At the end of October, 1856, Henry was asked to go down and survey
an estate in New Jersey, giving some lectures at the same time.
Alcott persuaded him to go. The two friends took the boat at Norwich,
Connecticut, so as to reach New York by way of the Sound. Norwich was
on the Thames: breezes blew there that seemed to come from afar.
Henry was leading a very dissipated life these days: visits to friends,
expeditions, lectures. For here and there, outside of Concord, people
were inviting him to come and utter those obscure or unpleasant truths
that fell on the fallow ground of their understandings. It was all the
same to him: he sowed as chance directed him, and the sower for his
pains gathered in a little cash that had a more genuine ring in his ear
than the applause of the audience.
Just two years before, during a brief trip to New York, Philadelphia
and back to New York, he had had another glimpse of Horace Greeley
who had taken him to the new Opera House to hear Grisi. (It was
like a dream when you went to the theatre with a man as well-known
as Greeley; you didn’t pay for your seat, and you even had a little
usher to conduct you to your place as if you were the Ambassador from
Brobdingnag.) He could offer as an excuse the long, long period of
vegetation from which he was just emerging and the natural desire, as
soon as he felt less limp, to get out and see a little of the world.
And yet he reproached himself for this dissolute life. You see what it
means to have a few dollars in your pocket at last; you squander them
as fast as you can, just like the “fortunate ones of this world.” It’s
a foolish business, and you will soon deserve to end your days at the
Poor Farm with those half-witted souls whom one sees planted about the
fields like boundary-posts at the foot of Brister’s Hill.
Surveying.... For he was not just treating himself to these delightful
outings. He was obliged to earn his daily bread, even if he no longer
baked it in the open air in the woods where its fragrance mingled so
well with the aroma of the pines. Of all the various little manual
trades that Henry had practised since his youth, surveying had turned
out to be the most substantial and profitable. When they spoke of Henry
in the village they now said: “Oh, yes, the surveyor....” You were free
to suppose that there was a touch of malice in these words and that the
good people really meant: “That fool who goes off every afternoon to
survey the waste lands instead of making pencils with his father....”
Well, perhaps they did mean this--not that it mattered to Henry. As
for lecturing, that was just another way of surveying the waste lands,
the swamps, property, propriety and the improprieties. It was even a
preferable way, for it was much less trying to spin words than to drag
the geometer’s chain.
A surveyor: not everybody can boast of becoming that at thirty-five,
after having tried many other trades without any dazzling success.
Henry was decidedly unjust in accusing his fellow-townsmen of not
finding any use for his talents. The people of the village were
very glad to turn to him when occasion arose, for they knew he was
scrupulously exact in his measurements. To draw up a plan of other
people’s land was to remain free to gather there what seemed good to
himself, without the knowledge of the owner, whose only desire was
to keep within his own little bounds. With his instruments, made to
suit himself and partly with his own hands, the compass, the staff and
the chain, Henry was ready to make surveys for anyone who asked him,
whenever he had the time. It was often in the winter, the slack season
on the farms, and then, when he was aiming at the staff, he could no
longer distinguish so clearly against the snow the white trunks of the
birches which were usually so useful. But the work occurred also at
the season when he took off his coat for greater comfort. Sometimes
it was a matter of a few days, sometimes an operation that required
a week or two weeks of brisk work (a loafer turned then into a model
workman ...). There were times, of course, when, in the face of this
landscape that flouted them, he consigned all these boundaries, and all
this business of fixing them, to the devil; naturally, but no layman
could guess all the pleasure this work brought with it, aside from the
routine and the wages.
In the first place, you must have a companion to carry the chain, set
up the staff, etc. You shout something to your helper over there, and
the echo joyously replies as if some practical joker had hidden himself
to play a trick on you; whereupon you feel like shouting at the top
of your lungs till the rascal shows his mug. And then, no matter how
seriously you apply yourself to your work it cannot completely absorb
you. You are out of doors and there are two of you; the helper is not
always as stupid as a surveying-staff. Sometimes the work lies in the
woods, where you are most at home; sometimes through a swamp where you
sink in up to your knees. Then at noon you fish out of your pocket a
bit of bread and cheese and have your lunch there on the ground. Or you
happen to have a meal at your employer’s table with the farm-hands.
If your employer is a fool, there is nothing for it but to hold your
tongue and enjoy his vulgarity on a bit of bread for your dessert.
