Henry D. Thoreau 2
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. Page
Birth and Family 1
CHAPTER II.
Childhood and Youth 32
CHAPTER III.
Concord and its Famous People 63
CHAPTER IV.
The Embattled Farmers 97
CHAPTER V.
The Transcendental Period 124
CHAPTER VI.
Early Essays in Authorship 148
CHAPTER VII.
Friends and Companions 174
CHAPTER VIII.
The Walden Hermitage 201
CHAPTER IX.
Horace in the Role of Mæcenas 216
CHAPTER X.
In Wood and Field 242
CHAPTER XI.
Personal Traits and Social Life 261
CHAPTER XII.
Poet, Moralist, and Philosopher 284
CHAPTER XIII.
Life, Death, and Immortality 297
HENRY D. THOREAU.
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH AND FAMILY.
There died in a city of Maine, on the river Penobscot, late in the
year 1881, the last member of a family which had been planted in
New England a little more than a hundred years before, by a young
tradesman from the English island of Jersey, and had here produced
one of the most characteristic American and New English men of genius
whom the world has yet seen. This lady, Miss Maria Thoreau, was the
last child of John Thoreau, the son of Philip Thoreau and his wife,
Marie le Galais, who, a hundred years ago, lived in the parish of St.
Helier, in Jersey. This John Thoreau was born in that parish, and
baptized there in the Anglican church, in April, 1754; he emigrated
to New England about 1773, and in 1781 married in Boston Miss Jane
Burns, the daughter of a Scotchman of some estate in the neighborhood
of Stirling Castle, who had emigrated earlier to Massachusetts,
and had here married Sarah Orrok, the daughter of David Orrok, a
Massachusetts Quaker. Jane (Burns) Thoreau, the granddaughter of David
Orrok, and the grandmother of Henry David Thoreau, died in Boston,
in 1796, at the age of forty-two. Her husband, John Thoreau, Sr.,
removed from Boston to Concord, in 1800, lived in a house on the
village square, and died there in 1801. His mother, Marie le Galais,
outlived him a few weeks, dying at St. Helier, in 1801. Maria Thoreau,
granddaughter and namesake of Marie le Galais, died in December, 1881,
in Bangor, Maine.
From the recollections of this "aunt Maria," who outlived all her
American relatives by the name of Thoreau, Henry Thoreau derived what
information he possessed concerning his Jersey ancestors. In his
journal for April 21, 1855, he makes this entry:--
"Aunt Maria has put into my hands to-day for safe-keeping
three letters from Peter Thoreau (her uncle), directed to
'Miss Elizabeth Thoreau, Concord, near Boston,' and dated
at Jersey, respectively, July 1, 1801, April 22, 1804, and
April 11, 1806; also a '_Vue de la ville de St. Helier_,'
accompanying the first letter. The first is in answer to
one from my aunt Elizabeth, announcing the death of her
father (my grandfather). He states that his mother (Marie
(le Galais) Thoreau) died June 26, 1801, the day before he
received aunt Elizabeth's letter, though not till after he
had heard from another source of the death of his brother,
which was not communicated to his mother. 'She was in the
seventy-ninth year of her age,' he says, 'and retained her
memory to the last. She lived with my two sisters, who took
the greatest care of her.' He says that he had written to
my grandfather about his oldest brother (who died about a
year before), but had got no answer,--had written that he
left his children, two sons and a daughter, in a good way:
'The eldest son and daughter are both married and have
children; the youngest is about eighteen. I am still a
widower. Of four children I have but two left,--Betsey and
Peter; James and Nancy are both at rest.' He adds that he
sends 'a view of our native town.'
"The second of these letters is sent by the hand of
Captain John Harvey, of Boston, then at Guernsey. On the
4th of February, 1804, he had sent aunt Elizabeth a copy
of the last letter he had written (which was in answer
to her second), since he feared she had not received it.
He says that they are still at war with the French; that
they received the day before a letter from her 'uncle and
aunt Le Cappelain of London;' complains of not receiving
letters, and says, 'Your aunts, Betsey and Peter join with
me,' etc. According to the third letter (April 11, 1806),
he had received by Capt. Touzel an answer to that he sent
by Capt. Harvey, and will forward this by the former, who
is going _via_ Newfoundland to Boston. 'He expects to go
there every year; several vessels from Jersey go there
every year.' His nephew had told him, some time before,
that he met a gentleman from Boston, who told him he saw
the sign 'Thoreau and Hayse' there, and he therefore thinks
the children must have kept up the name of the firm. 'Your
cousin John is a lieutenant in the British service; he has
already been in a campaign on the Continent; he is very
fond of it.' Aunt Maria thinks the correspondence ceased at
Peter's death, because he was the one who wrote English."
These memoranda indicate that the grandfather of Henry Thoreau was
the younger son of a family of some substance in Jersey, which had
a branch in London and a grandson in the army that fought under
Wellington against Napoleon; that the American Thoreau engaged in
trade in Boston, with a partner, and carried on business successfully
for years; and that there was the same pleasant family feeling in
the English and French Thoreaus that we shall see in their American
descendants. Miss Maria Thoreau, in answer to a letter of mine, some
years ago, sent me the following particulars of her ancestry, some of
which repeat what is above stated by her nephew:--
"BANGOR, _March 18, 1878_.
"MR. SANBORN.
"_Dear Sir_,--In answer to your letter, I regret that I
cannot find more to communicate. I have no earlier record
of my grandparents, Philippe Thoreau and Marie Le Gallais,
than a certificate of their baptism in St. Helier, Jersey,
written on parchment in the year 1773. I do not know what
their vocation was. My Father was born in St. Helier in
April, 1754, and was married to Jane Burns in Boston,
in 1781. She died in that city in the year 1796, aged
forty-two years. My sister Elizabeth continued my Father's
correspondence with his brother, Uncle Peter Thoreau, at
St. Helier, for a number of years after Father's decease,
and in one of his letters he speaks of the death of
grandmother, Marie Le Gallais, as taken place so near the
time intelligence reach'd them of Father's death, in 1801,
it was not communicated to her. Father removed to Concord
in 1800, and died there, of consumption. I do not know at
what time he emigrated to this country, but have been told
he was shipwreck'd on the passage, and suffered much. I
think he must have left a large family circle, as Uncle
Peter in his letters refers to aunts and cousins, two of
which, aunts Le Cappelain and Pinkney, resided in London,
and a cousin, John Thoreau, was an officer in the British army.
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