Table Of ContentLYDIA OR LIDIAN “ASIA” JACKSON EMERSON
WALDO’S
RELATIVES
Lidian Emerson was a Christian. Also, she was a member of the
privileged white leisure class. As a privileged white Christian
member of the leisure class she felt victimized, for of course,
even for a privileged member of our white leisure class, life
simply is never perfect. –But, life should be perfect. Life
should be nothing but satisfaction satisfaction satisfaction.
It was not, so somebody must have been doing her wrong. She was
hurt at this persecution.
But as I mentioned she was Christian. Being Christian, such
affect must all be legitimated by being stood on its head. She
will worship herself as victim, but will accomplish this self-
worship only in the manner in which this is allowed to Christians
— by electing someone else as the victim to be worshiped and
electing oneself as representing –speaking for– this victim.
Lidian selected the black slave. The American black slave, in
his/her victimhood, would serve for all Lidian’s life as her
“stand-in” for herself as victim, in being forced to be alive
in this imperfectly satisfying universe.
Was this good for the slaves? Well, at least it wasn’t harmful
since Lidian had no contact whatever with them. Being selected
to play a role in Lidian’s life fantasy didn’t do harm (it didn’t
help either but never mind — this was about her not them).
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lidian “Asia” Emerson
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LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON LYDIA JACKSON
1802
September 20, Monday: Lydia Jackson was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Count Alyeksandr Romanovich Vorontsov replaced Prince Alyeksandr Borisovich Kurakin as State
Chancellor of Russia.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Lidian “Asia” Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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LYDIA JACKSON LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON
1821
Lydia Jackson, just at the point at which she had become the very most eligible marriage material, during this
year or early in the following year, had a severe attack of the scarlet fever with lasting consequences either for
her health or for her hypochondria.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?
— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.
LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lidian “Asia” Emerson
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LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON LYDIA JACKSON
1827
December: The Reverend Waldo Emerson met Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker and, returning to Harvard College,
met the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge:
Pommer, Henry F. EMERSON’S FIRST MARRIAGE. Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1967
“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
The chapter on “Of Women and a Second Wife” gives an idea of Waldo Emerson’s
attitudes towards women. For the most part he praised them for being a civilizing
influence. They were made to be served, he believed, not to serve. However he wanted
to exclude women from the Town and Country Club, and he did not want them to assume
(or wish to assume) political functions.
When he married Lydia Jackson, he called her his “sober joy.” He respected her but
did not love her in the same way he loved Ellen Louisa Tucker, his first wife.
Emerson never stopped referring to Ellen, and he still wrote poems and journal
entries about her even after he married Lidian. He did not fail to love Lidian,
but he always loved Ellen more. And in later years Emerson was closer to his
daughter, named Ellen, than he was to his second wife Lidian.
The first part of the book gives biographical information on Emerson’s relationship
with Ellen. They first met on Christmas in 1827 when he was preaching at Concord.
She was sixteen and he was twenty-four. On Dec. 17, 1828 they were formally engaged
and were married on Sept. 30, 1829. Throughout her short life —she was not yet
twenty when she died— Ellen was affectionate, virtuous, religious, and cheerful,
but she was not subtle or profound. That did not seem to bother Emerson — Ellen
was his ideal of womanhood. She died of consumption on Feb. 8, 1831.
(Katherine A. O’Meara, May 25, 1989)
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LYDIA JACKSON LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON
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LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON LYDIA JACKSON
1832
January: Little Laura Dewey Bridgman and her two sisters came down with the scarlet fever.
Her sisters died. Laura’s ears and eyes suppurated and her senses of hearing and of sight were eliminated.
Her sense of smell, also, was almost entirely removed. The microorganisms in question had themselves a good
meal and were ready to move on, leaving behind a little girl who would always need to wear a ribbon across
what was left of her eyes, to protect the sensitivities of others:
Attending the 12th Church on Chambers Street in Boston with friends, Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, who had
herself in 1821 or early 1822 been a victim of the scarlet fever, heard Waldo Emerson preach.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lidian “Asia” Emerson
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LYDIA JACKSON LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON
1834
March 13, Thursday: Lydia Jackson, 31 years of age and unmarried, had a chance to meet and talk to Waldo
Emerson after a lecture in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
DATE: At some point Lydia Jackson’s older sister Mrs. Lucy Cotton Jackson Brown was abandoned by her
husband Mr. Charles Brown, a merchant, who dropped out of sight leaving her to provide for their two young
children Francis C. “Frank” Brown and Sophia Brown. The Reverend Waldo Emerson, preaching in a church
in Plymouth, Massachusetts, was seen and heard by Lydia for the 2d time.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND
YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Lidian “Asia” Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON LYDIA JACKSON
Not earlier than Thursday, November 13: The Reverend Waldo Emerson received Thomas Carlyle’s packet
containing the four stitched pamphlet copies of the complete SARTOR RESARTUS: “one copy for your own
behoof” as the author had phrased it, plus “three others you can perhaps find fit readers for.” Emerson would
pass on these extras to the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge in West Cambridge, to Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford
Ripley in Waltham, and to Lydia Jackson in Plymouth. Mrs. Ripley’s home in Waltham was functioning not
only as a school for young women and a parsonage for her husband the Reverend Samuel Ripley, but also as
a general clearinghouse for Transcendental thought. Carlyle’s opus would be read aloud there on winter
evenings, and the Reverend Ripley definitely read it. Young Lydia’s circle in Plymouth included not less than
seven other youths (Elizabeth Davis, Abby Hedge, Eunice Hedge, Hannah Hedge, Andrew Russell, LeBaron
Russell, and Nathaniel Russell) all of whom would presumably read or be hearing much about Carlyle’s opus.