If he is a really decent farmer, as some of them about here are after
all, it is a pleasure to share his simple meal after these hours in
the open. In the evening you are certainly tired, after having tramped
about all day with your mind fixed on your work; you are much more
tired than if you had come back from a long walk. But there is another
self within you who is grateful for your rested nerves and head and
who suddenly appears, after the day is over, refreshed and keen, ready
to catch any sound and gather in any shade of beauty that is entirely
free from toil and wages. No, no, you haven’t the slightest idea how
light the surveyor’s chain is or how pleasant to carry through the
woods or over the wet fields, compared with all those chains that I
see you dragging about after you, my friends, condemned as you are to
the “liberal professions”.... You don’t know how valuable it is for a
writer to survey other people’s lands in this fashion; you don’t know
how much else a man measures as he goes about, without the aid of the
compass and the staff.
In the mid-winter of 1852-3, Henry had even given himself a stronger
dose of surveying than he could have wished. In his finances the debits
and credits were usually in a sound equilibrium, but at this time he
found himself confronted with a large debt. He had to settle with the
publisher for his book.
The matter was quite simple. They had printed a thousand copies and in
three years had sold some two hundred. Since the cost of publishing
had not been covered, the author remained in debt for the balance,
according to the contract. It was all as smooth as silk. The method of
publishing “at the author’s risk” is just as simple a bit of machinery
as the “royalty” method: the only difference is that instead of
receiving money you spend it. You see? There’s nothing complicated
about that. Two hundred-odd copies sold of a work of which at least
three reviews (in the _Athenæum_, the _Tribune_ and the _Massachusetts
Quarterly_, all well-established publications) on all the press copies
that had been sent out had served to launch it, was a very impressive
result for an author who was making his debut before the public. But
the summer before, after various disappointments in regard to articles
on which he had built some reasonable hopes, the happy author, in order
to meet a note that was falling due, had been obliged to borrow eighty
dollars from his friend Horace Greeley--merely a small advance which
he had expected to be able to repay shortly. A responsible magazine
had just accepted his _Yankee in Canada_. And then, lo and behold,
after printing the first part of it, without his name (houses like
this are so discreet, you know), and adorned with fearful misprints,
the magazine proposed, for the remainder, to exercise its right to
make cuts--owing to certain bold statements that were too shocking for
a respectable review. The author would not hear of this and simply
demanded that his article should be returned to him, neither more
nor less: in this way the sensibilities of the readers of _Putnam’s
Magazine_ would not suffer and Henry would keep his manuscript intact
for better days. As you please, dear editors. Literature was decidedly
a paying business. Henry was sailing before the wind. Just one more
little effort and he would get there.
But what was the use of cultivating sarcasm? The thing to do was to pay
his debts. He didn’t owe Horace the whole State of California, but just
the same the sum was large enough for a man who as a rule owned nothing
in the world but his own joy in living, a stout pair of corduroy
trousers and a boat. When you have hands you use them to pay your
debts, instead of attempting, like a mere government, to make a new
loan in order to pay off the first one. A man has more decency than a
government. Manual labour is quite willing to pay for the loving labour
of the soul.
With a will he set to work surveying in mid-winter for sixty, eighty
days without intermission, at a dollar a day. To pay for that _Week on
the Concord_ he spent fortnights tramping over the snow-covered ground,
measuring and calculating, forgetting all about his reading, his
Journal, everything. It was all in the day’s work. Penal servitude, if
you like. But you take it in good part if you are a man. Deprivations
like this toughen your hide. They are like a long journey into the
land of trivialities--from which you never return empty-handed if you
have the eye of a good huntsman; on your return, you have a better
perception of some things, including your own naked self. Besides,
if literature fed its servitors too well, wouldn’t it be setting a
premium on obesity, on growing fat and flabby? That thought soon
lightens the snow-clogged steps of a man who, while he spends a winter
day surveying, is thinking all the time of the evening when he will
relight his little stove in the attic and find himself alone once
more with his abandoned meditations.... For the rest, these months of
intensive geometry were only a stage along the road he would have to
survey to be quits with the publisher. Two years before, to pay off a
former instalment, he had had to set to work with all his might making
pencils, grosses and grosses of them, which were worth hundreds of
dollars. And then, unable to dispose of all this merchandise quickly
enough, he found himself reduced to carting it to New York and selling
the lot for a hundred dollars. A bad stroke of business, but what are
you to do when you have to get hold of money at any price?... At the
time he had even considered speculating on his friends the cranberries
in order to meet that confounded debt. A vile thought, as vain as it
was impious, for after looking up the market price in both Boston and
New York he had quickly perceived that it was the same with cranberries
as it was with pencils: those mean souls would only take them at the
meanest price. And now, after these bouts of surveying, he had still to
make up the full sum that was due to Munroe. It was costing him $290,
that precious book.
