Ralph Emerson Forbes
(1866-1937), Grandson of Ralph Waldo EmersonSitter in 1 portrait
Thomas Carlyle; Ralph Emerson Forbes
by Unknown photographer
bromide copy print, 24 April 1872
NPG x45941
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Andrea Forbes Schoenfeld
31 March 2021, 21:26
Ralph Emerson Forbes (July 10,1866-March 1937, named after his grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson) was my paternal grandfather. His mother was Edith Emerson (Forbes), daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his father was William Hathaway Forbes, son of Emerson's good friend John Murray Forbes and his wife Sarah.
In 1872 William and Edith Forbes and the four children who had been born by that time spent several months in Europe and it was on that trip that this photograph was taken. It is mentioned in a biography of William Hathaway Forbes from which the following is quoted, "In London they saw much of Carlyle, who 'received Edith like a daughter' and had his photograph taken with Ralph, the oldest boy. 'I had no idea that Mr. Carlyle was such a talker,' wrote Forbes to his mother, 'He seemed bent and a good deal broken at first, but it was soon apparent that the fire was still burning.'"
A copy of this photograph hung in my grandfather's house and there are several copies within our family. Years ago, when I visited Carlyle's house in London I was pleasantly surprised to see a copy of it there, hanging prominently in one of the first rooms one enters.