[2] He was named David for this uncle; Dr. Ripley was the minister of
the whole town in 1817. The Red House stood near the Emerson house on
the Lexington road; the Woodwards were a wealthy family, afterwards in
Quincy, to which town Dr. Woodward left a large bequest.
[3] John Thoreau, grandfather of Henry, born at St. Helier's, Jersey,
April, 1754, was a sailor on board the American privateer General
Lincoln, November, 1779, and recognized La Sensible, French frigate,
which carried John Adams from Boston to France. See _Journal_, vol. v,
June 11, 1853. This John Thoreau, son of Philip, died in Concord,
1800.
[4] This had been the abode of old Deacon Parkman, a granduncle of the
late Francis Parkman, the historian, and son of the Westborough
clergyman from whom this distinguished family descends. Deacon Parkman
was a merchant in Concord, and lived in what was then a good house. It
stood in the middle of the village, where the Public Library now is.
The "Texas" house was built by Henry Thoreau and his father John; it
was named from a section of the village then called "Texas," because a
little remote from the churches and schools; perhaps the same odd
fancy that had bestowed the name of "Virginia" on the road of
Thoreau's birthplace. The "Yellow House reformed" was a small cottage
rebuilt and enlarged by the Thoreaus in 1850; in this, on the main
street, Henry and his father and mother died.
[5] During the greater part of his college course he signed himself D.
H. Thoreau, as he was christened (David Henry); but being constantly
called "Henry," he put this name first about the time he left college,
and was seldom afterwards known by the former initials.
[6] The impression made on one classmate and former room-mate ("chum")
of Thoreau, by this utterance, will be seen by this fragment of a
letter from James Richardson of Dedham (afterwards Reverend J.
Richardson), dated Dedham, September 7, 1837:--
"FRIEND THOREAU,--After you had finished your part in the
Performances of Commencement (the tone and sentiment of
which, by the way, I liked much, as being of a sound
philosophy), I hardly saw you again at all. Neither at
Mr. Quincy's levee, neither at any of our classmates'
evening entertainments, did I find you; though for the
purpose of taking a farewell, and leaving you some
memento of an old chum, as well as on matters of
business, I much wished to see your face once more. Of
course you must be present at our October
meeting,--notice of the time and place for which will be
given in the newspapers. I hear that you are comfortably
located, in your native town, as the guardian of its
children, in the immediate vicinity, I suppose, of one of
our most distinguished apostles of the future, R. W.
Emerson, and situated under the ministry of our old
friend Reverend Barzillai Frost, to whom please make my
remembrances. I heard from you, also, that Concord
Academy, lately under the care of Mr. Phineas Allen of
Northfield, is now vacant of a preceptor; should Mr. Hoar
find it difficult to get a scholar college-distinguished,
perhaps he would take up with one, who, though in many
respects a critical thinker, and a careful philosopher of
language among other things, has never distinguished
himself in his class as a regular attendant on college
studies and rules. If so, could you do me the kindness to
mention my name to him as of one intending to make
teaching his profession, at least for a part of his life.
If recommendations are necessary, President Quincy has
offered me one, and I can easily get others."
[7] This eldest of the children of John Thoreau and Cynthia Dunbar was
born October 22, 1812, and died June 14, 1849. Her grandmother, Mary
Jones of Weston, Mass., belonged to a Tory family, and several of the
Jones brothers served as officers in the British army against General
Washington.
[8] White Pond, in the district called "Nine-Acre Corner," is here
meant; the "Lee-vites" were a family then living on Lee's Hill.
Naushawtuck is another name for this hill, where the old Tahatawan
lived at times, before the English settled in Concord in September,
1635. The real date of this letter is November 11-14, 1837, and
between its two dates the Massachusetts State election was held. The
"great council-house" was the Boston State-House, to which the Concord
people were electing deputies; the "Eagle-Beak" named on the next page
was doubtless Samuel Hoar, the first citizen of the town, and for a
time Member of Congress from Middlesex County. He was the father of
Rockwood and Frisbie Hoar, afterwards judge and senator respectively.
[9] A delicate sarcasm on young B., who could not finish his speech in
town-meeting without looking at his notes. The allusion to the
"Medicine whose words are like the music of the mockingbird" is hard
to explain; it may mean Edward Everett, then Governor of
Massachusetts, or, possibly, Emerson, whose lectures began to attract
notice in Boston and Cambridge. It can hardly mean Wendell Phillips,
though his melodious eloquence had lately been heard in attacks upon
slavery.
