Henry D. Thoreau 34

Henry D. Thoreau 34

"Fame cannot tempt the bard

Who's famous with his God,

Nor laurel him reward

Who has his Maker's nod."

 

Though often ranked as an unbeliever, and too scornful in some of his

__EXPRESSION__s concerning the religion of other men, Thoreau was in truth

deeply religious. Sincerity and devotion were his most marked traits;

and both are seen in his verses from the same poem ("Inspiration") so

often quoted:--

 

"I will then trust the love untold

Which not my worth or want hath bought,--

Which wooed me young and wooes me old,

And to this evening hath me brought."

 

Thoreau's business in life was observation, thought, and writing,

to which last, reading was essential. He read much, but studied

more; nor was his reading that indiscriminate, miscellaneous perusal

of everything printed, which has become the vice of this age. He

read books of travel, scientific books, authors of original merit,

but few newspapers, of which he had a very poor opinion. "Read not

the 'Times,' read the Eternities," he said. Nor did he admire the

magazines, or their editors, greatly. He quarreled with "Putnam's

Magazine," in 1853-54, and in 1858, after yielding to the suggestion

of Mr. Emerson, that he should contribute to the "Atlantic," in

consequence of a dispute with Mr. Lowell, its editor, about the

omission of a sentence in one of his articles, he published no more

in that magazine until the year of his death (1862), when Mr. Fields

obtained from him some of his choicest manuscripts. He spent the

last months of his life in revising these, and they continued to

appear for some years after his death. Those which were published in

the "Atlantic" in 1878 are passages from his journals, selected by

his friend Blake, who long had the custody of his manuscripts. These

consist chiefly of his journals in thirty-nine volumes, many parts

of which had already been printed, either by Thoreau himself, by his

sister Sophia, or his friend Channing, who, in 1873, published a

life of Thoreau, containing many extracts from the journals, which

had never before been printed. When we speak of his works, we should

include Mr. Channing's book also, half of which, at least, is from

Thoreau's pen.

 

His method in writing was peculiarly his own, though it bore some

external resemblance to that of his friends, Emerson and Alcott.

Like them he early began to keep a journal, which became both diary

and commonplace book. But while they noted down the thoughts which

occurred to them, without premeditation or consecutive arrangement,

Thoreau made studies and observations for his journal as carefully

and habitually as he noted the angles and distances in surveying a

Concord farm. In all his daily walks and distant journeys, he took

notes on the spot of what occurred to him, and these, often very brief

and symbolic, he carefully wrote out, as soon as he could get time,

in his diary, not classified by topics, but just as they had come to

him. To these he added his daily meditations, sometimes expressed in

verse, especially in the years between 1837 and 1850, but generally

in close and pertinent prose. Many details are found in his diaries,

but not such as are common in the diaries of other men,--not trivial

but significant details. From these daily entries he made up his

essays, his lectures, and his volumes; all being slowly, and with much

deliberation and revision, brought into the form in which he gave

them to the public. After that he scarcely changed them at all; they

had received the last imprint of his mind, and he allowed them to

stand and speak for themselves. But before printing, they underwent

constant change, by addition, erasure, transposition, correction, and

combination. A given lecture might be two years, or twenty years in

preparation; or it might be, like his defense of John Brown, copied

with little change from the pages of his diary for the fortnight

previous. But that was an exceptional case; and Thoreau was stirred

and quickened by the campaign and capture of Brown, as perhaps he had

never been before.

 

"The thought of that man's position and fate," he said,

"is spoiling many a man's day here at the North for other

thinking. If any one who has seen John Brown in Concord,

can pursue successfully any other train of thought, I do

not know what he is made of. If there is any such who gets

his usual allowance of sleep, I will warrant him to fatten

easily under any circumstances which do not touch his body

or purse. I put a piece of paper and a pencil under my

pillow, and when I could not sleep, I wrote in the dark.

I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I

detected the routine of the natural world surviving still,

or met persons going about their affairs indifferent."

 

The fact that Thoreau noted down his thoughts by night as well as by

day, appears also from an entry in one of his journals, where he is

describing the coming on of day, as witnessed by him at the close of a

September night in Concord. "Some bird flies over," he writes, "making

a noise like the barking of a puppy (it was a cuckoo). It is yet so

dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot find it." No writer of

modern times, in fact, was so much awake and abroad at night, or has

described better the phenomena of darkness and of moonlight.

