[68] Ellery Channing is mentioned, though not by name, in the _Week_
(pp. 169, 378), and in _Walden_ (p. 295). He was the comrade of
Thoreau in Berkshire, and on the Hudson, in New Hampshire, Canada, and
Cape Cod, and in many rambles nearer Concord. He was also a companion
of Hawthorne in his river voyages, as mentioned in the _Mosses_.
[69] The Concord Lyceum, founded in 1829, and still extant, though not
performing its original function of lectures and debates. See pp. 51,
154, etc.
[70] This was the town of Harvard, not the college. Perhaps the
excursion was to visit Fruitlands, where Alcott and Lane had
established their short-lived community, in a beautiful spot near
Still River, an affluent of the Nashua, and half-way from Concord to
Wachusett. "Asnebumskit," mentioned in a former letter, is the highest
hill near Worcester, as "Nobscot" is the highest near Concord. Both
have Indian names.
[71] The New York newspaper.
[72] An odd boat.
[73] Mrs. Caroline Kirkland, wife of Prof. William Kirkland, then of
New York,--a writer of wit and fame at that time.
[74] A Worcester newspaper.
[75] B. B. Wiley, then of Providence, since of Chicago (deceased), had
written to Thoreau, September 4, for the _Week_, which the author was
then selling on his own account, having bought back the unsalable
first edition from his publisher, Munroe. In a letter of October 31,
to which the above is a reply, he mentions taking a walk with Charles
Newcomb, then of Providence, since of London and Paris, now dead,--a
_Dial_ contributor, and a special friend of Emerson; then inquires
about Confucius, the Hindoo philosophers, and Swedenborg.
[76] When, in 1855 or 1856, Thoreau started to wade across from
Duxbury to Clark's Island, and was picked up by a fishing-boat in the
deep water, and landed on the "back side" of the island (see letter to
Mr. Watson of April 25, 1858), Edward Watson ("Uncle Ed") was "saggin'
round" to see that everything was right alongshore, and encountered
the unexpected visitor. "How did _you_ come here?" "Oh, from Duxbury,"
said Thoreau, and they walked to the old Watson house together. "You
say in one of your books," said Uncle Ed, "that you once lost a horse
and a hound and a dove,--now I should like to know what you meant by
that?" "Why, everybody has met with losses, haven't they?"
"H'm,--pretty way to answer a fellow!" said Mr. Watson; but it seems
this was the usual answer. In the long dining-room of the old house
that night he sat by the window and told the story of the Norse
voyagers to New England,--perhaps to that very island and the Gurnet
near by,--as Morton fancies in his review of Thoreau in the _Harvard
Magazine_ (January, 1855).
[77] This was when he spoke in the vestry of the Calvinistic church,
and said, on his return to Concord, "that he hoped he had done
something to upheave and demolish the structure above,"--the vestry
being beneath the church.
[78] Notwithstanding this unwillingness to lecture, Thoreau did speak
at Worcester, February 13, 1857, on "Walking," but scrupulously added
to his consent (February 6), "I told Brown it had not been much
altered since I read it in Worcester; but now I think of it, much of
it must have been new to you, because, having since divided it into
two, I am able to read what before I omitted. Nevertheless, I should
like to have it understood by those whom it concerns, that I am
invited to read in public (if it be so) what I have already read, in
part, to a private audience." This throws some light on his method of
preparing lectures, which were afterwards published as essays; they
were made up from his journals, and new entries expanded them.
[79] Rev. Edward E. Hale, then pastor at Worcester. Others mentioned
in the letter are Rev. David A. Wasson and Dr. Seth Rogers,--the
latter a physician with whom Mr. Wasson was living in Worcester.
[80] A writer on scenery and natural history, who outlived Thoreau,
and never forgave him for the remark about "stirring up with a pole,"
which really might have been less graphic.
[81] The panic of 1857,--the worst since 1837.
[82] Reinhold Solger, Ph. D.,--a very intellectual and well-taught
Prussian, who was one of the lecturers for a year or two at my
"Concord School," the successor of the Concord "Academy," in which the
children of the Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne, Hoar, and Ripley families
were taught. At this date the lectures were given in the vestry of the
parish church, which Thoreau playfully termed "a meeting-house
cellar." It was there that Louisa Alcott acted plays.
