Thoreau: His Home, Friends and Books/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
THE YEARS OF EXPRESSION
IT is not difficult to assert, with seeming evidence of proof, that Thoreau's life, brief and unique, consisted entirely of years of preparation for the expression which never came. His mere life-incidents, read by a casual eye, seem trivial, vacillating experiments while his life has often been accounted a failure in achievement of any definite aims. One may, however, well recall the lesson of "Rabbi Ben Ezra,"—
"For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail."
The fifteen years of life after the Walden experiment witnessed no remarkable acts but they showed an increasing and sturdy expression of strong character that was fast maturing and that had gained a brighter, surer vision of the inner and loftier phases of life than has often been achieved in such a brief period. In a letter from a relative of the Thoreau family, loaned for use here, are two or three sentences that contained unconscious prophecy of the chosen form of expression during Thoreau's later years, though the writer failed entirely to comprehend the true purport of that expression. While Thoreau was in New York in 1843, occasionally visiting this relative, the latter wrote,—"I think he (Thoreau) is getting to view things more as others do than formerly,—he remarked he had been studying books, now he intended to study nature and daily life. It would be well! "There is a fund of latent sarcasm and family censure in that final, laconic sentence. This resolve made by Thoreau, at Staten Island, as a result of tentative years, became his life-profession,—to study nature and life, in poetic and philosophic phases, and to express this communion of ideas in authorship. Walden was the climactic step in his undistracted devotion to the messages of nature. Here also he served apprenticeship to literature as a profession. Already several poems and essays had appeared from his pen in The Dial and other journals. During the months at Walden he wrote the essay on "Thomas Carlyle and his Works," which appeared in Graham's Magazine. In addition to the definite material for his first two books, largely gathered and evolved by the little lake-retreat, he had, also, scattered thoughts and observation on nature and life which were destined to form the nucleus of much of his best literary work, published posthumously.
It is true that, immediately on leaving Walden, he again entered the Emerson home, as secretary and business agent, while Mr. Emerson was in England. In Thoreau's letters, however, one notes a change of tone from that of the resident of four years earlier. There is greater self-reliance, more surety of purpose both as regards his own work and affairs at large. A witty, cheery kindliness, full of references to the delights of the Emerson home-life, characterize his letters to the absent father, some of which we shall note later. Allusions are made to his magazine papers, to his efforts to secure a publisher, and suggestions of other prophetic "reveries before my green desk in the chamber at the head of the stairs." Doubtless, the disappointment expressed in Emerson's letters from England, where, despite all social attentions, he felt lack of deep purpose and response to his idealism, influenced Thoreau. The latter had clearly contemplated a visit abroad, for Emerson advised him to publish his book before he came, that his literary reputation might bring him entrée into English society.
No man had a deeper reverence for the profession of authorship than had Thoreau. In his very nature he abhorred and disdained the compromising, often insincere, shifts of aspirants for publication. His real aspiration and joy, like that of all true scholars and authors, was in the creation and expression, not in the publication. The latter was subsidiary and resorted to mainly at the urgence of friends and for financial ends. On this point, he wrote Mr. Elliot Cabot in 1848, as included in "Familiar Letters,"—"Time & Co., are after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know. I can sympathize, perhaps, with the barberry bush, whose business it is solely to ripen its fruit (though that may not be to sweeten it) and to protect it from thorns, so that it can hold on all winter, even, unless some angry crows come to pluck it. But I see that I must get a few dollars together presently to manure my roots. . . . At any rate, I mean always to spend only words enough to purchase silence with, and I have found that this which is so valuable, though many writers do not prize it, does not cost much, after all." This indifference to publication was induced, in part, by disappointments; in part, it was the expression of his constant plea for absolute independence of thought and form, without any restrictions imposed by printers or public. He continued to accumulate thoughts and observations for the books which, after his death, would give to the reading-world unique pleasure, and, to their author, tardy fame.
If Thoreau's profession during his mature life was clearly authorship, it had a specific range,—"study of nature and of life," the work of the naturalist and the poet-philosopher. Excursions, fifty years ago a rarity in comparison with to-day, were purposeless rambles to the majority of participants. Excursions for study, as conducted by Thoreau, were novelties in his day but are common current experiences. In this respect, as in others, was he distinctly "fifty years in advance of his times." The memorable excursion of 1839 with his brother on the Concord and Merrimack rivers, was the first of many extended trips for study of botany, ornithology, and their allied branches. While in encampment at Walden, in 1846, he spent two weeks in the Maine woods, finding special pleasure in the study of Indian words and customs. The combined accounts of this excursion and the later one with Channing in 1853-4, were not published until after Thoreau's death but the first study in the later series, "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods," appeared in Sartain's Union Magazine, through the influence of Mr. Greeley, in 1848; for it, Thoreau received twenty-five dollars. Graham, after compulsion by Mr. Greeley, had also paid seventy-five dollars for the article on Carlyle,—excellent prices for those days.
