young philosophical upstart named Peirce. Just days before the elderly Emerson returned to lecture at Harvard, he was invited to James Elliot Cabotâs Brookline home, where Henry Leeâs children were putting on a play of Alice in Wonderland .
How had Leeâs copy of Letters and Social Aims gotten to West Wind? Emerson probably gave Lee the book in 1875, and when Lee died, in 1905, his family probably gave the book to Richard Cabot (James Cabotâs son). Richard Cabot and William Ernest Hocking had taken Royceâs classes together in the 1890s and become best friends. In fact, Richard Cabot introduced William to Agnes OâReilly, whom he would later marry. Cabot was the namesake and godfather of Hockingâs son, RichardâJill, Penny, and Jenniferâs father and the most recent owner of West Wind. So when Richard Cabot died in the 1930s, the book became part of Hockingâs time capsule. Looking back, I had the realization that at one point in the not-so-distant past, philosophy wasnât the sort of thing that was discussed only at formal conferences and in arcane journals. It was exchanged over dinner, between families. It was the stuff of everyday life.
The more time I spent on the Hocking estate, the more it seemed that all roads in American philosophy converged at West Wind. Yet looking around the library, it was impossible not to feel utterly alone. Nobody cared about this circuitous history. Nobody cared anymore about self-reliance or about the possibility that philosophers could also be political or existential heroes. Philosophy was no longer intensely personal.
Emerson and the rest of his cohort encouraged their readers to face the unavoidable tragedies of life with Promethean fortitude. After my disaster with the tire iron, to say nothing of the seeming tragedy of the rest of my life, I thought all of this was a pipe dream. Life was tragicâtheyâd gotten that much rightâand on a few rare evenings, ensconced in a first-floor nook with Hockingâs notebooks on idealism, bathed in the warm glow of the Tiffanies, Iâd almost bought into their just-so story about self-reliance and salvation. This wouldnât be one of those evenings. Instead, I pulled myself up from the rocker, slunked across the library, looked up to pay my respects to the portrait of Agnes, and went directly upstairs.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
In the attic, I pulled the cord on the one overhead bulb, which turned out to be wholly insufficient for snooping. So I fished out my headlamp from my pocket and worked my way back into the eaves, where Penny Hocking had spent many a summer day. There, her mother, Katherine, had assiduously stored box after box of family correspondence, many of the letters written in the early nineteenth century from such places as Chicago, Albuquerque, and San Franciscoâparts of the country that were, at the time, frontiers. I had some vague idea that these rivaled the books for being the most valuable part of the library, at least monetarily speaking, but I wasnât an antique collector or that sort of history buff, and these letters were deeply personal for the current generation of Hockings. So I avoided them. I didnât want to trespass any more than I already had.
But on my last visit, the shelf next to the boxes had bothered me, so I flipped on the high beams and went digging. Headlamps are uniquely modern devices. I was, for the first time all day, the master of my own brightly lit, if pitifully small, dominion. I got to determine, with pinpoint accuracy, what I saw and what I didnât. The visible world was mine and mine alone. The unseen world didnât matter, because I said so. My dominion in the attic felt secure and protected, like a private island in the middle of the ocean. I cast my beam around a few corners, and then the âOâReilly booksâ entered my spotlight.
When Agnesâs father, John Boyle OâReilly, the
How had Leeâs copy of Letters and Social Aims gotten to West Wind? Emerson probably gave Lee the book in 1875, and when Lee died, in 1905, his family probably gave the book to Richard Cabot (James Cabotâs son). Richard Cabot and William Ernest Hocking had taken Royceâs classes together in the 1890s and become best friends. In fact, Richard Cabot introduced William to Agnes OâReilly, whom he would later marry. Cabot was the namesake and godfather of Hockingâs son, RichardâJill, Penny, and Jenniferâs father and the most recent owner of West Wind. So when Richard Cabot died in the 1930s, the book became part of Hockingâs time capsule. Looking back, I had the realization that at one point in the not-so-distant past, philosophy wasnât the sort of thing that was discussed only at formal conferences and in arcane journals. It was exchanged over dinner, between families. It was the stuff of everyday life.
The more time I spent on the Hocking estate, the more it seemed that all roads in American philosophy converged at West Wind. Yet looking around the library, it was impossible not to feel utterly alone. Nobody cared about this circuitous history. Nobody cared anymore about self-reliance or about the possibility that philosophers could also be political or existential heroes. Philosophy was no longer intensely personal.
Emerson and the rest of his cohort encouraged their readers to face the unavoidable tragedies of life with Promethean fortitude. After my disaster with the tire iron, to say nothing of the seeming tragedy of the rest of my life, I thought all of this was a pipe dream. Life was tragicâtheyâd gotten that much rightâand on a few rare evenings, ensconced in a first-floor nook with Hockingâs notebooks on idealism, bathed in the warm glow of the Tiffanies, Iâd almost bought into their just-so story about self-reliance and salvation. This wouldnât be one of those evenings. Instead, I pulled myself up from the rocker, slunked across the library, looked up to pay my respects to the portrait of Agnes, and went directly upstairs.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
In the attic, I pulled the cord on the one overhead bulb, which turned out to be wholly insufficient for snooping. So I fished out my headlamp from my pocket and worked my way back into the eaves, where Penny Hocking had spent many a summer day. There, her mother, Katherine, had assiduously stored box after box of family correspondence, many of the letters written in the early nineteenth century from such places as Chicago, Albuquerque, and San Franciscoâparts of the country that were, at the time, frontiers. I had some vague idea that these rivaled the books for being the most valuable part of the library, at least monetarily speaking, but I wasnât an antique collector or that sort of history buff, and these letters were deeply personal for the current generation of Hockings. So I avoided them. I didnât want to trespass any more than I already had.
But on my last visit, the shelf next to the boxes had bothered me, so I flipped on the high beams and went digging. Headlamps are uniquely modern devices. I was, for the first time all day, the master of my own brightly lit, if pitifully small, dominion. I got to determine, with pinpoint accuracy, what I saw and what I didnât. The visible world was mine and mine alone. The unseen world didnât matter, because I said so. My dominion in the attic felt secure and protected, like a private island in the middle of the ocean. I cast my beam around a few corners, and then the âOâReilly booksâ entered my spotlight.
When Agnesâs father, John Boyle OâReilly, the
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