Henry D. Thoreau 24

Henry D. Thoreau 24

It is well to read this shrewd humor, uttered in the opposite sense

from Thoreau's paradoxical wit in his "Walden," as an introduction

or motto to that book. For Thoreau has been falsely judged from the

wit and the paradox of "Walden," as if he were a hater of men, or

foolishly desired all mankind to retire to the woods. As Channing

said, soon after his friend's death,--

 

"The fact that our author lived for a while alone in a

shanty, near a pond, and named one of his books after

the place where it stood, has led some to say he was a

barbarian or a misanthrope. It was a writing-case; here in

this wooden inkstand he wrote a good part of his famous

'Walden,' and this solitary woodland pool was more to

his Muse than all oceans of the planet, by the force of

imagination. Some have fancied, because he moved to Walden,

he left his family. He bivouacked there and really lived at

home, where he went every day."

 

This last is not literally true, for he was sometimes secluded in his

hut for days together; but he remained as social at Walden as he had

been while an inmate of Mr. Emerson's family in 1841-43, or again

in 1847-48, after giving up his hermitage. He, in fact, as he says

himself,--

 

"Went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately,

to front only the essential facts of life, and see if he

could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when he came

to die, discover that he had not lived."

 

In another place he says he went to Walden to "transact some private

business," and this he did to good purpose. He edited there his

"Week," some portions of which had appeared in the "Dial" from 1840

to 1844, but which was not published as a volume until 1849, although

he had made many attempts to issue it earlier. It was at Walden,

also, that he wrote his essay on Carlyle, which was first published

in "Graham's Magazine," at Philadelphia, in 1847, through the good

offices of Horace Greeley, of which we shall hear more in the next

chapter.

 

Thoreau's hermit life was not, then, merely a protest against the

luxury and the restraints of society, nor yet an austere discipline

such as monks and saints have imposed upon themselves for their souls'

good. "My purpose in going to Walden was not to live cheaply, nor to

live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the

fewest obstacles." He lived a life of labor and study in his hut.

Emerson says, "as soon as he had exhausted the advantages of that

solitude, he abandoned it." He had edited his first book there; had

satisfied himself that he was fit to be an author, and had passed his

first examinations; then he graduated from that gymnasium as another

young student might from the medical college or the polytechnic

school. "I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there."

His abandoned hut was then taken by a Scotch gardener, Hugh Whelan

by name, who removed it some rods away, to the midst of Thoreau's

bean-field, and made it his cottage for a few years. Then it was

bought by a farmer, who put it on wheels and carried it three miles

northward, toward the entry of the Estabrook Farm on the old Carlisle

road, where it stood till after Thoreau's death,--a shelter for corn

and beans, and a favorite haunt of squirrels and blue jays. The

wood-cut representing the hermitage in the first edition of "Walden,"

is from a sketch made by Sophia Thoreau, and is more exact than that

given in Page's "Life of Thoreau," but in neither picture are the

trees accurately drawn.

 

On the spot where Thoreau lived at Walden there is now a cairn of

stones, yearly visited by hundreds, and growing in height as each

friend of his muse adds a stone from the shore of the fair water he

loved so well.

 

"Beat with thy paddle on the boat

Midway the lake,--the wood repeats

The ordered blow; the echoing note

Is ended in thy ear; yet its retreats

Conceal Time's possibilities;

And in this Man the nature lies

Of woods so green,

And lakes so sheen,

And hermitages edged between.

And I may tell you that the Man was good,

Never did his neighbor harm,--

Sweet was it where he stood,

Sunny and warm;

Like the seat beneath a pine

That winter suns have cleared away

With their yellow tine,--

Red-cushioned and tasseled with the day."

 

The events and thoughts of Thoreau's life at Walden may be read in

his book of that name. As a protest against society, that life was

ineffectual,--as the communities at Brook Farm and Fruitlands had

proved to be; and as the Fourierite phalansteries, in which Horace

Greeley interested himself, were destined to be. In one sense, all

these were failures; but in Thoreau's case the failure was slight, the

discipline and experience gained were invaluable. He never regretted

it, and the Walden episode in his career has made him better known

than anything else.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

HORACE IN THE RÔLE OF MÆCENAS.

 

 

In a letter to his sister Sophia, July 21, 1843, written from Mr.

William Emerson's house at Staten Island, Thoreau says:--

 

"In New York I have seen, since I wrote last, Horace

Greeley, editor of the 'Tribune,' who is cheerfully

in earnest at his office of all work,--a hearty New

Hampshire boy as one would wish to meet,--and says, 'Now

be neighborly.' He believes only or mainly, first in the

Sylvania Association, somewhere in Pennsylvania; and

secondly, and most of all, in a new association, to go into

operation soon in New Jersey, with which he is connected."

 

This was the "Phalanstery" at which W. H. Channing afterward preached.

A fortnight later, Thoreau writes to Mr. Emerson:--

 

"I have had a pleasant talk with W. H. Channing; and

Greeley, too, it was refreshing to meet. They were both

much pleased with your criticism on Carlyle, but thought

that you had overlooked what chiefly concerned them in the

book,--its practical aims and merits."

 

This refers to the notice of Carlyle's "Past and Present," in the

"Dial" for July, 1843, and shows that Mr. Greeley was a quick reader

of that magazine, as Thoreau always was of the "New York Tribune."

From this time onward a warm friendship continued between Thoreau

and Greeley, and many letters went to and fro, which reveal the

able editor in the light of a modern Mæcenas to the author of the

Musketaquid Georgics.

 

No letters seem to have passed between them earlier than 1846; and in

1844-45 Thoreau must have known the "Tribune" editor best through his

newspaper, and from the letters of Margaret Fuller, Ellery Channing,

and other common friends, who saw much of him then, admired and

laughed at him, or did both by turns. Miss Fuller, who had gone to New

York to write for the "Tribune," and to live in its Editor's family,

wrote:--

 

"Mr. Greeley is a man of genuine excellence, honorable,

benevolent, and of an uncorrupted disposition. He is

sagacious, and, in his way, of even great abilities. In

modes of life and manners, he is a man of the people,--and

of the American people. With the exception of my own

mother, I think him the most disinterestedly generous

person I have ever known."

 

There was a laughable side even to these fine traits, and there were

eccentricities of dress and manner, which others saw more keenly than

this generous woman. Ellery Channing,--whose eye no whimsical or

beautiful object ever escaped,--in the letter of March, 1845, already

cited, thus signaled to Thoreau the latest news of his friend:--

 

"Mumbo Jumbo is recovering from an attack of sore eyes, and

will soon be out, in a pair of canvas trousers, scarlet

jacket, and cocked hat. I understand he intends to demolish

all the remaining species of Fetichism at a meal. I think

it is probable it will vomit him."

 

Thoreau wrote an essay on Carlyle in 1846, and in the summer of that

year sent it to Mr. Greeley, with a request that he would find a place

for it in some magazine. To this request, which Mr. Greeley himself

had invited, no doubt, he thus replied:--

 

"_August 16, 1846._

 

"MY DEAR THOREAU,--Believe me when I say that I _mean_ to

do the errand you have asked of me, and that soon. But I

am not sanguine of success, and have hardly a hope that it

will be immediate, if ever. I hardly know a work that would

publish your article all at once, and 'to be continued'

are words shunned like a pestilence. But I know you have

written a good thing about Carlyle,--too solidly good,

I fear, to be profitable to yourself, or attractive to

publishers. Did'st thou ever, O my friend! ponder on the

significance and cogency of the assurance, 'Ye cannot serve

God and Mammon,' as applicable to literature,--applicable,

indeed, to all things whatsoever? God grant us grace to

endeavor to serve Him rather than Mammon,--that ought to

suffice us. In my poor judgment, if anything is calculated

to make a scoundrel of an honest man, writing to sell is

that very particular thing.

 

"Yours heartily,

 

"HORACE GREELEY.

 

"Remind Ralph Waldo Emerson and wife of my existence and

grateful remembrance."

 

On the 30th of September Mr. Greeley again wrote, saying,--

 

"I learned to-day, through Mr. Griswold, former editor of

'Graham's Magazine,' that your lecture is accepted, to

appear in that magazine. Of course it is to be paid for at

the usual rate, as I expressly so stated when I inclosed

it to Graham. He has not written me a word on the subject,

which induces me to think he may have written you.[10]

Please write me if you would have me speak further on the

subject. The pay, however, is sure, though the amount may

not be large, and I think you may wait until the article

appears, before making further stipulations on the subject."