Familiar Letters
by Henry David Thoreau · English · Gutenberg #43523 · 809,212 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Familiar Letters
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Editor: F. B. Sanborn
Release date: August 20, 2013 [eBook #43523]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43523
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMILIAR LETTERS ***
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. In particular, numerous spelling differences between
the text and the Appendices were retained.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Bold text is denoted by =equal
signs=.
Page 5, "Moved to Pinkney" is possibly a typo for "Moved to Pinckney".
Footnote 3: "St. Helier's" should possibly be "St. Helier".
Page 54, "It is not buried liked" should possibly be "It is not buried
like".
Page 235, "12 M." should possibly be "12 P.M."
The index cross-references to "Melilot," "Mist," "Toad," "Nighthawk,"
"Nuphar," "Aphorisms," "Earth-songs," "Loring's Pond," don't seem to
exist.
The index entry for Pepin Lake is incomplete.
THE WRITINGS OF
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
IN TWENTY VOLUMES
VOLUME VI
MANUSCRIPT EDITION
LIMITED TO SIX HUNDRED COPIES
NUMBER ----
[Illustration: _Sabbatia (page 264)_]
[Illustration: _Thoreau's Boat-landing, Concord River_]
THE WRITINGS OF
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
FAMILIAR LETTERS
EDITED BY F. B. SANBORN
ENLARGED EDITION
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
MDCCCCVI
COPYRIGHT 1865 BY TICKNOR AND FIELDS
COPYRIGHT 1894 AND 1906 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I
YEARS OF DISCIPLINE
SKETCH OF THOREAU'S LIFE FROM BIRTH TO TWENTY YEARS 3
LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER JOHN AND SISTER HELEN 11
EARLY FRIENDSHIP AND CORRESPONDENCE WITH EMERSON AND HIS
FAMILY 34
STATEN ISLAND AND NEW YORK LETTERS TO THE THOREAUS AND
EMERSONS 68
II
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT
CORRESPONDENCE WITH C. LANE, J. E. CABOT, EMERSON, AND
BLAKE 120
III
FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS
THE SHIPWRECK OF MARGARET FULLER 183
AN ESSAY ON LOVE AND CHASTITY 198
MORAL EPISTLES TO HARRISON BLAKE OF WORCESTER 209
ACQUAINTANCE AND CORRESPONDENCE WITH DANIEL RICKETSON OF
NEW BEDFORD 237
EXCURSIONS TO CAPE COD, NEW BEDFORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE, NEW
YORK, AND NEW JERSEY 254
EXCURSIONS TO MONADNOCK AND MINNESOTA 364
LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH 395
APPENDIX: LETTERS TO ISAAC HECKER AND CALVIN H. GREENE 403
GENERAL INDEX TO THOREAU'S WORKS 417
ILLUSTRATIONS
SABBATIA _Carbon photograph (page 264)_ _Frontispiece_
THOREAU'S BOAT-LANDING, CONCORD RIVER _Colored plate_
HENRY D. THOREAU, FROM THE RICKETSON MEDALLION
_(page 263)_ 1
CONCORD BATTLE-GROUND 24
WALDEN WOODS 122
THE HOSMER HOUSE 154
THOREAU'S BOAT-LANDING, CONCORD RIVER 236
FROM THE SUMMIT OF MONADNOCK 370
INTRODUCTION
The fortune of Henry Thoreau as an author of books has been peculiar,
and such as to indicate more permanence of his name and fame than
could be predicted of many of his contemporaries. In the years of his
literary activity (twenty-five in all), from 1837 to 1862,--when he
died, not quite forty-five years old,--he published but two volumes,
and those with much delay and difficulty in finding a publisher. But
in the thirty-two years after his death, nine volumes were published
from his manuscripts and fugitive pieces,--the present being the
tenth. Besides these, two biographies of Thoreau had appeared in
America, and two others in England, with numerous reviews and sketches
of the man and his writings,--enough to make several volumes more.
Since 1894 other biographies and other volumes have appeared, and now
his writings in twenty volumes are coming from the press. The sale of
his books and the interest in his life are greater than ever; and he
seems to have grown early into an American classic, like his Concord
neighbors, Emerson and Hawthorne. Pilgrimages are made to his grave
and his daily haunts, as to theirs,--and those who come find it to be
true, as was said by an accomplished woman (Miss Elizabeth Hoar) soon
after his death, that "Concord is Henry's monument, adorned with
suitable inscriptions by his own hand."
When Horace wrote of a noble Roman family,--
"Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo
Fama Marcelli,"--
he pointed in felicitous phrase to the only fame that posterity has
much regarded,--the slow-growing, deep-rooted laurel of renown. And
Shakespeare, citing the old English rhyming saw,--
"Small herbs have grace,
Great weeds do grow apace,"--
signified the same thing in a parable,--the popularity and suddenness
of transient things, contrasted with the usefully permanent. There
were plenty of authors in Thoreau's time (of whom Willis may be taken
as the type) who would have smiled loftily to think that a rustic from
the Shawsheen and Assabet could compete with the traveled scholar or
elegant versifier who commanded the homage of drawing-rooms and
magazines, for the prize of lasting remembrance; yet who now are
forgotten, or live a shadowy life in the alcoves of libraries, piping
forth an ineffective voice, like the shades in Virgil's Tartarus. But
Thoreau was wiser when he wrote at the end of his poem,
"Inspiration,"--
"Fame cannot tempt the bard
Who's famous with his God;
Nor laurel him reward
Who has his Maker's nod."
He strove but little for glory, either immediate or posthumous, well
knowing that it is the inevitable and unpursued result of what men do
or say,--
"Our fatal shadow that walks by us still."
The Letters of Thoreau, though not less remarkable in some aspects
than what he wrote carefully for publication, have thus far scarcely
had justice done them. The selection made for a small volume in 1865
was designedly done to exhibit one phase of his character,--the most
striking, if you will, but not the most native or attractive. "In his
own home," says Ellery Channing, who knew him more inwardly than any
other, "he was one of those characters who may be called 'household
treasures;' always on the spot, with skillful eye and hand, to raise
the best melons in the garden, plant the orchard with choicest trees,
or act as extempore mechanic; fond of the pets, his sister's flowers,
or sacred Tabby; kittens were his favorites,--he would play with them
by the half-hour. No whim or coldness, no absorption of his time by
public or private business, deprived those to whom he belonged of his
kindness and affection. He did the duties that lay nearest, and
satisfied those in his immediate circle; and whatever the impressions
from the theoretical part of his writings, when the matter is probed
to the bottom, good sense and good feeling will be detected in it."
This is preëminently true; and the affectionate conviction of this
made his sister Sophia dissatisfied with Emerson's rule of selection
among the letters. This she confided to me, and this determined me,
should occasion offer, to give the world some day a fuller and more
familiar view of our friend.
For this purpose I have chosen many letters and mere notes,
illustrating his domestic and gossipy moods,--for that element was in
his mixed nature, inherited from the lively maternal side,--and even
the colloquial vulgarity (using the word in the strict sense of
"popular speech") that he sometimes allowed himself. In his last years
he revolted a little at this turn of his thoughts, and, as Channing
relates, "rubbed out the more humorous parts of his essays, originally
a relief to their sterner features, saying, 'I cannot bear the levity
I find;'" to which Channing replied that he ought to spare it, even to
the puns, in which he abounded almost as much as Shakespeare. His
friend was right,--the obvious incongruity was as natural to Thoreau
as the grace and French elegance of his best sentences. In the dozen
letters newly added to this edition, these contrasted qualities hardly
appear so striking as in the longer, earlier ones; but they all
illustrate events of his life or points in his character which are
essential for fully understanding this most original of all American
authors. The present volume is enlarged by some thirty pages, chiefly
by additional letters to Ricketson, and all those to C. H. Greene. The
modesty and self-deprecation in the Michigan correspondence will
attract notice.
I have not rejected the common and trivial in these letters; being
well assured that what the increasing number of Thoreau's readers
desire is to see this piquant original just as he was,--not arrayed in
the paradoxical cloak of the Stoic sage, nor sitting complacent in the
cynic earthenware cave of Diogenes, and bidding Alexander stand out of
his sunshine. He did those acts also; but they were not the whole man.
He was far more poet than cynic or stoic; he had the proud humility of
those sects, but still more largely that unconscious pride which
comes to the poet when he sees that his pursuits are those of the few
and not of the multitude. This perception came early to Thoreau, and
was expressed in some unpublished verses dating from his long,
solitary rambles, by night and day, on the seashore at Staten Island,
where he first learned the sombre magnificence of Ocean. He feigns
himself the son of what might well be one of Homer's fishermen, or the
shipwrecked seaman of Lucretius,--
"Saevis projectus ab undis
Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum,"--
and then goes on thus with his parable:--
"Within a humble cot that looks to sea,
Daily I breathe this curious warm life;
Beneath a friendly haven's sheltering lee
My noiseless day with mystery still is rife.
"'T is here, they say, my simple life began,--
And easy credence to the tale I lend,
For well I know 't is here I am a man,--
But who will simply tell me of the end?
"These eyes, fresh-opened, spied the far-off Sea,
That like a silent godfather did stand,
Nor uttered one explaining word to me,
While introducing straight godmother Land.
"And yonder still stretches that silent Main,
With many glancing ships besprinkled o'er;
And earnest still I gaze and gaze again
Upon the selfsame waves and friendly shore.
"Infinite work my hands find there to do,
Gathering the relics which the waves upcast:
Each storm doth scour the sea for something new,
And every time the strangest is the last.
"My neighbors sometimes come with lumbering carts.
As if they wished my pleasant toil to share;
But straight they go again to distant marts,
For only weeds and ballast are their care."
"Only weeds and ballast?" that is exactly what Thoreau's neighbors
would have said he was gathering, for the most of his days; yet now he
is seen to have collected something more durable and precious than
they with their implements and market-carts. If they viewed him with a
kind of scorn and pity, it must be said that he returned the affront;
only time seems to have sided with the poet in the controversy that he
maintained against his busy age.
Superiority,--moral elevation, without peevishness or
condescension,--this was Thoreau's distinguishing quality. He softened
it with humor, and sometimes sharpened it with indignation; but he
directed his satire and his censure as often against himself as
against mankind; men he truly loved,--if they would not obstruct his
humble and strictly chosen path. The letters here printed show this,
if I mistake not,--and the many other epistles of his, still
uncollected, would hardly vary the picture he has sketched of himself,
though they would add new facts. Those most to be sought for are his
replies to the generous letters of his one English correspondent.[1]
The profile portrait reproduced in photogravure for this volume is
less known than it should be,--for it alone of the four likenesses
extant shows the aquiline features as his comrades of the wood and
mountain saw them,--not weakened by any effort to bring him to the
standard of other men in garb or expression. The artist, Mr. Walton
Ricketson, knew and admired him. To him and to his sister Anna I am
indebted for the letters and other material found in their volume
"Daniel Ricketson and His Friends."
F. B. S.
CONCORD MASS., March 1, 1906.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] These, written to Thomas Cholmondeley, are still (1906) lacking;
but a few other letters have been published since 1894.
FAMILIAR LETTERS OF THOREAU
[Illustration: _Henry D. Thoreau, from the Ricketson Medallion_
(_page 263_)]
I
YEARS OF DISCIPLINE
It was a happy thought of Thoreau's friend Ellery Channing, himself a
poet, to style our Concord hermit the "poet-naturalist;" for there
seemed to be no year of his life and no hour of his day when Nature
did not whisper some secret in his ear,--so intimate was he with her
from childhood. In another connection, speaking of natural beauty,
Channing said, "There is Thoreau,--he knows about it; give him
sunshine and a handful of nuts, and he has enough." He was also a
naturalist in the more customary sense,--one who studied and arranged
methodically in his mind the facts of outward nature; a good botanist
and ornithologist, a wise student of insects and fishes; an observer
of the winds, the clouds, the seasons, and all that goes to make up
what we call "weather" and "climate." Yet he was in heart a poet, and
held all the accumulated knowledge of more than forty years not so
much for use as for delight. As Gray's poor friend West said of
himself, "like a clear-flowing stream, he reflected the beauteous
prospect around;" and Mother Nature had given Thoreau for his prospect
the meandering Indian river of Concord, the woodland pastures and fair
lakes by which he dwelt or rambled most of his life. Born in the East
Quarter of Concord, July 12, 1817, he died in the village, May 6,
1862; he was there fitted for Harvard College, which he entered in
1833, graduating in 1837; and for the rest of his life was hardly away
from the town for more than a year in all. Consequently his letters to
his family are few, for he was usually among them; but when separated
from his elder brother John, or his sisters Helen and Sophia, he wrote
to them, and these are the earliest of his letters which have been
preserved. Always thoughtful for others, he has left a few facts to
aid his biographer, respecting his birth and early years. In his
Journal of December 27, 1855, he wrote:--
"Recalled this evening, with the aid of Mother, the various houses
(and towns) in which I have lived, and some events of my life. Born
... in the Minott house on the Virginia Road, where Father occupied
Grandmother's 'thirds,' carrying on the farm. The Catherines [had] the
other half of the house,--Bob Catherine and [brother] John threw up
the turkeys. Lived there about eight months; Si Merriam the next
neighbor. Uncle David [Dunbar] died when I was six weeks old.[2] I was
baptized in the old meeting-house, by Dr. Ripley, when I was three
months, and did not cry. [In] the Red House, where Grandmother lived,
we [had] the west side till October, 1818,--hiring of Josiah Davis,
agent for the Woodwards; there were Cousin Charles and Uncle Charles
[Dunbar], more or less. According to the day-book first used by
Grandfather [Thoreau],[3] dated 1797 (his part cut out and [then] used
by Father in Concord in 1808-9, and in Chelmsford in 1818-21), Father
hired of Proctor [in Chelmsford], and shop of Spaulding. Chelmsford
till March, 1821; last charge in Chelmsford about middle of March,
1821. Aunt Sarah taught me to walk there, when fourteen months old.
Lived next the meeting-house, where they kept the powder in the
garret. Father kept shop and painted signs, etc.
"Pope's house, at South End in Boston (a ten-footer) five or six
months,--moved from Chelmsford through Concord, and may have tarried
in Concord a little while.
"Day-book says, 'Moved to Pinkney Street [Boston], September 10, 1821,
on Monday;' Whitwell's house, Pinckney Street, to March, 1823; brick
house, Concord, to spring of 1826; Davis house (next to Samuel Hoar's)
to May 7, 1827; Shattuck house (now Wm. Munroe's) to spring of 1835;
Hollis Hall, Cambridge, 1833; Aunts' house to spring of 1837. [This
was what is now the inn called 'Thoreau House.'] At Brownson's
[Canton] while teaching in winter of 1835. Went to New York with
Father peddling in 1836."
This brings the date down to the year in which Henry Thoreau left
college, and when the family letters begin. The notes continue, and
now begin to have a literary value.
"Parkman house to fall of 1844; was graduated in 1837; kept town
school a fortnight in 1837; began the big Red Journal, October, 1837;
found my first arrowheads, fall of 1837; wrote a lecture (my first) on
Society, March 14, 1838, and read it before the Lyceum, in the Masons'
Hall, April 11, 1838; went to Maine for a school in May, 1838;
commenced school [in the Parkman house[4]] in the summer of 1838;
wrote an essay on 'Sound and Silence' December, 1838; fall of 1839 up
the Merrimack to White Mountains; 'Aulus Persius Flaccus' (first
printed paper of consequence), February 10, 1840; the Red Journal of
546 pages ended June, 1840; Journal of 396 pages ended January 31,
1841.
"Went to R. W. Emerson's in spring of 1841 [about April 25], and
stayed there to summer of 1843; went to [William Emerson's], Staten
Island, May, 1843, and returned in December, or to Thanksgiving, 1843;
made pencils in 1844; Texas house to August 29, 1850; at Walden,
July, 1845, to fall of 1847; then at R. W. Emerson's to fall of 1848,
or while he was in Europe; Yellow House (reformed) till the present."
As may be inferred from this simple record of the many mansions,
chiefly small ones, in which he had spent his first thirty-eight
years, there was nothing distinguished in the fortunes of Thoreau's
family, who were small merchants, artisans, or farmers mostly. On the
father's side they were from the isle of Jersey, where a French strain
mingled with his English or Scandinavian blood; on the other side he
was of Scotch and English descent, counting Jones, Dunbar, and Burns
among his feminine ancestors. Liveliness and humor came to him from
his Scotch connection; from father and grandfather he inherited a
grave steadiness of mind rather at variance with his mother's
vivacity. Manual dexterity was also inherited; so that he practiced
the simpler mechanic arts with ease and skill; his mathematical
training and his outdoor habits fitted him for a land-surveyor; and by
that art, as well as by pencil-making, lecturing, and writing, he paid
his way in the world, and left a small income from his writings to
those who survived him. He taught pupils also, as did his brother and
sisters; but it was not an occupation that he long followed after
John's death in 1842. With these introductory statements we may
proceed to Thoreau's first correspondence with his brother and
sisters.
As an introduction to the correspondence, and a key to the young man's
view of life, a passage may be taken from Thoreau's "part" at his
college commencement, August 16, 1837. He was one of two to hold what
was called a "Conference" on "The Commercial Spirit,"--his alternative
or opponent in the dispute being Henry Vose, also of Concord, who, in
later years, was a Massachusetts judge. Henry Thoreau,[5] then just
twenty, said:--
"The characteristic of our epoch is perfect freedom,--freedom of
thought and action. The indignant Greek, the oppressed Pole, the
jealous American assert it. The skeptic no less than the believer, the
heretic no less than the faithful child of the church, have begun to
enjoy it. It has generated an unusual degree of energy and activity;
it has generated the _commercial spirit_. Man thinks faster and freer
than ever before. He, moreover, moves faster and freer. He is more
restless, because he is more independent than ever. The winds and the
waves are not enough for him; he must needs ransack the bowels of the
earth, that he may make for himself a highway of iron over its
surface.
"Indeed, could one examine this beehive of ours from an observatory
among the stars, he would perceive an unwonted degree of bustle in
these later ages. There would be hammering and chipping in one
quarter; baking and brewing, buying and selling, money-changing and
speechmaking in another. What impression would he receive from so
general and impartial a survey. Would it appear to him that mankind
used this world as not abusing it? Doubtless he would first be struck
with the profuse beauty of our orb; he would never tire of admiring
its varied zones and seasons, with their changes of living. He could
not but notice that restless animal for whose sake it was contrived;
but where he found one man to admire with him his fair dwelling-place,
the ninety and nine would be scraping together a little of the gilded
dust upon its surface.... We are to look chiefly for the origin of the
commercial spirit, and the power that still cherishes and sustains it,
in a blind and unmanly love of wealth. Wherever this exists, it is too
sure to become the ruling spirit; and, as a natural consequence, it
infuses into all our thoughts and affections a degree of its own
selfishness; we become selfish in our patriotism, selfish in our
domestic relations, selfish in our religion.
"Let men, true to their natures, cultivate the moral affections, lead
manly and independent lives; let them make riches the means and not
the end of existence, and we shall hear no more of the commercial
spirit. The sea will not stagnate, the earth will be as green as ever,
and the air as pure. This curious world which we inhabit is more
wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it
is more to be admired and enjoyed than used. The order of things
should be somewhat reversed; the seventh should be man's day of toil,
wherein to earn his living by the sweat of his brow; and the other six
his Sabbath of the affections and the soul,--in which to range this
widespread garden, and drink in the soft influences and sublime
revelations of Nature.... The spirit we are considering is not
altogether and without exception bad. We rejoice in it as one more
indication of the entire and universal freedom that characterizes the
age in which we live,--as an indication that the human race is making
one more advance in that infinite series of progressions which awaits
it. We glory in those very excesses which are a source of anxiety to
the wise and good; as an evidence that man will not always be the
slave of matter,--but ere long, casting off those earth-born desires
which identify him with the brute, shall pass the days of his sojourn
in this his nether paradise, as becomes the Lord of Creation."[6]
This passage is noteworthy as showing how early the philosophic mind
was developed in Thoreau, and how much his thought and expression were
influenced by Emerson's first book,--"Nature." But the soil in which
that germinating seed fell was naturally prepared to receive it; and
the wide diversity between the master and the disciple soon began to
appear. In 1863, reviewing Thoreau's work, Emerson said, "That oaken
strength which I noted whenever he walked or worked, or surveyed
wood-lots,--the same unhesitating hand with which a field-laborer
accosts a piece of work which I should shun as a waste of strength,
Henry shows in his literary task. He has muscle, and ventures on and
performs feats which I am forced to decline. In reading him I find the
same thoughts, the same spirit that is in me; but he takes a step
beyond, and illustrates by excellent images that which I should have
conveyed in a sleepy generalization." True as this is, it omits one
point of difference only too well known to Emerson,--the controversial
turn of Thoreau's mind, in which he was so unlike Emerson and Alcott,
and which must have given to his youthful utterances in company the
air of something requiring an apology.