An exhaustive and just study of nature requires not alone familiarity with forest and meadow, but also with sea and shore. For this purpose he made the excursions of 1849, 1850, and 1855, recorded in "Cape Cod," portions of which appeared in Putnam's Magazine before Thoreau died. Another expedition destined to play an important part in his literary remains was to Canada in 1850 with Channing, when they styled themselves the "Knights of the Umbrella and the Bundle." In his letters and journals for 1847 to 1850 are sundry suggestions of the slow, yet sure, appreciation which was coming to Thoreau as a man of thought and literary ability, namely, invitations to lecture before lyceums and smaller audiences. In his first day-book is mention of his primal attempt at such lecture before the Concord Lyceum in 1838. Occasional mention is made of writing lectures during 1840 to 1845, but one can well understand that his radical and fearless utterances on church and state would disqualify him for any cautious lyceum during these years of conflict over slavery. The restriction on the lyceum seems to have been circumvented in Plymouth, as it was elsewhere, by arranging special services on Sundays, for the 
THOREAU'S MAIN STREET HOUSE
Photogravure from a photograph benefit of such noted abolitionists as Emerson, Higginson, Alcott, Garrison, Quincy, Mrs. Foster, and others. Here, at Leyden Hall, under the care of his friends, the Watsons, Thoreau lectured in February, 1852. He also lectured in Boston the same year at the Mechanics Apprentice's Library, as arranged by Colonel Higginson. In an interesting review of the Concord Lyceum by Judge Hoar, it is stated that Thoreau lectured before this organization nineteen times, while Emerson's lectures reached the remarkable number of ninety-eight. Thoreau also gave lectures in Salem, New Bedford, Fitchburg, Providence, and elsewhere in New England. In a letter to Emerson in 1848, as cited by Mr. Sanborn, he says,—"Lectures begin to multiply on my desk. I have one on Friendship which is new, and the materials of some others. I read one last week to the Lyceum on the Rights and Duties of the Individual in Relation to Government,—much to Mr. Alcott's satisfaction." One may conclude that the ideas promulgated were radical and bold. One of the few journeys Thoreau enjoyed was to Perth Amboy and Eagles wood in 1856, where he lectured and surveyed land for Mr. Marcus Spring, the friend of Alcott.
Opinions seem diverse regarding Thoreau's success as a lecturer. He could never be compared with Emerson, whom Lowell has called "the most steadily attractive lecturer in America," with a diction like "homespun cloth-of-gold." Thoreau's voice was musical, his subject matter always unique, sometimes stultifying, but he lacked that magnetic charm of manner and the gracious conciliation which allured the audiences of Emerson, even if to many his thoughts were supra-mundane. Thoreau's recall to some places testified to a degree of success, though he wrote in extravagant self-depreciation,—"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 again, so there is no danger of my repeating myself, and getting to be a barrel of sermons, which you must upset and begin with again." Like Emerson, Thoreau used the lecture as a means rather than an end and he often rebelled, as did Emerson, against the necessary interruption to his more deep and spontaneous thought. He felt "cheapened" by the trifling exactions often made by an audience,—the emphasis which they laid upon personal relations with the lecturer, their inability to understand without detailed explanations, and their total misunderstanding of his entire thought. Thoreau was so independent and sincere that this union of dullness and triviality annoyed him sorely and to his journal he confided some of his irritation. "Many will complain of my lectures, that they are transcendental and they can't understand them. 'Would you have us return to the savage state,' etc., a criticism true enough it may be, from their point of view. But the fact is that the earnest lecturer can speak only to his like, and adapting himself to his audience is a mere compliment which he pays them. . . . If you wish me to speak as if I were you, that is another matter."
In Worcester, Massachusetts, he lectured often, almost annually from 1849 to 1861. His friend, Mr. Harrison G. O. Blake, to whom more attention will be given under Thoreau's friends, began correspondence in March, 1848. From this time, Mr. Blake and another friend, Mr. Theophilus Brown, arranged lectures in Worcester before small, interested audiences, generally in the parlors of Mr. Blake's school. A small admittance fee was charged to meet expenses. As elsewhere, the audience was of two minds. Some were thrilled and stimulated to higher, nobler life; others, says a lady who attended many of the lectures, "could not understand what he meant and thought it was all nonsense." Another Worcester auditor has told me of her utter bewilderment at a lecture "all about beans," which he delivered at the City Hall. Her impression is borne out by a chance sentence noted in Alcott's "Concord Days," where he says of Thoreau,—"At Worcester he read a damaging-institution lecture on Beans which has never got to print." A lady, who was his hostess on occasions in Worcester, has expressed in strong analogy her memory of his face and bearing,—"He always reminded me of an eagle, ready to soar to great heights or to swoop down on anything he considered evil."
