Henry D. Thoreau 29

Henry D. Thoreau 29

"With the night,

Reserved companion, cool and sparsely clad,

Dream, till the threefold hour with lowly voice

Steals whispering in thy frame, 'Rise, valiant youth!

The dawn draws on apace, envious of thee,

And polar in his gait; advance thy limbs,

Nor strive to heat the stones.'"

 

Thoreau had much scorn for weakness like this, and said of his

comrade, "I fear that he did not improve all the night as he might

have done, to sleep." This was his last excursion, and he died within

less than two years afterward. The account of it which Channing has

given may therefore be read with interest:--

 

"He ascended such hills as Monadnoc by his own path; would

lay down his map on the summit and draw a line to the point

he proposed to visit below,--perhaps forty miles away on

the landscape, and set off bravely to make the 'shortcut.'

The lowland people wondered to see him scaling the heights

as if he had lost his way, or at his jumping over their

cow-yard fences,--asking if he had fallen from the clouds.

In a walk like this he always carried his umbrella; and

on this Monadnoc trip, when about a mile from the station

(in Troy, N. H.), a torrent of rain came down; without the

umbrella his books, blankets, maps, and provisions would

all have been spoiled, or the morning lost by delay. On

the mountain there being a thick soaking fog, the first

object was to camp and make tea.[13] He spent five nights

in camp, having built another hut, to get varied views.

Flowers, birds, lichens, and the rocks were carefully

examined, all parts of the mountain were visited, and as

accurate a map as could be made by pocket compass was

carefully sketched and drawn out, in the five days spent

there,--with notes of the striking aerial phenomena,

incidents of travel and natural history. The fatigue, the

blazing sun, the face getting broiled, the pint-cup never

scoured, shaving unutterable, your stockings dreary, having

taken to peat,--not all the books in the world, as Sancho

says, could contain the adventures of a week in camping.

The wild, free life, the open air, the new and strange

sounds by night and day, the odd and bewildering rocks,

amid which a person can be lost within a rod of camp; the

strange cries of visitors to the summit; the great valley

over to Wachusett, with its thunder-storms and battles in

the cloud; the farmers' backyards in Jaffrey, where the

family cotton can be seen bleaching on the grass, but no

trace of the pigmy family; the dry, soft air all night,

the lack of dew in the morning; the want of water,--a pint

being a good deal,--these, and similar things make up some

part of such an excursion."

 

These excursions were common with Thoreau, but less so with Channing,

who therefore, notes down many things that his friend would not think

worth recording, except as a part of that calendar of Nature which he

set himself to keep, and of which his journals, for more than twenty

years, are the record. From these he made up his printed volumes, and

there may be read the details that he registered. He had gauges for

the height of the river, noted the temperature of springs and ponds,

the tints of the morning and evening sky, the flowering and fruit

of plants, all the habits of birds and animals, and every aspect of

nature from the smallest to the greatest. Much of this is the dryest

detail, but everywhere you come upon strokes of beauty, in a single

word-picture, or in a page of idyllic description, like this of the

Concord heifer, which might be a poem of Theocritus, or one of the

lost bucolics of Moschus:--

 

"One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the herd, did by

degrees approach, as if to take some morsel from our hands,

while our hearts leaped to our mouths with expectation

and delight. She by degrees drew near with her fair limbs

progressive, making pretense of browsing; nearer and nearer

till there was wafted to us the bovine fragrance,--cream of

all the dairies that ever were or will be,--and then she

raised her gentle muzzle toward us, and snuffed an honest

recognition within hand's reach. I saw it was possible for

his herd to inspire with love the herdsman. She was as

delicately featured as a hind; her hide was mingled white

and fawn color; on her muzzle's tip there was a white spot

not bigger than a daisy; and on her side turned toward me

the map of Asia plain to see. Farewell, dear heifer! though

thou forgettest me, my prayer to heaven shall be that thou

may'st not forget thyself.

 

"I saw her name was Sumach. And by the kindred spots I knew

her mother, more sedate and matronly, with full-grown bag,

and on her sides was Asia, great and small, the plains of

Tartary, even to the pole, while on her daughter's was Asia

Minor. She was not disposed to wanton with the herdsman. As

I walked the heifer followed me, and took an apple from my

hand, and seemed to care more for the hand than the apple.

So innocent a face I have rarely seen on any creature, and

I have looked in the face of many heifers; and as she took

the apple from my hand, I caught the apple of her eye.