But after all these troubles he had a substantial reward. For more than
a year Munroe had been asking him what he should do with the unsold
copies that were encumbering his basement. Space comes high in Boston,
as you know. And Henry, who had nothing but his attic, had at last
taken pity on his poor over-burdened publisher and told him to send
all the unsold copies to Concord. So one fine day the express-wagon
unloaded all this merchandise on the Thoreaus’ doorstep, like riches
fallen from the skies. They kept pouring out of the wagon as if there
were enough of these poor _Weeks_ to fill a century. Take them all,
Henry; they are your property. They are like the waste lands; no one
will dispute them with you. In the end the work returns to the worker.
Isn’t that fair? Don’t despise your work. It is a weighty book. You
will have the best proof of this presently when you lug these bundles
up to the third floor. See, there’s the receipt--seven hundred and six
copies--most of them in sheets. This Munroe is certainly an honest man.
And how imposing these piles are in your attic! Towering there, they
humiliate your few beloved old odd volumes. The latter are quite taken
aback at finding themselves all of a sudden the property of a rich man.
An army of comrades, free and equal companions, has joined forces with
them, and over them all you will henceforth reign, a sceptical and
tolerant sovereign. They bear on their brows the stamp of fidelity,
these newcomers. You can safely wager that they will be your companions
for life. See how firmly their feet rest on the floor. Of course if
some of them now and then are seized with a desire to travel you are
not the man to hold them back; they are free. For now to his former
trades Henry has added that of a bookseller. He will sell his book
directly to admirers who send a small sum of money with their order.
All he has to do is to tie up the package. There is no commission to
be paid to any agent. This simplifies things so much. And the work
acquires all the more value, coming straight from the writer without an
intermediary. It is wrapped up and addressed by the author of the book
in person, and thus you have an autograph in addition for the price of
the volume. Purchasers, book-lovers with a real flair, what more do you
want? You should order _Weeks_ by the dozen, ten, twenty copies at a
time.... Stupid bibliophiles.
Two years went by before another surprise comparable to this befell
the master of the library in the attic. It was another enormous bundle
of books, but this time it came from across the sea. It smelt not of
Munroe’s basement but of the hold of a transatlantic liner. A surprise
from that English friend, the tall, fair-haired fellow with the silky
beard who had boarded with the Thoreaus the year before and accompanied
Henry on his walks. And what books! “Cholmley,” knowing Henry’s taste
for the beautiful things of Asia, had sent him all the most famous
Oriental books that he had been able to find. Good heavens, what an
Arabian Nights’ dream!... The great sacred books of India, translated
into English, French, Latin and Greek, and even some in Sanscrit....
This procession entered the house like the three Magi with their
retinue, bearers of gifts for heaven knew what new-born being ...
forty-four rare volumes, most of them not to be found on a continent
that was prodigal in corn and wheat but not in fruits of this kind ...
things of which you had dreamed and that appealed to you so powerfully,
and now here they were, right under your hand, day and night.... The
Hindu side by side with the Indian, your nearest kindred touching one
another! Precious stones flashing their fire about your den, lighting
up the pale arrow-heads. I can laugh at you now, pretentious libraries!
At first Henry was simply astounded by this patrician generosity, which
had gathered together all these treasures for him; astounded by all
these illustrious personages who surrounded him, who had come from the
other end of the world as friends, come with their veiled faces, great
black eyes, wide with dreams, their dark skins, strange faces, slow
gestures, to offer the son of a pencilmaker the flower of their wisdom
so that he might place it among the flowers of his own country. But
the sages of the Orient smiled at the seven hundred _Weeks_ and did
not seem to be in the least offended by the pile of nuts in the corner
of the little room. Henry soon felt quite at home beside them, and all
these presences, the new and the old, mingled in one friendship in the
warmth of the old stove.