This, at all events, seems to have been the feeling of Helen
Thoreau,[7] whose pride in her brother was such that she did not wish
to see him misunderstood. A pleasing indication of both these traits
is seen in the first extant letter of Thoreau to this sister. I have
this in an autograph copy made by Mr. Emerson, when he was preparing
the letters for partial publication, soon after Henry's death. For
some reason he did not insert it in his volume; but it quite deserves
to be printed, as indicating the period when it was clear to Thoreau
that he must think for himself, whatever those around him might think.
TO HELEN THOREAU (AT TAUNTON).
CONCORD, October 27, 1837.
DEAR HELEN,--Please you, let the defendant say a few words in defense
of his long silence. You know we have hardly done our own deeds,
thought our own thoughts, or lived our own lives hitherto. For a man
to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger
of losing all sense of responsibility or of self-respect. Now when
such a state of things exists, that the sacred opinions one advances
in argument are apologized for by his friends, before his face, lest
his hearers receive a wrong impression of the man,--when such gross
injustice is of frequent occurrence, where shall we look, and not look
in vain, for men, deeds, thoughts? As well apologize for the grape
that it is sour, or the thunder that it is noisy, or the lightning
that it tarries not.
Further, letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of
facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.
What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of
the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened
by a ray?
Your affectionate brother,
HENRY.
It is presumed the tender sister did not need a second lesson; and
equally that Henry did not see fit always to write such letters as he
praised above,--for he was quite ready to give his correspondents
facts, no less than thoughts, especially in his family letters.
Next to this epistle, chronologically, comes one in the conventional
dialect of the American Indian, as handed down by travelers and
romancers, by Jefferson, Chateaubriand, Lewis, Clarke, and Fenimore
Cooper. John Thoreau, Henry's brother, was born in 1815 and died
January 11, 1842. He was teaching at Taunton in 1837.
TO JOHN THOREAU (AT TAUNTON).
(Written as from one Indian to another.)
MUSKETAQUID, 202 Summers, two Moons, eleven Suns, since the coming of
the Pale Faces.
(November 11, 1837.)
TAHATAWAN, Sachimaussan, to his brother sachem, Hopeful of
Hopewell,--hoping that he is well:--
Brother: It is many suns that I have not seen the print of thy
moccasins by our council-fire; the Great Spirit has blown more leaves
from the trees, and many clouds from the land of snows have visited
our lodge; the earth has become hard, like a frozen buffalo-skin, so
that the trampling of many herds is like the Great Spirit's thunder;
the grass on the great fields is like the old man of many winters, and
the small song sparrow prepares for his flight to the land whence the
summer comes.
Brother: I write these things because I know that thou lovest the
Great Spirit's creatures, and wast wont to sit at thy lodge-door, when
the maize was green, to hear the bluebird's song. So shalt thou, in
the land of spirits, not only find good hunting-grounds and sharp
arrowheads, but much music of birds.
Brother: I have been thinking how the Pale-Faces have taken away our
lands,--and was a woman. You are fortunate to have pitched your wigwam
nearer to the great salt lake, where the Pale-Face can never plant
corn.
Brother: I need not tell thee how we hunted on the lands of the
Dundees,--a great war-chief never forgets the bitter taunts of his
enemies. Our young men called for strong water; they painted their
faces and dug up the hatchet. But their enemies, the Dundees, were
women; they hastened to cover their hatchets with wampum. Our braves
are not many; our enemies took a few strings from the heap their
fathers left them, and our hatchets are buried. But not Tahatawan's;
his heart is of rock when the Dundees sing,--his hatchet cuts deep
into the Dundee braves.
Brother: There is dust on my moccasins; I have journeyed to the White
Lake, in the country of the Ninares.[8] The Long-Knife has been
there,--like a woman I paddled his war-canoe. But the spirits of my
fathers were angered; the waters were ruffled, and the Bad Spirit
troubled the air.
The hearts of the Lee-vites are gladdened; the young Peacock has
returned to his lodge at Naushawtuck. He is the Medicine of his tribe,
but his heart is like the dry leaves when the whirlwind breathes. He
has come to help choose new chiefs for the tribe, in the great
council-house, when two suns are past.--There is no seat for Tahatawan
in the council-house. He lets the squaws talk,--his voice is heard
above the war-whoop of his tribe, piercing the hearts of his foes; his
legs are stiff, he cannot sit.
Brother: Art thou waiting for the spring, that the geese may fly low
over thy wigwam? Thy arrows are sharp, thy bow is strong. Has Anawan
killed all the eagles? The crows fear not the winter. Tahatawan's eyes
are sharp,--he can track a snake in the grass, he knows a friend from
a foe; he welcomes a friend to his lodge though the ravens croak.
Brother: Hast thou studied much in the medicine-books of the
Pale-Faces? Dost thou understand the long talk of the Medicine whose
words are like the music of the mockingbird? But our chiefs have not
ears to hear him; they listen like squaws to the council of old
men,--they understand not his words. But, Brother, he never danced the
war-dance, nor heard the war-whoop of his enemies. He was a squaw; he
stayed by the wigwam when the braves were out, and tended the tame
buffaloes.
Fear not; the Dundees have faint hearts and much wampum. When the
grass is green on the Great Fields, and the small titmouse returns
again, we will hunt the buffalo together.
Our old men say they will send the young chief of the Karlisles, who
lives in the green wigwam and is a great Medicine, that his word may
be heard in the long talk which the wise men are going to hold at
Shawmut, by the salt lake. He is a great talk, and will not forget the
enemies of his tribe.
14th Sun. The fire has gone out in the council-house. The words of our
old men have been like the vaunts of the Dundees. The Eagle-Beak was
moved to talk like a silly Pale-Face, and not as becomes a great
war-chief in a council of braves. The young Peacock is a woman among
braves; he heard not the words of the old men,--like a squaw he looked
at his medicine-paper.[9] The young chief of the green wigwam has
hung up his moccasins; he will not leave his tribe till after the
buffalo have come down on to the plains.
Brother: This is a long talk, but there is much meaning to my words;
they are not like the thunder of canes when the lightning smites them.
Brother, I have just heard _thy talk_ and am well pleased; thou art
getting to be a great Medicine. The Great Spirit confound the enemies
of thy tribe.
TAHATAWAN.
His mark [a bow and arrow].
This singular letter was addressed to John Thoreau at Taunton, and was
so carefully preserved in the family that it must have had value in
their eyes, as recalling traits of the two Thoreau brothers, and also
events in the village life of Concord, more interesting to the young
people of 1837 than to the present generation. Some of its parables
are easy to read, others quite obscure. The annual State election was
an important event to Henry Thoreau then,--more so than it afterwards
appeared; and he was certainly on the Whig side in politics, like most
of the educated youths of Concord. His "young chief of the Karlisles"
was Albert Nelson, son of a Carlisle physician, who began to practice
law in Concord in 1836, and was afterwards chief justice of the
Superior Court of the County of Suffolk. He was defeated at the
election of 1837, as a Whig candidate for the legislature, by a
Democrat. Henry Vose, above named, writing from "Butternuts," in New
York, three hundred miles west of Concord, October 22, 1837, said to
Thoreau: "You envy my happy situation, and mourn over your fate, which
condemns you to loiter about Concord and grub among clamshells [for
Indian relics]. If this were your only source of enjoyment while in
Concord,--but I know that it is not. I well remember that 'antique and
fish-like' office of _Major_ Nelson (to whom, and to Mr. Dennis, and
Bemis, and John Thoreau, I wish to be remembered); and still more
vividly do I remember the fairer portion of the community in C." This
indicates a social habit in Henry and John Thoreau, which the Indian
"talk" also implies. Tahatawan, whom Henry here impersonated, was the
mythical Sachem of Musketaquid (the Algonquin name for Concord River
and region), whose fishing and hunting lodge was on the hill
Naushawtuck, between the two rivers so much navigated by the Thoreaus.
In 1837 the two brothers were sportsmen, and went shooting over the
Concord meadows and moors, but of course the "buffalo" was a figure of
speech; they never shot anything larger than a raccoon. A few years
later they gave up killing the game.
TO JOHN THOREAU (AT TAUNTON).
CONCORD, February 10, 1838.
DEAR JOHN,--Dost expect to elicit a spark from so dull a steel as
myself, by that flinty subject of thine? Truly, one of your copper
percussion caps would have fitted this nail-head better.
Unfortunately, the "Americana"[10] has hardly two words on the
subject. The process is very simple. The stone is struck with a mallet
so as to produce pieces sharp at one end, and blunt at the other.
These are laid upon a steel line (probably a chisel's edge), and again
struck with the mallet, and flints of the required size are broken
off. A skillful workman may make a thousand in a day.
So much for the "Americana." Dr. Jacob Bigelow in his "Technology,"
says, "Gunflints are formed by a skillful workman, who breaks them out
with a hammer, a roller, and steel chisel, with small, repeated
strokes."
Your ornithological commission shall be executed. When are you coming
home?
Your affectionate brother,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
TO JOHN THOREAU (AT TAUNTON).
CONCORD, March 17, 1838.
DEAR JOHN,--Your box of relics came safe to hand, but was speedily
deposited on the carpet, I assure you. What could it be? Some
declared it must be Taunton herrings: "Just nose it, sir!" So down we
went on to our knees, and commenced smelling in good earnest,--now
horizontally from this corner to that, now perpendicularly from the
carpet up, now diagonally,--and finally with a sweeping movement
describing the circumference. But it availed not. Taunton herring
would not be smelled. So we e'en proceeded to open it _vi et chisel_.
What an array of nails! Four nails make a quarter, four quarters a
yard,--i' faith, this is n't cloth measure! Blaze away, old boy! Clap
in another wedge, then! There, softly! she begins to gape. Just give
that old stickler, with a black hat on, another hoist. Aye, we'll pare
his nails for him! Well done, old fellow, there's a breathing-hole for
you. "Drive it in!" cries one; "Nip it off!" cries another. Be easy, I
say. What's done may be undone. Your richest veins don't lie nearest
the surface. Suppose we sit down and enjoy the prospect, for who knows
but we may be disappointed? When they opened Pandora's box, all the
contents escaped except Hope, but in this case hope is uppermost, and
will be the first to escape when the box is opened. However, the
general voice was for kicking the coverlid off.
The relics have been arranged numerically on a table. When shall we
set up housekeeping? Miss Ward thanks you for her share of the spoils;
also accept many thanks from your humble servant "for yourself."
I have a proposal to make. Suppose by the time you are released we
should start in company for the West, and there either establish a
school jointly, or procure ourselves separate situations. Suppose,
moreover, you should get ready to start previous to leaving Taunton,
to save time. Go _I_ must, at all events. Dr. Jarvis enumerates nearly
a dozen schools which I could have,--all such as would suit you
equally well.[11] I wish you would write soon about this. It is high
season to start. The canals are now open, and traveling comparatively
cheap. I think I can borrow the cash in this town. There's nothing
like trying.
Brigham wrote you a few words on the 8th, which father took the
liberty to read, with the advice and consent of the family. He wishes
you to send him those [numbers] of the "Library of Health" received
since 1838, if you are in Concord; otherwise, he says you need not
trouble yourself about it at present. He is in C., and enjoying better
health than usual. But one number, and that you have, has been
received.
The bluebirds made their appearance the 14th day of March; robins and
pigeons have also been seen. Mr. Emerson has put up the bluebird-box
in due form. All send their love.
From your aff. br.
H. D. THOREAU.
[Postscript by Helen Thoreau.]
DEAR JOHN,--Will you have the kindness to inquire at Mr. Marston's for
an old singing-book I left there,--the "Handel and Haydn Collection,"
without a cover? Have you ever got those red handkerchiefs? Much love
to the Marstons, Crockers, and Muenschers. Mr. Josiah Davis has
failed. Mr. and Mrs. Howe have both written again, urging my going to
Roxbury; which I suppose I shall do. What day of the month shall you
return?
HELEN.
One remark in this letter calls for attention,--that concerning the
"bluebird-box" for Mr. Emerson. In 1853 Emerson wrote in his journal:
"Long ago I wrote of Gifts, and neglected a capital example. John
Thoreau, Jr., one day put a bluebird's box on my barn,--fifteen years
ago it must be,--and there it still is, with every summer a melodious
family in it, adorning the place and singing his praises. There's a
gift for you,--which cost the giver no money, but nothing which he
bought could have been so good. I think of another, quite inestimable.
John Thoreau knew how much I should value a head of little Waldo, then
five years old. He came to me and offered to take him to a
daguerreotypist who was then in town, and he (Thoreau) would see it
well done. He did it, and brought me the daguerre, which I thankfully
paid for. A few months after, my boy died; and I have since to thank
John Thoreau for that wise and gentle piece of friendship."
Little Waldo Emerson died January 27, 1842, and John Thoreau the same
month; so that this taking of the portrait must have been but a few
months before his own death, January 11. Henry Thoreau was then living
in the Emerson family.
TO JOHN THOREAU (AT WEST ROXBURY).
CONCORD, July 8, 1838.
DEAR JOHN,--We heard from Helen to-day, and she informs us that you
are coming home by the first of August. Now I wish you to write and
let me know exactly when your vacation takes place, that I may take
one at the same time. I am in school from 8 to 12 in the morning, and
from 2 to 4 in the afternoon. After that I read a little Greek or
English, or, for variety, take a stroll in the fields. We have not had
such a year for berries this long time,--the earth is actually blue
with them. High blueberries, three kinds of low, thimble- and
raspberries constitute my diet at present. (Take notice,--I only diet
between meals.) Among my deeds of charity, I may reckon the picking of
a cherry tree for two helpless single ladies, who live under the hill;
but i' faith, it was robbing Peter to pay Paul,--for while I was
exalted in charity towards them, I had no mercy on my own stomach. Be
advised, my love for currants continues.
The only addition that I have made to my stock of ornithological
information is in the shape not of a _Fring. melod._,--but surely a
melodious Fringilla,--the _F. juncorum_, or rush-sparrow. I had long
known him by note, but never by name.
Report says that Elijah Stearns is going to take the town school. I
have four scholars, and one more engaged. Mr. Fenner left town
yesterday. Among occurrences of ill omen may be mentioned the falling
out and cracking of the inscription stone of Concord Monument.[12]
Mrs. Lowell and children are at Aunts'. Peabody [a college classmate]
walked up last Wednesday, spent the night, and took a stroll in the
woods.
Sophia says I must leave off and pen a few lines for her to Helen: so
good-by. Love from all, and among them your aff. brother,
H. D. T.
The school above mentioned as begun by Henry Thoreau in this summer of
1838 was joined in by John, after finishing his teaching at West
Roxbury, and was continued for several years. It was in this school
that Louisa Alcott and her sister received some instruction, after
their father removed from Boston to Concord, in the spring of 1840. It
was opened in the Parkman house, where the family then lived, and soon
after was transferred to the building of the Concord Academy,[13] not
far off. John Thoreau taught the English branches and mathematics;
Henry taught Latin and Greek and the higher mathematics,--and it was
the custom of both brothers to go walking with their pupils one
afternoon each week. It is as a professional schoolmaster that Henry
thus writes to his sister Helen, then teaching at Roxbury, after a
like experience in Taunton.
[Illustration: _Concord Battle-Ground_]
TO HELEN THOREAU (AT ROXBURY).
CONCORD, October 6, 1838.
DEAR HELEN,--I dropped Sophia's letter into the box immediately on
taking yours out, else the tone of the former had been changed.
I have no acquaintance with "Cleaveland's First Lessons," though I
have peeped into his abridged grammar, which I should think very well
calculated for beginners,--at least for such as would be likely to
wear out one book before they would be prepared for the abstruser
parts of grammar. Ahem!
As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes
the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own
language; so that with us of the vowels only A has a peculiar sound.
In the end of a word of more than one syllable it is sounded like
"ah," as _pennah_, _Lydiah_, _Hannah_, etc., without regard to case;
but "_da_" is never sounded "_dah_," because it is a monosyllable. All
terminations in _es_, and plural cases in _os_, as you know, are
pronounced long,--as _homines_ (hominese), _dominos_ (dominose), or,
in English, _Johnny Vose_. For information, see Adams' "Latin
Grammar," before the Rudiments.
This is all law and gospel in the eyes of the world; but remember I am
speaking, as it were, in the third person, and should sing quite a
different tune if it were I that had made the quire. However, one must
occasionally hang his harp on the willows, and play on the Jew's harp,
in such a strange country as this.
One of your young ladies wishes to study mental philosophy, hey?
Well, tell her that she has the very best text-book that I know of in
her possession already. If she do not believe it, then she should have
bespoken another better in another world, and not have expected to
find one at "Little & Wilkins." But if she wishes to know how poor an
apology for a mental philosophy men have tacked together,
synthetically or analytically, in these latter days,--how they have
squeezed the infinite mind into a compass that would not nonplus a
surveyor of Eastern Lands--making Imagination and Memory to lie still
in their respective apartments like ink-stand and wafers in a lady's
escritoire,--why let her read Locke, or Stewart, or Brown. The fact
is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at
home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.
_Chorus._ I should think an abridgment of one of the above authors, or
of Ambercrombie, would answer her purpose. It may set her a-thinking.
Probably there are many systems in the market of which I am ignorant.
As for themes, say first "Miscellaneous Thoughts." Set one up to a
window, to note what passes in the street, and make her comments
thereon; or let her gaze in the fire, or into a corner where there is
a spider's web, and philosophize, moralize, theorize, or what not.
What their hands find to putter about, or their minds to think about,
that let them write about. To say nothing of advantage or disadvantage
of this, that, or the other, let them set down their ideas at any
given season, preserving the chain of thought as complete as may be.
This is the style pedagogical. I am much obliged to you for your piece
of information. Knowing your dislike to a sentimental letter, I remain
Your affectionate brother,
H. D. T.
The next letter to Helen carries this pedagogical style a little
farther, for it is in Latin, addressed "Ad Helenam L. Thoreau,
Roxbury, Mass.," and postmarked "Concord, Jan. 25" (1840).
TO HELEN THOREAU (AT ROXBURY).
CONCORDIAE, Dec. Kal. Feb. A. D. MDCCCXL.
CARA SOROR,--Est magnus acervus nivis ad limina, et frigus
intolerabile intus. Coelum ipsum ruit, credo, et terram operit. Sero
stratum linquo et mature repeto; in fenestris multa pruina prospectum
absumit; et hic miser scribo, non currente calamo, nam digiti
mentesque torpescunt. Canerem cum Horatio, si vox non faucibus
haeserit,--
Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Nawshawtuct, nec jam sustineant onus
Silvae laborantes, geluque
Flumina constiterint acuto?
Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco
Large reponens, etc.
Sed olim, Musa mutata, et laetiore plectro,
Neque jam stabulis gaudet pecus, aut arator igne,
Nec prata canis albicant pruinis;
Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus imminente luna.
Quam turdus ferrugineus ver reduxerit, tu, spero, linques curas
scholasticas, et, negotio religato, desipere in loco audebis; aut
mecum inter sylvas, aut super scopulos Pulchri-Portus, aut in cymba
super lacum Waldensem, mulcens fluctus manu, aut speciem miratus sub
undas.
Bulwerius est mihi nomen incognitum,--unus ex ignobile vulgo, nec
refutandus nec laudandus. Certe alicui nonnullam honorem habeo qui
insanabili cacoethe scribendi teneatur.
Specie flagrantis Lexingtonis non somnia deturbat? At non Vulcanum
Neptunumque culpemus, cum superstitioso grege. Natura curat
animalculis aeque ac hominibus; cum serena, tum procellosa, amica est.
Si amas historiam et fortia facta heroum, non depone Rollin, precor;
ne Clio offendas nunc, nec illa det veniam olim. Quos libros Latinos
legis? legis, inquam, non studes. Beatus qui potest suos libellos
tractare, et saepe perlegere, sine metu domini urgentis! ab otio
injurioso procul est: suos amicos et vocare et dimittere quandocunque
velit, potest. Bonus liber opus nobilissimum hominis. Hinc ratio non
modo cur legeres, sed cur tu quoque scriberes; nec lectores carent;
ego sum. Si non librum meditaris, libellum certe. Nihil posteris
proderit te spirasse, et vitam nunc leniter nunc aspere egisse; sed
cogitasse praecipue et scripsisse. Vereor ne tibi pertaesum hujus
epistolae sit; necnon alma lux caret,
Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.
