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Title: Henry Thoreau, bachelor of nature
Author: Léon Bazalgette
Translator: Van Wyck Brooks
Release date: June 3, 2026 [eBook #78810]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1924
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78810
Credits: Sean (@parchmentglow)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY THOREAU, BACHELOR OF NATURE ***
Henry Thoreau
BACHELOR OF NATURE
_by_ Léon Bazalgette
Translated by
Van Wyck Brooks
“My friend will be bold to conjecture.
He will guess bravely at the significance
of my words.”
--_Autumn_
NEW YORK
Harcourt, Brace and Company
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
Published, November, 1924.
Second printing, January, 1925.
Printed in the U. S. A.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Abundantly as Henry Thoreau informs us about himself in his Journal,
his correspondence and his writings, his story, owing to the extreme
reticence of his nature, would obviously be incomplete if it were
reduced to these elements alone. To finish it remained the task
of certain of his contemporaries, members of his circle. What the
following pages owe to their invaluable testimony is so evident that
it has not been thought necessary to emphasize this indebtedness by
crowding the book with notes, as if it laid any claim to erudition.
Nevertheless, this absence of references, ill-judged as it may be, must
not be taken to imply that this portrait-study has been inspired by
any desire less exacting than their own for the pure and simple truth.
It merely means that behind this truth there was perhaps another, less
often sought for, but no less moving after these vanished years.
I
Someone has died in the village: the man who bought the house on the
square a year ago--the retired seaman.
A new face that has soon disappeared. Perhaps he had his reasons in
choosing for his retreat this straggling village, twenty miles from
the city from which he came. Or perhaps it had been enough for him to
chance upon it one day, a city-dweller in search of a resting-place, to
be won by the fine elms and maples that sheltered a gracious village,
nestling among the low hills and deep woods and named after the
slow-moving river that watered the broad meadows: Concord.
For a man who had lived in the bustle of a port after a life of
adventure, everything there breathed a blessed peace. Nor was the
silence of the fields too sedative for one who had come from a capital.
Concord smiled in the agreeable spectacle of its thousand inhabitants,
farmers, workmen, tradespeople, village officials, and formed a
stopping-place for the stage-coach, the travellers, the carters who
passed through it on their way to the high pastoral regions of New
Hampshire. There was an inn, there were taverns where they served you
a stiff glass of liquor, several stores, the Town Hall. There was the
wooden church, too, and a fine stone jail that sheltered the county
criminals. They even hanged people there now and then. A man who was
accustomed to the world would not feel too remote from civilization.
Perhaps, too, the renown of a spot where the country-folk had offered
a bold and decisive resistance to the troops of His Britannic Majesty,
at the dawn of the Revolution, had affected his choice. But this memory
of twenty-five years ago was of far less importance than the promise
of the forests of pines and oaks and the fields and the footpaths
along the slopes for a man who knew he was ill and was looking for a
retreat where he could recover the strength of his lungs.... In the
pine-scented air of Concord floated the hope of a cure. And here he had
indeed found himself at rest, forever. The pure air of the valley had
not been able to restore the consumptive to health, no, nor the whey he
used to take at the houses of his friends on the days when they made
cheese, nor the simples from which he had made a syrup for his evil
cough. A man of moderate height, but broad-backed, who would once have
seized a barrel of molasses and carried it on his head. An old seaman,
in short, dying now of consumption, at the age of forty-seven, in the
year one of the nineteenth century, in the house on the square that he
had just bought the year before, and going to his rest in the cemetery
of a New England village, twenty miles from the ocean that he had put
between himself and his kindred, the Thoreaus of Saint-Helier.
For he was a lad from the Old World who had set out to seek his fortune
in the colonies, leaving behind him at nineteen a little green island
in order to attempt a great continent of mystery and chance. In Jersey,
where he was born, his family lived in comfort as people of substance,
of good Norman stock, speaking the old _langue d’oïl_. How would the
old family name sound in another tongue? The mother was a certain Marie
le Galais, who had had nine children and was in her seventy-ninth year
at the moment when her John, over there, had just been laid, without
her knowledge, in the Concord cemetery, laid there by the children he
had left behind him. The late Philippe Thoreau, her husband, had taken
over the business of his father, a wine merchant, with a branch in
London, where two of their daughters had married extremely well. They
belonged to the solid bourgeoisie, these Norman Thoreaus.
The younger son of a numerous family, John had not waited for his
twentieth year before yielding to the invitation of a sailing vessel
that plied between Boston and Saint-Helier, and he had set out, leaving
his family to their casks on the little Channel island. John had gone
to sea. On his first long voyage he was shipwrecked and suffered
much. At Boston, along the docks, he found employment with various
ship-chandlers. Then the war broke out; no more work. The Harbour was
blockaded by the British fleet. He dug in the trenches round the town,
under the fire of the guns. Then he shipped on a privateer that set
out in pursuit of English vessels: for a Jerseyman, this was to follow
one of the hardiest traditions of his race. At the end of the war his
share of the prizes enabled him to open a shop on Long Wharf, where,
with one partner, he carried on business for twenty years. John had not
discredited his family; in the sale of molasses and other substantial
products, he had resumed the family path of business and sound
principles.
At twenty-seven he married Jane Burns, the child of a Scottish emigrant
to Massachusetts and of the daughter of a Quaker who was a sailor too.
When she died, after fifteen years, he owned, aside from the proceeds
of his prosperous trade, the town-house which Jane had inherited from
her grandfather David, the Quaker: a fine house worth all of $10,000.
A widower, forty years old, with a houseful of children--the eldest,
eight years old, still a little girl--John Thoreau, the merchant of
Long Wharf, took for his second wife a certain Widow Kettell. Shortly
after this, finding his health affected, he sold out his business and
retired to the country to live on his income.
And now the house he had bought on the square at Concord, thanks to
the handsome fortune amassed in these twenty years of trade, sheltered
a woman widowed anew and the little children of whom the oldest boy,
John, second of the name, was fourteen at the death of his father--and
four others bearing in their breast a heritage that weighed more
heavily than the few thousand dollars that were to come to each of
them....
* * * * *
A child was born on the Minot farm, on the Eastern edge of the village,
by that road down there, a little to one side, which they called, no
one knew why, the Virginia Road. Perhaps because it dived down into a
vague country, in the other direction from the road that led to the
market-place.
But there was no need to take the child to the market-place. The father
with his wife and his two chicks, Helen, not yet five, and John,
who was three, found themselves there, for want of anything better,
because his mother-in-law Minot, left a widow for the second time, had
given him a chance to turn his ability to account on the farm. This
agriculturist by accident was the eldest son of the old sailor who had
come to Concord to die: John Thoreau II, now thirty years old and a man
upon whom fortune, far from smiling, had turned its bare teeth.
No luck yet for good little John. Nevertheless, the paternal shade
had guided him along the right path: he should undoubtedly have been
a merchant, like his father, like the Thoreaus of Saint-Helier. Good
blood would tell. After a year of school to complete his primary
studies begun in Boston, he had lost no time in apprenticing himself
to their neighbour, who kept a store and added to the dignity of a
merchant that of parish Deacon. Thus the potent sisters Grocery and
Piety took the little store-clerk by the hand. Then he enlarged his
experience of the world and affairs at a small dry-goods store in the
little town of Salem. The kindly epoch still existed when people were
not afraid of humanising trade by offering you a glass of liquor over
the counter, when you had made a sizable purchase.
At twenty-one, rich in practical knowledge acquired elsewhere and with
a few bank-notes borrowed from his good step-mother, John had returned
to Concord to open a store. The beginning was most promising, but he
took a partner with whom he had a misunderstanding--the result was a
law-suit, which he won. Meanwhile the store had failed. He had to begin
all over again. Elizabeth, his older sister, had married and gone to
live in Maine. John followed and joined them, establishing himself at
Bangor with his brother-in-law, on the edge of the wilderness, where
the Indians were their best customers. Was John homesick, or was the
trade insufficient to maintain two managers? However it was, Concord
soon saw him back again, and at twenty-five, like a wise little man, he
married there.
This charming, sprightly Cynthia certainly brought our brave John the
greatest happiness of his life. But she brought him nothing else; so
the two of them set out together to try their fortune in Boston, the
great city. Who could tell, if one had had no luck thus far in villages
and small towns, perhaps one was cut out for success in a capital. Not
in this case, not this time. The solidest wealth they acquired was a
new baby, John, third of the name, following Helen, born the same year
as their marriage. And then they returned to Concord, to the house of
Cynthia’s mother, the farm where Cynthia herself had been living at
the time of her marriage. Home enough for a young family without any
definite situation; before tempting chance elsewhere, a little farming,
to help the mother-in-law, would serve in the interval. And then the
maternal presence would not be unprofitable for Cynthia, during her
imminent confinement.
Little chick, born by chance on an out-of-the-way farm, when your
grandfather died in a big house on the town square, are you as poor
as all that at the moment when you are cast upon this earth where he,
the old privateer, has been resting for sixteen years? In your veins
the calm blood of the Thoreaus is united with the impetuous blood of
the Dunbars; from this mixture you will be able to make something
perhaps, if you have a touch of fancy. Your father is a fine, sturdy
fellow, serious and kind-hearted, who is doing his best to make his way
with his three little children. If he has not developed into a great
commercial strategist, fate has made up for it by giving him a superior
wife. A very good thing, for your arrival in the world has not improved
their fortune.
No more than her husband was Cynthia a child of Concord. They were of
the same age. Just as he had come as a boy, with his people, so she
had come as a little girl, with her mother, from New Hampshire, where
the father whom she had never known, Asa Dunbar, had died. Cynthia was
the daughter of a minister, a minister who had been at the same time a
counsellor-at-law and a zealous freemason. On the maternal side, the
great crisis of the Revolution, which had given the first John Thoreau
an opportunity to amass a handsome capital, had ruined the family,
who had once been important and influential gentlefolk. Colonel
Jones, her grandfather, who, with his eight sons, had taken the side
of the Crown, had shared the lot of the vanquished: confiscation of
their land, imprisonment, banishment. The chivalrous and adventurous
race of the Joneses had left their mark upon Cynthia in traits as
pronounced as the obscurity of her husband’s character: a taste for
elegance, a gift of eloquence. She knew how to talk, and there was as
much conviction in her words as in his silence. She loved to set the
lively tone of a bow of ribbon singing on a piece of cloth, like a
declaration of independence. She was not afraid to startle people by
a freedom of speech that was sharp enough to be malicious. It was a
handsome girl with dark eyes that John had taken for his wife, with
the calm assurance of these little serious, sedate men. Her charming
voice, when she sang, the animation of her talk, the vividness of her
replies had made up for his abysses of silence and self-effacement.
Happiest of harmonies, secured by an unassuming man whose wife talks
and is cheerful and has enough wit for two. John and Cynthia formed one
of those happy unions to which one brings genius, the other his lack
of genius, and both have courage enough to meet the ups and downs of
existence.
Cynthia, the youngest of her family, had two sisters, Sophia and
Louisa. She had the luck to possess a brother also, the gem of the
Dunbars, the rare flower of generations that had multiplied their
branches to blossom at last in the alliance of a minister with the
daughter of a gentleman-farmer. Charles Dunbar had taken the sunny
side of life. He had not asked it to make dollars grow on the counter
of a shop or in the furrows of husbandry where a man strains his
back, greatly to the detriment of his good-humour; he had let it go
its own way, since it was full of amusing things and he himself was
a strong man, capable of mastering it. Not stupid enough to settle
down, he rambled from village to village, an eternal apprentice whose
apprenticeship pursued its course especially in taverns. A splendid
voice, bursting from his athletic frame, was enough to assure him
success among his jolly comrades. But Uncle Charles was also an
incomparable wag. It is not enough to draw the long bow and talk well
in a tavern to put the company in a cheerful mood: you must show what
you are. Then you do astonishing tricks with cards, toss your hat into
the air and catch it again on the top of your head, swallow your nose,
or juggle away the knives, forks and plates on the table, refusing to
restore them until the landlord agrees not to charge you for your meal.
And as if this were not enough, you seize a ten-foot ladder, stand it
upright without any support, clamber up to the last rung and descend on
the other side, pushing it back with your foot. Yes, and handsomely.
Would any of these gentlemen like to have a try?... But old Charles’s
great feat was wrestling. With him wrestling was a primal, necessary
function, like eating and drinking. In the most natural way in the
world, he would walk into your house with the flattering remark, “Come
along, I’m going to throw you. Out with you.” And you had to go out,
spread some straw in the yard and place yourself in position. Of course
he did throw you. And then he was as pleased as if you had invited him
to the best of dinners at your house. This passion for wrestling seized
him suddenly as sensual desire seizes people who are badly brought
up. And you never had to be afraid that he would break your ribs: an
accomplished wrestler, he would displant you neatly, like an artist and
a gentleman. In this vocation he had lost all his teeth at the age of
twenty-one, which did not prevent him from having every blessed one of
them later on. Perhaps they had grown again--you never can tell with
these fire-eaters.
To judge him from this unconventional manner of living, anyone might
suppose that Charles would have been the victim of bad habits. A
great mistake. He did not gamble, he drank only in reason, he did not
smoke--at most, for the sake of politeness, he would take a pinch
of snuff if you offered it to him. His dress was always correct and
his language free from coarseness. Among his rare privileges Charles
possessed that of suddenly falling asleep in the very midst of whatever
he happened to be doing. Sometimes, with his razor in his hand, before
his mirror, without any reason he would succumb to sleep; and in order
to conform to the strict observance of the Sabbath which, as we know,
prohibits sleep, he found it necessary to devote himself on that day
to some absorbing occupation, such as sprouting potatoes. In pursuing
these artistic hobbies one does not gather very much of this world’s
goods, but he had found more enviable advantages: a reputation solidly
established in various public places and the promise of restoring
to the Lord a soul as fresh as on the day when it had been confided
to his care. Charles Dunbar, you are the salt of your family. Your
kindred should bless you. And as for this baby nephew who is just
born, to have an uncle who can hold himself in equilibrium on the top
of an unsupported ladder and possesses that formidable voice which,
from the strand, hails a ship at sea--what self-command this will give
him later, and what carrying-power for anything he may have to say or
proclaim.... If he is seized with a desire to leap over some obstacle,
his legs will remember you who, while leading your oxen, sprang over
the yoke with your feet together, once, twice, a mere nothing to amuse
the lads of the saw-mill whose eyes popped out of their heads at this
phenomenon.
When she was eight years old, Cynthia had set out by sea on a
ramshackle boat, with her mother and her two sisters, to see her
Jones uncles, the refugees in Maine and Canada. It was shortly after
this rather risky voyage that the mother and the daughter had come
to Concord, where the former had remarried and the latter, fifteen
years later, had fixed her destiny, sought her fortune, by uniting her
poverty with John’s.
To their possessions had now been added this youngster born on the
farm. The 12th of July, 1817, was inscribed on the tablets of the
household. Also the date of baptism, three months later, when,
stoically, uttering no shrill cries, Henry David (this latter name in
memory of Uncle David, who had just died) entered upon the Christian
life. One enters as one can. But whatever might be the virtue of the
baptismal water and the minister of the parish, Dr. Ripley, would it
prevail against the farm and the old deserted road on the edge of
which the child had been born? Glance at this farm: it is an ancient
two-storied dwelling, with plank walls discoloured with age, a setting
as appropriate for the birth of a god as for the coming of this poor
little soul. It stands on a knoll where the grass grows at will. No
fence. In front, a running brook. Around it, meadows and orchards,
where you smell the good soil and the turf. The nearest neighbour is
a long way off. The old winding road leads to no point whither the
interests of the villagers call them; and left to itself, it smiles at
its turnings, its ruts, at all the weeds on its banks, inviting the
fields it passes to share its delightful futility. The family occupies
one wing of the dwelling, the other half being inhabited by some people
who also have a little boy, in whose company John, with the authority
of his three years, drives the turkeys to pasture.
For the rest, the revenues of the farm were so small that the
mother-in-law had barely enough to live on. Eight months after
Henry’s birth, the household went to rejoin her in the red house
where she lived at the end of the village. The head of a family whose
peregrinations had not yet brought him wealth tried to think of some
better means of providing bread for these three little importunate
beaks. One must manage somehow. What remained of the paternal heritage
was scarcely worth talking about: the numerous minors having once
grown up, the lawyers and the trustees had left it nothing but a pale
memory. At the death of the Widow Kettell, each of the children of
the old sailor had pocketed a few crumbs, and that was the end of it.
And John’s share of the Boston house was already mortgaged. He had to
put his wits together. John had an idea. A vocation is not so easily
renounced, especially when it is confirmed by the voice of one’s
ancestors. Suppose they were to try Chelmsford over there, ten miles
away, and take a store. Cynthia could wait on the customers, while
John, who was very fertile in manual resources in spite of his modest
air, would try to find work outside. He could paint signs and do odd
jobs, and they would get on somehow.
Henry’s Aunt Sarah had already taught him to walk when, at sixteen
months, he took part in the exodus to Chelmsford. They remained there
two years and a half, keeping a grocery with a bar, near the church.
They sold spirits. They were honest and upright. But it’s always the
same story: fortune, which so joyously allows herself to be captured
by dare-devils, has not even the shadow of a smile for these honest
and reserved little Johns, even when they offer it a glass over the
counter. A pity, but there was no need to be discouraged because a
fourth child had been born. This one was a daughter; she was going to
bring them happiness and they would call her Sophia. Once more they set
out to try the capital, where people were rolling in money and might
be willing to let a few crumbs drop into the till of an honest man.
They found a perch in the southern part of Boston, calling on the way
at Concord. During this journey a pair of infant eyes that were hardly
open as yet to the images of the world were impressed by the glimpse
of a wild pond in the setting of an immemorial forest. The gaze of a
tender little creature, who knew nothing about the gold they had set
out to win among the rich, secretly absorbed the lustre of this pearl.
In two years of the great city they had three abodes. The town offered
every facility for sending to school a little boy of five, but there
was no great harvest for his parents to reap there. They were obliged
to give it up as hopeless. These removals had brought the young
household no success.
There was nothing to do but to return to the fold, to the house on
the square in which Thoreau the father had died, the father upon whom
fortune had smiled, and where John’s two sisters lived. It was the last
resource. John had been an apprentice in the village, he knew everybody
there, and there the little ones had been born. After all, it might be
better to live in poverty in Concord than to tempt chance elsewhere.
Off for old Concord. An honest little man, pursued by ill fortune, with
four chicks and their mother, was to seek his destiny henceforth in the
shadow of the great elms.
* * * * *
You will soon be six years old. Your parents have toiled and tried
every expedient to make ends meet, but for you who do not enter into
these domestic considerations life is a long holiday. All Concord is
spread out on your lap, like a great book full of pictures and songs.
You go forth and meet the adventures the roads offer. A dog passes,
a man, a cart. The great elms sigh. A cock calls in the distance of
the grey-white village. Two neighbours are soberly gossiping. The
first beautiful drops of a shower drum on the leaves and the wooden
sidewalk. You have no desire to turn back. The little girl ahead of you
is hurrying to the store. All these and how many other marvels, from
morning to bedtime, the long stretch of unmeasured hours, are all for
you, you who are not a king’s son, but the little Henry of the man who
lives on the village square, in the centre of a bustling, confused,
spangled universe, striped with sun-rays and surprises.
You are growing, and about you as you grow the world takes form. When
you are big and able to stand firmly on your feet, people depend on
you and entrust you with important commissions: leading the cow to
pasture, running on errands in the village. When you are very big you
are allowed to do everything; and if you have a brother who is much
bigger than you there are no limits to the conquests you can make
together. You are bound only by the four points of the compass. The
country about the village stretches away to the impossible. You have a
knife in your pocket, with which you can whittle anything you please,
a whistle, a weapon, a slingshot, a wagon. You make a trap. You rove
on wild adventures through the sunny meadows, gorge yourself with
huckleberries, run about, playing Indian, dig a cave, build a hut and
store it with provisions. At twelve you go hunting with your brother.
To feel the fowling-piece hanging from your shoulder, to be the crafty
master of the life and death of the creatures who have no suspicion
of your overwhelming power, to lie in wait for them, press the gun to
your shoulder, take aim, see the animal roll or tumble over: fearful
joys. There will be others later, but will they have the pure taste of
these? When you penetrate into these deep woods, a swarming world opens
before you that probably has no end. No village, no houses, no parents,
no fences any more; nothing but the great pines and the solemn oaks,
assembled like conspirators to hold counsel far from listening ears.
You are alone and very small under those heads touching one another
up there, but you feel no fear. You are armed, and, besides, your big
brother is with you. In the middle of the woods there is a pond towards
which the arches of foliage bend amid their garlands of wild vines. You
come there to fish for pouts and breams. You have brought your lunch to
spend the whole day there, as if you were on a desert island, on the
edge of this smooth water that mirrors the patriarchal trees. Night has
fallen; you have made a fire on the stones and before going away you
seize the red brands and shake them, describing fiery circles in the
air, then throw them into the water where they hiss and go out. Then,
when the flames are dead, you find yourself once more in the dense
night, in a darkness thick enough to cut, and groping your way you
return to the village with your fish--two Concord boys, who scour the
earth barefoot the better to possess it.
To be a Concord boy is to be intoxicated with the joy of the river, the
two rivers that unite here, the sluggish one and the lively one, and
pull as well together as John and Cynthia. It is to swim by the hour
in the cove with your comrades, under the arbour of pine branches that
shelters your duck-like sports. In the spring the overflowing river
floods the meadows--an immense sheet of water from which the trees
emerge: it is no longer fifty yards from bank to bank but half a mile
wide and more, like a great lake with gulls flying over it. There is
hay-time and the cranberry season; there are the Cliffs from which you
descry the faraway peaks where you have never gone, where perhaps the
world ends--since over there is the empire of the setting sun. You sail
a boat with a paddle or a mast, drink in the fragrance of the banks,
the waterplants, the crumpled mint-leaves, or you carry your line
with you and are engrossed for hours, dividing your attention between
the mystery of the depths that spread quivering up to your float and
the squadrons of clouds that cleave the great sky spread out over the
meadows. At these times you encounter now and then an old fisherman,
leathery and taciturn, who blends into the bank of the river, his
ancient cloak having taken its colour with time, and returns at evening
with slow steps to his little shanty on the edge of the village. When
he is fishing you have no desire to disturb him; he looks so grave.
He is not amusing himself, he is conducting a rite--the rite of the
compleat angler. No one pays any attention to the old chap: but Henry
knows him well and is attracted by his silence. Perhaps he has been
there since the time of the Indians; he is ageless. This must be old
Father Musketaquid, who is on the most intimate terms with all the
fishes.
And then the immense charm of the passage of an occasional barge on the
river, come who knows whence?--the rivers, whence come they? whither
do they go?--floating soundlessly towards nowhere. One day you see
that barge moored at the edge of a meadow; the following day it has
disappeared. To what race do these men on board belong? What language
do they speak? They have come from the world outside and yet they know
the river so well.... When will they pass again? On these boats are
piled hogsheads full of lime or bricks or iron-ore, with wheel-barrows.
How do they manage not to sink under this formidable weight? And yet,
when you climb up there, it is firm, it does not give. Strange. And
these men who, they say, sleep in their boats and live there as Henry
lives in a house on the village square.... How he would love to sleep
in a boat too, eat there, light a fire, spend the whole night on the
water! There are people who insist that these boats have sails like the
boats that go on the ocean; they have seen them. How can you believe
that? They pass like the birds, conjuring up other lands and a whole
unknown world to which the river may lead, a world that is certainly
impenetrable. Henry dashes off with his brother to feast on this
marvel. But he has still more beautiful sensations. Once a year a group
of men with reddish brown faces, altogether different from the men
of the village, come and camp under a tent in the meadows. They make
baskets and offer you collars of glass beads. Among themselves they
speak the language of sorcerers. They have a canoe which they manage in
the strangest fashion. The big people tell you that they were once the
masters of the country, in the days of old Tahataivan, before such a
place as Concord ever existed. If you had a canoe and were one of the
Redskins, you would not make baskets; you would spend your time hunting
and fishing and making expeditions; you would be one of the kings of
the country.
There is, of course, a school to which they send you, for it is a fine
thing to know how to read straight off, like your father, who reads
the newspaper. But the class is only an interlude between two sessions
of school out of doors. The river, the ponds are hard and smooth as
steel; it is the season for skating and sleighing-parties on the snow.
What does it matter that your sled has no iron runners and the other
boys make fun of it? You love it just the same because it is your own,
and nothing in the world could induce you to give it up. When you know
how to read, write and cipher, you still have a great many things
to learn, for your family dreams of a more brilliant future for you
than that of a store-keeper. So you enter the Academy founded by the
well-to-do for boys who want to become learned men. You must master
Greek, Latin, French, plunge into the classics, and grind away till you
are sixteen.
To follow the course at the Concord Academy and become better educated
than your parents is all very fine, for Concord has so many ways
of compensating you. But afterwards? These ambitious parents have
conceived the bold project of sending their younger boy to college to
learn what the Concord Academy cannot teach him. To leave Concord....
Ah, how desolate the Greek, the Latin, the French, this stupendous
human learning looks at the thought of all you must leave behind in
order to fathom its mysteries!... How heavy your heart is, at sixteen,
Henry, with these early tender affections to which you are to bid
an abrupt farewell as you set out for Harvard ... you, the son of
the little store-keeper, to serve your time in a department store of
learning.
II
At the age of twenty the student Henry Thoreau left the university with
his bachelor’s degree. This was the recompense for four years passed
away from Concord, four years save for the vacations and the time he
had returned to spend with his family because of ill-health. As for
this title, he may have given it its due--he was certainly not inclined
to over-value it.
Upon entering college, he had left a village environment where equality
was not a joke but a daily observance--left this environment to find
himself, the child of small folk, suddenly thrown among the offspring
of the fortunate ones of this world. In spite of the part-scholarship
which they had obtained for him, his parents, his sister Helen, his
aunts, in order to provide for the cost of his studies, had been
obliged to deprive themselves. At college also, to be sure, a kind of
equality prevailed among the students; but there it was an equality
with a difference. He was a country boy among these wide-awake young
men in whose eyes he was from the village indeed. Since his parents,
his sister, had been obliged to scant themselves to purchase his right
to a share of learning, he was inclined to feel certain things a little
differently from the way he would have felt them if he had been the son
of a senator.
He was assigned to a little room on a top floor of the hive. This was
natural enough. Natural too that the young men in the neighbouring
rooms liked to kick up a shindy when he wanted to work. But it only
made him react the more strongly, and he dreamed.
This environment exhaled an odour that rather annoyed him, not so
much because it had nothing in common with that of the new-mown hay
of the Concord meadows but because it was the odour of an exclusive
humanity, comfortably quartered in first-class state-rooms while the
common passengers made shift as they could between decks. No doubt
there were some charming fellows among these young men, and most of
them were generous enough to treat a poor comrade as if he were one
of themselves. And was it their fault, these college boys, if their
papas travelled in the first class and the atmosphere that surrounded
them was a first-cabin atmosphere? Among these sons of the well-to-do,
future lawyers, future ministers, future diplomats, captains of
industry, pillars of society, Henry felt out of his element. He was
anything but in tune with them. With a secret pride in his plebeian
hands, he exaggerated his reserve, his remoteness, his stiffness in the
presence of these boys who knew so little of the world of toil. The
hand he held out to them was nerveless. He was a Henry always absorbed
in his own thoughts, with his eyes on the ground as if he were seeking
something that did not grow there. He was, indeed, somewhere else.
If he had hardly any real comrades, it was because he had no desire
to make them. These well-dressed, jovial souls, with their special
recreations, their fine parties, their student manners, left him
surprisingly cold. Their sisters, their mothers had not had to deprive
themselves to pay for their studies. He was the son of a little village
shopkeeper, with a soul that already aspired very much higher than the
great stores where they were to lord it.
Besides, he was decidedly rustic in his appearance, this oddly dressed
scholarship-holder. He should have been dressed in black; it was the
rule of the institution. The colleges see the world in black and he was
here to adapt himself to their vision. But the only suit Henry had was
a green one which his father had had made for him at great expense,
and he was obliged to put it on every morning. There were evenings
when, as he undressed, he wished that its greenness were still greener
so as to be even more conspicuous among all these black backs. A good
olive green is less shabby-looking than a black coat that is always
threatening to let you see the thread. You must never let the thread be
seen in this fine black-coated world.
And then in his secret soul homesickness tormented him. Everything he
loved was out there, and it left a great void in his eighteen-year-old
heart. When he heard the thrush singing in the college yard, Harvard
ceased to exist, the library, the examinations he was preparing for....
Nothing remained but a dejected prisoner in his prison. Sometimes, as
he bent over a textbook, the meaning of the words he read was lost
in the sound of the wind that came to him in gusts from the woods of
Concord, and with a wild bound the fancy of the exile leaped over the
wall and sprang towards those dear haunted spots. It required a great
effort to recall the heart-sick fugitive and set himself to work again
in the cell of that austere building. At such moments as these, when
he compared the quality of what he had left behind him and the cost
of what he was acquiring, how could he help feeling in his bitterness
that what he was missing was beyond price? The only remedy was to bury
himself in study. All his free time Henry passed in the library, in
the company of the classics or the old English poets, from Chaucer
to the Elizabethans, who spoke to his solitary heart, a habit that
rendered him still more unsociable and so isolated him that he felt,
in this buzzing community, as if he were doing penance in the desert.
That natural gravity, which had caused him to be nicknamed “the
Judge” by his little playfellows of the village sleighing-parties,
had not been softened by solitary study, his impressions as a college
boy, his loneliness--far from it. The already taciturn child, who had
given himself up to play passionately but with an utter seriousness,
ultra-sensitive to everything that pricked his self-esteem, became
still more self-absorbed the more he grew during these lean years. The
hedgehog remained rolled up. It was as if he had something as precious
as his life to safeguard and was protecting it fiercely. This student
in his little room on the top floor was not one of those creatures that
people tame.
Henry was not conspicuous for his success. He had made a good record in
his studies, working hard to please himself. But in the examinations he
had not shone. It was even remarked, not without surprise, among his
professors, that this studious, gifted boy took no particular pains to
distinguish himself; in the holder of a scholarship this was almost an
offense and they had made him feel it. Thanks to the benefactors of the
college his studies were partly paid for by the revenues of an old farm
which he had to go and collect himself, braving the watch-dogs and the
ill-humour of the unwilling farmer. In any case, it was a favour. A
beneficiary should show his gratitude by exerting himself to the utmost
and carrying off all the honours. When you are poor, you are expected
to make up for this fault by your vigorous performances in composition.
He had read enormously aside from the curriculum and his preparation
for examinations. And he had learned how to express himself. His early
prose exhibits that firmness which is only acquired through a certain
quality of mind after much thought and the assiduous following of the
old masters. In some of his compositions and letters he reveals a
surprising independence, that of a boy who sturdily believes in another
civilization than that of the “civilized” and turns aside from the
beaten roads to follow a road of his own where his instinct directs
him better than the guide-posts. Hear this: “Our Indian is more of a
man than the inhabitant of a city. He lives as a man, he thinks as a
man, he dies as a man. The latter, it is true, is learned. Learning is
Art’s creature, but it is not essential to the perfect man; it cannot
educate....” Words of a solitary in the midst of the crowd, written
in a temple of knowledge with the accent of faith and the pungency of
revolt. At eighteen, he does not fear to make an apology for extremism,
denouncing half-way solutions, the herd-spirit, the fear of being
singular, the cowardice that follows the fashion and makes men “mere
tools in the hands of others.” Henry wearing his green coat among the
black costumes, far from apologizing for this incongruity, vigorously
translates it into a rule of conduct. “We are a nation of speculators,
stockholders and money-changers,” he writes before his nineteenth year,
hinting at a native literature still to be born in the New World, “the
establishment of a pure and nervous language.” And at the moment when
he leaves Harvard, he attacks in his Commencement oration the spirit
of lucre, the cur-spirit, with a vivacity, a conviction that slightly
oversteps the tone of university controversy: “Could one examine this
beehive of ours from an observatory among the stars, he would perceive
an unwonted degree of bustle in these later ages.... Where he found
one man to admire with him his fair dwelling-place, the ninety and
nine would be scraping together a little of the gilded dust upon its
surface.... This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than
it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be
admired and enjoyed than used. The order of things should be somewhat
reversed: the seventh should be man’s day of toil, wherein to earn his
living by the sweat of his brow; and the other six his Sabbath of the
affections and the soul....”
He had emerged from the factory, but it had not succeeded in casting
him in its mould. On the contrary, “the Judge” had judged it. It formed
one of the wheels of a society which he was beginning to understand.
Between mathematics, literature, the classics, the dead languages, some
living truths had crept in, upon which Henry had seized, and he brought
the latter home rolled up in his diploma like some happy find. With
that society there, as it appeared to him, he could have very little to
do. It was a machine of which the fly-wheels, the chains, the pinions
were all too apparent to him. From the whole apparatus falsehood leaked
like a sickening oil. Look sharp, my boy: if you do not, you will be
snapped up.
All this knowledge which he had acquired in his four years of probation
in the factory he measured with a lucid glance. An untutored fellow
with the right quality could put in its place all the science of the
colleges. A flash of the most everyday reality was enough to expose the
poverty of a culture that formed such ignorant beings, such paupers in
the face of life: little gentlemen with white hands who came there to
be confirmed in the pale tradition of their class, “to study chemistry
and not learn how [one’s bread] is made....”
At the same time he had undergone victoriously the ordeal of this
famous culture. It had done him no harm. He regretted nothing:
everything he had acquired, scanty as its weight might be in the
destiny of a man, he would be able to put to his own use, employ for
his own ends. He was going to dispose of knowledge; knowledge was not
to have the best of him. It was a very good thing to possess, as an
additional qualification, like a garment you put on when you need it
and hang up again later when it burdens you. Others might take home
from Harvard the beautiful uniform that people don for a lifetime.
Henry had returned with his old green jacket.
Since he had come back, his family had observed a certain change in his
replies, his attitude, his judgments. This decisive tone of their Henry
and his radical views on the world were a little disturbing to those
good people who had scraped together their dollars to send him off to
college but had never possessed themselves an ounce of rebelliousness.
So that was what they taught at Harvard? Insubordination? His aunts
could hardly believe their ears; their nephew, expressing himself in
this condemnatory fashion? His sister Helen who loved him dearly and
firmly believed in him, Helen who, from her salary as a teacher, had
contributed to pay Henry’s college expenses, even mildly urged him to
moderate his expressions a little. The good girl had her illusions
about the fond authority of an older sister: with his uncompromising
sincerity he ceased for a while to write to her. She had not suspected
that her brother would come home from Harvard with other resources
besides “the old joke of a diploma.” She had remained the same Helen as
ever, and he, after these years, had become a Henry multiplied by four.
In this month of August, 1837, a boy of twenty returned home who had
mastered everything that college had to offer, in the books and outside
the books. No need to press on to an A.M.; he knew quite enough. In
this respect, if not in others, the years at Harvard were certainly
worth the sacrifices that Helen and the father and the good aunts had
made. The certitudes he had brought back were even worth the sacrifice
the college boy had made of his free years of adolescence.
* * * * *
And now the problem was to earn his bread. The “old joke of a diploma”
might help him just the same in finding a livelihood.
Since his final return to Concord, his father had undertaken a new
business. He was manufacturing pencils. After the grocery and the
odd-jobbing, this was a step up: a manufacturer, the creator of that
beautiful thing, the hard casing with its marrowy flesh that a pencil
is, destined to the noblest uses--reckoning up accounts, taking notes,
drawing. For twenty years a pencil factory had existed at Concord when
John Thoreau cleverly bethought himself of setting up in competition.
It was rather bold for a little man who had been so unlucky hitherto
and had such slender resources.
Before his college years and during his long vacations, Henry had lent
a hand in the paternal workshop. It was their means of livelihood and
the aid of the two boys was necessary. They worked together under the
name of “John Thoreau and Son.” At the end of the summer of 1836, when
a serious illness had obliged him to return home for several months,
Henry had even accompanied his father to New York, whither they went
to put their merchandise on the market. It was his first visit to the
great metropolis, this visit as a commercial traveller who had come to
offer the city folk an article that had issued from his village hands.
The people of the metropolis obtained the softest and most perfect
pencils directly from Europe; would they have any use for his stuff?
Wait, you people of the metropolis, you spoiled folk who are so hard to
please, one of these days we are going to show you something just as
perfect, something better than your beautiful pencils from abroad.
But this was no sort of destiny for a college boy. Not for the sake
of manufacturing pencils had he spent four years in college at the
expense of his family. It would be disloyal to defeat their hopes,
and circumstances at home were in rather a bad way. Now that he had
his degree he would have to try something else. His Aunt Louisa was a
schoolmistress, and so was Helen; John was very clever at teaching.
They set him his example. Why should not he attempt the same thing?
Why not, indeed? This was the first experiment to be tried with the
armament of the “old joke.”
As a matter of fact, he had already had some experience in teaching.
During his long college vacations, to assist his family in paying the
other half of his expenses, he had followed the custom of students who
are not born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and taught a little,
as an assistant master, in the neighbouring villages; visiting in this
way at Canton, just outside Boston, he had even learned a little German
from the minister with whom he had stayed. This had brought him in a
few dollars, and he had studied himself while he was teaching others.
And now the time had come to find employment as a schoolmaster. To find
such a position at Concord itself would be ideal, and it so happened
that there was a vacancy in the Town School and he was accepted. In
September, the month after his return, he was established there.
So there he was, one of the wheels of the machine. The respectable
citizens had confided their children to him to teach them, not simply
the three R’s, but sound principles as well. It was the immemorial
Christian custom to inculcate sound principles upon the young by means
of the rod. Henry, however, was not the flogging kind. He was going
to talk to the young hopefuls as young hopefuls, appealing to their
feelings as good boys. Everything went well or seemed to be going well;
but there were eyes on the watch. These eyes saw what this innovation
was leading to, the ruin of the moral foundations upon which Concord
and the world rested. The master, this enemy of rods, had to reckon
with the committee in charge of the school, one of whom was a certain
Deacon--that same worthy man perhaps who also kept a store and with
whom, not long before, the elder Thoreau had served his commercial
apprenticeship. He or his like, it matters little: a guardian of the
sound traditions. Whereupon His Morality the Deacon represented to the
young master that his method was a menace to the discipline of the
school. It was inadmissible. Henry had been appointed to a function
that included the ritual distribution of the rod to scholars who
deserved it. There were always in a class scholars who deserved the
rod. He did not see them. He was not carrying out his function.
Very well. Since flogging formed a part of the work ordained in
exchange for a salary, that very day the master took at random and
punished conscientiously six boys of whom one at least was never to
know what had suddenly seized this gentle master and was to cherish a
bitter memory of him.... So there, Henry has earned his money. And now,
good-bye, Deacon, good-bye, all of you. Go and find another master who
will flog your school for you.... Henry had been a teacher for fifteen
days. The wheel had hardly been put in place before it had sprung off.
Too bad, but he could go back to pencil-making. It was not exactly the
thing he had dreamed of, but it was free work into which the Deacons
did not thrust their pious noses. If he was obliged to ply the ferule
to earn his living, he would go and pick huckleberries and sell them
in the market. Or fish for pike and peddle them in the village, or take
up any sort of work that wouldn’t oblige him to report to committeemen.
In spite of all this, he still wanted a school. He had the ability and
it meant independence. Working with his father, he was a help, but he
was dependent on his family, and they found it hard enough to make
ends meet. The fall, the winter passed. How much he would have liked
to go out and snatch a little air! There were moments like that. The
surroundings of his childhood had been so dear to him that, stoical
as he was by nature, the tears came to his eyes at the thought that
some day he might have to leave them. But people had affronted him; he
loathed his fellow-villagers. He wanted to push out into the world.
But he wanted to go with John. To set out without John would be to
sacrifice the best part of himself. For John was much more than his
brother, he was the cream of all possible brothers. John the third was
a delightful being who made him think that his grandfather, John the
first, had crossed the ocean simply to prepare for his coming and make
Concord an inestimable gift. John was a true Thoreau like Helen but
with an exquisite charm, a flavour that belonged to him alone. Gifted
as he was, none of his other gifts was equal to this faculty of making
himself loved. He was a warm presence like a ray of sunlight and the
freest-hearted companion to work with or to go off with, hunting,
exploring--the two of them, Indian chiefs, older brother, younger
brother, similar in their tastes, the gaiety of the one multiplied
by the happiness of the other. Everything became possible, easy,
everything brightened up, when John was with you. Would Concord have
been Concord if Henry had not explored it and made it his own, during
the whole of his childhood, with this perfect play-fellow?
Spring broke. Helen and Sophia would soon be leaving to take up their
teaching at Roxbury. John was at present a schoolmaster at Taunton.
Henry wrote to him. A friend of the family, settled in the West,
assured him that they could have a fine situation if they were to go
out there and open a school. What if they were to set off together?...
What do you say, brother? If we were to go out there and set up a
_real_ cabin, far away from these deacons and respectable numskulls,
in some raw, half-built town or out on the open prairie? We could
borrow money for the expenses of the journey, and as for the rest we
have workingman’s hands, we are not afraid of adventure, we could pull
through. What couldn’t we do, the two of us together?... Henry was
pressing. Stagnation weighed on him; on the river the ice was breaking.
He longed to undertake something. It was high time to begin. And if his
brother was willing.... A few weeks later he heard of a school that was
going to be opened in Virginia. He was certainly going down there if
they wanted him.... And soon after the question of another school came
up, in Maine, where his cousins were. He went up there and came back
the same hungry Henry as before, in spite of the brilliant certificate
he was able to show, signed with fine names, among them R. W. Emerson.
Well, then, if they didn’t want him and his diploma anywhere he would
change his plans. That was settled. His father and mother lived in a
house in the centre of the village: it was big enough for them to open
a private school there. John and Henry would teach at home, free from
all prying committees. They counted on finding pupils.
They did not count in vain. They had four already, and the promise
of a fifth. Henry, urged to begin in June, had not waited for his
brother’s arrival. As soon as the latter came he took over the
direction of the school. Henry took charge of the Latin, Greek, French,
physics and mathematics. They were so successful that they were obliged
to think of moving the school for the following year: their father’s
house was no longer big enough to hold it. Just then the building of
the Academy, where Henry had been prepared for college, became vacant,
and they took up quarters there. It looked as if the Thoreau school was
going to become the Academy. But not to underrate its masters, when had
the latter ever had such a director? A John, with this art of teaching
children and understanding a school as John understood it?
Very strange, the method of the two brothers. They obtained discipline
without punishment or threats. How did they manage this? All the
deacons in New England might well ask. They interested their pupils,
won them, attached them to themselves by a living bond, that between
the man-child and the child-man. Study ceased to be a mere heaping up
of ennui and constraint; it was a conversation between brothers. With
the money which the rod would have cost they had bought a little common
sense and good will; and though the pedants could not pardon these two
presumptuous souls, the pupils worked, the pupils stayed. Boys of ten
to fifteen came to listen to the two young masters, the elder of whom
had made them promise, when they entered, to do their best, and the
boys kept their promise because they were listening to a master who was
their friend. If they missed now and then, the punishment was to remind
them that they had not kept their word. No one dreamed of playing
pranks, yawning with misery or pulling wings off flies when the master
told stories or prolonged the recess playing with the boys himself.
The delightful invitations of the out-of-doors were less tantalizing
in a class where penal tasks were unknown. Outside the lessons there
was an attachment between the young master and the pupils created by a
thousand little subtle bonds such as ordinary pedagogues, with their
crass ignorance and their ferules, cannot imagine.
You arrived at school in the morning and, opening your desk, you found
a beautiful slice of melon there. You thought it was a joke that one of
the boys was playing on you. Not at all: John, your teacher, knowing
that you had a sweet tooth, was unostentatiously offering you a taste
of the melons from his garden; he was proud of them, for he and his
brother raised them, and this year they had a wonderful crop. A slice
of melon adds to study a taste which the poor imagination of the
pedants knows nothing of. It is refreshing, delectable, and the flavour
lingers in the lesson you are reciting. Especially the kind of melons
that John and Henry raised--those succulent citron-melons.