[10] _Americana_, in this note, is the old _Encyclopedia Americana_,
which had been edited from the German _Conversations-Lexicon_, and
other sources, by Dr. Francis Lieber, T. G. Bradford, and other Boston
scholars, ten years earlier, and was the only convenient book of
reference at Thoreau's hand. The inquiry of John Thoreau is another
evidence of the interest he took, like his brother, in the Indians and
their flint arrowheads. The relics mentioned in the next letter were
doubtless Indian weapons and utensils, very common about Taunton in
the region formerly controlled by King Philip.
[11] Dr. Edward Jarvis, born in Concord (1803), had gone to
Louisville, Ky., in April, 1837, and was thriving there as a
physician. He knew the Thoreaus well, and gave them good hopes of
success in Ohio or Kentucky as teachers. The plan was soon abandoned,
and Henry went to Maine to find a school, but without success. See
Sanborn's _Thoreau_, p. 57.
[12] This was the old monument of the Fight in 1775, for the
dedication of which Emerson wrote his hymn, "By the rude bridge." This
was sung by Thoreau, among others, to the tune of Old Hundred.
[13] For twenty-five years (1866-91) the house of Ellery Channing, and
now of Charles Emerson, nephew of Waldo Emerson.
[14] The steamer Lexington lately burnt on Long Island Sound, with Dr.
Follen on board.
[15] Mrs. Brown was the elder sister of Mrs. R. W. Emerson and of the
eminent chemist and geologist, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Plymouth and
Boston. She lived for a time in Mrs. Thoreau's family, and Thoreau's
early verses, "Sic Vita," were thrown into her window there by the
young poet, wrapped round a cluster of violets.
[16] This business of pencil-making had become the family
bread-winner, and Henry Thoreau worked at it and kindred arts by
intervals for the next twenty years.
[17] I. T. Williams, who had lived in Concord, but now wrote from
Buffalo, N. Y.
[18] Mrs. Brown, to whom this letter and several others of the years
1841-43 were written, lived by turns in Plymouth, her native place,
and in Concord, where she often visited Mrs. Emerson at the time when
Thoreau was an inmate of the Emerson household. In the early part of
1843 she was in Plymouth, and her sister was sending her newspapers
and other things, from time to time. The incident of the music-box,
mentioned above, occurred at the Old Manse, where Hawthorne was living
from the summer of 1842 until the spring of 1845, and was often
visited by Thoreau and Ellery Channing. In the letter following, this
incident is recalled, and with it the agreeable gift by Richard Fuller
(a younger brother of Margaret Fuller and of Ellen, the wife of Ellery
Channing, who came to reside in Concord about these years, and soon
became Thoreau's most intimate friend), which was a music-box for the
Thoreaus. They were all fond of music, and enjoyed it even in this
mechanical form,--one evidence of the simple conditions of life in
Concord then. The note of thanks to young Fuller, who had been,
perhaps, a pupil of Thoreau, follows this letter to Mrs. Brown, though
earlier in date. Mary Russell afterwards became Mrs. Marston Watson.
[19] Editor of the _Democratic Review_, for which Hawthorne, Emerson,
Thoreau, and Whittier all wrote, more or less.
[20] An interesting fact in connection with Thoreau and Wheeler (whose
home was in Lincoln, four miles southeast of Concord) is related by
Ellery Channing in a note to me. It seems that Wheeler had built for
himself, or hired from a farmer, a rough woodland study near Flint's
Pond, half-way from Lincoln to Concord, which he occupied for a short
time in 1841-42, and where Thoreau and Channing visited him. Mr.
Channing wrote me in 1883: "Stearns Wheeler built a 'shanty' on
Flint's Pond for the purpose of economy, for purchasing Greek books
and going abroad to study. Whether Mr. Thoreau assisted him to build
this shanty I cannot say, but I think he may have; also that he spent
six weeks with him there. As Mr. Thoreau was not too original and
inventive to follow the example of others, if good to him, it is very
probable this undertaking of Stearns Wheeler, whom he regarded (as I
think I have heard him say) a heroic character, suggested his own
experiment on Walden. I believe I visited this shanty with Mr.
Thoreau. It was very plain, with bunks of straw, and built in the
Irish manner. I think Mr. Wheeler was as good a mechanic as Mr.
Thoreau, and built this shanty for his own use. The object of these
two experiments was quite unlike, except in the common purpose of
economy. It seems to me highly probable that Mr. Wheeler's experiment
suggested Mr. Thoreau's, as he was a man he almost worshiped. But I
could not understand what relation Mr. Lowell had to this fact, if it
be one. Students, in all parts of the earth, have pursued a similar
course from motives of economy, and to carry out some special study.
