Henry D. Thoreau 30
This was a common mistake to make about Thoreau. When he ran the
gauntlet of the Cape Cod villages,--"feeling as strange," he says,
"as if he were in a town in China,"--one of the old fishermen could
not believe that he had not something to sell, as Bronson Alcott had
when he perambulated Eastern Virginia and North Carolina in 1819-22,
peddling silks and jewelry. Being assured that Thoreau was not
peddling spectacles or books, the fisherman said at last: "Well, it
makes no odds what it is you carry, so long as you carry Truth along
with you."
"As Thoreau came near me," continues Mr. Ricketson, "he
stopped and said, 'You do not know me.' It flashed at once
on my mind that the person before me was my correspondent,
whom in my imagination I had figured as stout and robust,
instead of the small and rather inferior-looking man before
me. I concealed my disappointment, and at once replied,
'I presume this is Mr. Thoreau.' Taking his portmanteau,
I conducted him to his room, already awaiting him. My
disappointment at his personal appearance passed off on
hearing his conversation at the table and during the
evening; and rarely through the years of my acquaintance
with him did his presence conflict with his noble powers
of mind, his rich conversation, and broad erudition. His
face was afterwards greatly improved in manly __EXPRESSION__
by the growth of his beard, which he wore in full during
the later years of his life; but when I first saw him he
had just been sitting for the crayon portrait of 1854,
which represents him without the beard. The 'ambrotype' of
him, which is engraved for your volume, was taken for me
by Dunshee, at New Bedford, August 21, 1861, on his last
visit to me at Brooklawn. His health was then failing,--he
had a racking cough,--but his face, except a shade of
sadness in the eyes, did not show it. Of this portrait,
Miss Sophia Thoreau, to whom I sent it soon after her
brother's death, wrote me, May 26, 1862: 'I cannot tell you
how agreeably surprised I was, on opening the little box,
to find my own lost brother again. I could not restrain
my tears. The picture is invaluable to us. I discover a
slight shade about the eyes, expressive of weariness; but a
stranger might not observe it. I am very glad to possess a
picture of so late a date. The crayon, drawn eight years
ago next summer, we considered good; it betrays the poet.
Mr. Channing, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Alcott, and many other
friends who have looked at the ambrotype, express much
satisfaction.'"
Of Thoreau's appearance then (at the age of thirty-seven), Mr.
Ricketson goes on to say:--
"The most expressive feature of his face was his eye,
blue in color, and full of the greatest humanity and
intelligence. His head was of medium size, the same as that
of Emerson, and he wore a number seven hat. His arms were
rather long, his legs short, and his hands and feet rather
large. His sloping shoulders were a mark of observation.
But when in usual health he was strong and vigorous, a
remarkable pedestrian, tiring out nearly all his companions
in his prolonged tramps through woods and marshes, when in
pursuit of some rare plant. In Thoreau, as in Dr. Kane,
Lord Nelson, and other heroic men, it was the spirit more
than the temple in which it dwelt, that made the man."
A strange mistake has prevailed as to the supposed churlishness
and cynical severity of Thoreau, which Mr. Alcott, in one of his
octogenarian sonnets, has corrected, and which all who knew the man
would protest against.
Of his domestic character Mr. Ricketson writes:--
"Some have accused him of being an imitator of Emerson,
others as unsocial, impracticable, and ascetic. Now, he was
none of these. A more original man never lived, nor one
more thoroughly a personification of civility. Having been
an occasional guest at his house, I can assert that no man
could hold a finer relationship with his family than he."
Channing says the same thing more quaintly:--
"In his own home he was one of those characters who may
be called household treasures; always on the spot with
skillful eye and hand, to raise the best melons, plant
the orchard with the choicest trees, and act as extempore
mechanic; fond of the pets,--his sister's flowers or sacred
tabby--kittens being his favorites,--he would play with
them by the half hour."
He was sometimes given to music and song, and now and then, in moments
of great hilarity, would dance gayly,--as he did once at Brooklawn, in
the presence of his host, Mr. Ricketson, and Mr. Alcott, who was also
visiting there. On the same occasion he sung his unique song of "Tom
Bowline," which none who heard would ever forget, and finished the
evening with his dance.
Hearing Mr. Ricketson speak of this dance, Miss Thoreau said:--
"I have so often witnessed the like, that I can easily
imagine how it was; and I remember that Henry gave me some
account of it. I recollect he said he did not scruple to
tread on Mr. Alcott's toes."