Quamobrem vale,--imo valete, et requiescatis placide, Sorores.
H. D. THOREAUS.
Memento scribere!
CARA SOPHIA,--Samuel Niger crebris aegrotationibus, quae agilitatem et
aequum animum abstulere, obnoxius est; iis temporibus ad cellam
descendit, et multas horas (ibi) manet.
Flores, ah crudelis pruina! parvo leti discrimine sunt. Cactus frigore
ustus est, gerania vero adhuc vigent.
Conventus sociabiles hac hieme reinstituti fuere. Conveniunt (?) ad
meum domum mense quarto vel quinto, ut tu hic esse possis. Matertera
Sophia cum nobis remanet; quando urbem revertet non scio. Gravedine
etiamnum, sed non tam aegre, laboramus.
Adolescentula E. White apud pagum paulisper moratur. Memento scribere
intra duas hebdomedas.
Te valere desiderium est
Tui Matris,
C. THOREAUS.
P. S. Epistolam die solis proxima expectamus. (Amanuense, H. D. T.)
Barring a few slips, this is a good and lively piece of Latin, and
noticeable for its thought as well as its learning and humor. The
poets were evidently his favorites among Latin authors. Shall we
attempt a free translation, such as Thoreau would give?
VERNACULAR VERSION.
CONCORD, January 23, 1840.
DEAR SISTER,--There is a huge snow-drift at the door, and the cold
inside is intolerable. The very sky is coming down, I guess, and
covering up the ground. I turn out late in the morning, and go to bed
early; there is thick frost on the windows, shutting out the view; and
here I write in pain, for fingers and brains are numb. I would chant
with Horace, if my voice did not stick in my throat,--
See how Naushawtuct, deep in snow,
Stands glittering, while the bending woods
Scarce bear their burden, and the floods
Feel arctic winter stay their flow.
Pile on the firewood, melt the cold,
Spare nothing, etc.
But soon, changing my tune, and with a cheerfuller note, I'll say,--
No longer the flock huddles up in the stall, the plowman bends
over the fire,
No longer frost whitens the meadow;
But the goddess of love, while the moon shines above,
Sets us dancing in light and in shadow.
When Robin Redbreast brings back the springtime, I trust that you will
lay your school duties aside, cast off care, and venture to be gay now
and then; roaming with me in the woods, or climbing the Fair Haven
cliffs,--or else, in my boat on Walden, let the water kiss your hand,
or gaze at your image in the wave.
Bulwer is to me a name unknown,--one of the unnoticed crowd,
attracting neither blame nor praise. To be sure, I hold any one in
some esteem who is helpless in the grasp of the writing demon.
Does not the image of the Lexington afire trouble your dreams?[14] But
we may not, like the superstitious mob, blame Vulcan or
Neptune,--neither fire nor water was in fault. Nature takes as much
care for midgets as for mankind; she is our friend in storm and in
calm.
If you like history, and the exploits of the brave, don't give up
Rollin, I beg; thus would you displease Clio, who might not forgive
you hereafter. What Latin are you reading? I mean _reading_, not
studying. Blessed is the man who can have his library at hand, and oft
peruse the books, without the fear of a taskmaster! he is far enough
from harmful idleness, who can call in and dismiss these friends when
he pleases. An honest book's the noblest work of man. There's a
reason, now, not only for your reading, but for writing something,
too. You will not lack readers,--here am I, for one. If you cannot
compose a volume, then try a tract. It will do the world no good,
hereafter, if you merely exist, and pass life smoothly or roughly; but
to have thoughts, and write them down, that helps greatly.
I fear you will tire of this epistle; the light of day is dwindling,
too,--
And longer fall the shadows of the hills.
Therefore, good-by; fare ye well, and sleep in quiet, both my sisters!
Don't forget to write.
H. D. THOREAU.
POSTSCRIPT. (BY MRS. THOREAU.)
DEAR SOPHIA,--Sam Black [the cat] is liable to frequent attacks that
impair his agility and good-nature; at such times he goes down cellar,
and stays many hours. Your flowers--O, the cruel frost!--are all but
dead; the cactus is withered by cold, but the geraniums yet flourish.
The Sewing Circle has been revived this winter; they meet at our house
in April or May, so that you may then be here. Your Aunt Sophia
remains with us,--when she will return to the city I don't know. We
still suffer from heavy colds, but not so much. Young Miss E. White is
staying in the village a little while (is making a little visit in
town). Don't forget to write within two weeks. We expect a letter next
Sunday.
That you may enjoy good health is the prayer of
Your mother,
C. THOREAU.
(H. D. T. was the scribe.)
Cats were always an important branch of the Thoreaus' domestic
economy, and Henry was more tolerant of them than men are wont to be.
Flowers were the specialty of Sophia, who, when I knew her, from 1855
to 1876, usually had a small conservatory in a recess of the
dining-room. At this time (1840) she seems to have been aiding Helen
in her school. The next letter, to Helen, is of a graver tone:--
TO HELEN THOREAU (AT ROXBURY).
CONCORD, June 13, 1840.
DEAR HELEN,--That letter to John, for which you had an opportunity
doubtless to substitute a more perfect communication, fell, as was
natural, into the hands of his "transcendental brother," who is his
proxy in such cases, having been commissioned to acknowledge and
receipt all bills that may be presented. But what's in a name? Perhaps
it does not matter whether it be John or Henry. Nor will those same
six months have to be altered, I fear, to suit his case as well. But
methinks they have not passed entirely without intercourse, provided
we have been sincere though humble worshipers of the same virtue in
the mean time. Certainly it is better that we should make ourselves
quite sure of such a communion as this by the only course which is
completely free from suspicion,--the coincidence of two earnest and
aspiring lives,--than run the risk of a disappointment by relying
wholly or chiefly on so meagre and uncertain a means as speech,
whether written or spoken, affords. How often, when we have been
nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our
tongues were the witty foils with which we fenced each other off. Not
that we have not met heartily and with profit as members of one
family, but it was a small one surely, and not that other human
family. We have met frankly and without concealment ever, as befits
those who have an instinctive trust in one another, and the scenery of
whose outward lives has been the same, but never as prompted by an
earnest and affectionate desire to probe deeper our mutual natures.
Such intercourse, at least, if it has ever been, has not condescended
to the vulgarities of oral communication, for the ears are provided
with no lid as the eye is, and would not have been deaf to it in
sleep. And now glad am I, if I am not mistaken in imagining that some
such transcendental inquisitiveness has traveled post _thither_,--for,
as I observed before, where the bolt hits, thither was it aimed,--any
arbitrary direction notwithstanding.
Thus much, at least, our _kindred_ temperament of mind and body--and
long _family_-arity--have done for us, that we already find ourselves
standing on a solid and natural footing with respect to one another,
and shall not have to waste time in the so often unavailing endeavor
to arrive fairly at this simple ground.
Let us leave trifles, then, to accident; and politics, and finance,
and such gossip, to the moments when diet and exercise are cared for,
and speak to each other deliberately as out of one infinity into
another,--you there in time and space, and I here. For beside this
relation, all books and doctrines are no better than gossip or the
turning of a spit.
Equally to you and Sophia, from
Your affectionate brother,
H. D. THOREAU.
We come now to the period when Thoreau entered on more intimate
relations with Emerson. There was a difference of fourteen years in
their ages, which had hitherto separated them intellectually; but now
the young scholar, thinker, and naturalist had so fast advanced that
he could meet his senior on more equal terms, and each became
essential to the other. With all his prudence and common sense, in
which he surpassed most men, Emerson was yet lacking in some practical
faculties; while Thoreau was the most practical and handy person in
all matters of every-day life,--a good mechanic and gardener,
methodical in his habits, observant and kindly in the domestic world,
and attractive to children, who now were important members of the
Emerson household. He was therefore invited by Emerson to make his
house a home,--looking after the garden, the business affairs, and
performing the office of a younger brother or a grown-up son. The
invitation was accepted in April, 1841, and Thoreau remained in the
family, with frequent absences, until he went in May, 1843, to reside
with Mr. William Emerson, near New York, as the tutor of his sons.
During these two years much occurred of deep moment to the two
friends. Young Waldo Emerson, the beautiful boy, died, and just
before, John Thoreau, the sunny and hopeful brother, whom Henry seems
to have loved more than any human being. These tragedies brought the
bereaved nearer together, and gave to Mrs. Emerson in particular an
affection for Thoreau and a trust in him which made the intimate life
of the household move harmoniously, notwithstanding the independent
and eccentric genius of Thoreau.
TO MRS. LUCY BROWN[15] (AT PLYMOUTH).
CONCORD, July 21, 1841.
DEAR FRIEND,--Don't think I need any prompting to write to you; but
what tough earthenware shall I put into my packet to travel over so
many hills, and thrid so many woods, as lie between Concord and
Plymouth? Thank fortune it is all the way down hill, so they will get
safely carried; and yet it seems as if it were writing against time
and the sun to send a letter east, for no natural force forwards it.
You should go dwell in the West, and then I would deluge you with
letters, as boys throw feathers into the air to see the wind take
them. I should rather fancy you at evening dwelling far away behind
the serene curtain of the West,--the home of fair weather,--than over
by the chilly sources of the east wind.
What quiet thoughts have you nowadays which will float on that east
wind to west, for so we may make our worst servants our
carriers,--what progress made from _can't_ to _can_, in practice and
theory? Under this category, you remember, we used to place all our
philosophy. Do you have any still, startling, well moments, in which
you think grandly, and speak with emphasis? Don't take this for
sarcasm, for not in a year of the gods, I fear, will such a golden
approach to plain speaking revolve again. But away with such fears; by
a few miles of travel we have not distanced each other's sincerity.
I grow savager and savager every day, as if fed on raw meat, and my
tameness is only the repose of untamableness. I dream of looking
abroad summer and winter, with free gaze, from some mountain-side,
while my eyes revolve in an Egyptian slime of health,--I to be nature
looking into nature with such easy sympathy as the blue-eyed grass in
the meadow looks in the face of the sky. From some such recess I would
put forth sublime thoughts daily, as the plant puts forth leaves.
Now-a-nights I go on to the hill to see the sun set, as one would go
home at evening; the bustle of the village has run on all day, and
left me quite in the rear; but I see the sunset, and find that it can
wait for my slow virtue.
But I forget that you think more of this human nature than of this
nature I praise. Why won't you believe that mine is more human than
any single man or woman can be? that in it, in the sunset there, are
all the qualities that can adorn a household, and that sometimes, in a
fluttering leaf, one may hear all your Christianity preached.
You see how unskillful a letter-writer I am, thus to have come to the
end of my sheet when hardly arrived at the beginning of my story. I
was going to be soberer, I assure you, but now have only room to add,
that if the fates allot you a serene hour, don't fail to communicate
some of its serenity to your friend,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
No, no. Improve so rare a gift for yourself, and send me of your
leisure.
TO MRS. LUCY BROWN (AT PLYMOUTH).
CONCORD, Wednesday evening,
September 8, [1841.]
DEAR FRIEND,--Your note came wafted to my hand like the first leaf of
the fall on the September wind, and I put only another interpretation
upon its lines than upon the veins of those which are soon to be
strewed around me. It is nothing but Indian summer here at present. I
mean that any weather seems reserved expressly for our late purposes
whenever we happen to be fulfilling them. I do not know what right I
have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time
of my desert.
What with the crickets and the crowing of cocks, and the lowing of
kine, our Concord life is sonorous enough. Sometimes I hear the cock
bestir himself on his perch under my feet, and crow shrilly before
dawn; and I think I might have been born any year for all the
phenomena I know. We count sixteen eggs daily now, when arithmetic
will only fetch the hens up to thirteen; but the world is young, and
we wait to see this eccentricity complete its period.
My verses on Friendship are already printed in the _Dial_; not
expanded, but reduced to completeness by leaving out the long lines,
which always have, or should have, a longer or at least another sense
than short ones.
Just now I am in the mid-sea of verses, and they actually rustle
around me as the leaves would round the head of Autumnus himself
should he thrust it up through some vales which I know; but, alas!
many of them are but crisped and yellow leaves like his, I fear, and
will deserve no better fate than to make mould for new harvests. I see
the stanzas rise around me, verse upon verse, far and near, like the
mountains from Agiocochook, not all having a terrestrial existence as
yet, even as some of them may be clouds; but I fancy I see the gleam
of some Sebago Lake and Silver Cascade, at whose well I may drink one
day. I am as unfit for any practical purpose--I mean for the
furtherance of the world's ends--as gossamer for ship-timber; and I,
who am going to be a pencil-maker to-morrow,[16] can sympathize with
God Apollo, who served King Admetus for a while on earth. But I
believe he found it for his advantage at last,--as I am sure I shall,
though I shall hold the nobler part at least out of the service.
Don't attach any undue seriousness to this threnody, for I love my
fate to the very core and rind, and could swallow it without paring
it, I think. You ask if I have written any more poems? Excepting those
which Vulcan is now forging, I have only discharged a few more bolts
into the horizon,--in all, three hundred verses--and sent them, as I
may say, over the mountains to Miss Fuller, who may have occasion to
remember the old rhyme:--
"Three scipen gode
Comen mid than flode
Three hundred cnihten."
But these are far more Vandalic than they. In this narrow sheet there
is not room even for one thought to root itself. But you must consider
this an odd leaf of a volume, and that volume
Your friend,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
TO MRS. LUCY BROWN (AT PLYMOUTH).
CONCORD, October 5, 1841.
DEAR FRIEND,--I send you Williams's[17] letter as the last
remembrancer to one of those "whose acquaintance he had the pleasure
to form while in Concord." It came quite unexpectedly to me, but I was
very glad to receive it, though I hardly know whether my utmost
sincerity and interest can inspire a sufficient answer to it. I should
like to have you send it back by some convenient opportunity.
Pray let me know what you are thinking about any day,--what most
nearly concerns you. Last winter, you know, you did more than your
share of the talking, and I did not complain for want of an
opportunity. Imagine your stove-door out of order, at least, and then
while I am fixing it you will think of enough things to say.
What makes the value of your life at present? what dreams have you,
and what realizations? You know there is a high table-land which not
even the east wind reaches. Now can't we walk and chat upon its plane
still, as if there were no lower latitudes? Surely our two destinies
are topics interesting and grand enough for any occasion.
I hope you have many gleams of serenity and health, or, if your body
will grant you no positive respite, that you may, at any rate, enjoy
your sickness occasionally, as much as I used to tell of. But here is
the bundle going to be done up, so accept a "good-night" from
HENRY D. THOREAU.
TO MRS. LUCY BROWN (AT PLYMOUTH).
CONCORD, March 2, 1842.
DEAR FRIEND,--I believe I have nothing new to tell you, for what was
news you have learned from other sources. I am much the same person
that I was, who should be so much better; yet when I realize what has
transpired, and the greatness of the part I am unconsciously acting, I
am thrilled, and it seems as if there were none in history to match
it.
Soon after John's death I listened to a music-box, and if, at any
time, that event had seemed inconsistent with the beauty and harmony
of the universe, it was then gently constrained into the placid course
of nature by those steady notes, in mild and unoffended tone echoing
far and wide under the heavens. But I find these things more strange
than sad to me. What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to
wonder? We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and
sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any _pure grief_ is ample
recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; for a great grief is
but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as
the resin on Arabian trees. Only Nature has a right to grieve
perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the
blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as
ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God,
and we will not be sorrowful if he is not.
We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The
memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of
present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness
that these motes were invisible in their light.
I do not wish to see John ever again,--I mean him who is dead,--but
that other, whom only he would have wished to see, or to be, of whom
he was the imperfect representative. For we are not what we are, nor
do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable
of being.
As for Waldo, he died as the mist rises from the brook, which the sun
will soon dart his rays through. Do not the flowers die every autumn?
He had not even taken root here. I was not startled to hear that he
was dead; it seemed the most natural event that could happen. His fine
organization demanded it, and nature gently yielded its request. It
would have been strange if he had lived. Neither will nature manifest
any sorrow at his death, but soon the note of the lark will be heard
down in the meadow, and fresh dandelions will spring from the old
stocks where he plucked them last summer.
I have been living ill of late, but am now doing better. How do you
live in that Plymouth world, nowadays?[18] Please remember me to Mary
Russell. You must not blame me if I do _talk to the clouds_, for I
remain
Your friend,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
TO MRS. LUCY BROWN (AT PLYMOUTH).
CONCORD, January 24, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--The other day I wrote you a letter to go in Mrs.
Emerson's bundle, but, as it seemed unworthy, I did not send it, and
now, to atone for that, I am going to send this, whether it be worthy
or not. I will not venture upon news, for, as all the household are
gone to bed, I cannot learn what has been told you. Do you read any
noble verses nowadays? or do not verses still seem noble? For my own
part, they have been the only things I remembered, or that which
occasioned them, when all things else were blurred and defaced. All
things have put on mourning but they; for the elegy itself is some
victorious melody or joy escaping from the wreck.
It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally
dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only
be enchanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found
it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.
Do you think of coming to Concord again? I shall be glad to see you. I
should be glad to know that I could see you when I would.
We always seem to be living just on the brink of a pure and lofty
intercourse, which would make the ills and trivialness of life
ridiculous. After each little interval, though it be but for the
night, we are prepared to meet each other as gods and goddesses.
I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived
upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom; and so I am
content to live.
What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul
that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening
soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its
despair?
I am very happy in my present environment, though actually mean enough
myself, and so, of course, all around me; yet, I am sure, we for the
most part are transfigured to one another, and are that to the other
which we aspire to be ourselves. The longest course of mean and
trivial intercourse may not prevent my practicing this divine courtesy
to my companion. Notwithstanding all I hear about brooms, and
scouring, and taxes, and housekeeping, I am constrained to live a
strangely mixed life,--as if even Valhalla might have its kitchen. We
are all of us Apollos serving some Admetus.
I think I must have some Muses in my pay that I know not of, for
certain musical wishes of mine are answered as soon as entertained.
Last summer I went to Hawthorne's suddenly for the express purpose of
borrowing his music-box, and almost immediately Mrs. Hawthorne
proposed to lend it to me. The other day I said I must go to Mrs.
Barrett's to hear hers, and lo! straightway Richard Fuller sent me one
for a present from Cambridge. It is a very good one. I should like to
have you hear it. I shall not have to employ you to borrow for me now.
Good-night.
From your affectionate friend,
H. D. T.
TO RICHARD F. FULLER (AT CAMBRIDGE).
CONCORD, January 16, 1843.
DEAR RICHARD,--I need not thank you for your present, for I hear its
music, which seems to be playing just for us two pilgrims marching
over hill and dale of a summer afternoon, up those long Bolton hills
and by those bright Harvard lakes, such as I see in the placid Lucerne
on the lid; and whenever I hear it, it will recall happy hours passed
with its donor.
When did mankind make that foray into nature and bring off this booty?
For certainly it is but history that some rare virtue in remote times
plundered these strains from above and communicated them to men.
Whatever we may think of it, it is a part of the harmony of the
spheres you have sent me; which has condescended to serve us
Admetuses, and I hope I may so behave that this may always be the
tenor of your thought for me.
If you have any strains, the conquest of your own spear or quill, to
accompany these, let the winds waft them also to me.
I write this with one of the "primaries" of my osprey's wings, which I
have preserved over my glass for some state occasion, and now it
offers.
Mrs. Emerson sends her love.
TO MRS. LUCY BROWN (AT PLYMOUTH).
CONCORD, Friday evening,
January 25, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--Mrs. Emerson asks me to write you a letter, which she
will put into her bundle to-morrow along with the "Tribunes" and
"Standards," and miscellanies, and what not, to make an assortment.
But what shall I write? You live a good way off, and I don't know that
I have anything which will bear sending so far. But I am mistaken, or
rather impatient when I say this,--for we all have a gift to send, not
only when the year begins, but as long as interest and memory last. I
don't know whether you have got the many I have sent you, or rather
whether you were quite sure where they came from. I mean the letters I
have sometimes launched off eastward in my thought; but if you have
been happier at one time than another, think that then you received
them. But this that I now send you is of another sort. It will go
slowly, drawn by horses over muddy roads, and lose much of its little
value by the way. You may have to pay for it, and it may not make you
happy after all. But what shall be my new-year's gift, then? Why, I
will send you my still fresh remembrance of the hours I have passed
with you here, for I find in the remembrance of them the best gift
you have left to me. We are poor and sick creatures at best; but we
can have well memories, and sound and healthy thoughts of one another
still, and an intercourse may be remembered which was without blur,
and above us both.