[83] Exclamation points and printer's devil.
[84] Channing says (_Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist_, new ed., pp. 41,
42): "He made for himself a knapsack, with partitions for his books
and papers,--india-rubber cloth (strong and large and spaced, the
common knapsacks being unspaced).... After trying the merit of cocoa,
coffee, water, and the like, tea was put down as the felicity of a
walking '_travail_,'--tea plenty, strong, with enough sugar, made in a
tin pint cup.... He commended every party to carry 'a junk of heavy
cake' with plums in it, having found by long experience that after
toil it was a capital refreshment."
[85] Marston Watson, whose uncle, Edward Watson, with his nephews,
owned the "breezy island" where Thoreau had visited his friends
(Clark's Island, the only one in Plymouth Bay), had built his own
house, "Hillside," on the slope of one of the hills above Plymouth
town, and there laid out a fine park and garden, which Thoreau
surveyed for him in the autumn of 1854, Alcott and Mr. Watson carrying
the chain. For a description of Hillside, see Channing's _Wanderer_
(Boston, 1871) and Alcott's _Sonnets and Canzonets_ (Boston: Roberts,
1882). It was a villa much visited by Emerson, Alcott, Channing,
Thoreau, George Bradford, and the Transcendentalists generally. Mr.
Watson graduated at Harvard two years after Thoreau, and in an old
diary says, "I remember Thoreau in the college yard (1836) with
downcast thoughtful look intent, as if he were searching for
something; always in a green coat,--green because the authorities
required black, I suppose." In a letter he says: "I have always heard
the 'Maiden in the East' was Mrs. Watson,--Mary Russell Watson,--and I
suppose there is no doubt of it. I may be prejudiced, but I have
always thought it one of his best things,--and I have highly valued
his lines. I find in my _Dial_, No. 6, I have written six new stanzas
in the margin of Friendship, and they are numbered to show how they
should run. I think Mrs. Brown gave them to me."
[86] _Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist_, new ed., pp. 42-45.
[87] Near which, at New Bedford, Mr. Ricketson lived.
[88] This was the "Orchard House," near Hawthorne's "Wayside." The
estate on which it stands, now owned by Mrs. Lothrop, who also owns
the "Wayside," was surveyed for Mr. Alcott by Thoreau in October,
1857.
[89] Channing's _Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist_, new ed., pp. 6, 15,
16. Channing himself was, no doubt, the "follower" and "companion"
here mentioned; no person so frequently walked with Thoreau in his
long excursions. They were together in New Boston, N. H., when the
minister mentioned in the _Week_ reproved Thoreau for not going to
meeting on Sunday. When I first lived in Concord (March, 1855), and
asked the innkeeper what Sunday services the village held, he replied,
"There's the Orthodox, an' the Unitarian, an' th' Walden Pond
Association,"--meaning by the last what Emerson called "the
Walkers,"--those who rambled in the Walden woods on Sundays.
[90] Of New Bedford, first published in the _Mercury_ of that city,
while Channing was one of the editors, and afterwards in a volume.
[91] The club with which Thoreau here makes merry was the Saturday
Club, meeting at Parker's Hotel in Boston the last Saturday in each
month, of which Emerson, Agassiz, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Henry
James, and other men of letters were members. Thoreau, though invited,
never seems to have met with them, as Channing did, on one memorable
occasion, at least, described by Mr. James in a letter cited in the
_Memoir of Bronson Alcott_, who also occasionally dined with this
club. The conversation at Emerson's next mentioned was also memorable
for the vigor with which Miss Mary Emerson, then eighty-four years
old, rebuked Mr. James for what she thought his dangerous Antinomian
views concerning the moral law.
[92] This was Tuckerman's Ravine at the White Mountains, where Thoreau
met with his mishap in the preceding July.
[93] He was looking after the manufacture of fine plumbago for the
electrotypers, which was the family business after pencil-making grew
unprofitable. The Thoreaus had a grinding-mill in Acton, and a
packing-shop attached to their Concord house. "Parker's society,"
mentioned at the close of the letter, was the congregation of Theodore
Parker, then in Italy, where he died in May, 1860.
