CONCORD, September 21, 1854.
BLAKE,--I have just read your letter, but do not mean now to answer
it, solely for want of time to say what I wish. I directed a copy of
"Walden" to you at Ticknor's, on the day of its publication, and it
should have reached you before. I am encouraged to know that it
interests you as it now stands,--a printed book,--for you apply a very
severe test to it,--you make the highest demand on me. As for the
excursion you speak of, I should like it right well,--indeed I thought
of proposing the same thing to you and Brown, some months ago. Perhaps
it would have been better if I had done so then; for in that case I
should have been able to enter into it with that infinite margin to my
views,--spotless of all engagements,--which I think so necessary. As
it is, I have agreed to go a-lecturing to Plymouth, Sunday after next
(October 1) and to Philadelphia in November, and thereafter to the
West, _if they shall want me_; and, as I have prepared nothing in that
shape, I feel as if my hours were spoken for. However, I think that,
after having been to Plymouth, I may take a day or two--if that date
will suit you and Brown. _At any rate_ I will write to you then.
CONCORD, October 5, 1854.
After I wrote to you, Mr. Watson postponed my going to Plymouth one
week, _i. e._, till next Sunday; and now he wishes me to carry my
instruments and survey his grounds, to which he has been adding. Since
I want a little money, though I contemplate but a short excursion, I
do not feel at liberty to decline this work. I do not know exactly how
long it will detain me,--but there is plenty of time yet, and I will
write to you again--perhaps from Plymouth.
There is a Mr. Thomas Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumly), a young
English author, staying at our house at present, who asks me to teach
him _botany_--_i. e._, anything which I know; and also to make an
excursion to some mountain with him. He is a well-behaved person, and
_possibly_ I may propose his taking that run to Wachusett with us--if
it will be agreeable to you. Nay, if I do not hear any objection from
you, I will consider myself _at liberty_ to invite him.
CONCORD, Saturday P. M., October 14, 1854.
I have just returned from Plymouth, where I have been detained
surveying much longer than I expected. What do you say to visiting
Wachusett next Thursday? I will start at 7¼ A. M. _unless there is a
prospect of a stormy day_, go by cars to Westminster, and thence on
foot five or six miles to the mountain-top, where I may engage to meet
you, at (or before) 12 M. If the weather is unfavorable, I will try
again, on Friday,--and again on Monday. If a storm comes on after
starting, I will seek you at the tavern at Princeton centre, as soon
as circumstances will permit. I shall expect an answer at once, to
clinch the bargain.
* * * * *
The year 1854 was a memorable one in Thoreau's life, for it brought
out his most successful book, "Walden," and introduced him to the
notice of the world, which had paid small attention to his first book,
the "Week," published five years earlier. This year also made him
acquainted with two friends to whom he wrote much, and who loved to
visit and stroll with him around Concord, or in more distant
places,--Thomas Cholmondeley, an Englishman from Shropshire, and
Daniel Ricketson, a New Bedford Quaker, of liberal mind and cultivated
tastes,--an author and poet, and fond of corresponding with poets, as
he did with the Howitts and William Barnes of England, and with
Bryant, Emerson, Channing, and Thoreau, in America. Few of the letters
to Cholmondeley are yet found, being buried temporarily in the mass of
family papers at Condover Hall, an old Elizabethan mansion near
Shrewsbury, which Thomas Cholmondeley inherited, and which remains in
his family's possession since his own death at Florence in 1864. But
the letters of the Englishman, recently printed in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ (December, 1893), show how sincere was the attachment of
this ideal friend to the Concord recluse, and how well he read that
character which the rest of England, and a good part of America, have
been so slow to recognize for what it really was.
