Not many years after I had known Mr. Burroughs personally, it occurred
to me to look up his literary record and see just how his years have
been spent and associate with this the fruit of his labors. The long
jump from _Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person_ (1867), his first
book to _Leaf and Tendril_ (1908), his last volume, marks a wonderful
change in interest and study. But the record is made, the books stand
for themselves, and we would not have it otherwise. This is the way of
nature and of her best interpreter, John Burroughs, whose nature books
almost have the fresh and sweet flavor of wild strawberries, and tell in
unmistakable language the author's love for and knowledge of the
out-door world in which he has spent so much of his life. Reared in the
country, he knows country life and country people and loves them. In his
early years, his mind must have been very susceptible to impressions of
truthful observations, which formed a setting for his after work. Of
this I think he is still conscious, judging from the advice he gives
teachers in a copy of the Pennsylvania School Journal I happen to have
before me. "I confess, I am a little skeptical about the good of any
direct attempt to teach children to 'see nature.' The question with me
would be rather how to treat them or lead them so that they would not
lose the love of nature which as children, they already have. Every girl
and every boy up to a certain age loves nature and has a quick eye for
the curious and interesting things in the fields and woods. But as they
grow older and the worldly habit of mind grows upon them, they lose this
love; this interest in nature becomes only so much inert matter to them.
The boy may keep up his love of fishing and of sport, and thus keep in
touch with certain phases of nature, but the girl gradually loses all
interest in out-door things.
"If I were a teacher I would make excursions into the country with my
children; we would picnic together under the trees, and I would contrive
to give them a little live botany. They should see how much a flower
meant to me. What we find out ourselves tastes so good! I would as far
as possible let the child be his own teacher. The spirit of
inquiry--awaken that in him if you can--if you cannot, the case is about
hopeless.
"I think that love of nature which becomes a precious boon and solace in
life, does not as a rule show itself in the youth. The youth is a poet
in feeling, and generally he does not care for poetry. He is like a
bulb--rich in those substances that are to make the future flower and
fruit of the plant.
"As he becomes less a poet in his unconscious life, he will take more
and more to poetry as embodied in literary forms. In the same way, as he
recedes from nature, as from his condition of youthful savagery, he is
likely to find more and more interest in the wild life about him. Do not
force a knowledge of natural things upon him too young."
If Mr. Burroughs had been taught nature after the academic fashion, he
would never have developed the love for the subject that is so evident
in all his out-door books. My impression is that his early environment
was best suited to him and he was the child so "like a bulb." He
absorbed nature without having any consciousness of what it meant. "I
was born of and among people," he says, "who neither read books nor
cared for them, and my closest associations since have been with those
whose minds have been alien to literature and art. My unliterary
environment has doubtless been best suited to me. Probably what little
freshness and primal sweetness my books contain is owing to this
circumstance. Constant intercourse with bookish men and literary circles
I think would have dwarfed or killed my literary faculty. This perpetual
rubbing heads together, as in literary clubs, seems to result in
literary sterility. In my own case at least what I most needed was what
I had--a few books and plenty of things." The roaming over the hills and
mountains and following up trout streams was most conducive to his life,
and thus it was he spent his odd hours and rest-days. This gave him
"plenty of real things," and just what they have meant to him you will
be able to learn from his twelve out-door volumes. But what brought all
this long string of books out of him? How comes it that he turned to
literature as a profession? From the earliest he had a passion for
authorship, and when in the "teens" resolved to become a writer. "It
was while I was at school, in my nineteenth year," he says, "that I saw
my first author; and I distinctly remember with what emotion I gazed
upon him, and followed him in the twilight, keeping on the other side of
the street.... I looked upon him with more reverence and enthusiasm than
I had ever looked upon any man.... I suppose this was the instinctive
tribute of a timid and imaginative youth to a power which he was
beginning vaguely to see--the power of letters."
