threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people
whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could,
with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and
river: and he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search
for chestnuts or grapes. Talking, one day, of a public discourse,
Henry remarked, that whatever succeeded with the audience was bad. I
said, “Who would not like to write something which all can read, like
Robinson Crusoe? and who does not see with regret that his page is not
solid with a right materialistic treatment, which delights everybody?”
Henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lectures which
reached only a few persons. But, at supper, a young girl, understanding
that he was to lecture at the Lyceum, sharply asked him, “Whether his
lecture would be a nice, interesting story, such as she wished to hear,
or whether it was one of those old philosophical things that she did
not care about.” Henry turned to her, and bethought himself, and, I
saw, was trying to believe that he had matter that might fit her and
her brother, who were to sit up and go to the lecture, if it was a good
one for them.
He was a speaker and actor of the truth, born such, and was ever
running into dramatic situations from this cause. In any circumstance
it interested all bystanders to know what part Henry would take, and
what he would say; and he did not disappoint expectation, but used
an original judgment on each emergency. In 1845 he built himself a
small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two
years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native
and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation.
He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action.
As soon as he had exhausted the advantages of that solitude, he
abandoned it. In 1847, not approving some uses to which the public
expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his town tax, and was put
in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like
annoyance was threatened the next year. But, as his friends paid the
tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No
opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully
stated his opinion of the company. It was of no consequence if every
one present held the opposite opinion. On one occasion he went to the
University Library to procure some books. The librarian refused to
lend them. Mr. Thoreau repaired to the President, who stated to him
the rules and usages, which permitted the loan of books to resident
graduates, to clergymen who were alumni, and to some others resident
within a circle of ten miles’ radius from the College. Mr. Thoreau
explained to the President that the railroad had destroyed the old
scale of distances,--that the library was useless, yes, and President
and College useless, on the terms of his rules,--that the one benefit
he owed to the College was its library,--that, at this moment, not
only his want of books was imperative but he wanted a large number of
books, and assured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian, was the
proper custodian of these. In short, the President found the petitioner
so formidable, and the rules getting to look so ridiculous, that he
ended by giving him a privilege which in his hands proved unlimited
thereafter.
No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his country
and condition was genuine, and his aversation from English and European
manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He listened impatiently
to news or bonmots gleaned from London circles; and though he tried
to be civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men were all imitating
each other, and on a small mould. Why can they not live as far apart
as possible, and each be a man by himself? What he sought was the most
energetic nature; and he wished to go to Oregon, not to London. “In
every part of Great Britain,” he wrote in his diary, “are discovered
traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their camps, their roads,
their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman
ruins. We have not to lay the foundations of our houses on the ashes of
a former civilization.”
But, idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition
of tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say
he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost
equally opposed to every class of reformers. Yet he paid the tribute of
his uniform respect to the Anti-Slavery party. One man, whose personal
acquaintance he had formed, he honored with exceptional regard. Before
the first friendly word had been spoken for Captain John Brown, he
sent notices to most houses in Concord that he would speak in a
public hall on the condition and character of John Brown, on Sunday
evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican Committee,
the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was premature and
not advisable. He replied,--“I did not send to you for advice, but to
announce that I am to speak.” The hall was filled at an early hour by
people of all parties, and his earnest eulogy of the hero was heard by
all respectfully, by many with a sympathy that surprised themselves.
It was said of Plotinus that he was ashamed of his body, and ’tis very
likely he had good reason for it,--that his body was a bad servant,
and he had not skill in dealing with the material world, as happens
often to men of abstract intellect. But Mr. Thoreau was equipped with
a most adapted and serviceable body. He was of short stature, firmly
built, of light complexion, with strong, serious blue eyes, and a grave
aspect,--his face covered in the late years with a becoming beard. His
senses were acute, his frame well-knit and hardy, his hands strong and
skilful in the use of tools. And there was a wonderful fitness of body
and mind. He could pace sixteen rods more accurately than another man
could measure them with rod and chain. He could find his path in the
woods at night, he said, better by his feet than his eyes. He could
estimate the measure of a tree very well by his eye; he could estimate
the weight of a calf or a pig, like a dealer. From a box containing a
bushel or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his hands fast
enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp. He was a good swimmer,
runner, skater, boatman, and would probably outwalk most countrymen in
a day’s journey. And the relation of body to mind was still finer than
we have indicated. He said he wanted every stride his legs made. The
length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up
in the house he did not write at all.