Perhaps you may like to know of my estate nowadays. As usual, I find
it harder to account for the happiness I enjoy, than for the sadness
which instructs me occasionally. If the little of this last which
visits me would only be sadder, it would be happier. One while I am
vexed by a sense of meanness; one while I simply wonder at the mystery
of life; and at another, and at another, seem to rest on my oars, as
if propelled by propitious breezes from I know not what quarter. But
for the most part I am an idle, inefficient, lingering (one term will
do as well as another, where all are true and none true enough) member
of the great commonwealth, who have most need of my own charity,--if I
could not be charitable and indulgent to myself, perhaps as good a
subject for my own satire as any. You see how, when I come to talk of
myself, I soon run dry, for I would fain make that a subject which can
be no subject for me, at least not till I have the grace to rule
myself.
I do not venture to say anything about your griefs, for it would be
unnatural for me to speak as if I grieved with you, when I think I do
not. If I were to see you, it might be otherwise. But I know you will
pardon the trivialness of this letter; and I only hope--as I know that
you have reason to be so--that you are still happier than you are
sad, and that you remember that the smallest seed of faith is of more
worth than the largest fruit of happiness. I have no doubt that out of
S----'s death you sometimes draw sweet consolation, not only for that,
but for long-standing griefs, and may find some things made smooth by
it, which before were rough.
I wish you would communicate with me, and not think me unworthy to
know any of your thoughts. Don't think me unkind because I have not
written to you. I confess it was for so poor a reason as that you
almost made a principle of not answering. I could not speak truly with
this ugly fact in the way; and perhaps I wished to be assured, by such
evidence as you could not voluntarily give, that it was a kindness.
For every glance at the moon, does she not send me an answering ray?
Noah would hardly have done himself the pleasure to release his dove,
if she had not been about to come back to him with tidings of green
islands amid the waste.
But these are far-fetched reasons. I am not speaking directly enough
to yourself now; so let me say _directly_
From your friend,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
Exactly when correspondence began between Emerson and Thoreau is not
now to be ascertained, since all the letters do not seem to have been
preserved. Their acquaintance opened while Thoreau was in college,
although Emerson may have seen the studious boy at the town school in
Concord, or at the "Academy" there, while fitting for college. But
they only came to know each other as sharers of the same thoughts and
aspirations in the autumn of 1837, when, on hearing a new lecture of
Emerson's, Helen Thoreau said to Mrs. Brown, then living or visiting
in the Thoreau family, "Henry has a thought very like that in his
journal" (which he had newly begun to keep). Mrs. Brown desired to see
the passage, and soon bore it to her sister, Mrs. Emerson, whose
husband saw it, and asked Mrs. Brown to bring her young friend to see
him. By 1838 their new relation of respect was established, and
Emerson wrote to a correspondent, "I delight much in my young friend,
who seems to have as free and erect a mind as any I have ever met." A
year later (Aug. 9, 1839), he wrote to Carlyle, "I have a young poet
in this village, named Thoreau, who writes the truest verses." Indeed,
it was in the years 1839-40 that he seems to have written the poems by
which he is best remembered. Thoreau told me in his last illness that
he had written many verses and destroyed many,--this fact he then
regretted, although he had done it at the instance of Emerson, who did
not praise them. "But," said he, "they may have been better than we
thought them, twenty years ago."
The earliest note which I find from Emerson to Thoreau bears no date,
but must have been written before 1842, for at no later time could the
persons named in it have visited Concord together. Most likely it was
in the summer of 1840, and to the same date do I assign a note asking
Henry to join the Emersons in a party to the Cliffs (_scopuli
Pulchri-Portus_), and to bring his flute,--for on that pastoral reed
Thoreau played sweetly. The first series of letters from Thoreau to
Emerson begins early in 1843, about the time the letters just given
were written to Mrs. Brown. In the first he gives thanks to Emerson
for the hospitality of his house in the two preceding years; a theme
to which he returned a few months later,--for I doubt not the lovely
sad poem called "The Departure" was written at Staten Island soon
after his leaving the Emerson house in Concord for the more stately
but less congenial residence of William Emerson at Staten Island,
whither he betook himself in May, 1843. This first letter, however,
was sent from the Concord home to Waldo Emerson at Staten Island, or
perhaps in New York, where he was that winter giving a course of
lectures.
In explanation of the passages concerning Bronson Alcott, in this
letter, it should be said that he was then living at the Hosmer
Cottage, in Concord, with his English friends, Charles Lane and Henry
Wright, and that he had refused to pay a tax in support of what he
considered an unjust government, and was arrested by the constable,
Sam Staples, in consequence.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT NEW YORK).
CONCORD, January 24, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right. I
had not spoken of writing to you, but as you say you are about to
write to me when you get my letter, I make haste on my part in order
to get yours the sooner. I don't well know what to say to earn the
forthcoming epistle, unless that Edith takes rapid strides in the arts
and sciences--or music and natural history--as well as over the
carpet; that she says "papa" less and less abstractedly every day,
looking in _my_ face,--which may sound like a _Ranz des Vaches_ to
yourself. And Ellen declares every morning that "papa _may_ come home
to-night;" and by and by it will have changed to such positive
statement as that "papa came home _larks_ night."
Elizabeth Hoar still flits about these clearings, and I meet her here
and there, and in all houses but her own, but as if I were not the
less of her family for all that. I have made slight acquaintance also
with one Mrs. Lidian Emerson, who almost persuades me to be a
Christian, but I fear I as often lapse into heathenism. Mr.
O'Sullivan[19] was here three days. I met him at the Atheneum
[Concord], and went to Hawthorne's [at the Old Manse] to tea with him.
He expressed a great deal of interest in your poems, and wished me to
give him a list of them, which I did; he saying he did not know but he
should notice them. He is a rather puny-looking man, and did not
strike me. We had nothing to say to one another, and therefore we said
a great deal! He, however, made a point of asking me to write for his
Review, which I shall be glad to do. He is, at any rate, one of the
not-bad, but does not by any means take you by storm,--no, nor by
calm, which is the best way. He expects to see you in New York. After
tea I carried him and Hawthorne to the Lyceum.
Mr. Alcott has not altered much since you left. I think you will find
him much the same sort of person. With Mr. Lane I have had one regular
chat _à la_ George Minott, which of course was greatly to our mutual
grati- and edification; and, as two or three as regular conversations
have taken place since, I fear there may have been a precession of the
equinoxes. Mr. Wright, according to the last accounts, is in Lynn,
with uncertain aims and prospects,--maturing slowly, perhaps, as
indeed are all of us. I suppose they have told you how near Mr. Alcott
went to the jail, but I can add a good anecdote to the rest. When
Staples came to collect Mrs. Ward's taxes, my sister Helen asked him
what he thought Mr. Alcott meant,--what his idea was,--and he
answered, "I vum, I believe it was nothing but principle, for I never
heerd a man talk honester."
There was a lecture on Peace by a Mr. Spear (ought he not to be beaten
into a plowshare?), the same evening, and, as the gentlemen, Lane and
Alcott, dined at our house while the matter was in suspense,--that is,
while the constable was waiting for his receipt from the jailer,--we
there settled it that we, that is, Lane and myself, perhaps, should
agitate the State while Winkelried lay in durance. But when, over the
audience, I saw our hero's head moving in the free air of the
Universalist church, my fire all went out, and the State was safe as
far as I was concerned. But Lane, it seems, had cogitated and even
written on the matter, in the afternoon, and so, out of courtesy,
taking his point of departure from the Spear-man's lecture, he drove
gracefully _in medias res_, and gave the affair a very good setting
out; but, to spoil all, our martyr very characteristically, but, as
artists would say, in bad taste, brought up the rear with a "My
Prisons," which made us forget Silvio Pellico himself.
Mr. Lane wishes me to ask you to see if there is anything for him in
the New York office, and pay the charges. Will you tell me what to do
with Mr. [Theodore] Parker, who was to lecture February 15th? Mrs.
Emerson says my letter is written instead of one from her.
At the end of this strange letter I will not write--what alone I had
to say--to thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long kindness to me. It
would be more ungrateful than my constant thought. I have been your
pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free as under the sky.
It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have
sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it,--I who have
failed to render even those slight services of the _hand_ which would
have been for a sign at least; and, by the fault of my nature, have
failed of many better and higher services. But I will not trouble you
with this, but for once thank you as well as Heaven.
Your friend, H. D. T.
Mrs. Lidian Emerson, the wife of R. W. Emerson, and her two daughters,
Ellen and Edith, are named in this first letter, and will be
frequently mentioned in the correspondence. At this date, Edith, now
Mrs. W. H. Forbes, was fourteen months old. Mr. Emerson's mother,
Madam Ruth Emerson, was also one of the household, which had for a
little more than seven years occupied the well-known house under the
trees, east of the village.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT NEW YORK).
CONCORD, February 10, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have stolen one of your own sheets to write you a
letter upon, and I hope, with two layers of ink, to turn it into a
comforter. If you like to receive a letter from me, too, I am glad,
for it gives me pleasure to write. But don't let it come amiss; it
must fall as harmlessly as leaves settle on the landscape. I will tell
you what we are doing this now. Supper is done, and Edith--the
dessert, perhaps more than the dessert--is brought in, or even comes
in _per se_; and round she goes, now to this altar, and then to that,
with her monosyllabic invocation of "oc," "oc." It makes me think of
"Langue d'oc." She must belong to that province. And like the gypsies
she talks a language of her own while she understands ours. While she
jabbers Sanskrit, Parsee, Pehlvi, say "Edith go bah!" and "bah" it is.
No intelligence passes between us. She knows. It is a capital
joke,--that is the reason she smiles so. How well the secret is kept!
she never descends to explanation. It is not buried liked a common
secret, bolstered up on two sides, but by an eternal silence on the
one side, at least. It has been long kept, and comes in from the
unexplored horizon, like a blue mountain range, to end abruptly at our
door one day. (Don't stumble at this steep simile.) And now she
studies the heights and depths of nature
On shoulders whirled in some eccentric orbit
Just by old Pæstum's temples and the perch
Where Time doth plume his wings.
And now she runs the race over the carpet, while all Olympia
applauds,--mamma, grandma, and uncle, good Grecians all,--and that
dark-hued barbarian, Partheanna Parker, whose shafts go through and
through, not backward! Grandmamma smiles over all, and mamma is
wondering what papa would say, should she descend on Carlton House
some day. "Larks night" 's abed, dreaming of "pleased faces" far away.
But now the trumpet sounds, the games are over; some Hebe comes, and
Edith is translated. I don't know where; it must be to some cloud, for
I never was there.
_Query_: what becomes of the answers Edith thinks, but cannot express?
She really gives you glances which are before this world was. You
can't feel any difference of age, except that you have longer legs and
arms.
Mrs. Emerson said I must tell you about domestic affairs, when I
mentioned that I was going to write. Perhaps it will inform you of the
state of all if I only say that I am well and happy in your house here
in Concord.
Your friend,
HENRY.
Don't forget to tell us what to do with Mr. Parker when you write
next. I lectured this week. It was as bright a night as you could
wish. I hope there were no stars thrown away on the occasion.
[A part of the same letter, though bearing a date two days later, and
written in a wholly different style, as from one sage to another, is
this postscript:]
February 12, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--As the packet still tarries, I will send you some
thoughts, which I have lately relearned, as the latest public and
private news.
How mean are our relations to one another! Let us pause till they are
nobler. A little silence, a little rest, is good. It would be
sufficient employment only to cultivate true ones.
The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the
kindness which we understand. A noble person confers no such gift as
his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it
produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to
friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one
in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remote parts of
my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit
faith in me. When such divine commodities are so near and cheap, how
strange that it should have to be each day's discovery! A threat or a
curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me. I am no
more of this earth; it acts dynamically; it changes my very substance.
I cannot do what before I did. I cannot be what before I was. Other
chains may be broken, but in the darkest night, in the remotest place,
I trail this thread. Then things cannot _happen_. What if God were to
confide in us for a moment! Should we not then be gods?
How subtle a thing is this confidence! Nothing sensible passes
between; never any consequences are to be apprehended should it be
misplaced. Yet something has transpired. A new behavior springs; the
ship carries new ballast in her hold. A sufficiently great and
generous trust could never be abused. It should be cause to lay down
one's life,--which would not be to lose it. Can there be any mistake
up there? Don't the gods know where to invest their wealth? Such
confidence, too, would be reciprocal. When one confides greatly in
you, he will feel the roots of an equal trust fastening themselves in
him. When such trust has been received or reposed, we dare not speak,
hardly to see each other; our voices sound harsh and untrustworthy. We
are as instruments which the Powers have dealt with. Through what
straits would we not carry this little burden of a magnanimous trust!
Yet no harm could possibly come, but simply faithlessness. Not a
feather, not a straw, is intrusted; that packet is empty. It is only
_committed_ to us, and, as it were, all things are committed to us.
The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort,--the
sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already
lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. The
gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain. We communicate like the
burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are
undermined by faith and love. How much more full is Nature where we
think the empty space is than where we place the solids!--full of
fluid influences. Should we ever communicate but by these? The spirit
abhors a vacuum more than Nature. There is a tide which pierces the
pores of the air. These aerial rivers, let us not pollute their
currents. What meadows do they course through? How many fine mails
there are which traverse their routes! He is privileged who gets his
letter franked by them.
I believe these things.
HENRY D. THOREAU.
Emerson replied to these letters in two epistles of dates from
February 4 to 12, 1843,--in the latter asking Thoreau to aid him in
editing the April number of the _Dial_ of which he had taken charge.
Among other things, Emerson desired a manuscript of Charles Lane,
Alcott's English friend, to be sent to him in New York, where he was
detained several weeks by his lectures. He added: "Have we no news
from Wheeler? Has Bartlett none?" Of these persons, the first, Charles
Stearns Wheeler, a college classmate of Thoreau, and later Greek tutor
in the college, had gone to Germany,--where he died the next
summer,--and was contributing to the quarterly _Dial_. Robert
Bartlett, of Plymouth, a townsman of Mrs. Emerson, was Wheeler's
intimate friend, with whom he corresponded.[20] To this editorial
request Thoreau, who was punctuality itself, replied at once.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT NEW YORK).
CONCORD, February 15, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I got your letters, one yesterday and the other
to-day, and they have made me quite happy. As a packet is to go in the
morning, I will give you a hasty account of the _Dial_. I called on
Mr. Lane this afternoon, and brought away, together with an abundance
of good-will, first, a bulky catalogue of books without
commentary,--some eight hundred, I think he told me, with an
introduction filling one sheet,--ten or a dozen pages, say, though I
have only glanced at them; second, a review--twenty-five or thirty
printed pages--of Conversations on the Gospels, Record of a School,
and Spiritual Culture, with rather copious extracts. However, it is a
good subject, and Lane says it gives him satisfaction. I will give it
a faithful reading directly. [These were Alcott's publications,
reviewed by Lane.] And now I come to the little end of the horn; for
myself, I have brought along the Minor Greek Poets, and will mine
there for a scrap or two, at least. As for Etzler, I don't remember
any "rude and snappish speech" that you made, and if you did it must
have been longer than anything I had written; however, here is the
book still, and I will try. Perhaps I have some few scraps in my
Journal which you may choose to print. The translation of the Æschylus
I should like very well to continue anon, if it should be worth the
while. As for poetry, I have not remembered to write any for some
time; it has quite slipped my mind; but sometimes I think I hear the
mutterings of the thunder. Don't you remember that last summer we
heard a low, tremulous sound in the woods and over the hills, and
thought it was partridges or rocks, and it proved to be thunder gone
down the river? But sometimes it was over Wayland way, and at last
burst over our heads. So we'll not despair by reason of the drought.
You see it takes a good many words to supply the place of one deed; a
hundred lines to a cobweb, and but one cable to a man-of-war. The
_Dial_ case needs to be reformed in many particulars. There is no news
from Wheeler, none from Bartlett.
They all look well and happy in this house, where it gives me much
pleasure to dwell.
Yours in haste, HENRY.
P. S.
Wednesday evening, February 16.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have time to write a few words about the _Dial_. I
have just received the three first signatures, which do not yet
complete Lane's piece. He will place five hundred copies for sale at
Munroe's bookstore. Wheeler has sent you two full sheets--more about
the German universities--and proper names, which will have to be
printed in alphabetical order for convenience; what this one has done,
that one is doing, and the other intends to do. Hammer-Purgstall (Von
Hammer) may be one, for aught I know. However, there are two or three
_things_ in it, as well as names. One of the books of Herodotus is
discovered to be out of place. He says something about having sent
Lowell, by the last steamer, a budget of literary news, which he will
have communicated to you ere this. Mr. Alcott has a letter from
Heraud,[21] and a book written by him,--the Life of Savonarola,--which
he wishes to have republished here. Mr. Lane will write a notice of
it. (The latter says that what is in the New York post-office _may_ be
directed to Mr. Alcott.) Miss [Elizabeth] Peabody has sent a "Notice
to the readers of the _Dial_" which is not good.
Mr. Chapin lectured this evening, and so rhetorically that I forgot my
duty and heard very little. I find myself better than I have been,
and am meditating some other method of paying debts than by lectures
and writing,--which will only do to talk about. If anything of that
"other" sort should come to your ears in New York, will you remember
it for me?
Excuse this scrawl, which I have written over the embers in the
dining-room. I hope that you live on good terms with yourself and the
gods.
Yours in haste, HENRY.
Mr. Lane and his lucubrations proved to be tough subjects, and the
next letter has more to say about them and the _Dial_. Lane had
undertaken to do justice to Mr. Alcott and his books, as may still be
read in the pages of that April number of the Transcendentalist
quarterly.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT NEW YORK).
CONCORD, February 20, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have read Mr. Lane's review, and _can_ say,
speaking for this world and for fallen man, that "it is good for us."
As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of
it, so I may say, criticism never fails; but if I go and read
elsewhere, I say it is good,--far better than any notice Mr. Alcott
has received, or is likely to receive from another quarter. It is at
any rate "the other side" which Boston needs to hear. I do not send it
to you, because time is precious, and because I think you would accept
it, after all. After speaking briefly of the fate of Goethe and
Carlyle in their own countries, he says, "To Emerson in his own
circle is but slowly accorded a worthy response; and Alcott, almost
utterly neglected," etc. I will strike out what relates to yourself,
and correcting some verbal faults, send the rest to the printer with
Lane's initials.
The catalogue needs amendment, I think. It wants completeness now. It
should consist of such books only as they would tell Mr. [F. H.] Hedge
and [Theodore] Parker they had got; omitting the Bible, the classics,
and much besides,--for there the incompleteness begins. But you will
be here in season for this.
It is frequently easy to make Mr. Lane more universal and attractive;
to write, for instance, "universal ends" instead of "the universal
end," just as we pull open the petals of a flower with our fingers
where they are confined by its own sweets. Also he had better not say
"books designed for the nucleus of a _Home_ University," until he
makes that word "home" ring solid and universal too. This is that
abominable dialect. He had just given me a notice of George Bradford's
Fénelon for the Record of the Months, and speaks of extras of the
Review and Catalogue, if they are printed,--even a hundred, or
thereabouts. How shall this be arranged? Also he wishes to use some
manuscripts of his which are in your possession, if you do not. Can I
get them?
I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all
above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal their eggs
still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor,--it
is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens.
Do not think that my letters require as many special answers. I get
one as often as you write to Concord. Concord inquires for you daily,
as do all the members of this house. You must make haste home before
we have settled all the great questions, for they are fast being
disposed of. But I must leave room for Mrs. Emerson.
* * * * *
Mrs. Emerson's letter, after speaking of other matters, gave a lively
sketch of Thoreau at one of Alcott's Conversations in her house, which
may be quoted as illustrating the young Nature-worshiper's position at
the time, and the more humane and socialistic spirit of Alcott and
Lane, who were soon to leave Concord for their experiment of
communistic life at "Fruitlands," in the rural town of Harvard.
