One of life’s underrated pleasures is that of reading an old, old book.
For the past few days, I’ve been working my way through an aged copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Representative Men.”
This particular volume I picked up at a used bookstore in Concord, Massachusetts. Its artfully ribbed spine caught my eye when it sat on the shelf. When I plucked it from its spot, its decorated leathery cover and pleasing heft seduced me.
It was published as part of a set of Emerson’s works by a London house, George Routledge and Sons, Limited, in 1899. On the inside of the front cover, there is a bookplate—presumably from the original owner, one Elisha Rhodes Brown.
A little bit of research told me that Brown was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 28, 1847. He was part of the family that helped build Providence and lent its name to Brown University.
He migrated to Dover, New Hampshire, late in his adolescence. He worked for a short time as a printer, then briefly clerked in a store before becoming a teller at the Stafford National Bank.
From that perch, he climbed the ladder until he became president of the bank when he was 50, a position he held until he died on Christmas Day, 1922, when he was 75.
The most prevalent photo of him shows a severe-looking gentleman wearing wire-rim glasses and a dark suit of material that looks as heavy as a tarp. His hair is parted in the middle, and he has a trimmed Lincoln-style beard with no moustache.
He looks every inch the sober 19th-century man of business.
He must have been a bookish fellow, too. Emerson’s writing never has been the stuff of light diversion.
I haven’t read Emerson since my graduate school days decades ago.
Back then, I didn’t care much for Transcendentalism’s sage. His almost promiscuous use of semi-colons made his prose seem distant and affected, so arch that it made it difficult for me to engage with his thinking.
Now, though, that I’ve moved to a later season of my life, I find Emerson’s style less dense and more inviting. This makes it easier to appreciate his insights, the movement of his agile mind at work and at play.
His breakthrough thought, of course, was a sense that the divine was not something separate from us, but something all around us and part of us. In other words, God was transcendent, embodied in every aspect of creation.
Thus, he elevated a walk in the woods to being a spiritual act. A hike became an ambulatory form of prayer.
Emerson’s inclusive theology sparked a kind of revolution in the 19th century, one that spread across the faith traditions and lingers to this day.
We now pray to a far less distant God in part because of Emerson’s nature-inspired and more intimate notions of the sacred and the divine.
I’ve always been fascinated by the physical history of books.
As I read this particular tome, its weight comfortable in my hands, I could not help but wonder what prompted Elisha Rhodes Brown to buy his Emerson set more than 100 years ago.
Did he have a fascination with Transcendentalism?
Or did he just love books?
Did he have a library in his home with a comfortable chair where, after spending a workday calculating balances and authorizing or rejecting loans, he fed the part of his soul that banking did not? Or did he settle himself in a parlor with his book in hand?
Did he read Emerson for pleasure or out of some sense of spiritual hunger?
Did this book bring him peace or set his spirit on a quiet quest?
This is the beauty of old books.
If the spine of this volume hadn’t spoken to me in a Massachusetts bookshop, I likely wouldn’t have started reading Ralph Waldo Emerson again. I wouldn’t have thought afresh about the idea of a transcendent divinity whose presence is within and all around us.
Nor would I have encountered Elisha Rhodes Brown or contemplated the arc of his life, a life that ended on Christmas Day 102 years ago.
Books tell us two stories.
One comes from the words on the pages.
The other can be found in the lines they write upon minds, hearts and souls as they work their way through time.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
This post was originally published on here