By this time Mr. Burroughs had begun to see his own thoughts in print in
a country newspaper. He also began writing essays about the same time
and sending them to various periodicals only to receive "them back
pretty promptly." These perhaps rather conventional papers on such
subjects as _Genius_, _Individuality_, _A Man and His Times_, etc.,
served a great purpose. They tutored the author of them into his better
papers that were welcomed by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly and
other leading periodicals. In his twenty-first year, he discovered
Emerson--so to speak--in a Chicago book-store, and says: "All that
summer I fed upon these essays and steeped myself in them." No doubt
Emerson's essays had a wonderful influence on this young reader and
almost swamped him. They warped him out of his orbit so far, that had he
not resolved to get back upon ground of his own, we would never have
had _Wake Robin_. Emerson had complete possession of him for a time and
was hard to shake off, but constant writing upon out-door themes did the
work, and put Burroughs back in possession of himself.
[Illustration: THE OLD STONE WALL IN FRONT OF THE BURROUGHS HOME, BUILT
BY DEACON SCUDDER. THE CATSKILLS DIMLY SHOW IN THE DISTANCE]
In the year 1863, he went to Washington apparently to join the army, but
somehow never did. Instead of this, he received an appointment in the
Treasury, as a guardian of a vault, to count the money that went in or
came out. During this time he had many leisure moments which he put to
good account writing his nature sketches that make up his first nature
book, _Wake Robin_. Before he had been in the National Capital a great
while he became acquainted with the poet Walt Whitman, and immediately
fell in with him. Whitman's poetry was not new to Burroughs who had
already developed a taste for it. The man Whitman seemed to be an
embodiment of the poetry, _Leaves of Grass_, and Burroughs was so
greatly moved by a study of the man that he soon began making notes of
this study which resulted in his first book--_Notes on Walt Whitman as
Poet and Person_ (1867). This little volume is one of the best, raciest
and freshest books on Whitman, and certainly is as readable as
Burroughs' later book on _Whitman: A Study_, (1896).
To any man, who would rise in the world, one thing must become evident;
he must know that the idle moments must be the busiest of all. On this
basis Burroughs worked. While at his work in the Treasury, he recalled
his many experiences in the Western Catskills, and wrote these
experiences. His Sundays and Holidays were spent in the woods around the
National Capital that he may each season increase his knowledge about
natural history. The Atlantic Monthly began to publish his nature papers
about 1864, the year after he reached Washington, and has continued to
do so at regular intervals ever since. In fact at the present time that
periodical has three of Burroughs' essays yet unpublished. _Wake Robin_,
a collection of these early nature sketches and his first book on
out-door themes, was published in 1871, just four years after the little
book on Whitman came from the press. Perhaps we have no more readable
book on bird life than this volume of nature sketches, which won for the
writer immediate and complete success.
Mr. Joel Benton formally introduced Burroughs to American literary
people in the old Scribner's Monthly in 1876 while his third volume,
_Winter Sunshine_ (1875), was fresh in the mind of the public. In this
timely article Mr. Benton claims: "What first strikes me in Mr.
Burroughs's work, even above its well-acquired style, is the unqualified
weight of conscience it exhibits. There is no posturing for effect; an
admiration he does not have he never mimics. We find in him, therefore,
a perfectly healthy and hearty flavor. Apparently, he does not put his
pen to paper hastily, or until he is filled with his subject. What has
been aptly termed the secondary, or final stage of thought, has with him
full play.... A natural observer of things, he summons all the facts,
near or remote--there is no side-light too small--and, when the material
is all in, it seems to undergo a long incubation in his mind; or shows
at least that reflection has done its perfect and many-sided work. Under
his careful treatment and keen eye for the picturesque, the details get
the proper artistic distribution and stand forth in poetic guise. The
essay, when it appears, comes to us freighted with 'the latest news'
from the meadows and the woods, and bears the unmistakable imprint of
authenticity." This is a good testimonial from a good source, especially
since it is the first public utterance of an opinion by an authority, on
the quality of Burroughs' literary work. In a recent letter, Mr. Benton
writes: "I did not say Burroughs was made by me, or that he remembers
the priority of my article, but that I had the privilege and honor of
being the first to write about him." This paper, I am sure, renewed his
hopes for literary distinction and fame, and perhaps encouraged him to
greater efforts.