Mr. Ricketson's own account is this:--
"One afternoon, when my wife was playing an air upon the
piano,--'Highland Laddie,' perhaps,--Thoreau became very
hilarious, sang 'Tom Bowline,' and finally entered upon an
improvised dance. Not being able to stand what appeared to
me at the time the somewhat ludicrous appearance of our
Walden hermit, I retreated to my 'shanty,' a short distance
from my house; while my older and more humor-loving friend
Alcott remained and saw it through, much to his amusement.
It left a pleasant memory, which I recorded in some humble
lines that afterwards appeared in my 'Autumn Sheaf.'"
After Thoreau's return home from this visit, his New Bedford friend
seems to have sent him a copy of the words and music of "Tom Bowline,"
which was duly acknowledged and handed over to the musical people
of Concord for them to play and sing. It is a fine old pathetic
sailor-song of Dibdin's, which pleased Thoreau (whose imagination
delighted in the sea), and perhaps reminded him of his brother John.
As Thoreau sang it, the verses ran thus:--
"Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowline,
The darling of our crew;
No more he'll hear the tempest howling,
For death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty;
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful, below, he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft.
"Tom never from his word departed,
His virtues were so rare;
His friends were many and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair.
And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly;
Ah, many's the time and oft!
But mirth is changed to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.
"Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather
When He who all commands
Shall give, to call life's crew together,
The word to pipe all hands.
Thus death, who kings and tars dispatches,
In vain Tom's life has doffed;
For though his body's under hatches,
His soul is gone aloft!"
Another of his songs was Moore's "Canadian Boat Song," with its
chorus,--
"Row brothers, row."
Mrs. W. H. Forbes, who knew him in her childhood, from the age of six
to that of fifteen more particularly, and who first remembers him in
his hut at Walden, writes me:--
"The time when Mr. Thoreau was our more intimate playfellow
must have been in the years from 1850 to 1855. He used
to come in, at dusk, as my brother and I sat on the rug
before the dining-room fire, and, taking the great green
rocking-chair, he would tell us stories. Those I remember
were his own adventures, as a child. He began with telling
us of the different houses he had lived in, and what he
could remember about each. The house where he was born was
on the Virginia road, near the old Bedford road. The only
thing he remembered about that house was that from its
windows he saw a flock of geese walking along in a row on
the other side of the road; but to show what a long memory
he had, when he told his mother of this, she said the only
time he could have seen that sight was, when he was about
eight months old, for they left that house then. Soon
after, he lived in the old house on the Lexington road,
nearly opposite Mr. Emerson's. There he was tossed by a cow
as he played near the door, in his red flannel dress,--and
so on, with a story for every house. He used to delight
us with the adventures of a brood of fall chickens, which
slept at night in a tall old fashioned fig-drum in the
kitchen, and as their bed was not changed when they grew
larger, they packed themselves every night each in its own
place, and grew up, not shapely, but shaped to each other
and the drum, like figs!
"Sometimes he would play juggler tricks for us, and swallow
his knife and produce it again from our ears or noses.
We usually ran to bring some apples for him as soon as
he came in, and often he would cut one in halves in fine
points that scarcely showed on close examination, and then
the joke was to ask Father to break it for us and see it
fall to pieces in his hands. But perhaps the evenings most
charming were those when he brought some ears of pop-corn
in his pocket and headed an expedition to the garret to
hunt out the old brass warming-pan; in which he would put
the corn, and hold it out and shake it over the fire till
it was heated through, and at last, as we listened, the
rattling changed to popping. When this became very brisk,
he would hold the pan over the rug and lift the lid, and a
beautiful fountain of the white corn flew all over us. It
required both strength and patience to hold out the heavy
warming-pan at arm's length so long, and no one else ever
gave us that pleasure.
"I remember his singing 'Tom Bowline' to us, and also
playing on his flute, but that was earlier. In the summer
he used to make willow whistles, and trumpets out of the
stems of squash leaves, and onion leaves. When he found
fine berries during his walks, he always remembered us,
and came to arrange a huckleberrying for us. He took
charge of the 'hay rigging' with the load of children,
who sat on the floor which was spread with hay, covered
with a buffalo-robe; he sat on a board placed across the
front and drove, and led the frolic with his jokes and
laughter as we jolted along, while the elders of the family
accompanied us in a 'carryall.' Either he had great tact
and skill in managing us and keeping our spirits and play
within bounds, or else he became a child in sympathy with
us, for I do not remember a check or reproof from him,
no matter how noisy we were. He always was most kind to
me and made it his especial care to establish me in the
'thickest places,' as we used to call them. Those sunny
afternoons are bright memories, and the lamb-kill flowers
and sweet 'everlasting,' always recall them and his kind
care. Once in awhile he took us on the river in his boat, a rare pleasure then;
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