 

It is interesting to note some dates and incidents concerning a few

of Thoreau's essays. The celebrated chapter on "Friendship," in the

"Week," was written in the winter of 1847-48, soon after he left

Walden, and while he was a member of Mr. Emerson's household during

the absence of his friend in Europe. On the 13th of January, 1848, Mr.

Alcott notes in his diary:--

 

"Henry Thoreau came in after my hours with the children,

and we had a good deal of talk on the modes of popular

influence. He read me a manuscript essay of his on

'Friendship,' which he has just written, and which I

thought superior to anything I had heard."

 

To the same period or a little later belong those verses called "The

Departure," which declare, under a similitude, Thoreau's relations

with one family of his friends.

 

In 1843, when he first met Henry James, Lucretia Mott, and others who

have since been famous, in the pleasant seclusion of Staten Island,

he wrote a translation of the "Seven Against Thebes," which has never

been printed, some translations from Pindar, printed in the "Dial," in

1844, and two articles for the New York "Democratic Review," called

"Paradise to be Regained," and "The Landlord."

 

Thoreau left "a vast amount of manuscript," in the words of his

sister, who was his literary executor until her death in 1876, when

she committed her trust to his Worcester friend, Mr. Harrison Blake.

She was aided in the revision and publication of the "Excursions,"

"Maine Woods," "Letters," and other volumes which she issued from 1862

to 1866, by Mr. Emerson, Mr. Channing, and other friends,--Mr. Emerson

having undertaken that selection of letters and poems from his mass of

correspondence and his preserved verses, which appeared in 1865. His

purpose, as he said to Miss Thoreau, was to exhibit in that volume "a

most perfect piece of stoicism," and he fancied that she had "marred

his classic statue" by inserting some tokens of natural affection

which the domestic letters showed. Miss Thoreau said that "it did not

seem quite honest to Henry" to leave out such passages; Mr. Fields,

the publisher, agreed with her, and a few of them were retained.

His correspondence, as a whole, is much more affectionate, and less

pugnacious than would appear from the published volume. He was fond of

dispute, but those who knew him best loved him most.

 

Of his last illness his sister said:--

 

"It was not possible to be sad in his presence. No shadow

of gloom attaches to anything in my mind connected with my

precious brother. He has done much to strengthen the faith

of his friends. Henry's whole life impresses me as a grand

miracle."

 

Walking once with Mr. Alcott, soon after he passed his eightieth

birth day, as we faced the lovely western sky in December, the old

Pythagorean said, "I always think of Thoreau when I look at a sunset;"

and I then remembered it was at that hour Thoreau usually walked

along the village street, under the arch of trees, with the sunset

sky seen through their branches. "He said to me in his last illness,"

added Alcott, "'I shall leave the world without a regret,'--that was

the saying either of a grand egotist or of a deeply religious soul."

Thoreau was both, and both his egotism and his devotion offended many

of those who met him. His aversion to the companionship of men was

partly religious--a fondness for the inward life--and partly egotism

and scorn for frivolity.

 

"Emerson says his life is so unprofitable and shabby for

the most part," writes Thoreau in 1854, "that he is driven

to all sorts of resources,--and among the rest to men. I

tell him we differ only in our resources: mine is to get

away from men. They very rarely affect me as grand or

beautiful; but I know that there is a sunrise and a sunset

every day. I have seen more men than usual lately; and well

as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what

vulgar fellows they are."

 

In 1859 he wrote to Mr. Blake:--

 

"I have lately got back to that glorious society called

Solitude, where we meet our friends continually, and can

imagine the outside world also to be peopled. Yet some of

my acquaintance would fain hustle me into the almshouse

for _the sake of society_; as if I were pining for that

diet, when I seem to myself a most befriended man, and find

constant employment. However, they do not believe a word I

say. They have got a club, the handle of which is in the

Parker House, at Boston, and with this they beat me from

time to time, expecting to make me tender, or minced meat,

and so fit for a club to dine off. The doctors are all

agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a

case like it! First, I did not know that I was suffering at

all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it

was indigestion of the society I got."

 

Yet Thoreau knew the value of society, and avoided it oftentimes only

because he was too busy. To his friend Ricketson, who reproached him

for ceasing to answer letters, he wrote in November, 1860, just before

he took the fatal cold that terminated in consumption and ended his life prematurely: