Kent P. Ljungquist

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 503 THE OREADES HEAR EMERSON IN WORCESTER kent p. ljungquist HE 1855–56 lecture season in Worcester, Massachusetts, in- T cluded such leading lights as William M. Thackeray, Bayard Taylor, George W. Curtis, Thomas Starr King, Theodore Parker, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In a 1992 article published in these pages, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/81/3/503/1791393/tneq.2008.81.3.503.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Wesley T. Mott and I identified the topic of Emerson’s 31 January 1856 lecture there, somewhat tentatively, as “Behavior.”1 A passage from the history of the Oread Collegiate Institute, founded by Eli Thayer (1819–99), serves to correct the record and establish Emer- son’s topic on that date as “Beauty.” When the Oread Collegiate Institute was founded in 1849, Thayer announced his goal to offer women the same opportunity for aca- demic study and intellectual development as men. Although early “female experiments” in postsecondary education preceded the Oread’s, Thayer and his associates claimed that its college curriculum, mod- eled after that of his alma mater Brown University, was the first in the nation designed exclusively for women. Oberlin was the first American college to admit women when it was chartered in 1833.2 Local residents commonly referred to the Oread as “the castle” because it looked feudal and was located on a hill outside the cen- ter of Worcester. On weekends (classes were done for the week on Thursday), the Oreades, named for the mountain nymphs in a passage in Virgil’s Aeneid, accompanied their teacher chaperones to concerts and lectures in the city. Extracts from letters written by one of these students in 1855–56 suggest how educated young women were re- sponding to the prominent speakers who were appearing in Worcester and elsewhere: 1Kent P. Ljungquist and Wesley T. Mott, “Emerson and the Worcester Lyceum, 1855–1857: Two New Letters,” New England Quarterly 65 (June 1992): 290–95. 2See Thomas S. Woody’s chapter, “Colleges for Women,” in his History of Women’s Education in the United States, 2 vols. (New York: Science Press, 1929), 2:137–223, for early experiments in women’s postsecondary and collegiate education at Georgia Female College and other institutions. Woody devotes a paragraph to Thayer’s institute (2:362). Catalogue: Oread Instiute (Worcester: Printed by Earle & Drew, 1854) outlines the four-year course of study, which although it largely mimicked Brown’s, dropped Greek as a requirement. As Woody’s discussion shows, some female seminar- ies eventually became colleges, some remained finishing schools, and others competed with or offered curricular alternatives to men’s colleges. A more complete discussion of Thayer’s pioneering work in women’s education appears in chap. 5 of Franklin P. Rice’s unpublished study, “The Life of Eli Thayer,” available in bound typescript at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. 504 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY I have taken a ticket to a course of ten Lyceum lectures in the city hall. The first was last evening by W. M. Thackeray. It was highly interesting. There are twenty who go from here, and I expect we shall enjoy the lectures much, though I shall have to study pretty hard to get my lessons and go. My studies occupy my time pretty fully. Thursday evening we went down to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson lecture. Was much pleased, as every one seemed to be, yet no one had a very clear idea as to the subject, but his lecture was Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/81/3/503/1791393/tneq.2008.81.3.503.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 mostly on beauty.3 A local columnist was more expansive in his praise for the lecturer: the “budget of epigrams” that highlighted Emerson’s “discussion of beauty” gave “inexpressible pleasure” to his listeners.4 A note in the History of Oread Collegiate Institute identifies the letter writer as Bernette Hill (1837–81), a student at the school from 1855 to 1856. Thayer, whose principalship coincided with his lead- ership of the Emigrant Aid Movement and his efforts to assure that Kansas and the territories remained free from slavery, apparently encouraged Oread students to engage controversies of the moment. Ten days before Emerson’s appearance in Worcester, Hill had been assigned to prepare an address, the aim of which was to incite slaves to insurrection, in a class in rhetoric. The ideas and principles she ei- ther learned or honed at the Oread evidently stayed with her, for Hill, who became Superintendent of Schools in Mendon, Massachusetts, remained committed to various social reforms, including woman suf- frage, temperance, and abolition.5 But at the beginning of January 1856, Emerson was not concerned with expounding on social policy to the audience assembled before him. He rehearsed his lecture on “Beauty,” which he delivered often during his extended lecture tour of the Midwest before returning to New England at the end of January 1856, and he repeated it once again for the Library Association in Taunton on 4 February 1856.6 3History of the Oread Collegiate Institute, Worcester, Mass. (1849–1881); with Biographical Sketches, ed. Martha Burt Wright and Anna M. Bancroft (New Haven, Conn.: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1905), pp. 13–14. 4“Local Intelligence,” Worcester National Aegis, 6 February 1856. 5The preface (pp. vii–xii) to the history of the school gives background on its founding and identifies documents used by the editors. Hill, identified as the letter writer (p. x), is the subject of a biographical sketch (pp. 99–100). 6William Charvat, Emerson’s American Lecture Engagements (New York: New York Public Library, 1961), pp. 31–32, and Albert J. von Frank, An Emerson Chronology (New York: G. K. Hall), pp. 312–13. MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 505 One of Emerson’s epigrams, as reported by the Worcester columnist, defined Beauty as “that about which there is nothing superfluous.” The Taunton Democrat reviewer restated the formulation as “True beauty consists in the thorough purgation of all superfluities.”7 In the essay “Beauty,” which appeared in The Conduct of Life (1860), Emerson noted that beauty has “no superfluous parts” and declared that “The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. ‘It Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/81/3/503/1791393/tneq.2008.81.3.503.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 is the purgation of superfluities,’ said Michelangelo.” Emerson also observed that the evolution of forms in nature follows a rule of just gradation, a principle that he then extended to civic affairs: “All that is a little harshly claimed by progressive parties may easily come to be conceded without question, if this rule be observed. Thus the cir- cumstances may be easily imagined, in which woman may speak, vote, argue causes, legislate, and drive a coach, and all the most naturally in the world, if only it come by degrees.”8 One cannot help but wonder what Bernette Hill would have thought of such a statement. 7“Local Intelligence,” Worcester National Aegis, 6 February 1856; “Mr. Emerson’s Lecture,” Taunton Democrat, 8 February 1856. “A Lecture by Emerson,” Taunton Democrat, 1 February 1856, offered advance notice of Emerson’s appearance and noted that he had not spoken in the Taunton-Attleboro area in over a year. 8The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 156–57, 156. Kent P. Ljungquist, Professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is the coeditor (with James P. Hanlan and Rodney Obien) of The History of Woodbury and Company (2007)..

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