There was no sinister __EXPRESSION__. She smelled as sweet as

the clethra blossom. For horns, though she had them, they

were so well disposed in the right place, but neither up

nor down, that I do not now remember she had any."

 

Or take this apostrophe to the "Queen of Night, the Huntress Diana,"

which is not a translation from some Greek worshipper, but the sincere

ascription of a New England hunter of the noblest deer:--

 

"My dear, my dewy sister, let thy rain descend on me! I not

only love thee, but I love the best of thee,--that is to

love thee rarely. I do not love thee every day--commonly

I love those who are less than thee; I love thee only on

great days. Thy dewy words feed me like the manna of the

morning. I am as much thy sister as thy brother; thou art

as much my brother as my sister. It is a portion of thee

and a portion of me which are of kin. O my sister! O Diana!

thy tracks are on the eastern hill; thou newly didst pass

that way. I, the hunter, saw them in the morning dew. My

eyes are the hounds that pursued thee. I hear thee; thou

canst speak, I cannot; I fear and forget to answer; I am

occupied with hearing. I awoke and thought of thee; thou

wast present to my mind. How camest thou there? Was I not

present to thee, likewise?"

 

In such a lofty mystical strain did this Concord Endymion declare

his passion for Nature, in whose green lap he slumbers now on the

hill-side which the goddess nightly revisits.

 

"O sister of the sun, draw near,

With softly-moving step and slow,

For dreaming not of earthly woe

Thou seest Endymion sleeping here!"

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI.

 

PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE.

 

 

The face of Thoreau, once seen, could not easily be forgotten, so

strong was the mark that genius had set upon it. The portrait of him,

which has been commonly engraved, though it bore some resemblance at

the time it was taken (by S. W. Rowse, in 1854), was never a very

exact likeness. A few years later he began to wear his beard long, and

this fine silken muffler for his delicate throat and lungs, was also

an ornament to his grave and thoughtful face, concealing its weakest

feature, a receding chin. The head engraved for this volume is from a

photograph taken, in 1861, at New Bedford, and shows him as he was in

his last years. His personal traits were not startling and commanding

like those of Webster, who drew the eyes of all men wherever he

appeared, but they were peculiar, and dwelt long in the memory. His

features were prominent, his eyes large, round, and deep-set, under

bold brows, and full of fearless meditation; the color varying from

blue to gray, as if with the moods of his mind. A youth who saw him

for the first time, said with a start, "How deep and clear is the mark

that _thought_ sets upon a man's face!" And, indeed, no man could fail

to recognize in him that rare intangible essence we call _thought_;

his slight figure was active with it, while in his face it became

contemplative, as if, like his own peasant, he were "meditating some

vast and sunny problem." Channing says of his appearance:--

 

"In height he was about the average; in his build spare,

with limbs that were rather longer than usual, or of which

he made a longer use. His features were marked; the nose

aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits of Cæsar

(more like a beak, as was said); large overhanging brows

above the deepest-set blue eyes that could be seen,--blue

in certain lights and in others gray; the forehead not

unusually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and

purpose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with

meaning and thought when silent, and giving out when open

a stream of the most varied and unusual and instructive

sayings. His whole figure had an active earnestness, as

if he had no moment to waste; the clenched hand betokened

purpose. In walking he made a short cut, if he could, and

when sitting in the shade or by the wall-side, seemed

merely the clearer to look forward into the next piece of

activity. The intensity of his mind, like Dante's, conveyed

the breathing of aloofness,--his eyes bent on the ground,

his long swinging gait, his hands perhaps clasped behind

him, or held closely at his side,--the fingers made into a

fist."

 

It is not possible to describe him more exactly.

 

In December, 1854, Thoreau went to lecture at Nantucket, and on

his way spent a day or two with one of his correspondents, Daniel

Ricketson of New Bedford,--reaching his house on Christmas day.

His host, who then saw him for the first time, thus recorded his

impressions:--

 

"I had expected him at noon, but as he did not arrive,

I had given him up for the day. In the latter part of

the afternoon, I was clearing off the snow, which had

fallen during the day, from my front steps, when, looking

up, I saw a man walking up the carriage-road, bearing a

portmanteau in one hand and an umbrella in the other. He

was dressed in a long overcoat of dark color, and wore

a dark soft hat. I had no suspicion it was Thoreau, and

rather supposed it was a pedler of small wares."