Thomas Cholmondeley was the eldest son of Rev. Charles Cowper
Cholmondeley, rector of Overleigh, Cheshire, and of a sister to
Reginald Heber, the celebrated bishop of Calcutta. He was born in
1823, and brought up at Hodnet, in Shropshire, where his father, a
cousin of Lord Delamere, had succeeded his brother-in-law as rector,
on the departure of Bishop Heber for India, in 1823. The son was
educated at Oriel College, Oxford,--a friend, and perhaps pupil of
Arthur Hugh Clough, who gave him letters to Emerson in 1854. Years
before, after leaving Oxford, he had gone with some relatives to New
Zealand, and before coming to New England he had published a book,
"Ultima Thule," describing that Australasian colony of England, where
he lived for part of a year. He had previously studied in Germany, and
traveled on the Continent. He landed in America the first time in
August, 1854, and soon after went to Concord, where, at the suggestion
of Emerson, he became an inmate of Mrs. Thoreau's family. This made
him intimate with Henry Thoreau for a month or two, and also brought
him into acquaintance with Ellery Channing, then living across the
main street of Concord, in the west end of the village, and furnishing
to Thoreau a landing-place for his boat under the willows at the foot
of Channing's small garden. Alcott was not then in Concord, but
Cholmondeley made his acquaintance in Boston, and admired his
character and manners.[53]
[Illustration: _Thoreau's Boat-landing, Concord River_]
With Channing and Thoreau the young Englishman visited their nearest
mountain, Wachusett, and in some of their walks the artist Rowse, who
had made the first portrait of Thoreau, joined, for he was then in
Concord, late in 1854, engraving the fine head of Daniel Webster from
a painting by Ames, and this engraving he gave both to Thoreau and to
Cholmondeley. In December the Englishman, whose patriotism was roused
by the delays and calamities of England in her Crimean war, resolved
to go home and raise a company, as he did, first spending some weeks
in lodgings at Boston (Orange Street) in order to hear Theodore Parker
preach and visit Harvard College, of which I was then a student, in
the senior class. He visited me and my classmate, Edwin Morton, and
called on some of the Cambridge friends of Clough. In January, 1855,
he sailed for England, and there received the letter of Thoreau
printed on pages 249-251.
The acquaintance with Mr. Ricketson began by letter before
Cholmondeley reached Concord, but Thoreau did not visit him until
December, 1854. Mr. Ricketson says, "In the summer of 1854 I
purchased, in New Bedford, a copy of 'Walden.' I had never heard of
its author, but in this admirable and most original book I found so
many observations on plants, birds, and natural objects generally in
which I was also interested, that I felt at once I had found a
congenial spirit. During this season I was rebuilding a house in the
country, three miles from New Bedford, and had erected a small
building which was called my 'shanty;' and my family being then in my
city house, I made this building my temporary home. From it I
addressed my first letter to the author of 'Walden.' In reply he
wrote, 'I had duly received your very kind and frank letter, but
delayed to answer it thus long because I have little skill as a
correspondent, and wished to send you something more than my thanks. I
was gratified by your prompt and hearty acceptance of my book. Yours
is the only word of greeting I am likely to receive from a dweller in
the woods like myself,--from where the whip-poor-will and cuckoo are
heard, and there are better than moral clouds drifting over, and real
breezes blow.' From that year until his death in 1862 we exchanged
visits annually, and letters more frequently. He was much interested
in the botany of our region, finding here many marine plants he had
not before seen. When our friendship began, the admirers of his only
two published books were few; most prominent among them were Emerson,
Alcott, and Channing of Concord, Messrs. Blake and T. Brown of
Worcester, Mr. Marston Watson of Plymouth, and myself. Many accused
him of being an imitator of Emerson; others thought him unsocial,
impracticable, and ascetic. Now he was none of these; a more original
man never lived, nor one more thoroughly personifying civility; no man
could hold a finer relationship with his family than he."
In reply to Mr. Ricketson's first letter (August 12, 1854) above
mentioned, Thoreau sent, after six weeks' delay, the reply of October
1, the beginning of which was just quoted. Continuing, Thoreau said:--
"Your account excites in me a desire to see the Middleborough ponds,
of which I had already heard somewhat; as also some very beautiful
ponds on the Cape, in Harwich, I think, near which I once passed. I
have sometimes also thought of visiting that remnant of _our_ Indians
still living near you. But then, you know, there is nothing like one's
native fields and lakes. The best news you send me is, not that Nature
with you is so fair and genial, but that there is one there who likes
her so well. That proves all that was asserted.
"Homer, of course, you include in your list of lovers of Nature; and,
by the way, let me mention here--for this is 'my thunder'
lately--William Gilpin's long series of books on the Picturesque, with
their illustrations. If it chances that you have not met with these, I
cannot just now frame a better wish than that you may one day derive
as much pleasure from the inspection of them as I have.
"Much as you have told me of yourself, you have still, I think, a
little the advantage of me in this correspondence, for I have told you
still more in my book. You have therefore the broadest mark to fire
at.
"A young English author, Thomas Cholmondeley, is just now waiting for
me to take a walk with him; therefore excuse this very barren note
from
"Yours, hastily at last."
Between the letter just quoted and Thoreau's next, of December 19,
1854, a letter is obviously missing. Mr. Ricketson had answered
(October 12), the first letter, and on December 14 had written again
to convey an invitation from Mr. Mitchell that Thoreau should lecture
at New Bedford, the 26th, on his way to Nantucket for the 28th.
Probably Thoreau had replied to the letter of October 12, and to the
invitation to bring Cholmondeley with him in the pleasant October
season. In this reply he had said something which called forth from
Ricketson an expression of sympathy, as well as the December
invitation; for Thoreau thus replied to the letter of December 14:--