In addition to these personal memories, graciously recalled, there is a report of a lecture in the Worcester Ægis for January 10, 1855. Thoreau's subject was "The Connection between Man's Employment and his Higher Life." The detached extracts in the half-column review have a most familiar sound for readers of Thoreau, for they are largely incorporated in his journal pages edited by Mr. Blake. Among significant sentences are these;—"The farmer is a worthy subject for an epic, when he cultivates at the same time his land and himself, so as to secure the best progress, physical and spiritual." . . . "It is the great art of life to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body." . . . "Conversation degenerates into gossip when people resign their inward life."
Among other lectures which he read in Worcester in 1857 were the favorites, "Autumnal Tints" and "Walking," both published in the Atlantic the same year as his death. The first lecture contained some of his most vivid and poetic descriptions of nature. With rapture he catalogued the varieties of Red Maples, declaring of the autumn brilliance that "if such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to posterity and get into the mythology at last." With an artist's eye, he urged the planting of bright-tinted trees along the village street as stimulant to beauty and cheer of living. In his journal for February 25, 1859, Thoreau recorded that the only criticism this lecture brought in Worcester was denial of his statement that his auditors had not seen as many beauties of nature as they assumed to admire. He reiterates his belief "that they have not seen much of them, that there are very few people who do see much of nature,"—a comment of absolute truth for his own time and for all times.
Using his own experience as a text, the lecture on "Walking" abounded in precepts upon proper equipment, motive and direction, and the spirit which would alone bring exhilaration. Some of these didactic statements form an interesting commentary upon the age prior to our own. To-day, when walking has been inculcated into the creed of all well-developed men and women, with present-day costumes adapted for outdoor life, his words have a ring of prophecy as well as remonstrance, while to his contemporaries they seemed merely defiant of conventionalities. In a burst of whimsicality, doubtless caused by some tiresome visitor, he wrote on a journal page, included in "Autumn,"—"I do not know how to entertain those who cannot take long walks. The first thing that suggests itself is to get a horse to draw them, and that brings me at once in contact with the stables and dirty harness, and I do not get over my ride for a long while. I give up my forenoon to them, and get along pretty well, the very elasticity of the air and the promise of the day abetting me; but they are heavy as dumplings by mid-afternoon. If they can't walk, why won't they take an honest nap in the afternoon and let me go? But when two o'clock comes, they alarm me by an evident disposition to sit. In the midst of the most glorious Indian summer afternoon, there they sit, breaking your chairs and wearing out the house, with their backs to the light, taking no note of the lapse of time." With special force, he urged elimination of all sordid or anxious thoughts when we are walking. The primal aim should be not exercise, though that is second, but rather pure affinity of senses, mind and soul with nature. Very explicit are the directions for equipment for a long journey on foot, "the cheapest way to travel and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest distance." For paraphernalia one needs an umbrella, (he drolly recalls that he was once taken for an umbrella mender) a dipper, a spoon, a fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar. Lacking the amenities of modern outing garb, which perhaps he would have rejected had they then been in vogue, he urges the use of old clothes for journey-wear. The traveler in his fine clothes is treated as guest, not friend. "Instead of going in quietly and sitting by the kitchen fire, he would be shown into a cold parlor, there to confront a fire-board and excite a commotion in the whole family. The women would scatter at his approach, and the husbands and sons would go right off to hunt up their black coats, for they all have them."
"Wild Apples" which appeared in the Atlantic for November, 1862, was another successful lecture. A Concord schoolboy recorded that this lecture made the audience laugh at first, but "it was the best lecture of the season, and at its close there was long, continued applause." Thoreau's wide knowledge of poetry, mythology, and horticulture, enabled him to recount with grace and rare interest the roles played by apples in legend and history, the distinctive qualities of seed, flavor, and aroma. The lecture closed with a panegyric to "The Saunterer's Apple," which not even a saunterer can eat in the house, since it requires "the November air for sauce."
In 1849, the Thoreau family made their last removal, from the "Texas House" to the "Yellow House" on Main Street; this had been enlarged from a cottage by Henry and his father. Another loss had come to the family circle in the death of Helen, from consumption, in 1849. The advancing years brought illness and dependence to his father, and Henry refused an invitation for a lecture and another for a visit, writing "my father is very sick and has been for a long time, so that there is the more need of me at home." He never wavered as faithful son or brother. He aided in the family business, and varied his studies with mechanical work, to meet the needs of the household. In a volume of his journal in original form, kindly shown me by the present executor of these precious books, Prof. E. Harlow Russell, among some loose sheets, are old letters whose reverse sides contain some of his nature-notes. Here are business letters from New York houses placing orders and acknowledging receipt of plumbago from Henry Thoreau.
