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Henry D. Thoreau

<h2>CHAPTER XI. PERSONAL TRAITS AND SOCIAL LIFE.</h2> 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[Pg 262] 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:— <div class="blockquot"> "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[Pg 263] 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." </div> 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:— <div class="blockquot"> "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[Pg 264] 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." </div> 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." <div class="blockquot"> "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,[Pg 265] 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[Pg 266] 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.'" </div> Of Thoreau's appearance then (at the age of thirty-seven), Mr. Ricketson goes on to say:— <div class="blockquot"> "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." </div> 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[Pg 267] which all who knew the man would protest against. Of his domestic character Mr. Ricketson writes:— <div class="blockquot"> "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." </div> Channing says the same thing more quaintly:— <div class="blockquot"> "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." </div> 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,[Pg 268] 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:— <div class="blockquot"> "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." </div> Mr. Ricketson's own account is this:— <div class="blockquot"> "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.'" </div> After Thoreau's return home from this[Pg 269] 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:— <div class="poetry-container"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "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. </div> <div class="stanza"> "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. </div> <div class="stanza"> "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. [Pg 270] 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!" </div> </div></div> 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:— <div class="blockquot"> "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[Pg 271] 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.[Pg 272] 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[Pg 273] 'everlasting,' always recall them and his kind care. Once in awhile he took us on the river in his boat, a rare pleasure then; and I remember one brilliant autumn afternoon, when he took us to gather the wild grapes overhanging the river, and we brought home a load of crimson and golden boughs as well. He never took us to walk with him, but sometimes joined us for a little way, if he met us in the woods on Sunday afternoons. He made those few steps memorable by showing us many wonders in so short a space: perhaps the only chincapin oak in Concord, so hidden that no one but himself could have discovered it—or some remarkable bird, or nest, or flower. He took great interest in my garden of wild flowers, and used to bring me seeds, or roots, of rare plants. In his last illness it did not occur to us that he would care to see us, but his sister told my mother that he watched us from the window as we passed, and said: 'Why don't they come to see me? I love them as if they were my own.' After that we went often, and he always made us so welcome that we liked to go. I remember our last meetings with as much pleasure as the old play-days." </div> Although so great a traveler in a small circle—being every day a-field when not too ill,—he was also a great stay-at-home.[Pg 274] He never crossed the ocean, nor saw Niagara or the Mississippi until the year before his death. He lived within twenty miles of Boston, but seldom went there, except to pass through it on his way to the Maine woods, to Cape Cod, to the house of his friend, Marston Watson at Plymouth, or to Daniel Ricketson's at New Bedford. To the latter he wrote in February, 1855:— <div class="blockquot"> "I did not go to Boston, for, with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors (George Minott), an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home." </div> What took him from home in the winter season was generally some engagement to lecture, of which he had many after his Walden life became a little known abroad. From the year 1847 Thoreau may be said to have fairly entered on his career as author and lecturer; having taken all the needful degrees and endured most of the mortifications necessary for the public profession of authorship. Up to that time he had supported himself, except while in college, chiefly by the labor of his hands;[Pg 275] after 1847, though still devoted to manual labor occasionally, he yet worked chiefly with his head as thinker, observer, surveyor, magazine contributor, and lecturer. His friends were the first promoters of his lectures, and among his correspondence are some letters from