The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 12th of July, 1817. He
was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, but without any literary
distinction. An iconoclast in literature, he seldom thanked colleges
for their service to him, holding them in small esteem, whilst yet his
debt to them was important. After leaving the University, he joined
his brother in teaching a private school, which he soon renounced. His
father was a manufacturer of lead-pencils, and Henry applied himself
for a time to this craft, believing he could make a better pencil than
was then in use. After completing his experiments, he exhibited his
work to chemists and artists in Boston, and having obtained their
certificates to its excellence and to its equality with the best
London manufacture, he returned home contented. His friends
congratulated him that he had now opened his way to fortune. But he
replied, that he should never make another pencil. "Why should I? I
would not do again what I have done once." He resumed his endless
walks and miscellaneous studies, making every day some new
acquaintance with Nature, though as yet never speaking of zoology or
botany, since, though very studious of natural facts, he was incurious
of technical and textual science.

At this time, a strong, healthy youth, fresh from college, whilst all
his companions were choosing their profession, or eager to begin some
lucrative employment, it was inevitable that his thoughts should be
exercised on the same question, and it required rare decision to
refuse all the accustomed paths, and keep his solitary freedom at the
cost of disappointing the natural expectations of his family and
friends: all the more difficult that he had a perfect probity, was
exact in securing his own independence, and in holding every man to
the like duty. But Thoreau never faltered. He was a born
protestant. He declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and
action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more
comprehensive calling, the art of living well. If he slighted and
defied the opinions of others, it was only that he was more intent to
reconcile his practice with his own belief. Never idle or
self-indulgent, he preferred, when he wanted money, earning it by some
piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat or a fence,
planting, grafting, surveying, or other short work, to any long
engagements. With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in
wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live
in any part of the world. It would cost him less time to supply his
wants than another. He was therefore secure of his leisure.

A natural skill for mensuration, growing out of his mathematical
knowledge, and his habit of ascertaining the measures and distances of
objects which interested him, the size of trees, the depth and extent
of ponds and rivers, the height of mountains, and the air-line
distance of his favorite summits,--this, and his intimate knowledge of
the territory about Concord, made him drift into the profession of
land-surveyor. It had the advantage for him that it led him
continually into new and secluded grounds, and helped his studies of
Nature. His accuracy and skill in this work were readily appreciated,
and he found all the employment he wanted.

He could easily solve the problems of the surveyor, but he was daily
beset with graver questions, which he manfully confronted. He
interrogated every custom, and wished to settle all his practice on an
ideal foundation. He was a protestant _a l'outrance_, and few
lives contain so many renunciations. He was bred to no profession; he
never married; he lived alone; be never went to church; he never
voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank
no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist,
he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely, no doubt, for himself,
to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth,
and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or
inelegance. Perhaps he fell into his way of living without forecasting
it much, but approved it with later wisdom. "I am often reminded," he
wrote in his journal, "that, if I had bestowed on me the wealth of
Croesus, my aims must be still the same, and my means essentially the
same." He had no temptations to fight against,--no appetites, no
passions, no taste for elegant trifles. A fine house, dress, the
manners and talk of highly cultivated people were all thrown away on
him. He much preferred a good Indian, and considered these
refinements as impediments to conversation, wishing to meet his
companion on the simplest terms. He declined invitations to
dinner-parties, because there each was in every one's way, and he
could not meet the individuals to any purpose. "They make their
pride," he said, "in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in
making my dinner cost little." When asked at table what dish he
preferred, he answered, "The nearest." He did not like the taste of
wine, and never had a vice in his life. He said,--"I have a faint
recollection of pleasure derived from smoking dried lily-stems, before
I was a man. I had commonly a supply of these. I have never smoked
anything more noxious."

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them
himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so
much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking
hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers' and
fishermen's houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because
there he could better find the men and the information he wanted.

There was somewhat military in big nature not to be subdued, always
manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel himself
except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to
pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the
drum, to call his powers into full exercise. It cost him nothing to
say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes. It seemed as
if his first instinct on hearing a proposition was to controvert it,
so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily thought. This
habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social affections; and
though the companion would in the end acquit him of any malice or
untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence, no equal companion stood in
affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless. "I love Henry,"
said one of his friends, "but I cannot like him; and as for taking his
arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree."

Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and
threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people
whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could,
with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and
river. And he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search
for chestnuts or grapes. Talking, one day, of a public discourse,
Henry remarked, that whatever succeeded with the audience was bad. I
said, "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like
'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not see with regret that his page is
not solid with a right materialistic treatment, which delights
everybody?" Henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lectures
which reached only a few persons. But, at supper, a young girl,
understanding that he was to lecture at the Lyceum, sharply asked him,
"whether his lecture would be a nice, interesting story, such as she
wished to hear, or whether it was one of those old philosophical
things that she did not care about." Henry turned to her, and
bethought himself, and, I saw, was trying to believe that he had
matter that might fit her and her brother, who were to sit up and go
to the lecture, if it was a good one for them.

He was a speaker and actor of the truth,--born such,--and was ever
running into dramatic situations from this cause. In any circumstance,
it interested all bystanders to know what part Henry would take, and
what he would say; and he did not disappoint expectation, but used an
original judgment on each emergency. In 1845 he built himself a small
framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years
alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and
fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He
was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As
soon as he had exhausted the advantages of that solitude, he abandoned
it. In 1847, not approving some uses to which the public expenditure
was applied, he refused to pay his town tax, and was put in jail. A
friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance
was threatened the next year. But, as his friends paid the tax,
notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No
opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully
stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the
opinion of the company. It was of no consequence, if every one present
held the opposite opinion. On one occasion he went to the University
Library to procure some books. The librarian refused to lend
them. Mr. Thoreau repaired to the President, who stated to him the
rules and usages, which permitted the loan of books to resident
graduates, to clergymen who were alumni, and to some others resident
within a circle of ten miles' radius from the College. Mr. Thoreau
explained to the President that the railroad had destroyed the old
scale of distances,--that the library was useless, yes, and President
and College useless, on the terms of his rules,--that the one benefit
he owed to the College was its library,--that, at this moment, not
only his want of books was imperative, but he wanted a large number of
books, and assured him that he, Thoreau, and not the librarian, was
the proper custodian of these. In short, the President found the
petitioner so formidable, and the rules getting to look so ridiculous,
that he ended by giving him a privilege which in his hands proved
unlimited thereafter.

No truer American existed than Thoreau. His preference of his country
and condition was genuine, and his aversation from English and
European manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He listened
impatiently to news or _bon mots_ gleaned from London circles;
and though he tried to be civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men
were all imitating each other, and on a small mould. Why can they not
live as far apart as possible, and each be a man by himself? What he
sought was the most energetic nature; and he wished to go to Oregon,
not to London. "In every part of Great Britain," he wrote in his
diary, "are discovered traces of the Romans, their funereal urns,
their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least,
is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundations of
our houses on the ashes of a former civilization."

But, idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition
of tariffs, almost for abolition of government, it is needless to say
he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost
equally opposed to every class of reformers. Yet he paid the tribute
of his uniform respect to the Anti-Slavery party. One man, whose
personal acquaintance he had formed, he honored with exceptional
regard. Before the first friendly word had been spoken for Captain
John Brown, he sent notices to most houses in Concord, that he would
speak in a public hall on the condition and character of John Brown,
on Sunday evening, and invited all people to come. The Republican
Committee, the Abolitionist Committee, sent him word that it was
premature and not advisable. He replied,--"I did not send to you for
advice, but to announce that I am to speak." The hall was filled at
an early hour by people of all parties, and his earnest eulogy of the
hero was heard by all respectfully, by many with a sympathy that
surprised themselves.

It was said of Plotinus that he was ashamed of his body, and it is
very likely he had good reason for it,--that his body was a bad
servant, and he had not skill in dealing with the material world, as
happens often to men of abstract intellect. But Mr. Thoreau was
equipped with a most adapted and serviceable body. He was of short
stature, firmly built, of light complexion, with strong, serious blue
eyes, and a grave aspect,--his face covered in the late years with a
becoming beard. His senses were acute, his frame well-knit and hardy,
his hands strong and skilful in the use of tools. And there was a
wonderful fitness of body and mind. He could pace sixteen rods more
accurately than another man could measure them with rod and chain. He
could find his path in the woods at night, he said, better by his feet
than his eyes. He could estimate the measure of a tree very well by
his eye; he could estimate the weight of a calf or a pig, like a
dealer. From a box containing a bushel or more of loose pencils, he
could take up with his hands fast enough just a dozen pencils at every
grasp. He was a good swimmer, runner, skater, boatman, and would
probably outwalk most countrymen in a day's journey. And the relation
of body to mind was still finer than we have indicated. He said he
wanted every stride his legs made. The length of his walk uniformly
made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not
write at all.

He had a strong common sense, like that which Rose Flammock, the
weaver's daughter, in Scott's romance, commends in her father, as
resembling a yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper,
can equally well measure tapestry and cloth of gold. He had always a
new resource. When I was planting forest-trees, and had procured half
a peck of acorns, he said that only a small portion of them would be
sound, and proceeded to examine them, and select the sound ones. But
finding this took time, he said, "I think, if you put them all into
water, the good ones will sink"; which experiment we tried with
success. He could plan a garden, or a house, or a barn; would have
been competent to lead a "Pacific Exploring Expedition"; could give
judicious counsel in the gravest private or public affairs.

He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory. If he
brought you yesterday a new proposition, he would bring you to-day
another not less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and setting,
like all highly organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed the
only man of leisure in town, always ready for any excursion that
promised well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours. His
trenchant sense was never stopped by his rules of daily prudence, but
was always up to the new occasion. He liked and used the simplest
food, yet, when some one urged a vegetable diet, Thoreau thought all
diets a very small matter, saying that "the man who shoots the buffalo
lives better than the man who boards at the Graham House." He
said,--"You can sleep near the railroad, and never be disturbed:
Nature knows very well what sounds are worth attending to, and has
made up her mind not to hear the railroad-whistle. But things respect
the devout mind, and a mental ecstasy was never interrupted." He
noted, what repeatedly befell him, that, after receiving from a
distance a rare plant, he would presently find the same in his own
haunts. And those pieces of luck which happen only to good players
happened to him. One day, walking with a stranger, who inquired where
Indian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, "Everywhere," and,
stooping forward, picked one on the instant from the ground. At Mount
Washington, in Tuckerman's Ravine, Thoreau had a bad fall, and
sprained his foot. As he was in the act of getting up from his fall,
he saw for the first time the leaves of the _Arnica mollis_.

His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, keen perceptions, and
strong will, cannot yet account for the superiority which shone in his
simple and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was
an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which
showed him the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery,
which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted
light, serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an
unsleeping insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament
might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. In his
youth, he said, one day, "The other world is all my art: my pencils
will draw no other; my jack-knife will cut nothing else; I do not use
it as a means." This was the muse and genius that ruled his opinions,
conversation, studies, work, and course of life. This made him a
searching judge of men. At first glance he measured his companion,
and, though insensible to some fine traits of culture, could very well
report his weight and calibre. And this made the impression of genius
which his conversation sometimes gave.

He understood the matter in hand at a glance, and saw the limitations
and poverty of those he talked with, so that nothing seemed concealed
from such terrible eyes. I have repeatedly known young men of
sensibility converted in a moment to the belief that this was the man
they were in search of, the man of men, who could tell them all they
should do. His own dealing with them was never affectionate, but
superior, didactic,--scorning their petty ways,--very slowly
conceding, or not conceding at all, the promise of his society at
their houses, or even at his own. "Would he not walk with them?" He
did not know. There was nothing so important to him as his walk; he
had no walks to throw away on company. Visits were offered him from
respectful parties, but he declined them. Admiring friends offered to
carry him at their own cost to the Yellow-Stone River,--to the West
Indies,--to South America. But though nothing could be more grave or
considered than his refusals, they remind one in quite new relations
of that fop Brummel's reply to the gentleman who offered him his
carriage in a shower, "But where will _you_ ride, then?"--and
what accusing silences, and what searching and irresistible speeches,
battering down all defences, his companions can remember!

Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields,
hills, and waters of his native town, that he made them known and
interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. The
river on whose banks he was born and died he knew from its springs to
its confluence with the Merrimack. He had made summer and winter
observations on it for many years, and at every hour of the day and
the night. The result of the recent survey of the Water Commissioners
appointed by the State of Massachusetts he had reached by his private
experiments, several years earlier. Every fact which occurs in the
bed, on the banks, or in the air over it; the fishes, and their
spawning and nests, their manners, their food; the shad-flies which
fill the air on a certain evening once a year, and which are snapped
at by the fishes so ravenously that many of these die of repletion;
the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which
heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,--these heaps the huge nests of
small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck,
sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck, and
fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the
banks vocal,--were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and
fellow-creatures; so that he felt an absurdity or violence in any
narrative of one of these by itself apart, and still more of its
dimensions on an inch-rule, or in the exhibition of its skeleton, or
the specimen of a squirrel or a bird in brandy. He liked to speak of
the manners of the river, as itself a lawful creature, yet with
exactness, and always to an observed fact. As he knew the river, so
the ponds in this region.

One of the weapons he used, more important than microscope or
alcohol-receiver to other investigators, was a whim which grew on him
by indulgence, yet appeared in gravest statement, namely, of extolling
his own town and neighborhood as the most favored centre for natural
observation. He remarked that the Flora of Massachusetts embraced
almost all the important plants of America,--most of the oaks, most
of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the
nuts. He returned Kane's "Arctic Voyage" to a friend of whom he had
borrowed it, with the remark, that "most of the phenomena noted might
be observed in Concord." He seemed a little envious of the Pole, for
the coincident sunrise and sunset, or five minutes' day after six
months: a splendid fact, which Annursnuc had never afforded him. He
found red snow in one of his walks, and told me that he expected to
find yet the _Victoria regia_ in Concord. He was the attorney of
the indigenous plants, and owned to a preference of the weeds to the
imported plants, as of the Indian to the civilized man,--and noticed,
with pleasure, that the willow bean-poles of his neighbor had grown
more than his beans. "See these weeds," he said, "which have been
hoed at by a million farmers all spring and summer, and yet have
prevailed, and just now come out triumphant over all lanes, pastures,
fields, and gardens, such is their vigor. We have insulted them with
low names, too,--as Pigweed, Wormwood, Chickweed, Shad-Blossom." He
says, "They have brave names, too,--Ambrosia, Stellaria, Amelanchia,
Amaranth, etc."

I think his fancy for referring everything to the meridian of Concord
did not grow out of any ignorance or depreciation of other longitudes
or latitudes, but was rather a playful expression of his conviction of
the indifferency of all places, and that the best place for each is
where he stands. He expressed it once in this wise:--"I think nothing
is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mould under your feet is not
sweeter to you to eat than any other in this world, or in any world."

The other weapon with which he conquered all obstacles in science was
patience. He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested
on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from him,
should come back, and resume its habits, nay, moved by curiosity,
should come to him and watch him.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the
country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths
of his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and what
creature had taken this path before him. One must submit abjectly to
such a guide, and the reward was great. Under his arm he carried an
old music-book to press plants; in his pocket, his diary and pencil, a
spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife, and twine. He wore straw
hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave shrub-oaks and
smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk's or a squirrel's nest. He
waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no
insignificant part of his armor. On the day I speak of he looked for
the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination
of the florets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He drew
out of his breast-pocket his diary, and read the names of all the
plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a
banker when his notes fall due. The Cypripedium not due till
to-morrow. He thought, that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp,
he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was within two
days. The redstart was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks,
whose brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, and whose
fine clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which has got
rid of its hoarseness. Presently he heard a note which he called that
of the night-warbler, a bird he had never identified, had been in
search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act
of diving down into a tree or bush, and which it was vain to seek; the
only bird that sings indifferently by night and by day. I told him he
must beware of finding and booking it, lest life should have nothing
more to show him. He said, "What you seek in vain for, half your life,
one day you come full upon all the family at dinner. You seek it like
a dream, and as soon as you find it you become its prey."

His interest in the flower or the bird lay very deep in his mind, was
connected with Nature,--and the meaning of Nature was never attempted
to be defined by him. He would not offer a memoir of his observations
to the Natural History Society. "Why should I? To detach the
description from its connections in my mind would make it no longer
true or valuable to me: and they do not wish what belongs to it." His
power of observation seemed to indicate additional senses. He saw as
with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a
photographic register of all he saw and heard. And yet none knew
better than he that it is not the fact that imports, but the
impression or effect of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory
in his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18