CONCORD, Friday evening,
January 25, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND,--Mrs. Emerson asks me to write you a letter, which she
will put into her bundle to-morrow along with the "Tribunes" and
"Standards," and miscellanies, and what not, to make an assortment.
But what shall I write? You live a good way off, and I don't know that
I have anything which will bear sending so far. But I am mistaken, or
rather impatient when I say this,--for we all have a gift to send, not
only when the year begins, but as long as interest and memory last. I
don't know whether you have got the many I have sent you, or rather
whether you were quite sure where they came from. I mean the letters I
have sometimes launched off eastward in my thought; but if you have
been happier at one time than another, think that then you received
them. But this that I now send you is of another sort. It will go
slowly, drawn by horses over muddy roads, and lose much of its little
value by the way. You may have to pay for it, and it may not make you
happy after all. But what shall be my new-year's gift, then? Why, I
will send you my still fresh remembrance of the hours I have passed
with you here, for I find in the remembrance of them the best gift
you have left to me. We are poor and sick creatures at best; but we
can have well memories, and sound and healthy thoughts of one another
still, and an intercourse may be remembered which was without blur,
and above us both.
Perhaps you may like to know of my estate nowadays. As usual, I find
it harder to account for the happiness I enjoy, than for the sadness
which instructs me occasionally. If the little of this last which
visits me would only be sadder, it would be happier. One while I am
vexed by a sense of meanness; one while I simply wonder at the mystery
of life; and at another, and at another, seem to rest on my oars, as
if propelled by propitious breezes from I know not what quarter. But
for the most part I am an idle, inefficient, lingering (one term will
do as well as another, where all are true and none true enough) member
of the great commonwealth, who have most need of my own charity,--if I
could not be charitable and indulgent to myself, perhaps as good a
subject for my own satire as any. You see how, when I come to talk of
myself, I soon run dry, for I would fain make that a subject which can
be no subject for me, at least not till I have the grace to rule
myself.
I do not venture to say anything about your griefs, for it would be
unnatural for me to speak as if I grieved with you, when I think I do
not. If I were to see you, it might be otherwise. But I know you will
pardon the trivialness of this letter; and I only hope--as I know that
you have reason to be so--that you are still happier than you are
sad, and that you remember that the smallest seed of faith is of more
worth than the largest fruit of happiness. I have no doubt that out of
S----'s death you sometimes draw sweet consolation, not only for that,
but for long-standing griefs, and may find some things made smooth by
it, which before were rough.
I wish you would communicate with me, and not think me unworthy to
know any of your thoughts. Don't think me unkind because I have not
written to you. I confess it was for so poor a reason as that you
almost made a principle of not answering. I could not speak truly with
this ugly fact in the way; and perhaps I wished to be assured, by such
evidence as you could not voluntarily give, that it was a kindness.
For every glance at the moon, does she not send me an answering ray?
Noah would hardly have done himself the pleasure to release his dove,
if she had not been about to come back to him with tidings of green
islands amid the waste.
But these are far-fetched reasons. I am not speaking directly enough
to yourself now; so let me say _directly_
From your friend,
HENRY D. THOREAU.
Exactly when correspondence began between Emerson and Thoreau is not
now to be ascertained, since all the letters do not seem to have been
preserved. Their acquaintance opened while Thoreau was in college,
although Emerson may have seen the studious boy at the town school in
Concord, or at the "Academy" there, while fitting for college. But
they only came to know each other as sharers of the same thoughts and
aspirations in the autumn of 1837, when, on hearing a new lecture of
Emerson's, Helen Thoreau said to Mrs. Brown, then living or visiting
in the Thoreau family, "Henry has a thought very like that in his
journal" (which he had newly begun to keep). Mrs. Brown desired to see
the passage, and soon bore it to her sister, Mrs. Emerson, whose
husband saw it, and asked Mrs. Brown to bring her young friend to see
him. By 1838 their new relation of respect was established, and
Emerson wrote to a correspondent, "I delight much in my young friend,
who seems to have as free and erect a mind as any I have ever met." A
year later (Aug. 9, 1839), he wrote to Carlyle, "I have a young poet
in this village, named Thoreau, who writes the truest verses." Indeed,
it was in the years 1839-40 that he seems to have written the poems by
which he is best remembered. Thoreau told me in his last illness that
he had written many verses and destroyed many,--this fact he then
regretted, although he had done it at the instance of Emerson, who did
not praise them. "But," said he, "they may have been better than we
thought them, twenty years ago."
The earliest note which I find from Emerson to Thoreau bears no date,
but must have been written before 1842, for at no later time could the
persons named in it have visited Concord together. Most likely it was
in the summer of 1840, and to the same date do I assign a note asking
Henry to join the Emersons in a party to the Cliffs (_scopuli
Pulchri-Portus_), and to bring his flute,--for on that pastoral reed
Thoreau played sweetly. The first series of letters from Thoreau to
Emerson begins early in 1843, about the time the letters just given
were written to Mrs. Brown. In the first he gives thanks to Emerson
for the hospitality of his house in the two preceding years; a theme
to which he returned a few months later,--for I doubt not the lovely
sad poem called "The Departure" was written at Staten Island soon
after his leaving the Emerson house in Concord for the more stately
but less congenial residence of William Emerson at Staten Island,
whither he betook himself in May, 1843. This first letter, however,
was sent from the Concord home to Waldo Emerson at Staten Island, or
perhaps in New York, where he was that winter giving a course of
lectures.
In explanation of the passages concerning Bronson Alcott, in this
letter, it should be said that he was then living at the Hosmer
Cottage, in Concord, with his English friends, Charles Lane and Henry
Wright, and that he had refused to pay a tax in support of what he
considered an unjust government, and was arrested by the constable,
Sam Staples, in consequence.