But when you have distinguished visitors who have made a long voyage
in the belly of an ocean liner, you must offer them lodgings that are
worthy of them. Henry had some well-seasoned wood, gathered along the
river, and he had tools. For these beautiful books he was going to make
a new bookcase, a bookcase of honour that would be a sort of Asiatic
province royally accommodated on the third floor of the house on Main
Street.
There could never be any question of repaying the magnificent Thomas
such a debt of gratitude as this. Whole seasons of surveying would
not be enough. But he did send him a few American books, among them a
novelty--not a rarity, for nobody bought it--that scandalized its few
readers, a bewildering book, powerful as a buffalo, multitudinous as a
seaport, torrential, insolent, shameless. Henry regarded it as a work
of the grandest kind. Emerson also. Thomas would see. A purely American
product and, what was astonishing, something that made you think of the
Orient. It was written in Biblical verse, like the Song of Songs or the
Rig-Veda, and it had the strange title, _Leaves of Grass_. The book was
not signed. A very slender present, you see, friend “Cholmley.” You
must tell me what you think of my buffalo.
In a den where stones, birds’ eggs and plants had long swamped the
books there was now almost an affluence of tops and backs. Among the
newcomers there was one which had arrived all alone, quite modestly,
the year between the two surprises. It had not come as a surprise,
however; it was an expected visitor. It entered there familiarly, as if
it had come back from a journey and knew the ways of the house and the
fellow who lived there. Its name was Walden. But it was not a pond. It
was Henry’s latest born. A responsible publisher had taken charge of
it; and this time there was no need to run into debt or do surveying
for the sake of a book which the author was the only one to love. The
name of Ticknor covered it like a flag.
To be sure, there was no wild scramble to buy it. But it sold a little.
And responses came to the unknown author; new friends rose out of the
ground along his path. You write a book for your own pleasure, without
thought of any good or harm it may do, and lo and behold, it sets out
alone, in its own right, and makes conquests for you all over the
world. Is it possible that you wrote a book in order to discover your
friends? It is as if the book were grateful to you for having brought
it to light and courteously wished to show its gratitude.
It bears under its title a picture of the cabin (the poor cabin that
will never again be able to gossip with the pines--it is doing penance
now in the bean-field). It is a book that carries a cabin across the
world and invites you to enter and inspect it and inhale the resinous
fragrance. It will not carry you off to dance for a week on the
water in a nut-shell. It requests your company on a ramble around a
transparent pond where you can contemplate your own image in water that
is clearer than your mirror. It is not Narcissus that you will see
there, returning your own smile to you, but the face of a man who is
studying the curious effect of his big nose in the water.
Between Henry’s two offspring there have been more than five years of
growth. Although they have both been nourished on the same sap that
has been accumulating for fifteen years in the Journal, _Walden_ is
the book of a writer who has reached his full stride--a little too
full, if you like--with the same unpardonable waywardness in his
composition. You will never turn a pate like that into the saw-mill of
a _littérateur_. Well then, call him a liberator instead. That is the
way Henry himself expresses it.
* * * * *
To return, then, towards the end of October, 1856, the surveyor set
out with all his paraphernalia for Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He didn’t
want to pass through New York without seeing that good Greeley, but
not finding him at his newspaper office he walked up Broadway, meeting
a friend, and then went and settled himself in the Astor Library. You
can’t study these great brawling cities as you can study a book in a
sanctuary of silence; coming from Concord, you are deafened by the
’busses and the trampling crowds. Whither are all those feet rushing?
Who is waiting for them at their appointed meeting-places? That is,
unless these people are not all simply out of their heads. Here is a
blissful refuge! Let’s go and sit down for a while and read.
Perth Amboy, on Raritan Bay, faces the island, shaped like a bunch
of grapes, that recalls to Henry the rather melancholy days when he
was a tutor. A mile and a quarter from the town a friend of Margaret
Fuller’s, Marcus Spring, whom he had seen on his journey to find the
poor woman’s remains, owned some property: the estate was situated on
the edge of the bay and was called Eagleswood. They had tried to start
a phalanstery there, and now the eagles had gathered to establish a
“colony.”
The question was one of drawing up plans for the future village, a
very proper task for a surveyor who had come expressly from Concord.