[94] He was invited to a gathering of John Brown's friends at the
grave in the Adirondack woods. "Mr. Sanborn's case" was an indictment
and civil suit against Silas Carleton _et als._ for an attempt to
kidnap F. B. Sanborn, who had refused to accept the invitation of the
Senate at Washington to testify in the John Brown investigation.
[95] This is the excursion described by Thoreau in a subsequent
letter,--lasting six days, and the first that Channing had made which
involved "camping out." It was also Thoreau's last visit to this
favorite mountain; but Channing continued to go there after the death
of his friend; and some of these visits are recorded in his poem "The
Wanderer." The last one was in September, 1869, when I accompanied
him, and we again spent five nights on the plateau where he had camped
with Thoreau. At that time, one of the "two good spruce houses, half a
mile apart," mentioned by Thoreau, was still standing, in ruins,--the
place called by Channing "Henry's Camp," and thus described:--
We built our fortress where you see
Yon group of spruce-trees, sidewise on the line
Where the horizon to the eastward bounds,--
A point selected by sagacious art,
Where all at once we viewed the Vermont hills,
And the long outline of the mountain-ridge,
Ever renewing, changeful every hour.
See _The Wanderer_ (Boston, 1871), p. 61.
[96] See Thoreau's _Journal_, Dec. 3, 1859. Merriam mentioned
Thoreau's name to him, but never guessed who his companion was.
[97] This was Thoreau's last visit to Monadnock, and the one mentioned
in the note of August 3, and in Channing's _Wanderer_.
[98] The Prince of Wales (now King Edward VII), then visiting America
with the Duke of Newcastle.
[99] Now termed pneumonia.
[100] In April, 1859, Mr. Alcott was chosen superintendent of the
public schools of Concord, by a school committee of which Mr. Bull,
the creator of the Concord grape, and Mr. Sanborn, were members, and
for some years he directed the studies of the younger pupils, to their
great benefit and delight. At the yearly "exhibitions," songs were
sung composed by Louisa Alcott and others, and the whole town
assembled to see and hear. The stress of civil war gradually checked
this idyllic movement, and Mr. Alcott returned to his garden and
library. It was two years after this that Miss Alcott had her severe
experience as hospital nurse at Washington.
[101] Edwin Morton of Plymouth, Mass., a friend of John Brown and
Gerrit Smith, who went to England in October, 1859, to avoid
testifying against his friends.
[102] A word may be said of the after life of this magnanimous
Englishman, who did not long survive his Concord correspondent. In
March, 1863, being then in command of a battalion of Shropshire
Volunteers, which he had raised, he inherited Condover Hall and the
large estate adjacent, and took the name of Owen as a condition of the
inheritance. A year later he married Miss Victoria Cotes, daughter of
John and Lady Louisa Cotes (Co. Salop), a godchild of the Queen, and
went to Italy for his wedding tour. In Florence he was seized with a
malignant fever, April 10, 1864, and died there April 20,--not quite
two years after Thoreau's death. His brother Reginald, who had met him
in Florence, carried back his remains to England, and he is buried in
Condover churchyard. Writing to an American friend, Mr. R.
Cholmondeley said: "The whole county mourned for one who had made
himself greatly beloved. During his illness his thoughts went back
very much to America and her great sufferings. His large heart felt
for your country as if it were his own." It seems that he did not go
to New Zealand with the "Canterbury Pilgrims," as suggested in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ (December, 1893), but in the first of Lord
Lyttelton's ships (the Charlotte Jane), having joined in Lord L.'s
scheme for colonizing the island, where he remained only six months,
near Christchurch.
[103] Rev. Joseph May, a cousin of Louisa Alcott.
[104] I had answered T. Cholmondeley's last letter, explaining that
Thoreau was ill and absent.
[105] A return to religious Quakerism, of which his friend had written
enthusiastically.
[106] This was a short-lived monthly, edited at Cincinnati (1861-62)
by Moncure D. Conway, since distinguished as an author, who had
resided for a time in Concord, after leaving his native Virginia. He
wrote asking Thoreau and all his Concord friends to contribute to this
new _Dial_, and several of them did so.