying in my mind. It does not agree with my humor just now to be going about and seeing so many people, and I don’t thrive under it. It is not Aunt Mary’s fault, that I do not exactly as I please, for she is a nonpareil of a hostess in her combination of quiet, courteous attention to the comfort of her guests, with the desire to be alone, whenever it is best... I like Aunt Mary’s dry humor. Have you ever seen that?
Rev. Daniel Harper wrote, “Margaret Fuller’s letters to Mary Rotch talk about health, and travel, and clothing; they are letters one friend would write to another. Margaret’s letters to Aunt Mary show a real love existed between the two.”
An example of a letter from Fuller to Rotch:
“I wore your black dress at Niagara and many other places where I was very happy and it was always an added pleasure thus to be led to think of you. — I wish, dear Aunt Mary, you were near enough for me to go in and see you now and then, I know that, sick or well, you are always serene and sufficient unto yourself…but now you are so much shut up, it might animate existence to hear of some things I might have to tell….”
STOP 3: Friend’s Meeting House in New Bedford, 83 Spring Street
This was where Mary Rotch worshipped until she was expelled. She was a leader of the New Lights, progressive Quakers who believed in the Light Within as a sufficient guide, more important than the Old Light rules of organized religion. Disowned by New Bedford Friends in 1824, she united with Universalists, refusing to participate in certain rituals. (From LIghting the Way, Historic Women of New Bedford.)
As Emerson described her belief:
She was much disciplined, she said, in the years of Quaker dissension, and driven inward, driven home, to find an anchor, until she learned to have no choice, to acquiesce without understanding the reason when she found an obstruction to any particular course of acting.. It was so simple it could hardly be spoken of. It was long, long, before she could attain to anything satisfactory. (From Peggi Medeiros).
Medeiros says: “She must be included among the women whose influence moulded his life… It is even suggested that it may have been the vision of Rotch leaving church when the consecration was to be commemorated which first cast a blight upon that rite in Emerson’s eyes.”
Rick Finneran spoke about Quakerism and its similarity to the transcendentalists movement here.
STOP 4: Unitarian Church, 71 8th Street, New Bedford.
NOTE: On July 17, we did not go here because we shortened the walk given the extreme humidity.
This is not the actual space in which Emerson preached. The original church where he preached was on William Street; the congregation later moved here.
Born into a long line of ministers (he was the seventh generation), Emerson struggled with his faith and eventually left the ministry.
This quote from Self-Reliance is a good one to read inside the space:
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary. Se let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.
STOP 5: Return to RJD Garden
We returned to RJD yard where we discussed Margaret Fuller’s connection to music. Fuller wrote,
The thought of the law that supersedes all thoughts, which pierces us the moment we have gone far in any department of knowledge or creative genius, seizes and lifts us from the ground in music… What the other arts indicate and philosophy infers, this all-enfolding language declares… All truth is comprised in music and mathematics.
She also wrote of music:
Botany had never touched our true knowledge of our favourite flower, but a symphony displays the same attitude and hues; the philosophic historian had failed to explain the motive of our favourite hero, but every bugle calls and every trumpet proclaims him… Music, by the ready medium, the stimulus and the upbearing elasticity it offers for the inspirations of thought, alone seems to present a living form rather than a dead monument to the desires of Genius.
Fuller wrote Lives of the Great Composers which NBSO violinist Adam Jeffrey used to select two violin pieces to perform for us.
“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” Emerson
For our refreshments, we had ginger cookies because we found the recipe in a handwritten book c. 1862 by New Bedford’s Emma Cornelia Ricketson whose father Daniel Ricketson was friends with Emerson and Thoreau.
This program was supported by the New Bedford Cultural Council, the Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum, the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra and the New Bedford Preservation Society.
NEXT UP:
Our next walking book tour will be in October. In the meantime, join us for a special walking tour on New Bedford's waterfront with the Fishing Heritage Center. From 8 to 9, we'll walk along the working waterfront with Phil Mello who provides an entertaining insiders' peak into the waterfront. Afterwards, we'll amble over to the Fishing Heritage Center to check out their exhibits.
This tour is $25 all of which directly goes to the Fishing Heritage Center to support their work. Space is limited so reserve yours right here.
We'll be there and we'll bring coffee for you!!