Besides, the school did not consist entirely in the lectures, the
lessons and the compositions. It spread out to include the more
familiar concerns before, after class, during recess, in the street. If
you came across John outside school, you ran to meet him of your own
accord, joined him and went part of the way with him. He was grown up,
your professor, but you were not afraid of him, for his friendliness
effaced these distances. Henry, who taught the big boys, had a colder,
soberer air; when you saw him going by, you had no desire to joke with
this personage who knew Greek and Latin. But you had only to wait till
you became his pupil. When you knew him better, how much you wanted to
overtake him too in the street after class and walk along with him,
hand in hand, and how much you were rewarded by the stories and the
amusing things he told you! Henry was as much your friend as John.
At school they also studied surveying--a beautiful chance to go out
for a walk and have lessons in the open country. Henry was the one who
showed the boys how to draw up a plan. And one afternoon each week
they had school in the open air; the whole crew, masters and pupils,
poured out into the woods, plunged into the meadow grass, for the most
enlightening of object-lessons. Then which of them all was more of a
boy than Henry? Which was the fastest runner? The most indefatigable
gatherer of huckleberries? The most enraptured of them all? Anyone who
saw him exulting with this troop of schoolchildren would have said that
it was he who poured this childlike zest into the others, as if he
possessed an inexhaustible store. You, teacher of Greek and Latin, will
never be, under your grave airs, anything but a youngster. They are not
mistaken, the good people who say this, smiling disdainfully as they
see you pass. For they are men, austere, dignified men, weighed down by
cares, exhaling an odour of old prayer-books and warranty deeds.
Sometimes Henry carried off a pupil for a swim in a pond or a boating
party on the river; they made discoveries; they landed on unknown
shores. All this was part of the school and helped to keep up the
spirit of comradeship. One day young Edmund Sewall took his place in
the boat--Edmund, who was so like his big sister Ellen of whom John and
Henry were particularly fond. Ellen was the daughter of the minister
of Scituate. Her grandmother and her aunt, old friends of the family,
boarded with the Thoreaus; and when the girl came to Concord to see
them, gay parties were organised and they had beautiful evenings at
home. Ellen’s fresh seventeen years had made an impression on the two
brothers. But it was the lovable John especially who made an impression
on her. Presently he had in his class this young Edmund, whose charm
haunted him and to whom he was devoted because behind the child’s face
rose that of the big sister, his play-fellow, the thought of whom
sometimes made him dream and gave him the desire to say to the pupil
tender things that might have been addressed equally well to her.
At home they met again, for the Thoreaus boarded and lodged those
youngsters whose parents did not live in the village. They sat at the
same table, masters, pupils, boarders, old friends, and the vivacity of
the mother presided over the family meal. It was no banquet, for they
had neglected to be rich, but the bread tasted better than elsewhere,
and the vegetables came from the garden. The school was only a step
from the house. They carried the homelike atmosphere over with them. Is
that why the memory of these years--years in which two brothers, in a
village, taught them what they knew--was to flavour the whole lives of
those who had passed through the Thoreau school? You worked well there,
better than anywhere else, and the study left no musty taste behind
it. What was John and Henry’s secret? They were no lesson-mongers. And
so when the parents of a pupil who interested them found it difficult
to pay for his studies they asked the parents to let them keep him for
nothing. Let him come and work with the others; time enough to talk
about money later.
Nor did the pupils take up all their time. The day is long when you are
twenty-five; it knows how wonderful it is and turns slowly, slowly,
so as to give you the leisure to admire all its aspects. The hours
of school left a beautiful margin of independence: the morning, the
very early morning, the glorious late afternoons in summer, and the
Sundays, and the vacations! When Henry had finished in the garden, put
to rights this or that little matter in the house, off he went! All
the surroundings of Concord awaited him. The woods were waiting for
him, the fish in the river, those luxuriant plants, swollen with sap,
which nobody ever looked at, on the edge of the marsh. He had to go and
get the latest news of them. So Henry seized his gun and set off on a
stroll through the woods. Perhaps to-day he would bring back some rare
bird to study, for he had a true passion for the birds, the plants, and
all the creatures of the open air. In any case, he would undoubtedly
bring back something, if only the certainty of his own happiness in
the woods. This man who was setting out, with his gun on his shoulder,
for the fields, was no common huntsman in quest of game; he might
not take a single shot with his gun, but he would not return with an
empty bag. There are different kinds of good hunting. The discoveries,
the surprises, the confirmations, an attention awakened by a certain
phenomenon do not fill your game-bag, but fur and feathers would not
satisfy you half so much. Henry would pick up an Indian arrow-head to
add to his collection. His brother and he were immensely interested
in these finds. One day, as a token of their respect for the red
aborigines who had once been the kings of the country, they raised a
cenotaph to the memory of a sachem on Fairhaven Hill, where they had
often come as boys to watch the sunrise. They were fond of the names
the former rulers had left everywhere, full of the calls of animals,
twittering birds, murmuring winds, gliding waters, roaring cataracts.
Henry took his fishing-rod and set out through the fields in search of
a good nook on the river. He might perhaps bring back some fish. But to
catch fish, when he went fishing, was not, after all, the finest part
of the adventure. The river had many other presents to make him besides
its fish. He even had fishing-parties when the fish were only an
unimportant incident, as, for example, on a calm, warm evening, when he
set off with an eel-spear, at the break of spring, before the fish had
begun to hide among the tall reeds or in the deep water. He fastened a
grating to the bow of his boat, a yard above the water, where he burned
resinous roots. From a distance it looked like a will-o’-the-wisp in
the meadows. For himself, in the boat, armed with his long harpoon,
it was like sailing in the midst of enchantment. The water was so
violently illumined over a large space all round the bow that he
could stare down many feet into the depths and surprise the fish in
the inmost recesses of their hiding-places. Strange sojourners, some
of whom seemed to be asleep or dreaming, others very wide-awake, the
latter ferocious in their aspect, the former on their backs as if they
were floating ... They had so little fear of the monster who brandished
the iron and the fire over their abodes that he could have caught them
with a fork, as you spear a potato in the pot, or could even seize
the sleepers with his hand. But as he was not a mere brute, the most
thrilling thing was not the basket of fish he might have brought home
but the spectacle itself, the supernatural beauty of the reflexions
of the flames in the water, on the willows and the pines on the bank.
Surprised by this brutal dawn, a song-sparrow wakened and began to sing
as if it were morning--singing for Henry who, in this raw glow that
cut the shadows, rowed along in silence, groping his way, listening,
meditating....
Most radiant of all were the times when he left gun, fishing-rod, boat
and harpoon behind for a simple ramble on foot when the earth seemed
to respond to the pressure of his soles and his being dilated as if
all the good news carried through space were addressed especially to
him. This is what Henry felt every time he explored the country of his
childhood, in hours of liberty, finding once more the old confidences
and secret favours in those nooks he had left behind in the days of his
homesickness.
Invariably the schoolmaster’s day closed with another escape. Every
evening, before going to bed, he gathered together, worked over,
expressed with the greatest exactness to a sure and discreet confidant
the most secret impressions of the day. Since his return from Harvard
he had formed the habit of this daily rendezvous with this other self
who never betrayed him and would never bore him with complaints and
expostulations but accepted everything. Later on, this was going to
be an unexceptionable witness when, published to the world, it would
reply to those who questioned it. The solitude of the college years
had developed in him a natural tendency to examine himself--the taste
for the inner dialogue. All the knowledge we acquire through study or
the society of others will never compensate for our indifference where
our own souls are concerned. This is a subject for study that is worth
all the pains you devote to it--a book that is of more importance for
you to read than those that lie on your shelf. And this over and above
the fact that when you have read it you will be prepared to understand
other books and other men. Henry was anxious to know where he stood in
relation to himself. An orderly man does not go to bed without making
up his accounts.
Henry confided to his Journal his intimate thoughts, his discoveries
of the day. He reckoned up his stock. To what end? He would see later
on. In the meantime, a man who was aware of what he possessed slipped,
with his spirit at peace, into sheets that were as white as the page of
to-morrow.
* * * * *
To have the good luck to be born on the brink of two rivers, to be
twenty years, twenty-five years old, to have a hearty, open-air
appetite, and not to have a boat, is a flaw in the happiness of a man.
Fishing or swimming, loafing about the banks or skating on its firm
back, you have never known the joy of the river if it has not taken you
and rocked you, led you, carried you off, made you dance at its own
will and pleasure.
If you were to build a boat?... You can find the timber, you have a few
tools and fingers that know how to handle a piece of wood. A real boat.
Not a mere dugout such as Henry had made when he was nineteen, a dugout
that looked like an oblong trough, though even that was better than a
tub in which you drift with the current; it was delightful; it did not
move swiftly, but with patience and skill you could risk yourself in it
for a quarter of an hour’s adventure. No, a real boat this time, a boat
that really travels over the water. If you bought one, or had it built
by a boat-builder, you would spend a lot of money and have nothing but
the joy of the boat itself; whereas if you made it with your own hands
you would also have the joy of building it.
To assemble your materials for building a boat in the open air, in the
first days of spring, is a very different pleasure from expounding the
Odyssey; you feel as if you were living like a man of Homer’s day, you
inhale in advance the scent of discovery. To wield the saw and the
hammer, take your careful measurements, fit together the pieces of
the body, see the work taking form, to be two brothers under the sky,
busy in your dock-yard, among your tools, your timber, striking with
precision, trimming neatly, responsible to nobody--schoolmaster as you
are, the gods that roam New England on their tour of inspection might
envy you, those gods who have never had the joy of building a boat
themselves. John and Henry’s hearts are in their work. At the end of
one week the masterpiece is finished. It is a dory, heavy and strongly
built, with a sharp bow, such as fishermen use; it is fifteen feet
long by three and a half in breadth at the middle. A real craft: you
can move about in it, sail it, stow away a little cargo in it. A good
coat of paint will protect it and give it a tidier appearance. As it
is destined to take part in open-air holidays on the water, it must be
painted green with a blue border. The painting is done in a jiffy, and
then comes the glorious moment when with a final glance the creators
survey their creation, weaned at last from themselves and ready to face
the broad daylight of the world.... For legs the dory has wheels that
will enable it to be rolled around falls.
Nothing remains now but to equip it. It must have two sets of oars,
poles, two masts; you must foresee everything when you have these vast
projects in your head. As the boat is going to carry you a long way and
you are going to camp out under the stars, the tent is indispensable.
Then there is no limit to your dreams. With a boat and a tent you can
sail round a continent, coast along all the shores, disembark on an
island, set up your tent there, light a fire and survey the landscape
with that knowing air: It’s I, exactly. Do you recognize me?... Yes,
you can do unbelievable things with this boat. You can begin to enjoy
the world, measure the amplitude of the earth. You can carry Concord
with you to all sorts of strange countries, scour the land, found
colonies.
Meanwhile, you begin experimenting with it, you lose no time, you are
prouder of being a good mariner than a good schoolmaster and you invite
the boys on board to teach them things that are not to be found in
the books. New aspects of the world are revealed, you make important
discoveries, for you are the man who has a boat.
To think there were so many unknown things around you: brooks,
mountains, buildings, men, flocks of ducks, and all the people on the
banks--unsuspected neighbours! If it were not for the school, you
would like to follow the watery road as far as ever it could lead you.
Concord widens into a vast province, as if newly peopled with animals
and landscapes and surprises. In the succession of the springs and the
summers, this spring of the year 1839 will always bear for you the
colours of the boat--green and blue, will bear a sail swelling against
a mast, which two brothers have planed with their own hands in an
open-air dock-yard.
When you really know your boat you are ready for the decisive
adventures for which it has been fitted out. The long vacation has
come. Your departure is fixed for Saturday, the last day of August.
This is to be no mere airing before supper: it is the great embarkation
for a week or two weeks, for good and all--who knows?--for the fabulous
regions where men speak another language.
John and Henry have made plans to go all the way to the White Mountains
by water, from little Concord, their village, to big Concord, the
capital of New Hampshire. It is a plan that requires some reflexion.
They have thought it over and made up their minds, and they are to
set out to-morrow. Preparations, the cargo. First the tent and a
buffalo-skin; then a few tools, some utensils for their cooking; as
provisions in reserve some potatoes and melons from their own patch.
Do not laugh, you sceptics. You don’t know what it is to have at hand,
under all circumstances, a fruit whose virtues are perfectly known
to you. And isn’t it like having on board a friendly presence, a
remembrance of the garden, that will bring the pilgrims good luck on
their perilous voyage? Like the boat itself, the melons are the fruit
of their own labour, and thus, without borrowing anything from anyone,
they set forth, side by side, for the conquest of the world.
At last, the thrilling moment. Vain for you your Harvard diploma,
vain your teaching of Greek and Latin this August afternoon, when you
finally jump into the boat that awaits you, all provisioned, and gently
gives under your feet. What are your learning and your evening dreams
beside the certitude that floods you with happiness like a child,
beside the glamour of this dazzling day and this running water that
is going to carry you to the beyond?... Books? The most beautiful of
them all is a thousand times less beautiful to you than that which this
rude dory under your oars and your sail is eager to bring you. Wisdom?
Listen to that rippling along the bank; the river whispers to you as it
passes that she herself is wisdom--and how your soul responds to the
invitation of the voyage!
It has rained in the morning, as if the gods of the Concord had wished
to thwart the plans of two good boys who are setting out in search of
them; but this only makes the smile of the afternoon more calm. Come
along, off we go! Good-bye, friends. A cup of air to your health! A
little further on, as a final farewell from the navigators, a salvo of
joy which the forest echoes after noting it on its leaves. The sounds
of the village are stilled, you sink into a deep dream, rhythmical
with the gliding of the oars. You slip along this road that runs,
buoyant, fresh, through the recesses of the landscape. You surprise it,
as it were, gently, in its privacy, not seizing it by the throat as you
do on those beastly, dusty roads where the world leaves its dung and
the imprint of its iron feet. The watery way flows on and carries you
past the willows, the waterplants with their white and rose-coloured
flowers, the meadow grass with the faded tints of the closing summer.
A bittern sails away, a tortoise drops into the water. From afar the
familiar heights salute you courteously. Farewell, village, farewell,
last fisherman with your motionless line and your dog.
We are rowing towards fresh promises: see how the river widens out.
We pull straight ahead, in cadence, not like apprentices. The evening
draws in; it makes good rowing, and what good haying it ought to be at
this hour for those reapers over there, almost lost in the grass of the
meadows, where every blade they cut seems to exhale a sigh of gladness
and commit it to the breeze, the courier of the evening. It is time to
look for a good place for the night. We are seven miles from Concord.
Billerica already.... It is astonishing what this name stands for when
you have been rowing for hours and are ready to pitch your tent on
_terra firma!_ And here are some ripe huckleberries for dessert The
fire crackles. A good cup of cocoa, some bread. And sunset to finish
the meal. Before you, as far as the horizon, nothing but a solitary
farmhouse, far away, lost in the glorious wilderness, amid the clumps
of pines, the hills, the rocks, all the squatting people of the brush.
Fireflies in the grass. The good night awaits the two of you under the
cotton tent that is fastened to one of the masts. But the hour is so
captivating, this August evening is so charged with messages in the
depths of the silence, that you have no desire to go to sleep at once.
Neighbours betray their presence. A fox makes his rounds; some creature
fumbles among the potatoes and melons in the boat, disappearing into
the water when you go to see what it is. On the horizon a great blaze
from a fire over in Lowell; the fire-alarm reaches you in snatches,
mingled with the barking of the watch-dogs from invisible farms. Two
lads who have rowed with a will roll themselves up in the buffalo-skin
and close their eyes on the thought of the boat moored by the clump of
alders for the next day. Good night, brother. Good night, Henry. How
about the school?... And the eight, ten, twelve, fifteen days like this
one to look forward to? Blow out the lantern.
Sunday morning. You come out of your tent into the mist of the dawn and
light the fire for breakfast. Then, like the pagan you are, oblivious
of the fall of man, fold up the tent and embark with your Sunday soul
in the rising sun that disperses the fog. You give names to the spots
along the way, the hills, cliffs, woods, as fresh as if no human eye
had ever touched them. The river is a mirror: it is Sunday on the
water, too, and you hesitate to disturb it with a stroke of your oar.
A skiff passes with two men, gliding so lightly that it seems almost
unreal among the reflexions of the foliage in the water. The meditation
of the frogs, motionless on the reeds, contemplating the day of the
Lord’s rest, is tinged with the grave Sabbath beauty.
Just above the Billerica Falls they take the canal through the woods,
and one of the two mariners pulls the dory with the rope along the
tow-path as far as the dam. The people are coming out of church in
the village and the good folk look down from the height of the bridge
upon these two good-for-nothings who are voyaging along, just as if
the Lord’s day were not made to cement the nothingness of the week
that has passed with the nothingness of that which is dawning. But the
lock-keeper is more liberal-minded: he knows two merry souls, out for
adventure, when he sees them, and he opens the locks for them, in spite
of the Sunday rule. The lock-keepers of this world are broad enough to
redeem its narrowness.
And now they find themselves on the Merrimac, the great river. The dory
is a mere insect striking out on this sheet of water, one hundred,
two, four hundred yards wide, over which every sound glances and
comes to you with a marvellous clearness. Those children repeating
their catechism in a cottage are a good third of a mile away from you
who catch the murmur of their voices; or is it that the words of the
catechism have a miraculous carrying-power? The cows in the meadow do
not know their catechism; they are content to be beautiful in silence
and enrich the look of those villages with their tiny harbours and
their fairylike setting. The boat has burst into a new part of the
world; this is the valley that leads up into the heart of New Hampshire
by a succession of natural dams, with a rapid, leaping current of
yellowish water cut by falls. When you have rowed since morning
against the current, your nooning is very precious in the shade of
an apple-tree. It is Chelmsford here, the village where your parents
came once to seek their fortune. The hour is so beautiful under this
apple-tree that you would like to read a poem as ample as the landscape
of the valley; when Sunday chimes within you and as far as the horizon,
you would like all this music to be crowned in that of a poem.
See those islets. High up on one of them are perched two men who hail
the little craft, asking to be taken off. But there are the melons, the
tent, a whole outfit on board, and with this cargo the dory already
has enough trouble making headway against the stream. Can’t be done,
boys; you will have to make _terra firma_ and Nashua on foot. Good
luck! Further on, what is this enormous fish whose back rises and sinks
in mid-stream? A sturgeon? A monster? Look out there: with a blow of
that assuredly formidable tail it could send to the bottom two brothers
and their fortune. But no, this old fraud that is going to capsize us
is nothing but a wooden spar fixed there as a buoy to warn sailors of
sunken rocks....
The sun sets, twilight creeps in; shall we think of resting, like the
fish who, save for a few that prowl all night, are preparing themselves
for sleep? You have stretched out the most beautiful of Sundays as long
as you could between the two shores and rowing hard against this strong
current. You have well earned the favourable spot for pitching your
tent and tasting the sleep of adventurers.
The earth is firm and sweet under your feet when you trample it after a
whole day tossing about in a walnut-shell. You unload the provisions,
like conquistadors who have reached a far country after countless
perils, arrived at a shore where you will make yourself understood by
signs to the natives, if any appear. Once the lantern is hung to the
tent-pole, the fire ready, the kettle on the fire, you are at home;
nothing is missing to make life solid and satisfying. After closing
the tent, Henry scribbles a few notes in the glimmering light of the
lantern: the shore journal of the navigators. And after a little chat
they go to sleep in the buffalo-skin. On the opposite bank, some
Irish labourers on the railroad are celebrating the Sabbath with wild
shouts, whirling up and down the track. But their brawling is not loud
enough to disturb the sleep of the two oarsmen who soon forget where
they are. The two lads are dead to the world among all the sleeping
creatures who, like them, have drained the happiness of Sunday on the
banks. Alone, the river, eager to reach its end, pursues all night its
course to the sea; its adventure will brook no delay.
But why does this evil beast traverse in a dream the sleep of a happy
man, torturing him after a blissful day?... Happily, in the same
buffalo-skin sleeps his good genius, with a sleep that is peaceful and
unbroken all night long. The phantoms of agonizing dreams are dispersed
by the brotherly voice sounding under the tent in the early day. And
listen now to this little world of oak-leaves, under which you have
slept, saying their morning prayers in the breeze.
It is enough to hear the rippling of the river, when you emerge from
your tent, and to see once more the boat that is calmly waiting for
you, to feel a hunger for adventure. So off you start again through the
fog to devour the beautiful week that lies before you, round and new;
you have not yet broken the loaf, you have merely nibbled a few crumbs;
the country you have passed is only a tiny morsel of the territories
you plan to annex.
Occasionally, when you have watched the banks gliding by for a long
time, the desire seizes you to draw nearer and explore a little the
hinterland of the country you are skirting. Nothing easier for you who
are at once the commanding officer, the crew and the passengers. One
of the two coxswains runs along the shore, while the other continues
to row and a little further on picks up the explorer and hears him
recount his discoveries. There have been surprises. By good luck the
rover has happened into a cottage, and because he looks well and it
is a summer morning when hearts are softened with generosity, the
farmer’s wife has offered him a bowl of milk which he has tossed off,
while the children have watched the stranger amorously plunging his
big nozzle into the little bowl. During this excursion the other one
on board, if he is thirsty, halves a melon and dispatches it, drawing
up under the bows on the bank, where he waits for the explorer. In the
heat of the day, a New England lad whose muscles are hard enough to
manage the oars feels himself invaded by an Oriental indolence, with
a great pity for the vague humanity toiling and moiling down there in
the world. Amid the delights of the siesta, with a succulent slice of
melon in a boat in the shadow of a willow, he can find some apology for
pleasure-lovers, even for smokers of opium.
The river seems to flow solely for the joy of these two comrades who
have set out one fine Saturday for the conquest of the world. Just this
side of Nashua a fleet of great canal-boats appears, with sails set and
high bulwarks, like junks. Have you really been asleep on the stream
and actually reached the Orient? Let’s make the most of it. The rowers
will enjoy a little idling. From the dory they throw a rope and get
themselves towed a bit of the way like pashas; it has grown so hot that
two schoolmasters, who are not of the soft kind, can allow themselves
to be towed by a great merchantman. They toss into the water some of
the melons that remain on board; they have seen enough of them, and
the fish may like them. These jovial boatmen with whom they chat do
not break the beautiful harmony of the landscape; they belong in it,
and their language has the flavour of the river-grass. When they have
passed and you find yourselves alone again in your dory, oars in hand,
the solitude has almost a new taste.
Noon suggests a swim and a siesta under a tree. Suddenly a boatman’s
horn, echoing from bank to bank, rouses the sleepers, and they set out
again. The linden trees on the shore are a revelation. Nashua drops
behind, the bridge, the junction of the rivers, the mills; they are
in the woods again, and the evening clouds are reflected in the water
like a warning. This evening the gods have planned for the encampment a
beautiful, solitary spot on the border of a pine-wood, under the rocky
walls of a deep ravine. The gods that voyage along these shores know
how soft is the carpet the pine-needles make and what a fragrance they
will add to the fire and the smoke. The song of the kettle, like an
incantation, calls up this evening the friends they have left in the
village; their images prowl and linger about the tent, bending over the
shoulders of these two companions on the edge of the forest who are
trying to discover on the map in the centre of what universe they are
this evening and what country they will annex to-morrow. If you are
awakened to-night by the shrill grating of a cricket, or the rambling
of a spider over the peaks and passes of your face, the brook that
flows at the bottom of the ravine has a cradle-song that will lull you
to sleep again. Later, through a restless night at home, you will think
of the quality of this sleep close to the earth after a day on the
water.
Far away in the night someone is beating a drum--some tyro preparing
for a country muster--and this trivial rat-a-tat-tat, ennobled by the
distance and the darkness, seems, in the warmth of heroism that pours
through the buffalo-skin, strangely to arm you for the most extravagant
deeds. What will the coming dawn suggest, the Deliverance of the Holy
Sepulchre or the Quest of the Golden Fleece? And has this high wind
that shakes the tent a mission to inform the sleepers and publish the
great news along the banks and under the pines? In any case, you are
awake before dawn to be ready to welcome the great day, whatever it
may be. Hand me the hatchet, I am off for fuel. The birds are still on
their roosts and the kettle is already singing like a nurse. They haul
the boat up on land, upset it and empty it and give it a good rinsing.
At three o’clock everything is reshipped, stowed away, ready for
departure, with the tent spread over the bow, for it is drenched with
dew. The heavy morning fog, the curtain that had fallen to conceal the
surprises to come, promises a glorious day.
As the banks are cleared of their velvety coverlet, sparkling with dew
under the first rays, and the pines on the shore reveal their outlines,
the river appears as large as an arm of the sea. The day of glory
announced by the drum rises between the high slopes of the river: not a
village in sight; you might think you were in the days of the Redskins,
in the midst of a primitive country. You row with a will. Drummer of
the night, the meaning of your rat-a-tat-tat becomes clear. We are
going to review landscapes and men.
First, at Cromwell’s Falls, the lock-keeper, with whom the boys
exchange some wholesome gossip. Several canal-boats are waiting to
pass. On such a morning, if you encountered humanity in the form of
some fellow with affected manners, a crabbed face and the look of a
deacon, you would bless anyone who would force his respectable head
under the water. But as for these shapely, strapping boatmen, in their
shirt-sleeves, bare-headed, slouching or leaning on a pole, they have a
sort of accent that heightens the meaning of the proud word on your own
lips, fellow-creature. See that flaxen-haired brother there, with his
skin tanned by wind and sun, young or old, you could never say which,
but rugged and beautiful as a tree. Don’t put yourself out to be
polite; it doesn’t go with these fellows. A few words of the language
of men and everything is understood. The banter you shout back to them
as you pull away is as cordial as a farewell. With all the boatmen you
meet you exchange a friendly greeting.
Happy souls.... To be the two men on board these canal-boats, pushing
with the pole when you are going up the stream, steering with the aid
of an oar at each end when you are in mid-stream, hoisting the sail if
the wind is favourable, transporting wood or bricks and bringing back
odd freight: what could be jollier on a rustling September morning like
this on the water? You contrive a little shelter under the cargo, where
you may retire from the rain. As you sail your boat along in this way
you do not seem to be toiling for wages or an employer; it is as if you
were playing some very ancient game. The day’s work ended, you get your
supper and lodging at some house or other by the water-side, breakfast
in the morning with the lock-man, load your boat, travel all day,
unload, receive your pay, take a drink at the inn, where you hear the
news of the world, and then off again. A fine life, blooming with songs
that sound over the river.
These were the people the marvelling eyes of a child had seen now and
then, when a canal-boat passed the village. Their fabulous race, as he
has come to know it better, has lost none of its glamour in the eyes of
the man. Sometimes when the high road approaches within a few hundred
yards of the shore, what a sorry, absurd figure the parti-coloured
stage cuts beside these barges, as it sweeps past in a cloud of dust!
Good luck to you, my fine fellows, who are in such a hurry to get
there, piled in together, busy, with your worries and your trunks
heaped up on the rack behind.... No doubt you are making good time,
but you have not the least notion of the sights we are passing, that
cottage bathed in a patriarchal atmosphere, with the well and the
barn, and the old grandfather sitting on a bench; and those shagbark
trees, unlike anything to be seen in Concord or where you live, in all
probability, and those magnificent maples. See that scow there turned
up on the bank, which those carpenter boys are mending. The joyous ring
of the great strokes of their hammers, echoing from shore to shore, and
the glittering of their tools in the sun, are not for townspeople who
take the stage. These things that make work as beautiful as a festival,
the work that nourishes the soul and the muscles of a man ... repairing
a boat, building a hayrick, woodcutting in the forest, setting up the
frame of a house under the benediction of the open air ... what have
they in common with your infernal routine, you passengers of the stage?
The burning sun plumbs the landscape. That large island with the shade
and the cattle, at the mouth of a river, is too inviting to be ignored.
They put into port, and as the flesh is weak they no longer resist the
temptation of those pigeons that have also stopped there, during the
heat of the day, and are innocently cooing among the branches, heedless
of the two savages that approach with their engines of death. One of
the pigeons has fallen. You savages, wash in the river the hands that
have killed in cold blood one of these beautiful pigeons that had also
set out on a journey; do penance, eaters of innocent flesh, who have
already brought down some squirrels for your supper, and now, in sheer
wantonness, replace them with a pigeon: boil a bowl of rice. After the
feast, recite some poetry, since you have no music, and yield in your
satiety to idleness in the shade of this island where you have been
behaving like abject creatures of civilisation.
But it is time to re-embark. They raise the sail to take advantage of
the breeze. From the top of a hill forming the bank, some lumberers
are rolling down timber that falls into the water with a thundering
roar; their axes and levers glitter in the sun. That cottage, with
its dooryard blossoming with sunflowers and poppies, smiles with such
confidence that they skirt the bank to see it better. This is a wild
region that makes them want to explore it a little. Those old oaks
welcome them as friends who do not often receive visits. A lonely horse
in a pasture, then some cows grazing in the shade, after the warm day,
and some wild apple trees with the sourish fruit that Henry knows
so well and likes. That ruined mill shrouded in creepers, which the
pedestrian discovers while following a torrent through the woods, sets
him thinking when he regains the boat of the life and the dreams of the
old settler who lived there once and the taste that his flour must have
had.
At Coos Falls, in a solitary part of the river, some stone-masons are
repairing the locks. They stop for a chat. One of them, a young man,
questions the voyagers about their adventures, examines the little
craft and its outfit with a confession in his eye. If he only could
set off with these two fellows to explore the world! What a trio they
would make, a mason and two schoolmasters, who are not more than
twenty-five.... A wild desire seizes him to throw away the chisel
and mallet, leap into the boat and say to them: “Take me! I have had
enough of stone-cutting. Now I want to cut into the stuff of the vast
world....” But the stones remain, little mason, weights heavier than
your vision, which soon disappears with the two explorers, leaving you
pensive at your work.
As they continue to ascend, the watery landscape becomes more rugged,
interspersed with rapids, rocks, falls. On the fifth day they are
between Manchester and Bedford. There are many locks to pass through,
and sometimes no lock-keeper is at hand. Then they have the fun of
manipulating the lock themselves, no easy task but so amusing.... They
are at once the passengers and the all-powerful being who locks the
boat through.
Contemplating the cottages of these lock-keepers, gloriously lost
before a vast stretch of whirling waters, roaring, foaming, you are
filled with envy at the thought of the good soul who lives his life
there as a lock-man, almost as solitary as a lighthouse-keeper, and
the desire seizes you to go in, just to ask for a glass of water and
hear the sound of a human voice as a contrast to that of the river.
This one seems to be asleep on the earth under the benediction of the
summer sun, like an infant in the warmth of its mother’s breast. Henry
crosses the little garden and knocks at the door. A woman opens it:
he can’t have such a shaggy face, after all, in spite of five nomadic
days, or she would not invite him in so prettily. The freshly scoured
floor has a fragrant odour; the visitor is afraid of soiling it with
his big boots. He takes a glass from the dresser, then goes to the well
where he catches a glimpse of his hairy face, the face of a voyager who
has not had the leisure to shave himself like a true Christian. The
lockman’s wife offers him a little molasses and ginger to temper this
hard water, for the day is warm. Nearby her brother, the sailor, who
seems a little out of his element among these freshwater folk, dandles
the family cat; with his sea-dog’s eye, filled with the horizon,
he scrutinizes the visitor curiously, sympathetically. Oh, these
lockmen’s cottages, with their fireplaces and their door-yards, in
this solitude!... What honey one could make here, a wild and exquisite
honey, with that lingering suggestion of bitterness in the taste which
is so grateful to healthy palates.
The oarsman is a happy man who turns his back on his discoveries, lets
them come, and only enjoys them after they have well passed. This
wooded island is the largest they have encountered thus far. It seems
to say: I have been here since the beginning of things, waiting for the
day when you would plant your tent-pole for the night in the shelter
of my great elms. Who knows but I shall yield myself to you with such
trust that you may decide to conclude your adventure and set up your
hearthstone here? Between the world and myself there is nothing but
a strip of water: would not that protect you from it and connect you
with it sufficiently?... But as it is still morning, they leave behind
them the great island and the great dream, to resume the course of the
big wonders that are offered two poor devils who scan the world from a
little boat of their own making.
After Amoskeag Falls, as steep as a staircase where they are in danger
of capsizing every minute and have to jump into the water to right the
boat, the river opens out into a lake. They make fast under a grove
of alders for their lunch and siesta. A good breeze blows up. Boats
pass, with their sails set, great, heavy, one-winged birds advancing
with a stately solemnity. The boats pass which they saw before lunch
and the last of which offered to take the two navigators and their
traps on board and carry them the rest of the way; when the brothers
are resting in the shade, the wag at the helm calls out a proposal to
take them in tow. Many thanks, my boy, not just now; it is too good
under these trees. When lunch is finished, John and Henry also raise
their sail and, rowing vigorously, catch up with the big canal-boat
which has hardly advanced at all, the breeze having fallen. Now then,
my barge-boy, would you like us to take you in tow? Here’s a piece of
rope if we can oblige you. The little dory you laughed at a while ago
has the laugh on you. And one by one the oarsmen overtake the other
monsters that are painfully dragging their bellies in a file along the
watery road.
They have become once more the sovereigns of the river; but this does
not make it less necessary for them to look for provisions before
night. Their stock is low. John jumps ashore and sets off to find a
farmhouse where they can revictual, while Henry explores the other bank
for a suitable haven for the night. Again the canal-boats loom behind
them, advancing with much effort, for the breeze has quite died away.
John comes back with a loaf of bread and some melons, accompanied by
a little flaxen-haired boy who wants to have a close view of the boat
of these people who have set out for adventure on the water and have
brought nothing to eat. He too, like the little mason, would love to
go with them; who would not love to go with John? They would be happy
to take him on board, this lively boy with the sparkling blue eyes,
who would not weigh very much among the cargo; but his father will not
allow it. But he is a very good-natured father, just the same, and
he invites the travellers to come and visit his farm the next day.
With pleasure. Are they not colleagues? Who knows more about raising
melons than they? They might even be able to recommend some seeds. They
taste his products, one of which, set in the water to cool while they
are pitching the tent, has taken it into its head to go off with the
current, like a melon on vacation that has been seized with a desire
for the sea; they have to jump into the boat to capture it, for it is
already far away. They taste his melons, sitting on the bank, facing
the glow of the sunset in which the river wishes to share, to light its
depths on its evening journey. The song over there, close by, is that
of the brook at the mouth of which they have pitched their camp, and
which hastens to confide to the great confused current a few secrets it
has brought from afar.
That night Henry’s dreams under the tent file past amid the babble of
this neighbour and disappear as he awakens at the soft tapping of drops
of rain on the cotton roof. A sparrow trills cheerily in the morning:
a good omen. They set out with this promise. More locks. And then
the last one: nothing beyond but impassable rapids. A pity, for the
navigators, who have set out from Concord, Massachusetts, want to push
on by boat to Concord, New Hampshire. It would be more of an adventure
but it can’t be done. Since their goal is the White Mountains, they
will leave the boat here and continue along the shore on foot. Before
they became great navigators, they had been great walkers.
So they cut a pair of sticks and set out like pilgrims in the mist and
rain. If they are to have no more the joy of the river and the boat,
they will have the pleasure of the hard earth under the freedom of
their big boots. The earth and the watery meadows have a sweet smell.
All the frogs in Christendom are sounding the hymn of deliverance and
the toadstools smile with joy in the starch of their little collars.
The travellers resolutely drench themselves. Are you afraid of a little
wetting? Then stay shut up at home; stay where it’s dry, dry souls. You
are not cut out for sitting in the rain, on the side of a brush-covered
hill, happy even if your clothes are soaking. Perhaps it will clear in
the afternoon; but what if it doesn’t clear?
A good welcome to big Concord. To save time they take the stage (yes,
like those other idiots) as far as Plymouth, where a friend lives
with whom they want to shake hands; then they resume the staff and
the road. They come to a little sylvan inn where, in the evening, the
people of the neighbourhood gather to discuss their business and hear
the news over a glass of whisky. They wonder where in the world these
people have come from when all day they have not caught even a glimpse
of a roof. On the inn-table lies an old newspaper. At home Henry has
little use for this kind of literature; he leaves the paper to his
father who enjoys it so much. But in this poor, solitary inn, when
you have tramped all day through the woods, it is astonishing what
savour an old newspaper that gives you the stale news of the world
acquires, a newspaper that has been rumpled by all sorts of rough
hands, astonishing how your eyes fasten on a paragraph and you are led
to believe in the virtues of the soap recommended in the advertisements.
And then, in this lost country, you have surprising encounters. Along a
path in the woods a young soldier advances in full regimentals, going
to muster no doubt with his musket on his shoulder; he marches with
military step, with an air of being very sure of the importance of his
mission. He must carry himself well, you see, before these civilians,
and safeguard in the depths of the forest the prestige of his military
apparel. Poor little soul! As he passes close to John and Henry his
martial mask falls, he becomes a little boy again in his absurd harness
in the presence of these trees that are judging him, and, crestfallen
under his warrior helmet, he steals away unheroically, embarrassed by
the greaves that chafe his legs. Honest little lad, we wish you well!
They can send you off and dress and drill you in the barracks or get
you killed for no reason at all. Your ingenuousness consents to it all
in advance.
As they leave Sanbornton the mountains appear. They spend several days
exploring them. It is a great revelation. The culminating point of the
journey is at an altitude of 6288 feet, that of Mount Washington, which
the two comrades climb. On the twelfth day they are back again at the
place where they left their boat. Everything is in good condition, and
the tent, the blankets, left in charge of the melon-grower, are quite
dry. This lovable man expects his friends to carry off an immense melon
to ballast the little boat: see, this one, which he long ago gave his
flaxen-headed heir permission to dispose of as he chose. John carries
it off, to the satisfaction of the owner, for he is the friend to whom
you give whatever is dearest to you.
They are not homesick in the least, but they must return southwards to
their own anchorage. The return is beautiful too. They set off spinning
like an arrow, with the current, as far as the confluence of the
Concord. The departure is at noon, this very Thursday. The river smiles
under the fresh mid-September wind; they raise the sail, they can
rest on their oars occasionally without loss of time. And everything
drifts past them again, in the other direction. As they see the funny
little dory repassing with its two savages on board, the people
recognize them and give them a friendly halloo. To watch the sail, the
lumbermen, rolling their timber down with an immense splash into the
water, pause for a moment. From their boat the two adventurers salute
every nook of the landscape, banks, islands, mouths of rivers, like
old acquaintances. They must set up their tent once more, at least: it
shall be opposite the large island of the slaughtered pigeons where
they took their siesta on the way up. The boat is drawn up on the
sand. Not a sail in sight; nothing but the spiders of the grassy jungle
which come out curiously at the light of the lantern, and explore the
mystery of the buffalo-skin spread out on the ground.
It is fragrant this evening, and every blade of grass, damp with dew,
seems to be on its doorstep taking the air. They have journeyed far
to-day and are tired; and after dipping their slices of bread in a cup
of cocoa and scribbling the main things down in their journals, they
blow out the lantern and bid farewell to Thursday. A high wind in the
night flaps the curtains of the tent. In the morning, the heavy fog
rolls away over the water, uncovering a landscape suddenly tinged with
autumn. In the flitting clouds, in the look of the cottages, in the
lowing of the cattle in the meadows, in the flying troops of flickers,
the death of summer is confirmed. And when they set foot on earth and
clamber up the bank to cast an eye over the countryside, they catch
almost everywhere the prevailing yellow note of the asters, coreopses,
tansies, golden-rod, little flowers of autumn already burning with the
flames of the declining summer’s sun--the little candles left lighted
all day long for the pilgrims in the church of the meadows.
But they carry on at a good pace, with sail stretched, one steering
with an oar in the stern, the other rowing. The boat, seized by the
autumnal ferment, speeds along; in the rippling of the water before
them they seem to hear it laughing to itself at the promise of the
splendour the season is preparing to bring forth. They are invigorated
by this brisk wind that obliges them to sit muffled in their cloaks.
See how they bound along; they are almost home again already. Here
is the beginning of Massachusetts. They pass--rare spectacle--a
pleasure-boat with a young man and a girl, and a dory, a commoner
sight, with some people who are gathering driftwood for the winter.
As they sail, they munch an apple-pie they have bought at a farm; it
is rather tart. Driven by this famous breeze that bends the trees
on the bank, they scud merrily along, with a devil-may-care look in
their faces, at a speed that astonishes the men on some scows which
they pass. Already the locks of the canal through the woods that gives
access to the Concord. Yes, here we are, dear old Musketaquid! We shall
have to row hard, against the current, and try to arrive this evening.
The sun reappears to make Chelmsford and Billerica smile, and sinks
magnificently, filling the valley with a flood of soft light. High
overhead, in silence, two herons pass against the sky, on their way
to the North. A good journey, comrades up there; our home is to the
Southwest. If you feel as we do, at this heavenly hour of the end of
day when two lads, returning from a long expedition, are filled by
the beauty of the familiar landscape, you are two very high-hearted
herons. The night falls, they row in the light of the few candles a
kind providence has set burning above, far higher than the track of the
herons. There is no sound on board but the monotonous cadence of the
oars, for John and Henry have no desire to talk; silence alone can draw
out the thoughts that fill them. They mean to arrive to-night, Friday
the thirteenth.
And indeed, late in the evening, the boat of the two argonauts draws
up very smoothly alongside the shore whence it had set out fourteen
days before, and rubs its wet cheek against the bearded bank. They have
completed a stage of fifty miles this day.
John and Henry leap ashore, draw up the boat and fasten it to the wild
apple tree. And then! A last look at the dory that has borne them so
far out into the wide world, and laden with their traps they turn their
steps towards the house. For them now the sweetness of civilised
life and soft beds. They are ready to face them with visages bronzed
by the wind and the sun of the river. But to-morrow morning, when
they awaken, how surprising it will be not to hear the flick-flack of
the cotton tent over their heads, to smell no longer the warm odour
of the buffalo-skin! What a surprise and what a disenchantment to
find the four walls, a motionless ceiling, the glass window.... How
sad. Meanwhile, a ramble in the woods to-morrow, just to see what
preparations are on foot there for the festival of autumn.
* * * * *
The school will soon have lasted for three years. In spite of all, the
masters have inspired confidence, and there are now twenty-five pupils.
There would be more of them if the building were not inadequate. For
others are awaiting the first vacancy, to be taught in their turn. And
those pious personages may well ask whether the good morals of the rod
are not in peril.
Then, towards Easter, they hear that the Thoreau school is going to
close. What has happened? John feels shaky, unable to continue. For
some time he has not been well, but he has said nothing about it, in
order not to discourage the pupils in their work. But now he is no
longer able to keep up the pretence. Whatever the regrets and the
consequences may be, everything must be given up abruptly, on the high
tide of success, so that John may take care of himself, for it is
he who steers the ship. Henry, who had begun the school without his
brother, would no longer have the same reasons for keeping it if the
latter retired. To keep school with John was perfect. Without him, it
was not to be thought of. Better to look for something else.
John is ill, consumed by a slow, tenacious disease.... Is the
grandfather, lying down there in the graveyard, demanding him back?
Already three of his daughters--Aunts Sarah, Nancy and Mary, and one
of his sons, Uncle David, whose Christian name Henry bears, have died
young of consumption, like their father. Is his grandson going to have
the same fate? Or is John to be confronted with a demand more brutal
still? To be condemned without appeal, because sweet souls like him
are out of place on this earth? Yes, for the poor fellow, as he drags
along, is finally carried off, with a refinement of horror. In shaving
himself he makes an insignificant cut. Lockjaw sets in; and the smile
of this loving soul is extinguished amid atrocious convulsions. John
dies in torture.
In the house of mourning, on this February day of 1842, the younger
brother is the most miserable of all. What is the use of fortitude,
of this mask of impassibility, when you are stricken in the tenderest
depths? How survive the best part of yourself? A boy, crushed under his
suffering, does not know.... John, my brother, after these years we
have enjoyed together, and all the secrets we have shared, how can I
support alone the weight of this grief that once was joy? My comrade,
my inspiration, my good genius, my brother. You whom one read as a
beautiful story that everyone loves to hear retold. You never had to be
deciphered laboriously to yield the meaning of the tale....
Henry remains sitting in the house, with this weight that overwhelms
him. He no longer cares for anything: everything, in the garden, in the
woods, on the banks of the river, in the neighbourhood of their school,
cries out his destitution. His sisters try to take him out to distract
him. He does not object, he is inert. He is indifferent to everything.
It is as if he had lost the highest reason for existence, love.
Will he regain his poise, his taste for life? Possibly--apparently.
But there is in his deepest depths an incurable wound that will never
endure being touched, however lightly. He cannot make the slightest
verbal allusion to his bereavement, so greatly does it pain him. To
deceive himself he plays the stoic, writing to a friend that a musical
air has brought back to him the sense of the harmony of the universe
and that he wishes never again to see his brother in life--that he
wishes only for his ideal prototype. But in the confidences of his
Journal how much truer he is! “Where is my heart gone? They say men
cannot part with it and live.” That delightful intimacy they had
shared through childhood, boyhood, manhood, he knew very well he would
never find again, _never_. John’s grave enclosed the youth of two.
Twelve years later, trying to describe to a friend those moments when
his brother had disappeared in torture, Henry turned pale and almost
fainted.
There remained the boat they had built, with which they had unrolled
the beautiful watered ribbon of their adventures. To see it rocking
against the bank was simply to have before him a sharper image of his
grief: John taking sail to face alone a terrible adventure. He would go
no more in this boat. That was ended.
In the following spring he gave it to a friend who wanted it.
III
When the Thoreau school unexpectedly closed, Henry was only twenty-four
years old. But he had moved forward since he had left Harvard. His
convictions, already clear, the presentiments of the college boy, had
acquired more force. He had ripened early in solitude and study, and
his experience of the world had enlarged. He had had some taste of it,
and the face he presented to it held little promise of friendship.
The aversion he had felt in college for an atmosphere dominated by the
young gentleman was extended now to the village atmosphere, the realm
of the young gentleman’s self-satisfied country cousin. The dear little
town, preserved in a syrup of sweet conventions, smiled with an air of
inviting him to add to its sweetness. The church-tower there pointed
toward heaven the sacred meaning of its anxious cares: observance,
decency, mediocrity--store-keepers, farmers, townspeople, honourable
souls one and all, cast in the same mould, more or less orthodox, good
folk, honest folk, so very honest, in almost perfect agreement, as if
they were acting together some excellent amateur comedy of manners.
Join in the dance, my boy. As he watched them performing their parts he
had no inclination to figure in the play. These farces bored him and
left him cold. Henry felt within him a disobedient soul.
Where in the world had it come from, this little seed of rebellion that
had sprouted in the soul of the child and sprung up in the boy? It was
to-day, at any rate, a fine, tough-grained shrub, well-rooted in the
soil. The school-less schoolmaster had no inclination to share in the
social mill that blissfully revolved about him. Under his hat there was
not an atom of the will that animated his forebears, the merchants of
the Norman island, or his grandfather, the store-keeper of Long Wharf.
A sad fact, but so it was. As naturally as they breathed or said their
prayers his family had put on the harness in all docility and taken
the road like good domestic animals who never dream that anything else
exists in the universe than the shafts, the rack, the halter, the
town-square and the street-corners where one turns every day. Doesn’t
this attract you, this cab-horse’s life, with the certainty of a bag of
oats at the end of the journey? With a beautiful plume on your head?
With your diploma you could easily be the master’s horse.
Many thanks. This may very well be, as the doctors say, the good old
wisdom of the ages, with an assured recompense in this world and the
next, but for me it has a disagreeable taste. If I listen to you and
nibble the good oats now, I shall soon find myself grazing in the
field and obliged to chew dry stalks. No doubt about that. I don’t
propose to let your wisdom catch me. It is soft and subtle; it is so
powerful because everyone, wherever he turns, not only breathes it in
himself and is impregnated at its touch, but passes it on, willy-nilly,
to the next fellow. It has its agents at work in the four quarters
of the world. To this marvellous wisdom, the crown of centuries of
civilisation, Henry gives another name, fraud. It has made itself at
home in the village as in the great city. And it has that smile because
it knows it is universally accepted.
Henry smiles too, for he is thinking of another universe than that of
the hay-merchants. What alienates him from their brotherhood is the
ugliness of their existence, pure derision. His own seems to him true,
fresh and full of unexpected things, lived in the quick beauty of
every moment, demanding no other profit than itself. Munch away your
life, then, good citizens of Concord, and permit me to _live_ mine.
The shadow cast by our elms is not sufficiently enveloping to sweep
me along after you into the paths of honourable stupefaction. I know
what your society makes of a man by taming him. It will get along very
well without my help. If it has held me for a short time, while I was
groping my way, trying to get my bearings, you may be assured that this
is over and done with. I have no desire to be a bad neighbour to you;
you are very worthy members of this parish. But don’t count on my aid
in making your merry-go-round go. I have my own corn to grind. You say
that in refusing to adapt myself to your rhythm I condemn myself to
poverty. As you please; why not? He laughs best who laughs last. I am
not afraid of my poverty. But I should have a terrible fear of what you
call your respectability, your industry, your virtue, if I were ever
threatened with having to share them.
But his whole race, all this little world about him, modelled in the
image of the great world, had obeyed the commandment: Look after
your business, increase your wealth. He listened to the mandate from
within--listened in his own fashion. Yes, exactly, look after one’s
_own_ business, increase one’s _own_ wealth. Interpret this freely, in
your own way. This boy does interpret it in his own free way. He counts
as much as anyone on “making a position for himself.” There are many
fine formulas of this kind that pass like counters from hand to hand,
from one shop to another, from father to son, while no one suspects
their true value. “Make a living” is one of them. Do you mean, make
a living and lose what makes it worth while? Then make it, makers of
money. We shall see in the end who is rich and who is poor. There is
nothing the matter with your formulas. I shall take them and give them
a good cleaning before I use them, for your hands have dulled them,
soiled them. They will have to be bright and new for my poverty.
Henry is no frivolous boy, make no mistake about that. The great
business of existence occupies his thoughts too. He asks himself if
life is not too precious an affair to be sold in pencils or lessons,
or measured out behind a counter, or at so much the page at a clerk’s
desk. Yes indeed, the great business of existence.... Exactly. But in
quite another sense than that of all these poor souls who are much
more aware of their dollars, their cattle and their land than of their
essential poverty. Henry is quite willing to be poor, but poor like
these people, never. By _no_ means. Not at any price. He intends to
pile up day by day the wealth to which all these well-to-do people, who
think they are so comfortable and so shrewd, pay no heed. The great
business of existence, in his twenty-five-year old eyes, is to create
oneself, to _live_, develop oneself, with respect for this gift that
one is--respect and love for this material that has been placed in
one’s hands in the rough for one to make of it the most beautiful of
works of art. Is that clear, you poor souls, with your minds on dollars
and cents?
As he watches this world, so diligent in its little wiles, its little
thieveries, Henry has no disposition for recriminations and dark
thoughts. He is too full of happiness. He feels his own strength. Let
them have their gains! A tissue of trivialities, their days, whose
comings and goings form the woof and the warp of their life. It amuses
him vastly to behold the beautiful acquisitions they pile up around
their mediocrity, like so much worthless bric-a-brac. Dull souls,
not to see that the first step to wealth is to simplify one’s life,
disencumber it of endless useless knick-knacks that prevent it from
growing. Money, to Henry, represents a pair of stout boots, a straw
hat, corduroy trousers. These elements once acquired at little cost, he
feels that all the other things--the savoury things the earth freely
offers--are given him in addition, as a bounty, as to anyone who
trusts. The apples in the orchard and the pike in the river and the joy
of the banks are all thrown in. Your money, your absurd money, thanks
to which you think you are assured of the enjoyment of the world,
simply prevents you from getting it. Your incomes are your jailers;
they stand on guard night and day about you. You serious men, you
sensible men, perpendicularly set upon your principles, you sly old men
of business, dignified heads of families, with an iron belief in the
sanctity of your motives, how ludicrous you are in the eyes of a boy
who strips away your mask....
A certain mustiness, for the rest, which he finds everywhere in this
Puritan atmosphere, offends the taste of the savage and the soul of
the pagan that have come to him heaven knows whence. He is not adapted
to the moral sanctity which these wooden sidewalks exhale. From his
childhood, the meeting-house, the pulpit, the Sunday school and the
tedious Sunday itself have made piety unpleasant in his eyes. How
does it happen that the church is generally the ugliest building in
a village? Is it a symbol? And if, some fine Sunday, in place of the
preacher, shouting like a herdsman whose herd is refractory, some
honest soul, some simple wood-cutter from the backwoods were to begin
to utter, with his accent, before the congregation, a few of the words
of Jesus, do you imagine that a single pane would remain in the windows
of the edifice, that a single worshipper would stay in his pew and
brave the crash? That old story refers across the ages to a fine,
frank character who must have been as simple as a wood-cutter, and who
could never have suspected, poor soul (otherwise how quickly he would
have stopped talking!), that after eighteen hundred years his name
would be invoked by all the brawlers of New England and creation to
confuse men and women. A splendid fellow, this Jesus, the carpenter’s
son--too beautiful for us to be able to doubt, in spite of the
vagueness of his story or of his legend, that he really existed in the
flesh--a boy come from the people to recall the bigots and hucksters
to decency, close up the vestries and the temples, put a little manly
pride into the heart of the poor, and obliged, after his time and in
spite of himself, to be the patron of the most flourishing business of
emasculation.
I know you are going to say to me: this is no substantial nourishment,
this old gospel of Judea, for a hearty lad who has worked all day and
likes to put a juicier morsel into his mouth. I agree. It does not
alter the fact that in spite of all the efforts of Christianity to
disgust you with him, Jesus, my brother, spreads about him an aroma
of godlike humanity. As you read the almost unknown book in which his
life is told, you wish, just because you are a pagan yourself, that you
could call your friends and say to them: Look here, I want to read to
you some pages you probably don’t know--they enchant me.... What do you
think of my discovery? Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it a splendid heresy, with
enough revolutionary force in it to crack the shell of this antiquated
world? And how happy you would be to welcome as a comrade the friend of
the vagabond if ... if the fanatic in front did not need him to thrust
into his sermon and shoot him at the worshipper at his feet.... Poor
fellow, soul of love, heart of the poor, what have they made of you?...
The famous Pilgrim Fathers, who embarked on the Mayflower to free
themselves spiritually and found a new England--did they imagine that
in doing this they would be liberated from themselves? It was hardly
worth while making this long voyage when, in the hold of the famous
boat, the Son of Man was in irons. They had really come to organize,
among other solid businesses, that immense conspiracy against life with
which every child born under a roof in any of the Atlantic States is
supposed to associate itself tacitly, and which he must never betray
till death, under pain of eternal damnation and a damned existence here
below. What a black responsibility Plymouth Rock bears!
This particular mania is what the posterity of the Pilgrim Fathers
call their religion. It taxes with sin the innocence of a boy who sets
off for a Sunday walk in the woods, or takes his fishing-line to the
water-side at church-time, to feel religious in his own fashion: the
Brotherhood of Sunday Bores sneers as the Sunday Walker passes. This
religion, with its church-tower, is broadminded enough to tolerate
the guile that gets the best of your neighbour during six days of the
week.... Ugh.... Come nearer, good people, and let me tweak your noses
and then turn my back and enjoy a good laugh. Your pious, mercantile
existence is too dismal; a little gaiety would not ill become you. Your
Sabbath bell strikes death into the soul; it sounds as if the continent
were groaning in the unending misery of the terrestrial abode adorned
by the Smug.
How was it possible for Henry to feel that he belonged to the same
parish as these parishioners? As a matter of fact, this refractory
soul had early declared his position. Soon after his return from
college, at twenty, he had refused to pay the church-tax of the parish
and officially separated himself from it with a written declaration
in which no deacon caught a hint of humour: “Know all men by these
presents that I Henry Thoreau do not wish to be regarded as a member of
any incorporated society which I have not joined.” This was plain and
precise. Take that, clerk of the parish; put this disavowal away among
your old papers, so it can bear witness in case there is need for it
some day. The parish has carelessly counted one parishioner too many.
This was about the time when Henry, master in a parish school, flatly
refused to form the character of his pupils with the help of the
rod. Naturally this double rebellion, against the authorities of the
village and the church, made him a suspicious character. The following
year, when he reached the age for voting, he openly refused to perform
the elementary act of a good citizen of a great democratic Republic.
Moreover, the very success, for three years, of the Thoreau school
had brought him the marked hostility of the mandarins of the village.
This stiff little schoolmaster ... this whipper-snapper of twenty-one
who permitted himself not to have recourse to corporal punishment, who
taught in an independent, lively fashion, who took the children off
boating or gathering huckleberries instead of holding them by fear!
Impudent! We shall have to be on our guard against you.
All right, be on your guard, mandarins. If the world speaks through
your lips, I shall let the world go. From childhood Henry has been used
to walking alone, at his own pace. He will try to find whether there
does not exist somewhere another world of which he carries the image in
himself. His one ambition, and it is a great one, is to make the finest
use of the marvellous gift that he has received--life. He has received
it, he is sure of that, and he knows its value. He must find out how
to employ his faculties, that is all. Perhaps he is destined for some
uncatalogued employment. He will see. But it must be an occupation that
dispenses him from conniving with this world of universal huckstering.
That’s settled. Every line he has meditated in college, every one
of his impressions since the time when he drove his parents’ cow to
pasture, has confirmed him in the resolution to remain himself, cost
what it may. The inflexibility which he does not dissemble and which
renders him insupportable to the mandarins is merely the outward sign
of this will.
In any case, he desires to work only at what is useful, with his
hands or his brain or his idleness--fruitfully, that is all that
matters--according to his own idea of the useful. Those numberless
absurd or degrading interests that absorb the human race he puts aside
with deliberate design. He can easily make shift with the little
sympathy that is felt for him in some quarters. If he had piled up a
lot of rubbish in a shop and sold it at a good profit, like a true
Thoreau of tradition, he would certainly have accomplished a work
agreeable to the Lord. It’s a pity, but he has no desire to please the
Lord or his servants. He wants to please himself. This is certainly
not the way to get up in the world; but for the moment, so far as that
is concerned, to be planted on his two legs and to stand on the top of
the Cliffs and watch the sun setting behind the mountains seems to him
sufficiently happy till something better turns up.
* * * * *
And then there was another side to the story. Since college Henry had
been working with definite aspirations, drawn towards a path that led
heaven knew whither but solicited him with an authority as sweetly
irresistible as the open spaces, out there, on a morning when he had a
hunger for discovery.
This dated even from the days before college. At Harvard some of his
compositions revealed an intellectual curiosity, a boldness, a turn of
mind that did not suggest the future lawyer or the embryo minister.
Henry was already trying to express himself. As a growing boy he had
devoured eagerly the scraps of new thought that came within reach of a
villager. They had a fresh, exquisite flavour that left a good taste in
his mouth. One day the friends of culture had inaugurated at Concord
one of those Lyceums which were being founded almost everywhere in
Massachusetts. Henry was only twelve years old at the time; but in
future, before going to college, he followed assiduously the lectures
and debates. The most beautiful of these lectures was the one he heard
there when he was eighteen, delivered by the step-grandson of old Dr.
Ripley, the minister of the parish, and a former minister himself,
who had come to settle in the village after a difference with the
ecclesiastical authorities.
What seized him, exalted him, was not so much the oration itself,
composed for the occasion of the second centenary of the founding of
Concord, as the sight of the lecturer, his expression, his eyes, the
indefinable charm of his words. How right he had been to give up the
church and its nonsense, this fellow of thirty-three, to come out
as a man among men and talk to them with that voice and that smile
that invited you to close your eyes to the wretched spectacles of the
world and contemplate the figures which the spheres describe in their
sacred dances. This man spoke as one inspired, with a simplicity, a
nobility that carried you away. It was said that he had made a journey
to Europe and had met a great many people over there, talked with
Coleridge, Wordsworth and this Carlyle who was about to publish an
astonishing book. He was just going to marry a second time. The year
after the lecture, they had recited a poem of his in celebration of
the anniversary of the famous battle of Lexington, a historic date
from which Concord drew most of its lustre. It looked as if this new
inhabitant, who had come to enjoy the natural charm of the little
town, had brought it in exchange a superior charm capable of raising
it above itself: short as the time was since he had settled there,
he already cut a great figure, second only to that of his venerable
step-grandfather, the spiritual director of the parish. Henry was
nineteen years old. And this very year the poet published a book
that was even richer than the most beautiful lecture. What a book!
A revelation, a gospel, the music of which made you melt with pure
admiration and joy. To think that this man was your neighbour.... That
simple title _Nature_ touched Henry at the most sensitive point. He was
captivated, illumined, confirmed in his own aspirations. If he himself,
some day, could only write pages that had a little of that subtle and
luminous quality!...
If he could become a writer, one of those people who have something to
say and know how to say it! At certain moments when he found himself
really face to face with himself, Henry had the impression that there
was something more than a great desire within him, that he had the
power as well. Before his twentieth year and aside from his college
dissertations, he composed, as an experiment, a few descriptive pages,
wrote a rhymed ballad. And since his return from college, his Journal
had always been there, scrupulously written up, to receive the secrets
of this desire, the more urgent inquiries, the first attempts of a
beginner who does not really know if the vein is rich but is heartily
resolved to pursue his exploration, even if he is to have at the end
nothing but the joy of exploring and contemplating the beautiful veins
of the earth cut away by the drill.
Whenever he was not too dissatisfied with a page he had written, he
read it to his little sister, for when you have a sister like Sophia,
who feels just as you do, a true Thoreau, you can let her into the
secret. It was at the beginning of the autumn that followed Henry’s
return home. A sister-in-law of the new great man of Concord was
boarding with his parents. Henry liked her very much: one day in the
spring of this year, while passing under her open window, with the
gesture of a shy young boy, he had even thrown her a bouquet of fresh
violets gathered on his walk, wrapped up in his apprentice rhymes.
Yes, Henry liked Lucy Brown very much and he told or wrote her of
things that he would never have been willing to confide to anyone
else. In talking with this friend, Sophia, who had gone to one of the
great man’s lectures, could not help remarking: “That is very much
like something that Henry has written....” It was easy to verify this
singular concordance, which Lucy Brown mentioned to her brother-in-law.
The great man wanted to see this young neighbour whose thought was so
much akin to his own; had he progressed so well, then, the college
boy whom he, as an influential and charitable man, had recommended
to the benevolence of the President of Harvard? And so Henry found
himself face to face with the man whose words, whose expression, whose
beautiful book had stirred him.
And now that they had met they were delighted with each other. Each
had understood the other at a glance; and before long they felt as if
they had always been friends. Waldo was the elder by fourteen years,
but Henry’s maturity of mind made one forget that he was only twenty.
Practically speaking, they were of the same age. The great man, who
also kept a Journal, observed in it: “My good Henry Thoreau made
this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity and clear
perception.” Happiest of moments were those when they set out together
for a ramble in the woods. At such times it was as if Henry was
introducing his lady-love to the author of the beautiful book on Dame
Nature. There Henry was at home, his companion was only on a visit. But
so happy, this latter, to become acquainted, thanks to his guide, with
so many things he had only perceived from a distance, things he had
touched in thought but not through the senses. This boy knew everything
that a philosopher did not suspect and introduced his friends of the
forest to you in such a way that they counted henceforth among your own
friends. In an excursion with Henry you were the guest shown about by
the master of the estate. The great man became the student once more
in the hands of this initiate. Charming student. Charming walks when
these two were happy together, the one penetrating into the secret life
of the woods with this sylvan creature, the other showing his intimate
friend the cherished marvels that had been familiar to him from his
childhood. How could a friendship rooted in the mould of the forest
fail to shoot up high and thick? When the great man’s family planned an
expedition to the Cliffs, they sometimes begged Henry to go with them
and not to forget to bring his flute.
Who can say what either one or the other of the friends reaped from
these walks, these conversations, this exchange? Who gained the more?
It would be hard to say. For Henry, in any case, in return for what he
brought the great man--an influence that was tonic, real, strong as
the taste of some crumpled aromatic plant or even the pungency of a
thought impregnated with the raciness of the soil--how comforting it
was to find in his elder such a wonderful response to his own youthful
meditations ... to hear, for instance, such perceptions as these: “Life
is an art. When we consider what life may be to all, and what it is to
most, we shall see how little this art is yet understood.... The work
of life ... is self-culture ... the perfect unfolding of our individual
nature,” when, at his own entrance into life, his instinct had repeated
to him in every key this very admonition.... To hear this from the lips
of a sage whose personality was so magnetically impressive was to yield
to the purest appeal of oneself while gathering the sweetest fruit of
friendship.
In the warmth of this exchange, which transformed old Concord and gave
it a new relish, Henry’s tastes were developed, along with his peculiar
ambition. From an assiduous listener at the meetings of the Lyceum he
had become a lecturer. At twenty-one he read there the fragment he was
just then writing on _Society_. It was as bold as the first attempt of
a young man is likely to be, and not very thrilling for the village
_élite_, who had come to listen to a little schoolmaster on his first
appearance on the platform; especially as he made no elocutionary
efforts to win them. He read his paper to them as he would have read
it at home to his sister, without any further adornment; it was their
business to listen and profit by it. When people do not understand
you there always remains for them the resource of guessing at your
drift. In spite of this, the following year, because he was actively
interested in the maintenance of this centre in the grey village
existence, they made him the secretary of the Lyceum, in charge of the
lectures--without remuneration, which gave the post its value and charm
in Henry’s eyes. Whether the audience followed him or not he meant to
go on speaking, even if the things he had to say were a little beyond
the horizon of Concord. Why should Concord not permit itself to shed a
little light, even from afar, upon those who lacked it?
So from now on a luminous centre existed here in spite of the good
people who were so busy, here as elsewhere, digesting the dough of
their days, without disturbing themselves about an art of living.
There were philosophic symposia at the great man’s house. A few choice
men and even a muse met there, deeply interested in lofty problems
and united in the same disinterested worship of the ideal. Towards
the third year of the Thoreau school, various wise personages were to
be seen there, Harvard graduates, men of learning, a poet, most of
them young, attracted from various points in the neighbouring country
through their love for a certain new thought. Especially to be noted
was one who had the air of presiding over the conversations, with the
authority of a man of forty; a pure spirit, lodged by mistake or a
singular taste for antithesis in a carnal envelope--thin, lanky, with
a pale skin and a head crowned with weeping hair, already white, named
after one of the minor prophets, Amos. Amos Bronson Alcott. This noble
dreamer had just settled in Concord with his terrestrial family, for
he had taken a wife and begotten daughters, after the human law. As
for the muse, her thirty summers had brought forth a bony visage and
masculine features; her fascination was due to her great learning and
her fancy and enthusiasm. Her name was Margaret Fuller. In such company
you soon felt disburdened of your clayey mediocrity. You were ready to
embark for the various points in the sky which the programme of the
meeting indicated. The smile of the master of the house was enough
to give you full confidence. Adventurous, intoxicating expeditions
on which, after soaring through the clouds, you were never sure of
being able to recover your path on the earth. They were veritable
skylarkings of the spirit.
Henry listened, sharing in the discussions. Allied as he was to these
choice spirits by the noble interests that were common to them, he
did not feel entirely in harmony with them. Alcott was very eloquent
and said many beautiful things. But while these tours of the heavens
have an irresistible attraction for young and generous souls, Henry
had never lost his plebeian habit of feeling the grain of the earth
under his boots. In this refined game it was the stakes that mattered
to him; the game for the game’s sake struck him as a little academic.
They were neo-platonists. But as these new aspirations required a
new name they had adopted that of Realists or Transcendentalists,
which the great man had selected with his friend George Ripley, who
lived in Boston. Realists, those who pursued the reality behind the
appearance--Transcendentalists, seekers of the infinite through the
finite: this had the right sound, it told the story, and it was
unorthodox enough to disturb all those pious heads that were congealed
in the ice of their formulas. The smell of heresy is sweet to the
nostrils of one who is fond of sniffing the wind.
Henry rejoiced to feel in himself the soul of a Transcendentalist.
A good word this, Transcendentalist. It is long but it goes a long
way. He was not quite sure that this “ist” had just the same shade of
meaning for the whole gathering. Perhaps it was pale and crowned with
white curls like the noble Alcott. Or curved in an exquisite smile like
the lips of Waldo. Perhaps Transcendentalism, like its brother isms,
had no more value than the individual who happened to pass it round his
neck like a collar. Perhaps it was nothing but a tool in the hands of
a worker, good or bad. Henry was going to use it as a worker who knows
what to do with a tool. As for the word itself, serious as the matter
was for him, there were even moments when Henry was tempted not to
take it much more seriously than did the outsiders who lost no time in
ridiculing the new gospel. Besides, he always had the resource of being
a Transcendentalist in his own fashion. Let his friends seek for the
real and the infinite as they chose; he was going to seek for it first
under the soles of his heavy boots. Of this he was transcendentally
sure.
As they were a circle of apostles revealing a new life at the heart of
the old withered Puritanism, it was necessary for them to propagate
this outside the work-room where they gathered. They founded a
magazine; it appeared every three months and the muse of the group
assumed the care and the expense of editing it. The great man gave it
many pages that ought to have won for it subscribers by the thousand
if the public could only have altered its detestable habit of ignoring
a magazine supported solely by a belief in the beauty of humanity. If
you publish, for instance, noble old bits from the classics, how can
you expect to catch readers who ask for things that are amusing and
sensational and up-to-the-minute? In the opening number of the magazine
Henry had seen himself in print for the first time. A small emotion
compared to that which was concealed, to all save one or two persons
perhaps, in this poem entitled “Sympathy,” under the signature Henry
Thoreau. The author was twenty-three years old. He had published.
He had emerged from his Journal. He was in a circle of friends who
were initiating the renaissance of mystic idealism that was going to
renovate the thought of New England and America. This was no reason
for giving up his big boots or chinking in his pocket the dollars he
had not received, since the magazine paid nothing. But it gave him the
desire to write, to collaborate in this rare magazine in which his
friends welcomed his manuscripts so cordially--or, when they refused
them, refused as friends. They had not refused his “Aulus Persius
Flaccus,” his first public attempt as a writer of prose. And an unpaid
article will sometimes earn one a friendship that is worth more than
money. Often one is not to know of this till much later.
But to whom was he to give these little verses, the scribblings of a
sentimental and philosophic schoolmaster, since the great man, who did
not like them very much, advised him not to publish them? They had the
archaic flavour of the old English poets who had helped him to endure
his exile in the college library. They were like the work of a boy
who amuses himself collecting little wanton butterflies and pinning
them on equal lines on a card in some harmonious arrangement of their
tinted wings. It was a game at which boys amuse themselves, boys and
those older children who re-translate Horace after sixty. Henry was
not yet twenty-five, and he was only a child in the sense that his
childhood was inseparable from him; but he loved these soothing little
old-fashioned verses, just as he loved to play a little air on his
flute or whistle the tune of some organ-grinder in the street. Not
“smooth and flowing” enough for the taste of the great man of Concord,
who made rhymes too now and then. There was nothing to be done then but
to keep them to himself, since their rhythm was dear to him in spite of
all. There would always be time to throw them into the stove.
But what was he to do with those great chunks of prose interspersed
with the little verses in his Journal? And when did he first realize
that he was the writer, the poet, in them, and not in these rhymes
of an elderly amateur? Aside from the pages that he had used in the
composition of his first essay, “Sound and Silence,” there were those
he had copied and sent to Margaret Fuller, the editor, who did not
want them for her magazine. Yet they had rather a strong quality.
In a tone of juvenile grandiloquence, but with a firm accent, Henry
pronounced his vows, notified society of his refusal to collaborate
with it, and dedicated himself to the service of the cause. The editor
did not perceive that a writer of prose had been born, prolix and not
yet sufficiently sure of himself to break through the weight of words,
carried away by his love of paradox, but rich in savoury fantasy, a
creator of bold, fresh images. Her copy had been returned to him, with
a graceful note of refusal. He would wait, then.
Henry stored his harvest away. Henry worked. Outside his father’s
little factory, where he made the pencils, there was a labourer at his
toil, awaiting his audience without anxiety.
* * * * *
How does it happen that Henry, yesterday a schoolmaster, should be
living at his friend Waldo’s house? Ralph Waldo Emerson, yes. It has
come about quite simply.
His friend, finding him free after the closing of the school, has made
him a proposal.
He is greatly in need of someone to look after a hundred and one little
matters, in the house and outside, which he cannot attend to himself.
When he is away, off on lecture tours, it would be very pleasant
to feel that he was leaving at home someone he could trust to see
that everything went smoothly, as it should go in the household of a
philosopher. He thought that such a man as Henry, who was a famous
gardener and understood everything, would be just the person. Was he
mistaken? Henry could come and live in their house without sacrificing
any of his cherished liberty. How did Henry feel about it?
The latter had accepted. Not as a young man of twenty-four, only
too happy to yield to the desire of a great elder, but because this
proposal had a sound that pleased him. In that house at least he knew
they would accept him, discerningly, at his true value. They were
not appealing to a workman whose arms or brain one hires; they were
appealing to Henry, raw as he was, with his qualities and his defects.
That is why he had said yes. An ugly word becomes clarified when you
take a “job” with people who understand you and love you as nature has
made you. Heavens, yes, he had agreed without a single reservation.
The arrangement was quite simple. The steward was to work as he chose
in the garden or elsewhere, at any hours that pleased him and whenever
work seemed good to him; in return, he was to have his meals and his
room as if he were one of the family. He was to be one of the family.
Wasn’t that clear and above-board?... If you were a great philosopher,
illumined with a serene wisdom, but little fitted for all those small
material affairs that have to be reckoned with just the same in the
daily life of a philosopher, would you not be very happy to have
engaged a trustworthy man to shoulder all these little troublesome
tasks and be on the spot, with an alert eye and a sure hand, during
your absences? And suppose, at the same time, that you could converse
occasionally on the noblest topics with your confidential man, as a
brother, an equal, who is prepared to accompany you, to follow or
precede you, up the highest peaks of thought: would not this be a
famous combination?... And if you were a penniless young man, seeking
employment for your faculties or your skill with people who would not
make use of you simply as a tool that one takes up and throws aside,
a tool that one oils or allows to rust, would you not be overjoyed to
be the confidential man of a sage who wants to place in your hands
all the odd tasks about the house? A sage who knows perfectly who you
are and appeals to the man as well as the worker? Would you hesitate?
Hardly, for it would strike you that to work for such an employer,
such a friend, would be like playing even if the work sometimes were
hard; it would be the highest form of collaboration. Your friend is a
philosopher divinely adroit in the field of ideas, but far from handy
in the practical domain; he needs your workingman’s hands and allows
them to exist side by side with the soul of a poet. Your friend opens
his house to you as an equal.
All right, it’s settled, friend Waldo. This environment, this household
are sympathetic to Henry; the house itself smiles on him. Coming
to Concord, Emerson, after visiting his step-grandfather, in the
delightful old manse built by his ancestor where he himself had written
_Nature_, had had the luck to find and establish there, as the home of
his second marriage, the true dwelling for a sage. At the far end of
the village, on the same side as the Poor Farm, it was called, from
the name of a previous holder, the Coolidge house. The benediction of
the great trees along the road prepared you for the grave smile of a
little white dwelling among the pines whose modest porch seemed to
say to the new master: I give myself to you for eternity. Be faithful
to me. We shall always understand each other. And the nine windows
in front approved and the two chimneys took the oath; the Mill Brook
in the great meadow was the witness of the engagement. And you felt
immediately that what the porch said was true. From there it was only
a short quarter of an hour to Walden Pond, where you found yourself
in the wild woods; a spot haunted by Henry since his childhood, where
the Sage particularly loved to air his thoughts under the pines. It
was a house after Rousseau’s heart and after Henry’s heart. And when a
house pleases you, everything you have to do that depends on the house
is tinged with pleasure. It was only a few weeks after the closing of
his school that Henry had come to occupy the place offered him in this
home, nestling in the joy of the fields at the end of April.
There is nothing like a little white house and its out-buildings in
the fields for giving you work to do. This is Henry’s business. From
the kitchen-dresser hangs a door the hinges of which have come off.
Just in his line. The hinges of the door of eternal life are in the
best of order, but the genius of a philosopher does not understand
kitchen-dressers. The stove draws badly; it must be taken apart. This
is in your line too, man of all work. The disfigurement of hands soiled
with soot is not indelible. And who is to assume the important labours
of the hen-house? A philosopher, of course, possesses like the most
ordinary mortal the art of eating a soft-boiled egg; but before and
after this beautiful fresh egg is laid for you to go and take it out of
the nest, how many little details there are that demand the skill and
experience of a man well up in other tasks than the tasks of the study!
Fowls have their own life and their own ideas; there is the practical
philosophy of the poultry-yard on which neo-platonism has made no
profound impression, and there is the hand that knows how to make just
the right twist to restore the broken roost. An idealist especially
needs good roosts and hens that lay. Not necessarily golden eggs;
simple, soft yellow eggs are the thing for your philosophic breakfast.
And who but a gardener-poulterer is to prevent the blessed hens from
marauding among the flowers in the garden? Then there is a pail that
leaks, and here is the tinker. You have everything under your hand with
that wonderful boy. He is the universal repairer. The neighbours know
him well and have recourse to his knowledge. And he is a great hand
at chopping wood. When you see Henry handling the wood you feel that
his friend Waldo is going to gain a good deal by this exchange. His
trusty man does not measure the pains he takes, he is indefatigable and
performs his labourer’s toil with the same conscientiousness with which
he has elaborated a page of prose, for himself alone, in his Journal.
But Henry’s real kingdom is the garden. He understands not merely
how to raise melons, but how to prune fruit-trees; he knows how to
graft, and how to catch moles and field-mice; he is ready if there is
a stake that needs to be strengthened with heavy blows of the mallet,
vegetables to be transplanted or trenches to be dug. Sometimes the
philosopher and the gardener work together in the garden. Near this
invaluable boy, who is like a brother to him, the Sage is happy; it
is not merely the garden-work that does him so much good, but Henry’s
presence acts on him like a tonic. The stroke of this little man’s
spade seems to stir the roots of his own philosophy; on the clod that
he turns up a worm is wriggling. The spade plunges into the secrecy
of the combinations of the earth that will make the seed of the idea
germinate.
Henry is in a fortunate position. He can really share in such a
household. He feels at home there. In their leisure hours the master
and his confidential man have long conversations in the study, where
the plain board shelves do not look as if they held the books merely
for the charm of their bindings. At these moments their everyday
intimacy rises to the loftiest comradeship. They prolong these
fine excursions in which Waldo remembers that he is the son of a
mighty walker before the Eternal. In the open fields and amid this
full-hearted intimacy, they make astonishing discoveries. Yes, they
are happy, and neither of them would be able to say what it is that so
enlivens the landscape when they set out together. The Sage does not
walk on Sunday; on that day it is more suitable to stay at home.
So now the master of the Coolidge house can set out with a mind at
ease when he is going to give his lectures. He can depend on his young
friend, from whom he receives letters that have the fragrance of their
garden days together. In his absence the confidential man becomes the
protector and the stay of the household. Other ties unite him to the
family than those of the hen-house and philosophy. If Lidian, the
mistress of the household, loves him like a grown-up son, it is not
merely because he looks after the flowers in her garden that she has
brought from her parents’ house. In the same month in which Henry had
lost his brother, she had lost her dear little Waldo, her eldest, five
years old. It was to John, the charming John who had brought Emerson
one day a bluebird-box for the barn, that she owed that daguerreotype
of the child who had now vanished with him.... This poignant double
loss had touched depths that the Transcendentalist doctrines never
reached. From the bereavement they had simultaneously undergone there
had sprung up, in the mistress of the house, an affection like that of
an older sister for the big boy of the house, which he returned with a
deep, tender respect. The good gardener who took such pains with her
garden and her flowers gratefully accepted the authority, extending to
all sorts of small daily observances, of this woman who confided in him.
They led a very frugal existence in the home of the philosopher, who
was familiar with narrow circumstances from his childhood, his mother
having been left a widow with five small children to bring up, and he
had kept the taste for simplicity. This mother with her wholesome face,
always smiling, had come to live with her son and daughter-in-law. As
for Aunt Mary, who was also to be seen in the house, still so young at
eighty years, Henry had simply won her heart. And it was a holiday when
Lidian’s elder sister, Lucy Brown, the gardener’s very dear friend,
happened to be there. Yes, Henry, the philosopher’s right-hand man, was
very much at home.
Nothing was needed but children to make him feel completely so, for
between Henry and the children there was a tacit alliance. There were
only two of them, Ellen and Edith, babies or practically so, since the
death of little Waldo, but with Henry they formed a new trio. With
the children as in the garden he was in his element. Their innocence
brought out several Henrys, for he was never at the end of his wits.
There was the inexhaustible teller of wonderful tales, a wizard who had
no equal for making them little flutes and whistles with the simple
reeds they collected in the meadow. And all those tricks he showed
them: how to manage the warming-pan in which they heated the pop-corn
till it burst and fell in showers like fire-works, the jack-knife that
he swallowed and took out again through the nose, with a skill that
would have made his Uncle Charles jealous, and the trick of the apple
divided so cleverly that it seemed to be intact till he asked you
to cut it and it fell into quarters. And how many other inventions!
The only person whom Ellen and Edith never saw with their friend was
Father Spoil-Sport. When they were bigger he was going to take them
out in his boat, and they were going to be Indians and camp out in
a hut of branches and live on huckleberries and sour apples and make
music. Meanwhile, after supper, they could go on strange journeys on
the carpet before the fire; play horse and gallop astride his knee, or
perch perilously on Henry’s sloping shoulders, standing straight up
taller than Grandma and almost touching the ceiling. When Ellen said,
“Papa may be coming home this evening,” little Edith, who was beginning
to talk, would repeat “Papa” and look at her friend Henry. He had a
big nose like her real Papa and they were quite willing to accept him
as a second Papa. He was not a grave gentleman all in black like those
whom they saw coming to the house and who remained shut up in Papa’s
study. He at least was willing to lend a hand and was not afraid of
soiling it. He was a Henry after their own heart with whom they could
exchange a knowing smile, for he understood the mysterious meaning of
the onomatopoeia of children who create a language of their own before
accepting another ready-made; a Henry whom they respected though he did
not growl at them and was not one of these respectable people; a Henry
who was on secret terms with the world of fairies, strange plants,
astonishing animals and corn that burst in the fire, and with the
little folk who were in ecstasy before these marvels.
Do not try to play the child with children if you lack the proper
physique. Henry’s figure contributes greatly to his success with young
people. Small, thin as a wolf, with a narrow chest, sloping shoulders,
he looks like a wise and cunning gnome. No matter if he is ugly, of an
ugliness for which not one of the seven deadly sins would accept the
responsibility, for this really makes no difference to them. At the
ends of his long arms are veritable workingman’s hands; a spindling
trunk, rather short legs planted on big feet. His markedly aquiline
nose points to a mouth with singularly expressive lips and knows
nothing of the receding chin. Sunk beneath the saliant eyebrows are
large, clear, wide-open eyes, grey with a tinge of the blue of the
sky, that look you through and through. Light-brown hair, abundant and
fine. His sunburnt complexion, a certain rusticity of manner, which
his association with Harvard and its fine gentlemen has not corrected,
would make it very easy to mistake him for some longshore-man on a
visit up country. As you see him pass, with his rough clothes, worn
alike on weekdays and Sundays, his hob-nailed boots bound with leather
laces, with the long, swinging step of a man who is used to walking
great distances, hands behind his back and fists clenched, often with
his eyes on the ground, the impression of physical resistance this thin
little fellow gives is in flat contradiction to the meagre frame. When
he lifts his eyes and looks at you it is as if a jet of implacable
sincerity and perspicacity had struck you; the whole man is revealed in
those eyes. Not a very easy fellow to teach, you say to yourself. But
the twinkling of the grey eyes has another meaning which the children
and his few friends know; under the bold features of a face that can
be serious to the point of desolation, they know what fancy, what a
vein of caustic humour and sober gayety is waiting for a chance to be
released. And these diverse impressions melt in the aroma of open air
that breathes from his whole person.
Not easy to get on with, assuredly no. You can look to him for adhesion
or resistance, but never for submission. You can do nothing with
him unless you accept him as he is, with his mulish obstinacy, his
final “noes,” his likes and his dislikes. They know him well at the
Emersons’: sudden bursts of frankness, resistance without any reason,
fits of combativeness, a bluntness that does not always conform to the
code of politeness are to be expected from this right-hand man, who
shocks them now and then. But it is always wiser to let him follow his
own fancy, singular as it may be. If they had engaged a gardener by
the year or a day-labourer, he would have done his money’s worth--his
money’s worth exactly or a little less, done his job like a duty that
enables you to live. With Henry you always get more than your money’s
worth, because money to him means nothing--or something so different.
You have only to let him choose his own hours and his own way of
working. There is no one who will do a job better than he, as long as
it has none of the grey tinge of a duty.
For the rest, who could deny the excellence of the arrangement? A man
who can do everything about the house and yard is very valuable: how
much more so if he can be your literary collaborator as well! Margaret
Fuller, who is finding it very difficult to make a success of the
_Dial_, the Transcendentalist magazine that only needs subscribers to
be the first magazine of the continent, has finally turned over the
editorship to Emerson. The latter asks Henry to help him. They will
work in the garden and the magazine together. They have to assemble
the copy, send it to the printer, read the proofs, put it into pages,
canvass for new subscribers. A task not quite so familiar to Henry
as grafting and pruning, but he sets to work and does it. Under his
hands the magazine takes a new turn. It associates the old Oriental
sapience with the fresh wisdom of the Atlantic shores. Henry likes his
work as editorial secretary. Here he is at the heart of the movement.
And now it is he, whose manuscripts the amiable editress had refused,
who judges and inserts the manuscripts of other people. He profits
by the change to extract from his Journal, revise and publish long
fragments--accounts of excursions, impressions of nature, studies of
the fauna and the flora of the country. The editor thinks very highly
of this gardener-subeditor who helps him so earnestly in preparing the
magazine and filling out the table of contents.
Can you imagine a boy looking back later upon this time of his
twenty-fifth year, passed thus in the confidence of a little white
house, and not finding in the recollection the happiest of tastes?
The best part of it was not so much the privilege of having lived on
such intimate terms with a great man as the liberty they had given
him, the trust they had reposed in him in this household. Henry,
their confidential man--how wise they had been in giving him their
confidence!... In return for his board, they had permitted him to live
in his own way, giving what he was able to give on this condition. They
had not asked him not to be the Henry that he was by the grace of God,
with all his oddities and his pig-headedness and his nonchalance.
Everything else could be forgotten, but this noble and affectionate
indulgence, this magnanimous faith in him, a young man who had not yet
shown his best, had warmed his heart at a time when the future seemed
dim to a boy who had nothing to offer the world but what the world had
no use for. Whatever this future might be, there would remain between
his elder and himself the magnetism of this friendship, the tie of
these fraternal years when they had cultivated the garden together.
Even if he said little about it, he carried this always in the bottom
of his shy, remembering heart.