In 1853, he records that by surveying, in which he was always expert, he made a dollar a day for seventy-six successive days work. Perhaps this statement explains the unique comment on Thoreau by a so-called historian of Concord,—"His profession was that of a surveyor and it is easy to imagine how, with his poetic temperament, while laying out roads and measuring wood-lots, he came to be what he was." Could there be a more complete reversal of facts? In such a picture he becomes Admetus serving some Apollo.
In 1849–1850 he says that he manufactured one thousand dollars worth of pencils and finally sacrificed them in price to pay a debt of one hundred dollars. Probably this work, and some of the returns from surveying, paid the expense of his first book, issued by Munroe of Boston in 1849. This account of the week's excursion on the Concord and Merrimack rivers, gained a few favorable reviews, among them Lowell's in The Massachusetts Quarterly, quite different in tone from his later sharp, piquant essay, to receive attention in another chapter. Favorable reviews, however, do not always ensure buyers, and the volume was doomed to join that long list of the unsold. The story is familiar of the return, in 1853, of seven hundred copies of this first edition, which Thoreau bore doggedly upon his back to his attic study, declaring that he had now a library of "nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." To-day, the 1861 edition of "A Week," published by Ticknor, commands a fabulous price. It contains on a fly-leaf at the end, an announcement, "To Appear Soon, 'Walden' by the same Author." As "Walden" was published in 1854, this amusing and telltale oversight discloses the fact that the later publishers bought those seven hundred copies and sold them as part of this later edition.
No one can question that Thoreau's sensitive heart was hurt by this early rebuff in authorship yet he applied nobly his philosophy of complacency and contentment. It was not pure stoicism or egotism that called forth the words,—"Indeed, I believe that this result is more inspiring and better than if a thousand had bought my wares. It affects my privacy less and leaves me freer." A man of less courage and confidence in his powers might have here ended his literary career. Thoreau, however, had prepared with care, and with greater variety and uniqueness of theme, his experiences at Walden. This was published by Ticknor in 1854. Some unpleasant, distorted strictures upon the volume appeared, but criticism, in the main, was favorable. The public at least was interested and, in two years, the publishers sold two thousand copies. Comment upon these books must be reserved for a later chapter. Though "Walden" was never a work to catch popular fancy, in the fleeting sense of the term, it gained a sure and increasing hold upon the reading-public of the higher grades and established Thoreau's reputation as an author, naturalist and philosopher. The words which he used in general application in his journal for November 20, 1857, are especially pertinent for "Walden";—"It is not the book of him who has traveled farthest on the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home."
As Thoreau's life neared its close and his reputation became established, national affairs approached a climax, destined to further increase public interest in this man and evidence his strong, lofty character. Like nearly all the radical thinkers of his day, he had long censured the lax and corrupt politics of his time, for history repeats itself in such conditions in every generation. In Thoreau's case this opposition had a definite cause and was given a bold, defiant expression. Among the scattering incidents, always associated with his memory, is the fact that, while at Walden, he had been arrested and spent a night in jail because he persistently refused to pay his state tax. This occurrence, like many another incidental to his character-unfolding, was wholly misconstrued. It was regarded as a deed of silly, affected defiance to custom, whereas it was one of the most simple and consistent expressions of his firm, basal principles. Eight years before he had refused to pay the church tax and had seceded quietly but firmly from church attendance, though Emerson, in his journal, speaks of him as an occasional attendant. He was then teaching, and he saw no logic for payment of a tax to support the minister unless the minister should pay a sum for the support of the teacher. He was no anarchist in his refusal to meet the demands of state, but he was a radical, bold reformer. His demand was for "a government which establishes justice in the land," and he was averse to recognizing any claims of a government which violated its foundation stone of liberty.
The abolition element was coming to the fore in subtle channels. Thoreau's was not the only refusal to support a government which had acquiesced in the Mexican War and was willing to pamper slave-owners. Often Thoreau seemed to follow the example of his friends or, rather, to carry their ideas to some extreme issue. In writing Emerson in 1843, he mentions Alcott's refusal to pay his taxes and his narrow escape from arrest; his opposition was fully concurred in by Thoreau and Alcott's English friend, Lane. In "Walden" is a simple yet dramatic recital of Thoreau's own experience:—"One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere narrated, I did not pay a tax to or recognize the authority of the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of the state-house." Samuel Staples, the jailor, whose recent death has removed another link between Thoreau's Concord and the town of to-day, delighted to recount his prisoner's demeanor, his interested study of his fellow-prisoners, his anger when his Aunt Maria in disguise paid his tax, his reluctance to leave the jail, and his departure, with his mended shoe, as "captain of a huckleberry-party." While these incidents have semblance to the acts of a mere poseur, they yet indicate the fontal source of Thoreau's opposition. In the essay upon "Civil Disobedience," he complains of the false interpretation placed upon this experience in jail;—"I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that were dangerous."
Among the side-lights upon this tax episode was the significant dialogue between Emerson and Thoreau, when the former visited his friend in jail and asked, "Henry, why are you here?" Thoreau's answer, so often misquoted, was, "Why are you not here?" This should not be construed as pertness or lack of deference. It was a calm, judicial, and perhaps Yankee, counter-question, expressing his firm belief that all who opposed slavery in thoughts and words, among whom was Emerson, should be willing to show that opposition in deed, even at the risk of being counted as eccentrics, perhaps law-breakers. In the essay on "Civil Disobedience," he emphasized this idea and urged the Abolitionists to refuse support to the state until it should declare itself against slavery. Such course, involving incarceration in county jail, if maintained by "ten honest men only,—ay, if one honest man ceasing to hold slaves,—it would be the abolition of slavery in America."From the focus of this century it is not difficult to laud, as brave and prophetic, Thoreau's words and deeds, for the world has grown in admiration of true heroism in whatever form, but to his contemporaries, while they deplored existent conditions, such bold, decisive steps savored of anarchy. It was that critical decade before the courage of conviction and action had awakened, and many brave men advocated the doctrine of patience and silence. A reformer or prophet can never be understood by his neighbors,—his deeds and words need the light of subsequent events and balanced judgments after white heat has subsided, or they will lack true interpretation. One can readily revert to the conditions of sixty years ago and imagine the effect, in a small village, of such an unprecedented excitement as Thoreau's lodgment in jail. Probably the surprise was less astounding in this case than it would have been if related of any other villager. The years, however, passed quietly by, the man pursued his serene life, avoiding all publicity, writing his books and essays, reading his lectures, making an occasional excursion, or spending a few consecutive weeks at surveying or pencil-making? years of industry, sturdiness, and creation, years of service to family and friends, years of quiet, sure expression of the nature-lore, the literary treasures, the lofty ideals and noble principles which were his.
During these same years national affairs were also approaching their crucial expression. The compromise of 1850, the new, more stringent, fugitive slave law of the same year, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the long, fierce struggle in Kansas, the attack upon Charles Sumner in the Senate in 1856, the Dred Scott case, and the final message of the President urging the admission of Kansas with the stigma of slavery as her entrance-fee,—these and similar acts of this intense period awakened the lethargic North, and especially New England, to a realization of the deluge of tyranny which threatened to sweep over the republic and bear away her sacred "name and fame." Concord had long been excited over the question of anti-slavery. In 1837, Emerson had made there an address on this subject and to Concord, at sundry times, for personal and political sympathy, had come the four great leaders of abolition,—Garrison and Parker, Phillips and Sumner. As in all New England towns, however, there was a division of sentiment, deep, almost violent. In Boston and her contiguous towns the higher grades of society opposed the movement and visited, with social scorn, their own representatives, Phillips and Sumner, no less than the men of the common people. To many noble, progressive thinkers of the time, the abolition movement seemed full of injustice to property-holders at North and South. They feared also the violent disruption and riots sure to result from the radical application of such principles. Many shared Hawthorne's feeling,—and many share it to-day with added strength after the conflict has left its after math of tragic race-problems,—we "could not see the thing at so long a range." Few of the reformers knew much of the actual status at the South from any personal inspection. Many of the criticisms and some of the proposed measures were not alone rabid but fraught with danger to the nation. The movement, however, in the main, was the natural outgrowth of the spirit of freedom, bodily, mental, and religious, which swept over the world during the last century. Emphasis of the latent good in all men, and their possible progress in mind and soul, fostered this primal defiance to bondage of the negroes. The abolitionists held a convention in Concord in 1844. The churches refused to open their doors, so the meeting was held in the Court-House. Thoreau asked for and gained permission for its use and he rang the bell, with all the vigor of muscle which was his, and Emerson made a thrilling address advocating the possible benefits of education for freed negroes.
