Lidian Jackson Emerson

Lidian Jackson Emerson (born Lydia Jackson; September 20, 1802 – November 13, 1892) was the second wife of American essayist, lecturer, poet and leader of the nineteenth century Transcendentalism movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and mother of his four children. An intellectual, she was involved in many social issues of her day, advocating for the abolition of slavery, the rights of women and of Native Americans and the welfare of animals, and campaigned for her famous husband to take a public stand on the causes in which she believed.

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.

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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[failed verification]} 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.