* * * * *
After a visit to New York in February, 1843, Emerson was at home again
by the end of the winter to welcome another spring in Concord. It
would soon be two years since Henry had come to his house to live: or
had he always been there, and was he to remain always? It was time
to do a little thinking. William, the philosopher’s older brother,
was looking for a tutor for one of his children. What would the
confidential man, the Harvard graduate, say to this? He would have
to give up Concord, for William Emerson was living near New York. A
serious resolution, to leave his kingdom and his own people. On the
other hand, the neighbourhood of New York would be favourable to his
literary ambitions, and might help him, who could say, to sell a few
articles. This chance to try was perhaps the most tempting opportunity
that might offer. And then he would see a new country, another horizon
would stand out against the setting sun. Henry had had no further
glimpse of New York since he had gone there on business, at nineteen,
with his father.
So it happened that, in the May of this year, the confidential man
found himself on Staten Island, the island with its back to the
continent like an animal advancing to sniff that much larger animal,
Long Island, which has come out of the Atlantic, with the bay of New
York crowding between their two muzzles. It was on the north side of
the island that William Emerson had his residence. A beautiful house,
worthy souls who did their best to be amiable. But one who had just
left a house like that of Waldo and Lidian recognized by the smell,
the moment he entered this house, that these people were of another
species. It was imposing, grave and stupefying. Henry felt like a
stranger among strangers; even the title of Judge, borne by the master
of the house, weighed upon him. They did not understand one another,
they never would understand one another; but for all that he would
do his work as well as he could since he was a tutor and it was a
question of Waldo’s brother. Later on, he would see; meanwhile, the
tutor was obliged to stay in his room. For on arriving he had caught
a violent cold that kept him shut up for a week. A misery to have had
such a weak chest ever since that bad case of bronchitis which had made
him so ill when he was eighteen.
A bad beginning at the Judge’s, in an unknown country. In front of the
house, deep woods, and a mile away the sea, which he heard roaring
when the wind blew. The house stood with its back against a hill a
hundred yards high, from which you surveyed the immense panorama of
the Bay, the Narrows, Brooklyn, New York in the distance, the coast of
New Jersey. The first time he climbed it and took in all this horizon,
he was sure of one thing: this was the place he would come to for
the nourishment he would never find under this roof, where there was
nothing to hold him aside from his duties as a tutor. His real daily
repast awaited him on the hill. He could live for a few months in a
strange house, situated at the foot of a height that commanded such a
quarter of space. Alone, up there, he could collect himself towards
evening, watching the boats and the sea or reading a dear letter
received from far, far over there, beyond the boats and the sea--from
old Concord of which he dreamed and the forest paths that preserved the
imprint of his feet.
Henry felt a void in his soul. A stoical boy has remedies against
homesickness and, wherever he is, his own company helps him to endure
it. Just the same, the soul suffers from a sudden change of diet; it
is slow in acclimatizing itself. Over there were his own people and
the face of his own country, the voices of the two rivers and the Mill
Brook and the smell of the upturned earth in Waldo’s garden. Here,
everything breathed of exile, and the summer had a different language;
in spite of the sun he shivered.
When homesickness prowls about, seeking for some chink by which to
worm its way into you, the best thing to do, when you are not shut up
between the walls of a college, is to set out for discoveries over the
island, to see what it has to offer you. When you are a mighty walker,
a born vagabond, you hold homesickness at a respectful distance. From
nine to two o’clock Henry makes his pupil work, then he is free.
You can see him setting out in his good Concord boots to seek his
fortune. The interior of the island is like a great pleasure-park,
with its valleys, its woods, its verdure; fruit-trees abound there,
cherry-trees are common along the hedges, the tulip-tree flourishes,
and the magnolia in July is enthroned like a supernatural bride. A
park in which some care has been taken for the views; through the long
clefts in the earth you suddenly perceive, over a field, a ship under
full sail, passing thirty miles out at sea--as in a magic lantern. In
the valleys, shielded by the foliage, are the farms of the Huguenots,
the first colonists; the old elm on the shore still marks the spot
where they landed, after placing the ocean between themselves and the
Dragonnades of Louis XIV--the great-great-grandparents of your own
people at Saint-Helier, brought here not by the desire to make fortunes
but by their passion for spiritual independence. In the northeastern
corner, not very far from Castleton, where the Emersons’ house is,
there is another Concord. You find them everywhere. The Sundays are
free for long excursions. The vast kingdom of an island seems still
more vast, for you are surprised that the seashore can surround so
much country. The walker annexes it methodically. Everything is new
to him. They raise tomatoes and potatoes in the open fields. Henry
has not left at home his old vigilance as a rover. Crossing a field
he stoops and picks up an arrow-head. It is really almost laughable.
At Concord or wherever he may be, when a flint-flake emerges, however
imperceptibly, from the earth or a heap of pebbles, you may be sure
that Henry, tramping in that neighbourhood, will fall upon it. He
smells it. It is as if in his shrewd glance there were a magnet that
makes these arrow-heads emerge for his benefit from the earth where
they are hidden.
Henry scours the island. A surveyor, no doubt, this lanky fellow whom
people see crossing and re-crossing the fields, examining everything
with his old habit of inventorying a piece of land, as if he were
going to buy it: he cuts across it in a bee-line, whether the ground
is good or bad, regardless of the regular road. Or perhaps a man
looking for a good site for some speculation. He must be pretty well
acquainted with the state of things. A poor devil of a tutor, you say?
Come now!... More attractive still than the interior of the island are
its watery shores, the salt marshes, the approaches of the sea. Henry
wanders along the beach, waiting for this enormous presence to define
itself. Never before has he had such a chance to be impressed by it.
Perhaps it has things to say to him which the pines about Concord
have forgotten to convey. He has the whole of space to himself; there
is nothing frivolous to distract him, the hidden musicians play for
him alone, and he can walk and walk and walk to its ritornello in the
dazzling marine daylight. It is grand enough to overwhelm him if he
were not made of tough gristle. A pack of half-wild dogs scours the
beaches in quest of carrion thrown up by the ocean. The smallest of
them stops and barks after him. He has surely rubbed against mankind,
this cur, for he was the one you took under your protection yesterday,
driving off with stones the big fellows that were chasing him. The
only people you see are fishermen who have drawn their boats up on the
shore--herring-fishers, with great nets. Far away glide the boats with
men on board who think as you do. You feel as if you were one of these
boats, and you too long to spread your sails, instead of leaving your
footprints on the wet sand or walking on the shingle like the crabs.
Concord, you are in no danger of being forgotten, but confess that you
have no such sight as this to offer. The best place from which to take
it in is some height where you are the monarch over this immensity.
Then, though you are too far away to reach the shore, the ocean seems
to you so near that you could touch it. The whole radiant panorama of
the sea, islands, bay, shores, marshes, converges towards your own
small self that receives it and feasts upon it; your landsman’s soul
drinks in the sea and the sailors. From an old ruined fort, Henry
watches the arrival of the vessels; the health-officer climbing on
board, the messenger who has come for his bundle of newspapers. Best of
all is the hill-top behind the house which he can ascend every evening,
the ideal observatory from which to count the sails in sight as the
sun sets, revealing more and more of them the lower it falls--passing,
returning, departing, sometimes in a long procession, busy, stately,
as if they were coming here, between the muzzles of the two fishes, to
conclude their tour of the world.
Before this huge spectacle of the bay of New York, this incessant
passing of vessels, this amplitude of ocean that is offered to the
eye of the little tutor, sitting and musing there on the ridge, his
rustic Concord soul communes with itself and wonders if it could become
acclimatized here. This hour is the best of the day, and on this
hill-top he recovers his balance. Yes, the sea alone can mitigate the
separation. It is like the winds that blow in the woods at home. But
if, at the foot of the hill or on his return from a walk, there were
only some friend with whom he could talk as a brother! Or if he could
merely find himself again in some circle of familiar silence bathed
in an atmosphere of trust! For Henry solitude is an old and honoured
acquaintance: but never till now has it wearied him as it sometimes
wearies him here. There are no human faces about him on the island--for
all these New York families who come over to spend the summer--save an
old fisherman, a neighbour, who invites him to come to the beach and
see the beautiful shad he has caught. So Staten Island is not a desert
island; it is inhabited by old Smith in whose presence he feels happy
as a man and a fresh-water fisherman himself.
In a rapid, sloping hand, cut with dashes for punctuation, Henry
writes affectionate letters to his family and friends in Concord--an
extraordinary number of letters for him. This cheers him up when the
unsavoury food of his days, served on the Judge’s table, leaves on his
palate an after-taste of exile. He entreats his mother for details of
the life at home, for news of everybody, including Aunt Louisa, whose
benignant face smiles upon him like an apparition from the wall of his
room, and Cousin George Minot. The lonely boy ingenuously commits all
sorts of enormities: he, with his sovereign contempt for newspapers,
asks them to send him the Concord paper. Of course it is perfectly
idiotic there, but how good it would be here, alone on the hill in the
evening, or in his room, to have a taste of the printed news from home!
And business, the pencils? And the vegetable garden? Henry is still so
full of Concord that, when he wakes up at night he can hardly believe
that the sound of the neighbouring sea is not that of the wind among
the woods of his childhood. In his dreams he sits under the poplar
behind his father’s house, sure that he is going to spend his whole
life there. He has bought a new pair of pantaloons which have cost him
$2.25 ready-made; the stockings are wearing well, for they are properly
made--knitted at home. His mother need have no fears: his outfit will
not have to be renewed yet--it withstands the new climate as well as
its master’s frame. Henry is going through a period of strange mental
lethargy, which makes him think of his waggish Uncle Charles, the
famous wrestler who was so speedily overthrown by the demon of sleep,
in the very middle of a conversation or even while he was shaving.
And he also thinks of his brother, in his grave now for more than a
year.... He writes to Waldo. How conceal the fact that he grates upon
William and Susan Emerson as much as these excellent people grate upon
him? His pupil is clever and is making progress, but nothing about him
wins the affection of his tutor. He takes after the Judge. As for your
brother, your sister-in-law, your nephews, dear Waldo, you can’t guess
how much further away one feels from them, thinking of you and yours
and the years passed in the little white house! He writes to Lidian.
How are the flowers getting on in her garden? Are the weeds coming up
too fast? She must have a new gardener. And the chickens? And do they
go huckleberrying as they used to do? The poor woman is not well and
she has told him about her difficulties; and in his own solitude, in
his affection and respect, her old right-hand man feels more grateful
than ever to this noble friend. Henry has a heavy heart, but as he
breathes these dear odours of Concord his hand does not tremble. His
advice to a sick friend is an exhortation to fortitude; his letters
to Waldo are as luminous as the conversations they had had when they
were off together on some excursion in the fields. The exile dreams,
collects his thoughts, struggles against his debility. The penholder
and the pocket inkstand which Elizabeth Hoar, Emerson’s friend, had
given him for his journey, are there like a feminine invitation. He
translates the “Seven Against Thebes,” and even composes for the _Dial_
a piece that is full of visions of dear Concord, _A Winter Walk_. If
it comes out well he will send it off for the next number. He can only
follow from afar the little review they are making among themselves,
imprinting it with a style all its own; but how he loves it as a ray
of light, an annunciation--and how he loves its disdain for commercial
methods.
As for the nearby metropolis, visible to the North, Henry was not
satisfied with observing it from the hill-top when his evening thought
interrogated the horizon. Since the first month of his arrival he had
profited by his Saturdays to go over and see New York. It was easy:
a half-hour’s walk on the road that passed in front of the house,
then three-quarters of a mile along the shore to the village of
Castleton, where you took the boat. In the city he went at once to see
two young friends of Emerson, clerks in an office. They had a drink
together. Thanks to these pleasant boys he did not feel alone in this
pandemonium, where everything shocked and grated on his country nerves.
Then he went to see a few sights that would serve as landmarks, the
Station, the Reservoir, the National Academy. He was not living so far
away; he would come back. Such a big morsel was not to be swallowed at
one mouthful. But there was one sight that had struck the Concord boy
much more than any of the monuments mentioned in the guide-books: the
crowd, the flood of faces in this Babel of a metropolis. The churches,
the Stock Exchange, the great pretentious buildings were mean, vulgar,
insupportable. But the crowd surging through the canyon-like streets
was a phenomenon that surpassed all these monuments, whether they were
dedicated to the worship of gold, God or the devil. Nothing like this
in Boston; it was a revelation. He would not forget the name of this
power. The crowd, yes, the herd that counted for so little beside
the individual. But what if the hum that rose from these swarms of
nobodies, this surge of faces in the great arteries, did correspond to
the waves that he had seen rushing together in the Narrows, or beating
the shores of the metropolis? He had the impression that this human
flood could, when it wished, submerge these stupid cubes of stone. The
crowd had imposed itself on little man.
Henry returned to the city whenever he could. He would have returned
oftener were it not for the expense. The boats left every hour, but you
had to pay your fare, and he was in rather bad straits. The distances
were great in the city, and he would have taken the stage often had
it not been for this miserable impecuniosity. If only that wretch of
an editor who had published one of his articles with a promise of
remuneration and who pretended to be dead would only have paid him!
He was obliged to space out his visits to New York. He went to see
Henry James, the Swedenborgian, a little plump, rosy, lame man who
looked like a broker. Henry spent three hours talking with him: in the
questions the latter asked he came into touch with a soul of wisdom
and goodness that refreshed him. One of those men who were able to
enliven a city whose tawdry buildings disheartened him. By degrees the
villager became used to the monster. He went to read in the libraries,
where he found the magazines and one or two substantial mouthfuls like
Carlyle’s last article; especially the Mercantile Library, the keeper
of which, an old Harvard tutor, had given him a card of admission
for a month. Moreover, in spite of this mental lethargy from which he
suffered, he did not forget one of the reasons that had led him to try
New York. He had come with the idea of seeing how the land lay in the
literary world. Horace Greeley, the editor-in-chief of the _Tribune_,
upon whom he called, made a good impression on him. They talked over
the experimental phalansteries, in which Horace had more faith than
Henry. Horace was a strong and important connection. He recommended
the beginner to the _Democratic Review_ which accepted his paper “The
Landlord,” for its October number. This was no great source of wealth,
for the magazine was poor and only paid famine prices. So he thought
it would be a good thing to find something else, for there was always
this irritating question of money. Henry held his lethargy in check
and boldly called upon publishers and editors; there might be one who
needed a young writer like himself, just fresh from his village, a
fruit of the orchards of Concord with their bloom still on him. One
of them proposed some work that an honest man could not do. Another
jingled the $50,000 in profits which he made year in, year out, just
by letting well enough alone. No doubt, no doubt. This chinking of
dollars made Henry feel that he was rich enough to despise them. There
was nothing much to tempt him indeed among fellows like that. It was
just as it was in Concord; no one needed him, and those who would
have liked to give him a welcome were unable to pay him. He had gone
the rounds of the magazines; those that he had thought of as possible
had obliging contributors by the dozen. There was, to be sure, the
_Ladies’ Companion_, which paid; but he was not likely to stray into
that company. Ask somebody else, dear lady. And yet he was absolutely
obliged to earn a little money. So Henry spent a whole day hawking
_The Agriculturist_ about New York. This was less humiliating than
scribbling for a trashy publisher. If there was nothing for a writer
to do in New York, he would wait for luckier days. The Republic of
Letters would not die, nor would Henry either. He would retire in good
order, as light in money and the hope of money as when he arrived. His
flat purse, on his return as on his departure, would serve to identify
him....
But have you reckoned up exactly what you are bringing back, my friend?
It is more than your purse would hold. Or even your portmanteau,
between your socks and your books. Your wealth, young man of Concord,
is solid and durable in a different way from the ready-made trousers
you have bought in New York. The experience of the literary market--how
much do you think that is worth? You have watched these shopkeepers,
big and little, at their counters; while they were talking, you have
caught the odours from the back-shop. These few glimpses were enough
for you to divine the flavour of their cooking, their motives, the
quality of their trade. The most generous of them could not pay for
your collaboration a more royal price than that of this experience.
At twenty-six, when you are beginning, to know once and for all that
the literary market is a market like other markets, to which you bring
your merchandise, which will remain on your hands if it does not suit
the taste of the customer; to know that the career of letters as you
understand it is not a trade that enables a man to subsist and that
there is no profit of money for you to hope for in this way ... tie up
this truth tight in your handkerchief and keep it as the rarest of your
arrow-heads.
And this ocean of faces in the streets, on the wharves, the human
flood of New York--how much is it worth, from your point of view, to
have coasted along that and felt it beat against you? The passionate
individualist is in rebellion against the power of the mass. But it has
fascinated you, disturbed you; its magnetism has impressed you at the
first contact. A mob, undoubtedly. But with a movement as grand and
sweeping as that of the clouds and the winds and the waves. And the
watery surroundings of the city, that luxuriance of ocean and horizon
and ships, absorbed from the hill-top, and those long walks on the
shore--do you imagine they have not affected you also? Recall those
crowds of immigrants you have seen passing, stopping for a day or two,
pent up on a wharf, men, women, children, tattered but so very human,
so real, washing their linen unconcernedly, cooking their dinner in
the open air, whole families come from the four corners of the Old
World to seek their fortunes in the hospitable West. Always the mob,
observed with a distrustful sympathy by a savage who will never admit
that man can keep his quality as a man by mingling in the mob. Yes,
but in this swarm of poor wretches, encamped on a wharf, among these
playing, whining children, these mothers sitting on their bundles of
clothing, has it not occurred to you as you observed them with the eye
of an artist fascinated by this picturesque parade, that there might be
some Henry going West with his tools and his fortune and a soul as rich
as your own or even greater? In any case, your glances have scrutinized
this horde on the march and recognized human faces in transit. And what
remains to you from this must not be forgotten when you balance your
accounts.
Have you lost your homesickness? Has even your health been strengthened
by the air of the bay? When you go home, you will remember, with a
leaping of the heart that will warm the November air, how much you
have been repaid for your months of exile by all that those crowds,
that ocean, those wharves, those steamers have left in you--yes, and
those hours of solitude when, from the top of the hill, your sick soul
was fed by the play of the storm and the sunlight and the moonlight at
midnight over the bay. And that sound of the sea which you have heard
in your bed in the silence of the Judge’s house, and the spectacle
of the sun rising from the Atlantic--do you think they will not add
something to the magnificence of the sunset when you have contemplated
it anew from your riverside heights of Musketaquid?
IV
The dear presences are ranged about you there, in the centre of that
universe for which you have longed; it is good there, and what does
the rest matter? For a lover who has been nourished exclusively on his
dreams for six months, the joy of return surpasses everything. It is
winter; but what warms Henry is not merely the sticks in the stove. All
Concord offers its warmth for his return.
He finds his father still busy with the pencils. What if he were to
turn in and help? All right, the pencils. The lead seems less grey
in the delight of his return. Since he has nothing to look for in a
literary way, and no opportunity offers for the moment, he will stay
at home and attend to the pencil business with his father. Doesn’t it
occur to you that a miserable little piece of lead imprisoned between
two sticks of cedar-wood may be unworthy of your attention? It is not
quite what you have dreamed of, perhaps. But Henry knows the secret.
For there is a secret. So much so that it would be a mistake for anyone
who has no business there to approach the workshop where the Thoreaus,
father and son, manufacture their product.
The business had made progress since the time when the unlucky
store-keeper had bethought himself of competing with Monroe, the
Concord pencilmaker. It was quite a story. The native pencils were
not good for much, even Monroe’s, in spite of the process he had
invented; they had the disagreeable grain of poor, scratchy, brittle,
inefficient pencils. No chance of holding out in the market beside the
imported English pencils, and especially the incomparable Fabers from
Germany. So something better had to be tried if they were to satisfy
people who liked good pencils. To obtain a good pencil, everything
depended on the treatment and the preparation of the graphite, which
came from Sturbridge, then from Canada, and which the elder Thoreau
had especially ground for him at Acton. The first thing was to reduce
the graphite to a very fine powder, which was obtained by means of an
ingenious, primitive machine that enabled them to collect exclusively
the finest dust from the material ground in the mill. This was a great
point gained. After this the softness of the pencil depended on the
product mixed with the pulverized graphite, upon so composing the paste
that, once hardened, it would produce that delicate, firm substance
that glides on the paper between your fingers, leaving a fine, vigorous
mark, of a beautiful grey-black, and not that dim, vague mark that bad
pencils have. Hitherto the elder Thoreau had produced this effect,
like his predecessor Monroe, by the use of spermaceti or bayberry
wax mixed with glue, while there entered into the composition of the
Faber pencils a certain clay that was found in Bavaria. They succeeded
in procuring this. The result was remarkable. After much groping and
difficulty they at length arrived at the goal of their efforts, the
perfect pencil. It was awarded a first medal at the exposition of
mechanical arts in Salem. Henceforth they could hold their own in
competition with the English pencils of pure graphite or even the
Fabers with their skilful proportioning of graphite and Bavarian clay.
But they could not think of turning out a pencil as cheap as these. The
Thoreau pencils cost twenty-five cents, in spite of which many teachers
of drawing who saw how excellent they were recommended them to their
pupils. A friend, Horace Hosmer, was the traveller for the house. So
the business was not bad. But they also had to watch carefully lest
someone else should steal the process. This explained the mystery that
surrounded the great work--the mystery of the mill at Acton where
they ground the graphite, the mystery of the very primitive workshop,
adjoining the house, where, with a workman who could be trusted not to
give them away, they manufactured, finished, packed and shipped the
choice article. Six dollars a gross, and the daily bread of the family
depended on it.
In these researches, these experiments, this final success,
Henry played an ample part. It was he who had found out in some
reference-book about this clay which the masters of the pencil industry
used in Germany, and who had contrived two or three pieces of apparatus
of capital importance, notably for the cutting out of the slabs of
hardened paste and the drilling of the blocks of wood that were
destined to receive the lead. So long as it was a question of producing
a fine pencil that would be satisfying to exacting draughtsmen, you
could count on his skill and his zeal; to conquer a difficulty was the
business of the admirable Henry, master of ingenious arts. But when the
end was attained the pencil-factory left him rather lukewarm; it was
a simple affair of exploiting an invention and reaping profits. All
very well for his family who lived by it. But if the equilibrium of the
family rested on the lead-pencils, his equilibrium had a less friable
foundation. He would help his father, yes, as much as was necessary.
But sell his entire life in pencils, no, thank you; he had other fish
to fry. With his life he wrote poems--even without a pencil.
Working in the paternal factory was then, after all, only a makeshift.
Always the same story: the pencils were his father’s business. Even
though it was enough to keep them all afloat, Henry was unwilling to
be a charge on his family. He must earn a little outside and butter
with a little independence the bread that he ate at home. But how?
School-teaching, tutoring, already had a rather stale taste. A page
turned--look further.
This thing that is rolling in his head, turning over and over, this
trifle of one’s daily bread, is a great problem when you don’t follow
the beaten track that leads to ease and self-disgust. He is not
stupider or clumsier than other people; he is qualified in all sorts of
lines and has plenty of good will. Who is going to profit by employing
him in some way in which he knows he can do a good job? Mystery. Unless
you are looking for a flogging schoolmaster for your children, or a
scribbler of copy, or a clerk, or a servant by the year, or an animal
that will place himself in the shafts, here I am with hands at the
ends of my long arms, five strong fingers on each hand, a trade at
the end of each of my ten fingers, and a head full of resources. I am
twenty-seven years old and have not travelled very much, but I know
enough about the world and myself not to sell you my beautiful liberty,
except in bits. Ask me for a day, two days, three days of work; from
childhood I have been used to manual labour, I have always been a good
gardener, in a house I have taken the place of several workmen, I can
build a boat, and in the woods I am as much at home as a wood-cutter.
Give me the tools and you will see. My hands and my brain and my good
will are for anyone who wants to take them for a dollar a day.
And you will get something for your dollar, I promise you. _Noblesse
oblige._ When one has the honour to be called Henry Thoreau, one
doesn’t do one’s work by halves. One respects one’s work, whether it is
for someone else or for oneself, because one respects oneself. At your
service.
After various experiments, Henry, graduate of Harvard, son and grandson
and great-grandson of merchants, has already made his choice. The lot
he desires most, as the happiest and the freest, and the worthiest as
well, is that of a day-labourer, who cuts off a slice of his time to
sell, when he must, but takes good pains not to sell the whole loaf.
He knows that fifty days of work a year will be enough to pay for his
keep, such as it is. And all the other days, six each week, will be for
God and himself, for his own private affairs.
Manual labour is not only the most congenial to his tastes: it is that
which agrees the best with an intellectual worker. Above your toiling
hands, the spirit cheerfully pursues its free play, thanking the hands
for placing it in so cordial a relation with this beautiful material
world, so richly veined, the sight of which refreshes and attracts
it. The day-labourer who treasures his time escapes from the damnable
routine of the salaried work that devours your soul. When you engage
me, I shall do for you everything that a clever, skilful man who puts
his heart into his work can do. But when your work is finished I shall
go back to my own which requires no assistance. I append to my offers
of service a programme of the things you can ask me to do: fence in
your land, plant your young trees, dig, build a wall, set up the frame
of a house, cut your wood, whitewash your walls, hang wall-paper, etc.,
etc., etc.... And if you have a leaking pail or a door that is off its
hinges, I shall attend to them into the bargain. I am not particular.
Work has no terrors for me. There is not an Irish labourer of them
all--you see those strapping fellows who are laying out the ground
about the village for the new railroad?--who has waded in the swamps
as much as I have done, for my own pleasure. It knows me well, that
mud. Tilling the ground for Tom, Dick and Harry for a few days for the
sake of earning five dollars is what you call servile, back-breaking
work. (You tell me this, you who spend the day adding up figures for
an employer, you who bow and scrape to customers from behind your
counter, morning and afternoon, sunshine or snow....) Come! Do you
expect me to shudder at this rough work? Feel the callous on my palms.
You don’t know how cheerily the handle of a pickaxe or a hoe slips
between fingers that have smoothed and stroked it as fellow-diggers and
delvers. Servile labour? Fine masks with white hands, look at Henry
toiling out there in the field if you want to see a fellow whose work
does not enslave him at all. While you are adding up your ciphers or
calculating your phrases, I am adding up my strokes of the pickaxe or
the billhook, and smelling the earth and the turf and the bark around
me. Yes, hire me to do work in my own line and I shall do it less for
the money than for the love of the labour of my hands. Don’t worry, I
shall not give you time enough to disgust me. So take me for what I am
worth, and you will have a workman who will treat you as he would like
to have the other fellow treat him.
Henry looks about him. Who wants a fellow like this? Don’t all speak at
once. If he could secure a day here and a day there it would encourage
him to believe that it is really possible in this world for an honest
man who can do everything to earn his bread. But the lovers of good
work do not seem to be very numerous. Only the friends at whose houses
he drops in for a meal or who stop as they pass him seem to appreciate
the varied talents of a clever young man. And if you only knew what
a pleasure it is, for a fellow who flatters himself that he is no
bungler, to feel that he is appreciated, without any compliments, at
his real worth. As a general thing, you have to work for some dull soul
who naturally takes you for a creature of his own kind; all he wants
for his dollar is the strength of your hoofs and your back, without the
slightest regard for the real extent of your competence. The employer,
in short, in all his worldly splendour.
Suppose he were to try some of those little trades that do not catch
a man up in the greedy machinery of their routine, only to leave him
at the end empty of his pulp, flat as an apple in a cider-press? Henry
has often thought of this. In summer when he sees the boys bringing
back baskets of huckleberries to sell to the important villagers whose
dignity or lofty occupations prevent them from running about the
fields, he says to himself: I am as much of a vagabond as they are....
I should like to do that too. Or he could make baskets, trays and all
sorts of fine, durable, useful things out of birch-bark. Why not? The
manufacture of sand-paper would be lucrative if he could get a few
customers. He invents various contrivances that might be exploited,
such as a rule for measuring cords of wood. But the superintendent of
the city hay-scales in Boston tells him that the wood-dealers would
never hear of this because it would put an end to their swindling. No,
the best thing is to try surveying. Henry has devised his own compass
and chain and is ready to measure other people’s property to the very
confines of the earth. He can be relied upon as a surveyor.
But whether or not the world offers him employment for his faculties,
it will never get him into the mill of “wholesome work,” extolled by
the preachers and held up as an example to the sons of the family. Let
the parish make the best of its bereavement: he has not the makings of
a respectable citizen. “You must get your living by loving”--isn’t that
so, Henry? And not earn your bread by being turned into dough? That’s
the main thing. He will make shift as he can on the ragged edge of
society, if society has no place for an individual like him. Meanwhile,
far from groaning over his lot, he loves it to the very marrow and
would not exchange it for an empire. Concord is richer than all the
empires in the heart of old Asia, and Henry Thoreau, a day-labourer
without a job, feels that he is in the heart of rich Concord, the king
of a limitless country of which every day he brings back a little
of the earth sticking to his boots. Though he may end his days in a
poor-house, nothing can take away this triumphant happiness which he
experiences in living responsive to the instinct that rings in him like
gold.
If you are industrious in your own way and not in the accepted fashion,
you must not be surprised if you pass for a loafer. That is the way
of things. In the eyes of the sober folk around you an inaptitude for
business is the very mark of inferiority. Think of it, an American
who cares nothing about getting on.... What’s more, a Yankee, without
the slightest relish for trading, who seems to be positively bent on
remaining poor.... It’s preposterous, it’s even rather presumptuous.
Among the mandarins of the village there is scant sympathy for this
little whipper-snapper of a schoolmaster who has audaciously pronounced
against the rod and holds aloof from church, charitable circles,
politics. And that surly eye, the gruff tone of his replies and his
cutting words.... When they see him passing down the village street,
under the dome of the great elms, or crossing their fields, a Henry who
lives heaven knows how and seems to have his pockets full of leisure,
the good people sneer, smile knowingly or shrug their shoulders as
much as to say: “You bleed yourself to send a boy to college.... He’s
been spoiled.... Behaving like a millionaire ... running about the
woods all day like a schoolboy, lounging in his boat on the river....
If he had no brains it wouldn’t matter, but he’s clever enough when he
wants to take the trouble, the lazy good-for-nothing....”
If they were able to read the mind of this “lazy good-for-nothing”
who marches along, with head bent, sloping shoulders, clenched fists,
in his old workingman’s togs, they might hear a much finer sermon
for their own sins present and to come. But the good people are a
little hard of hearing, and they would not understand, anyhow! On
the other hand, he has taken their measure as exactly as if he had
used his surveyor’s outfit, when surveying their precious land for
them. If they are “society,” Henry, the simpleton, the ne’er-do-well,
the good-for-nothing, the village fool, is of the unsociable kind.
He sets out for adventure in disgust at money and the evil-smelling
varnish with which money covers existence. There is no spite in this
retirement, none of the peevishness of the misunderstood soul who
has been deceived in his hopes. He goes simply to seek elsewhere the
feeling of another humanity that must exist somewhere, perhaps under
the bark of the trees. Even in the main street of the village, how much
more moving is the presence of the great elms than the fronts of the
neighbouring houses!
Come, good people, would you like to see a savage, a real one, not one
of those of whom your grandfathers told you, whom they perhaps never
saw? Watch this little man passing at the bottom of your pasture,
avoiding the habitations that are set about like snares through the
countryside, on the way to his daily rendezvous. Do not waste your
precious time attempting to follow him, natives of Concord. His
savagery would soon leave you behind.
* * * * *
When you are neither the lawyer nor the doctor, nor even the principal
shopkeeper of the town, you naturally have to go without the legitimate
prestige that attaches to these functions. To be a day-labourer, even
though you are the son of a pencil-manufacturer, is to be condemned to
live outside the luminous circle in which these incontestable powers
move. It is to dedicate yourself to an obscure destiny.
No doubt, but this has its compensations. They are insufficient, you
will tell me; but are you sure of this? The great advantage of being a
day-labourer, free to hire yourself out as you please and cheerfully
pocket your dollar or two, is that you keep the brightest of your
time for your own affairs. These little personal affairs are nobody’s
concern; but, great or small, they are your own. Admit that they have
the same claims as a vocation and everything yields to what is most
important.
Henry’s vocation is to start out every afternoon, rain or shine, for
half the day, three, four hours or more, according to the occasion and
the season, half for adventure, half with an object, in search of....
In search of what, indeed? Does one ever know? Simply in search.
He does not set out for amusement like a sedentary man who is taking
his constitutional; he sets out like an artist towards the studio
where his work is awaiting him. This excursion is the very core of
the day, the condition of the creative hours that will give him his
knowledge and his reward. Ask Henry for anything you wish, money, a
good pencil, a helping hand, but do not suggest that he might sacrifice
his precious afternoon; he will send you packing. The afternoon is
reserved for work, his work. Amid the little tasks of the day, this
is the big affair. Henry punctually responds to the call of the hour,
which has no sound of duty for him: it has a commanding charm. If some
obstacle interferes with his outing, some urgent task or illness, he
is as miserable as a lover who has missed his rendezvous. The day is
spoilt. It is the empty day of one who has failed in his work. And if
he is forced to keep to his room for several days running, he is as
despondent as a girl over a sad story. Henry in a cage feels himself
becoming soft. It is as if he were deprived of his food.
As a rule, he goes off alone, for labours of love demand this strict
intimacy. No annoying person, no idler, no lover of the “joys of the
country” to pester you with his questions, his chatter, when you
are out on business. Not at any price. But when your friend, who
is a congenial soul, accompanies you, there are three of you, for
William’s dog is of the party. The dog hunts for his profit, as the two
companions seek for theirs.
On occasion Henry devotes himself to fishing, but this is rare. He
never hunts any more; he has sold his gun. The game that he starts
to-day is no longer that which he pursued in his boyhood, with his
brother. Instead of the fowling-piece on the strap, he is likely to
carry under his arm, if it is the season for flowers, an old music-book
in which he can press specimens of plants that he wants to keep. And in
his pockets, which are as roomy as wallets, you will be sure to find
his field-glass for observing distant objects, his magnifying-glass
for examining the ground, his big knife, a ball of twine, and perhaps
a bite to eat, if he has set out for the whole day. But you don’t
know him if you think that without the old music-book he would have
any difficulty in bringing back some occasional vegetable discovery.
He drops in at your house for a moment on his way back from some
expedition, and you notice the care with which he sets down his
old straw hat in the hall; its interior is skilfully arranged for
receiving frail plants or flowers without bruising or crushing them.
Henry carries his herbarium on his head and braves under this friendly
protection the rain and the sun. He is indeed equipped from top to
toe for the most perilous expeditions, for the leather of his brogues
is proof against mud and brush. His trouser-ends are thrust into his
boots, a sign that he is not going out for an afternoon call or even
going to follow the main road.
Concord is connected with the world by the roads. A villager only sets
out from the village when his business takes him to some neighbouring
village. What lies between the roads is indifferent to him, unless
he happens to have something to do there. For this reason there are
vast, empty stretches between the roads and around the farms where you
never meet a soul, for no serious man could possibly find anything
worth his while there; haunts of animals, weeds, thickets, mud-holes
and trees that are allowed to grow as they please. The surroundings of
Concord abound in solitudes, and these are Henry’s studio. He has his
favourite nooks and corners where the soil is bad or barren, untilled,
abandoned, chaotic, marshy, with clumps of trees, large ponds, cliffs.
The luxuriant, aromatic vegetation of swampy ground is a feast for him,
for he is a regular glutton, this lean little fellow. Around Fairhaven,
to the South, there are stretches of country that will return to
haunt him in his last hour--Conantum, Baker Farm; and over there,
towards the west, as far as Second Division Brook, one can walk in a
veritable cloud of revelations. It is just the same to the north, the
Easterbrook country, and Mason’s Pasture--abandoned orchards that have
surrendered again to the moss, the rocks and the underbrush, fields of
huckleberries and barberries, and wild apple trees among the birches
and pines. And the Great Meadows and Walden Woods.... And those old
grass-grown roads, wandering at their own will, without a living soul,
without a house or a landmark, their forgotten tracks leading heaven
knows whither, but where you feel so much at home; brotherly roads that
take you by the arm as you leave the village behind and lead you along
till they are lost themselves in the wilderness. The wild grasses that
people call weeds seem sweeter to you than the tractable plants of good
family. They belong to your own family. They like to straggle along the
old roads, just as you do, far from the little gardens where the sober
box-wood grows.
Concord is also united with the world by two rivers, the lively one and
the sluggish one, which are not navigable for trade. The domain of the
waters which, in the spring and autumn floods, lops off an inordinate
amount of the surrounding country, belongs to no one and is free to
all. The two rivers are yours if you want them. Accept their gladness
and their freshness; no one will dispute them with you. That fisherman
over there wants nothing but their fish.
It is towards one or another province of this domain that Henry, freed
from the little tasks of the morning, turns each day with the soul of
an explorer. The house where he has slept and spent the morning between
four walls has a musty smell. He must leave it behind to get the poison
out of his system, set out at midday to receive the shock of the wind
and the sunlight. He is off for discovery. Soon the village and its
rancid taste are far in the walker’s rear.
The point now is to keep clear of the tilled lots that bore him, like
those people who are so cultivated that he wants to turn his back
on them. It is to foil the eye of the house-fronts that are watching
among the trees, to avoid the roads and those people who, flourishing
some phrase of village wisdom, are capable of spoiling his whole day.
By foot-paths and short-cuts known from of old Henry steals between
the farms, like a marauder who is anxious to escape the owner’s
observation. At last he has emerged from the danger-zone; he is on the
threshold of a region where his studious sauntering will be troubled
by no further undesirables. The beautiful hours of the day begin,
the fruitful hours. The inspector visits a corner of the bad ground,
pauses, examines, calculates the harvest. How much this poor soil
yields! And how vast the domain is! Within a radius of ten miles about
the village, the surprises that await him are so marvellous and so
numberless that his whole life will not suffice to exhaust them.
So Henry is the busiest man in Concord. The rest of you on your little
farms cannot imagine the concerns of a great farmer whose lands cover
more than the whole township. Nor can you imagine them, you men of
business. Henry does not close his store on Sundays and holidays. Henry
has no master who employs him. He is an incomprehensible donkey who
works for himself and never stops. In other words, a skulker. Such is
the opinion of those great toilers who, after the day’s work is over,
twist about in their chairs with their newspapers in their hands,
enjoying their poor hours of liberty and fulfilling the rites of the
Sunday boredom. This fellow seems to pay no attention to the rites.
Active in his silence, without appearing to be so, he is off at his
work. He alone knows the demands of this work and the wages. A true
loafer, this lad after whom a certain farm-hand, emboldened by drink,
shouts: “Hello, Mister, what do you think of the walking?”
Henry’s work? Yes, walking, just that. But how explain to this country
simpleton and his kind what walking means for a born walker who
practises the art of walking, with all its emotions, its discoveries,
the great expectations that it arouses and the work at which it aims?
Two, three miles away from the village square you are in the midst of
the unknown, familiar as the place may be to you. In you there awakens
a world of relations that Main Street in Concord has never been able
to set vibrating. It has a reality so strange that sometimes you ask
yourself if the country of the Arabian Nights begins on the outskirts
of Concord or if it is the village ant-heap itself that is unreal.
These streams of living things flowing beyond human control for the
mere joy of being are fragments of a great poem that will find their
completion perhaps only in you--strange man who comes day after day to
surprise them, observe them, weigh their words and penetrate to their
rhythm. All the confidences of which you have been the depository since
childhood have woven between this wild life and your own (less wild?)
a web of intimacy so strong that to break it would be to tear yourself
to pieces. In what language, through what images, can you make the tame
people understand the force of this old passion that drives the heart
of an untamed man into the heart of this wild nature?
The object of your expedition? What does it matter? At the end there
is always some conquest, big or little. Follow the direction that is
indicated by the magnetic needle of your instinct. Perhaps the thought
of some particular chum that you have promised to go and see has
decided you. For you have well-tried friendships out there amid the
waste of trees, weeds and ponds. To-day Henry has passed and heard the
news from this old boy that lives far away over there, like a squire
on his lands. He walks with an alert step, stops, his eye watching,
listens, bends over, picks some flower, examines it, full of spirits,
transformed, his heart high. All these familiar faces salute him as he
passes. He has acquaintances on every side. No one who has known him
at such a moment as this could ever see him as the stiff, purse-lipped
fellow, bored and hardly concealing it, who has to keep such a tight
hold on himself and his sarcastic impulses in polite company. It is
a new man that these friendly presences stir into life. Among his
own kindred he has recovered his humanity. He keeps his wry face for
society. Here he expands, he is himself, he is real. Sometimes it is as
if these open spaces were all one fast friendship that intoxicates him
like a drink between old cronies.
Does all this astonish you? Perhaps the only things you know are the
four walls of your room, the doormat that lies before your threshold
and receives without a tremor the petty dust of your routine, and the
grey ribbon that leads to your daily bread. This may be enough for your
imagination. But confess that you have never set out for an adventure
beyond your dooryard. You have never risen well before dawn to go and
watch the awakening of the water-lilies and bring back a dozen or so
to put in a dish of water; you have never got up at the first peep of
the birds to climb the Cliffs and watch from up there the white sea
of fog strewn with the crests of the mountains like islands of which
you wonder if the inhabitants are not at this very moment watching
your own. At the end of the day, when the summer moon is in its first
quarter, you have never turned towards Conantum to listen to the sounds
of the twilight, while you study through your spyglass the neighbouring
slopes that look as immense as the Andes: a scrap of the song of a
boy on his way home, the trumpeting of the bull-frogs or a horse in
the distance neighing in a meadow. You have never walked miles and
miles at a stretch to go and watch, from one season to another, the
growth of a plant, as many as ten times in a fortnight, making detours
and digressions to pass other great friends of yours. You have not
scrambled up to the summit of a pine-tree to balance there, facing an
astonishing horizon, and climb down again to the ground besmeared with
resin but proud of having picked the unknown flower that opens up there
every summer for the sole joy of adventurous man. You have never even
bent your spine--not once--to study the landscape through your legs and
observe the surprising things in a sky that is hung with pictures of
the earth. No, you have never dreamed of the resources that procure for
a born walker a thousand means of feeling himself live.
Surprised by a heavy rain, he remains for hours under a tree, in the
shelter of a roof of bark that he has made in an instant with his
knife, delightfully occupied in studying the texture of the fiber or
the minute vegetation at the foot of the tree, while the shower tumbles
and splashes the earth about this man who feels a strange well-being
(he never feels less alone than in this laughing cascade of merry
drops).
He finds himself before a clump of shrub-oaks, as compact as a thicket,
and instead of going round it he plunges into it like a savage, going
through it in a straight line, bending down, pushing aside these
branches that are as hard as iron, regardless of rips and scratches on
his hands, regardless even of blinding himself, lost in the embrace of
the foliage but happy in bending its tough arms.
He becomes so infatuated with a swamp that he thinks of remaining for a
whole afternoon weltering in the mud, not to doctor his aching limbs
but for the sheer delight of breathing the rich aromas and listening
to the hum of the insects, not as a stranger, an intruder, but as an
equal, as if he were himself a sweet-flag meditating on the strange
happiness of its fate.
He listens and listens again to the ineffable evening song of the
woodthrush ... _hi willy willy--ha willy willy--o willy oh_ ... which
sounds continually, like a tender prayer to the heart of man that he
may remember, or the _de-de-de_ of the chickadees, trooping about him
as if they were in a playground.
He watches the departure of the balloonists when the ripe down of the
milkweed embarks, free at last, on its great voyage, after having
awaited this moment all summer, one seed crowded against another. He
returns from his expedition in the brush, covered with clinging burs
that absolutely insist upon travelling with him.
He remains for three-quarters of an hour motionless in the most
uncomfortable position to watch a turtle laying its eggs, or to observe
a female nighthawk, rigid on its nest and peering at him through its
all but closed eyelids.
In mid-July, he takes his bath walking, as if on a road, down some
shallow river, his straw hat on his head, the water up to his knees,
then suddenly up to his neck, observing the incidents of the road,
the wayfarers whom he passes, the irregularities of the ground, the
waterplants as shapely as sea-weeds, the molluscs, moving along
like himself, a turtle shambling by, the entrance to the apartments
of a musk-rat and that mother pout advancing toward his naked self
with her procession of infants behind her ... a thousand of them at
least and all so credulous, so confiding ... the mother, frightened
at first by the monster barring her way, returning to them, then
becoming accustomed to the monster ... the little ones approaching and
examining his legs, tickling his toes.... They form such a cloud that
he can no longer see his feet in the clear water.
He takes his boat and listens to the grinding of the oars in the
locks, which evokes for him all the odours and sounds of a harbour,
the swinging of the vessels in the docks, or spends hours on the water
fishing up driftwood that he will carry home and use for making a
trestle to pull his boat up on the shore.
He feels, as he witnesses the felling of a great pine-tree a hundred
feet high and four feet in diameter at the base, as much anguish
of heart as if he were present at an execution, and he curses the
executioner.
He leans with his companion over a rippling brook and sees their double
image, two black heads, as big as thumbs, William and Henry, looking
as if they were bending towards one another in this mirror of convex
bubbles, with the reflexion of the branch of a young elm crowning them.
He feasts like a blackbird on those huckleberries which they call low
blueberries and carries them home by the pocketful, thinking that if
he were a Canadian he would also call them “bluets” and that if he
were a native of the country about Oulme in Normandy, not far from
the home of his great-grandparents, he would say to the little girls:
“Let’s pick some _maurettes_; we can eat as many as we like and keep
the rest for preserves.”... As a connoisseur he runs the whole gamut
of the whortleberry family, the wild grapes and the cranberries, not
forgetting the barberries.
Best of all, in the old abandoned orchards, he gathers those wild
apples that are sour and crabbed enough to set your teeth on edge but
that later, when you eat them after they have been softened by the
frost, refresh your palate with a delectable cider.
He inhales the fragrance of the plants in the moonlight when the
earth is breathing and the sounds have a supernatural delicacy in the
silence, or listens to the hooting of the screech-owls whose wisdom is
older and greater than that of all the sages. He would like to trifle
away the whole night.
He feels that everything has a message for him and is awaiting his
response--the layers on the sides of the railroad cut, the fireflies in
the meadows, thistles, puffballs, migrating birds, and the immutable
mountains that he sees over there by the setting sun with their grassy
slopes where he pastures so often the flock of his thoughts ... as if
the vanished Indians still spoke to him, those Indians who sprinkled
the soil with arrow-heads (look here, one more for his collection) and
left the very embers of their fires intact under a crust of earth.
He is like a trapper who sets his traps after sunset and visits them
before dawn, a skilful trapper who knows the likeliest places and
varies his bait, and keeps from his catch only the thing he is looking
for, a thing that is better than fur or meat.
You think there is nothing here to sustain a man, saturate his life,
fill him with the desire to spend in such company not just a few hours
of afternoon but the whole day? The beings whom Henry comes to visit
may not communicate with the aid of articulate language, but they
have a soul just the same: how happy he would be to find a soul so
expressive among his own kind! Did you suppose that such company was to
be found only in drawing-rooms or the halls of the hotels in the city?
Pretentious human race that regards itself as the salt of the earth! A
little modesty, my neighbours. Out beyond that stretch of space where
the murmur of your words is no longer heard, a man sees and hears many
things, but never one that is absurd.
Think of calling oneself impecunious with the great, beautiful day
before one and this swarming life around Concord! This poor fellow
goes off every day on his visit to the waste lands to watch the
growing things their two mingled poverties yield.... Henry enjoys that
elemental happiness which is the breath of the soul, freed from the
load that burdens it--knowledge, morality, prudence, laws. If he did
not have so much respect for the skin of a tree, he would like to cut
with his knife in the bark of that oak three simple letters:
H H H
_Henry Happy Heathen._ It would be a curious design on the bark and
would recall those mysterious signs which the Indians engraved to mark
their passing. Or Three Hatchets, to puzzle passers-by still more. And
then dance a wild jig around the tree at the thought of the beautiful
epitaph there, to be cut off some day and set on a flat stone among the
crosses and urns in a graveyard.
He is happy without reason, because things are as they are ... happy
just as the river is happy as it hastens to join its great sister
and run with her down to the sea ... or as the leaves of the poplar,
fluttering as they prattle the news which this gay little wind has
whispered to them as it passed. In the delight that he shares with all
these things he strews the landscape with imaginary beings after his
own heart. There are whole families of them of whom he has never caught
so much as a glimpse, but who, as he knows, live there in the spots
where his dreams place them. From afar he greets them as he passes,
sure friends who must not be disturbed at their work or in their
serenity; it is enough to know that they are there. Their presence
helps him to endure cheerfully the misery of the town.
With his own happiness chinking down in his pockets like an arrow-head
against the steel of his knife, Henry marvels that he never encounters
anyone on his expeditions. So he is the only one to profit by all this?
Not one of his own kind dreams of disputing his pleasure with him. I
am greatly obliged to you all. How kind of you to abandon the earth
to me, while you, sober souls, measure cotton behind your counters
or spend the whole afternoon sitting with your legs crossed on your
bench like a penitent! Take care or some green sprig may thrust itself
between the pages of your existence; this would spoil the pious images
that slip into your book. Work on, and let me carry off in peace what
you despise. You will not prevent a lad who is up earlier than you
and passes your yard in the moonlight without waking you from drawing
from your land the profits he is pleased to put into his own pocket.
Let each have his own share: you bear the costs and the risks and take
the money, and he in his poverty will collect the tithe. The hail that
ravages your harvest will be music in his ears. You will never believe
it; but unaware of it as you may be, it is for him that all your work
is done, good people. You think you are the possessors, but it is he
who possesses you.
Henry exercises with impudent freedom the privileges that are common to
all men. He has not surrendered for the ownership of a miserable field
or two his claims to the whole earth. Henry knows his rights. He will
build a fence for you now and then at so much a yard, but you cannot
talk to him about Holy Property.
Henry is the largest farmer in Concord. He collects the revenues of
a whole township. There are other men in this world who, through
carelessness or lack of skill, utterly fail to perceive what belongs to
them by right. They are the indifferent souls who forget to take their
share of the spectacle of the setting sun, the beauty of men and women,
the sea, the day, the night, the trees, the lands of their neighbours.
Well, it is for them that the little god with the big boots, the great
nose, the thin chest, the long arms and the sloping shoulders collects
the inalienable share of the common property.
Suppose, some day, the village authorities, perceiving the value for
everyone of these journeys of a little god who so carefully keeps up
the forest paths and maintains the right of way wherever men might
like to go, were to coax him into accepting an appointment, as, let us
say, Conservator of Waste Lands or Inspector of Swamps or Curator of
Indian Relics? Something like a liaison officer between the wilderness
and civilization. Of course they would have to be tactful and appoint
him without any formal appointment. For in what form could they make
him accept the frightful idea of being any kind of town official!
With a little imagination they might be able to find the formula that
would permit him to remain his own free self and yet receive a small
allowance just the same. Perhaps a little fund, or a commission, as
in the case of an explorer.... Yes, assuming that you could find
in the bosom of the town-council the slightest sense of these fine
shades. Hm ... let’s not be too sanguine about it. But what a fine
thing it would be for the town to be assured for some trifling sum of
the services of a young man who has an eye for these treasure-chests
to which everyone can go and take what he likes when he feels his
soul in a cage behind the bars of his dull days.... Have you no sense
of your own interest, you poor silly people? He demands nothing, he
complains of nothing. He has had his choice and finds that he is amply
indemnified for having squandered all his capital in tilling the
wastes; but it would be rather nice now if they were to assure him a
pittance.... So Henry dreams and scatters his fancies to the wind along
his path. Yes, of all possible employments it strikes him that this is
the one he would have accepted most gladly, for he is prepared for it
by a long apprenticeship, and he could put into it so much of himself,
so much love.
If it is for the sake of one young man of Concord that the seasons
arrange and vary their pageants, you may imagine what obligations
this favour imposes on him. Henry sets out in all weathers, from
one year’s end to another, favoured by a porous soil that is sandy
enough to absorb the water. The festival of summer offers the most
plentiful programme, of course, for there is room then for the longest
of processions from dawn till dusk, and the manager of the show is a
spendthrift. It dazzles us and leaves us with the impression of an
unequalled pomp when, after its mad extravagance, it has vanished in a
golden stream, sounding a glorious fanfare amid the blazing bonfires
of October. The illumined brow of the tiniest hill is a murmur that
mounts, swells, ends in a clamour of farewell to the great artist
who is disappearing. Every tree unites in this in the words of its
own language and the accent of its spot of soil. Listen.... The
hickories express their thanks with orange words, the oaks cry out in
scarlet that makes the blacksmith’s forge seem pale, the maples shout
with a mad note of crimson and yellow that spreads panic among the
sober-minded. A red flag unfurled would disappear in the fires of this
conflagration.
It is as if a whole wild race of beings at the point of death were
confessing at last without reserve the delirious thoughts of the
year that have ripened in the August sunlight. Every weed, to the
very rim of the forest, every leaf tries, before it vanishes, to be
as sumptuous and beautiful and tempting as a flower. Even in the
streets of Concord, under the golden ruin of the great elms, one asks
oneself how the passers-by can still cherish such beggarly thoughts.
Then Henry’s eyes, gorged with the purple, the red, the lemon-yellow,
the flame-colour, do not lose a crumb of the feast. They devour the
oriflammes of the great flag-day, offered once a year to children and
barbarians to satisfy their joy in lively colours. And at this season,
when the villagers no longer go into the woods and he is alone under
this great rose-like oak, the deep scarlet of which forms so intense
a contrast to the green of the pines, he feels stirring in himself
a veritable troop of bohemians, good-for-nothings, ne’er-do-wells,
burning to join hands and dance, shouting as if possessed.... The
long festival of summer at its mad end! It returns later, appears
for a moment to offer a last farewell, with a calm, purified serene
magnificence, in the golden days of Indian summer with their flavour
of ripe fruit, ruddy, sweet and sunny.... Yes, the summer bears on its
brow the assurance of its triumph; it has the easy pride of wealth. But
the other seasons.... Are you so blind as to ignore them?
Admit for yourself that you have never discovered what a different face
the seasons wear at home from that which they wear in the calendar.
You may know what it is to walk with great strides over a bed of dead
leaves, hearing them whisper like a crowd in a church at the entrance
of some expected personage. But it is a safe wager that you know
nothing of the real quality of those naked, desolate, paralysed days
at the end of November when a man feels that the best thing he can do
is to stay in his own hole, that there can be absolutely nothing for
him to glean amid this death of all things. But Henry has set out just
the same, without much hope in his heart; and lo and behold, in the
course of the journey through this windy desert a beautiful surprise
is waiting to feed and enchant his imagination. He returns with the
sunlight in his heart, “as if from an adventure.” What he has seen it
has required the nakedness of this dying November to permit him to
discover, and it is the very thing perhaps that he has been vainly
seeking so long in the abundance of the year. There is not a living
thing abroad but himself, not an insect, not a flower, not a reflexion
of real light, and here is this wandering lunatic, marching along with
his hands in his pockets, waiting for the dismal day to confide to him
for safe-keeping the particles of illumination and warmth that are
hidden under its desolate exterior. At this season, when the wild geese
pass in echelon, a thousand sometimes in a single day, the fancy seizes
him, when he is out of doors, to imitate their cry. The means are at
hand. You flap your elbows against your sides, then utter through your
nose, with your neck stretched out: _snowack_. It is so good that a
flock on their journey up there are positively deceived by it and do
you the honour to take you for a goose--a wild goose, let us hope.
Winter has come. His visit is due, and since the first snow-flakes
a new joy has come to take the place of the little old pleasures
that still linger on. For this jolly newcomer, who has the blood and
strength of youth, needs all the room there is. Henry’s fingers are so
numb that he cannot open his knife, and he buries them in his pockets
to feel the pulse of this youthful joy. He puts on his cloak and
mittens: it is time for him to start. Walking is hard work; he has to
plough his way, and he turns round now and then to look at the furrow
he has dug in the melting snow that covers the earth. In this cheerful
little soul who walks along with padded steps, the warmth of this
pleasure is like a log-fire in a hut in the woods in January; it is as
if the evening crickets had left their snatches of song in some nook in
the timbers to keep it cheerful till their return. Weary of all this
whiteness, his eyes fasten upon a twig of brier glimmering with such
an intense green that it seems to be the bearer of all the memories of
the shrouded earth. Two men, seen from afar in this frame fishing for
pickerel through a hole cut in the ice of the pond, look as if they had
come out of some legend.
Henry has walked into the land of metamorphoses. The pine-tree, in
its contentment, has deepened to a brown green; with its arms trimmed
to support the weight of the snow, it rises like a mass of fantastic
architecture. The miracle has spread even as far as the store in Main
Street, where the arborescence on the shop-window makes you forget the
beautiful Christmas presents that are on show there ... spread to the
very panes of your own window, which are being covered with a fern-like
growth. Winter is blossoming like the orchards in May with these
miraculous trees, each one wrought like a shrine.
He has put his boat up for the winter. But the river is still there
for those who enjoy the wind, for them more than ever. It has prepared
for them a solid floor on which they can whirl as if they were on a
race-track. The skater has a double joy; he is the horse and the rider
at once. He moves swiftly wherever his fancy takes him; the best runner
is the merest lout beside him--the man on skates makes him look like
a fool. The heavy boat was not of much use, anyway; its clumsy body
was never able to follow all the windings of the river, and it was too
timid to lead you to all the things you discover as you dart over the
immense ice-sheet of the flooded fields where the little wooden bridges
emerge like islets. Henry, an accomplished skater from childhood, can
make fifteen miles an hour against the wind without straining himself.
While the good William is covered with perspiration from the strenuous
efforts he makes to keep up, Henry merely has a little watering of the
eyes from the wind of the race. No, without winter and the kindness of
the river offering its hard back, the master would never know many of
the aspects of his domain.
Winter, the severe winter that is not a mere picture in the almanac....
When the snow-storms block trains and roads and shut people up in their
houses.... When there is not a single sleigh to be seen in the village
square, nothing but a saddle-horse that has just brought a farmer into
town, Henry has gone out just the same, as far as the post-office....
The bitter cold creeps into the house, freezes the bread, the milk and
the food in the pantry till you dread the moment when you have to go
upstairs to bed, thinking of those sheets as stiff as boards against
your cheek.... Indeed, you no longer know just how cold it is because
the mercury of the thermometer has taken refuge in the bulb, as a snail
in its shell. The earth cracks and splits; in the house the wood-work
creaks. This is no reason for ignoring what goes on out of doors; after
all, your skin is somehow related to the skin of the earth. If it
cracks too, well, you will look through the cranny.
No need to go far to find a polar landscape. Here is Baffin’s Bay,
there is Nova Zembla. The snow is waist-high. No longer any trace of
the embankment of the railroad. The farmers have become cave-dwellers;
the houses are buried half-way up the windows, but the smoke rises
from the chimneys. The houses breathe. The silence is prodigious, it
hums in your ears. The colours sing on the white sheet, red, blue,
straw-yellow, purple, green, orange, russet, tawny. The light is pink,
and your shadow a deep indigo.
What has the finest log-fire to say to those slippered folk who have
never left the chimney-corner when the moonlight on the snow leads you
by the hand through an enchanted palace, or on those days when the
south wind melts the snow and the uncovered earth exhales an odour that
invigorates you like the scent of strong meat, or on those evenings
when you come back armoured in ice because it has rained while you are
out and you are coated with rime like a gingerbread man?
Is there any romance comparable to the events of a walk on a winter’s
day? The song that rises to your lips ... the echo that comes back to
you deadened because the snow has kept a good share of the sound of
your voice ... those vermilion berries sparkling with ice ... that
hardened ground offering you a footway in all directions where you were
never able to take a step in mild weather ... the living warmth that
smoulders under the red catkins of the alders and in the blue of the
silhouette of that Persian, with his hatchet in his hand, so tall, so
imposing, so admirable that you would like to present your respects to
him, just as if he were not your own shadow on the ice of the pond....
Winter, hard winter, great banks of snow without which you would never
have known that downy intimacy in the padded hollows of the old earth,
season of the warm, quick heart under the frost! Now, remembering the
summer, you ask if winter is not also a person of substance, concealing
under his white furs the rarest jewels of the year.
And that matchless moment when the spring breaks, just begins to
break--what do you make of that? If you remain in the back of your shop
while outside the wings of the swallows brush a man who is seeking for
an answer to the disquietude he has borne within him in the bleak
February or March landscape, you are a poor wretch who has deliberately
deprived himself of the cream of earthly emotions. You are to be
pitied if you have never prowled about then to receive the surprise
of the first signs. The winter for you has been merely a torpor, and
the end of winter will only be a renewal of the same old play, Rubbing
Along--with the same old scenery.
The first bee has come out with numbed wings in search of the first
calyx. This man has come forth too, for he has been on the alert ever
since that day at the end of February when he found on the willows and
the osiers an unusual lustre of red and green. He is expecting great
news. Amid the dead leaves and the melted snow of a ditch he has seen
two yellow-spotted turtles moving. He is greatly stirred because of a
certain quality in the air which makes him think he is going to hear a
bluebird sing. He looks for signs that will bear out his presentiment.
On the watch from the ridges, he scrutinizes the deep blue of the
inundated fields where cakes of ice are drifting about, and upon this
mass of water which covers a good quarter of the land of the township
there is a little shining white spot that catches his attention: he
discovers through his glass that this is a little sheldrake which, with
its companion, has taken possession of the waters. So one couple is
already there, awaiting the coming of the procession. No more does he
himself intend to miss the first measures of the music announcing its
approach.
March thrills with the anxiety of a man who is following the steps of
the resurrection. A robin has called, _svit, svit_. The black waves of
the river have almost a grassy smell. There are sea-gulls in the air.
The lookout-man scrutinizes the earth: bare and tawny, it reappears
in spots, its bosom exposed to the rains that are going to fertilise
it. The buds of the red maples are swelling. On a beautiful clear day,
after a night of frost the sap flows if he makes an incision. Henry
collects the sap to make maple sugar. He draws from his tubes four and
a half pints, boils them down and obtains an ounce and a half of sugar.
Fine. But his father cannot understand why anyone should bother to make
bad sugar when it is so easy to get good sugar at the grocer’s. His
father is right, as fathers always are. It is because he does not feel
the maple-sap flowing in himself. There is no sap in his pencils.
Walking along his favourite path, the railroad-track, towards the
middle of March, when he hears the bluebirds and sees them flying,
Henry has a feeling of deliverance, as if some band that confined his
chest had burst. He would like to fall on his knees and embrace the
earth. The sound of a wood-cutter’s axe in the forest lightens his
heart. What doubts can he have henceforth? From a pool deep in the
woods comes the faintly perceptible _wurrk, wurrk, wur r r k wurk_ of
a frog, a treasure to this keen ear that catches it. The air grows
softer, an overcoat becomes troublesome. When the brooks break up, the
saunterer sets out along the banks to hear the song of their awakening
and watch the floating procession of the little rafts of ice. The fish
hasten up-stream, for they too have heard the great news and wish
to have the details. New arrivals are to be observed on all sides,
a procession of travellers returning after a long absence. How many
things they have to tell one another!
One day a boat appears, freshly painted, setting out to reconnoitre in
the cold clearness. In the distance the village looks like a low island
lying in the water. The wind brings you an odour of musk. The note of
a bird that has come back sounds joyously in the woods as if he were
giving a house-warming there. Since the birds have returned, there is
one man in the village who rises before daybreak and goes out to hear
them in the dawn of things, a man who can sleep no longer when he has
heard that call flung from the tops of the elms along the street. A man
who must needs inhale the scent of the earth in the early morning, a
gardener who, when he plants his spade in the soil of his garden, once
released from the frost, has a feeling of victory, not so much perhaps
at the thought of the seeds he is going to entrust to it again as
because of this new life which, stronger than the shoots of April, he
feels germinating in himself.
No use for you to say, to excuse your own inertia, that this man
owes to the unique quality of his senses the enjoyment he derives
from a spectacle in the midst of which the village is monumentally
indifferent. For nature has made him all nerves--visual, olfactory,
auditory, gustatory, tactile. Henry, the virginal New Englander, is
repaid for his chastity by the most voluptuous delights of the senses.
It is a great pity if you have not been repaid for your own; but is
that an excuse? The voice of sex has remained silent in him, or he has
silenced it by a strict discipline for reasons of his own--because his
race, his temperament, the gods of Concord demand it, and then because
... because that is the way things go, it makes no difference: nature
will have her due. Henry drinks water, but the essences of the waste
lands intoxicate him. There is no symphony orchestra in the village,
but a common accordeon or a hand-organ in the street is enough to wring
his heart, and a simple music-box enchants him. He eats little or no
meat but no epicure could scent with a more delicate nostril the savour
of a solitude that is peopled with secret lives. If carnal emotion at
the sight of the human body has not been annihilated in him, it cowers
in the darkness of so deep a cave that you will never catch a glimpse
of it. But he has at his command five scouts who always have marvellous
things to relate when they return to their master. They are able to
put such delicate perception, such freshness into their reports that
he could listen to them forever. Seeing, tasting, touching, hearing,
smelling are a matchless intoxication when you are served by such
stewards and have a soul in which their least declaration echoes and
re-echoes.
Henry’s virility lurks in his eye. He has a look that envelops and
penetrates pitilessly a piece of the landscape and probes you to the
bottom if you form a part of it. Among the plants, the dead leaves and
the debris he distinguishes some tiny creature which, to the ordinary
passer-by, would be lost among the colours of the soil. But this man
with the senses of a savage relies especially upon his ear and his
sense of smell: a thing betrays or confesses its presence by the sound
it makes or the odour it gives off. The thrush’s song in the woods
touches the depths of his soul, but all space is strewn with fragments
of music that ravish him, as a child is enchanted by the tinkling of
crystal or the tick-tack of a watch. When he wishes to hear the news
of the world Henry puts his ear close to the telegraph-poles along
the railroad. You could never explain how astonished you are by this
murmur of the ocean that reaches you from the heart of a vibrating
mast. It is the same continuous story that a shell tells you when
you put it to your ear, but far greater, infinitely richer and more
sonorous. The listener, alone at the foot of the pole, far away from
the post-office, receives a flood of communications; he cannot make
out the words but their music is enough for him. It is as if they had
been round the world before coming to ring through the pores of the
wood; they have travelled so far that to receive them you wish you had
a larger frame. The dispatches vary according to the humour of the day,
the direction of the wind, the quality of the air. Henry never fails
to stop as he passes and listen to see if there is a message for him.
Very strange, the playing of this harp. You might pass twenty times
and hear nothing but a vague trill; and then, all at once, some fine
day, as if tremendous things were happening in the world, the wires
begin to vibrate with an unheard-of intensity and volume. What you hear
is yours alone; you may be sure that no one is eavesdropping at any
other receiving-pole unless some youngster is amusing himself as you
are, listening to the music, so much more beautiful than that of the
locomotive passing along the track.
Henry’s big nose is no useless ornament: when he breathes the smoke
of burning leaves or the first waterlily of the season that has just
opened at dawn, all his quick sensibility flows into the sense of
smell. Of the five messengers, this is the most faithful; its report
carries conviction. When he picks a plant, Henry first smells it to
see if he knows it; and even in re-reading some page he has written he
_smells_ what is good and what ought to be rejected. The surrounding
country is full of floating aromas that have come heaven knows whence,
varying with the hours and the seasons but always there, and sometimes
so fragrant as to make you think that your adventure has led you to the
shores of the Moluccas, the Spice Islands.
And you speak of renunciation in connection with a penniless man who
has for his daily bread such delights as these! When you see the
wanderer returning from his rounds, perhaps chewing a stalk, you
would not fling him a glance of contemptuous pity if you knew what
he has brought back with him. First of all, good folk of Concord, the
satisfaction of a man who has not wasted his day. A good walker, he
has zigzagged about for miles. On the way back he has spent a quarter
of an hour perhaps on the cliff, watching the sun sinking behind the
Peterboro hills and blazing in the windows of the first houses in the
village. Wachusett, all by itself over there, looked like a whale this
evening at sunset. And with this sumptuous vision he returns, as the
bats are flitting about, just as you are on your way to the post-office
to get your own news.
In his pockets he carries the spoils of the day: notes that he has
scribbled on his walk as a painter jots down a hasty outline in his
sketch-book, and perhaps a few lucky finds, plant or fruit, egg or
bit of moss, flint or bark. But among these finds there is one you
would never count, if you were allowed to plunge your hand to the very
bottom of his big pockets or even into that surprise-hat. It takes up
much less room than a handful of huckleberries or chestnuts. The best
of the spoils--can you guess what it is? It is the invigorated mind,
the soul that has been stretched by the adventure of the day.... This
imponderable that he has brought home from the wastes to fertilise
his life and enrich his humanity is a rather big affair, you see,
brothers.... This lesson he has received from the plants and the trees
in the art of self-expression.... These spoils that a rambler has taken
from your orchards and fields, you farmers of Concord.... This barely
visible green which the plants and the mosses have left on his elbows
and his knees.... This earth that he brings back on his boots, full of
things to be born which have made the journey with him and for which he
cares so much....
In the evening, in his room, when the shopkeepers are making up their
books and the farmers are counting the loads of hay that have been
brought in, Henry does not forget to note down these discoveries.
They are not expressed in figures, hardly in words. They are not even
palpable. But they fecundate the page that he is adding to his Journal.
For is it not a Henry-still-to-be-found that he has followed as a
hunter follows the trail through all the zigzags of his walk? Is it
not, after all, a reflexion of himself, in these faces in the verdure
and the water, in these cries, this silence, this wildness, these
odours, this swarming growth, these blue shadows on the snow--is it not
himself that he has glimpsed at the end of the path?
* * * * *
Extraordinarily enough, one April evening in 1844 the man of the wilds
returned from his walk not alone nor with one companion but accompanied
by a whole troop of villagers. What was the meaning of this unusual
spectacle?
It was Town-Meeting Day, a serious ceremony in a democratic community
and one at which every loyal citizen, proud of being a necessary unit,
was expected to be on hand. Henry, who had no love for voting and
debating, nor any pride in the exercise of his civic rights, did not
feel that his presence was indispensable. If he failed in his duty as a
citizen and a unit, well, he could survive it. This little celebration
was not for him. Let every man mind his own business. This day was
plainly intended for a spring-time exploration; young Edward, still in
college and Henry’s comrade because he was the brother of his friend
Elizabeth Hoar, was going with him. They were to set off by boat on the
river, and they were not coming back till they had found the sources
of the Sudbury River. They were going to camp on the bank unless they
found a farmhouse where they could spend the night. They were taking
their fishing-tackle with them, having decided to live like savages
on their catch. A magnificent prospect, while the citizens, conscious
of their duties and their rights, were worthily spending the day
palavering.
So they had set off, light-hearted, as in the old days when the big
brother had gone off with the younger on a long adventure. They had
forgotten the matches for the camp-fire, an omission that could be
repaired happily at the cobbler’s, near the point of embarkation. It
would be no sort of day without matches for two fellows gaily setting
out over the world.
As the spring had not been rainy, the river was low and they caught
some fish. When the time came for lunch they landed on the shore of
Fairhaven Pond, the big bay with its little island adjoining the
richest provinces of the domain. The two explorers had started a fire
in a sunny hollow, a long way from the woods; they were about to eat
their fish and they had the appetite of cannibals. But, lo and behold,
if the tall, dry last year’s grass didn’t catch fire like tinder about
the camp! They tried to put it out with their hands, then by beating
it with a board, but all in vain. The flames were already eating their
way up the slope and the underbrush was crackling.... They were stunned
for a moment. “Where will this end?” asked young Edward, whose father,
the old Senator, was one of the bigwigs of the village. The flames in
their headlong joy were rushing towards the top of the slope and the
woods in a transport of victory and Henry was sure they were going to
devour everything. The woods once reached, it would certainly be the
village next; the fire would descend upon the assembled citizens who
were debating and voting. So there was nothing to do now but to run
and charitably warn them of what was threatening. Edward, very much
excited, leapt into the boat to go back by water. Henry, speeding
through the woods by his usual short-cuts, would reach the village
before him and give the alarm.
It was a bad business, but how could they have foreseen it? Many and
many a time they had lighted a fire out of doors and burned a little
of the surrounding grass without doing any harm. These furious flames
had the most definite and perverse intentions: they were like a tidal
wave of red rebels, even surer of their rights than the citizens over
there. Henry raced through the woods, and, looking back, saw the great
cloud of smoke behind him. The first man he met was a farmer driving a
team who, when he was told what the smoke meant, cheerfully jogged on
again: it was not his woods that were burning. But that other man over
there in his field happened to be the owner of the woodlot where the
flames were crackling at that very moment. He followed the messenger
on the run towards the fire: but what could they do, two men, even if
one of them was the owner, before that crepitating wave of assault?...
A hundred cords of wood, ready for delivery, were threatened with
disaster. They must go for help.
Henry was out of breath. He was going to stay there and wait for
events, while the owner went for reinforcements. The battle-front now
extended over half a mile. Henry watched it rushing on. It was a fine
spectacle. He had forgotten all about Wheeler, the man to whom the
largest of the threatened woodlots belonged. He was a deacon, yes,
just so, as chance would have it. You go off fishing and light a fire
to cook your catch and innocently set fire to a deacon’s woodlot. Just
Henry’s luck. It was too bad about that fellow--but the devil take him
anyway! Perhaps these woods that praised God in their own fashion
were tired of belonging to a deacon. So crackle, beautiful flames, be
as red as you like, beautiful logs! It will take away from you the
taste of the deacon. Henry climbed to the top of the cliff to enjoy
the spectacle better; and sitting on a rock he watched the flames
leaping for joy, escaping with a hiss from their old prison under the
bark, spreading so rapidly that they threatened to surround him, high
up as he was--watching with the satisfied eye of an artist. The fire
licked the roots of the pines, then sprang with one leap to their tops.
The squirrels beat a retreat, the wood-pigeons flew away through the
smoke. He heard the alarm-bell in the village. This was a moment worth
living. Just before, when he was running to warn the people, Henry
had felt rather sheepish; but now a pure joy blazed up in him at this
conflagration that seemed to have been decreed by the solitary Nero
calmly seated on the top of the rock, enjoying the spectacle while the
rescuers were approaching.
For several hours he fought the fire with the others who were dashing
about. Result: a hundred acres burned over, including many young
trees. He had no reason to feel so proud--or to be astonished at being
called a “damned rascal” by those whose woods had suffered. As for the
crowd that had rushed up from the village, they seemed to be tacitly
grateful to the good-for-nothing who had provided them with this free
conflagration to crown their Town-Meeting Day.
After all, if anyone had reason to be grieved, was it not Henry
himself, thinking of the beautiful young trees that had been destroyed?
He who owned the woods by a different right than the persons who had
paid their market-value in mere greenbacks? He who loved them for
themselves and not for the number of cords of wood that could be got
from them? Walking through the burned woodland alone that night to see
if the insurrection had been entirely quelled, the incendiary thought
of the fresh shoots that would spring up with new life through the
charred surface.
On the spot where they had had their interrupted lunch lay those
blessed fish, shamefaced and shrivelled, as if they were the real
culprits.
V
In spite of all, dear Concord, a man would have to be very perverse
and strangely made not to accept you with all your faults, your
absurdities, the petty prosaicness of your townspeople.... Not to
embrace you as heartily as the river-bank embraces your Main Street,
without debating your good and your evil.... Not to respond with a
smile to the smiling unison of this little world where farmers and
citizens, tradesmen, workmen, store-keepers, educated people, after the
purest tradition of democratic equality and simplicity, are scarcely
distinguishable from one another.... In the shade of those great
elms that spread harmony over all, how can one fail to feel tenderly
sympathetic with this family of honest souls?
See the two white churches there, the tavern and the jail, where they
will receive you without the least compunction. Few of the things are
absent from the village that make the solid happiness of the world.
Not even a bowling green and a centre of high culture. There is the
Mill-dam, where the people gossip and munch the news of the day, the
blacksmith’s, the post-office, the shops. And the little wooden houses
with their Doric pediments, painted white, with the gardens stretching
down to the willows to reach the water. Everything is in its place,
everything in concord. The village sings in its grey-white, in the
green of the meadows and the pine-crowned hills, with the approbation
of those beautiful big maples on the common, as serene as philosophers.
And on Sunday, when no townsman would have the bad taste to abuse the
peace of the Sabbath by playing the piano or taking his skates to
the river, and an awful silence reigns over the wooden sidewalks, how
good it would be to allow oneself to be carried along by the godly
simplicity of the town, dozing blissfully to the sound of the clock
that spreads the enchantment of submission.
Yes, indeed.... And there are moments when Henry could envelop in his
affection all the households of dear Concord. For example, when he sees
the roofs smoking far away over the crests of the young elms; when
humanity melts into the landscape or is only heard in the sound of an
anvil, the shout of a ploughman with his team. At such moments as these
he was in concord too. From a distance it was so easy to believe that
people lived there whose daily life flowed like the river that bears
you along as it gives you its freshness. Why, when you have taken part
since your infancy in the activities of the village, are you not the
dupe of appearances? The smile of Concord hides so many ugly thoughts,
mean habits, dull conventions; there is so much tacit deceit in its
simplicity. Why has not nature made you complete by granting you the
adaptability that accommodates itself to the little frauds of ordinary
life, to the devious path that discreetly spins the thread of its days?
It is not Henry’s fault if he is at odds with it all. Instead of the
treasures of indulgence that nature might have given him, she has
provided him with a sense of smell too subtle not to be offended by its
odours of routine and rapacity. He thinks of that old farmer, living
alone on his big farm with a man to do his housekeeping for him, who
gets up every morning in mid-winter, when everything is frozen hard,
between three and four o’clock, puts on his boots and his coat, lights
his lantern and goes out to the barn to milk his seventeen cows. Of
course it is warm in the stable near the cows, but just the same....
Rich, without heirs, he yokes himself to this task of milking, his one
satisfaction in life being to fulfil punctiliously the function of a
miser. You see him returning to the house, his morning task ended, and
eating the breakfast his man has prepared while the master was at work
at the seventeen udders. All very fine, you say. But how surprised he
would be one of these nights, when the animals begin to talk, if he
heard a sisterly cow say to him: “Go back to bed, old man, and when
you wake up glance over your accounts again. See how much cream your
life has given you for all that your pails of milk have furnished.”...
Obstinate soul, perverse rebel, not to be able to forgive these
virtuous farmers because, while their first concern is to fill their
barns with good hay, they think they absolve themselves from the sin of
avarice by posing as protectors of letters and the arts.
In the good society of Concord he finds himself among notables of
Philistia who like to feel that they are the choice spirits of New
England. These are the upper spheres of the village. Henry avoids
them, for his lungs are not adapted to the air they breathe there. The
language and attitudes of society people have the unfailing effect of
precipitating the mercury of his thermometer to the bulb. On the rare
occasions when he has been exposed to the hostile and malign influences
that float in the humblest parlour, the experience has left him with a
bad memory. It is there that you encounter those people who say to you,
with their faces shining with amiability: “Oh, my dear fellow, how well
I understand your love of nature.... It is so poetic....”
The victim has his ferocious words or silences for cases of this kind.
If the lover of “nature” and “the poetic” were shrewd enough, he could
collect a good pint of the most acid disgust this mouth and these
pursed lips are able to distil.
He cannot always avoid the peril under its most artful forms. When he
has charge of the lectures at the village Lyceum, he cannot refuse to
carry the manuscript of the distinguished lecturess who is going to
discourse this evening on Woman: she has rolled it up in a handkerchief
and he has thrust it into his pocket before returning it to her. He
would be very glad to fulfil with stoical politeness for half an hour
the obligations of ladies’ man, but he would be happier if his pocket,
the next morning, did not retain such a fragrant reminder of the lady,
of her manuscript and her dressing-table. Feminism and perfumery have
craftily conspired to get the best of his lining. Similarly, when he
has allowed himself to be taken across the threshold of some stifling
room where, under the pretext of a “soiree,” thirty-odd idle women,
young or not so young, are chattering, simpering, warbling, in company
with various gentlemen who are dumb with admiration, the sad thing is
not merely the two mortal hours that he has passed there, wretched and
humiliated: the worst is the shame afterwards of his own weakness which
has prevented him from fleeing on the spot or committing some enormity
that would spread panic in this dovecote. The pretty girl to whom they
have presented him would have been charming perhaps if she had been
willing to keep still among all these ladybirds. In masculine society,
after a social dinner well seasoned with anecdotes, he feels just as
unhappy till he is past the door and free. In vain Henry holds himself
on the defensive: on another occasion there is that benign soul who
intrudes upon him with an oily affection for his person, an odious,
vulgar familiarity.
In the presence of these samples of cultivated humanity, Henry’s
natural stiffness is intensified and he becomes so icy that it is
difficult to imagine him ever laughing--as a good lady had the
hardihood to remark to him one day: she had never heard him in his
gay moods, for she had encountered him only during a call in a region
where, owing to the atmosphere, the laughter of this laugher was
extinguished. The polite people of the village, the church-goers,
those upright and self-sufficient folk, provoke his curt witticisms,
the sharp rejoinders that suddenly rivet a fellow, with outstretched
wings, like an owl over a barn door. Henry inevitably reaps antipathies
and lasting enmities. The clever ones think that he wants to astonish
and scandalize people by his paradoxes. They think he is pretentious.
His reputation for merciless satire and a cynical misanthropy, odd to
the point of perversity, is of his own making. If you roundly abuse
philanthropy and philanthropists, of course it shows that you are
not very anxious to win the esteem of the world. The plain-dealer
sometimes amuses himself with this game of massacre, delights in
sharpening his sarcasms, but without wasting any considerable time
on the characters who play in the village comedy: the keenest of his
sarcasms is to ignore them. When they come to his attention he packs
them off as intruders: let these fine-mannered gentry air their graces
somewhere else and leave common mortals alone. A substantial citizen,
whoever he may be, is always a slightly ludicrous animal in the eyes
of a workingman like Henry. A man’s virtue is all nonsense if it is
disconnected from his sins.
Happily Concord has something more than the silence of its elms and
maples to unite it with the true humanity. It also possesses those
congenial souls who gather about the Sage in the household where Henry
has been living, a spiritual family whose friendship has a far better
flavour than all the sarcasms. The pipe and frock of Edmund Hosmer,
that shrewd farmer who knows what the earth is made of, make up for
all these mean peasants. Amos Bronson Alcott, who has returned from
an adventure in which he has vainly tried to consummate the marriage
of dreams and reality in a paradisical existence, may be a cause
of wit in others, but his presence is really like an anticipation
or a recollection of the golden age. Henry has no particular taste
for the sky-blue tint of his idealism, so delightful to old maids
who are devoured by spiritual love, but he feels a brother in this
poor dreamer who is so helplessly unfitted to follow the ways of the
world. He lends him a good hand and digs beside him, when Alcott is
settling at Hillside. In every stroke that he takes with the pickaxe,
as they sweat side by side on the slope, the beautiful Platonic dreams
incarnate themselves in the shape of friendship. Henry is not unhappy
as a comrade and handyman in the service of philosophy. Who knows
but the good Alcott’s immense generosity of soul does not exist to
counterbalance all the miserliness of the neighbourhood?
With Hawthorne one doesn’t turn up the earth. In the company of this
imposing personage, a simple heart sheathed in solemn gravity, Henry
is inclined to present rather an iron visage: like black cloth and
corduroy, they are somehow unable to be friends. In handing over his
boat to him--the boat of the great voyage, which he manages like a
virtuoso--Henry, the dry joker, remarks: “It’s a boat that manages
itself, you see.” The grave Hawthorne tries it, with the awkwardness of
a beginner, and the boat, deprived of its soul, obeys no more.
Of this spiritual family, however, the one who is most closely akin
to him is William. They have been comrades since the days before
Henry’s departure for Staten Island. William Ellery Channing, one
year younger than himself, is the nephew of a Unitarian minister, a
professor at Harvard. He has married a sister of Margaret Fuller, the
animating spirit of the _Dial_. An odd soul, whimsical, fanciful, not
very sociable, childlike, hard to please, charming, full of imagination
and in other respects the best companion in the world. William also
writes verses, but in other respects, in spite of his independence,
he is not wholly exempt from a touch of Philistinism. He has a knack
of sharpening Henry’s love of paradox and leads him rather to force
the expression of his cynicism in regard to the civilised; but he is
an invaluable friend for toning you up again when you are feeling a
little slack. And when they set out together for an afternoon’s ramble
they are the happiest of comrades, welcoming the surprises of the road
in the intoxication of an open-air chat. Of all possible cronies he
is almost the only one whom Henry accepts, the only one who does not
throw a blot upon his afternoon landscape; with William he can have a
silent understanding. To whom but William then, and those fields that
are free from fine manners, do you show yourself as you are, with your
boyish zest, your fits of gaiety, the bursts of buffoonery that make
you dance and leap over the ice when you are skating? William is the
witness of those spontaneous moments when the spleen of a young man who
has been frozen by the sight of stupidity breaks and falls into pieces
like a mask of clay. What is under the mask reveals itself only to this
friendly nature, this friend after one’s own heart.
A lover of the wilds can enjoy friendships like this that establish
in the greyness of the village a few luminous points proclaiming the
presence of his own kind. Why are they not always complete enough to
satisfy him fully? Too often Henry feels a kind of embarrassment in
his relations with brotherly minds. The impediment is not of his own
willing. He asks to be filled to the brim, and these half-unbosomings
leave him dissatisfied with himself and others. When he is away from
them, alone in the woods, it seems to him that the silence of his
surroundings speaks of a truer friendship than that which he feels in
their company: it is a silence whose “yes” melts all discords. A tree
knows the art of winning you without discussion, while in the presence
of a human face you resist, you are a stubborn mule, a bellicose
intransigent who will not appear to approve of what he condemns and
then demolishes his adversary--his friend--with blows of crabbed
speechlessness or bitter irony. A human face is a provocation; at the
least pretext you discharge a “no” that shoots like an arrow.
Even among such friends as these, if an opinion, a gesture, an attitude
happens not to suit him, Henry rolls up into a ball and erects his
quills. Touch him then if you dare. Look at him, bristling with
resistance, ready to defend his position against all comers, fiercely
resolved not to yield an inch of ground. No doubt the ground is too
precious for him to sacrifice an inch of it. Pride? Conceit? Touchy
susceptibility? It is rather an excessive, irreducible, militant
devotion to various axioms that he identifies with himself. The gods
have made a Henry who is all of a piece, and they have placed him on
the earth among objects and souls that are different and queer. He
reacts. He has no particular desire to please you. But you happen to
be his friend. Well, one owes a friend the purest truth one has. If
friendship ceases to be a perfect harmony, it is a struggle, not an
exchange of concessions. So Henry abruptly says his “no”: forces rush
from all the provinces composing the individual Henry Thoreau, throwing
into disorder everything in their way. He must attest, amplify, exalt
the difference, to establish the fact that he is this and not that.
The Sage, a friend of long standing, knows something about all this:
the ferocity of this instinct of contradiction shocks the man with the
exquisite and conciliatory smile, though it does not cool his affection
for this headstrong soul who sometimes puts his patience to a severe
test. The other friends are also very familiar with their “terrible
Thoreau” in whose eyes esteem seems to be the strongest of reasons
never to capitulate. And they allow themselves to be cut by his plain
speaking or bitten by his caustic spirit, on occasion, since he will
not give himself on any other terms. A naked simplicity is necessary
to this fearfully difficult man. Manners fill him with horror, like an
indecency. If you allow him to see that after all you belong to a world
in which the desire to be correct and respectable taints your gestures
or speech, well, for the moment that is the end of your understanding.
You have shown the tip of the black cloth from which the frock-coats
are cut. To be a man, a plain man, would be so fine and so sincere. Why
this smooth, mealymouthed parlour-talk? Henry retires into his shell of
silence. This is not the sort of thing he was expecting from you.