Lydia’s friend George Partridge Bradford, Mrs. Ripley’s younger brother and thus Emerson’s half-uncle,
would definitely be reading it. It is a wonder these enthusiasts didn’t wear the print right off the page!
SARTOR RESARTUS
STUDY THIS STRANGENESS
On this day the remains of Francois-Adrien Boieldieu were being laid to rest in Rouen, his birthplace.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lidian “Asia” Emerson
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LYDIA JACKSON LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON
1835
Young Lydia Jackson’s friend Dr. LeBaron Russell in Plymouth “determined to publish an American edition”
of SARTOR RESARTUS and approached the firm of James Munroe and Company, which of course stipulated
that he come up somehow with the usual list of 150 paying subscribers — to ensure recovery of the cost of
setting the type for such a printing.
Much of this successful subscription gathering would be undertaken by William Silsbee and Theodore Parker
in Cambridge, as well of course as by Russell himself.
THOMAS CARLYLE
This by way of contrast with the customary story which appears in our storybooks, which tend to simplify
accounts to the greatest convenience by assigning meretricious actions to famous names:
“Regular book publication of SARTOR did not take place until 1836,
when Emerson arranged for publication in Boston and wrote an
enthusiastic preface.”
WALDO EMERSON
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Lidian “Asia” Emerson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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LIDIAN “ASIA” EMERSON LYDIA JACKSON
January 20(?), Tuesday: Waldo Emerson lectured in Plymouth, Massachusetts either once on the 20th or 21st
or twice on succeeding nights, and again met Lydia Jackson. At the time the eligible young lady was living in
the large Winslow House overlooking Plymouth Harbor, in which she had been raised by her shipowning
father, and a suitor would have had no way to learn that her inheritance had been embezzled by her brother-
in-law.
At some point during the courtship, not necessarily on this particular day, this gentlemanly swain would assure
this eligible young lady that he was having a hard time waiting until it would be seemly for him to jump her
bones: “I do sympathize with the homeliest pleasures and attractions by which our good foster mother Nature
draws her children together.” –Let’s hope this gentlemanly swain did not author that remark on this particular
day, for on this particular day without any warning, our good foster mother Nature was drawing her children,
perhaps some half a hundred of them, to her, by blowing off the top of the volcano known as Cosigüina in
Nicaragua, sending some 10 cubic miles of tephra material into the atmosphere:
VOLCANIC EXPLOSIVITY INDEX (Logarithmic)
Timing Volcanic Event Logarithmic Explosivity Index
640,000 years ago Yellowstone, Wyoming VEI-8
Toba, Sumatra
74,000 years ago VEI-8
(the largest caldera in the world)
5,600 BCE Mazama (forming Crater Lake) VEI-7
1,620 BCE Thera VEI-7
79 CE Vesuvius VEI-5
April 10, 1815 Tambora, Indonesia VEI-7
January 20, 1835 Cosigüía, Nicaragua Very large
August 26, 1883 Krakatau VEI-6
July 15, 1888 Bandaisan, Japan Apparently not that much of an explosion
May 10, 1902 Mt. Pelée, Martinique Apparently not that much of an explosion
January 30, 1911 Taal, Philippines Apparently not that much of an explosion
June 6-8, 1912 Novarupta (near Mt. Katmai), Alaska VEI-6
1919 Kelud, Java Apparently not that much of an explosion
1932 Quizapú, Chile Apparently not that much of an explosion
1947-1948 Hekla, Iceland Apparently not that much of an explosion
1956 Bezmianny, Kamchatka Apparently not that much of an explosion
June 15, 1991 Pinatubo, Philippines VEI-6
May 18, 1980 Mount Saint Helens, USA VEI-5