Hawthorne, inviting him to the Salem Lyceum. The first of these letters is dated, Salem, October 21, 1848, and runs thus:— <div class="blockquot"> "My dear Sir,—The managers of the Salem Lyceum, sometime ago, voted that you should be requested to deliver a lecture before that Institution during the approaching season. I know not whether Mr. Chever, the late corresponding secretary, communicated the vote to you; at all events, no answer has been received, and as Mr. Chever's successor in office, I am requested to repeat the invitation. Permit me to add my own earnest wishes that you will accept it; and also, laying aside my official dignity, to express my wife's desire and my own that you will be our guest, if you do come. In case of your compliance, the Managers desire to know at what time it will best suit you to deliver the lecture. "Very truly yours, "Nathl Hawthorne, "Cor. Sec'y, Salem Lyceum. [Pg 276] "P.S. I live at No. 14 Mall Street, where I shall be very happy to see you. The stated fee for lectures is $20." </div> A month later, Hawthorne, who had received an affirmative answer from Thoreau, wrote to him from Boston (November 20, 1848), as follows:— <div class="blockquot"> "My dear Thoreau,—I did not sooner write you, because there were preëngagements for the two or three first lectures, so that I could not arrange matters to have you come during the present month. But, as it happens, the expected lectures have failed us, and we now depend on you to come the very next Wednesday. I shall announce you in the paper of to-morrow, so you must come. I regret that I could not give you longer notice. We shall expect you on Wednesday at No. 14 Mall Street. "Yours truly, "Nathl Hawthorne. "If it be utterly impossible for you to come, pray write me a line so that I may get it Wednesday evening. But by all means come. "This secretaryship is an intolerable bore. I have traveled thirty miles, this wet day, on no other business." </div> Apparently another lecture was wanted by the Salem people the same winter, for[Pg 277] on the 19th of February, 1849, when the "Week on the Concord and Merrimac" was in press, Hawthorne wrote again, thus:— <div class="blockquot"> "The managers request that you will lecture before the Salem Lyceum on Wednesday evening after next, that is to say, on the 28th inst. May we depend on you? Please to answer immediately, if convenient. Mr. Alcott delighted my wife and me, the other evening, by announcing that you had a book in press. I rejoice at it, and nothing doubt of such success as will be worth having. Should your manuscripts all be in the printer's hands, I suppose you can reclaim one of them for a single evening's use, to be returned the next morning,—or perhaps that Indian lecture, which you mentioned to me, is in a state of forwardness. Either that, or a continuation of the Walden experiment (or indeed, anything else), will be acceptable. We shall expect you at 14 Mall Street. "Very truly yours, "Nathl Hawthorne." </div> These letters were written just before Hawthorne was turned out of his office in the Salem custom-house, and while his own literary success was still in abeyance,—the "Scarlet Letter" not being published till a[Pg 278] year later. They show the friendly terms on which Hawthorne stood with the Concord Transcendentalists, after leaving that town in 1846. He returned to it in 1852, when he bought Mr. Alcott's estate, then called "Hillside," which he afterward christened "Wayside," and by this name it is still known. Mr. Alcott bought this place in 1845, and from then till 1848, when he left it to reside in Boston, he expended, as Hawthorne said, "a good deal of taste and some money in forming the hill-side behind the house into terraces, and building arbors and summer-houses of rough stems, and branches, and trees, on a system of his own." In this work he was aided by Thoreau, who was then in the habit of performing much manual labor. In 1847 he joined Mr. Alcott in the task of cutting trees for Mr. Emerson's summer-house, which the three friends were to build in the garden. Mr. Emerson, however, went with them to the woods but one day, when finding his strength and skill unequal to that of his companions, he withdrew, and left the work to them. Mr. Alcott relates that Thoreau was not only a master workman with the[Pg 279] axe, but also had such strength of arm, that when a tree they were felling lodged in some unlucky position, he rushed at it, and by main strength carried out the trunk until it fell where he wanted it. It was one of the serious doctrines of the Transcendentalists that each person should perform his quota of hand-work, and accordingly Alcott, Channing, Hawthorne, and the rest, took their turn at wood-chopping, hay-making, plowing, tree-pruning, grafting, etc. Even Emerson trimmed his own orchard, and sometimes lent a hand in hoeing corn and raking hay. To Thoreau such tasks were easy, and, unlike some amateur farmers, he was quite willing to be seen at his work, whatever it might be (except the pencil-making, in which there were certain secrets), and by choice he wore plain working clothes, and generally