As for those people who are as sober as a church-pew, they cannot
understand why a savage wants to whet his fancy and his paradoxes and
gravely make a butt of their respectable heads. Innocent souls who
are skilled in cleaving the interstellar spaces but whose terrestrial
envelope is of a prudently bourgeois cut have difficulty in adapting
themselves to the diapason of an artistic sensibility. That is why
Henry, who is both savage and artist, never feels so fully as at the
times when he is away from his friends the value of a friendship that
would have the serenity of a landscape in which every blade of grass
has a true word to say.
However it may be with men and their manners, Concord is in the centre
of a territory that is rich in living springs where all deceit is
drowned, and Henry has his home with his own family in the heart of
Concord. In the great kingdom of the afternoons--wind, sun or snow--the
little kingdom of morning, evening, night--shelter, stability, ties:
the house, the garden.
The little kingdom is peopled, not like the great, with secret lives
and furtive encounters as he passes, but with beings to whom he is
united more closely than by blood: by the memories of childhood and
their sweetness, strong as the memory of a brother, the sharing of
every day, and the tenderness that cannot refuse itself. There is his
mother, lively, talkative, full of geniality, the animating spirit
of the little house, skilful in the art of making a little go a long
way when times are hard, a housekeeper as heedful of the comfort of
the boarders who are entertained at the family table as in mending
the pockets of her son’s trousers. There is his father whom nature
has endowed with a middling stature and an air of prudence, a rather
retiring man because not destined to command but to find his way in a
tacit submission to the justifiable authority of his wife. As nature
has not developed in him to excess the imaginative and poetical sense,
he is the better able to play the part of a cautious, circumspect
little father who looks after his pencils, attends to his work,
silently, sedulously, with a mind set on details, good man that he
is. And then Sophia and Helen, Henry’s two sisters--Helen, the elder,
with the big eyes, the strong nose and a mouth as expressive as her
brother’s. Finally, Aunt Sophia and the devoted Aunt Louisa, when one
or the other happens to be living with the family.
This is the harmonious household the thought of which filled with such
ardent melancholy the heart of the exile in the Judge’s house, as if
he had heard from afar the shrill sound of the delicious music-box,
the gift of Richard, Margaret Fuller’s brother, with which the family
regaled itself in the evening. At home, the ne’er-do-well, the
jack-of-all-trades cheerfully does his share of the work, taking charge
of all the small tasks that need to be done.
The valuable little services that he renders his family extend even
to his boat, which not only bears occasionally the two noble dames,
Sophia and his mother, who enjoy a trip on the river in the evening,
but serves him for gathering driftwood to stock the wood-pile. The wood
that he hoists on board with a pole and then carries on his back to the
house, saws and splits with his hands, has a tawny life that warms you
a great deal better than the rotten wood these silly rich people buy
at so much a cord; for you have already sweated in transporting it and
cutting it up, and when you see its flames dancing the trouble it has
given you makes them dance all the more merrily. It is wood which, far
from costing you anything, gives you returns. It is of every kind and
has plenty of stories to tell you--old pickets, old planks, old stumps,
dead trees, condemned, adventurous timbers which, instead of rotting in
their abandonment, are going to give the Thoreaus before they vanish
the last rays of their glowing hearts, leaving beautiful ashes that
will be valuable for washing.
In the garden, it goes without saying, Henry’s function is as important
as that of his mother in the house. He raises enough potatoes for the
needs of the table and occasionally has some to sell. You can order
them by the bushel from the market, if you prefer. You can settle
yourself in your slippers in a corner by the fire, without knowing
what it is to have logs from your own wood-pile. You can taste the joy
of living like a potato or a stump. But he is a gardener to whom the
potatoes, even before they have been gathered, have given something
more nourishing than their starch. Henry’s work in his garden brings
with it another recompense than the beauty of the melons, the pumpkins,
the fruit-trees, the rose-bushes that he cultivates. Besides, the
garden is that one place in all the world where the home is contiguous
to the earth.
When the family is obliged to leave the big house where they have lived
for seven years, the Parkman house in the centre of the village where
the school was begun, a scheme is adopted which they could not have
conceived, still less executed, without the boy’s aid. For the question
is one of building a house. They are going to live at the end of the
world, in a lane on the other side of the railroad. A big undertaking,
a man’s work, to excavate the earth and lay the foundations, pave the
cellar, take the measurements, collect the materials. He would be happy
to do it for other people; he is still happier to do it for his own
family. Henry does the digging, the masonry, the carpentry, the slating
with his father. He plants the fruit-trees. There is a fine view from
the house; and besides, it is somewhat sheltered from the routine and
the tittle-tattle of the village. He will be able to sleep well under
this modest roof that he has put up himself.
Aside from the aid of his skilful and inventive hands, the man of the
wilds does not refuse his family that best of himself of which he
is far from lavish outside. What the chestnut is to the bur the big
child who amuses himself by the half-hour with the kitten or dances a
jig with his intimates is to the “terrible Thoreau” of those sharp
replies. Is he tamed then? Well, perhaps so, if you mean by this that
his resistance, in the family circle, adopts a tolerant and courteous
manner--which his friends would greatly appreciate. If, at table, the
maternal voice occasionally interrupts your dialogue with a friend, why
vent your ill-humour instead of listening till this gifted woman has
had her say? Her son patiently lets the downpour pass, as if he were
under a pine-tree in the woods, and at the last drops acquiesces with a
little bow: “Shall I take the liberty ... my turn?”--then resumes the
interrupted discussion. Because he himself despises the newspapers, is
he going to cast a scoffing or disdainful glance towards his father,
deep in the paper he is reading from the first line to the last, with
the touching faith of an honest shopkeeper? Nothing more natural than
that the good man should like to roll the lollipop of the “latest news”
in his mouth to get rid of the taste of the lead. Let him roll it as
much as he likes and go up to bed: his son will not plague him with
demands for advice, for he relies for everything on his own personal
experience and looks for little or nothing from the knowledge of his
elders. Henry’s indulgence is not blind. He knows the prejudices, the
limitations of this beloved little house, and he notes them on occasion
in his Journal. But his home is an indisputable reality to which he
comes back every evening, on his return from an adventure, finding
there certain special ways that may not have very much in common with
his inner life but that belong to him just the same, exactly how he
could hardly say--his father’s love of good work, for instance, a
perfect pencil or a phrase that hits the bull’s-eye, and his mother’s
vivacity of imagination and lively spirits that are always ready for
a little mischief. And if the sisters, the excellent aunts alone
had been there to warm the wanderer, all his roads would still have
converged towards this fixed light.
Is the little flame of the family fire fed at the same sources as those
wandering lights that attract his eye on his walks and make him stop
as he stops before his friends the trees? But that is another story.
These lights are not will-o’-the-wisps but miraculous beings that win
the favour of an unsociable soul, as if they had no connection with
a humanity that he has tried and condemned. Go and ask the cleverest
person in the village to explain this strange fact to you: you have
heard of a young fellow who is intolerably conceited, who affects a
gruff, stiff, top-lofty air when he is in company--such is the report
of the polite people--and this workingman here, if you happen to ask
him whether he knows this boy, tells you that he is the most amiable
of companions.... Then there are two Henry Thoreaus in Concord?
The workingman tells you about a delightful boy, sincere, simple,
always ready to do you a good turn and always to be depended upon; in
describing him he uses the sort of words that come to you when you are
speaking of a brother, without the least allusion to his conceit, his
stiffness, his sarcasms. He does not know of any other Henry Thoreau;
there is no other in Concord.... It is simply incomprehensible. And you
will never understand it if you are not of the understanding kind.
There exist, in fact, among the human fauna of this village, of all
villages, magicians who have the power of calling this other Henry
instantly into life, the Henry whose friendship is gained for all time
by his own kind. There are certain characters who have no part in
Concord society--obscure little nameless people, men who do odd jobs,
farm-hands, small farmers, and there are people of dubious reputation,
bad boys, who are akin to the waste lands, fishermen, Irishmen,
wood-cutters, small fry, loafers, weeds in the eyes of the village
bigwigs. Henry finds them very much to his taste. These latter are real
people, not play-actors. The artist is touched, the heart of the man is
captured. The grain of sympathy that is buried in the depths of this
unsociable soul can rise to the surface just the same. And he shows
them his true face, which is unknown to the prosperous townspeople, the
well-to-do farmers and the deacons.
When he sees one-eyed Goodwin, the tough old fisherman, making for
the river-bank at any hour of the day, small and thick-set under his
old oil-cloth coat, carrying his basket and pole or fetching home
in a handcart the wood he has collected in his boat, or dressed in
his short blue frock, chopping stumps for his winter after having
laid wall all day, Henry feels less isolated among men. Goodwin, the
vicious character, as the good people call him, puts a little poetry
into their sanctimonious dullness. He lives his life cheerily in the
freshness of the river and the fields, far from all these souls who are
so poor in imagination and sincerity. It is the same way with those
hunters, drunkards, rascals who are periodically sent to serve a term
in the House of Correction, like that big, lanky young blackguard of
a Melvin, with his baskets and his game-bag, accompanied by his lean,
bluish-white, black-spotted hound, who are so much more your own kind
than the village lawyer. Their gunshots sound so free in the woods,
and you remember the time when you wandered about the country like
these blessed pagans for hours with John. Melvin is an antidote to the
morality of the deacons. Melvin is a part of the beauty of Concord.
And there is Rice sawing the planks in his workshop. He is a master
of the art of living. Whether he is digging in the earth or going off
hunting or fishing with his boy, everything seems to amuse him. The
sacrosanct law of stupefying labour was not invented for him, for he
always consults his own time and pleasure when he works. At the mere
sight of him you forget the ugliness of humanity, you graze the reality
of a life that is strong and leafy as a poem; you are no longer alone
in the world with your dreams and your sadness. Rays of joy that
warm you as you pass, the gift that the poor make to the solitary
walker.... How could you fail to be enlivened after days of misery by
the childlike gaiety of old Brooks who, at eighty, bent double with
age, sets out every day with his basket under his arm to gather a
little wood and whatever else happy chance may offer to cheer his old
days? To-day, dressed in an ancient frock-coat, he has come back from
an expedition, barefoot, an axe in one hand, in the other carrying the
boots that he has filled with apples because his pockets would hold no
more. He has also brought back a thrush with a broken wing that he has
found, and old Brooks is very happy in his find--as happy as yourself
as you stop to hear him tell about it on an autumn evening made still
lovelier by the old man’s delight. Bit by bit he has gathered in two
cords of wood for his winter; but they will certainly warm him less
than this schoolboy’s joy in roaming the countryside which has remained
intact in the heart of a poor old grandfather who blesses the life that
puts thrushes in his path.
Why are there certain beings of whom it is enough to have a glimpse
to be happy? When you meet old Minot and cross a woodlot with him,
everything seems to sing at his mere presence while he tells you
stories of the days when he used to go hunting. One glimpse of his
little cottage on the hillside is enough to make you forget that there
was ever an ugly house in this world; it is the first to show signs
of the coming of spring and the last to bid farewell to the beautiful
season. How easy it is to understand why old Minot has never wanted to
budge from Concord, when even his rheumatism cannot keep him indoors!
It is up there you must hear him, surrounded by the old furniture that
he has inherited from his ancestors, to the tick-tack of a clock that
was sounding before Massachusetts existed, reciting to you the stories
that he knows almost by heart, stories that are engarlanded with minute
details and good old solid and obsolete words that gratify the ear of
an artist. He has a tiny bit of land that he has always cultivated
himself, without help, mingling his work and his pleasure, drawing from
every inch of ground the great happiness it gives him with his bread
and asking for nothing more. He lives with his sister, and his only
regret is that because of his rheumatism he is no longer able to go out
and cut his own wood. But what a clear flame his life yields! He has
the finest ear in the village for the thread of a bird’s note, however
thin it may be. How you would love to toil away for an employer like
that, to be the man-of-all-work for the master of the little house on
the hillside where the spring first breaks!
You perceive, solitary walker, how the ugliness of humanity dies away
at the foot of this hill? And how it vanishes at the foot of other
hills than old Minot’s? You may not have realized this, you who walk
with your eyes on the ground, meditating, but look: the sunlit smile
of this old woman ironing at her window, which is full of blossoming
daisies, cleanses the whole earth as you pass, as if you had never seen
it before. Take a good look around you, as you go through the world.
You may find that it is strewn with men and women whose beauty you
have never suspected and who belong to you as much as Goodwin or old
Minot.
Henry is certainly not at war with humanity when it presents itself in
the form of this wood-cutter who knows the woods so much better than
the finest naturalist: his clothes have a wholesome smell, he is happy
enough for two, and you could work beside him all day. And you would
like to follow old Hayden too as you see him pass and repass with his
team, with the serenity of a good workman. The world of labourers is a
friendly world where you cease to feel that you are among strangers.
There is nothing in them that irritates you; your love of sarcasm
vanishes in their atmosphere; there is nothing awry, nothing that you
could find fault with in them, nothing that is not assured of your
affectionate indulgence. No parlour, no store, no model farm in the
village shelters a face as human as the faces of these Irish labourers,
camping under their plank shanties along the new railroad. Simple
digging-machines, ridiculous louts, in the eyes of noble, pure-blooded
Yankees, are these brawny souls condemned to their killing tasks for
a tiny wage. The scantiness of his own respectability is confirmed
in Henry’s eyes in the friendship he feels for these slow-witted
fellows, navvies, ditch-diggers, scavengers, ice-cutters, indefatigable
executors of the heavy tasks of the earth. To his mind their accent,
their awkwardness, the dirtiness of their big, boyish, sunburnt faces
are far less to be sneered at than the unctuousness of some doctor of
divinity whose hands have never rubbed against anything but a cake of
soap or the Holy Scriptures.
How could one fail to like that big-hearted Michael Flannery who
toils away all day with such bubbling good spirits! It is as if the
more energy he spent the more inexhaustible were the good humour he
has drawn from heaven knows what miraculous fountain in his native
Kerry. Naturally the respectable exploiters of other people’s work
take advantage of this and abuse his simplicity. Michael has won a
prize at the Cattle-show, and the farmer who hires him has taken the
prize-money away from him, maintaining that his wages pay for his time
and that his good luck belongs to his employer: to swindle a lout of
an Irishman is a good Yankee joke that will never shut you out of
the kingdom of heaven promised to prosperous farmers. But this is an
act that completely upsets Henry’s serenity: he immediately takes up
a collection and returns to Michael the money which the miser has
cribbed. And when he sees that little Irish monkey of a Johnny going
to school all alone through the snow from the shanty where his parents
live in the woods, as sober as a judge under the rags that so oddly
cover his four or five years, Henry thinks of the satisfied air of
the alms-givers and ostensible philanthropists who brave the winter
courageously muffled up in their rich fur-coats. What does a mere
little weed of a wood-cutter’s child matter, toddling along without
stumbling through the intense cold with scarcely a shoe on his foot or
a rag on his back, looking as if he found this world royally well made
for little Irish boys who go to school where there is a bench to sit on
and a fire in the stove? And in his mind he strips these worthy rich
folk and puts the rags of the poor Irish on their backs to drape their
philanthropy--takes their purple and fine linen and tenderly envelops
this little scrap of half-naked humanity. Henry himself has no purple
and fine linen to give Johnny, but what he has he takes to his parents:
an old pair of pantaloons and a coat from which Mrs. Riordan can work
up some trousers and a schoolboy’s cloak so that he will not have to
miss school for the futile reason that the snow is too deep this winter.
For the rest, whether it is Irish Johnny or some New England youngster,
the world of childhood is an irreducible power that tolerates no
assumed formality nor any veil of reserve. To make an end of the
“terrible Thoreau,” nothing is necessary but the two black eyes of some
little boy under a big cap or the manoeuvres of four small kiddies
bringing back a big horse from the pasture. You will find then that
he is just a big boy himself, touched, captivated, won, a boy whose
shyness feeds upon solitude and wild nature and who, in order to love
you, asks only to be able to find in you that simplicity and candour,
that true and savoury quality for which his childlike heart is greedy.
Henry feels affectionately sheltered under his own family roof: nothing
in the world could induce him to leave home as his grandfather did for
good and all to seek his fortune far away. But when he meets on his
path these poor, ignorant, simple people, small folk, little souls, a
strange feeling of kinship awakens in him, stronger than the affections
of home, as if at bottom they were his real family.
* * * * *
It was an old desire that had haunted him very often, a desire that he
had cherished no doubt from his childhood, when he had been a great
chief who had withdrawn into his cave to inspect the spoils of conquest
and dream of future expeditions, to go and live alone in some solitary
spot--as Wheeler had done, a fellow at Harvard who had established
himself in a shanty on the edge of Flint Pond to devote himself in all
tranquillity to the study of Greek. A well-tempered character, this
Wheeler, who slept there on the straw like a stableman or a soldier and
later went off to study in Germany, where the poor fellow died. Henry
liked and admired him greatly.
Yes, it was the dream of having some sort of shelter bathed in silence
where he could listen to the things, both within and outside himself,
that were lost in the Babel of the village. He had once been on the
point of realizing it when he had just missed buying the Hallowell
place, the beautifully ruined and solitary old farm he had seen on the
river as he passed in his boat; but he had not come to terms with the
owner and it had remained nothing but a charming fancy sheltered behind
its screen of maple-trees. After all, it was better to have missed this
opportunity, to have been spared the humiliation of seeing his name
printed in the records as a property-owner.
But the old desire had not died. It spoke to-day with more authority
than ever. At twenty-eight, with some experience of the solutions
the world offered for the problem of a livelihood and no inclination
whatever to adopt any of them, there still remained the old question
of supporting himself. His little jobs as an occasional day-labourer
gave him at best a precarious and insufficient means of living. It had
become clearer and clearer that Concord was not very anxious to employ
the particular talents of an “amateur” who undertook to do his work
with the respect of an artist for his art. Well, suppose he were to
free himself from all these needs that were not worth the trouble he
took to satisfy them? Suppose he were to simplify his life?
Existence in his own home, to be sure, was frugality itself. But when
you looked closely, how encumbered it was with superfluities! Cut down,
cut down! This luxury perverts the life of a man. It usurps the place
of true values that only ask for a chance to blossom. The truth of
life is a fragile plant that a gardener should protect against evil
intruders. A house brings with it innumerable duties. A village is a
buzzing, trampled thoroughfare, poisoned with gossip and neighbours.
You could get away by yourself for a few hours, but there were times
when domestic thoughts, village thoughts clung so tight to your skin
that you could not shake them off in the open air and they reduced your
adventure to the vulgar proportions of some cockney’s holiday in the
country. You would give anything to rid yourself of these leechlike
thoughts, not just for a few hours in the afternoon but for good
and all, for days and nights together. You would give anything, for
example, if the first sound you heard when you woke up in the morning
were not to come from some neighbour who is clearing his throat. You
would give anything not to squander so many precious hours, sacrificed
for the privilege of being a citizen who is taught his P’s and Q’s
on the lap of a parish. And what wouldn’t you give not to dream any
longer of the beauty of living, but to experience it completely for a
while, without alloy, unrestrictedly, in all its freshness, free as
the open air, naked and real, from dawn to the day’s end, and the same
to-morrow--to feel that you were _existing_ on this good green earth?
There happened to be other needs that quickened this desire for a
little retirement. Henry had already written a few pages with which he
had reason not to be too dissatisfied. His articles, his studies were
only a prelude, an incentive to exercise himself more rigorously at his
trade as a writer. There too he had to strip himself of vain ornaments
and find out exactly what he was capable of and whether he was really
worthy of doing something. He would work well in this peaceful
seclusion. The outlines of a book were vaguely taking form in the pages
of the Journal. He would see.
Henry needed a retreat, to audit his books with all care and discover
just where his personal affairs stood, to examine various true,
essential matters, including himself, face to face.
It was a more serious business at bottom even than the desire to
clarify his existence and live more or less alone, after his own
fashion. It had the charm of a great difficulty to be overcome; instead
of running away from it or trifling with it, he wanted to come to grips
with it and find out, without any beating about the bush, which was
the stronger. It was a tempting opportunity to prove to himself that
he could provide for his subsistence with his own hands, without aid,
giving himself the beautiful margin of leisure that is indispensable
to a man if his life is to have a meaning and yield its flower. We
shall have a good try, my shopkeeping friends. You set yourself up in
business. Henry is going to follow your example and launch out in an
enterprise of his own, at his own risk and peril, with his ten fingers
and the wits of a ne’er-do-well for his capital. When you are the son
and grandson and great-grandson of merchants, you may turn your back on
your patrimony, but you do not discard from your destiny the taste for
certain kinds of operations. On the other hand, you are not going to
puzzle your brains trying to calculate your profits if you succeed. And
if your speculation is unfortunate, you will still have the pleasure of
telling about your failure.
A boy had been turning these thoughts over in his mind while tramping
over the fourteen acres of woodland which his friend Waldo had bought
for a little more than $200 last September, a spot that had taken
Henry’s fancy above all the paradises of the domain of vagabonds. It
was on the banks of Walden Pond, where the Sage carried his philosophy
into the woods, drawn there by the sound of the name: Waldo ...
Eden....
The circle of sombre branches reflected in the calm blue waters was an
impression that he had preserved from his earliest infancy, and later
it had been the goal of many an expedition. As a child, as a boy he
had run off to go fishing, hunting, skating there, or to stretch out
in a boat in summer, letting himself glide over the water to the waves
of wild foliage that enclosed the pond. The spot had an incomparable
charm and wildness, and although it was only half an hour from the
village it was so retired that all the villages of the earth were lost
and forgotten there in a distance beyond the sea for the explorer who
prowled about its banks. An evil fame, a legendary mirage floated about
these regions--an additional attraction. On the borders of the woods of
Walden, on the neighbouring hill, in former times, all sorts of lawless
characters, pariahs, escaped slaves, negresses who told fortunes and
other riff-raff used to live whose presence in the shadow of the church
would have been an offence to the purity of the village. The blackened
remains of their cabins were still to be seen there. Henry liked to
think of black Zilpha, who spun linen and had such a beautiful voice,
and Wyman, the poor potter, unfortunate souls indeed. But the pond
itself! Sunk in the shelving semicircle, a dark green mass drank in the
deep blue of this miraculous glade under a great stretch of sky. The
whole world was still, and he himself was a flood of silent wonder amid
this population of pines and oaks.
How good it would be to come here and taste the quality of the silence!
Who knew but this pond, meditating in its immemorial solitude, folded
in upon itself in the quiet of the woods, might not have some important
secret to whisper to him, if he became its confidant?... Many a time
on its banks he had dreamed of a Waldenic existence and had taken the
road home again to the village and his old ways. But now the little
voice murmured among the reeds: My secret is not for a boy who has
merely come on a visit. It is for the faithful soul who will come and
live beside me, spending his nights and his days and mingling with
his existence every hour of my own.... The little voice possessed an
all-powerful sweetness for the senses of a lover, a solitary. Yes, to
come and savour there the interminable summer evenings, drink in the
first draught of air before the dawn, allow the winter to blockade him
with snow as he listened to the beating of his heart in the frosty
silence. To plunge into the pond every morning! To feel at home there,
like a wild duck or a skater-insect!... Suppose, instead of the
summerhouse which the Sage planned to set up there, some day, on his
land, he were to build himself at once a house under the pines, on the
side of the knoll that dropped off by a gentle slope into the pond?
When a beautiful castle in Spain that has been tenderly cherished for
years finds a foundation like this upon which to rest, one hesitates no
longer. The business is settled. Spring appears like a notification.
Towards the end of March, in the year 1845 of the Christian era,
Henry goes to his friend Alcott and borrows his axe; it does not cut
very well, this philosophical axe--perhaps it has been blunted at
Fruitlands, in that unhappy phalansterian enterprise--but he undertakes
to sharpen it.
The builder has chosen his site, felled the trees to clear the space
where he is to erect the house. The plan is already settled. Those
pines will do for the framework. The other materials can be found
at little cost. Why new planks when second-hand planks will serve
perfectly well? A labourer’s shanty will give him plenty of timber,
and he will only have to unnail it and transport it with all the
accessories, not forgetting the old nails, which will serve a second
time. For four dollars and twenty-five cents, an Irishman who is
working on the railroad is quite willing to sell him the one he lives
in; it will only be necessary to let the planks dry a little so that
the air can absorb their Hibernian moisture. The materials are all
ready for the work. The cellar is dug in the sand, where the provisions
are to be kept. There is nothing impossible about setting up the frame
for a man who helped his father to build their new house the year
before; no need of a gang of skilled hands to plant a post upright at
the corner where the roof is to rest. But if his friends offer to come
and give him a hand with this heavy job of the timber-work, is he going
to renounce the rare pleasure of working in the woods there with a few
cronies who are not such good carpenters as himself perhaps but who are
full of hearty good will? Alcott and Edmund Hosmer join in the party.
Everything they say sparkles in the resinous air; all the preparations
have taken time and it is May already. A philosopher, a farmer and a
ne’er-do-well in collaboration nail together with affection the frame
of a cabin that is going to support the weight of solitude.
It may be weeks since spring came to surprise old Minot. But it has
been just as long, if not longer, since it took possession of the
heart of a boy who, since the end of March, has turned his steps
every morning, with his lunch in his pocket, towards his workshop in
the woods. The little glade is covered with shavings; the work of
building goes on amid the cheerful clatter of axe and hammer, and the
surrounding pines gaze with a curious eye upon this neighbour who is
coming to live there as if they had never seen old nails driven by
so young an arm. It is only a house that is going up, a motionless
house overlooking a motionless pond, but for the workman, blissfully
alone in the woods.... April, May, June ... the light sings as in
former days when he was building his little boat for those faraway
expeditions--sings a chaplet of songs as long as the work that he
pursues unhastingly on this piney knoll. The cabin is fixed to the
earth by its roots, and it is to shelter the sleep of an explorer who
is promising himself not a week or two but whole seasons of discoveries
and adventures ... seasons that will be reflected in the eye of this
big high window, seasons upon which this door that hangs here will open
with a gesture of welcome and familiarity at the entrance of the cabin
where Henry is going to sleep on this holiday evening--for it is the
Fourth of July.
Up before dawn on the first morning, the builder stops on his
threshold, goes out, takes a turn around his castle, comes in again,
goes out again, looks up at his roof with perfect confidence in its
power to resist snow, sun and rain, and only asking himself if it is
not going to burst with the happiness contained between these four
plank walls. In the woods some neighbours are singing and chirping.
The fresh air pours through him as if he had come out of a tent. But
the cabin is not a tent, it is spacious: ten feet by fifteen. You can
stretch your legs in it. It contains everything: bed, table, a chair
and, at one end, facing the door, a place for the hearth which is not
yet built. The household utensils are in a cupboard. Under the floor,
the cellar, and an attic above, each with its trap-door. The room is
lighted by two windows, one in front and one in the rear. It has all
the comfort and brightness of a living-room with the compact intimacy
of a ship’s cabin.
Thirty to forty square yards of ground, which do not belong to him,
offer their immovable base to this new man who has built the home of
his dreams and come here to sleep and means to sleep here to-morrow
and another to-morrow--who has touched with his feet, as he leaps out
of bed, the realization of his vision, touched it with his hand as he
opens his door, as he slowly makes the rounds to reassure himself that
it is all true, as, from the threshold of the cabin, in the innocence
of the earth, emerging from the summer night, he sees down there forty
yards away the rocky little bay, his haven, the great blue lake and
the woods beyond, nothing but water, sky, waves of foliage, without
the least sign of a human habitation, a whole corner of the world that
has kept itself intact to enchant the eye of a newcomer. Like everyone
else he had had his black and his grey moments in life, but he cannot
imagine at this instant a discontent the vexation of which would
not vanish under the benediction of such a morning, in the air of a
hillside where he has planted his cabin to live an eternity there. He
is not cut off from the world: on the left is the road to Lincoln and
on the right the railroad to Fitchburg. But the squatter cannot see a
roof. He can fancy as he awakens that the human race has gone away for
a time to nurse its sorrows under other skies, leaving the place for
the fresh happiness of a solitary.
Yes, it seems as if one could live here. Everything is clean, there
is none of the litter that encumbers existence. The true wealth is in
the open; you can weigh it, drink it, breathe it; it is solid, fluid,
has a good resinous smell, refreshing as ice-water, fills your arms
like the stones you pile up to build the fireplace. There is so much
to do, in the first place, living is such an absorbing, delightful
occupation, that the most beautiful page you could read would seem like
an impertinence: it would interrupt your collaboration in the poem
of the whole day. You are no longer an afternoon stroller. The slow
task of taking possession of the surroundings demands all your hours,
a continuous employment, going and coming on the path that leads to
the water, observations, saunterings, surprises. But the hours about
the cabin are free from everything you have left out there beyond
the woods, the habits of a household, the family table, the routine
with its taste of pencil-lead, the house-fronts in Main Street, the
regimented faces. They wear new robes, these hours, cut in the workshop
of Walden; they marvel at themselves and their labour is like play.
What is there to do, all the blessed day long, living alone on the
edge of a pond? That is what puzzles those charitable souls beyond the
woods. Ah, good people, if one were alone!... But Henry has never felt
less alone than he has felt since the day when he put that little space
between the village and himself, not for a few hours but for good. He
can feel alone in a Judge’s house but not in a cabin in the woods which
he has built after his own heart. When is there a moment for loneliness
to worm itself into the course of the day? When he is preparing his
meals? Hardly. His main dish every day is a gruel of corn, rye or
rice; the preparation is simple and pleasant. No need of a lot of
saucepans and ingredients, no need to devote himself to those rather
repulsive manipulations that are demanded in expert cookery. And this
is very nourishing too. If he feels like it, the cook may also broil
a little rasher of bacon. When he wants to vary his ordinary diet, it
is quite simple for him to boil some acorns for breakfast as an homage
to the gods of Walden; boiled acorns are a little more bitter than raw
acorns, but you soon get used to them. And what other bitterness can
you imagine a man feeling who does his housekeeping in the open air,
in front of his cabin, where he eats sitting on his doorstep, with his
bowl on his knees and the lake at his feet and the whole day entirely
at his disposal? He has the best of table companions around him, all
drinking to the health of a happy man. Music plays for him, and it is
a different music from that of the human voice. Henry oversees the
baking of his bread, placed in an oven the mouth of which is covered
with stones as unceremoniously as in the days of the ancient Romans.
But the bread that is baked in this way has no flavour of antiquity;
a savoury odour comes from this rustic bakery improvised on a piney
New England slope. How could a baker like this, watching his ovenful
in the open air, feel lonely? Nor is he any likelier to feel so as
he does his housekeeping, chops his wood or sets to work to give his
room a good cleaning. All his furniture is taken outside--there is a
whole wheel-barrowful of it--the table faces the broad daylight without
flinching, the bed stretches itself in the open air, while Henry
carries up buckets of water and scours and rinses his floor with the
water of Walden. Imagine a boy who does his housekeeping under the eye
of the pines, carries his furniture in again when the floor is dry,
happy as a king who is going to sleep to-night in a room that has a
good, well-washed smell--imagine a boy so happily busy feeling himself
forsaken! Solitude may prowl almost anywhere, on the very pavements of
a populous city, but what could it ever find to pick up in the tracks
of a boy like this?
To deserve this life he has chosen he must first make sure of his
subsistence. The cabin is not a philosopher’s country cottage; it is
a farmhouse, and the farmer has his mind on his farm and his harvest.
This bread that smells so good when he takes it out of the oven is not
to be earned by listening to the hooting of the owls. On Emerson’s lot
at Walden there is a stretch of waste land which, with a good deal
of work and a little imagination, he ought to be able to turn into
a field. It is a piece of poor, sandy ground which the woods have
covered for the last fifteen years: virgin soil, still full of stumps
but with plenty of vigour and good will, in which he can have some
confidence--even if it did belong, at the end of the last century, to
a great uncle by marriage who was a deacon. It certainly needs manure,
but he has not come to Walden to apply the methods of model farms. The
labour of his own solid muscles will have to take the place of the
manure, after the clearing, ploughing and harrowing of the ground, for
which the work of a man with his horse and cultivator is indispensable.
Certain expenses are unavoidable in every enterprise.
Henry has sown some potatoes, a little corn, a few peas, a handful of
turnips and a lot of beans, and they all come up--all but the seeds
which the worms have eaten--come up, sprout and form an immense field.
But the weeds, encouraged by the ploughing, also spring up merrily,
and he has to grub them out to protect the life of the beans and his
own honour as a rash adventurer. And what work! The sower has sown his
beans generously, as a farmer who sees things in a large way. He has
rows and rows of them, innumerable rows--seven good miles if he placed
them end to end--four times longer than the distance from the cabin to
the village. On this immense battle-front the general defends the land
step by step. It is very painful for a man of the wilds to see himself
condemned to assuming the defence of culture against these hordes of
barbarians that have grown so beautifully. But what is to be done when
the destiny of a legion of beans, threatened with being surrounded,
hangs in the balance? Since five o’clock in the morning, hoe in hand,
the squatter has been out in his field, first in the dew, then, as the
sun mounts, in the glare of the summer day, weeding, putting fresh
soil about the stems, without giving up till noon, his bare feet in
the burning sand, as steady as a negro in a cotton-field.
The man with the hoe is not slaving away under the eye of an overseer.
He works with a will, first because that is his way, and then because
he is not a hired man but an obstinate soul who means to carry out with
honour a difficult undertaking; he must justify Walden with the sweat
of his brow. Walden is not a phalanstery; there is only one person
responsible for it, and that is much more serious. The villagers who
pass in their carts on the road see a little skinny fellow bending over
his bean-stalks in his half-wild, half-cultivated field and wonder why
this strange workman is breaking his back over such a piece of ground
at such a season. It is Henry the simpleton, toiling away cheerfully
and letting the world go by. He is thinking, under the heat of the
sun, of the sweet bath he is going to give himself in the pond, after
this glorious sweat, and how good it will be to stretch out on his
grassy bank near the spring, in the shade of a vast white pine, with a
book for a companion ... But it is not enough to work himself to death
defending, weapon in hand, these wretched beans that are surrounded
with enemies; the woodchucks, which are very partial to them, eat up a
quarter of your acre. For these blessed beasts the attraction of the
tender shoots is stronger than any fear of the trap; Henry kills one of
them and eats it in revenge. But in spite of all, as the reward of his
labours, the farmer harvests twelve bushels of beans and sells them for
$16.94, plus $4.75 for potatoes. Something of a result!
In all, $8.71½, deducting the original outlay, a total that might not
satisfy one of those knowing souls who go by sneering on the road,
but enough to yield the farmer of Walden a good profit--if he adds it
to the others which, shrewder than these shrewd folk, he gathered in
long before the harvest. The sneerers know all about the sort of soil
that produces a big crop, but what do they know of these magnificent
days of combat for the beans? They have no Ganges in which to cleanse
themselves every morning, to begin the day as if with a prayer; they
have no poor field on a hillside on the edge of the woods, where
you sweat for hours scratching the earth to persuade it to yield
well-podded stalks; they do not know the reward for all the toil of the
toilers of the world, or the delight of feeling one’s skin exhale its
gratitude after the bath and the rubbing. They do not have the rest of
the day for dreaming, observing, wandering, turning their laziness into
thanksgiving, listening to one’s own life amid the throng of things.
They are clodhoppers.
The summer has its great sunny spaciousness in which friendship hangs
like a scarf from every branch. Just wait for autumn and winter, when
some evil animal cowering in the solitude of the cellar comes up
from below or descends slyly from a corner of the attic, in the long
evenings, to clamber up the legs of a solitary in his cabin, or glide
under his shirt and bite him--some insect, some black beetle, some blue
devil of doubt to plague a boy who thinks he can get along without the
village. But there is nothing under this floor but the field-mice, and
they only want the potatoes. And there is nothing in the attic but an
old tent-cloth that dreams of distant adventures and the wide air of
the river-banks. The spiders may have hung up their webs, but they
are the friends of man, weaving decorations for the roof-timbers of a
castle in the woods.
No, there are no foul creatures prowling about this cabin, not even an
importunate cockroach. Henry has made everything ship-shape. A log is
smouldering in the fireplace and the thoughts it has kept shut up till
its last hour surround him, dancing gaily. For the cabin, finished at
last, breathes. A house without a chimney through which you can see
the smoke coming out is not a living house. It is a mere vulgar barn,
a store-house, a dead thing. Before the bad season William comes and
lends his friend a hand in setting up the fireplace; he stays fifteen
days, fifteen beautiful days of comradeship. From now on there will be
wood in the woodshed to keep Henry warm in winter and in the evening
when he sits up late. He is living here like some old bachelor of a
forester who has just finished his supper, his day’s work ended, and
tells himself stories before going to bed. The latter would probably
have his pipe for company, or some yellow-haired mongrel with grave,
tender, vigilant eyes. Henry’s only companions are his thoughts, the
ladies of the house who brush him lightly as they pass as if they were
sisters who had come out with him to the woods. Henry reads or writes
at his table in the deep silence, where the singing of the fire gives
him the feeling of a presence. He revises his manuscripts, works,
writes an essay on Carlyle. He takes a good measure of his inner powers
in the silence of the cabin and toils over a sheet of paper with the
heart of a workman who has swung his hoe through the furrows under
the glaring sun. There are the weeds to be dug out, the beans to be
defended. Sometimes Henry works at his table in the morning, when he is
in the right mood, in the freshness of his strength. At the approach
of spring the red squirrels come and make love under the floor of the
cabin where a solitary meditates in his twenty-ninth year; when he raps
with his foot to silence them, their squeals redouble, as if the lovers
were affirming their rights in the face of this scribbler whom their
gambols do not greatly disturb.
And in winter, when the snow covers the paths and the approaches of the
dwelling, weighs down the pines, weighs upon the roof of the cabin,
when the village is further away than ever, in the overwhelming silence
of the snow and its dazzling splendour, what joy to feel himself in
this hollow in the woods, like a nest stamped with the warmth of his
body, and how the stumps he has toilsomely split repay him for the
difficult time he has spent in loosening the embrace of their fibres!
What joy walking on the stiffened pond, making a hole in the ice with
his axe and bending over the opening, lying flat on his stomach to peep
into the aquarium where the hermit fishes look as if they did not find
it so bad living in Walden, even under this opaque glass that hides the
day from them....
And now, if by chance a friend comes to call on you in the woods, you
can do him the honours of your castle. When there are two between the
bed, the table and the fireplace, the reception-hall is almost filled,
but it is large enough to make room for this chance accession. One
Sunday it is dear Edmund Hosmer--no miserly peasant, that fellow--who
comes to look in on his colleague, the farmer of Walden; or his son
Joseph perhaps, whom the latter has invited to come for a feast at his
table. On this occasion there is a choice of dishes and the cook has
surpassed himself. You cannot do too much when you are entertaining
one of your own kind. He has prepared a banquet: fish from the pond,
beans, corn, bread from the Walden bakery, all seasoned with that fine
salt of which there is always a full box at Henry’s. It is Sunday twice
over in the cabin. Nor does Alcott refuse to make it the object of a
walk to go and see one of the two or three friends with whom alone he
can embark on one of those endless conversations in which time and
space are abolished. There is not much philosophical talk at Walden;
you don’t press wisdom there between the leaves of an old book; you
live it, freshly every day, as naturally as you turn to the water in
the pond. But with the master of the axe that Henry borrowed to fell
the pines for his house, what a feast he has! The bean-field is soon
left behind; they are in full flight, and in a few hours they have
surveyed numberless continents and unknown archipelagos. If the visitor
is only William, who lives a good three miles from the pond but whom
neither snow nor storm can stop when the fancy seizes him to go and
say good morning to his friend, there are no culinary preparations or
voyages into the empyrean: there are simply orgies of laughter in the
hermitage. They must say and do all sorts of foolish things to express
their joy in finding themselves there in the woods as brothers, free
from bores. How the laughter resounds in the cabin on the hillside!
Listening to the response that comes from the heart of the woods, you
might think it had been built just for this day.... They chatter like
magpies, they chirrup louder than those amorous squirrels, they roar,
their boisterous mirth shakes the plank walls. They have no good old
wine to drink as they eat their dishes of gruel, nothing but a nut to
put under their teeth. But they are able to intoxicate themselves just
the same, with the pure gaiety of old cronies.
Now and again some prying busybody also comes to the woods. A boy who
has had a little experience of the world knows various tricks for
getting rid of these gentry--though they are not always successful.
But what a charm spreads about the cabin when other visitors pass,
those strolling railroad men, for instance, who are not afraid to
violate the Sabbath occasionally by turning in towards the little house
in the woods. They are quite a gang, half a dozen of them, walking
together and stopping in as neighbours, for Henry often meets them on
his comings and goings along his boulevard, the railroad. They have
put on their white shirts and saunter along, airing their leisure and
waving their Sunday idleness like a little twig one cuts on one’s way,
the older ones with seamy faces, the younger giving you a friendly
greeting and wishing you good luck, without showing the least surprise
that a man prefers the company of the pines to that of the villagers.
The language and bearing of some of these fine fellows reveal that
exquisite, simple, unaffected courtesy that bears the stamp of the
workingman and leaves you with the impression that you have received a
visit from great personages.
One of those good apostles of the village who knows Henry only as a
harsh, dismal mask should pass at a moment when his tempestuous laugh
is sounding over the knoll; he would understand better then what this
mock hermit has come to seek in the woods. Henry has not broken with
the world. He is simply holding it at a distance for a while in order
to find space for something he wishes to create. Almost every afternoon
the anchorite-in-his-own-fashion crosses the woods and descends again
among men. There is an unimaginable charm in taking a trip of this
kind as a simple visitor into the regions of the civilized, where he
sees human faces. When you have behind you a cabin that is waiting
for you in the heart of a kingdom of your choice, the Main Street of
the village is as pleasant as possible. You see the strangest things
there and you judge everything indulgently, for you see it from another
point of view. You have all the enjoyment of a traveller in a foreign
town, observing the manners of the natives, the sights, the shops,
the fashions, the things for sale. Henry, in spite of his change of
domicile, remains on the same old intimate terms with his family and
stops in regularly to see if everything is going well at home, lend
a hand in the workshop, if it is necessary, or busy himself a little
in the garden. When he goes home again he sometimes has to carry some
tidbit cooked for him by his mother, who is rather afraid that the
gruel at the cabin may be too slender a diet for a boy accustomed to
the family table. Sometimes too, at the end of the day, if the fancy
takes him, Henry knocks at a friend’s door and invites himself to
supper, as the bearer of the latest news from the woods; then if night
has fallen on the road, as he gropes his way through the darkness
after the evening he has passed with his friends, it only deepens the
serenity of his return. And this is not to mention the times when, even
for a man who has no complaint to make of his business, a dollar comes
in very nicely and he undertakes to go down and work for a day or two
in the village as a painter, gardener or mason. It is just so much to
add to the revenue of the farm.
The farmer of Walden does not deposit his wealth in the bank like big
landowners and prudent citizens. These good people lock their tills
and bolt their doors for fear of robbers. They are so afraid of being
relieved of a crumb of their bothersome money! When Henry leaves home
for a whole day, and even when he sets out for several days on some
distant excursion, it never occurs to him to lock his door. One bother
the less. The door of the cabin has neither lock nor bolt; nothing but
a latch. It is open to all comers. The scorner of men has confidence
in humanity, in the unknown. Come in, gentlemen, if you happen to be
passing, and you too, Mrs. Paul Pry. Inspect the bed, the fireplace and
the cupboard. A little something to eat? Eat to your heart’s content.
You will find a dipper to fetch the water if you are thirsty. Make
yourself at home. And if you have a mind to, after the feast, read a
page in one of those books lying there on the table. It will not do you
any harm. And if you like the book so much that you don’t want to leave
it, take it away with you. It has gilt edges; the man of the woods
makes you a present of it. The principal of his worldly wealth is there
between those planks. But what are the sneak-thieves thinking of? They
never come to Walden.