When you happen to know a good surveyor, nothing can be more natural
than to have recourse to his compass. Henry’s friends had not
forgotten him--for instance, there was Marston Watson, who had asked
him two years before to come and survey his park on the hillside
above Plymouth (no need of a helper that time, for Alcott himself,
with his tall frame, platonically carried the chain, assisted by the
owner in person). Henry assuredly had very noble friends who not only
appreciated his talents but loaded him down with little gifts: in the
space of a few days had he not received from Marston, who had presented
him with those magnificent big glow-worms the previous summer, some
pear-trees the very name of which was like a juicy fruit that melted
in your mouth, and a hummingbird’s nest from Blake, and a box of
mayflowers from somebody else? Quite apart from the Christmas season,
the express-company evidently had permanent agencies in fairyland.
The surveyor set to work, plunged into the woods and salt marshes,
regardless of rips and tears; before each meal it took him fifteen
minutes to pick off the burs that clung to him. These are the little
pleasures of the trade. While it awaits the promised village,
Eagleswood contains an old farmhouse and a big stone building, together
with Marcus Spring’s private residence, and it glories in some shops
and offices and a school where the teaching is done by various
dignified greybeards. Rather too many people and rather too much
dignity to suit the taste of Henry, who prefers the informality of the
burs; and creditable as the work may be, he longs to have done with it
and get home again. There is an accursed wood-pigeon that begins to coo
every night at the slightest sound from the house. Perhaps it is the
former janitor of the phalanstery.
Yes, the work begins to drag, and he cannot drop it because it has been
entrusted to him. Nor does the society of these worthy greybeards, the
atmosphere of the “colony,” offer any great attraction. The big city,
where Alcott has stayed behind, is close at hand, and Henry feels like
a molecule subject to the law of gravitation. He longs to make a trip
to New York and go and see his friend and have a little vacation from
these old fossils. Just for one little week-end. On Friday, November
7th, he enters Alcott’s room and finds a guest there, to whom he is
introduced, John Swinton. This young man, a delightful fellow, full of
fire and revolutionary instinct, is a good friend of the author of
_Leaves of Grass_. Do tell us something about your friend. Alcott has
already seen this Walt Whitman who sounds his barbaric yawp over the
roofs of the world. Henry is most anxious to meet him.
To-day he is invited to go with Alcott to a certain lady’s house, but
he means to let his friend go alone: a drawing-room and a lady in New
York must be very much like a lady and a drawing-room anywhere else. He
knows all about such things even at Concord, in a small way, and he has
very little desire to see them in a large.
The next day they meet Horace Greeley at the station and go and
spend the day at his farm at Chappaqua. For every Saturday the
editor-in-chief of the _Tribune_ shakes the dust of the city and his
editorial office off his feet and hurries out to look after his little
farm, of which he is very proud (his turnips have taken the prize at
the County Fair). A friend, the poetess Alice Cary, is also one of
the party. For some ten years Horace has more than once shown his
friendship for Henry; he would have liked very much to keep him in his
family as a tutor for his children. (Horace is a great man who has
already had a big book written about him in his own lifetime, and Henry
is fond of him and grateful for all the attention he shows a little
village scribbler, but ... but to give up once more that precious
independence, to leave Concord where there are so many friends, from
Easterbrook to Nine Acre Corner, who have only himself to count upon
... no, never, Horace must excuse him....) At Chappaqua the guests
admire the crops and the farm-buildings, but when he sees how much
trouble and expense it has cost the owner to transform swamp-land into
fertile ground, Henry remarks to himself how much more attractive a
beautiful swamp is than a model farm. And they come back to town for
the night.
It is Sunday, and they cannot begin the Lord’s Day better than by
going to hear an astonishing man who is preaching at Plymouth Church
in Brooklyn. There are crowds to listen to him, crowds that have come
there to be thrilled by this magician who makes them turn pale, laugh,
weep or exult as he wills, as if he were developing and unfolding
before them the most moving drama. But it is not the art of an actor,
even the greatest actor, that makes such an impression here; it is an
elemental force. It is such a beautiful spectacle in that pulpit that
you forget you are in the presence of a churchman. He is something
better than that--a man, Henry Ward Beecher, the brother of Harriet,
author of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. Henry thinks this other Henry deserves
to be called a pagan; the whole ghastly race of preachers is forgotten,
the setting of the church disappears, a great wind has passed over
these people to purify and uplift them, like a rush of autumn leaves.