In _Birds and Poets_ (1877), we find our nature student measuring other
men's observations by his own deductions. He is beginning to branch out
in literature and note nature references in the poets and now and then
calls them to taw for stepping beyond the bounds of truth. Here we find
Burroughs as much of a student of literature as he is of nature, and as
delightful in his literary references as one could desire. Ten years
after his appointment, he tired of his clerkship in the Treasury, as he
resigned in 1872 to become receiver for a broken bank in Middletown, New
York. Pretty soon after leaving Washington, he was made bank examiner
for the Eastern part of New York State, which position he held till
1885. Since this last date he has depended entirely on literature and on
a small farm for a livelihood. He purchased a place up the Hudson river
at West Park about 1873 and began immediately to build a stone mansion
which he named Riverby, and in which he has lived since its completion.
But stone houses did not prove best suited for his literary work and he
built a small bark covered study only a few yards from Riverby in which
he has done most of his literary work. The most active period of his
literary career was when he settled at West Park. Mention has already
been made of _Birds and Poets_ (1877). The magazines are full of his
essays at this time and the volumes come thick in the blast: _Locust and
Wild Honey_ (1879), _Pepacton and Other Sketches_ (1881), _Fresh_
_Fields_ (1884), _Signs and Seasons_ (1886). The increased revenue from
his books and literary work, supplemented by his little grape farm,
enabled him to resign as Bank examiner in 1885, as above suggested, and
he has never held office of any kind since. It was about at the age of
fifty that Mr. Burroughs seems to have developed a considerable
consciousness of literature as an art, as a consequence of which we find
him beginning to write papers on literary criticism and _Indoor Studies_
(1889). From this time on his nature books are written in a different
key, just as interesting but not quite as enthusiastic, and in most of
them a touch of nature philosophy. In 1886 there appeared in the Popular
Science Monthly an essay by him under the caption, _Science and
Theology_, which showed pretty clearly the deeper currents of his mind.
This paper was followed by others of its kind for several years until
they were collected into a volume, _The Light of Day_, Religious
Discussions and Criticism from the Naturalist's Point of View (1900).
Studies on such themes are the logical outcome of the growth and
development of a mind like that of Burroughs', and in the present case
the papers are accompanied with that "unqualified weight of conscience"
referred to in Mr. Benton's article and are valuable discussions on
themes that never grow old.
Again we find him delighting himself and the reading public on his
out-door observations around _Riverby_ (1894), his stone house by the
Hudson, in the preface to which he expresses the belief that this is to
be his last volume of out-door essays. _Whitman: A Study_ (1896), and
_Literary Values_ (1902), are books for the critic and are fully up to
the standard in that field of activity. This book on Whitman is claimed
by many scholars to be the best criticism of Whitman yet published. It
is a strong defense of the "Good Gray Poet" and his literary method.
Beginning with the year 1900, and perhaps a little earlier, there
developed a great demand from the public for a larger crop of nature
books and a great many of our good writers, seeing this demand, began to
try to fill it whether they were naturalists or not, and the consequence
was that a great many fake nature stories got before the reading public.
This, of course, bore heavily on Mr. Burroughs' mind who had lived so
long with nature trying to understand her ways and laws, who in 1903
issued his protest against this practice in a strong article, "Real and
Sham Natural History," in the March Atlantic Monthly of that year. This
paper brought forth a warfare between the two schools of nature study in
America, the romantic school and the scientific or the sane or sober
school, which did not end till about 1908, and in fact, a little fruit
of the controversy still crops out here and there in magazines and
papers. In this controversy Burroughs won the battle of his life. The
main point at issue was: Do animals have reason to any degree in the
sense that man has reason? Burroughs claimed that they do not, and the
romantic school claimed that they do, and to prove the claim hatched up
a great many fairy tales about the animals and declared that these
statements were made from observations under their own eyes. Before it
was over, Burroughs had won the strong support of Mr. Frank M. Chapman,
the ornithologist; Dr. Wm. M. Wheeler, W. F. Ganong, and Mr. Roosevelt,
then the President of the United States, together with a great many
other distinguished naturalists.
It was natural and fitting that Burroughs should be the first one to
come to the rescue of popular natural history, when it seemed to be
falling into the hands of romancers, as he was and is the dean of
American nature writers and is our best authority on the behavior of
animals under natural conditions. The result of this controversy was the
publication of _Ways of Nature_ (1905), containing all the papers which
were the outcome of the currents of thought and inquiry that the
controversy set going in his mind. The volume contains many fine
illustrations of his claims and is a complete answer to the many attacks
made upon him by his enemies in this controversy.
At the urgent request of his many friends he collected in a volume and
published his poems, _Bird and Bough_ (1906), which for perfect cadence
and simple sweetness have not been surpassed by any of our minor poems.
In 1903, he went west with President Roosevelt and spent the month of
April in Yellowstone Park studying natural history with him. The
President surprised Mr. Burroughs in his broad knowledge and
enthusiastic study of nature. The little volume, _Camping and Tramping
with Roosevelt_ (1907), contains an account of this trip and brings out
Mr. Roosevelt's strong points as a naturalist. During the last few years
his philosophy has been ripening and a great deal of his energy has been
spent in working out natural philosophy rather than natural history,
though he has never gotten away from the latter. His last volume of
essays, _Leaf and Tendril_ (1908), contains a resume of his studies
along this line and are, perhaps, the most readable of all of his late
books. Another volume of papers is now in the hands of the printers,
which will likely appear in print next spring (1912).
The names and dates of appearance of his many volumes are as follows,
and mark the evolution of his mind:
1867--Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person.
1871--Wake Robin.
1875--Winter Sunshine.
1877--Birds and Poets.
1879--Locusts and Wild Honey.
1881--Pepacton and Other Sketches.
1884--Fresh Fields.
1886--Signs and Seasons.
1889--Indoor Studies.
1894--Riverby.
1896--Whitman: A Study.
1900--The Light of Day.
1902--Literary Values.
1902--John James Audubon, A Biography.
1904--Far and Near.
1905--Ways of Nature.
1906--Bird and Bough.
1907--Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt.
1908--Leaf and Tendril.
[Illustration: THE DEN, BURROUGHS' STUDY NEAR HIS STONE MANSION,
RIVERBY, AT WEST PARK]
This does not include a great many papers that were never printed in
book form, nor many of his books and parts of them edited by other
writers. This list is a good account of a life well spent, and treats of
almost all phases of our American natural history. In the main, Mr.
Burroughs has been a stay-at-home pretty much all his life, though he
has been about some. In 1872, he was sent to England, and returned there
of his own accord in the eighties. An account of these visits will be
found in the two volumes, _Winter Sunshine_ and _Fresh Fields_. From
Alaska, 1899, and the island of Jamaica, 1902, he brought back material
for most of the volume, _Far and Near_. In recent years he has visited
the Golden West and Honolulu, an account of which we shall doubtless see
in his volume now in press. The best part of all his travels is
undoubtedly his return to the simple life at West Park and Roxbury, New
York. His little bark covered study near by Riverby, where he has done
so much of his writing, was his first love up to a few years ago. At
present, his Roxbury summer home, Woodchuck Lodge, seems to be his place
of greatest interest. In either place, he can lounge about as he sees
fit and feel at ease, as he can no where else.
Wherever he goes he continues writing in his ripe old age, and only last
summer (1911), completed eight new essays while on an extended stay at
Woodchuck Lodge. In the morning, from eight till twelve, he does his
best work, and in the afternoon he rambles around the old place of his
birth and among his neighbors. In the preparation of the above eight
essays, he writes: "I lost eight pounds of flesh which I do not expect
to regain." He is now beginning to "serenely fold his hands and wait"
for the inevitable end, though the chances are he will live many years
and win many battles against Nature Fakers and put many awkward students
of nature in the paths of righteous observation. Strong and healthy, he
can climb fences, ascend mountain heights with very little fatigue.
Writing of his experiences with a party of friends in California,
March, 1911, he says: "During the mountain climbing the other day, I set
the pace and tired them all out. Mr. Brown, of the Dial, is sixty-six,
but he had to stop and eat a sandwich and have some coffee before the
top was reached." Not many of the school of literary men to which he
belongs are now living. But what does he say to this: "The forces that
destroy us are going their appointed ways, and if they turned out or
made an exception on our account, the very foundations of the universe
would be impeached." If needs be, I am sure he can boldly and
fearlessly,
"Sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach _the end_,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams,"
and if needs be, I am as well persuaded that he can for another score of
years, teach the world how to observe nature. He is optimistic and has
always been, because he has always found plenty to do. His friends enjoy
each victory he makes, and are glad to see so much interest center about
his name as the years roll by.