Early life She was born as
Lydia Jackson, the fifth child of Charles Jackson and Lucy Jackson (née Cotton). She was raised in austerity; by the time she was orphaned at sixteen, two of her siblings had also died, and Lydia was sent to live with relatives. At age 19 she developed
scarlet fever, which was judged the source of her lifelong poor health. Her head was said to be "hot ever after." Chronic digestive problems, coupled with gastric and epigastric pain, discouraged her from eating, to the point that she became quite thin. She dosed herself with
calomel, a commonly used mercury-containing preparation now known to damage health. The terror of her childhood haunted her all her life.
Marriage in Plymouth, Massachusetts: the girlhood home of Lidian Emerson In 1834, Lydia Jackson heard Ralph Waldo Emerson give a lecture in her town of
Plymouth, Massachusetts and was "so lifted to higher thoughts" that she had to hurry home before those thoughts could be tainted with everyday things. She attended another lecture and a social gathering afterward, where she was able to speak with Mr. Emerson. She was inclined toward belief in
omens and believed to herself to have experienced two pre-cognitive episodes, in which she saw herself married to Emerson although they had met only once. A letter from Emerson containing a marriage proposal arrived soon after Lydia's vision of his face, looking into her eyes. Although content, at age thirty-two, with the life of a spinster-aunt who tended a garden and kept chickens, Lydia Jackson accepted Ralph Waldo Emerson's proposal. The couple were married on September 14, 1835, in the parlor of the Jackson family home overlooking
Plymouth Harbor. The house, known as the Edward Winslow House, is now the headquarters of
The Mayflower Society. Newlyweds Lydia and Ralph Waldo Emerson settled immediately in Concord, in a large white house they named "Bush". It was here Lydia Emerson would play hostess to a continual stream of dinner and overnight guests throughout the years of her marriage. Emerson immediately began calling his wife "Lidian" rather than Lydia, possibly to avoid her name being pronounced "Lidiar" as would be common in New England. In his book,
Emerson Among the Eccentrics,
Carlos Baker suggests the possibility Emerson made the change because "something in his quiet association with her recalled to his memory" lines from ''L'Allegro'' by
John Milton: :And ever, against eating cares, :Lap me in soft Lydian airs, :Married to immortal verse :Such as the meeting soul may pierce... However, Lydia and her friends continued to refer to her as Lydia. On the other hand, Lidian always referred to her husband as "Mr. Emerson", reflecting "New England reserve" rather than lack of affection. Lydia Jackson's name is "Lidian" on her tombstone in
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
Motherhood Lidian's frequent bouts of illness and chronic fatigue were exacerbated during pregnancy, when it was difficult for her to take proper nourishment due to gastric upset. Nevertheless, the Emersons had four children. • Waldo, born October 30, 1836, succumbed to
scarlet fever at age five, a loss from which Lidian never recovered. • Eldest daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson, born February 24, 1839, was named for the first wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson at Lidian's suggestion. She remained unmarried and proved to be a great help to her father in his work. She wrote a biography of her mother and lived to the age of sixty-nine. •
Edith Emerson, born November 22, 1841, married
William Hathaway Forbes, son of
John Murray Forbes, bore him eight children, and lived to be eighty-seven. •
Edward Waldo Emerson, born July 10, 1844, became a medical doctor and, upon his death at eighty-five, had outlived all but one of his seven children.
Friendships A friendship developed between Lidian Emerson and
Henry David Thoreau, who roomed with the Emersons, assisting with household maintenance and guiding the Emerson children. When Emerson went abroad in 1847, Thoreau wrote him that "Lidian and I make very good housekeepers. She is a very dear sister to me."
Death In mid-November, 1892, Ellen Emerson reported that her mother was breathing heavily, as though she had a cold. Lidian Emerson had outlived her husband by more than ten years, and was buried beside him in
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, on Author's Ridge. ==Beliefs==