One evening, when he sets out for the cobbler’s to take a boot to be
repaired, the village resorts to a singularly rough way of testifying
its regret at no longer seeing him except as a passing stranger. The
town constable places his hand on Henry’s shoulder and takes him off
to jail. He has refused to pay his poll-tax. His intention in doing so
was to protest against a power which protects the purchase, the sale,
the practice of dealing in men, women and children, those colonial
wares from Africa--and which, on the other hand, makes war on one of
its neighbours in order to seize its territory. To say “no” flatly to
the tax-collector is a much more serious matter than to refuse to pay
the tax of a parish of which one is not a parishioner. It is revolt,
disloyalty, the crime of treason, the perverse act of a bad citizen who
disowns the institutions and the enterprises of his country. Off with
his head!
So here is a boy who only wants to return to his home in the woods
and who is invited to spend the night in the middle of the village
in a beautiful stone house. Modest as he may be, this pressing and
irresistible way of showing him that he is indispensable to the
equilibrium of the village does not fail to touch his pride a little.
They lodge him in a princely fashion, for this is not the old wooden
jail where, in the days of the Revolution, two of Henry’s great-uncles
were imprisoned as Loyalists--and from which their sister, his
grandmother Jones, coming from Weston to bring them something to eat
in prison, helped one of them to escape. No, the world has made great
progress since then, and the jail is in harmony with the world.
On the threshold of the fine modern building, Henry is accosted by
his friend Sam Staples, whose cheery bluster is not insensible to the
honour of receiving under his roof the son of the pencil-manufacturer.
A former innkeeper, Sam adds to this quality the importance of
the part he plays in the village; he is at once the jailer and
the tax-collector. He is almost everything but a deacon. Sam is
also the son-in-law of the innkeeper celebrated by Henry in one of
his best pieces, published three years before in the _Democratic
Review_. Sam owes it to himself and his father-in-law to be polite
in return to Henry. His first remark is: “I’ll pay your tax, Henry,
if you’re hard up.” The pity is that Henry is by no means hard up
and does not want money. The only thing he wants is to go to jail to
meditate at leisure on the beauty of the institutions of his country.
Walden is not propitious for this meditation; the hours there are
too precious to be wasted in such unclean thoughts. But in this
beautiful stone edifice, behind the stout, bolted door, he is in a
better position to think of his country, and its laws and law-makers,
while he is held there between four firm walls, under the guard of a
jailer-tax-collector-ex-innkeeper who is going to sell him at auction
perhaps like a mere negro for refusing to bow down to an enslaving and
conquering State.
The noise of Henry’s arrest spreads through the village. Waldo hastens
over to see his friend. The Sage is a little shocked; it spoils the
harmony of his universe to find Henry in such a place. “Henry, why
are you here?” “Why are you not here?” the prisoner replies with the
cool impudence that great criminals have. You can be a sage and yet
never be able to understand certain things. The best thing Henry can
do is to remain in the company of his own thoughts, which, in spite
of this magnificent masonry that seems destined to annihilate them,
have not lost a jot of their serenity and their liberty. Yes, and to
talk with his cell-companion, an honest soul, accused of having set
fire to a barn, who had been imprudent enough to go to sleep there in
the straw when he was drunk with a lighted pipe in his mouth; or to
listen to this other prisoner, whose voice comes from a neighbouring
cell and who never stops repeating in his misery: “What is life?... So
this is life!”... Through the safe bars of the skylight there comes
to you the clear sound of the village bell, a strange sound to hear
in this way from behind these prison walls and this bolted door. You
have never felt so close to the soul of the village, so close to its
citizens, to the beautiful souls of the builders of the prison, the
makers of laws, the buyers and sellers of human flesh, the plunderers
of other people’s territory. This voice of the bell, falling in the
naked intimacy of a jail, is just the one thing necessary to strip you
of the last shred of respect you have kept, without being aware of it,
for these blessed institutions. The prisoner actually has a feeling of
deliverance: when he first came in he did not perceive that the parish
was really imprisoned on the other side of those bars and that he had
been summoned there as a judge to judge it.
A man can find his happiness anywhere if he has room for happiness in
himself. Many a time Henry has said that he would be able to live very
well in an almshouse, among the humble souls whom one saw about the
grounds of the Poor Farm. He is quite ready to remain Sam’s boarder
till Authority recognizes that it has made a bad blunder. But he has
reckoned without the indiscreet solicitude of his family, who are
all in a flutter over the incarceration of their Henry. While he
is meditating in his dungeon, his good Aunt Maria hastens out after
nightfall, concealing herself in a neckerchief to avoid scandal, and
deposits the sum which the tax-collector demands, plus the costs. All
the serenity which his evening in prison has confirmed in this enemy
of the laws vanishes at dawn when the jailer comes in and tells him of
this transaction. The beautiful stone building is to lodge him only for
one night; he must leave it. Sam is very happy to set this sympathetic
boarder free, but the latter is furious at finding himself betrayed by
his own people. Confound them! So he leaves. The village has become
odious to him. When he goes to the cobbler’s for his boot, he exhibits
on the visage that he reveals to the gaze of his sly fellow-townsmen
the defiance of an army marching, with flags unfurled, through a
conquered country. That evening the discharged prisoner looks like a
man who has come back from a long journey. As a matter of fact, in
order to efface the memory of that night and that awakening and the
humiliation of that enforced release, he has gone off and spent the day
gathering huckleberries.
* * * * *
Inestimable hours of Walden! Do you really imagine, you poor simple
souls, that he has nothing to do here, nothing more important than to
contemplate the image of his own blessed purity in the mirror of the
pond, or to listen to himself playing his flute on the water amid this
encircling verdure? It is perfectly true that the pond is a liquid
gem, where the mysterious little rayed breem lives, as perfect as a
jewel. It is not bottomless, as the good people say. Your sounding-lead
touches the bottom in more than a hundred places--a bottom of pure
sand, without mud--and you can draw up an outline of its basin. But
how far the discoveries you make here surpass the miracle of its
limpidity! Why does this prowler about the woods find more soul in
these desert places than among his own brothers, the bipeds of the
villages and cities? Is it possible that a narrow-chested fellow
with sloping shoulders carries the whole load of it on his own back,
scattering it about the roads as he passes? And so saturates the earth
with his own feeling as to make it murmur, sing, pray, utter words,
force it to say what its religion is? Or does the human quality reside
in a diffused state under the bark of the trees and in the sap of
plants for the soul of this vagabond to collect it and feed upon it?...
In any case, every hour at Walden is like the measure of sand passed
through the sieve of a gold-seeker; it leaves enough of a residue to
make a boy comfortable for the rest of his days.
These fresh things that flow about the cabin surprise him in the midst
of his labours with a beauty so pure and so exultant that he is obliged
to drop his spade, his book or his housekeeping, sit down on the
doorstep and simply surrender himself to the unknown things that are
passing. You would say then that the earth had chosen this poor, shy
boy whom you see absorbed there, on the threshold of his cabin, as an
instrument for thinking in peace of its own unity and eternity. How can
he say where he is? The planet is silent, time and space are strangely
annihilated, the notion of any journey is lost, he may be at the
antipodes. Under the pines of Walden, this man who is lost in his dream
is Mir Mohammed Ali, perhaps, the painter of Ispahan; his American
profile is drawn in miniature in the colours of a precious stone on
the blue of the pond. Or is he some Chinese poet-philosopher in whom
mingle the souls of animals and plants and hermits sitting under an
arbour near a little lake? There comes to this man, as he listens to
sound beyond sound, a music that is deeper and more ample than the
music of his everyday life; he feels on his palate as it were a taste
of immortality--it grows clearer than the clear morning about him. This
beetle that buzzes by, this sweetflag swaying on the pond are like
messengers charged with transmitting to him the friendship of men who
have dreamed the same dreams in the depths of the old Orient. He knows
those men, he has invited them now and again in the evening to come
and bear him company under his roof; they have never felt out of their
element or constrained in a cabin as big as one’s hand in the open
woods. And the beautiful stories they have told him are not discordant
with the cry of the whip-poor-will.
At such moments as these, you would take him for a fellow who has
laid his hoe aside like a workman about to take his rest. In reality,
he is a man in ecstasy, ravished by this miracle, and his life grows
more and more exalted and ascends in a perfume of thanksgiving till
his contempt for the little men whose stupidity has made him flee is
unravelled like smoke in the wind. Some fine morning he will find them
almost rehabilitated in his eyes: in the first rays of the sun, at the
first notes of the thrush after the winter, it will be the end of all
that; there will be nothing left under the pines of Walden but a man
who is all feeling and who is ready to pardon his kind for being such
sorry automatons, repeating their mechanical gestures in the dullness
of their days. This light of early dawn will be enough to set shining
at the bottom of their poverty a precious spangle which they themselves
do not know they possess, and which redeems all their shabbiness.
Two such years as these, two full years quite to himself, far from
every discordant sound, impregnate the very tissue of an existence. The
anchorite can leave his cabin. Very foolish would be the person who
supposed that the experience of his life in the woods had played him
false. It had crowned him. To have proved to himself that a man, when
he wishes, can be entirely self-sufficient without hiring out either
his arms or his head, was one result: but he had derived something else
from it as well. He had not only provided for his needs; he had learned
how to economize. He could choose, according to his mood, like a man of
leisure: return and stay with his fellowmen or remain by the pond.
At the end of the third summer he abandoned the cabin to the squirrels.
Why, exactly? Will those who know be good enough to tell him? He
scarcely knows himself. Changing one’s dwelling-place is a vestige
perhaps of the old migratory instinct. Was he right or wrong in
leaving? Did he have any reason to regret it? Vain questions.... He
simply went away in 1847 as he had come in 1845. But aside from this?
Perhaps because it was better that an all too beautiful experience
should be interrupted before habit destroyed its freshness. Or merely
because he could not resist the invitation of a great friend who begged
his old right-hand man to come and live in his house again during his
second voyage to Europe.
For Henry Waldo’s house was like another home. He had spent two happy
years there; he would be glad to spend another eight or ten months.
During his stay in the woods he had read to Waldo, under an oak on
the bank of the river, some pages from the book he was preparing. He
would be able to work in the Sage’s house. He intended to include in
this book a piece on friendship that he would be able to write most
fitly under the roof of a perfect friend. On October 5th, Henry went
to Boston to see the traveller off and say good-bye to him in his
stateroom. (How small and dark it was after the cabin!) The boat was
called the “Washington Irving”--a favourable augury. The great man
was going to deliver some lectures before the choicest spirits in
England. He was going to see Carlyle. He planned to make a tour of the
Continent, stopping at Paris. Bon voyage, and may the gods of Concord
protect you, dear Waldo. Have no anxiety about the garden or your
family.
Once more in the little white house the children find their Henry.
Ellen has become a personage of eight; Eddy, a new personage, is three
and a half. And the parties begin again. The right-hand man has not
forgotten in the woods how to win the confidence of childhood. When
they turn over together the pages of a picture-book, the savage takes
as much interest in them as the little figures perched on his knees. He
is on very good terms with Ellen. He must never ignore these important
details in giving the traveller the news of the little house. It is the
middle of November, a good time for long letters. In a hand not always
easy to decipher but one which the recipient will read without any
hesitation, Henry writes to his friend Waldo:
I am but a poor neighbour to you here,--a very poor companion am I.
I understand that very well, but that need not prevent my _writing_
to you now....
I have banked up the young trees against the winter and the mice,
and I will look out, in my careless way, to see when a pale is
loose or a nail drops out of its place. The broad gaps, at least,
I will occupy. I heartily wish I could be of good service to this
household. But I, who have only used these ten digits so long to
solve the problem of a living, how can I? The world is a cow that
is hard to milk--life does not come so easy,--and oh, how thinly
it is watered ere we get it! But the young bunting calf, he will
get at it. There is no way so direct. This is to earn one’s living
by the sweat of his brow. It is a little like joining a community,
this life, to such a hermit as I am; and as I don’t keep the
accounts, I don’t know whether the experiment will succeed or fail
finally. At any rate, it is good for society, so I do not regret my
transient nor my permanent share in it.
Lidian and I make very good housekeepers. She is a very dear sister
to me. Ellen and Edith and Eddy and Aunty Brown keep up the tragedy
and comedy and tragic-comedy of life as usual. The two former have
not forgotten their old acquaintance; even Edith carries a young
memory in her head, I find. Eddy can teach us all how to pronounce.
If you should discover any rare hoard of wooden or pewter horses,
I have no doubt he will know how to appreciate it. He occasionally
surveys mankind from my shoulders as wisely as ever Johnson did.
I respect him not a little, though it is I that lift him up so
unceremoniously. And sometimes I have to set him down again in a
hurry, according to his “mere will and good pleasure.” He very
seriously asked me, the other day, “Mr. Thoreau, will you be my
father?” I am occasionally Mr. Rough-and-tumble with him that I may
not miss _him_, and lest he should miss _you_ too much. So you must
come back soon, or you will be superseded.
Alcott has heard that I laughed, and so set the people laughing, at
his arbour, though I never laughed louder than when I was on the
ridge-pole. But now I have not laughed for a long time, it is so
serious. He is very grave to look at. But, not knowing all this, I
strove innocently enough, the other day, to engage his attention
to my mathematics. “Did you ever study geometry, the relation of
straight lines to curves, the transition from the finite to the
infinite? Fine things about it in Newton and Leibnitz.” But he
would hear none of it,--men of taste preferred the natural curve.
Ah, he is a crooked stick himself. He is getting on now so many
_knots_ an hour. There is one knot at present occupying the point
of highest elevation,--the present highest point; and as many
knots as are not handsome, I presume, are thrown down and cast into
the pines. Pray show him this if you meet him anywhere in London,
for I cannot make him hear much plainer words here. He forgets
that I am neither old nor young, nor anything in particular, and
behaves as if I had still some of the animal heat in me. As for the
building, I feel a little oppressed when I come near it. It has
no great disposition to be beautiful; it is certainly a wonderful
structure, on the whole, and the fame of the architect will endure
as long as it shall stand....
I have had a tragic correspondence, for the most part all on
one side, with Miss--. She did really wish to--I hesitate to
write--marry me. That is the way they spell it. Of course I did
not write a deliberate answer. How could I deliberate upon it? I
sent back as distinct a _no_ as I have learned to pronounce after
considerable practice, and I trust that this _no_ has succeeded.
Indeed, I wished that it might burst, like hollow shot, after it
had struck and buried itself and made itself felt there. _There was
no other way._ I really had anticipated no such foe as this in my
career.
I suppose you will like to hear of my book, though I have nothing
worth writing about it. Indeed for the last month or two I have
forgotten it, but shall certainly remember it again. Wiley &
Putnam, Munroe, the Harpers, and Crosby & Nichols have all declined
printing it with the least risk to themselves; but Wiley & Putnam
will print it in their series, and any of them anywhere, at _my_
risk. If I liked the book well enough, I should not delay; but for
the present I am indifferent. I believe this is, after all, the
course you advised,--to let it lie.
I do not know what to say of myself. I sit before my green desk, in
the chamber at the head of the stairs, and attend to my thinking,
sometimes more, sometimes less distinctly.
I trust a common man will be the most uncommon to you before you
return to these parts. I have thought there was some advantage even
in death, by which we “mingle with the herd of common men”....
Oh, yes, he must also send him the news about Hugh, the gardener,
who has been intending to buy Henry’s cabin and the old bean-field.
The fruit-trees he promised to plant there are not set out yet. Hugh
is busy elsewhere: on the day after the Cattle-show he was among the
missing. The same old story, too much beer.... The field at Walden is
in good hands.
* * * * *
They have had a peace meeting here.... Some men, Deacon Brown at the
head, have signed a long pledge, swearing that they will “treat all
mankind as brothers henceforth.” I think I shall wait and see how they
treat me first. I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our
brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace. So good-bye, and a
truce to all joking, my dear friend.
VI
Henry weighs in his hand a book that has just come from the press. A
duodecimo, bearing on its back: H. D. THOREAU--A WEEK ON THE CONCORD
AND MERRIMAC RIVERS.
From it rises a faintly insipid odour of glue and ink. But it is no
cardboard tomb that he has wished to raise to the memory of the dear
companion to whom these pages are dedicated. He is wondering how the
delight of a week like that, two adventurous weeks passed with his
brother, could possibly be contained between two layers of brown
cardboard, and he has half a mind to fling the volume into the corner.
It is less true than that arrow-head there on the table.
He is examining his first book, which has at last appeared. It is a
mere trifle of pulp or dirty rags, boiled down, flattened into sheets,
dried and finally blackened with ink. And beyond that? How about
all the things he had meant to put into it? The best part has been
lost between the manuscript and the composing-stick. A book that is
nothing more than a book may be a very attractive accessory among the
drawing-room furnishings of people of taste if the shade of the binding
harmonizes with the hangings and the rugs. To a man of the woods whose
eye prefers to linger on bare boards and plain whitewashed walls, a
book is a useless knick-knack, a rather sorry one, mere dust in a
cardboard box.
In this scrap-book of verse and prose (the verse--old verse, for he
has ceased to write it--like dried flowers pressed between the leaves)
in which the glorious voyage ... yes, ten summers ago now ... serves
only as a pretext for personal digressions, he would have liked to
put the whole world, with its blowing winds, its floods of light, the
fragrance of the river-banks at dawn and all the surprises under heaven
that had been gathered in by a twenty-year-old heart. A book of which
the first outlines had been sketched under a tent and the chapters had
been assembled in a cabin in the woods was not intended merely for the
mahogany shelves of Mr. Pettifogger the bibliophile. It should dance
and plash like the boat that had borne the two conquerors; it should
preserve a little of the flavour of the melons they had carried on
board. What was the use of it otherwise? There were enough cemeteries
of books already, full of the other kind, with mortuary emblems
watching over them.
Did they amount to as much as one dip of an oar in a river spangled
with reflexions, these few hundred pages, black on white? (See if you
can find any black in nature.) Well, anyway, the book had come out.
Not without difficulty. The publishers would have nothing to do with
it. In the end he had had to resign himself to a “published by the
author.” Another fling of the adventurer, launching his bark for the
conquest of the world, with the good Jersey blood of the mariner in his
veins. It was for the public now to do its duty by demanding _Weeks_
and _Weeks_ from the booksellers, enough weeks to make up the life of a
centenarian, or at least the age of the author. Here’s a book for you,
just out, a thousand copies, by Henry Thoreau, out of his own head,
every word of it, from the title to the last period. Quite a different
affair from an article published in a magazine, between a cream-puff
and a sermon.
When you have cherished from college days an ambition to be a writer
there is naturally a little warmth in the hand that holds the back of
the first book. You have made your bow in the world, you have started,
you have set out for the antipodes; you are off on a voyage that will
never end. You have openly confessed your secret passion, accepted the
ordeal of the daylight that shines on a larger world than Concord. The
Sage has encouraged you to try your luck. You are going to see. The
author is not greatly troubled in advance about the judgment of the
world on the first fruits of a writer of thirty-two. In his silent
communion with his notebooks, during the dozen years that he has been
preparing himself to write, Henry has fortified himself with assurances
that have nothing to do with success or failure.
Curious Journal, curious confidant, a work that is to be continued
through many volumes--eight or ten already exist--and that will never
be finished till the day when the universe ceases to surprise him, the
day when his two eager eyes are closed at last. As the farmer has been
in no hurry to sell his crop while he was reaping it, his barn contains
the harvest of several years. It has been necessary to add one floor
after another in order to get it all stored away. Heaven knows whether
all this will keep; but he has taken good care that all the garnered
sheaves shall be quite dry.
On his rambles the explorer scribbles on the spot a note or a few
cabalistic signs, while he is under the direct impression of the
phenomenon or the landscape he is observing. On his return the note
is copied out, more deliberately. Later, in its final form, it will
be incorporated in the Journal. What Henry, the writer, adds in the
evening to the visions and thoughts of the day’s walk in no way
destroys their freshness, for they are thoughts of a true Pilgrim,
flowers that have unfolded in the rhythm of the walk and that he turns
over in his hands at home, in the evening, with his spirit bathed in
the open air, so as to study their tints. It might be called, this
Journal, the account of a journey that never comes to an end, for the
world about Concord is immense and has a genius for metamorphosis; or
perhaps the review of a spectacle that is performed for himself alone,
with a programme that is constantly renewed, action and setting, with
the strange encounters one has after a performance, the people one
likes, the people one laughs at. Or the “love story” of a boy who is
looking for his own affinities and finds them oftener in the world
of plants than in human form. It is illustrated now and then by rude
sketches carefully recording some observation or discovery. But whether
it is to be called a report, a review, a story or the music of the
day, the notebook contains nothing that is not veracious testimony.
A descendant of merchants and like them a hoarder of treasures,
Henry reckons up in the Journal the gains of the day. He too is in
business, and he keeps his accounts with the meticulous exactness of
a book-keeper. You can examine his books. Observe the debits and the
credits. If the profits do not strike you as very clear, it is because
you have singular ideas about wealth, my dear fellow.
The harvest might well have remained in the barn. No purchasers appear,
but at times the desire seizes him to sell a few armfuls if only to see
whether or not it is keeping well--perhaps, too, for the fun of having
a little cash. Now and then Henry wants to buy some fine old book, if
only to escape the bother of having to go to the library to read it,
or he needs a good pair of boots. Then he draws from his Journal the
substance of an article and sends it off to a magazine. Horace Greeley,
whose acquaintance he has made in New York, has been of great service
in finding a place for his work and has even agreed to advance him a
small sum. But Concordians propose and editors dispose. The manuscript
is too long, or they will not countenance some of his audacities of
thought. Or, what is more likely to happen, the article is printed and
the author is swindled. What, dear sir, you are not satisfied with
the honour of appearing in print in my celebrated sheet? You expect
to be paid for it? You can dig in your own pockets. This misadventure
befell him long since with the editor of a certain _Boston Miscellany_
and more recently with that of _Graham’s Magazine_, who published his
essay on Carlyle, written at Walden. There you are! You are a Concord
hayseed, and these fine gentlemen are giving you a lesson in humility.
One doesn’t write for money. Pocket the lesson and clench your fist.
And get back to work at your Journal.
And now it has appeared, after all, this volume he has just brought
back, freshly bound, from his printer Monroe’s, at whose shop he has
been to see it through the press on this twenty-sixth of May. Henry
examines his first book, and he does not feel so very proud. He is
the author of _A Week on the Concord_. It has been introduced to
the public. What next? One must sometimes have confidence in one’s
fellowmen and place a figure before a line of zeros.
(Yes, a book is born, and almost at once someone close to you dies,
someone whose loss hurts you deeply and blots out all thought of
books. Henry loses his sister Helen, the eldest--called back, she too,
to the grandfather--Helen who had his features, his eyes, and was so
sympathetic with his ideas. Helen has gone, not yet thirty-seven, to
keep John company in the cemetery.)
The writer also appears in public when he gives a lecture. It is in the
Concord Lyceum that Waldo distributes the honey from his hives. Since
he made his first appearance at twenty-one, Henry has spoken there
every year. He has been chosen secretary. The honour of addressing
one’s fellow-citizens from a chair that has been occupied by a sage
of European fame is worth the effort of trying to do it graciously.
From the fund on which he can draw to organize his series of winter
lectures, Henry can offer in exceptional cases ten dollars to an
orator of note; he himself pockets only the thanks of the committee.
But the neighbouring Lyceums ask him to come and speak in other towns.
Last year his friend Hawthorne, who has left Concord and now lives in
Salem, arranged for him to be invited there and asked him to stay at
his house. Henry received twenty dollars for his trouble. A fine haul.
This year he is taking his eloquence to Worcester, where Harrison Blake
lives.
What do you think of the lecturer? Hm, hm.... In the first place, he
doesn’t speak, he “reads” a paper elaborately written; he doesn’t drop
his manuscript for an instant, and he utters it all in a desperately
earnest, monotonous voice. A bad method. He pronounces his r’s harshly.
And he is not exactly engaging, this young man. He doesn’t give
himself. The people listen attentively to this sober soul who talks
to them about things that interest them very little; they are not
repelled, they are not indignant, they are simply bored. And the worst
of it is that Henry not only believes in what he says but is quite
aware of the freezing effect his little discourse has upon people; he
plods along with imperturbable gravity. It is as if he had started
with some such little preamble as this in his mind: You blockheads
down there listening to me, what do I care whether I interest you or
not? You seem to think I’ve come here to give you lollypops. Here are
a few sour apples and some acorns I’ve collected for you. Do what you
like with them. What can a man expect from such frozen wits? It’s
quite useless to waste any finesse on these dolts. They wouldn’t see
anything in it. They make no personal effort; they don’t come half-way
to meet you.... If you go on speaking just the same, it is because you
are sustained by the hope of finding one or two living beings among
these mummies, a few simple and impressionable souls thanks to whom
your pains will not be lost. As a rule, no one comes up after the
lecture to tell you how extraordinarily good it is. Well, never mind;
you can go home, ladies and gentlemen. There is something to be said
for you for having listened without a murmur to such a trying pedant.
No, Henry doesn’t hit it off with the audience at all. You don’t
get very far with these good people with paradoxes and ferocious
affirmations; you must have the art of flattering and tickling them,
putting them into a good humour and touching their hearts. This fellow
here doesn’t know the first thing about his business. There is nothing
these people like better than to be amused in a sociable kind of way,
and he doesn’t even know how to make himself agreeable. He is the worst
bore in New England. If you have all that faith, my boy, hand it out
in little sandwiches that can be taken with a cup of tea. Add a little
water-cress, sprinkle it with a pinch of salt, and serve it with a
smile. See what will happen then.
Henry, you are no sort of cook at all. You are only up to boiling gruel
in your cabin. It’s pathetic to see a man satisfied with being as poor
an orator as he is a man of letters. This refusal to yield to the ways
of the world gets to be irritating after a while. No use for him to
want to be a writer; he will never enter the paradise of the literary.
He would merely bring to it an absurd respect for his art and the firm
intention of pleasing himself before pleasing others. Henry, the lover
of good work, takes a workman’s pains in perfecting his page. Thanks
to the erasures, this manuscript has become an illegible scrawl, not
because in the first draught the writing was so uncertain but because
the author is so extremely severe with himself. He has a pitiless blue
pencil. No “almosts.” Nothing that savours of improvisation. Every word
that is not alive, that is merely a word, must disappear. Struggle
and toil count for nothing, he must get there. If you could only find
me some sort of eraser that would obliterate from this page the exact
things that ought to be obliterated: that invention would be even more
useful than the best pencil bearing the mark of Thoreau and Son. In
everyday life with your neighbours garrulity is irritating enough; in
art it is intolerable. The work that comes from Henry’s hands is to the
point. You can take it and see how firm the texture is. The man who
made it wears corduroy clothes because they are durable and take on an
exquisite tone with time. Very well. But let me repeat that with these
principles you will never be anybody in the literary world. There copy
is knitted by the yard for firms that do a thriving trade.
And isn’t it just as odd to have such a passionate love for plants,
animals, minerals, to study with such fervour all these physical
phenomena, and yet to have so little in common with the scientists?
Science consists of shells, stuffed animals, glass phials, long names,
dissertations in musty books, and what interests Henry is the living
animal in all its wildness and freedom, the plant with its sap, the
phenomenon seized alive in its natural setting. In spite of his tastes
and his gift for exact observation, the poet and the lover in him are
too exigent to yield precedence to the naturalist. And besides, there
is a strange animal that interests him enormously; namely, himself.
This is a very poor sort of recommendation among scientists.
On three occasions, however, he sends Concord fish from Walden to
Agassiz, who is preparing his great work on the fishes of America.
Agassiz is very grateful and promises to pay a visit to his Concord
“colleague.” The latter has been appointed a corresponding member
of the Society of Natural History in Boston; he has just sent it a
goshawk, a rare bird. Even in the village, people have fallen into the
way of consulting him as an authority on botanical and ornithological
matters. This does not prevent him from being very sarcastic whenever
the subject of science and scientists comes up. Just speak to him about
the specialists who write a big book on turtles--to amuse a man who
knows how turtles live! Or about this or that communication to some
learned society.... He says very little about his own zoölogical or
botanical observations; he confides them to his Journal alone, for the
benefit of those knowing persons who are going to jeer some day at the
amateur naturalist and his discoveries. Go ahead and stuff your birds,
pedants. Give them your Latin names. See if you can find one that any
tree or quadruped pronounces with its branches or its caperings. In
this Journal living animals pass, birds call, fishes glide through
the water, the loon flings its laughter over the pond, the sap rises
in the plants, the trees quiver to the tips of their branches, juicy
bay-bushes scent the air: Hebrew for your Latin. These fancies are
enough to show that he doesn’t belong to the profession. Leave him to
his innocent pastimes.
Besides, this “amateur” places too high a value on ignorance to be
taken seriously by the academies. This man who reads Latin and French
as well as his mother tongue, Greek fluently, German, Italian, Spanish
a little, has a thorough knowledge of old English literature and is
more interested than a philologist in the development of the life of a
word, as a beautiful plant among plants, runs about the country every
day like a schoolboy throwing to the winds the knowledge learned from
books. The consciousness that he knows so little delights him so much
that he is willing to make his ignorance the very apex of knowledge.
Absurd Henry, to be so infatuated with his not-knowing.
Sometimes, as seldom as possible, he goes to the city, for now and then
he wants to consult some book that interests him. It is a sad business,
reading in a big library. Fresh books, vibrant, vagabond, libertine
books, how in the world can you stay so still among those rows of
shrivelled corpses? The friend who comes to see you at intervals pities
your distress.
When he has finished his reading, the villager invariably goes off to
consume a dish of boiled apple pudding at some cheap eating-house (he
distrusts their accursed stews), then crosses the town without stopping
till he reaches the end of Long Wharf, where his grandfather had his
store. There he looks at the sea, the ships, the piles of merchandise.
Save for a glance at the market on his way, this is all he sees of
Boston. The stir of the metropolis means nothing to him whatever; the
fronts of the substantial houses and the faces of men seem to shut him
out. Everything here, to the very stones, reeks of respectability.
The windows full of idlers and the brawling vulgarity of the streets
make him ill. The city is a pickpocket who wants to filch from you
the most precious possession you have and leave you on the sidewalk
dejected and destitute in a vast solitude. This is because you were
not born, because you never played as a boy in one of these crowded
neighbourhoods, because you grew up on the bank of a river that wanders
through the fields, bathing the whole world with its freshness. For
others no doubt, among its stones, the city has wondrous gifts; for a
boy who is thinking of old Minot’s cottage on the hillside it is full
of shams and shoddy, and what this boy demands is the real. There is
a club in Boston made up of some very sympathetic people who meet on
the last Saturday of every month; among them are Emerson, Agassiz and
Henry James. But although Henry has been invited he never goes there.
Quick, take the train and put twenty miles between yourself and this
dismal burden of stone house-fronts. Quick, get back to Concord where
the village is merely a shabby excrescence amid the verdure. At Concord
there are no steamers, no Long Wharves, no crowds in the streets,
no immigrants, no big, bustling shops, no special editions; and you
feel as if you were at the heart of the world. In Boston there are no
humming and singing telegraph-poles where you can listen to the news
from afar. Call it parochialism, if you like, but parish towers answer
one another. Concordance is no empty word.
At Concord you have a chance to remain simple. Suppose you were to
become a great writer or a fashionable lecturer or a light of science
and lose the simplicity of heart that alone permits you to have
access to the unknown riches that surround you. That would be a fine
advancement! There you would be with the esteem of everybody, with
your glory or your hard cash, wondering how in the world you could
get rid of all these substantial advantages and recover your boyish
ingenuousness, and the keen, inquisitive nose, the gift of marvelling
at the commonest object that have always so astonished the good
William. You would have taken a false step indeed. You would have
been transformed into one of those men who are too sober-minded, too
dignified or too intelligent to stop and pick a tempting huckleberry
beside their path. Your eyes would be dead to the miracle of every
day. You would no longer want to be a sailor and skirt the bays and
promontories of “some fair wild island in the ocean,” suggested by an
oak-leaf. You would lose your elasticity. You would become old before
your time, old, respectable and unhappy. You might even pose as a
little saint and cease to feel yourself a man complete with his virtues
and his vices, no better at bottom than the neighbour he scoffs at and
lectures. You would be a success, and you would have lost everything,
while at Concord one never becomes a success.
There may have been a moment when Henry wondered if the art of writing
could not support the writer; but this moment had passed. He understood
the trade and the taste of its customers only too well. Precarious as
his other resources might be, they were better than that. As a small
boy, running barefoot in the fields and up to all sorts of mischief,
and later as an ingenious older boy, he had learned how to dig, plane,
paint houses, plant, survey. And now Henry continues to work by the
day, as occasion offers. A precious thing, manual labour. It stops
babbling tongues and toughens a frail body. It gives a tone to what
you write afterwards. Your qualities as a workingman reappear when you
come to weigh and balance words. When you have finished a fence of
pickets and lattice at $1.50 for every five yards, or built a woodshed
by contract for six dollars, it is very pleasant to receive the money;
but that is not everything. You must also reckon the pleasure you have
had. And add to this the profit you have received in indirect ways,
such as the quality of the page on which you relate the impressions
of the day. Henry does surveying, and he also helps his father in the
workshop. When he is not engaged elsewhere, he gives him his mornings.
The family industry is being transformed. The Thoreau pencils are
selling fairly well, and a new market has opened for the famous
plumbago powder--the secret. It happens to fit exactly the needs of a
new invention--electrotyping--and the people give them ten dollars a
pound for it. Even though they can sell only a few hundred pounds of it
a year, this is not a bad stroke of business for the little family. The
pencils have become only a side-issue; they work for the big industry.
But Henry makes a trip to New York to dispose of a lot he has made, for
he has a large debt to pay.
The poorer you are in Concord, the better you know your true wealth.
It is all very clever to create happiness with a thousand costly
accessories, but to create happiness out of nothing, to be happiness
yourself, is much more interesting, and happiness of this kind has
quite a different quality. To have been born poor is a privilege too.
In the most authentic great man, no matter how magnificent and complete
he is in appearance, never to have worn rags or gone without a meal,
never to have been able to toss his dignified respectability to the
winds, never to have known what hardship means is a lacuna that can
never be filled up. Think of that poor, great Goethe, too well brought
up, as he said, to have had any intercourse in his childhood with the
boys in the streets.... Whatever you may say, the boy who has never
set his bare, smarting feet on the hard ground has missed one of the
best of gifts. He has not been judged worthy of experiencing the real
savour of this world. Henry has no inclination to make a profession
of his poverty, to set himself up in the square for the admiration of
connoisseurs. He saves it for himself because it keeps him warm, as a
sheepskin coat warms a driver in winter. It has a taste that he likes
and it helps him to keep up his good spirits. It lives with him like
a comrade in the attic he has arranged for himself in the new house,
the yellow one, where his parents have been living on Main Street since
August, 1850. He is very much at home there and William lives across
the way. At the foot of his garden the boat is moored.
There in his den Henry lives like a king among the spoils of his
expeditions, his collections of birds’ eggs, mosses, plants,
arrow-heads, his bedside books, his manuscripts--and always a store of
nuts to take the place of pipe and bottle. There he sleeps and works
and talks with his comrade, enjoying the tawny shade of the latter’s
eyes and blessing the fate that has provided for him so generously.
Recently his classmates have asked him for an account of himself for
the record they are preparing of the class of 1837 at Harvard. Henry’s
reply is as follows:
Am not married. I don’t know whether mine is a profession, or a
trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance
has been practised long before being studied. The mercantile part
of it was begun by myself alone. It is not one but legion. I
will give you some of the monster’s heads. I am a Schoolmaster,
a private Tutor, a Surveyor, a Gardener, a Farmer, a Painter (I
mean a House Painter), a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-labourer, a
Pencil-maker, a Glass-paper-maker, a Writer, and sometimes a
Poetaster. If you will act the part of Iolas, and apply a hot
iron to any of these heads, I shall be greatly obliged to you. My
present employment is to answer such orders as may be expected from
so general an advertisement as the above. That is, if I see fit,
which is not always the case, for I have found out a way to live
without what is commonly called employment or industry, attractive
or otherwise. Indeed, my steadiest employment, if such it can be
called, is to keep myself at the top of my condition, and ready for
whatever may turn up in heaven or on earth. The last two or three
years I lived in Concord woods, alone, something more than a mile
from any neighbour, in a house built entirely by myself.
P. S. I beg that the class will not consider me an object of
charity, and if any of them are in want of any pecuniary assistance
and will make known their case to me, I will engage to give them
some advice of more worth than money.
As he sends off this description and thinks of his fellows at college,
he sees this poor devil, at the head of a factory, condemned to sweat
money out of his machines and his workmen ... this poor devil, launched
in politics or absorbed in business, deep in the auriferous mire ...
this poor devil reduced to working as some high office-holder ... this
poor devil, consenting to spend his life manufacturing counterfeit
money stamped with the effigy of Jesus, the enemy of all money ...
a whole list of poor devils, with round shoulders or an air of
satisfaction, who have not wasted the money their fathers sacrificed
to send them to college. He sees them with their positions, their
prestige, their prosperous households, their wives, their children,
their mothers-in-law and heaven knows what, and himself beside them,
the failure, without position, bank-account or influence, with his
workman’s clothes, earning a meagre living by the labour of his hands,
hands which, like theirs, have thumbed so many books. And how glad and
privileged he feels in his attic with his tawny-eyed companion! He
would be only too happy to work in their gardens or split the wood for
their stoves, offering them his pity in exchange for their dollars.
If he met the most fortunate of them all, he would feel like hanging
a placard round his neck: “Have pity on a poor rich man”--for some
passer-by with a generous heart to slip into his hand a pennyworth of
compassion. And if no charitable passer-by appeared, he would gladly
give the poor fellow his own mite. You are magnanimous when you are a
success.
Is it not from the worst that we often get the very best? Then why not
meet ill fortune with a high heart and refuse, on the dullest day, not
to be happy over a mere nothing, a trembling leaf, a swaying twig, or
the smile of old Minot’s house on the hillside--happy, you don’t know
why, because you are happy, happy as a child who plays with his poverty
as a comrade, finding in its eyes the colour of your own real wealth?
When you are a rich man like Henry you want to treat yourself, now
and then, to some little trip. For one who disposes of his time as he
pleases, this is merely a matter of gathering together a few odds and
ends. A week or so of surveying, a windfall in the shape of a lecture
or a cheque for an article provides you with the means of surveying
good fortune for many hours, a week, two weeks, not to mention a store
of memories. This is one of the satisfactions of the lot of a man
who is free, as all men ought to be free. It is good to work on your
manuscripts. But you never write a story to be compared with those that
are traced by your feet as you welcome the surprises of the road.
There are always more surprises in Concord than anywhere else; but the
world is wide and you want to see how the sun shines in other places.
And besides, you want to give your old notions an airing; no matter how
wide open you keep your window, they are always in danger of getting a
little musty.... There are those hills on the horizon towards the West
behind which, at nightfall, from the top of the Cliffs, you see that
blazing reflection. The land of the sunset is a powerful magnet.
What if you were to explore one of those hills that rise up, like
a challenge and a promise, beyond that stretch of country over
there--climb it, brush your boots on its brow, watch the sun rise from
up there and see if you can discover the faraway spot in the valley
from which you set out? That ought to do your soul good and expand your
lungs. There is that solitary Wachusett, for example, forever crouching
there in the distance, as if it were watching over some treasure; you
would like to go and ask that brother if he finds his solitude bitter
or friendly. His younger brother from Concord is coming to make him a
visit. That blue wall is not a fabulous vision; it is a solid reality,
in harmony with the woods, the fields, the river. It belongs to the
family too. Another time the thirty-seven hundred feet of Monadnoc draw
him up. He has to prolong his visit, live with the mountain a while,
become familiar with the dawn and the sunset on those heights. The
visitor camps for one night, two nights, in the open, on the summit of
the vision that holds him aloft with all its mass till a small man, on
this pedestal, has the illusion of being a somebody.
On the day before, in the morning, well before dawn, he had set out on
foot with a companion. They passed through villages and woods, with
staves in their hands like pilgrims. The fields were full of fragrance
for the early risers, the farms still asleep in the twilight of dawn;
save for one reaper already sharpening his scythe, they were the first
that morning to tread the July countryside; they passed through the
hop-fields, rested on the fence-rails of a farm from which the sound
of music reached them; and in the afternoon in the valley they sought
shelter from the broiling heat and bathed their feet in the streams
they found there. And at last they arrived together on a grassy
plateau, strewn with clumps of huckleberry and raspberry bushes, in
time to see the moon rising in this tremendous silence--two little
souls, serious, lost in wonder, half frightened at finding themselves
so high above the rest of their fellow-townsmen. And the dawn, the
notes of the birds before the dawn on these heights, the great waves
of the slopes below rise out of the shadows as if they were at sea--on
what a ship!--as the camp-fire pales and the day breaks and the
landscape unrolls in all its unreality: old Massachusetts, the whole of
it, bathed in the sunrise, at their feet, spreading its panorama before
them in the summer morning! The air of the heights intoxicates them;
it has a quality that is unknown to dwellers on the plain. It is not
so much that it acts upon your lungs: its rarity has a strange power
of exalting the spirit. Henry revels in it and feels at home on the
shoulder of the mountain. If he did not live in Concord he would be a
mountaineer.
And the charm of the mountains persists. Sometimes he goes still
further west, as far as Greylock or Saddle-back Mountain, to pay a
visit to Their Majesties. And then--wonder of wonders--the mountains he
has always seen towards the sunset rise, in a spirit of contradiction,
to the east! Is he a new man who, without realizing it, has taken a
trip round the world?... Before beginning his climb he stops in this
mountain valley at the next to the last house. It would be fun to spend
a week in that house if they would take him in. The mistress is a young
woman who continues to arrange her hair while she talks to him in the
friendliest way, without any fuss, thank heaven; she is dark and her
eyes are full of fire and she questions him with as much familiarity
as if they had been children together. She makes him think of his
cousin in Bangor. And they really are cousins in a way. She has taken
him for one of those daredevil students who often come on trips to the
mountain. On the top he finds bits of newspapers they have left about;
it is strange to read a stray sheet of some old paper alone on the
summit of a mountain by the light of a camp-fire. What wears the best
at this altitude is the advertisements and the market prices, for there
is a bit of real poetry mixed with them, though the advertisers are
quite unaware of it (fortunately); as for the rest, editorials, news,
jokes, reviews, heaven save us! And then, after a cold night that he
has passed without a blanket, the day dawns over an ocean of fog that
covers the three adjoining States as if it were a dream-country rolling
off into infinity.... It is the earth that has become unreal, and you
are planted there as if you were the centre of this tremendous glory
that rises with the sun.... And you descend Tabor again, a little drunk
with this vision and no longer in the least cold in spite of the night
passed without a blanket.
In the other direction from the land of the sunset lies the sea, quite
close--another magnet. The peaks are silent and contemplative, but the
sea stirs and rustles like a forest of gigantic pines, lulling its old
anguish. On an island in the middle of the ocean you might contrive to
have a rich existence if you could ever forget Concord. Or in one of
those villages about Cape Ann. The whole Atlantic coast and all the
width of the continent lie at the ends of the roads that set out from
the village square.
Yes, to go off for two, three, four days, according to the occasion and
the plumpness of your purse, to leave Main Street and the church-tower
and the sidewalks of the grey little town behind you and attempt an
unexplored world ... that’s the thing, Henry ... the real holidays of
life. You must have them complete. The first thought of most poor souls
on such occasions is to take the train or the stage. They are poor
souls indeed. When you are rich you have the means to travel on foot.
Henry has no intention of surrendering to a machine or animal the
pleasure of treading the road and devouring it for him; this traveller
likes the taste of it far too much to leave it to a mere auxiliary. It
is a part of the adventure. When a vagabond journeys on foot, the earth
invites him to her table and lets him roam all over her domain; those
other people are mere stupid tourists who follow where their baggage
leads them. Before they set out, the latter are sure to worry about
where they will find a lodging; why do they leave home if they begin a
journey with the thought of lodgings?
