Charles Stearns Wheeler: Emerson's "Good Grecian"

Abstract

friends of Emerson is Charles Steamrns Wheeler. Very little has been written about him although from 1836 to 1842 he worked closely with Emerson on numerous editorial jobs, was foreign correspondent to the Dial, caused Alfred Tennyson to break his nine-year silence in 1842, and probably gave Thoreau the inspiration for going to Walden. Wheeler was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, three and a half miles from Concord, in 1816. With Thoreau he attended Phineas Alien's Concord Academy and entered Harvard, with Thoreau as his roommate, in 1833. At Harvard he made an excellent scholastic record, graduating with second honors in 1837. Among his student friends were Samuel Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Jones Very, John Weiss, and Thoreau. Conscientious, indefatigable, and badly in need of money, Wheeler performed numerous jobs outside his curricular duties. During his last two years at Harvard he earned six hundred dollars by teaching, copying, editing, and index-making. He helped Jared Sparks with several volumes of the Library of American Biography, and his editorial work led to his close association with Emerson.1 When in 1838 Jones Very suffered a nervous collapse and had to be taken to an asylum, Wheeler took his place as Tutor in Greek.2 At first he had much difficulty in managing the students. They broke out the windows to his room and were disorderly in numerous ways. Wheeler's friends thought that his trouble was caused by his having to take over the Greek class so