Mr. Thoreau wished to study birds, flowers, and the stone age, just as
Mr. Wheeler wished to study Greek. And Mr. Hotham came next from just
the same motive of economy (necessity) and to study the Bible. The
prudential sides of all three were the same." Mr. Hotham was the young
theological student who dwelt in a cabin by Walden in 1869-70.
[21] An English critic and poetaster. See _Memoir of Bronson Alcott_,
pp. 292-318.
[22] _Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist._ With Memorial Verses. By William
Ellery Channing, New Edition, enlarged, edited by F. B. Sanborn
(Boston: Charles Goodspeed, 1902). This volume, in some respects the
best biography of Thoreau, is no longer rare. Among the Verses are
those written by Channing for his friend's funeral; at which, also,
Mr. Alcott read Thoreau's poem of Sympathy.
[23] Headley died at the age of twenty-three, in 1788. His posthumous
book was edited in 1810 by Rev. Henry Kett, and published in London by
John Sharp.
[24] An allusion to the strange and painful death of John Thoreau, by
lockjaw. He had slightly wounded himself in shaving, and the cut
became inflamed and brought on that hideous and deforming malady, of
which, by sympathy, Henry also partook, though he recovered.
[25] _Past and Present._
[26] Of the publishing house of Bradbury & Soden, in Boston, which had
taken Nathan Hale's _Boston Miscellany_ off his hands, and had
published in it, with promise of payment, Thoreau's "Walk to
Wachusett." But much time had passed, and the debt was not paid; hence
the lack of a "shower of shillings" which the letter laments.
Emerson's reply gives the first news of the actual beginning of
Alcott's short-lived paradise at Fruitlands, and dwells with interest
on the affairs of the rural and lettered circle at Concord.
[27] At Fruitlands with the Alcotts. See Sanborn's _Thoreau_, p. 137,
for this letter.
[28] Emerson also was satisfied with it for once, and wrote to
Thoreau: "Our _Dial_ thrives well enough in these weeks. I print W. E.
Channing's 'Letters,' or the first ones, but he does not care to have
them named as his for a while. They are very agreeable reading."
[29] Afterwards Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, but then in Harvard
College.
[30] Henry James, Senior.
[31] Emerson had written, July 20: "I am sorry to say that when I
called on Bradbury & Soden, nearly a month ago, their partner, in
their absence, informed me that they should not pay you, at present,
any part of their debt on account of the _Boston Miscellany_. After
much talking, all the promise he could offer was 'that within a year
it would probably be paid,'--a probability which certainly looks very
slender. The very worst thing he said was the proposition that you
should take your payment in the form of _Boston Miscellanies_! I shall
not fail to refresh their memory at intervals."
[32] It may need to be said that these were New York weeklies--the
_Mirror_, edited in part by N. P. Willis, and the _New World_ by Park
Benjamin, formerly of Boston, whose distinction it is to have first
named Hawthorne as a writer of genius. "Miss Fuller" was
Margaret,--not yet resident in New York, whither she went to live in
1844.
[33] The allusion here is to Ellery Channing's "Youth of the Poet and
Painter," in the _Dial_,--an unfinished autobiography. The _Present_
of W. H. Channing, his cousin, named above, was a short-lived
periodical, begun September 15, 1843, and ended in April, 1844.
"McKean" was Henry Swasey McKean, who was a classmate of Charles
Emerson at Harvard in 1828, a tutor there in 1830-35, and who died in
1857.
[34] This inkstand was presented by Miss Hoar, with a note dated
"Boston, May 2, 1843," which deserves to be copied:--
DEAR HENRY,--The rain prevented me from seeing you the night before I
came away, to leave with you a parting assurance of good will and good
hope. We have become better acquainted within the two past years than
in our whole life as schoolmates and neighbors before; and I am
unwilling to let you go away without telling you that I, among your
other friends, shall miss you much, and follow you with remembrance
and all best wishes and confidence. Will you take this little inkstand
and try if it will carry ink safely from Concord to Staten Island? and
the pen, which, if you can write with steel, may be made sometimes the
interpreter of friendly thoughts to those whom you leave beyond the
reach of your voice,--or record the inspirations of Nature, who, I
doubt not, will be as faithful to you who trust her in the sea-girt
Staten Island as in Concord woods and meadows. Good-by, and εὖ πράττειν,
which, a wise man says, is the only salutation fit for the wise.
Truly your friend, E. HOAR.