"Last evening we had the 'Conversation,' though, owing to the bad
weather, but few attended. The subjects were: What is Prophecy? Who is
a Prophet? and The Love of Nature. Mr. Lane decided, as for all time
and the race, that this same love of nature--of which Henry [Thoreau]
was the champion, and Elizabeth Hoar and Lidian (though L. disclaimed
possessing it herself) his faithful squiresses--that this love was the
most subtle and dangerous of sins; a refined idolatry, much more to be
dreaded than gross wickednesses, because the gross sinner would be
alarmed by the depth of his degradation, and come up from it in
terror, but the unhappy idolaters of Nature were deceived by the
refined quality of their sin, and would be the last to enter the
kingdom. Henry frankly affirmed to both the wise men that they were
wholly deficient in the faculty in question, and therefore could not
judge of it. And Mr. Alcott as frankly answered that it was because
they went beyond the mere material objects, and were filled with
spiritual love and perception (as Mr. T. was not), that they seemed to
Mr. Thoreau not to appreciate outward nature. I am very heavy, and
have spoiled a most excellent story. I have given you no idea of the
scene, which was ineffably comic, though it made no laugh at the time;
I scarcely laughed at it myself,--too deeply amused to give the usual
sign. Henry was brave and noble; well as I have always liked him, he
still grows upon me."
Before going to Staten Island in May, 1843, Thoreau answered a letter
from the same Richard Fuller who had made him the musical gift in the
previous winter. He was at Harvard College, and desired to know
something of Thoreau's pursuits there,--concerning which Channing says
in his Life,[22] "He was a respectable student, having done there a
bold reading in English poetry,--even to some portions or the whole of
Davenant's 'Gondibert.'" This, Thoreau does not mention in his letter,
but it was one of the things that attracted Emerson's notice, since he
also had the same taste for the Elizabethan and Jacobean English
poets. An English youth, Henry Headley, pupil of Dr. Parr, and
graduate of Oxford in 1786, had preceded Thoreau in this study of
poets that had become obsolete; and it was perhaps Headley's volume,
"Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry, with Remarks by the late
Henry Headley," published long after his death,[23] that served
Thoreau as a guide to Quarles and the Fletchers, Daniel, Drummond,
Drayton, Habington, and Raleigh,--poets that few Americans had heard
of in 1833.
TO RICHARD F. FULLER (AT CAMBRIDGE).
CONCORD, April 2, 1843.
DEAR RICHARD,--I was glad to receive a letter from you so bright and
cheery. You speak of not having made any conquests with your own spear
or quill as yet; but if you are tempering your spear-head during these
days, and fitting a straight and tough shaft thereto, will not that
suffice? We are more pleased to consider the hero in the forest
cutting cornel or ash for his spear, than marching in triumph with his
trophies. The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than
the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the
pleasantest prospects.
What you say about your studies furnishing you with a "mimic idiom"
only, reminds me that we shall all do well if we learn so much as to
talk,--to speak truth. The only fruit which even much living yields
seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some
slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for
the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon
and spices, you know. Even the grown hunter you speak of slays a
thousand buffaloes, and brings off only their hides and tongues. What
immense sacrifices, what hecatombs and holocausts, the gods exact for
very slight favors! How much sincere life before we can even utter one
sincere word.
What I was learning in college was chiefly, I think, to express
myself, and I see now, that as the old orator prescribed, 1st, action;
2d, action; 3d, action; my teachers should have prescribed to me, 1st,
sincerity; 2d, sincerity; 3d, sincerity. The old mythology is
incomplete without a god or goddess of sincerity, on whose altars we
might offer up all the products of our farms, our workshops, and our
studies. It should be our Lar when we sit on the hearth, and our
Tutelar Genius when we walk abroad. This is the only panacea. I mean
sincerity in our dealings with ourselves mainly; any other is
comparatively easy. But I must stop before I get to 17thly. I believe
I have but one text and one sermon.
Your rural adventures beyond the West Cambridge hills have probably
lost nothing by distance of time or space. I used to hear only the
sough of the wind in the woods of Concord, when I was striving to give
my attention to a page of calculus. But, depend upon it, you will love
your native hills the better for being separated from them.
I expect to leave Concord, which is my Rome, and its people, who are
my Romans, in May, and go to New York, to be a tutor in Mr. William
Emerson's family. So I will bid you good-by till I see you or hear
from you again.
* * * * *
Going to Staten Island, early in May, 1843, Thoreau's first care was
to write to his "Romans, countrymen, and lovers by the banks of the
Musketaquid,"--beginning with his mother, his sisters, and Mrs.
Emerson. To Sophia and Mrs. E. he wrote May 22,--to Helen, with a few
touching verses on his brother John, the next day; and then he resumed
the correspondence with Emerson. It seems that one of his errands near
New York was to make the acquaintance of literary men and journalists
in the city, in order to find a vehicle for publication, such as his
neighbor Hawthorne had finally found in the pages of the _Democratic
Review_. For this purpose Thoreau made himself known to Henry James,
and other friends of Emerson, and to Horace Greeley, then in the first
freshness of his success with the _Tribune_,--a newspaper hardly more
than two years old then, but destined to a great career, in which
several of the early Transcendentalists took some part.
TO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER (AT CONCORD).
CASTLETON, STATEN ISLAND, May 11, 1843.
DEAR MOTHER AND FRIENDS AT HOME,--We arrived here safely at ten
o'clock on Sunday morning, having had as good a passage as usual,
though we ran aground and were detained a couple of hours in the
Thames River, till the tide came to our relief. At length we curtseyed
up to a wharf just the other side of their Castle Garden,--very
incurious about them and their city. I believe my vacant looks,
absolutely inaccessible to questions, did at length satisfy an army of
starving cabmen that I did not want a hack, cab, or anything of that
sort as yet. It was the only demand the city made on us; as if a
wheeled vehicle of some sort were the sum and summit of a reasonable
man's wants. "Having tried the water," they seemed to say, "will you
not return to the pleasant securities of land carriage? Else why your
boat's prow turned toward the shore at last?" They are a sad-looking
set of fellows, not permitted to come on board, and I pitied them.
They had been expecting me, it would seem, and did really wish that I
should take a cab; though they did not seem rich enough to supply me
with one.
It was a confused jumble of heads and soiled coats, dangling from
flesh-colored faces,--all swaying to and fro, as by a sort of
undertow, while each whipstick, true as the needle to the pole, still
preserved that level and direction in which its proprietor had
dismissed his forlorn interrogatory. They took sight from them,--the
lash being wound up thereon, to prevent your attention from wandering,
or to make it concentre upon its object by the spiral line. They began
at first, perhaps, with the modest, but rather confident inquiry,
"Want a cab, sir?" but as their despair increased, it took the
affirmative tone, as the disheartened and irresolute are apt to do:
"You want a cab, sir," or even, "You want a nice cab, sir, to take you
to Fourth Street." The question which one had bravely and hopefully
begun to put, another had the tact to take up and conclude with fresh
emphasis,--twirling it from his particular whipstick as if it had
emanated from his lips,--as the sentiment did from his heart. Each one
could truly say, "Them 's my sentiments." But it was a sad sight.
I am seven and a half miles from New York, and, as it would take half
a day at least, have not been there yet. I have already run over no
small part of the island, to the highest hill, and some way along the
shore. From the hill directly behind the house I can see New York,
Brooklyn, Long Island, the Narrows, through which vessels bound to and
from all parts of the world chiefly pass,--Sandy Hook and the
Highlands of Neversink (part of the coast of New Jersey),--and, by
going still farther up the hill, the Kill van Kull, and Newark Bay.
From the pinnacle of one Madame Grimes's house, the other night at
sunset, I could see almost round the island. Far in the horizon there
was a fleet of sloops bound up the Hudson, which seemed to be going
over the edge of the earth; and in view of these trading ships
commerce seems quite imposing.
But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a
neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane. I do not
like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and
sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in,
and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street
cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along
the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to
sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and
roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.
I must not know anything about my condition and relations here till
what is not permanent is worn off. I have not yet subsided. Give me
time enough, and I may like it. All my inner man heretofore has been a
Concord impression; and here come these Sandy Hook and Coney Island
breakers to meet and modify the former; but it will be long before I
can make nature look as innocently grand and inspiring as in Concord.
Your affectionate son,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
TO SOPHIA THOREAU (AT CONCORD).
CASTLETON, STATEN ISLAND, May 22, 1843.
DEAR SOPHIA,--I have had a severe cold ever since I came here, and
have been confined to the house for the last week with bronchitis,
though I am now getting out, so I have not seen much in the botanical
way. The cedar seems to be one of the most common trees here, and the
fields are very fragrant with it. There are also the gum and tulip
trees. The latter is not very common, but is very large and beautiful,
having flowers as large as tulips, and as handsome. It is not time for
it yet.
The woods are now full of a large honeysuckle in full bloom, which
differs from ours in being red instead of white, so that at first I
did not know its genus. The painted-cup is very common in the meadows
here. Peaches, and especially cherries, seem to grow by all the
fences. Things are very forward here compared with Concord. The
apricots growing out-of-doors are already as large as plums. The
apple, pear, peach, cherry, and plum trees have shed their blossoms.
The whole island is like a garden, and affords very fine scenery.
In front of the house is a very extensive wood, beyond which is the
sea, whose roar I can hear all night long, when there is a wind; if
easterly winds have prevailed on the Atlantic. There are always some
vessels in sight,--ten, twenty, or thirty miles off,--and Sunday
before last there were hundreds in long procession, stretching from
New York to Sandy Hook, and far beyond, for Sunday is a lucky day.
I went to New York Saturday before last. A walk of half an hour, by
half a dozen houses, along the Richmond road--that is the road that
leads to Richmond, on which we live--brings me to the village of
Stapleton, in Southfield, where is the lower dock; but if I prefer I
can walk along the shore three quarters of a mile farther toward New
York to the quarantine village of Castleton, to the upper dock, which
the boat leaves five or six times every day, a quarter of an hour
later than the former place. Farther on is the village of New
Brighton, and farther still Port Richmond, which villages another
steamboat visits.
In New York I saw George Ward, and also Giles Waldo and William
Tappan, whom I can describe better when I have seen them more. They
are young friends of Mr. Emerson. Waldo came down to the island to see
me the next day. I also saw the Great Western, the Croton water-works,
and the picture-gallery of the National Academy of Design. But I have
not had time to see or do much yet.
Tell Miss Ward I shall try to put my microscope to a good use, and if
I find any new and preservable flower, will throw it into my
commonplace-book. Garlic, the original of the common onion, grows here
all over the fields, and during its season spoils the cream and butter
for the market, as the cows like it very much.
Tell Helen there are two schools of late established in the
neighborhood, with large prospects, or rather designs, one for boys
and another for girls. The latter by a Miss Errington, and though it
is only small as yet, I will keep my ears open for her in such
directions. The encouragement is very slight.
I hope you will not be washed away by the Irish sea.
Tell Mother I think my cold was not wholly owing to imprudence.
Perhaps I was being acclimated.
Tell Father that Mr. Tappan, whose son I know,--and whose clerks young
Tappan and Waldo are,--has invented and established a new and very
important business, which Waldo thinks would allow them to burn
ninety-nine out of one hundred of the stores in New York, which now
only offset and cancel one another. It is a kind of intelligence
office for the whole country, with branches in the principal cities,
giving information with regard to the credit and affairs of every man
of business of the country. Of course it is not popular at the South
and West. It is an extensive business and will employ a great many
clerks.
Love to all--not forgetting Aunt and Aunts--and Miss and Mrs. Ward.
* * * * *
On the 23d of May he wrote from Castleton to his sister Helen thus:--
DEAR HELEN,--In place of something fresher, I send you the following
verses from my Journal, written some time ago:--
Brother, where dost thou dwell?
What sun shines for thee now?
Dost thou indeed fare well
As we wished here below?
What season didst thou find?
'T was winter here.
Are not the Fates more kind
Than they appear?
Is thy brow clear again,
As in thy youthful years?
And was that ugly pain
The summit of thy fears?[24]
Yet thou wast cheery still;
They could not quench thy fire;
Thou didst abide their will,
And then retire.
Where chiefly shall I look
To feel thy presence near?
Along the neighboring brook
May I thy voice still hear?
Dost thou still haunt the brink
Of yonder river's tide?
And may I ever think
That thou art by my side?
What bird wilt thou employ
To bring me word of thee?
For it would give them joy,--
'T would give them liberty,
To serve their former lord
With wing and minstrelsy.
A sadder strain mixed with their song,
They've slowlier built their nests;
Since thou art gone
Their lively labor rests.
Where is the finch, the thrush
I used to hear?
Ah, they could well abide
The dying year.
Now they no more return,
I hear them not;
They have remained to mourn,
Or else forgot.
As the first letter of Thoreau to Emerson was to thank him for his
lofty friendship, so now the first letter to Mrs. Emerson, after
leaving her house, was to say similar things, with a passing allusion
to her love of flowers and of gardening, in which she surpassed all
his acquaintance in Concord, then and afterward. A letter to Emerson
followed, touching on the _Dial_ and on several of his new and old
acquaintance. "Rockwood Hoar" is the person since known as judge and
cabinet officer,--the brother of Senator Hoar, and of Thoreau's
special friends Elizabeth and Edward Hoar. Channing is the poet, who
had lately printed his first volume, without finding many readers.
TO MRS. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
CASTLETON, STATEN ISLAND, May 22, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I believe a good many conversations with you were
left in an unfinished state, and now indeed I don't know where to take
them up. But I will resume some of the unfinished silence. I shall not
hesitate to know you. I think of you as some elder sister of mine,
whom I could not have avoided,--a sort of lunar influence,--only of
such age as the moon, whose time is measured by her light. You must
know that you represent to me woman, for I have not traveled very far
or wide,--and what if I had? I like to deal with you, for I believe
you do not lie or steal, and these are very rare virtues. I thank you
for your influence for two years. I was fortunate to be subjected to
it, and am now to remember it. It is the noblest gift we can make;
what signify all others that can be bestowed? You have helped to keep
my life "on loft," as Chaucer says of Griselda, and in a better sense.
You always seemed to look down at me as from some elevation,--some of
your high humilities,--and I was the better for having to look up. I
felt taxed not to disappoint your expectation; for could there be any
accident so sad as to be respected for something better than we are?
It was a pleasure even to go away from you, as it is not to meet some,
as it apprised me of my high relations; and such a departure is a sort
of further introduction and meeting. Nothing makes the earth seem so
spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and
longitudes.
You must not think that fate is so dark there, for even here I can see
a faint reflected light over Concord, and I think that at this
distance I can better weigh the value of a doubt there. Your
moonlight, as I have told you, though it is a reflection of the sun,
allows of bats and owls and other twilight birds to flit therein. But
I am very glad that you can elevate your life with a doubt, for I am
sure that it is nothing but an insatiable faith after all that deepens
and darkens its current. And your doubt and my confidence are only a
difference of expression.
I have hardly begun to live on Staten Island yet; but, like the man
who, when forbidden to tread on English ground, carried Scottish
ground in his boots, I carry Concord ground in my boots and in my
hat,--and am I not made of Concord dust? I cannot realize that it is
the roar of the sea I hear now, and not the wind in Walden woods. I
find more of Concord, after all, in the prospect of the sea, beyond
Sandy Hook, than in the fields and woods.
If you were to have this Hugh the gardener for your man, you would
think a new dispensation had commenced. He might put a fairer aspect
on the natural world for you, or at any rate a screen between you and
the almshouse. There is a beautiful red honeysuckle now in blossom in
the woods here, which should be transplanted to Concord; and if what
they tell me about the tulip tree be true, you should have that also.
I have not seen Mrs. Black yet, but I intend to call on her soon. Have
you established those simpler modes of living yet?--"In the full tide
of successful operation?"
Tell Mrs. Brown that I hope she is anchored in a secure haven and
derives much pleasure still from reading the poets, and that her
constellation is not quite set from my sight, though it is sunk so low
in that northern horizon. Tell Elizabeth Hoar that her bright present
did "carry ink safely to Staten Island," and was a conspicuous object
in Master Haven's inventory of my effects. Give my respects to Madam
Emerson, whose Concord face I should be glad to see here this summer;
and remember me to the rest of the household who have had vision of
me. Shake a day-day to Edith, and say good-night to Ellen for me.
Farewell.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
CASTLETON, STATEN ISLAND, May 23.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I was just going to write to you when I received your
letter. I was waiting till I had got away from Concord. I should have
sent you something for the _Dial_ before, but I have been sick ever
since I came here, rather unaccountably,--what with a cold,
bronchitis, acclimation, etc., still unaccountably. I send you some
verses from my Journal which will help make a packet. I have not time
to correct them, if this goes by Rockwood Hoar. If I can finish an
account of a winter's walk in Concord, in the midst of a Staten Island
summer,--not so wise as true, I trust,--I will send it to you soon.
I have had no later experiences yet. You must not count much upon what
I can do or learn in New York. I feel a good way off here; and it is
not to be visited, but seen and dwelt in. I have been there but once,
and have been confined to the house since. Everything there
disappoints me but the crowd; rather, I was disappointed with the rest
before I came. I have no eyes for their churches, and what else they
find to brag of. Though I know but little about Boston, yet what
attracts me, in a quiet way, seems much meaner and more pretending
than there,--libraries, pictures, and faces in the street. You don't
know where any respectability inhabits. It is in the crowd in Chatham
Street. The crowd is something new, and to be attended to. It is worth
a thousand Trinity Churches and Exchanges while it is looking at them,
and will run over them and trample them under foot one day. There are
two things I hear and am aware I live in the neighborhood of,--the
roar of the sea and the hum of the city. I have just come from the
beach (to find your letter), and I like it much. Everything there is
on a grand and generous scale,--seaweed, water, and sand; and even the
dead fishes, horses, and hogs have a rank, luxuriant odor; great
shad-nets spread to dry; crabs and horseshoes crawling over the sand;
clumsy boats, only for service, dancing like sea-fowl over the surf,
and ships afar off going about their business.
Waldo and Tappan carried me to their English alehouse the first
Saturday, and Waldo spent two hours here the next day. But Tappan I
have only seen. I like his looks and the sound of his silence. They
are confined every day but Sunday, and then Tappan is obliged to
observe the demeanor of a church-goer to prevent open war with his
father.
I am glad that Channing has got settled, and that, too, before the
inroad of the Irish. I have read his poems two or three times over,
and partially through and under, with new and increased interest and
appreciation. Tell him I saw a man buy a copy at Little & Brown's. He
may have been a virtuoso, but we will give him the credit. What with
Alcott and Lane and Hawthorne, too, you look strong enough to take New
York by storm. Will you tell L., if he asks, that I have been able to
do nothing about the books yet?
Believe that I have something better to write you than this. It would
be unkind to thank you for particular deeds.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, June 8, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--I have been to see Henry James, and like him very much.
It was a great pleasure to meet him. It makes humanity seem more erect
and respectable. I never was more kindly and faithfully catechised. It
made me respect myself more to be thought worthy of such wise
questions. He is a man, and takes his own way, or stands still in his
own place. I know of no one so patient and determined to have the good
of you. It is almost friendship, such plain and human dealing. I think
that he will not write or speak inspiringly; but he is a refreshing,
forward-looking and forward-moving man, and he has naturalized and
humanized New York for me. He actually reproaches you by his respect
for your poor words. I had three hours' solid talk with him, and he
asks me to make free use of his house. He wants an expression of your
faith, or to be sure that it is faith, and confesses that his own
treads fast upon the neck of his understanding. He exclaimed, at some
careless answer of mine: "Well, you Transcendentalists are wonderfully
consistent. I must get hold of this somehow!" He likes Carlyle's
book,[25] but says that it leaves him in an excited and unprofitable
state, and that Carlyle is so ready to obey his humor that he makes
the least vestige of truth the foundation of any superstructure, not
keeping faith with his better genius nor truest readers.
I met Wright on the stairs of the Society Library, and W. H. Channing
and Brisbane on the steps. The former (Channing) is a concave man, and
you see by his attitude and the lines of his face that he is
retreating from himself and from yourself, with sad doubts. It is like
a fair mask swaying from the drooping boughs of some tree whose stem
is not seen. He would break with a conchoidal fracture. You feel as if
you would like to see him when he has made up his mind to run all the
risks. To be sure, he doubts because he has a great hope to be
disappointed, but he makes the possible disappointment of too much
consequence. Brisbane, with whom I did not converse, did not impress
me favorably. He looks like a man who has lived in a cellar, far gone
in consumption. I barely saw him, but he did not look as if he could
let Fourier go, in any case, and throw up his hat. But I need not have
come to New York to write this.
I have seen Tappan for two or three hours, and like both him and
Waldo; but I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight
disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet
the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads. Persons
and things flit so rapidly through my brain nowadays that I can hardly
remember them. They seem to be lying in the stream, stemming the tide,
ready to go to sea, as steamboats when they leave the dock go off in
the opposite direction first, until they are headed right, and then
begins the steady revolution of the paddle-wheels; and _they_ are not
quite cheerily headed anywhither yet, nor singing amid the shrouds as
they bound over the billows. There is a certain youthfulness and
generosity about them, very attractive; and Tappan's more reserved and
solitary thought commands respect.