He had a strong common-sense, like that which Rose Flammock the
weaver’s daughter in Scott’s romance commends in her father, as
resembling a yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper,
can equally well measure tapestry and cloth of gold. He had always a
new resource. When I was planting forest trees, and had procured half
a peck of acorns, he said that only a small portion of them would be
sound, and proceeded to examine them and select the sound ones. But
finding this took time, he said, “I think if you put them all into
water the good ones will sink;” which experiment we tried with success.
He could plan a garden or a house or a barn; would have been competent
to lead a “Pacific Exploring Expedition;” could give judicious counsel
in the gravest private or public affairs.
He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory. If he
brought you yesterday a new proposition, he would bring you to-day
another not less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and setting,
like all highly organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed
the only man of leisure in town, always ready for any excursion that
promised well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours. His
trenchant sense was never stopped by his rules of daily prudence, but
was always up to the new occasion. He liked and used the simplest food,
yet, when some one urged a vegetable diet, Thoreau thought all diets a
very small matter, saying that “the man who shoots the buffalo lives
better than the man who boards at the Graham House.” He said,--“You
can sleep near the railroad, and never be disturbed: Nature knows very
well what sounds are worth attending to, and has made up her mind not
to hear the railroad-whistle. But things respect the devout mind, and a
mental ecstasy was never interrupted.” He noted what repeatedly befell
him, that, after receiving from a distance a rare plant, he would
presently find the same in his own haunts. And those pieces of luck
which happen only to good players happened to him. One day, walking
with a stranger, who inquired where Indian arrow-heads could be found,
he replied, “Everywhere,” and, stooping forward, picked one on the
instant from the ground. At Mount Washington, in Tuckerman’s Ravine,
Thoreau had a bad fall, and sprained his foot. As he was in the act of
getting up from his fall, he saw for the first time the leaves of the
_Arnica mollis_.
His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, keen perceptions and
strong will, cannot yet account for the superiority which shone in
his simple and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there
was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which
showed him the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery,
which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light,
serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping
insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might
cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his youth,
he said, one day, “The other world is all my art; my pencils will
draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use it
as a means.” This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions,
conversation, studies, work and course of life. This made him a
searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion,
and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well
report his weight and calibre. And this made the impression of genius
which his conversation sometimes gave.
He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and saw the limitations
and poverty of those he talked with, so that nothing seemed concealed
from such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men of
sensibility converted in a moment to the belief that this was the
man they were in search of, the man of men, who could tell them all
they should do. His own dealing with them was never affectionate, but
superior, didactic, scorning their petty ways,--very slowly conceding,
or not conceding at all, the promise of his society at their houses, or
even at his own. “Would he not walk with them?” “He did not know. There
was nothing so important to him as his walk; he had no walks to throw
away on company.” Visits were offered him from respectful parties, but
he declined them. Admiring friends offered to carry him at their own
cost to the Yellowstone River,--to the West Indies,--to South America.
But though nothing could be more grave or considered than his refusals,
they remind one, in quite new relations, of that fop Brummel’s reply to
the gentleman who offered him his carriage in a shower, “But where will
_you_ ride, then?”--and what accusing silences, and what searching
and irresistible speeches, battering down all defenses, his companions
can remember!
Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields,
hills and waters of his native town, that he made them known and
interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. The
river on whose banks he was born and died he knew from its springs
to its confluence with the Merrimack. He had made summer and winter
observations on it for many years, and at every hour of the day and
night. The result of the recent survey of the Water Commissioners
appointed by the State of Massachusetts he had reached by his private
experiments, several years earlier. Every fact which occurs in the bed,
on the banks, or in the air over it; the fishes, and their spawning and
nests, their manners, their food; the shad-flies which fill the air on
a certain evening once a year, and which are snapped at by the fishes
so ravenously that many of these die of repletion; the conical heaps
of small stones on the river-shallows, the huge nests of small fishes,
one of which will sometimes overfill a cart; the birds which frequent
the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat,
otter, woodchuck and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla and
cricket, which make the banks vocal,--were all known to him, and, as it
were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity or
violence in any narrative of one of these by itself apart, and still
more of its dimensions on an inch-rule, or in the exhibition of its
skeleton, or the specimen of a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He liked
to speak of the manners of the river, as itself a lawful creature, yet
with exactness, and always to an observed fact. As he knew the river,
so the ponds in this region.
