CONCORD, Mass., February 7, 1855.
DEAR CHOLMONDELEY,--I am glad to hear that you have arrived safely at
Hodnet, and that there is a solid piece of ground of that name which
can support a man better than a floating plank, in that to me as yet
purely historical England. But have I not seen you with my own eyes, a
piece of England herself, and was not your letter come out to me
thence? I have now reason to believe that Salop is as real a place as
Concord; with at least as good an underpinning of granite, floating on
liquid fire. I congratulate you on having arrived safely at that
floating isle, after your disagreeable passage in the steamer America.
So are we not all making a passage, agreeable or disagreeable, in the
steamer Earth, trusting to arrive at last at some less undulating
Salop and brother's house?
I cannot say that I am surprised to hear that you have joined the
militia, after what I have heard from your lips; but I am glad to
doubt if there will be occasion for your volunteering into the line.
Perhaps I am thinking of the saying that it "is always darkest just
before day." I believe it is only necessary that England be fully
awakened to a sense of her position, in order that she may right
herself, especially as the weather will soon cease to be her foe. I
wish I could believe that the cause in which you are embarked is the
cause of the people of England. However, I have no sympathy with the
idleness that would contrast this fighting with the teachings of the
pulpit; for, perchance, more true virtue is being practiced at
Sevastopol than in many years of peace. It is a pity that we seem to
require a war, from time to time, to assure us that there is any
manhood still left in man.
I was much pleased with [J. J. G.] Wilkinson's vigorous and telling
assault on Allopathy, though he substitutes another and perhaps no
stronger _thy_ for that. Something as good on the whole conduct of the
war would be of service. Cannot Carlyle supply it? We will not require
him to provide the remedy. Every man to his trade. As you know, I am
not in any sense a politician. You, who live in that snug and compact
isle, may dream of a glorious commonwealth, but I have some doubts
whether I and the new king of the Sandwich Islands shall pull
together. When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves
and the slaveholders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a
glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic; I shall not meddle with
the Gem of the Antilles. General Quitman[56] cannot count on my aid,
alas for him! nor can General Pierce.[57]
I still take my daily walk, or skate over Concord fields or meadows,
and on the whole have more to do with nature than with man. We have
not had much snow this winter, but have had some remarkably cold
weather, the mercury, February 6, not rising above 6° below zero
during the day, and the next morning falling to 26°. Some ice is still
thirty inches thick about us. A rise in the river has made uncommonly
good skating, which I have improved to the extent of some thirty miles
a day, fifteen out and fifteen in.
Emerson is off westward, enlightening the Hamiltonians [in Canada] and
others, mingling his thunder with that of Niagara. Channing still sits
warming his five wits--his sixth, you know, is always limber--over
that stove, with the dog down cellar. Lowell has just been appointed
Professor of Belles-Lettres in Harvard University, in place of
Longfellow, resigned, and will go very soon to spend another year in
Europe, before taking his seat.
I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of
success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it not a real
triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely
to want me anywhere again. So there is no danger of my repeating
myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and
begin again with.
My father and mother and sister all desire to be remembered to you,
and trust that you will never come within range of Russian bullets. Of
course, I would rather think of you as settled down there in
Shropshire, in the camp of the English people, making acquaintance
with your men, striking at the root of the evil, perhaps assaulting
that rampart of cotton bags that you tell of. But it makes no odds
where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.
Let me hear from you, wherever you are, and believe me yours ever in
the good fight, whether before Sevastopol or under the wreken.
* * * * *
While Cholmondeley's first letter from England was on its way to
Concord, Thoreau was one day making his occasional call at the Harvard
College Library (where he found and was allowed to take away volumes
relating to his manifold studies), when it occurred to him to call at
my student-chamber in Holworthy Hall, and there leave a copy of his
"Week." I had never met him, and was then out; the occasion of his
call was a review of his two books that had come out a few weeks
earlier in the _Harvard Magazine_, of which I was an editor and might
be supposed to have had some share in the criticism. The volume was
left with my classmate Lyman, accompanied by a message that it was
intended for the critic in the Magazine. Accordingly, I gave it to
Edwin Morton, who was the reviewer, and notified Thoreau by letter of
that fact, and of my hope to see him soon in Cambridge or Concord.[58]
To this he replied in a few days as below:--