After some ado, I discovered the residence of Mrs. Black, but there
was palmed off on me, in her stead, a Mrs. Grey (quite an inferior
color), who told me at last that she was not Mrs. Black, but her
mother, and was just as glad to see me as Mrs. Black would have been,
and so, forsooth, would answer just as well. Mrs. Black had gone with
Edward Palmer to New Jersey, and would return on the morrow.
I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am
ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meaner than
I could have imagined. It will be something to hate,--that's the
advantage it will be to me; and even the best people in it are a part
of it, and talk coolly about it. The pigs in the street are the most
respectable part of the population. When will the world learn that a
million men are of no importance compared with _one_ man? But I must
wait for a shower of shillings, or at least a slight dew or mizzling
of sixpences, before I explore New York very far.
The sea-beach is the best thing I have seen. It is very solitary and
remote, and you only remember New York occasionally. The distances,
too, along the shore, and inland in sight of it, are unaccountably
great and startling. The sea seems very near from the hills, but it
proves a long way over the plain, and yet you may be wet with the
spray before you can believe that you are there. The far seems near,
and the near far. Many rods from the beach, I step aside for the
Atlantic, and I see men drag up their boats on to the sand, with oxen,
stepping about amid the surf, as if it were possible they might draw
up Sandy Hook.
I do not feel myself especially serviceable to the good people with
whom I live, except as inflictions are sanctified to the righteous.
And so, too, must I serve the boy. I can look to the Latin and
mathematics sharply, and for the rest behave myself. But I cannot be
in his neighborhood hereafter as his Educator, of course, but as the
hawks fly over my own head. I am not attracted toward him but as to
youth generally. He shall frequent me, however, as much as he can, and
I'll be I.
Bradbury[26] told me, when I passed through Boston, that he was
coming to New York the following Saturday, and would then settle with
me, but he has not made his appearance yet. Will you, the next time
you go to Boston, present that order for me which I left with you?
If I say less about Waldo and Tappan now, it is, perhaps, because I
may have more to say by and by. Remember me to your mother and Mrs.
Emerson, who, I hope, is quite well. I shall be very glad to hear from
her, as well as from you. I have very hastily written out something
for the _Dial_, and send it only because you are expecting
something,--though something better. It seems idle and Howittish, but
it may be of more worth in Concord, where it belongs. In great haste.
Farewell.
TO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER (AT CONCORD).
CASTLETON, June 8, 1843.
DEAR PARENTS,--I have got quite well now, and like the lay of the land
and the look of the sea veryDEAR PARENTS much,--only the country is so
fair that it seems rather too much as if it were made to be looked at.
I have been to New York four or five times, and have run about the
island a good deal.
George Ward, when I last saw him, which was at his house in Brooklyn,
was studying the daguerreotype process, preparing to set up in that
line. The boats run now almost every hour from 8 A. M. to 7 P. M.,
back and forth, so that I can get to the city much more easily than
before. I have seen there one Henry James, a lame man, of whom I had
heard before, whom I like very much; and he asks me to make free use
of his house, which is situated in a pleasant part of the city,
adjoining the University. I have met several people whom I knew
before, and among the rest Mr. Wright, who was on his way to Niagara.
I feel already about as well acquainted with New York as with
Boston,--that is, about as little, perhaps. It is large enough now,
and they intend it shall be larger still. Fifteenth Street, where some
of my new acquaintance live, is two or three miles from the Battery,
where the boat touches,--clear brick and stone, and no "give" to the
foot; and they have laid out, though not built, up to the 149th street
above. I had rather see a brick for a specimen, for my part, such as
they exhibited in old times. You see it is "quite a day's training" to
make a few calls in different parts of the city (to say nothing of
twelve miles by water and land,--_i. e._, not brick and stone),
especially if it does not rain shillings, which might interest
omnibuses in your behalf. Some omnibuses are marked "Broadway--Fourth
Street," and they go no farther; others "Eighth Street," and so
on,--and so of the other principal streets. (This letter will be
circumstantial enough for Helen.)
This is in all respects a very pleasant residence,--much more rural
than you would expect of the vicinity of New York. There are woods all
around. We breakfast at half past six, lunch, if we will, at twelve,
and dine or sup at five; thus is the day partitioned off. From nine
to two, or thereabouts, I am the schoolmaster, and at other times as
much the pupil as I can be. Mr. and Mrs. Emerson are not indeed of my
kith or kin in any sense; but they are irreproachable and kind. I have
met no one yet _on the island_ whose acquaintance I shall
cultivate,--or hoe round,--unless it be our neighbor Captain Smith, an
old fisherman, who catches the fish called "moss-bonkers"--so it
sounds--and invites me to come to the beach, where he spends the week,
and see him and his fish.
Farms are for sale all around here, and so, I suppose men are for
purchase. North of us live Peter Wandell, Mr. Mell, and Mr. Disosway
(don't mind the spelling), as far as the Clove road; and south, John
Britton, Van Pelt, and Captain Smith, as far as the Fingerboard road.
Behind is the hill, some 250 feet high, on the side of which we live;
and in front the forest and the sea,--the latter at the distance of a
mile and a half.
Tell Helen that Miss Errington is provided with assistance. This were
a good place as any to establish a school, if one could wait a little.
Families come down here to board in the summer, and three or four have
been already established this season.
As for money matters, I have not set my traps yet, but I am getting my
bait ready. Pray, how does the garden thrive, and what improvements in
the pencil line? I miss you all very much. Write soon, and send a
Concord paper to
Your affectionate son,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
The traps of this sportsman were magazine articles,--but the magazines
that would pay much for papers were very few in 1843. One such had
existed in Boston for a short time,--the _Miscellany_,--and it printed
a good paper of Thoreau's, but the pay was not forthcoming. His
efforts to find publishers more liberal in New York were not
successful. But he continued to write for fame in the _Dial_, and
helped to edit that.
TO MRS. EMERSON.
STATEN ISLAND, June 20, 1843.
MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--I have only read a page of your letter, and have
come out to the top of the hill at sunset, where I can see the ocean,
to prepare to read the rest. It is fitter that it should hear it than
the walls of my chamber. The very crickets here seem to chirp around
me as they did not before. I feel as if it were a great daring to go
on and read the rest, and then to live accordingly. There are more
than thirty vessels in sight going to sea. I am almost afraid to look
at your letter. I see that it will make my life very steep, but it may
lead to fairer prospects than this.
You seem to me to speak out of a very clear and high heaven, where any
one may be who stands so high. Your voice seems not a voice, but comes
as much from the blue heavens as from the paper.
My dear friend, it was very noble in you to write me so trustful an
answer. It will do as well for another world as for this; such a voice
is for no particular time nor person, but it makes him who may hear it
stand for all that is lofty and true in humanity. The thought of you
will constantly elevate my life; it will be something always above the
horizon to behold, as when I look up at the evening star. I think I
know your thoughts without seeing you, and as well here as in Concord.
You are not at all strange to me.
I could hardly believe, after the lapse of one night, that I had such
a noble letter still at hand to read,--that it was not some fine
dream. I looked at midnight to be sure that it was real. I feel that I
am unworthy to know you, and yet they will not permit it wrongfully.
I, perhaps, am more willing to deceive by appearances than you say you
are; it would not be worth the while to tell how willing; but I have
the power perhaps too much to forget my meanness as soon as seen, and
not be incited by permanent sorrow. My actual life is unspeakably mean
compared with what I know and see that it might be. Yet the ground
from which I see and say this is some part of it. It ranges from
heaven to earth, and is all things in an hour. The experience of every
past moment but belies the faith of each present. We never conceive
the greatness of our fates. Are not these faint flashes of light which
sometimes obscure the sun their certain dawn?
My friend, I have read your letter as if I was not reading it. After
each pause I could defer the rest forever. The thought of you will be
a new motive for every right action. You are another human being whom
I know, and might not our topic be as broad as the universe? What have
we to do with petty rumbling news? We have our own great affairs.
Sometimes in Concord I found my actions dictated, as it were, by your
influence, and though it led almost to trivial Hindoo observances, yet
it was good and elevating. To hear that you have sad hours is not sad
to me. I rather rejoice at the richness of your experience. Only think
of some sadness away in Pekin,--unseen and unknown there. What a mine
it is! Would it not weigh down the Celestial Empire, with all its gay
Chinese? Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys. Let us be sad
about all we see and are, for so we demand and pray for better. It is
the constant prayer and whole Christian religion. I could hope that
you would get well soon, and have a healthy body for this world, but I
know this cannot be; and the Fates, after all, are the accomplishers
of our hopes. Yet I do hope that you may find it a worthy struggle,
and life seem grand still through the clouds.
What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them
without elevation! And we can think of them any time and anywhere, and
it costs nothing but the lofty disposition. I cannot tell you the joy
your letter gives me, which will not quite cease till the latest time.
Let me accompany your finest thought.
I send my love to my other friend and brother, whose nobleness I
slowly recognize.
HENRY.
TO MRS. THOREAU (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, July 7, 1843.
DEAR MOTHER,--I was very glad to get your letter and papers. Tell
Father that circumstantial letters make very substantial reading, at
any rate. I like to know even how the sun shines and garden grows
with you. I did not get my money in Boston, and probably shall not at
all. Tell Sophia that I have pressed some blossoms of the tulip tree
for her. They look somewhat like white lilies. The magnolia, too, is
in blossom here.
Pray, have you the seventeen-year locust in Concord? The air here is
filled with their din. They come out of the ground at first in an
imperfect state, and, crawling up the shrubs and plants, the perfect
insect bursts out through the back. They are doing great damage to the
fruit and forest trees. The latter are covered with dead twigs, which
in the distance look like the blossoms of the chestnut. They bore
every twig of last year's growth in order to deposit their eggs in it.
In a few weeks the eggs will be hatched, and the worms fall to the
ground and enter it, and in 1860 make their appearance again. I
conversed about their coming this season before they arrived. They do
no injury to the leaves, but, beside boring the twigs, suck their sap
for sustenance. Their din is heard by those who sail along the shore
from the distant woods,--Phar-r-r-aoh. Phar-r-r-aoh. They are
departing now. Dogs, cats, and chickens subsist mainly upon them in
some places.
I have not been to New York for more than three weeks. I have had an
interesting letter from Mr. Lane,[27] describing their new prospects.
My pupil and I are getting on apace. He is remarkably well advanced in
Latin, and is well advancing.
Your letter has just arrived. I was not aware that it was so long
since I wrote home; I only knew that I had sent five or six letters to
the town. It is very refreshing to hear from you, though it is not all
good news. But I trust that Stearns Wheeler is not dead. I should be
slow to believe it. He was made to work very well in this world. There
need be no tragedy in his death.
The demon which is said to haunt the Jones family, hovering over their
eyelids with wings steeped in juice of poppies, has commenced another
campaign against me. I am "clear Jones" in this respect at least. But
he finds little encouragement in my atmosphere, I assure you, for I do
not once fairly lose myself, except in those hours of truce allotted
to rest by immemorial custom. However, this skirmishing interferes
sadly with my literary projects, and I am apt to think it a good day's
work if I maintain a soldier's eye till nightfall. Very well, it does
not matter much in what wars we serve, whether in the Highlands or the
Lowlands. Everywhere we get soldiers' pay still.
Give my love to Aunt Louisa, whose benignant face I sometimes see
right in the wall, as naturally and necessarily shining on my path as
some star of unaccountably greater age and higher orbit than myself.
Let it be inquired by her of George Minott, as from me,--for she sees
him,--if he has seen any pigeons yet, and tell him there are plenty of
jack snipes here. As for William P., the "worthy young man,"--as I
live, my eyes have not fallen on him yet.
I have not had the influenza, though here are its
headquarters,--unless my first week's cold was it. Tell Helen I shall
write to her soon. I have heard Lucretia Mott. This is badly written;
but the worse the writing the sooner you get it this time from
Your affectionate son,
H. D. T.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, July 8, 1843.
DEAR FRIENDS,--I was very glad to hear your voices from so far. I do
not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe. It is
all a fable, and I cannot but think that you speak with a slight
outrage and disrespect of Concord when you talk of fifty of them.
There are not so many. Yet think not that I have left all behind, for
already I begin to track my way over the earth, and find the cope of
heaven extending beyond its horizon,--forsooth, like the roofs of
these Dutch houses. My thoughts revert to those dear hills and that
_river_ which so fills up the world to its brim,--worthy to be named
with Mincius and Alpheus,--still drinking its meadows while I am far
away. How can it run heedless to the sea, as if I were there to
countenance it? George Minott, too, looms up considerably,--and many
another old familiar face. These things all look sober and
respectable. They are better than the environs of New York, I assure
you.
I am pleased to think of Channing as an inhabitant of the gray town.
Seven cities contended for Homer dead. Tell him to remain at least
long enough to establish Concord's right and interest in him. I was
beginning to know the man. In imagination I see you pilgrims taking
your way by the red lodge and the cabin of the brave farmer man, so
youthful and hale, to the still cheerful woods. And Hawthorne, too, I
remember as one with whom I sauntered, in old heroic times, along the
banks of the Scamander, amid the ruins of chariots and heroes. Tell
him not to desert, even after the tenth year. Others may say, "Are
there not the cities of Asia?" But what are they? Staying at home is
the heavenly way.
And Elizabeth Hoar, my brave townswoman, to be sung of poets,--if I
may speak of her whom I do not know. Tell Mrs. Brown that I do not
forget her, going her way under the stars through this chilly
world,--I did _not_ think of the wind,--and that I went a little way
with her. Tell her not to despair. Concord's little arch does not span
all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.
And least of all are forgotten those walks in the woods in ancient
days,--too sacred to be idly remembered,--when their aisles were
pervaded as by a fragrant atmosphere. They still seem youthful and
cheery to my imagination as Sherwood and Barnsdale,--and of far purer
fame. Those afternoons when we wandered o'er Olympus,--and those
hills, from which the sun was seen to set, while still our day held on
its way.
"At last he rose and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new."
I remember these things at midnight, at rare intervals. But know, my
friends, that I a good deal hate you all in my most private thoughts,
as the substratum of the little love I bear you. Though you are a
rare band, and do not make half use enough of one another.
I think this is a noble number of the _Dial_.[28] It perspires thought
and feeling. I can speak of it now a little like a foreigner. Be
assured that it is not written in vain,--it is not for me. I hear its
prose and its verse. They provoke and inspire me, and they have my
sympathy. I hear the sober and the earnest, the sad and the cheery
voices of my friends, and to me it is a long letter of encouragement
and reproof; and no doubt so it is to many another in the land. So
don't give up the ship. Methinks the verse is hardly enough better
than the prose. I give my vote for the "Notes from the Journal of a
Scholar," and wonder you don't print them faster. I want, too, to read
the rest of the "Poet and the Painter." Miss Fuller's is a noble
piece,--rich, extempore writing, talking with pen in hand. It is too
good not to be better, even. In writing, conversation should be folded
many times thick. It is the height of art that, on the first perusal,
plain common sense should appear; on the second, severe truth; and on
a third, beauty; and, having these warrants for its depth and reality,
we may then enjoy the beauty for evermore. The sea-piece is of the
best that is going, if not of the best that is staying. You have
spoken a good word for Carlyle. As for the "Winter's Walk," I should
be glad to have it printed in the _Dial_ if you think it good enough,
and will criticise it; otherwise send it to me, and I will dispose of
it.
I have not been to New York for a month, and so have not seen Waldo
and Tappan. James has been at Albany meanwhile. You will know that I
only describe my personal adventures with people; but I hope to see
more of them, and _judge_ them too. I am sorry to learn that Mrs.
Emerson is no better. But let her know that the Fates pay a compliment
to those whom they make sick, and they have not to ask, "What have I
done?"
Remember me to your mother, and remember me yourself as you are
remembered by
H. D. T.
I had a friendly and cheery letter from Lane a month ago.
TO HELEN THOREAU (AT ROXBURY).
STATEN ISLAND, July 21, 1843.
DEAR HELEN,--I am not in such haste to write home when I remember that
I make my readers pay the postage. But I believe I have not taxed you
before.
I have pretty much explored this island, inland and along the shore,
finding my health inclined me to the peripatetic philosophy. I have
visited telegraph stations, Sailors' Snug Harbors, Seaman's Retreats,
Old Elm Trees, where the Huguenots landed, Britton's Mills, and all
the villages on the island. Last Sunday I walked over to Lake Island
Farm, eight or nine miles from here, where Moses Prichard lived, and
found the present occupant, one Mr. Davenport, formerly from
Massachusetts, with three or four men to help him, raising sweet
potatoes and tomatoes by the acre. It seemed a cool and pleasant
retreat, but a hungry soil. As I was coming away, I took my toll out
of the soil in the shape of arrowheads, which may after all be the
surest crop, certainly not affected by drought.
I am well enough situated here to observe one aspect of the modern
world at least. I mean the migratory,--the western movement. Sixteen
hundred immigrants arrived at quarantine ground on the 4th of July,
and more or less every day since I have been here. I see them
occasionally washing their persons and clothes: or men, women, and
children gathered on an isolated quay near the shore, stretching their
limbs and taking the air; the children running races and swinging on
this artificial piece of the land of liberty, while their vessels are
undergoing purification. They are detained but a day or two, and then
go up to the city, for the most part without having _landed_ here.
In the city, I have seen, since I wrote last, W. H. Channing, at whose
home, in Fifteenth Street, I spent a few pleasant hours, discussing
the all-absorbing question "what to do for the race." (He is sadly in
earnest about going up the river to rusticate for six weeks, and
issues a new periodical called _The Present_ in September.) Also
Horace Greeley, editor of the _Tribune_, who is cheerfully in earnest,
at his office of all work, a hearty New Hampshire boy as one would
wish to meet, and says, "Now be neighborly," and believes only, or
mainly, first, in the Sylvania Association, somewhere in Pennsylvania;
and, secondly, and most of all, in a new association to go into
operation soon in New Jersey, with which he is connected. Edward
Palmer came down to see me Sunday before last. As for Waldo and
Tappan, we have strangely dodged one another, and have not met for
some weeks.
I believe I have not told you anything about Lucretia Mott. It was a
good while ago that I heard her at the Quaker Church in Hester Street.
She is a preacher, and it was advertised that she would be present on
that day. I liked all the proceedings very well, their plainly greater
harmony and sincerity than elsewhere. They do nothing in a hurry.
Every one that walks up the aisle in his square coat and expansive hat
has a history, and comes from a house to a house. The women come in
one after another in their Quaker bonnets and handkerchiefs, looking
all like sisters or so many chickadees. At length, after a long
silence,--waiting for the Spirit,--Mrs. Mott rose, took off her
bonnet, and began to utter very deliberately what the Spirit
suggested. Her self-possession was something to see, if all else
failed; but it did not. Her subject was, "The Abuse of the Bible," and
thence she straightway digressed to slavery and the degradation of
woman. It was a good speech,--Transcendentalism in its mildest form.
She sat down at length, and, after a long and decorous silence, in
which some seemed to be really digesting her words, the elders shook
hands, and the meeting dispersed. On the whole, I liked their ways and
the plainness of their meeting-house. It looked as if it was indeed
made for service.
I think that Stearns Wheeler has left a gap in the community not easy
to be filled. Though he did not exhibit the highest qualities of the
scholar, he promised, in a remarkable degree, many of the essential
and rarer ones; and his patient industry and energy, his reverent love
of letters, and his proverbial accuracy, will cause him to be
associated in my memory even with many venerable names of former days.
It was not wholly unfit that so pure a lover of books should have
ended his pilgrimage at the great book-mart of the world. I think of
him as healthy and brave, and am confident that if he had lived he
would have proved useful in more ways than I can describe. He would
have been authority on all matters of fact, and a sort of connecting
link between men and scholars of different walks and tastes. The
literary enterprises he was planning for himself and friends remind me
of an older and more studious time. So much, then, remains for us to
do who survive. Love to all. Tell all my friends in Concord that I do
not send my love, but retain it still.
Your affectionate brother.
TO MRS. THOREAU (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, August 6, 1843.
DEAR MOTHER,--As Mr. William Emerson is going to Concord on Tuesday, I
must not omit sending a line by him,--though I wish I had something
more weighty for so direct a post. I believe I directed my last letter
to you by mistake; but it must have appeared that it was addressed to
Helen. At any rate, this is to you without mistake.
I am chiefly indebted to your letters for what I have learned of
Concord and family news, and am very glad when I get one. I should
have liked to be in Walden woods with you, but not with the railroad.
