THOREAU’S thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even in a bad woodcut,
conveys some hint of the limitations of his mind and character. With his
almost acid sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity in
act, there went none of that large, unconscious geniality of the world’s
heroes. He was not easy, not ample, not urbane, not even kind; his
enjoyment was hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to be
convincing; he had no waste lands nor kitchen-midden in his nature, but
was all improved and sharpened to a point. “He was bred to no
profession,” says Emerson; “he never married; he lived alone; he never
went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he
ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco and,
though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. When asked at dinner
what dish he preferred, he answered, ‘the nearest.’” So many negative
superiorities begin to smack a little of the prig. From his later works
he was in the habit of cutting out the humorous passages, under the
impression that they were beneath the dignity of his moral muse; and
there we see the prig stand public and confessed. It was “much easier,”
says Emerson acutely, much easier for Thoreau to say _no_ than _yes_; and
that is a characteristic which depicts the man. It is a useful
accomplishment to be able to say _no_, but surely it is the essence of
amiability to prefer to say _yes_ where it is possible. There is
something wanting in the man who does not hate himself whenever he is
constrained to say no. And there was a great deal wanting in this born
dissenter. He was almost shockingly devoid of weaknesses; he had not
enough of them to be truly polar with humanity; whether you call him
demi-god or demi-man, he was at least not altogether one of us, for he
was not touched with a feeling of our infirmities. The world’s heroes
have room for all positive qualities, even those which are disreputable,
in the capacious theatre of their dispositions. Such can live many
lives; while a Thoreau can live but one, and that only with perpetual
foresight.
He was no ascetic, rather an Epicurean of the nobler sort; and he had
this one great merit, that he succeeded so far as to be happy. “I love
my fate to the core and rind,” he wrote once; and even while he lay
dying, here is what he dictated (for it seems he was already too feeble
to control the pen): “You ask particularly after my health. I _suppose_
that I have not many months to live, but of course know nothing about it.
I may say that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret
nothing.” It is not given to all to bear so clear a testimony to the
sweetness of their fate, nor to any without courage and wisdom; for this
world in itself is but a painful and uneasy place of residence, and
lasting happiness, at least to the self-conscious, comes only from
within. Now Thoreau’s content and ecstasy in living was, we may say,
like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for
there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a
life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing
contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not
wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a
corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain
virtuous self-indulgences. It is true that his tastes were noble; that
his ruling passion was to keep himself unspotted from the world; and that
his luxuries were all of the same healthy order as cold tubs and early
rising. But a man may be both coldly cruel in the pursuit of goodness,
and morbid even in the pursuit of health. I cannot lay my hands on the
passage in which he explains his abstinence from tea and coffee, but I am
sure I have the meaning correctly. It is this; He thought it bad economy
and worthy of no true virtuoso to spoil the natural rapture of the
morning with such muddy stimulants; let him but see the sun rise, and he
was already sufficiently inspirited for the labours of the day. That may
be reason good enough to abstain from tea; but when we go on to find the
same man, on the same or similar grounds, abstain from nearly everything
that his neighbours innocently and pleasurably use, and from the rubs and
trials of human society itself into the bargain, we recognise that
valetudinarian healthfulness which is more delicate than sickness itself.
We need have no respect for a state of artificial training. True health
is to be able to do without it. Shakespeare, we can imagine, might begin
the day upon a quart of ale, and yet enjoy the sunrise to the full as
much as Thoreau, and commemorate his enjoyment in vastly better verses.
A man who must separate himself from his neighbours’ habits in order to
be happy, is in much the same case with one who requires to take opium
for the same purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the
world, do a man’s work, and still preserve his first and pure enjoyment
of existence.
Thoreau’s faculties were of a piece with his moral shyness; for they were
all delicacies. He could guide himself about the woods on the darkest
night by the touch of his feet. He could pick up at once an exact dozen
of pencils by the feeling, pace distances with accuracy, and gauge cubic
contents by the eye. His smell was so dainty that he could perceive the
fœtor of dwelling-houses as he passed them by at night; his palate so
unsophisticated that, like a child, he disliked the taste of wine—or
perhaps, living in America, had never tasted any that was good; and his
knowledge of nature was so complete and curious that he could have told
the time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect of the plants. In
his dealings with animals, he was the original of Hawthorne’s Donatello.
He pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail; the hunted fox came
to him for protection; wild squirrels have been seen to nestle in his
waistcoat; he would thrust his arm into a pool and bring forth a bright,
panting fish, lying undismayed in the palm of his hand. There were few
things that he could not do. He could make a house, a boat, a pencil, or
a book. He was a surveyor, a scholar, a natural historian. He could
run, walk, climb, skate, swim, and manage a boat. The smallest occasion
served to display his physical accomplishment; and a manufacturer, from
merely observing his dexterity with the window of a railway carriage,
offered him a situation on the spot. “The only fruit of much living,” he
observes, “is the ability to do some slight thing better.” But such was
the exactitude of his senses, so alive was he in every fibre, that it
seems as if the maxim should be changed in his case, for he could do most
things with unusual perfection. And perhaps he had an approving eye to
himself when he wrote: “Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the
laws of the universe are not indifferent, _but are for ever on the side
of the most sensitive_.”