Henry is thoroughly delighted.
Such a capital Sunday must have a worthy finish. Suppose they go and
see Walt Whitman, since he lives in Brooklyn? So, after lunching with a
lady who knows Alcott, the two companions set out for his house. Here’s
Portland Avenue, where the buffalo lives, and here is his number.
Disillusionment; he has gone out. The mother, with her kind face, tells
them this and asks them to come in. Henry has a mother too over yonder,
a lively mother who would be only too happy to talk to two visitors who
had come to see her son; and she too would be unlikely to say anything
unkind to them about her boy. He thinks of her as he listens to this
smiling woman of sixty, as simply dressed as a farmer’s wife, uttering
a maternal eulogy on her son Walter. These gentlemen have come to see
him because he is the author of a book; and she, who is the author of
the author of the book, can only tell them how proud she is of this
son, and how much he means to his brothers and sisters, and what a
blessing his presence is to them all at home. “If you can come back
to-morrow morning, not too late, you will be sure to find him, for
he will be very sorry to have missed you to-day.” All right, Mother
Whitman, we shall be back to-morrow, and thank you for your welcome. We
have not seen your Walter, but in the little wrinkles about your eyes
and lips there is something that seems to foretell what he is like.
On Monday morning there are three of them to take the ferry and make
their way to Portland Avenue, through streets that sound like a
country town after the jam they have left; a lady from Philadelphia
has asked to go with them. They knock at the door and are invited to
come in just as they were the day before. Walter is at home, expecting
them. Presently the three visitors are sitting face to face with a
great hairy, ruddy animal, who has nothing sinister about him at all.
Strange, this fellow is simplicity itself and everything in the room
is quite ordinary, but from the very first instant, seeing him planted
there, you think of a great sailing ship at sea or of a beautiful tall
tree in summer. You would think you were out of doors. Henry feels
quite at home in a house where you drink in the fresh air as freely as
you do the friendly glass on the table.
It is a house like many other houses that has gathered under its roof
to-day Walt and Henry, the Manhattanese and the Concordian.... But the
walls of the house still stand, they bear up bravely under the shock.
It is roomy, the Whitmans’ house, and built by the hand of a clever
workman, as strong as if the father, who died last year, had set up
the frame himself. But that muffled sound which echoes and rolls away,
very far away, is the detonation of these mingling spirits, though no
one hears anything in the house or the neighbourhood but the sounds of
a quiet street.
Four persons are talking together as friends in the innocence of Monday
morning, three of them observing and the other, without the least
embarrassment, allowing himself to be observed. The appointments of the
room, the old, worn furniture which has known so many dwellings are
swallowed up in this masculine figure, which is enigmatic because of
its very nonchalance and abundant ease. There are so many questions one
might address to the high vault of that pronounced eyebrow, the right
one. The visitors ask him this and that, seeking to penetrate beneath
the brick-coloured skin of the enigma, tanned by all the suns of Long
Island; all constraint has vanished, so complete is the absence of
ceremony in the man they have come to see, so strong his expression of
virile goodness. In a rich, musical voice, in direct, everyday words,
he speaks of what he loves--the ever-changing crowds of his city, the
ebb and flow at the foot of those cliffs with their myriad windows, the
human flood rolling through the ferry-boats, the stages, the popular
theatres, the squares. The enigma does not give up its secret, but it
becomes more and more attractive. Henry also has loves that he might
confess, but he only asks the lover of the poetry of the streets if he
has read the great Oriental poems. “No, tell me about them....” It is
an encounter in which each puts out these verbal feelers. Their words
are less clear perhaps than their attitudes and the expressions of
their faces. But the visitors do not dream of going away.