I think of you all very often, and wonder if you are still separated
from me only by so many miles of earth, or so many miles of memory.
This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any
account men give of it. Methinks I should be content to sit at the
back door in Concord, under the poplar tree, henceforth forever. Not
that I am homesick at all,--for places are strangely indifferent to
me,--but Concord is still a cynosure to my eyes, and I find it hard to
attach it, even in imagination, to the rest of the globe, and tell
where the seam is.
I fancy that this Sunday evening you are pouring over some select
book, almost transcendental perchance, or else "Burgh's Dignity," or
Massillon, or the _Christian Examiner_. Father has just taken one more
look at the garden, and is now absorbed in Chaptelle, or reading the
newspaper quite abstractedly, only looking up occasionally over his
spectacles to see how the rest are engaged, and not to miss any newer
news that may not be in the paper. Helen has slipped in for the fourth
time to learn the very latest item. Sophia, I suppose, is at Bangor;
but Aunt Louisa, without doubt, is just flitting away to some good
meeting, to save the credit of you all.
It is still a cardinal virtue with me to keep awake. I find it
impossible to write or read except at rare intervals, but am,
generally speaking, tougher than formerly. I could make a pedestrian
tour round the world, and sometimes think it would perhaps be better
to do at once the things I _can_, rather than be trying to do what at
present I cannot do well. However, I shall awake sooner or later.
I have been translating some Greek, and reading English poetry, and a
month ago sent a paper to the _Democratic Review_, which, at length,
they were sorry they could not accept; but they could not adopt the
sentiments. However, they were very polite, and earnest that I should
send them something else, or reform that.
I go moping about the fields and woods here as I did in Concord, and,
it seems, am thought to be a surveyor,--an Eastern man inquiring
narrowly into the condition and value of land, etc., here, preparatory
to an extensive speculation. One neighbor observed to me, in a
mysterious and half-inquisitive way, that he supposed I must be pretty
well acquainted with the state of things; that I kept pretty close; he
did n't see any surveying instruments, but perhaps I had them in my
pocket.
I have received Helen's note, but have not heard of Frisbie Hoar
yet.[29] She is a faint-hearted writer, who could not take the
responsibility of blotting one sheet alone. However, I like very well
the blottings I get. Tell her I have not seen Mrs. Child nor Mrs.
Sedgwick.
Love to all from your affectionate son.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, August 7, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I fear I have nothing to send you worthy of so good
an opportunity. Of New York I still know but little, though out of so
many thousands there are no doubt many units whom it would be worth my
while to know. Mr. James[30] talks of going to Germany soon with his
wife to learn the language. He says he must know it; can never learn
it here; there he may absorb it; and is very anxious to learn
beforehand where he had best locate himself to enjoy the advantage of
the highest culture, learn the language in its purity, and not exceed
his limited means. I referred him to Longfellow. Perhaps you can help
him.
I have had a pleasant talk with Channing; and Greeley, too, it was
refreshing to meet. They were both much pleased with your criticism on
Carlyle, but thought that you had overlooked what chiefly concerned
them in the book,--its practical aim and merits.
I have also spent some pleasant hours with Waldo and Tappan at their
counting-room, or rather intelligence office.
I must still reckon myself with the innumerable army of
invalids,--undoubtedly in a fair field they would rout the
well,--though I am tougher than formerly. Methinks I could paint the
sleepy god more truly than the poets have done, from more intimate
experience. Indeed, I have not kept my eyes very steadily open to the
things of this world of late, and hence have little to report
concerning them. However, I trust the awakening will come before the
last trump,--and then perhaps I may remember some of my dreams.
I study the aspects of commerce at its Narrows here, where it passes
in review before me, and this seems to be beginning at the right end
to understand this Babylon. I have made a very rude translation of the
Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was
better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal
to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame
itself,--or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have
not done with Pindar yet. I sent a long article on Etzler's book to
the _Democratic Review_ six weeks ago, which at length they have
determined not to accept, as they could not subscribe to all the
opinions, but asked for other matter,--purely literary, I suppose.
O'Sullivan wrote me that articles of this kind have to be referred to
the circle who, it seems, are represented by this journal, and said
something about "collective we" and "homogeneity."
Pray don't think of Bradbury & Soden[31] any more,--
"For good deed done through praiere
Is sold and bought too dear, I wis,
To herte that of great valor is."
I see that they have given up their shop here.
Say to Mrs. Emerson that I am glad to remember how she too dwells
there in Concord, and shall send her anon some of the thoughts that
belong to her. As for Edith, I seem to see a star in the east over
where the young child is. Remember me to Mrs. Brown.
* * * * *
These letters for the most part explain themselves, with the aid of
several to Thoreau's family, which the purpose of Emerson, in 1865, to
present his friend in a stoical character, had excluded from the
collection then printed. Mention of C. S. Wheeler and his sad death in
Germany had come to him from Emerson, as well as from his own family
at Concord,--of whose occupations Thoreau gives so genial a picture in
the letter of August 6 to his mother. Emerson wrote: "You will have
read and heard the sad news to the little village of Lincoln, of
Stearns Wheeler's death. Such an overthrow to the hopes of his parents
made me think more of them than of the loss the community will suffer
in his kindness, diligence, and ingenuous mind." He died at Leipsic,
in the midst of Greek studies which have since been taken up and
carried farther by a child of Concord, Professor Goodwin of the same
university. Henry James, several times mentioned in the
correspondence, was the moral and theological essayist (father of the
novelist Henry James, and the distinguished Professor James of
Harvard), who was so striking a personality in Concord and Cambridge
circles for many years. W. H. Channing was a Christian Socialist fifty
years ago,--cousin of Ellery Channing, and nephew and biographer of
Dr. Channing. Both he and Horace Greeley were then deeply interested
in the Fourierist scheme of association, one development of which was
going on at Brook Farm, under direction of George Ripley, and another,
differing in design, at Fruitlands, under Bronson Alcott and Charles
Lane. The jocose allusions of Thoreau to his Jones ancestors (the
descendants of the Tory Colonel Jones of Weston) had this foundation
in fact,--that his uncle, Charles Dunbar, soon to be named in
connection with Daniel Webster, suffered from a sort of lethargy,
which would put him to sleep in the midst of conversation. Webster had
been retained in the once famous "Wyman case," of a bank officer
charged with fraud, and had exerted his great forensic talent for a
few days in the Concord court-house. Emerson wrote Thoreau: "You will
have heard of the Wyman trial, and the stir it made in the village.
But the Cliff and Walden knew nothing of that."
TO MRS. THOREAU (AT CONCORD).
CASTLETON, Tuesday, August 29, 1843.
DEAR MOTHER,--Mr. Emerson has just given me warning that he is about
to send to Concord, which I will endeavor to improve. I am a great
deal more wakeful than I was, and growing stout in other
respects,--so that I may yet accomplish something in the literary
way; indeed, I should have done so before now but for the slowness and
poverty of the "Reviews" themselves. I have tried sundry methods of
earning money in the city, of late, but without success: have rambled
into every bookseller's or publisher's house, and discussed their
affairs with them. Some propose to me to do what an honest man cannot.
Among others, I conversed with the Harpers--to see if they might not
find me useful to them; but they say that they are making $50,000
annually, and their motto is to let well alone. I find that I talk
with these poor men as if I were over head and ears in business, and a
few thousands were no consideration with me. I almost reproach myself
for bothering them so to no purpose; but it is a very valuable
experience, and the best introduction I could have.
We have had a tremendous rain here last Monday night and Tuesday
morning. I was in the city at Giles Waldo's, and the streets at
daybreak were absolutely impassable for the water. Yet the accounts of
the storm that you may have seen are exaggerated, as indeed are all
such things, to my imagination. On Sunday I heard Mr. Bellows preach
here on the island; but the fine prospect over the Bay and Narrows,
from where I sat, preached louder than he,--though he did far better
than the average, if I remember aright. I should have liked to see
Daniel Webster walking about Concord; I suppose the town shook, every
step he took. But I trust there were some sturdy Concordians who were
not tumbled down by the jar, but represented still the upright town.
Where was George Minott? he would not have gone far to see him. Uncle
Charles should have been there,--he might as well have been catching
cat naps in Concord as anywhere.
And then, what a whetter-up of his memory this event would have been!
You'd have had all the classmates again in alphabetical order
reversed,--"and Seth Hunt and Bob Smith--and he was a student of my
father's,--and where's Put now? and I wonder--you--if Henry's been to
see George Jones yet! A little account with Stow,--Balcom,--Bigelow,
poor miserable t-o-a-d,--(sound asleep.) I vow, you,--what noise was
that?--saving grace--and few there be--That's clear as preaching,--Easter
Brooks,--morally deprived,--How charming is divine philosophy,--some
wise and some otherwise,--Heighho! (sound asleep again) Webster's a
smart fellow--bears his age well,--how old should you think he was?
you--does he look as if he were ten years younger than I?"
I met, or rather, was overtaken by Fuller, who tended for Mr. How, the
other day, in Broadway. He dislikes New York very much. The Mercantile
Library,--that is, its Librarian, presented me with a stranger's
ticket, for a month, and I was glad to read the Reviews there, and
Carlyle's last article. I have bought some pantaloons; stockings show
no holes yet. These pantaloons cost $2.25 ready made.
In haste.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, September 14, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--Miss Fuller will tell you the news from these parts, so
I will only devote these few moments to what she does n't know as
well. I was absent only one day and night from the island, the family
expecting me back immediately. I was to earn a certain sum before
winter, and thought it worth the while to try various experiments. I
carried _The Agriculturist_ about the city, and up as far as
Manhattanville, and called at the Croton Reservoir, where, indeed,
they did not want any Agriculturists, but paid well enough in their
way.
Literature comes to a poor market here; and even the little that I
write is more than will sell. I have tried _The Dem. Review_, _The New
Mirror_, and _Brother Jonathan_.[32] The last two, as well as the _New
World_, are overwhelmed with contributions which cost nothing, and are
worth no more. _The Knickerbocker_ is too poor, and only _The Ladies'
Companion_ pays. O'Sullivan is printing the manuscript I sent him some
time ago, having objected only to my want of sympathy with the
Committee.
I doubt if you have made more corrections in my manuscript than I
should have done ere this, though they may be better; but I am glad
you have taken any pains with it. I have not prepared any translations
for the _Dial_, supposing there would be no room, though it is the
only place for them.
I have been seeing men during these days, and trying experiments upon
trees; have inserted three or four hundred buds (quite a Buddhist, one
might say). Books I have access to through your brother and Mr.
McKean, and have read a good deal. Quarles's "Divine Poems" as well as
"Emblems" are quite a discovery.
I am very sorry Mrs. Emerson is so sick. Remember me to her and to
your mother. I like to think of your living on the banks of the Mill
Brook, in the midst of the garden with all its weeds; for what are
botanical distinctions at this distance?
TO HIS MOTHER (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, October 1, 1843.
DEAR MOTHER,--I hold together remarkably well as yet,--speaking of my
outward linen and woolen man; no holes more than I brought away, and
no stitches needed yet. It is marvelous. I think the Fates must be on
my side, for there is less than a plank between me and--Time, to say
the least. As for Eldorado, that is far off yet. My bait will not
tempt the rats,--they are too well fed. The _Democratic Review_ is
poor, and can only afford half or quarter pay, which it _will_ do; and
they say there is a _Ladies' Companion_ that pays,--but I could not
write anything companionable. However, speculate as we will, it is
quite gratuitous; for life, nevertheless and never the more, goes
steadily on, well or ill-fed, and clothed somehow, and "honor bright"
withal. It is very gratifying to live in the prospect of great
successes always; and for that purpose we must leave a sufficient
foreground to see them through. All the painters prefer distant
prospects for the greater breadth of view and delicacy of tint. But
this is no news, and describes no new conditions.
Meanwhile I am somnambulic at least,--stirring in my sleep; indeed,
quite awake. I read a good deal, and am pretty well known in the
libraries of New York. Am in with the librarian (one Dr. Forbes) of
the Society Library, who has lately been to Cambridge to learn
liberality, and has come back to let me take out some un-take-out-able
books, which I was threatening to read on the spot. And Mr. McKean, of
the Mercantile Library, is a true gentleman (a former tutor of mine),
and offers me every privilege there. I have from him a perpetual
stranger's ticket, and a citizen's rights besides,--all which
privileges I pay handsomely for by improving.
A canoe race "came off" on the Hudson the other day, between
Chippeways and New Yorkers, which must have been as moving a sight as
the buffalo hunt which I witnessed. But canoes and buffaloes are all
lost, as is everything here, in the mob. It is only the people have
come to see one another. Let them advertise that there will be a
gathering at Hoboken,--having bargained with the ferryboats,--and
there will be, and they need not throw in the buffaloes.
I have crossed the bay twenty or thirty times, and have seen a great
many immigrants going up to the city for the first time: Norwegians,
who carry their old-fashioned farming-tools to the West with them, and
will buy nothing here for fear of being cheated; English operatives,
known by their pale faces and stained hands, who will recover their
birthright in a little cheap sun and wind; English travelers on their
way to the Astor House, to whom I have done the honors of the city;
whole families of emigrants cooking their dinner upon the
pavement,--all sunburnt, so that you are in doubt where the
foreigner's face of flesh begins; their tidy clothes laid on, and then
tied to their swathed bodies, which move about like a bandaged
finger,--caps set on the head as if woven of the hair, which is still
growing at the roots,--each and all busily cooking, stooping from time
to time over the pot, and having something to drop in it, that so they
may be entitled to take something out, forsooth. They look like
respectable but straitened people, who may turn out to be Counts when
they get to Wisconsin, and will have this experience to relate to
their children.
Seeing so many people from day to day, one comes to have less respect
for flesh and bones, and thinks they must be more loosely joined, of
less firm fibre, than the few he had known. It must have a very bad
influence on children to see so many human beings at once,--mere herds
of men.
I came across Henry Bigelow a week ago, sitting in front of a hotel in
Broadway, very much as if he were under his father's stoop. He is
seeking to be admitted into the bar in New York, but as yet had not
succeeded. I directed him to Fuller's store, which he had not found,
and invited him to come and see me if he came to the island. Tell Mrs.
and Miss Ward that I have not forgotten them, and was glad to hear
from George--with whom I spent last night--that they had returned to
C. Tell Mrs. Brown that it gives me as much pleasure to know that she
thinks of me and my writing as if I had been the author of the piece
in question,--but I did not even read over the papers I sent. The
_Mirror_ is really the most readable journal here. I see that they
have printed a short piece that I wrote to sell, in the _Dem. Review_,
and still keep the review of "Paradise," that I may include in it a
notice of another book by the same author, which they have found, and
are going to send me.
I don't know when I shall come home; I like to keep that feast in
store. Tell Helen that I do not see any advertisement for her, and I
am looking for myself. If I could find a rare opening, I might be
tempted to try with her for a year, till I had paid my debts, but for
such I am sure it is not well to go out of New England. Teachers are
but poorly recompensed, even here. Tell her and Sophia (if she is not
gone) to write to me. Father will know that this letter is to him as
well as to you. I send him a paper which usually contains the
news,--if not all that is stirring, all that has stirred,--and even
draws a little on the future. I wish he would send me, by and by, the
paper which contains the results of the Cattle-Show. You must get
Helen's eyes to read this, though she is a scoffer at honest
penmanship.
TO MRS. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, October 16, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I promised you some thoughts long ago, but it would
be hard to tell whether these are the ones. I suppose that the great
questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge absolute," which used to
be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled. And here comes [W. H.]
Channing, with his _Present_ to vex the world again,--a rather
galvanic movement, I think. However, I like the man all the better,
though his schemes the less. I am sorry for his confessions. Faith
never makes a confession.
Have you had the annual berrying party, or sat on the Cliffs a whole
day this summer? I suppose the flowers have fared quite as well since
I was not there to scoff at them; and the hens, without doubt, keep up
their reputation.
I have been reading lately what of Quarles's poetry I could get. He
was a contemporary of Herbert, and a kindred spirit. I think you would
like him. It is rare to find one who was so much of a poet and so
little of an artist. He wrote long poems, almost epics for length,
about Jonah, Esther, Job, Samson, and Solomon, interspersed with
meditations after a quite original plan,--Shepherd's Oracles,
Comedies, Romances, Fancies, and Meditations,--the quintessence of
meditation,--and Enchiridions of Meditation all divine,--and what he
calls his Morning Muse; besides prose works as curious as the rest. He
was an unwearied Christian, and a reformer of some old school withal.
Hopelessly quaint, as if he lived all alone and knew nobody but his
wife, who appears to have reverenced him. He never doubts his genius;
it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes
as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain
in him, there is plenty of tough, crooked timber. In an age when
Herbert is revived, Quarles surely ought not to be forgotten.
I will copy a few such sentences as I should read to you if there.
Mrs. Brown, too, may find some nutriment in them.
How does the Saxon Edith do? Can you tell yet to which school of
philosophy she belongs,--whether she will be a fair saint of some
Christian order, or a follower of Plato and the heathen? Bid Ellen a
good-night or good-morning from me, and see if she will remember where
it comes from; and remember me to Mrs. Brown, and your mother, and
Elizabeth Hoar.
TO R. W. EMERSON (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, October 17, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I went with my pupil to the Fair of the American
Institute, and so lost a visit from Tappan, whom I met returning from
the Island. I should have liked to hear more news from his lips,
though he had left me a letter and the _Dial_, which is a sort of
circular letter itself. I find Channing's[33] letters full of life,
and I enjoy their wit highly. Lane writes straight and solid, like a
guide-board, but I find that I put off the "social tendencies" to a
future day, which may never come. He is always Shaker fare, quite as
luxurious as his principles will allow. I feel as if I were ready to
be appointed a committee on poetry, I have got my eyes so whetted and
proved of late, like the knife-sharpener I saw at the Fair, certified
to have been "in constant use in a gentleman's family for more than
two years." Yes, I ride along the ranks of the English poets, casting
terrible glances, and some I blot out, and some I spare. McKean has
imported, within the year, several new editions and collections of old
poetry, of which I have the reading, but there is a good deal of chaff
to a little meal,--hardly worth bolting. I have just opened Bacon's
"Advancement of Learning" for the first time, which I read with great
delight. It is more like what Scott's novels _were_ than anything.
I see that I was very blind to send you my manuscript in such a state;
but I have a good _second_ sight, at least. I could still shake it in
the wind to some advantage, if it would hold together. There are some
sad mistakes in the printing. It is a little unfortunate that the
"Ethnical Scriptures" should hold out so well, though it does really
hold out. The Bible ought not to be very large. Is it not singular
that, while the religious world is gradually picking to pieces its old
testaments, here are some coming slowly after, on the seashore,
picking up the durable relics of perhaps older books, and putting them
together again?
Your Letter to Contributors is excellent, and hits the nail on the
head. It will taste sour to their palates at first, no doubt, but it
will bear a sweet fruit at last. I like the poetry, especially the
Autumn verses. They ring true. Though I am quite weather-beaten with
poetry, having weathered so many epics of late. The "Sweep Ho!" sounds
well this way. But I have a good deal of fault to find with your "Ode
to Beauty." The tune is altogether unworthy of the thoughts. You slope
too quickly to the rhyme, as if that trick had better be performed as
soon as possible, or as if you stood over the line with a hatchet, and
chopped off the verses as they came out, some short and some long. But
give us a long reel, and we'll cut it up to suit ourselves. It sounds
like parody. "Thee knew I of old," "Remediless thirst," are some of
those stereotyped lines. I am frequently reminded, I believe, of Jane
Taylor's "Philosopher's Scales," and how the world
"Flew out with a bounce,"
which
"Yerked the philosopher out of his cell;"
or else of
"From the climes of the sun all war-worn and weary."
I had rather have the thought come ushered with a flourish of oaths
and curses. Yet I love your poetry as I do little else that is near
and recent, especially when you get fairly round the end of the line,
and are not thrown back upon the rocks. To read the lecture on "The
Comic" is as good as to be in our town meeting or Lyceum once more.
I am glad that the Concord farmers plowed well this year; it promises
that something will be done these summers. But I am suspicious of that
_Brittonner_, who advertises so many cords of _good_ oak, chestnut,
and maple wood for sale. _Good!_ ay, good for what? And there shall
not be left a stone upon a stone. But no matter,--let them hack away.
The sturdy Irish arms that do the work are of more worth than oak or
maple. Methinks I could look with equanimity upon a long street of
Irish cabins, and pigs and children reveling in the genial Concord
dirt; and I should still find my Walden Wood and Fair Haven in their
tanned and happy faces.