One of the weapons he used, more important to him than microscope or
alcohol-receiver to other investigators, was a whim which grew on him
by indulgence, yet appeared in gravest statement, namely, of extolling
his own town and neighborhood as the most favored centre for natural
observation. He remarked that the Flora of Massachusetts embraced
almost all the important plants of America,--most of the oaks, most of
the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts.
He returned Kane’s “Arctic Voyage” to a friend of whom he had borrowed
it, with the remark, that “Most of the phenomena noted might be
observed in Concord.” He seemed a little envious of the Pole, for the
coincident sunrise and sunset, or five minutes’ day after six months:
a splendid fact, which Annursnuc had never afforded him. He found red
snow in one of his walks, and told me that he expected to find yet the
_Victoria regia_ in Concord. He was the attorney of the indigenous
plants, and owned to a preference of the weeds to the imported plants
as of the Indian to the civilized man, and noticed, with pleasure, that
the willow bean-poles of his neighbor had grown more than his beans.
“See these weeds,” he said, “which have been hoed at by a million
farmers all spring and summer, and yet have prevailed, and just now
come out triumphant over all lanes, pastures, fields and gardens, such
is their vigor. We have insulted them with low names, too,--as Pigweed,
Wormwood, Chickweed, Shad-blossom.” He says, “They have brave names,
too,--Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchier, Amaranth, etc.”
I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord
did not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes
or latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of
the indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is
where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise:--“I think nothing
is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not
sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world.”
The other weapon with which he conquered all obstacles in science was
patience. He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested
on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him,
should come back and resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should
come to him and watch him.
It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the country
like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of
his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and what
creature had taken this path before him. One must submit abjectly to
such a guide, and the reward was great. Under his arm he carried an
old music-book to press plants; in his pocket, his diary and pencil,
a spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife, and twine. He wore a
straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave scrub-oaks and
smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk’s or a squirrel’s nest. He
waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no
insignificant part of his armor. On the day I speak of he looked for
the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination
of the florets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He drew
out of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the
plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a
banker when his notes fall due. The Cypripedium not due till to-morrow.
He thought that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp, he could
tell by the plants what time of the year it was within two days. The
redstart was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, whose
brilliant scarlet “makes the rash gazer wipe his eye,” and whose fine
clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which has got rid of
its hoarseness. Presently he heard a note which he called that of the
night-warbler, a bird he had never identified, had been in search of
twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving
down into a tree or bush, and which it was vain to seek; the only bird
which sings indifferently by night and by day. I told him he must
beware of finding and booking it, lest life should have nothing more to
show him. He said, “What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day
you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream,
and as soon as you find it you become its prey.”
His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind,
was connected with Nature,--and the meaning of Nature was never
attempted to be defined by him. He would not offer a memoir of his
observations to the Natural History Society. “Why should I? To detach
the description from its connections in my mind would make it no longer
true or valuable to me: and they do not wish what belongs to it.” His
power of observation seemed to indicate additional senses. He saw
as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a
photographic register of all he saw and heard. And yet none knew better
than he that it is not the fact that imports, but the impression or
effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a
type of the order and beauty of the whole.
His determination on Natural History was organic. He confessed that he
sometimes felt like a hound or a panther, and, if born among Indians,
would have been a fell hunter. But, restrained by his Massachusetts
culture, he played out the game in this mild form of botany and
ichthyology. His intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller
records of Butler the apiologist, that “either he had told the bees
things or the bees had told him.” Snakes coiled round his leg; the
fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water; he pulled
the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail and took the foxes under his
protection from the hunters. Our naturalist had perfect magnanimity;
he had no secrets: he would carry you to the heron’s haunt, or even to
his most prized botanical swamp,--possibly knowing that you could never
find it again, yet willing to take his risks.