How had Henry pictured to himself the Manhattanese, “eating, drinking
and breeding,” of the _Leaves_--“one of the roughs”? Perhaps he had
not pictured him at all. Perhaps he had thought that this rude sketch
was only the fantasy of a poet who was enamoured of bright colours and
had no prototype in reality. However this may have been, there was
the “rough” before him. And he was beautiful, a little coarse, but
beautiful. With that whole person, in its radiance of life and vigour,
Walt signed his book, signed it with a far more striking truthfulness
than the portrait he had used as a frontispiece. Here was the flesh and
the blood and the colour. Henry looked and looked again, seeking to
fathom the nature of the radiance that passed over him in the presence
of the phenomenon. He did not challenge this thing that bathed him and
seemed to make him float; he noted his reactions, that was all. This
fellow had too much blood in him, perhaps. Perched on a stage beside
the driver, amid the hubbub of Broadway, did he not shout out verses as
if he were alone on some beach! A wild man indeed!--but with a wildness
that did not intimidate Henry’s, like that sullen summit of Ktaadn, but
stirred his curiosity, provoked him. That strong aroma of masculine
health, which he smelled, did not tell him very much. But how did it
happen that with this luxuriance of the flesh, which was brutal enough
to be offensive, there mingled an exquisite perfume that utterly defied
your power to define it? With a disconcerting naturalness this big
fellow spoke or listened (he was a most astonishing listener) as this
invitation emanated from his ruddy body to the three others--the tall
fellow, the little fellow and the lady sitting opposite: “Do take as
much of my health as you like. You can see I shall always have enough.
Call this irritating, if you like, but it’s quite real; and mine is a
presence that does not wait for your consent to warm you.”
Henry, with his habit of absorbing phenomena, sits there, all
eyes--with those eyes that know how to look--seeking to understand,
to pierce to the bottom. Henry, the dry little animal, all nerves and
tendons, with his drooping shoulders and his narrow chest (look at
that great thorax over there, ready for any fist to strike it, where
the weariest head might lie without covering it ...); Henry, with his
receding chin, lost in the little apish beard which he is allowing
to grow just now, his pursed lips, his big, contemptuous nose, his
absorbed, reflective, alert air, his whole life gazing with implacable
seriousness out of the blue-grey windows of those eyes that are so
round, sagacious, keen, vigilant, shining with perpetual use like a
spade; Henry whose lean body refuses to speak for his soul, with his
frail health and his tempered will, crouching behind his own glance
like a hunter on his knees in some thicket, face to face with this
demi-god beaming with nonchalance and carnal opulence; Henry, saturated
with the woodland life of his village, beside this other whose soul is
peopled with his own Broadway.... And each is trying to catch the scent
of the other.
With his rather sluggish glance, the big animal absorbs the little
as he absorbs everything--tranquilly. He accepts without any mental
reservations these friendly people who have come to see him--the tall
man, the short man and the lady; there is room for them too in his
universe. The Leaves exclude no one from their shadow; they spread out
as far as Concord and Philadelphia. He is happy to welcome them, though
he sees nothing in them that particularly surprises him. He lets them
talk, as his way is, draws his own profit from what the speakers say
and replies without opening himself particularly or abandoning his
reserve. These two birds have come from the land of phantoms. They are
intellectuals, bred in the colleges. Not much of a recommendation
in his eyes. It would never occur to you to say to this lanky New
Englander: “Henry, let’s go and have a drink.” He’s not cut out for a
comrade. Just the same, these fellows are friends of the man to whom
he owes enough to call him “master” and who has written, thanking him
for his book, that unforgettable letter which he always carries there
in his pocket, like a patent of nobility. They are two Yankees, one of
whom has begun to sing for himself, who have come on a pilgrimage to
greet the boys of Manhattan.
The great animal is not insensible to such an homage and he accepts it
cordially, in the name of his own people, as a wholesome response. But
Walt’s interest is not aroused. Henry, on his part, would have dearly
liked to be alone with this extraordinary fellow so that the two of
them might start one of those talks like his old talks in the cabin,
when some full-minded friend came to see him and not a syllable that
was not sonorous echoed between the plank walls. But there are four
of them and the conversation begins to wander. They don’t get hold of
one another, and what a pity it is! For surely they have things to say
to one another that are worth saying, points of contact they might
establish together. Henry’s big grey-blue eyes express this wish and
this regret. For isn’t it vexatious to be face to face with such a huge
puzzle and not be able to grasp it and turn it round so as to discover
in the end, as likely as not, that the same flame burns in that big
chest and under that narrow, grouse-like throat? Isn’t it? _Isn’t_ it?
(Ah, my two friends, the future opens out, furrowed with very different
paths from this hour that brings you together here.... You have
decades to live still, Walt.... You are to pass through the horrors
of the great war; you are to see it lying on beds of torture and to
be tortured yourself. Will you then be the man who stood for a fight
to the finish? In your great ripe heart, a comradeship as ardent as
love will have seized upon you, so painful that you will flee from the
world, you will take flight with your sorrow by paths untrodden to the
shores of pond waters, to gather the fragrant calamus root--(it grows
also on the shores of Walden Pond)--and partake of it mystically with
your known and unknown friends.... And then, when you are past the age
for stormy passions, you will find one day the Passage to India: that
little chap found it long ago, you big simpleton.... And many other
discoveries are reserved for the consolation of your mellow age: after
so many other things have lost their lustre, the trees, the seasons
and the skies will offer you their balm and you will voluptuously
anoint yourself with it, bathing in the mud of Timber Creek to ease
your aching body. Then you will take more pleasure in a squirrel’s play
than in the shuffling feet of crowds. And how well you will understand
the thought of that old chap who said that he was seldom less alone
than when alone! Yes, and then, as you approach your sixtieth year,
you will seek by a little pond what men refuse you, and you will find
it, and you will be stirred through and through with gratitude, my
friend.... And the day will come when, as an old gaffer leaning on a
stick, you will visit Concord and receive a whole-hearted welcome in
the land of phantoms at a time when the land of the living rejects you,
and you will step down from your friend’s carriage and add your stone
to the cairn that marks the spot of Henry’s cabin.... You will have
your florid complexion still, set off by the bushy, snow-white beard
that adorns it.... And you will still be the same Walt, enjoying this
miraculous life and rejecting nothing. You will simply have come to
understand certain things....
The future opens out, and in the distant perspective paths take shape
where your feet, my friends, have left their prints.... Is it possible
that lovers like you should never, never meet there? Listen.... How
strange it is!... You might think you were listening to words that
cross one another.... Does it not sound like an intermittent dialogue
in which two voices reply back and forth over some field that catches
their harmony?
HENRY:--He would be a poet who ... nailed words to their primitive
senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the
frost has heaved ... whose words were so true and fresh and
natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the
approach of spring, though they lay half-smothered between
two musty leaves in a library,--ay, to bloom and bear fruit
there, after their kind, for the faithful reader ...
WALT:--Roots and leaves themselves alone are these.... Frost-mellow’d
berries and Third-month twigs offer’d fresh to young persons
wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and
bring form, colour, perfume, to you,
If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers,
fruits, tall branches and trees.
HENRY:--True verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath
of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and
fragrance.... There are two classes of men called poets.
The one cultivates life, the other art--one seeks food for
nutriment, the other for flavour.... The true poem is not
that which the public reads. There is always a poem not
printed on paper ...
WALT:--Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my
poem ...
HENRY:--It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the test
of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight.
WALT:--Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by
trees, stars, rivers ...
HENRY:--I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for
walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted
in the house.
WALT:--I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a
house ...
If you would understand me go to the heights or watershore ...
HENRY:--When I stand in a library ... Alas! that so soon the work of
a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!
WALT:--... in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or
dead ...
HENRY:--The very names of the commodities ... poetic, and as
suggestive as if they had been inserted in a pleasing
poem--Lumber, Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, Logwood.
WALT:--Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar,
rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp!...
HENRY:--I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts
will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky--our
understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our
plains--our intellect generally on a grander scale, like ...
our rivers and mountains and forests--and our hearts shall
even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our
inland seas.
WALT:--... a bard is to be commensurate with a people ... he
incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and
lakes. Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes,
Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and St. Lawrence with the
Falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where
they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him ...
HENRY:--There are poets of all kinds and degrees, little known to
each other.... I meet these gods of the river and woods with
sparkling faces (like Apollo’s), late from the House of
Correction, it may be.... What care I to see galleries full
of representations of heathen gods, when I can see actual
living ones by an infinitely superior artist?
WALT:--Accepting the rough deific sketches ...
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves
driving the mallet and chisel ...
Lads ... no less to me than the gods of the antique wars ...
HENRY:--There is this moment proposed to me every kind of life
that men lead anywhere.... By another spring I may be a
mail-carrier in Peru, or a South African planter, or a
Siberian exile, or a Greenland whaler, or a settler on the
Columbia River, or a Canton merchant, or a soldier in
Florida, or a mackerel fisher off Cape Sable, or a Robinson
Crusoe in the Pacific, or a silent navigator of any sea....
These are but few of my chances, and how many more things may
I do with which there are none to be compared!
WALT:--I am a real Parisian ...