I write this in the corn-field--it being washing-day--with the
inkstand Elizabeth Hoar gave me;[34] though it is not redolent of
corn-stalks, I fear. Let me not be forgotten by Channing and
Hawthorne, nor our gray-suited neighbor under the hill [Edmund
Hosmer].
* * * * *
This letter will be best explained by a reference to the _Dial_ for
October, 1843. The "Ethnical Scriptures" were selections from the
Brahminical books, from Confucius, etc., such as we have since seen in
great abundance. The Autumn verses are by Channing; "Sweep Ho!" by
Ellen Sturgis, afterwards Mrs. Hooper; the "Youth of the Poet and
Painter" also by Channing. The Letter to Contributors, which is headed
simply "A Letter," is by Emerson, and has been much overlooked by his
later readers; his "Ode to Beauty" is very well known, and does not
deserve the slashing censure of Thoreau, though, as it now stands, it
is better than first printed. Instead of
"Love drinks at thy banquet
_Remediless_ thirst,"
we now have the perfect phrase,
"Love drinks at thy _fountain_
_False waters of thirst_."
"The Comic" is also Emerson's. There is a poem, "The Sail," by William
Tappan, so often named in these letters, and a sonnet by Charles A.
Dana, afterwards of the _New York Sun_.
TO HELEN THOREAU (AT CONCORD).
STATEN ISLAND, October 18, 1843.
Dear Helen,--What do you mean by saying that "_we_ have written eight
times by private opportunity"? Is n't it the more the better? And am I
not glad of it? But people have a habit of not letting me know it
when they go to Concord from New York. I endeavored to get you _The
Present_ when I was last in the city, but they were all sold; and now
another is out, which I will send, if I get it. I did not send the
_Democratic Review_, because I had no copy, and my piece was not worth
fifty cents. You think that Channing's words would apply to me too, as
living more in the natural than the moral world; but I think that you
mean the world of men and women rather, and reformers generally. My
objection to Channing and all that fraternity is that they need and
deserve sympathy themselves rather than are able to render it to
others. They want faith, and mistake their private ail for an infected
atmosphere; but let any one of them recover hope for a moment, and
right his _particular_ grievance, and he will no longer train in that
company. To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must
speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has
left. This _Present_ book indeed is blue, but the hue of its thoughts
is yellow. I say these things with the less hesitation, because I have
the jaundice myself; but I also know what it is to be well. But do not
think that one can escape from mankind who is one of them, and is so
constantly dealing with them.
I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the
development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be
too cruel. And then, as if looking all this while one way with
benevolence, to walk off another about one's own affairs suddenly!
Something of this kind is an unavoidable objection to that.
I am very sorry to hear such bad news about Aunt Maria; but I think
that the worst is always the least to be apprehended, for nature is
averse to it as well as we. I trust to hear that she is quite well
soon. I send love to her and Aunt Jane. For three months I have not
known whether to think of Sophia as in Bangor or Concord, and now you
say that she is going directly. Tell her to write to me, and establish
her whereabouts, and also to get well directly. And see that she has
something worthy to do when she gets down there, for that's the best
remedy for disease.
Your affectionate brother,
H. D. THOREAU.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] He was named David for this uncle; Dr. Ripley was the minister of
the whole town in 1817. The Red House stood near the Emerson house on
the Lexington road; the Woodwards were a wealthy family, afterwards in
Quincy, to which town Dr. Woodward left a large bequest.
[3] John Thoreau, grandfather of Henry, born at St. Helier's, Jersey,
April, 1754, was a sailor on board the American privateer General
Lincoln, November, 1779, and recognized La Sensible, French frigate,
which carried John Adams from Boston to France. See _Journal_, vol. v,
June 11, 1853. This John Thoreau, son of Philip, died in Concord,
1800.
[4] This had been the abode of old Deacon Parkman, a granduncle of the
late Francis Parkman, the historian, and son of the Westborough
clergyman from whom this distinguished family descends. Deacon Parkman
was a merchant in Concord, and lived in what was then a good house. It
stood in the middle of the village, where the Public Library now is.
The "Texas" house was built by Henry Thoreau and his father John; it
was named from a section of the village then called "Texas," because a
little remote from the churches and schools; perhaps the same odd
fancy that had bestowed the name of "Virginia" on the road of
Thoreau's birthplace. The "Yellow House reformed" was a small cottage
rebuilt and enlarged by the Thoreaus in 1850; in this, on the main
street, Henry and his father and mother died.
[5] During the greater part of his college course he signed himself D.
H. Thoreau, as he was christened (David Henry); but being constantly
called "Henry," he put this name first about the time he left college,
and was seldom afterwards known by the former initials.
[6] The impression made on one classmate and former room-mate ("chum")
of Thoreau, by this utterance, will be seen by this fragment of a
letter from James Richardson of Dedham (afterwards Reverend J.
Richardson), dated Dedham, September 7, 1837:--
"FRIEND THOREAU,--After you had finished your part in the
Performances of Commencement (the tone and sentiment of
which, by the way, I liked much, as being of a sound
philosophy), I hardly saw you again at all. Neither at
Mr. Quincy's levee, neither at any of our classmates'
evening entertainments, did I find you; though for the
purpose of taking a farewell, and leaving you some
memento of an old chum, as well as on matters of
business, I much wished to see your face once more. Of
course you must be present at our October
meeting,--notice of the time and place for which will be
given in the newspapers. I hear that you are comfortably
located, in your native town, as the guardian of its
children, in the immediate vicinity, I suppose, of one of
our most distinguished apostles of the future, R. W.
Emerson, and situated under the ministry of our old
friend Reverend Barzillai Frost, to whom please make my
remembrances. I heard from you, also, that Concord
Academy, lately under the care of Mr. Phineas Allen of
Northfield, is now vacant of a preceptor; should Mr. Hoar
find it difficult to get a scholar college-distinguished,
perhaps he would take up with one, who, though in many
respects a critical thinker, and a careful philosopher of
language among other things, has never distinguished
himself in his class as a regular attendant on college
studies and rules. If so, could you do me the kindness to
mention my name to him as of one intending to make
teaching his profession, at least for a part of his life.
If recommendations are necessary, President Quincy has
offered me one, and I can easily get others."
[7] This eldest of the children of John Thoreau and Cynthia Dunbar was
born October 22, 1812, and died June 14, 1849. Her grandmother, Mary
Jones of Weston, Mass., belonged to a Tory family, and several of the
Jones brothers served as officers in the British army against General
Washington.
[8] White Pond, in the district called "Nine-Acre Corner," is here
meant; the "Lee-vites" were a family then living on Lee's Hill.
Naushawtuck is another name for this hill, where the old Tahatawan
lived at times, before the English settled in Concord in September,
1635. The real date of this letter is November 11-14, 1837, and
between its two dates the Massachusetts State election was held. The
"great council-house" was the Boston State-House, to which the Concord
people were electing deputies; the "Eagle-Beak" named on the next page
was doubtless Samuel Hoar, the first citizen of the town, and for a
time Member of Congress from Middlesex County. He was the father of
Rockwood and Frisbie Hoar, afterwards judge and senator respectively.
[9] A delicate sarcasm on young B., who could not finish his speech in
town-meeting without looking at his notes. The allusion to the
"Medicine whose words are like the music of the mockingbird" is hard
to explain; it may mean Edward Everett, then Governor of
Massachusetts, or, possibly, Emerson, whose lectures began to attract
notice in Boston and Cambridge. It can hardly mean Wendell Phillips,
though his melodious eloquence had lately been heard in attacks upon
slavery.
[10] _Americana_, in this note, is the old _Encyclopedia Americana_,
which had been edited from the German _Conversations-Lexicon_, and
other sources, by Dr. Francis Lieber, T. G. Bradford, and other Boston
scholars, ten years earlier, and was the only convenient book of
reference at Thoreau's hand. The inquiry of John Thoreau is another
evidence of the interest he took, like his brother, in the Indians and
their flint arrowheads. The relics mentioned in the next letter were
doubtless Indian weapons and utensils, very common about Taunton in
the region formerly controlled by King Philip.
[11] Dr. Edward Jarvis, born in Concord (1803), had gone to
Louisville, Ky., in April, 1837, and was thriving there as a
physician. He knew the Thoreaus well, and gave them good hopes of
success in Ohio or Kentucky as teachers. The plan was soon abandoned,
and Henry went to Maine to find a school, but without success. See
Sanborn's _Thoreau_, p. 57.
[12] This was the old monument of the Fight in 1775, for the
dedication of which Emerson wrote his hymn, "By the rude bridge." This
was sung by Thoreau, among others, to the tune of Old Hundred.
[13] For twenty-five years (1866-91) the house of Ellery Channing, and
now of Charles Emerson, nephew of Waldo Emerson.
[14] The steamer Lexington lately burnt on Long Island Sound, with Dr.
Follen on board.
[15] Mrs. Brown was the elder sister of Mrs. R. W. Emerson and of the
eminent chemist and geologist, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Plymouth and
Boston. She lived for a time in Mrs. Thoreau's family, and Thoreau's
early verses, "Sic Vita," were thrown into her window there by the
young poet, wrapped round a cluster of violets.
[16] This business of pencil-making had become the family
bread-winner, and Henry Thoreau worked at it and kindred arts by
intervals for the next twenty years.
[17] I. T. Williams, who had lived in Concord, but now wrote from
Buffalo, N. Y.
[18] Mrs. Brown, to whom this letter and several others of the years
1841-43 were written, lived by turns in Plymouth, her native place,
and in Concord, where she often visited Mrs. Emerson at the time when
Thoreau was an inmate of the Emerson household. In the early part of
1843 she was in Plymouth, and her sister was sending her newspapers
and other things, from time to time. The incident of the music-box,
mentioned above, occurred at the Old Manse, where Hawthorne was living
from the summer of 1842 until the spring of 1845, and was often
visited by Thoreau and Ellery Channing. In the letter following, this
incident is recalled, and with it the agreeable gift by Richard Fuller
(a younger brother of Margaret Fuller and of Ellen, the wife of Ellery
Channing, who came to reside in Concord about these years, and soon
became Thoreau's most intimate friend), which was a music-box for the
Thoreaus. They were all fond of music, and enjoyed it even in this
mechanical form,--one evidence of the simple conditions of life in
Concord then. The note of thanks to young Fuller, who had been,
perhaps, a pupil of Thoreau, follows this letter to Mrs. Brown, though
earlier in date. Mary Russell afterwards became Mrs. Marston Watson.
[19] Editor of the _Democratic Review_, for which Hawthorne, Emerson,
Thoreau, and Whittier all wrote, more or less.
[20] An interesting fact in connection with Thoreau and Wheeler (whose
home was in Lincoln, four miles southeast of Concord) is related by
Ellery Channing in a note to me. It seems that Wheeler had built for
himself, or hired from a farmer, a rough woodland study near Flint's
Pond, half-way from Lincoln to Concord, which he occupied for a short
time in 1841-42, and where Thoreau and Channing visited him. Mr.
Channing wrote me in 1883: "Stearns Wheeler built a 'shanty' on
Flint's Pond for the purpose of economy, for purchasing Greek books
and going abroad to study. Whether Mr. Thoreau assisted him to build
this shanty I cannot say, but I think he may have; also that he spent
six weeks with him there. As Mr. Thoreau was not too original and
inventive to follow the example of others, if good to him, it is very
probable this undertaking of Stearns Wheeler, whom he regarded (as I
think I have heard him say) a heroic character, suggested his own
experiment on Walden. I believe I visited this shanty with Mr.
Thoreau. It was very plain, with bunks of straw, and built in the
Irish manner. I think Mr. Wheeler was as good a mechanic as Mr.
Thoreau, and built this shanty for his own use. The object of these
two experiments was quite unlike, except in the common purpose of
economy. It seems to me highly probable that Mr. Wheeler's experiment
suggested Mr. Thoreau's, as he was a man he almost worshiped. But I
could not understand what relation Mr. Lowell had to this fact, if it
be one. Students, in all parts of the earth, have pursued a similar
course from motives of economy, and to carry out some special study.
Mr. Thoreau wished to study birds, flowers, and the stone age, just as
Mr. Wheeler wished to study Greek. And Mr. Hotham came next from just
the same motive of economy (necessity) and to study the Bible. The
prudential sides of all three were the same." Mr. Hotham was the young
theological student who dwelt in a cabin by Walden in 1869-70.
[21] An English critic and poetaster. See _Memoir of Bronson Alcott_,
pp. 292-318.
[22] _Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist._ With Memorial Verses. By William
Ellery Channing, New Edition, enlarged, edited by F. B. Sanborn
(Boston: Charles Goodspeed, 1902). This volume, in some respects the
best biography of Thoreau, is no longer rare. Among the Verses are
those written by Channing for his friend's funeral; at which, also,
Mr. Alcott read Thoreau's poem of Sympathy.
[23] Headley died at the age of twenty-three, in 1788. His posthumous
book was edited in 1810 by Rev. Henry Kett, and published in London by
John Sharp.
[24] An allusion to the strange and painful death of John Thoreau, by
lockjaw. He had slightly wounded himself in shaving, and the cut
became inflamed and brought on that hideous and deforming malady, of
which, by sympathy, Henry also partook, though he recovered.
[25] _Past and Present._
[26] Of the publishing house of Bradbury & Soden, in Boston, which had
taken Nathan Hale's _Boston Miscellany_ off his hands, and had
published in it, with promise of payment, Thoreau's "Walk to
Wachusett." But much time had passed, and the debt was not paid; hence
the lack of a "shower of shillings" which the letter laments.
Emerson's reply gives the first news of the actual beginning of
Alcott's short-lived paradise at Fruitlands, and dwells with interest
on the affairs of the rural and lettered circle at Concord.
[27] At Fruitlands with the Alcotts. See Sanborn's _Thoreau_, p. 137,
for this letter.
[28] Emerson also was satisfied with it for once, and wrote to
Thoreau: "Our _Dial_ thrives well enough in these weeks. I print W. E.
Channing's 'Letters,' or the first ones, but he does not care to have
them named as his for a while. They are very agreeable reading."
[29] Afterwards Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, but then in Harvard
College.
[30] Henry James, Senior.
[31] Emerson had written, July 20: "I am sorry to say that when I
called on Bradbury & Soden, nearly a month ago, their partner, in
their absence, informed me that they should not pay you, at present,
any part of their debt on account of the _Boston Miscellany_. After
much talking, all the promise he could offer was 'that within a year
it would probably be paid,'--a probability which certainly looks very
slender. The very worst thing he said was the proposition that you
should take your payment in the form of _Boston Miscellanies_! I shall
not fail to refresh their memory at intervals."
[32] It may need to be said that these were New York weeklies--the
_Mirror_, edited in part by N. P. Willis, and the _New World_ by Park
Benjamin, formerly of Boston, whose distinction it is to have first
named Hawthorne as a writer of genius. "Miss Fuller" was
Margaret,--not yet resident in New York, whither she went to live in
1844.
[33] The allusion here is to Ellery Channing's "Youth of the Poet and
Painter," in the _Dial_,--an unfinished autobiography. The _Present_
of W. H. Channing, his cousin, named above, was a short-lived
periodical, begun September 15, 1843, and ended in April, 1844.
"McKean" was Henry Swasey McKean, who was a classmate of Charles
Emerson at Harvard in 1828, a tutor there in 1830-35, and who died in
1857.
[34] This inkstand was presented by Miss Hoar, with a note dated
"Boston, May 2, 1843," which deserves to be copied:--
DEAR HENRY,--The rain prevented me from seeing you the night before I
came away, to leave with you a parting assurance of good will and good
hope. We have become better acquainted within the two past years than
in our whole life as schoolmates and neighbors before; and I am
unwilling to let you go away without telling you that I, among your
other friends, shall miss you much, and follow you with remembrance
and all best wishes and confidence. Will you take this little inkstand
and try if it will carry ink safely from Concord to Staten Island? and
the pen, which, if you can write with steel, may be made sometimes the
interpreter of friendly thoughts to those whom you leave beyond the
reach of your voice,--or record the inspirations of Nature, who, I
doubt not, will be as faithful to you who trust her in the sea-girt
Staten Island as in Concord woods and meadows. Good-by, and εὖ πράττειν,
which, a wise man says, is the only salutation fit for the wise.
Truly your friend, E. HOAR.
II
GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT
This was the golden age of hope and achievement for the Concord poets
and philosophers. Their ranks were not yet broken by death (for
Stearns Wheeler was hardly one of them), their spirits were high, and
their faith in each other unbounded. Emerson wrote thus from Concord,
while Thoreau was perambulating Staten Island and calling on "the
false booksellers:" "Ellery Channing is excellent company, and we walk
in all directions. He remembers you with great faith and hope; thinks
you ought not to see Concord again these ten years--that you ought to
grind up fifty Concords in your mill--and much other opinion and
counsel he holds in store on this topic. Hawthorne walked with me
yesterday afternoon, and not until after our return did I read his
'Celestial Railroad,' which has a serene strength which we cannot
afford not to praise, in this low life."
The Transcendentalists had their quarterly, and even their daily
organ, for Mr. Greeley put the _Tribune_ at their service, and gave
places on its staff to Margaret Fuller and her brother-in-law
Channing, and would gladly have made room for Emerson in its columns,
if the swift utterance of a morning paper had suited his habit of
publication. While in the _Tribune_ office, Ellery Channing thus
wrote to Thoreau, after he had returned home, disappointed with New
York, to make lead pencils in his father's shop at Concord.
ELLERY CHANNING TO THOREAU (AT CONCORD).
March 5, 1845.
MY DEAR THOREAU,--The handwriting of your letter is so miserable that
I am not sure I have made it out. If I have, it seems to me you are
the same old sixpence you used to be, rather rusty, but a genuine
piece. I see nothing for you in this earth but that field which I once
christened "Briars;" go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there
begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no
alternative, no other hope for you. Eat yourself up; you will eat
nobody else, nor anything else. Concord is just as good a place as any
other; there are, indeed, more people in the streets of that village
than in the streets of this. This is a singularly muddy town; muddy,
solitary, and silent.
In your line, I have not done a great deal since I arrived here; I do
not mean the Pencil line, but the Staten Island line, having been
there once, to walk on a beach by the telegraph, but did not visit the
scene of your dominical duties. Staten Island is very distant from No.
30 Ann Street. I saw polite William Emerson in November last, but have
not caught any glimpse of him since then. I am as usual suffering the
various alternations from agony to despair, from hope to fear, from
pain to pleasure. Such wretched one-sided productions as you know
nothing of the universal man; you may think yourself well off.
That baker, Hecker, who used to live on two crackers a day, I have not
seen; nor Black, nor Vethake, nor Danesaz, nor Rynders, nor any of
Emerson's old cronies, excepting James, a little fat, rosy
Swedenborgian amateur with the look of a broker and the brains and
heart of a Pascal. William Channing, I see nothing of him; he is the
dupe of good feelings, and I have all-too-many of these now. I have
seen something of your friends, Waldo and Tappan, and have also seen
our good man McKean, the keeper of that stupid place, the Mercantile
Library.
* * * * *
Acting on Channing's hint, and an old fancy of his own, Thoreau, in
the summer of 1845, built his cabin at Walden and retired there; while
Hawthorne entered the Salem custom-house, and Alcott, returning
defeated from his Fruitlands paradise, was struggling with poverty and
discouragement at Concord. Charles Lane, his English comrade, withdrew
to New York or its vicinity, and in 1846 to London, whence he had come
in 1842, full of hope and enthusiasm. A few notes of his, or about
him, may here find place. They were sent to Thoreau at Concord, and
show that Lane continued to value his candid friend. The first,
written after leaving Fruitlands, introduces the late Father Hecker,
who had been one of the family there, to Thoreau. The second and third
relate to the sale of the Alcott-Lane Library, and other matters.
[Illustration: _Walden Woods_]
CHARLES LANE TO THOREAU (AT CONCORD).
BOSTON, December 3, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--As well as my wounded hands permit, I have scribbled
something for friend Hecker, which if agreeable may be the opportunity
for entering into closer relations with him; a course I think likely
to be mutually encouraging, as well as beneficial to all men. But let
it reach him in the manner most conformable to your own feelings. That
from all perils of a false position you may shortly be relieved, and
landed in the position where you feel "at home," is the sincere wish
of yours most friendly,
CHARLES LANE.
MR. HENRY THOREAU,
Earl House, Coach Office.
NEW YORK, February 17, 1846.
DEAR FRIEND,--The books you were so kind as to deposit about two years
and a half ago with Messrs. Wiley & Putnam have all been sold, but as
they were left in your name it is needful, in strict bu
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