No college ever offered him a diploma, or a professor’s chair; no
academy made him its corresponding secretary, its discoverer, or even
its member. Perhaps these learned bodies feared the satire of his
presence. Yet so much knowledge of Nature’s secret and genius few
others possessed, none in a more large and religious synthesis. For not
a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men,
but homage solely to the truth itself; and as he discovered everywhere
among doctors some leaning of courtesy, it discredited them. He grew
to be revered and admired by his townsmen, who had at first known him
only as an oddity. The farmers who employed him as a surveyor soon
discovered his rare accuracy and skill, his knowledge of their lands,
of trees, of birds, of Indian remains and the like, which enabled him
to tell every farmer more than he knew before of his own farm; so
that he began to feel a little as if Mr. Thoreau had better rights in
his land than he. They felt, too, the superiority of character which
addressed all men with a native authority.
Indian relics abound in Concord,--arrow-heads, stone chisels, pestles,
and fragments of pottery; and on the river-bank, large heaps of
clam-shells and ashes mark spots which the savages frequented. These,
and every circumstance touching the Indian, were important in his eyes.
His visits to Maine were chiefly for love of the Indian. He had the
satisfaction of seeing the manufacture of the bark-canoe, as well as
of trying his hand in its management on the rapids. He was inquisitive
about the making of the stone arrow-head, and in his last days charged
a youth setting out for the Rocky Mountains to find an Indian who could
tell him that: “It was well worth a visit to California to learn it.”
Occasionally, a small party of Penobscot Indians would visit Concord,
and pitch their tents for a few weeks in summer on the river-bank. He
failed not to make acquaintance with the best of them; though he well
knew that asking questions of Indians is like catechizing beavers and
rabbits. In his last visit to Maine he had great satisfaction from
Joseph Polis, an intelligent Indian of Oldtown, who was his guide for
some weeks.
He was equally interested in every natural fact. The depth of his
perception found likeness of law throughout Nature, and I know not any
genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the single fact. He
was no pedant of a department. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear
to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he
went. He thought the best of music was in single strains; and he found
poetic suggestion in the humming of the telegraph-wire.
His poetry might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility
and technical skill, but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual
perception. He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry
was to the ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or
absence of the poetic element in any composition, and his thirst for
this made him negligent and perhaps scornful of superficial graces. He
would pass by many delicate rhythms, but he would have detected every
live stanza or line in a volume, and knew very well where to find
an equal poetic charm in prose. He was so enamored of the spiritual
beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in
the comparison. He admired Æschylus and Pindar; but, when someone was
commending them, he said that Æschylus and the Greeks, in describing
Apollo and Orpheus, had given no song, or no good one. “They ought not
to have moved trees, but to have chanted to the gods such a hymn as
would have sung all their old ideas out of their heads, and new ones
in.” His own verses are often rude and defective. The gold does not
yet run pure, is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet
honey. But if he want lyric fineness and technical merits, if he have
not the poetic temperament, he never lacks the causal thought, showing
that his genius was better than his talent. He knew the worth of the
Imagination for the uplifting and consolation of human life, and liked
to throw every thought into a symbol. The fact you tell is of no value,
but only the impression. For this reason his presence was poetic,
always piqued the curiosity to know more deeply the secrets of his
mind. He had many reserves, an unwillingness to exhibit to profane eyes
what was still sacred in his own, and knew well how to throw a poetic
veil over his experience. All readers of “Walden” will remember his
mythical record of his disappointments:--
“I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse and a turtle-dove, and am still
on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them,
describing their tracks, and what calls they answered to. I have met
one or two who have heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and
even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud; and they seemed as anxious
to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.”[16]
His riddles were worth the reading, and I confide that if at any time I
do not understand the expression, it is yet just. Such was the wealth
of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain.
His poem entitled “Sympathy” reveals the tenderness under that triple
steel of stoicism, and the intellectual subtility it could animate.
His classic poem on “Smoke” suggests Simonides, but is better than any
poem of Simonides. His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought
makes all his poetry a hymn to the Cause of causes, the Spirit which
vivifies and controls his own:--
“I hearing get, who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before;
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.”
And still more in these religious lines:--
“Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life;
I will not doubt the love untold,
Which not my worth nor want have bought,
Which wooed me young, and wooes me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.”