Thoreau, as remonstrant in potent, dramatic form, was destined to stand with many of his friends, rather than alone, as the years passed with their messages of hazard and state-corruption. The Fugitive Slave Law and the Anthony Burns affair of 1854 kindled Thoreau's wrath to strong words. Alcott said that, after the return of Simms, Thoreau, in defiant satire, urged his townsmen to paint their Revolutionary monument black, "as a symbol of the dreadful treason." John Brown came to Concord to visit Mr. Sanborn in 1857 and then Thoreau met the man whose character he had long admired. There seemed an immediate affinity between the two men, both keen lovers of nature and legend, both inflexible in moral fibre, both somewhat fanatical in ideas of government, both glad to risk life for principle. Mr. Burroughs has called Thoreau the spiritual brother of Brown,—"the last and final flowering of the same plant,—the seed flowering; he was just as much of a zealot, was just as gritty and unflinching in his way." John Brown's character and career moved Thoreau at two points,—as reformer and as poet. He admired the life-risking defiance to an unjust, slave-permitting government, but he also appreciated the dramatic and romantic in Brown's deeds and tragic end. In his journal, he reiterated his recognition that his "extracts of the noblest poetry are applicable in part or whole as Brown's elegy, eulogy, or oration." His keen interest and sympathy with this man interfered with all his usual delights; it seems to have disturbed his complacency and shattered his philosophy of serene mind more than any other single life-incident. Even a beautiful sunset failed to win him from contemplation of the wrong, both committed and endured. His active part in the agitation over the famous raid took the form of public utterances of force and eloquence during those seven weeks after the arrest of Brown, in October, 1859. Public interest ran high during this interim. Compromise was no longer possible. Brown was either a hero or a lunatic.
Emerson, no less than Thoreau, allowed his serenity to be displaced by irritation and anxiety during this excitement. He called Brown "that new saint"; he endured calmly the hisses of a Boston mob as he eulogized, with rare feeling, Lovejoy the Abolitionist, whose tragic death in the west had been prophetic of later martyrdom. He eagerly advocated war rather than any compromise which should be "an unjust peace." The three Concord philosophers, turning from nebulous ideals to practical politics, displayed unsurpassed energy and courage. We recalled their forceful prophecies of the possible educative results for the negroes at the dedication of the Robert Shaw monument in Boston in May, 1898. Booker T. Washington was given the ovation of this occasion as he uttered his magnetic words which established, beyond all doubt, the actual mental power, at least in one example, evolved by education and encouragement from one born and bred in slavery and now recognized throughout the world as among the most honored of Americans.
In that rare volume, "Echoes from Harper's Ferry," edited by James Eedpath in 1860, Thoreau's "Plea for Captain Brown" has initial place, beside orations by Emerson and Wendell Phillips. A chance allusion in a letter indicates that Thoreau tried to get his plea printed for the benefit of the Brown family,—another evidence of his genuine helpfulness. At the commemoration services at Concord in December, 1859, Thoreau had the most important part. His personal remarks show how strongly he was moved by the pathos of the affair. He referred with emotion to the woman, (wife of Judge Russell) who visited Brown in prison to mend his sabre-riven clothes and brought away, as a sacred memento, a pin marked with blood-stains. In addition to the original comments, full of tender feeling, Thoreau read quotations from elegies and odes, showing a wide and careful selection. Among the authors cited were Schiller, Wordsworth and Tennyson, with a translation of his own from Tacitus. He also quoted "The Soul's Errand," the poem attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh when awaiting threatened execution; there was especial significance in the last stanza, for Thoreau, with others, had sought permission from the town officers to toll the bell on the day of Brown's death, but the faint-hearted magnates had demurred. Hence, Thoreau italicized with voice the lines:
"When I am dead,
Let not the day be writ,
Nor bell be tolled.
Love will remember it
When hate is cold."
Thoreau's address in behalf of Brown, after the arrest, was delivered in Concord on Sunday evening, October 30th, and was repeated the following week in Boston, Worcester, and elsewhere. Some friends deprecated this boldness and dreaded lest Thoreau's arraignment of the government might bring him arrest. Little recked he the result,—his duty was to speak and, if possible, awaken public conscience and national courage. His address, even read at the present day, is trenchant and magnetic. He transcended his usual powers of language and was listened to, says Emerson, "by many with a sympathy that surprised themselves." In the Worcester Spy for November 3, 1859, I found the announcement for the address,—"As Mr. Thoreau never deals in commonplaces,—as he considers Brown a hero,—and as he has been so moved by the Harper's Ferry affair as to feel compelled to leave his customary seclusion in order to address the public, what he has to say is likely to be worth hearing." Surely, it so proved! The opening sentence was a graceful, strong explanation of his attitude,—"I trust that you will pardon me for being here. I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself." He recounts his own deep disturbance in the cause,—his inability to read or sleep, and the urgent sentences written in the dark,—the plea not for Brown's life so much as for his character,—"his immortal life." With the force of a seer he spoke to the slave-committed South,—"Prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. . . . You may dispose of me very easily, I am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled,—this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet."