old ones. The fashion of his garments gave him no concern, and was often old, or even grotesque. At one time he had a fancy for corduroy, such as Irish laborers then wore, but which occasionally appeared in the wardrobe of a gentleman. As he climbed trees, waded swamps, and was[Pg 280] out in all weathers during his daily excursions, he naturally dressed himself for what he had to do. As may be inferred from his correspondence with Horace Greeley, Thoreau's whole income from authorship during the twenty years that he practiced that profession, cannot have exceeded a few hundred dollars yearly,—not half enough in most years to supply even his few wants. He would never be indebted to any person pecuniarily, and therefore he found out other ways of earning his subsistence and paying his obligations,—gardening, fence-building, white-washing, pencil-making, land-surveying, etc.,—for he had great mechanical skill, and a patient, conscientious industry in whatever he undertook. When his father, who had been long living in other men's houses, undertook, at last, to build one of his own, Henry worked upon it, and performed no small part of the manual labor. He had no false pride in such matters,—was, indeed, rather proud of his workmanship, and averse to the gentility even of his industrious village. During his first residence at Mr. Emerson's[Pg 281] in 1841-43, Thoreau managed the garden and did other hand-work for his friend; and when Mr. Emerson went to England in 1847, he returned to the house (soon after leaving his Walden hut), and took charge of his friend's household affairs in his absence. In a letter to his sister Sophia (October 24, 1847), Thoreau says:— <div class="blockquot"> "... I went to Boston the 5th of this month to see Mr. Emerson off to Europe. He sailed in the 'Washington Irving' packet ship, the same in which Mr. Hedge went before him. Up to this trip, the first mate aboard this ship was, as I hear, one Stephens, a Concord boy, son of Stephens, the carpenter, who used to live above Mr. Dennis. Mr. Emerson's state-room was like a carpeted dark closet, about six feet square, with a large keyhole for a window (the window was about as big as a saucer, and the glass two inches thick), not to mention another skylight overhead in the deck, of the size of an oblong doughnut, and about as opaque. Of course, it would be in vain to look up, if any contemplative promenader put his foot upon it. Such will be his lodgings for two or three weeks; and instead of a walk in Walden woods, he will take a promenade on deck, where the few trees, you know, are stripped of their bark." </div> [Pg 282] There is a poem of Thoreau's, of uncertain date, called "The Departure," which, as I suppose, expresses his emotions at leaving finally, in 1848, the friendly house of Emerson, where he had dwelt so long, upon terms of such ideal intimacy. It was never seen by his friends, so far as I can learn, until after his death, when Sophia Thoreau gave it to me, along with other poems, for publication in the "Boston Commonwealth," in 1863. Since then it has been mentioned as a poem written in anticipation of death. This is not so; it was certainly written long before his illness. <div class="poetry-container"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "In this roadstead I have ridden, In this covert I have hidden: Friendly thoughts were cliffs to me, And I hid beneath their lee. </div> <div class="stanza"> "This true people took the stranger, And warm-hearted housed the ranger; They received their roving guest, And have fed him with the best; </div> <div class="stanza"> "Whatsoe'er the land afforded To the stranger's wish accorded,— Shook the olive, stripped the vine, And expressed the strengthening wine. </div> <div class="stanza"> "And by night they did spread o'er him What by day they spread before him; [Pg 283] That good will which was repast Was his covering at last. </div> <div class="stanza"> "The stranger moored him to their pier Without anxiety or fear; By day he walked the sloping land,— By night the gentle heavens he scanned. </div> <div class="stanza"> "When first his bark stood inland To the coast of that far Finland, Sweet-watered brooks came tumbling to the shore, The weary mariner to restore. </div> <div class="stanza"> "And still he stayed from day to day, If he their kindness might repay; But more and more The sullen waves came rolling toward the shore. </div> <div class="stanza"> "And still, the more the stranger waited, The less his argosy was freighted; And still the more he stayed, The less his debt was paid. </div> <div class="stanza"> "So he unfurled his shrouded mast To receive the fragrant blast,— And that same refreshing gale Which had woo'd him to remain Again and again;— It was that filled his sail And drove him to the main. </div> <div class="stanza"> "All day the low hung clouds Dropped tears into the sea, And the wind amid the shrouds Sighed plaintively." </div> </div></div> <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 284] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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