In a dual sense were his words prophetic,—both as regards his country and himself. The agitation ripened fast; the conflict he had foreseen, and foretold, came apace. His latent reference to his own death was as speedily fulfilled. To many he seemed now at the very prime of age and power. His development had been slow and experimental, his recognition as author, naturalist, and reformer, had at last been bestowed. His unique, yet strong, philosophy of life had been shaped and tested; his knowledge of nature, poetry, and Indian lore was rare and extensive, ready for expression in literary forms of new and recognized value. His home-life as companion and care-taker for mother and sister was affectionate and satisfying. He had many devoted and dependent friends. He had become a force in national affairs at a time when such sympathies were sure to broaden and ennoble the best manhood. At forty-two years of age, with all these prospects before him, his health had failed, his active Work was nearly done. Only months of patient endurance and a few last expressions of mind and soul remained.
There has always seemed a paradox in the fact that the man who lived four or five hours a day in the open air when it was possible, who walked and bivouacked amid the pine woods, whose physical and muscular fibre seemed untiring, with what Emerson called "an oaken strength," should have succumbed to a lingering consumption, before half his days of rightful life were spent. As intimated, the disease had been a family blight, fastened upon both the Thoreaus and the Dunbars. In one sense, Lowell's peculiar sentence on Thoreau,—"his whole life was a search for the doctor,"—is not false. His doctor was health-giving Nature, which should bestow the tonic of purity, simplicity, and ideality to the congested civilization of the age, while she should bring, also, individual strength and elixir to his own body and soul. From his college days to the last years are occasional journal-notes of attacks of illness, passed by with light, apologetic mention, as was his wont on personal matters, yet indicating a proneness to bronchitis. As if in prescience of the future trials he wrote, after such an illness in 1841,—"Sickness should not be allowed to extend farther than the body. We need only to retreat farther within us to preserve uninterruptedly the continuity of serene hours to the end of our lives." In a letter to Mr. Blake in 1855, he refers to an illness of two or three months, followed by languor and inability to read or work. With characteristic optimism, he adds,—"However, there is one consolation in being sick and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before." The following year he alludes to "ridiculous feebleness" and inability to take long tramps.
From this continued illness, called by him "two years' invalidity," he recovered sufficiently to take a later excursion to Cape Cod with Channing, and to the Maine Woods and White Mountains in 1857 and 1858. The excursion to the White Mountains, made with Edward Hoar, had the unusual luxuries of a horse and wagon, involving, in Thoreau's opinion, a loss of independence. It was on this trip, in exploring Tuckerman's Ravine, that Thoreau slipped and sprained his ankle and, at almost the same minute, found the arnica plant, arnica mollis, for which they had been searching as a botanical specimen. This opportune aid lessened the severity of the pain, but for five days Thoreau and Hoar, joined by two other friends, kept camp, while Thoreau entertained his friends with a lively recital of botanical facts, Indian legends and poetic selections. His health was not permanently re-established, however, for the next year he refers to another illness. This year, after his father's death, he was closely confined at home and in indoor business; he once mentions in his journal, "some very irksome affairs on account of my family." His last break from routine, after the strain and excitement of the John Brown affair, was in August, 1860, when he made his last trip to Monadnoc, encamping there five days with Channing who has described this excursion in "The Wanderer." Their letters record the severe rain-storm through which they journeyed to the summit, sheltered at last under a temporary "substantial house" of spruce roof, hewn by Thoreau. They did not reach this refuge, however, until they were as wet "as if we had stood in a hogshead of water." One cannot refrain from belief that such adventures, however exhilarating to Thoreau's spirits, were scarcely adapted to a physique liable to throat and lung disease.
It has been stated that on this Monadnoc trip he contracted his fatal cold but that is disproved by his own letters and the testimony of Concord friends. The latter declare that he had taken a contract for surveying and was determined to finish the work, though he had to stand in a swamp for hours. He never recovered from that exposure. In a letter to Mr. Ricketson, March 22, 1861, he wrote,—"I took a severe cold about the third of December, which at length resulted in a kind of bronchitis, so that I have been confined to the house ever since." In May of the same year, as he failed to gain strength, the doctors urged a trip westward or to some warmer climate. With Horace Mann, Jr., a botanist friend, he started for Minnesota, there to remain three months. He returned, however, in a few weeks, with little benefit physically and a passionate longing for home-scenes. He took few notes and wrote few letters while on this journey, which he said he performed "in a very dead and alive manner," and his chief interest was in the letters from home. The only marked incidents were a few rare botanical and anatomical discoveries and a visit to the Sioux Indians at Redwood. Here he added to his personal knowledge of the Indians and their sentiments towards the white man, and incorporated some of these notes into his last literary work. From the time of his return, July 1861, until his death the following May, Thoreau experienced those alternates of hope and despair which accompany all bronchial diseases. His friend Edward Hoar, placed at his service a horse and carriage and, with Sophia or some friend, he took long drives while strength lasted. He made a brief visit to Mr. Ricketson in New Bedford in August, 1861; there he consented to sit for his last ambrotype from which Mr. Walton Ricketson has made his fine medallion.
If Thoreau showed a remarkable courage and independent nobility of character during the years of health, these qualities were yet more in evidence in his months of illness. His letters reveal almost constant cheerfulness and serenity. After reading these, it is easy to understand his sister's statement,—"During seventeen months never a murmur escaped him. I wish I could describe the wonderful simplicity and childlike trust with which he accepted every experience." He applied fully that philosophy which he had collated. Industrious to the last day of his life, he read many books, revised his manuscripts, and talked with family and friends. He was vitally interested in the beginnings of the war, declaring he was "sick for his country," and should never recover while the war lasted. He bore his debility and suffering like a hero but his attitude was more than mere resignation. There was the nobler element of contentment and faith. He was grateful for the years that he had enjoyed and knew that his time of revelation had come. He told Alcott,—"I leave the world without a regret." His serene faith never wavered. To Parker Pillsbury, who inquired concerning Thoreau's belief in the hereafter, he calmly and gently replied,—"My friend, one world at a time." To the well-meaning but bigoted Calvinist, who asked if he had made his peace with God, his answer was as consistent,—"I have never quarreled with Him."
The home-life, always happy, was spiritualized during these last weeks. As he was courageous and peaceful, so he inspired the atmosphere about him. Into his nature crept a more tender manifestation of love. His mother told a friend, after Thoreau's death,—"Why, this room did not look like a sick-room. My son wanted flowers and pictures and books all around him; and he was always so cheerful and wished others to be so while about him." He insisted upon joining the family at meals even when his strength was nearly gone, because "it was more social." To them he would relate his strange dreams or unfold his treasures of knowledge and thought, as long as voice allowed. A pathetic little incident proclaimed his tender love for children. As he watched the village boys and girls, whom he had led to berry-pastures, or entertained with stories of his animal-friends, pass his home daily, he expressed to his sister a wish to see and talk with them, adding,—"I love them as well as if they were my own." Such was the stoic!
To the last he was visited by friends, old and young. It is noteworthy that any prejudice harbored by the townspeople against "the Walden hermit" or "the tax-evader" had wholly disappeared. His family relate the many evidences of kindness and deep affection, shown by neighbors and even strangers, to one whom they had learned to respect. To Mr. Calvin Greene, the Western friend of Thoreau, Miss Sophia narrated the following anecdote: "Some boys of the vicinity were in the habit of bringing game for him to eat, presenting it at the kitchen door, and then gently withdrawing, so as not to disturb the sick man. On one occasion he was told of it soon after their leaving, when he earnestly inquired, 'Why do you not invite them in? I want to thank them for so much that they are bringing me.' And then adding, thoughtfully, 'Well, I declare; I don't believe they are going to let me go after all.'" At another time, with half-humorous tenderness, he said,—"I should be ashamed to stay in this world after so much has been done for me! I could never repay my friends." His last letter, collated by Emerson and Sanborn, written jointly by Henry and Sophia, was to one of these strangers who, learning of Thoreau's illness, wrote with deep regret and regard. Very calm and courteous is the reply, containing the self-revelatory words,—"I suppose that I have not many months to live, but of course I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing." The opening sentence, also, bespeaks. Thoreau's business habits and unfailing civility,—"I thank you for your very kind letter, which, ever since I received it, I have intended to answer before I died, however briefly."
Calmly he waited death, for which he had prepared himself all his life; nor was his a mock courage and bravado but a steadfast surety of faith in nature's laws and nature's God. Peacefully enjoying the fragrance of flowers, just sent in by an honored friend and neighbor, he passed from this life, May 6, 1862. With special appropriateness, his casket was hidden behind the wild flowers and forest growths that he had loved so well. His own poem, "Sic Vita," was read by Alcott and his eulogy spoken by Emerson, with broken, tender voice. Within his coffin Channing had placed some mottoes, two emphasizing Thoreau's ideals and faith:—"Gazed on the heavens for what he missed on earth.". . ."Hail to thee, O man, who art come from the transitory place to the imperishable." Burial, no less than death, lacked terrors for Thoreau. He had written, "For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall delight to be buried in it."
Does history afford another example of a brief life, lived so simply and steadfastly, left so willingly, and ended with such entire sublimity? So serene and brave had been the long illness, and so peaceful and natural the passing of the life, that his sister could well write,—"I feel as if something very beautiful had happened,—not death."