Henry starts off with a pack on his back. It’s a marvel, this knapsack.
See if you can find one like it in the shops! The traveller has
manufactured it to suit himself. It is waterproof and has compartments;
a notebook, the map of the country, his old music-book for pressing
flowers, his change of linen are in no danger of being injured. If
he is going some distance he carries a little bundle in his hand. It
is a package tied up in a handkerchief or a piece of brown paper. He
recommends this to you as preferable to any sort of handbag, first
because it is lighter and swings more merrily in your fist, and
secondly because it causes less trouble. Don’t forget the inevitable
accessory of any expedition, a good stout umbrella. A raincoat or an
oilskin might be more becoming, but they keep you too warm and they are
unwholesome, while under an umbrella you are always exposed to the air
and you have only to shut it up when the shower is over. And then you
have the rare pleasure of hearing the rain patter on your roof, while
you are perfectly sheltered yourself; you are a householder on your own
threshold, and you take it easy listening to the rain dripping from the
eaves. When you are tired of carrying the umbrella in your hand, you
can carry it on your shoulder and even hang your bundle on it, or any
other prize you pick up--a bird or a bit of sea-weed. People may laugh
at you. Let them. They will never have so much fun in all their lives.
The clever fellow has thought of everything, down to the sewing-case
for mending rips and fastening on buttons that fall off. These accursed
leather shoestrings are always undone and cause endless bother in
walking; they really abuse their right to relaxation. Henry and William
have often exchanged their views on this grave subject, a theme worthy
of philosophers at least who despise the fiddle-faddle of learning.
One day Henry finds the knot-that-will-not-come-undone and triumphs.
If everyone applied himself to solving such problems, the world would
soon stand on a different basis. But above all, do not forget to take
along some old newspapers. You will find them providential. If you
don’t already know to how many uses old newspapers can be put, on a
journey or at home, try some experiments. You are leaving your shanty
for a week or two or for six months and you are afraid that during this
time your kettle will rust. Wrap it up in a newspaper and go your way
in peace. Or you want to give your copper basin a good scouring; take
a wad of newspaper and polish it up as it should be. Your face will
smile at you in the mirror you have brightened so easily. And what
a comfort a few old newspapers are on your trip, if you have taken
them along: they serve as wrappers, as a tablecloth, as a plate, as a
means of starting the fire, or as a light, warm chest-protector if it
turns cold. And there are still so many fools in the world who believe
that newspapers are made to be read, to inform you about accidents
and politics. Among the humble truths that might shed a little light
on their existence, this is not the least important: in spending your
two cents you are making a golden investment if, instead of unfolding
the sheet, you place it carefully on a pile of old papers for the
approaching day when it will reveal its true use.
The question of provisions also demands a good bit of attention and
experience. Henry has weighed this for a long time. He has been armed
with certitudes ever since he first took the road. For drinking on a
journey nothing equals good strong tea. Because you have seen so many
old souls busy over teapots, brewing and stewing, don’t imagine that
tea is an old woman’s beverage. A grave mistake. Winter or summer, it
is a powerful and subtle tonic. For solid food, carry with you a good
loaf of heavy cake. If it is made by your mother it will be A-number-1.
You will thank me for this advice. Add a little cornmeal, enough to
make some gruel, a small bag of rice, some salt. With a spoon, a tin
quart-measure, and, if you like, a saucepan--not to mention the matches
and the knife that a walker must always have--you are the master of
circumstance. No longer any need to knock at a door, when the fresh air
of the road has given you an appetite, except for the pleasure of a
chat or to add a glass of milk to your usual fare if you want to bring
back your childhood. You are both the inn and the traveller.
These arrangements are very important for the success of the trip. As
for your clothes, they should be durable and old, preferably brown or
tan--the colour of the earth. They will show the dust and the mud less,
and you will not offend the landscape as the figure of a townsman in
the country does with his funereal black. In heaven’s name, avoid the
“tourist’s” get-up. You must slip through the countryside like an old
family friend, not like an intruder. One more recommendation. A straw
hat is one of those creations in which the inventive genius of man
triumphs. Light and as solid as flexible armour, it places between the
burning sun and your poor skull just the right amount of space for you
to be able to speak of the _good_ sun.... Suppose a shower, a downpour,
surprises you on a day when you have left your umbrella behind. If it
does not last too long the wide rim of your head-covering will shelter
you. If the straw is a little warped after this bath, well, it has seen
plenty of others. It will soon get back its proper shape; your oval,
square or pointed skull takes care of that gratis. And this invention,
you know, costs only a few cents. If some accident befalls it, if it
has not been fastened firmly with your handkerchief knotted under your
chin, and a gust of wind blows it into the water or some ditch, well,
good-bye, old friend.... I shall regret you because my head breathed
its warmest thoughts through you, but I shall find another like you for
a mere song at the first shop I reach.
If you travel with this modest outfit, you must not expect to be
treated as a rich gentleman travelling for his pleasure. That
humiliation will certainly be spared you. Nor must you be too surprised
if, along the road, you are taken for a pedlar by the women on the
doorsteps or the labourers in the fields. That’s natural enough, and
it will even please you, for nothing could be more creditable. They
may ask you if you are able to mend an umbrella (why an umbrella in
your hand in this radiant sunlight?) or if you are not a tinker. Or a
clock-setter. Or one of those casual labourers who work by the day in
the hay-making season. You will certainly not be offended by anything
of this kind; indeed you will be flattered, for it will show you
that they don’t take you for a fool. This is a compliment you don’t
often receive from your own fellow-townsmen. At home they are not
particularly struck by your ability, but out in the world your ten
fingers are in constant request. Even if some theft has been committed
in the neighbourhood as you are passing through with a friend and they
look at you suspiciously and the constable discreetly walks along with
you, you are not indignant at the inquisition. How could the police,
with their infallible noses, fail to suspect two mischievous-looking
young fellows, roaming about the roads without any apparent purpose,
instead of the traveller who puts up at the best hotel and orders his
dinner in a lofty voice? You and your companion must be the criminals,
or good-bye to the constable and the constable’s nose.
In case you don’t care to sleep out under the stars, ask for a bed
in some house along the way. It is so much cosier. You will make the
acquaintance of some very good souls. Under their roof, as your wet
boots are drying before the fire, you will feel that you are in the
very heart of the country. And you will not have to refuse the hotel
boy the tip he has failed to deserve, the wretch, because he has
polished your famous boots instead of greasing them with a rind of pork.
So, no matter where you go, the world responds to your expectations.
It likes to be approached on its own level, and it is for you, the man
with the knapsack, that it keeps its finest stories. Finally, you will
spend less money than if you stayed at home.
Henry finds the highway tedious, for it is the road of trade and
traffic. He has not buckled on his haversack to perform a military
march. On the highway the gravel crunches under your feet, the dust
gets between your teeth. If his itinerary obliges him to take the road,
he at least walks on the bank, stopping from time to time to listen
to what the wind has to say on the wires. What’s the latest news? As
a rule he follows the paths, taking short-cuts across fields, jumping
over hedges, clambering up the little hills without slackening his
pace. He has a good wind. Once he has made up his mind to reach a
point he has marked on his map, all the obstacles in the world, natural
and artificial, can get in his way: he makes straight for his object,
scaling every one. Obstacles are made to be leapt over--a much quicker
way than going round them. He never loses his sense of direction in
the woods. He is a walker who can count more years of experience than
Christianity can count centuries. A pagan of a walker.
This time the man with the old umbrella is going off alone. To set out
in company would certainly be to multiply by two or three the pleasure
of the adventure. But where can he find them, the rare birds that
share his tastes? He knows one or two perhaps, scarcely three. Most of
his friends are simply not to be thought of as travelling companions.
People who wear black clothes and are impeccably correct to the very
soles of their feet, people who are charming in their own houses but
whom you can’t imagine eating a bowl of gruel before a camp-fire. They
would make you conspicuous on the road. You can’t go and ask them to
travel like a common tramp, with an old umbrella and a bundle. And
besides, you who are an indefatigable walker and as abstemious as a
camel would soon leave your companion behind. Half-way along the road
you would hear him complaining back there that his boot hurt him or
that he was melting with perspiration. He would have to belong to a
special type, a Henry number 2 or a brother John.... Or a William. But
William does not dare to start out this time; he is afraid of what
might befall him with such an intrepid companion when it is no longer a
question of a mere afternoon’s ramble to Nine Acre Corner.
Some friends have sent Henry an invitation to lecture over yonder; it
is a chance for a little trip. If he sometimes has to be urged a bit,
it is only for the stupidest of reasons. When he goes to see some of
his friends or appears in public, he has to dress up more or less (a
remnant of respect for the conventions, you know).... His old togs,
frayed by all the thickets of the wilderness, have such a beautiful
patina and they are so well moulded to all his movements and so easy at
the arm-holes that it is heart-breaking to be obliged to give them up
and harness himself in a frock-coat in which he feels as cramped as a
best man dressing up for his cousin’s wedding. The mere thought of it
almost spoils his pleasure in advance. He would like to be his everyday
self, not this promenader in his Sunday best.
But Henry is ready for any sacrifice. He is going to take the train
for Worcester and pay his friend Harrison Blake a visit. The latter
is an old Harvard man like himself whom he met through Emerson when
he was living at Walden. A little too full of starch, this good
man--Henry would like to pinch him now and then to see if he has blood
in his veins--but a firm and faithful friend. They write to each other
regularly. Henry is a little bored by the correspondence, and he would
be very happy if he could make this excellent Blake, who absolutely
insists upon regarding him as a sage and a great philosopher,
understand how seriously mistaken he is. No, my friend, you are quite
wrong; I am a very ordinary soul and very much at a loss how to reply
to you, for to me two words exchanged with a carter mean more than
all the moral counsels in the world. You insist on asking me for all
sorts of spiritual directions, and I am as threadbare in philosophical
matters as I am in the matter of clothes. You are throwing your respect
away, dear fellow. It is very hard for a pagan, an artist and a savage
to make himself intelligible to a churchman, for he is a churchman,
this good, faithful Blake. It is a safe bet that in fifty years he
would never understand. To appease this keen spiritual hunger, the
great “philosopher,” in his letters--after ten years of correspondence
they are invariably addressed to “Mr. Blake”--copies out for him whole
pages from his Journal, carefully selected from those that are the
most “moral.” Their correspondence and their relations always keep
this grave tone. Henry feels the frock-coat that cramps him at the
arm-holes. But Mr. Blake is certainly the most loyal of friends.
Henry feels more at home with Daniel Ricketson, who invites him to
his house at New Bedford, the whaling port. On the first occasion it
is mid-winter, and Ricketson, who is a Quaker, is clearing the snow
off his front steps and thinking of his visitor who is very late in
arriving. Up the carriage road comes someone who looks like a pedlar,
in a long overcoat, carrying a little bag and a big umbrella. But it
is the expected personage, and he strolls up imperturbably through
the friendly snow; he has had no thought of preparing a sensational
appearance; they will receive him cheerfully in this disguise as Santa
Claus, for it is Christmas Day. The following year Daniel returns the
visit. He is a new friend. There are good years for friendship as
there are for trees. It even comes to Henry from across the sea in the
person of that tall, fair-haired, distinguished-looking young man, the
descendant of Anglican bishops, who, on his trip through America, comes
to see Emerson who sends him to the Thoreaus’ house, where there is
always room for a boarder. Rather an odd fish, this Thomas “Cholmley,”
and a little hard to swallow just at first, but charming at bottom
under his English patrician’s uniform, fresh from Oriel College. He is
just back from New Zealand, where he has had a taste of cattle-raising.
They go off on several rambles together about Concord; with William to
make up a trio, they set out for the conquest of that old solitary
Wachusett. Henry has very little use for these over-civilized young
blades who respectfully ask him to take them along on his walks; but he
has made an exception of this tall, fair-haired fellow who has been to
New Zealand. Some day he must take him to New Bedford.
There, at least, there is no constraint. On the very threshold he
shakes off his gloom, the melancholy of the northern pine; he is
himself, he is a child. In this congenial atmosphere he is ready for
any joke, and he laughs and sings. He doesn’t quite catch the tune,
but who cares?--it sounds just as well. The bathing is excellent
and they get up a boating-party. One afternoon--is it the venerable
Alcott’s presence that excites him?--when Mrs. Ricketson is at the
piano, the northern pine, seized with a mad gaiety, actually begins
to execute a Zulu dance around the room, taking pains to tread on the
toes of Alcott who smilingly watches his good colleague’s extravagant
behaviour. If that blessed Blake were only in a corner of the parlour
too, on this occasion, ready for a little nip from the dancer’s boots!
It would enlighten him better than the longest letter on the nature
of Henry’s philosophy. Henry’s face is as long as a night-cap when
he is with ceremonious people who bore him. He writes deep, serious
things because he is not interested solely in trifles. And there he
is, forever pigeon-holed as the most dismal of souls. They haven’t
seen him, brimming over with nonsense, acting a pantomime with his
own intimate friends; they have never heard him singing at the top of
his lungs alone in the woods or surprised him with the children doing
some marvellous trick. No, he is and he will remain the morose ascetic
who went off into the woods one day, full of hatred for humanity, and
pounded out his black thoughts in a rough-hewn mortar. Rubbish!... Let
them talk, Henry, while you go on dancing about the room. And look out
for your toes, Alcott!
One day, towards the end of July, 1850, Henry sets out hurriedly on
a strange journey. He is not going to spend Sunday this time with a
friend who is waiting for him; he has to find the body of a friend
who has died. Poor Margaret Fuller, whom he had never known well but
who recalled to him the days of the _Dial_, was returning from Italy,
married now and a mother, on a ship that had gone ashore in a storm on
Fire Island. She was one of the victims, after having watched death
approaching for twelve hours till a mightier wave delivered her with
her child and her husband. Henry has been commissioned by all the
Concord friends--Margaret was William’s sister-in-law--to search the
scene of the shipwreck and try to recover her pitiful remains and her
belongings. He scours the beach, questions everybody, pursues his
inquiries. Plunderers of the wreck have been there before him. At first
nothing is found but a few papers, some love-letters and the little
body of Nino.... Then, eight days after the shipwreck, Henry, who has
got his direction from a lighthouse-keeper, finds on a lonely beach the
shapeless remains of a body, ravaged by the rough jaws of the sea--a
few bones with a little flesh still adhering to them....
Concord enfolds a man very tenderly in the arms of its river and woods
when he comes back with roughened skin from such trips as these. But
when you are at once a stay-at-home and a nomad, there are few holidays
to be compared to a long expedition when your confounded circumstances
permit you to think of such a thing. And nothing could be happier than
the happiness of the preliminaries when you are making your plans and
studying your itinerary, inspecting your knapsack and your boots,
and reading the books about the country you are going to explore.
Don’t talk about recreation or satisfying some asinine taste for the
picturesque by following the footsteps of other travellers. Henry
sets out from his village to reconnoitre, to get light on some very
important matters and bring back something to fill up his chests there
in the garret. These are his campaigns.
There is that crooked beak, shaped like a fishhook, which Massachusetts
thrusts out into the sea--perhaps in an attempt to catch that big
greedy fish Long Island, if the latter, tired of sniffing the
unprofitable metropolis, should decide some day to turn to the North
for its food. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to go and see how the wind
blows there and have a look at the old sea-dogs that incrust it
like shell-fish? Cape Cod. A long tongue of land curving out like a
breakwater into the open Atlantic--an immense organ from which the
ocean draws its grandest tones.
This year, with his book out at last, Henry can give himself a little
extra treat. William has decided to come too. They set out together at
the beginning of October (they are obliged to take the train so as not
to spend an eternity on the way) and stumble straight into a shipwreck
at Cohasset. The train is crowded with Irishmen who are on their way to
identify the bodies--from the beach to the church the farm-wagons come
and go, some of them carrying the corpses, others the sea-weed thrown
up by the storm. Immigrants from Galway in Ireland, and here they are,
livid under their white sheets, arriving, feet first, in the land of
their hopes. The flag of the shipwrecked vessel is drying there on the
rocks with pebbles on its four corners, still keeping its colours--not
dead like the Irish lads. The captain and the other survivors will lead
the funeral procession.... At the base of the fishhook they leave the
train and take the stage as far as Orleans, where the tongue of land
grows so thin: it is nothing but a sandbar sixty-five miles long by
a few miles in width. How good-natured the people in the stage are!
Simple and natural as if--O joy!--no blessed social categories existed
in their astonishing country and they were all old acquaintances. Does
the nearness of the ocean teach people the art of living?
It rains and blows the next day, when they start out on foot. Never
mind, they are not going to wait for it to clear. They walk along the
shore; the umbrella shields them and the wind drives them on. They are
not loaded down like those two little Italians who are walking towards
Provincetown with their organs on their backs. It is an entirely new
landscape for the lads from Concord. No trees. Here and there a cottage
with a red roof. Octagonal windmills, such as they have never seen
except in pictures. In the fields heaps of clam-shells; the pigs, they
say, are fattened on the clams, those marine acorns. And see there,
those stunted apple-trees sheltered in a hollow, those little old
toy-like trees from which a child could pick the apples by hand. It
would be difficult to creep your way under them, the branches are so
low and shrubby. The little Cape Cod horses are as amusing as goats.
You great Concord farmers, if you could measure the scantness of the
land the people cultivate here--about as much as a miser could hold in
his palm! But it yields a little rather meagre corn and the vegetables
in the tiny gardens actually seem to be thriving. This is the country
of the sea.
The best thing is to leave the road and march along to this roar that
you hear uninterruptedly on the right. The companions have come here
not to follow a road but to enjoy the ocean. They cut across the
fields in the direction of the three Nauset Lights. Then, in the
wind and rain, they are lost in an absolutely bare plain, shut in by
fog. The smallest object appears immense in this desert and as if
suspended between sky and sand. It is just the way one should see this
interminable plain. Henry feels so happy that he could sing. He is
going to try to keep clear of the villages up to the very end of the
Cape so as not to break the powerful charm. At the end of this vast
plain, and after crossing a stretch of upland covered with shrub-oak
and beech-grass and a strip of bare sand, they suddenly find themselves
at the top of a Bluff: at their feet lies everything they have come
to seek--the beach and the Atlantic. The ocean is dark under a stormy
sky--as Atlantic as possible. Those white lines of foam, some distance
out, reveal the sandbars. And beyond that nothing ... nothing but
Europe, and faraway Jersey ... so people say. It is too beautiful here
for you to have any desire to go over and see it. From this point on
the two umbrellas set out to skirt the shore, as close to the water as
possible where the sand is hardest.
Twenty-five good miles lie before them to the tip. As they sail along
under the umbrellas that shelter and aid them, with the wind at their
backs, the walk side by side becomes glorious. Two happy souls under
their whalebone turtle-shells travel along so close to the water’s
edge that every now and then they have to leap quickly aside to escape
a great wave that has watched them from afar and flung itself upon
them: perhaps it is the umbrellas that have provoked it into lashing
them with its kelp-weed tails. And when you have played with the waves
it is a delight to scramble up the sandbank that forms the back-bone
of the Cape, so as to have a wider view of the ocean and look off
into the distance and over to the left, to the desert of sand. The
rolling country yonder, covered with autumn-tinted shrubbery, permits
them at intervals a glimpse of the bay. Walking now on the ridge,
straddling the Cape, now on the fine sand--there are no rocks to break
the wonderful monotony of this shore--the wayfarers take their time,
resting now and then; for the sand, soft as it is to their feet, makes
walking difficult after a while. Not a sail in sight, for the sea is
too heavy; not a soul on the beach. It is as if the ocean preferred to
see no one about him when he is roused. Days might pass without your
encountering two natives of the country, those plunderers of wrecks
with faces hard as a stone, a stone that the sea has rolled from the
beginning of time and is ready to go on rolling for as many ages as it
chooses.
But they do not ask for any distraction. The enormous spectacle fills
the scene. It is better even not to talk amid this continual roar
that obliges them to shout; and if they do it is only to thunder some
Homeric lines to put themselves in tune with this bass voice. Surprises
strew their path, marvellous plants, dragged up from the sunken palaces
of the sea, all of which they would like to carry away if they could
only keep them alive in their flexibility and their lustre. Henry
chews a tip of one of them. The beautiful sea-medusas that strew the
beach in their tattered finery are as if struck with consternation not
to be swinging any longer, delicate and transparent, in the hollow
of the waves: dispossessed princesses whose hearts shrivel on this
alien strand. In spite of the noise of the sea they hear the piping
of a plover. Suppose they have a little lunch? It is noon, time to
settle themselves in a hollow of the bank and eat something, as two
good boys should who have gone a long way since breakfast in the inn
at Orleans and are famished by the salt air. Some dry sticks, a fire,
a superb clam cooked over the sand as the principal dish; the meat is
a bit rubbery, but with a cracker and sprinkled with the cries of the
sea-gulls it is quite edible and even savoury. And look there, the
weather is clearing....
By evening the pilgrims have reached Wellfleet. They must think of
shelter for the night. In that little house over there, with the
gable pierced with those small irregular windows, there will surely
be a corner for two fellows who are not hard to please. No one at
home. How about the other? An old woman who has had her eye on these
two suspicious-looking individuals fastens her fence-gate, then
resolutely goes back into the house. Hm.... We’ll see. Knock, knock.
An old man opens the door and asks them with a distrustful air where
they have come from and what they want. They explain. Of course we
might be almanac-vendors, but no, my friend, we’re not. We’re from the
famous Concord where the great battle took place at the time of the
Revolution. The old man is eighty-eight, so he was fourteen when that
historic event occurred. These pedlars who are not pedlars are too
much for him. Well, walk in, since you’ve come from the country of the
Revolution. The old woman relieves the strangers of their bundles and
their hats, while the grandfather grumbles: “I am all broken down this
year. I am under petticoat government here.”
The hospitable family is composed of a daughter who looks as old
as her mother, and a brutish-looking, heavy-jawed son who goes out
abruptly at the sight of these strangers; there is also a boy of
ten. “These women,” the old man says to Henry, “are both of them
poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one is my wife. I married her
sixty-five years ago. She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an
adder, and the other is not much better.” The good soul is an old
oysterman who, since sailing the seas in his young days, has had much
intercourse with oysters and the Bible. He likes to gossip and they
converse in a friendly way about oysters, surveying and apple-raising.
The half-witted son returns and begins to mutter, without lifting his
head: “Damn book-pedlars--all the time talking about books. Better
do something. Damn ’em. I’ll shoot ’em”.... Whereupon, the old man,
assuming an air of authority as if he were used to it, says: “John, go
sit down, mind your business. Precious little you’ll do--your bark is
worse than your bite.” But the sullen imbecile persists in muttering,
goes and sits down at the table, eats up everything that is on it and
reaches out for the apples which his mother is paring for her guests’
meal. She draws them away and sends him about his business. There are
many of these imbeciles in the villages of Massachusetts.
But it is a pleasure to listen to the old oysterman who relates his
recollections in a language as salty as the water that you swallow
with an oyster. He well remembers seeing Washington, a man with such
a fine bearing! And to show how well the great general sat his horse
the old fellow strikes an attitude, straightens his shoulders and bows
ceremoniously to right and left, sweeping the absent three-cornered hat
with a wide gesture. It is just as you see him in the school-books,
but in what picture will the general ever have such a grand air as
he has in this little house on Cape Cod, evoked by the mimicry of an
old oysterman? After this they all go to bed. The boy, who is in the
chimney-corner, takes off his shoes and stockings, and as he has a sore
leg they rub it with salve before he goes upstairs. The imbecile takes
off his old shoes and follows. Then the old man, removing his shoes
in turn, without ceasing to discourse on the miseries of the world,
exhibits with pride a pair of calves as plump as a baby’s.
William and Henry retire to their room. Someone behind them draws
the bolt and fastens them in. You can’t be too careful. After all,
you never know with these clever people who are up to all sorts
of tricks.... (Ah, good people, how right you were to distrust
two strangers who had dropped from the clouds. Two days later the
Provincetown Bank was robbed and the police were looking for two men
who must have done the job. Good heavens, to think you might have had
those two scoundrels under your roof.... Nothing more prophetic than
the instinct of an imbecile who wants to execute them out of hand.
Put this in your pipe and smoke it, you sham pedlars, even if you are
not the thieves. You have been taken for tinkers or almanac-vendors
already--it may be pickpockets next. If you had never left your own
hole-in-the-ground, how would you have ever known that you had in you
the makings of all these characters?)
The door is unlocked before dawn and Henry runs to the beach to watch
the sun come out of the sea. They have breakfast. The old man begins
to spin his yarns again, forgetting to eat, and says to his wife, who
reminds him of this: “Don’t hurry me; I have lived too long to be
hurried”.... Meanwhile, the two comrades breakfast a little gingerly,
not being sure of the exact spots on the hearth sprinkled by the old
man’s tobacco-juice while the meal was being prepared there. They
pay their score and set out. The weather is marvellously clear this
morning, swept clean by the wind that howled in the chimney.
They follow the dunes. The tide is coming in. The vessels are skimming
like gulls over the ocean; one, a barque, furls her sails and drops
anchor a gunshot from the shore. In this miraculous brightness of
the ocean how large and strange objects on the sand appear: at a
distance a bit of wreckage looks like a cliff. The most absurd little
rocking-horse here would have the size of some monstrous steed. And
always, under your feet, those gifts of the sea that would go so well
in your collection: a wet pebble, gleaming like a jewel, debris, come
heaven knows whence, rolled by the waves heaven knows how long, roughly
modelled by the ocean, polished or tarnished, a beautiful crab’s
shell, a sponge, a five-franc piece, bearing the image of Louis XV the
Well-beloved. Henry’s eyes, with their Concord habits, even find an
arrow-head, placed there in his honour. They must bathe in that little
basin formed by a sandbar, then sit down to dry and watch the coots
dancing like corks on the waves or the schools of menhaden, with their
back fins projecting two or three inches out of the water. In some
patches the sea is as purple as a grape. That sail yonder comes from
some port of dreams for which you are homesick even without knowing
what it is. It speaks mysteriously to a man, naked in the sun after his
bath, who hears the pores of his skin murmuring together how marvellous
it is to belong to a body that is freed from its braces and buttons.
It will be best not to stop at Truro but to push on to the Highland
Light where they will find comfortable quarters. Indeed the keeper
receives them without asking them who they are, receives them, in
his simple brick dwelling attached to the white lighthouse, with the
generosity of a lonely soul. They climb with him up the winding iron
stairway to the lantern when he goes up to light his fifteen oil lamps.
(What a job keeping them in order! There are the wicks, the oil that
congeals in winter, the reflectors, the windows, and on warm summer
nights the moths that glue themselves there by the million, dimming
the lights--and yet everything is neat and in apple-pie order in the
lantern.) Think what a fine place it would be for a lad with studious
tastes who was too poor to feed his own lamp! And what a beautiful inn!
There you are, all night, close to the waves, snug in your bed, a part
of the lighthouse, yourself a light towards which the lookout-men at
sea direct their eyes. Wonderful!
The Cape narrows and is soon nothing but a shrunken tongue of land
along which move two insects in holiday spirits. They are approaching
the point of the hook. Three or four days along the seashore, tramping
in the October wind, and there is Provincetown at last, a mere dot. A
compactly built little town, a barking cur, people going about their
business--all these things cut a sorry figure before an ocean that
swings from one continent to another. The two hundred schooners of the
mackerel fleet that lie there in the harbour are like toys scattered
on a green carpet. There is a smell of drying fish along the plank
sidewalks of the little town, which is engulfed in the fine sand that
filters into everything, into your shoes, into the houses. To bid
farewell to the Cape they push on across the deserted region to the
North of the port. The wind from the open sea stings and caresses them
and makes their skin smart. The whole burden of the Atlantic comes to
die at their feet in the whiteness of the foam and a rumbling as of the
end of the world.
It is Sunday. Some sailors are engaged in painting their boat at
Provincetown when a tithing-man comes along and tells them they are
disturbing the Sabbath. That’s all very well for you, my friend. On
Sunday you lounge about the house after church, smoking your pipe with
your family, looking at the picture-papers or getting drunk if you
like; it’s easy for you to observe the Sabbath without causing any
scandal. But from where I sit, peacefully watching the harbour and the
sea, I can hear the shouts of a preacher from the meeting-house over
there with its windows wide open to the sunlight. (Wouldn’t you think
he was a drill-sergeant or a boatswain giving his commands?) Now,
tithing-man, why not tell that fellow to stop making a nuisance of
himself? Those sailors are not disturbing a soul as they paint their
boat, but that fanatic poisons the beautiful Sunday air for everybody.
Monday, the departure. They set off for home by sea, saluted, as they
leave the harbour, by some red-shirted men who, from their boats, watch
the little steamer passing: a Newfoundland dog, with his paws on the
rail of one of the boats, watches them too, watches as a big sailor’s
dog knows how to watch. In no time at all the Cape and everything
over there behind them is a mere pale beak almost level with the sea,
and before they know it they are tying up at Long Wharf between two
big boats ... Boston ... the train for Concord. Oh, to get to Concord
quickly enough to bring home before they are gone that scent of codfish
and oysters and that drone of the sea in the shell at your ear....
It is so beautiful, this desolate coast, so powerfully appealing, this
Atlantic solitude, that Henry returns alone to the Cape the following
summer and twice later, alone or with William. Cape Cod has become the
first colonial possession of an affluent lover of the wilds. But the
danger of these long expeditions is that one becomes insatiable. A rich
man always wants more. Having gone to the extremities of Massachusetts,
to the mountains and the sea, he has taken it into his head to press on
to the boundary of the United States, and beyond....
Henry, you are ready to throw your money out of the window. William
has agreed to go up to Canada with you, or is he the tempter who
has induced you to go? However that may be, the matter is settled
between the two accomplices. They are going to take advantage of a
special excursion train. It is very disagreeable to travel under such
conditions, packed in with those idiotic tourists, but it enables them
to go a long way for very little money, and once they are there they
can get rid of the other reduced-price gentry soon enough and set out
by themselves on a tour of discovery. They will have a week before them.
They leave Concord in the morning, before eight o’clock, and by six
in the evening they are on the shore of Lake Champlain, which crosses
the frontier ... on the map. For it crosses nothing on the landscape.
But is there a single one of these fifteen hundred excursionists who,
at this solemn moment of passing from one country into another, is not
looking for some mountain-chain, some gulf, some gigantic gate--heaven
knows what--to show that here one nation begins and another ends? A
frontier, and the face of the earth goes straight on as if it knew
nothing about its own political geography? But they begin to hear
people speaking in a different language (is that the looked-for gulf?),
and already they feel far away from home--on the “foreign soil” of the
romances.
More than anything else, Montreal is the church of Notre Dame. A deep
cave like that in the heart of a city deserves a visit. It is very
still there. The church can hold ten thousand worshippers, but at the
moment it seems to contain only three women who are praying, and the
latter do not even lift their eyes to look at two fellows who are
softly making the tour of the nave with their hats in their hands. A
troop of natives come in, countrymen on a visit to town whose first
thought is to kneel before the high altar, with the rather awkward
movements--as Henry thinks--of cattle preparing to lie down. The
glitter of the altars, the candles and the images do not impress him,
but he is touched by this ingenuous respect. The silence is good in
this cavern. There reigns here a little of the mystery of the deep
woods; it is open every day to all comers, a retreat to which you can
come and meditate, away from the crowds, and really feel at peace with
yourself. If you were condemned for your sins to live in a town like
this, you would certainly come to Notre Dame, with the same respect
as these good women, to pray in your own fashion between services. If
it were not for the priests and their mummery, this Catholic religion
would not be a bad thing at all. It has such beautiful shrines for
meditation. Even the holy water in the basins would not disturb you
very much if, in the minds of the faithful, it were sacred like the
water of a fountain dedicated to a goddess. This Roman religion merely
needs to be brushed up a little by a pagan. Notre Dame is certainly an
astonishing cave.
In the streets, priests and Sisters of Charity. These latter must have
been weeping all their lives long to have such scalded-looking eyes;
they have the faces of people who have been buried and dug up. They
all go about with lowered eyeballs, as if they had made up their minds
never to smile again. The sight of them insults the daylight. There are
also a great many soldiers about, mounting guard or drilling. Henry
wonders of what use all these puppets are. They are probably to amuse
the citizens, like a Punch and Judy show. And there are market-women
in the square with beautiful apples, pears and peaches for sale. (It
is the end of September.) Henry buys some, hazarding a few words of
the language of the country. These honest fruit-sellers at least are
flesh-and-blood women, and their apples are apples and not church
ornaments. And the old French names that he reads in the town have as
much flavour as the apples, or as the chronicles of the navigators
who set sail from Saint-Malo in their immense old tubs and landed at
Tadousac, at the confluence of the Saguenay. Henry has read those
chronicles, and they enchant him.
The zigzag fissures there in the rock are Quebec and its climbing
streets. And the citadel--and the barracks and the barracks. High up
there on the ramparts he perceives from afar a terrible warrior with
an immense cocked hat; he wonders if it is the god of war stuck up
there like a scarecrow, or if that horrifying puppet with its gun is
preparing to destroy the world. These soldiers are the ornament of
Quebec; they are set about everywhere to make it clear that the English
are energetic people. In the citadel the Highlanders are drilling.
They have the graceful, elastic step of mountaineers: strong, healthy
young men, condemned to a humiliating and ridiculous occupation that
is stupefying them and turning them into automatons in the service of
Her Britannic Majesty. Their movements make a sad impression upon a
man who stands there, with his old umbrella and his bundle, staring at
the soldiers, as if they were a new species whose habits are unknown
to him. He is poorly dressed, as his way is when he travels, with a
thin, twenty-five-cent palm-leaf hat on his head and a brown linen sack
to conceal the raggedness of his coat. The spectator compares himself
mentally with that superb officer there who, without his disguise,
would probably look just like anybody else. He would almost like to
hand him his own duster out of charity, so that he wouldn’t have to
look so much like an old bogie.
But he had better climb down again to the town and have a look at the
milkmen’s dogs, harnessed to the little carts containing a single
immense can, and the market by the water-side, and the old women
sitting in the open air behind their vegetables and fruit--and the
ferry-boats continually going to and fro with their motley, chattering
crowds. The cabmen talking in French to their old hacks remind him of
the ancient France that still keeps its aroma here. In this restaurant
he has just entered what interests Henry is not the bottles and the
glasses on the table but a great map of Canada hanging on the wall.
This table is made of mahogany, and it would be a pity to scratch it.
The guest spreads out his handkerchief, then climbs up on the table and
begins to study the map. When he sets foot on the floor again, without
having broken any of the dishes, he has had his meal; the food itself
will be merely dessert.
But it is to see the country that he has come to this “foreign soil.”
The two friends set out on foot to explore the Falls of Montmorenci.
They promise themselves a good deal of pleasure. There may be less
uniforms and nuns along the roads. It will be a great experience to see
simple human beings.
The peasant women are working in the fields, buxom, healthy-looking
creatures with ruddy cheeks under their broad-brimmed hats, and much
more agreeable to look at than the natives of the stronger sex. The
villages straggle along with their whitewashed houses. Thank goodness,
you no longer feel yourselves strangers as you did at Montreal and
Quebec. Isn’t it odd? No matter where you wander on the planet, as long
as there is a tree of any species, a blade of grass, a glint of running
water or a beach where pebbles have been washed up, you are immediately
at home; while a score of miles from your own church-tower you have
only to set foot on the sidewalk of a town to feel yourself an alien,
with all communications cut with the world and your own kindred. A
strange business, this “foreign soil.”
Evening falls. They have reached the village of Beauport. It would
be much cosier if they could put up with some of the inhabitants.
They are in the heart of the Canuck country, where you have to speak
the language. Even the little curs bark in a kind of French. Henry
courageously knocks at a door, and when they shout “Entrez” from
within some fine little phrases emerge, the fruit of his reading since
school-days. His accent may not be very good, but often enough the
people understand it. The only trouble is that he can make scarcely
anything of their voluble replies. And the blunders are very amusing.
These honest Canucks are full of good will, but unfortunately they are
poor people and have no bed to offer the strangers. So our friends are
compelled to enquire in their best pigeon-French: “_Y a-t-il une maison
publique ici?_” Who would ever guess that these two boys are looking
for a simple inn? The Canucks of Beauport have no inn, as they have no
_maison publique_. But there may be room at the mill or the grocery. At
this other house, where the travellers sit down for a moment to drink a
glass of water, the people politely excuse themselves by showing them
the loft where the whole family sleep, the only bedroom in the house.
At last, under a less poverty-stricken roof, they are offered the best
room and a bed with coarse, unbleached linen sheets. But there is no
coarseness in the hospitality of the Binets, who do not lock them into
their room like that funny old oysterman who had seen Washington;
they even ask their guests if they would like some brandy with their
breakfast. No, good lady, a plain apple will taste better to us than
any drink.
The next day they set out for the Falls. The spot from which they
can see them best has been appropriated by a mill-owner, who has his
mansion and grounds there. Very sorry, dear sir, but we are going
to cross your land with as little fuss as if we were in Concord. It
appears that you supplanted on this spot a mighty lord of the last
generation. But mighty lord or not, there is a great natural spectacle
here, and the view belongs to the humblest of walkers who comes from
a distance with his bundle to see the Falls. What do we care for your
land-title? Sir William and Sir Henry here have a right to enjoy the
sight to their hearts’ content.
There should still be time to go and see the Falls of Sainte-Anne, a
simple matter of thirty miles on foot. On the road they constantly pass
wooden crosses and little shrines to the Blessed Virgin with ex-votos.
Now and then they meet some villager wearing a cap of red, blue or
grey worsted who bids them a polite good-day and lifts his hand to
his bonnet. How civil and human they are! Even this fat, friar-like
personage in his black, priestly robe--what can these fellows do for
a living?--who appears at the door of his parsonage, where they have
knocked to ask their way, gives them a friendly greeting. There is no
inn at Sainte-Anne any more than at Beauport, but here too there are
good souls to put them up. The master of the house, in his red cap,
has the true Norman stamp; he talks with his stubby pipe between his
teeth, which makes his Canuck French very hard to understand. Just
the same, two fellows who have come from New England feel very near
home here, very near and very far away at once, much further away in
time and space than the excursion-ticket had given them any reason to
expect. They are in the heart of old Normandy--Henry has returned for
one night to sleep in the cradle of his race. He may not be thinking
of this perhaps, but it is very much to his taste here. The villages,
the streams have such charming names: Rivière de la Blondelle, Rivière
de la Friponne, Rivière de la Rose, Rivière du Sault a la Puce, Pointe
aux Trembles ... How can he help feeling that he belongs to the race
of poets-without-knowing-it who thought of such names as these? All
the little houses turn their backs on the road, perhaps the better to
preserve the fragrance of the old country.
After the visit to the Falls and a good stiff walk along the Saint
Lawrence, they stop again at nightfall at a farm where they pass a very
agreeable evening chattering French in the great kitchen. It is Sunday.
William’s pipe pays a tribute of incense to the little Canuck gods
who have never died on the cross. What they cannot make intelligible
because of their accent they write. This little girl knows how to
write. Henry amuses them all by drawing a map of the country in chalk
on the old oiled table-cloth. They are the best of friends in no time.
With the few words at their disposal they talk about the soil, for that
subject can be expressed in very simple terms. The good people talk
about “senelles,” and Henry at first supposes that they mean snails
till they show him the little red apples of the hawthorn. They also go
out for some real apples to give the two strangers, beautiful, firm,
glossy apples that have just been picked. In the autumn fragrance of
ripe apples, Mother Earth says thanks in a universal language.
These poor Canucks, who are so gentle, with their rather humble
politeness and an intelligence that seems to have been arrested in its
development, are pitiful creatures in the eyes of you Yankee tourists,
and you make fun of them because you are so clever and so strong. But
what would you have been if it had been perpetually rammed down your
throat by your father and your father’s father that the one great
thing in this world is to obey our holy mother the Church? You would
have been dunces, and you would have been mean, hard-hearted dunces.
You would not have had the openheartedness, the simple courage, the
good nature and humanity of these people. (Henry is thinking of the
clear, laughing “By gosh” of the wood-chopper from Quebec who had come
to see him in his cabin.) A little of the wealth of these “poor souls”
would not come amiss in your pockets, shrewd fellows that you are.
But they must rejoin their fellow-excursionists. Quebec. Yes, the
soldiers in red, the priests in black, the nuns, the seminarists....
You have seen enough of them. To Montreal on the boat, and then the
train that is to carry you home. In the car the inevitable wag of
the party begins to imitate the cry of the cabmen in the streets of
Quebec. Among these prosperous Yankees a silent man is thinking of
the landscape along that tremendous river, so many miles wide, with
its falls, its islands, and the little children who said good-day so
politely to the strangers on the road. Reckoning all the expenses, the
journey to Canada has amounted to $12. A little more, to be sure, than
the net profits of a year of farming at Walden. But he does not regret
his money.
Henry has cousins at Bangor, in Maine, the stepsons of his Aunt
Elizabeth, one of whom is in the lumber-trade. He has never gone back
there since that time in his twenty-first year when he had wanted so
much to find a place as a schoolmaster almost anywhere. While he was
living at Walden, he was seized with a desire to go up and shake hands
with his cousin and do a little exploring with him in the forests up
there. Henry lived in the woods, and the woods are cousins of the
forest. One special attraction was that mountain which was more than
five thousand feet high and in the midst of the wilderness and still
almost unknown, Ktaadn. A royal mouthful, with that dense primitive
forest he would have to penetrate before reaching the giant and
offering it the homage of a very small cousin who had come a very long
way with his knapsack to dine with His Mightiness.
On the last day of August, in the second year of his stay in the
woods, he left his cabin (no need to bolt the door) and set off with
his outfit in his haversack. From Bangor, Henry and his relative, the
lumber-merchant, reached by buggy the meeting-point of the two branches
of the Penobscot, where two companions were to join them. On an island
in the river, where some degenerate Indians were living on their lands,
they engaged two of the latter who were to serve as guides. One of them
pathetically called himself Louis Neptune. The real journey began here.
Humanity, in this region, already presented the rough, honest features
of a wood-cutter in a red flannel shirt. A solitary store stood for
trade; it was filled with all kinds of “sweet cakes” upon which the
lumberers threw themselves like starving men after their long fast in
the woods. They also sold cartridges and toys for the children who were
anything but visible. Perhaps these too were to amuse the wood-cutters.
The road stopped here; they marched forward in Indian file. The forest
had engulfed them; from an elevation they saw, as far as the eye could
reach, nothing but its sombre green bosom. Pines, beeches, birches
fraternized and struggled over the moss. There was no animal so scarce
as man, and what a surprise it was to encounter him in the form of
Uncle George, as he was called, living here on his lands so far from
everyone, with another man and two women and his beasts, like a pasha!
They were to spend the night under his roof, for it was here that the
two Indian guides were to join them.
Excellent Uncle George, offering his hospitality with such an open hand
to four travellers, and refusing to take any recompense! It was easy
enough to see that his ancestors belonged to the good Scotch race.
And what hospitality! Henry saw them preparing a royal dinner over an
enormous fire with logs as long as an axle-tree: on the table were ham
and eggs, wheat cakes, cheese, salmon, shad, sweet cakes and stewed
cranberries, all in profusion. And butter in such quantities that they
gave it to you to grease your boots with. Henry felt very much alive in
this land of Cockaigne. Henry the sober rejoiced in this munificence,
for it was all seasoned after his own heart and everything was so
simple, so grand and so beautiful in this forest setting. He dreamed
at Uncle George’s of that “larger and more populous house, standing
in a golden age,” where his blessed fellow-townsmen, those dear
little provincial souls whom he knew all too well, had died of their
stinginess, and the large spirit, the magnificent generosity reigned
that he had found here in the remote depths of the woods.
Louis Neptune and the other Indian did not arrive, and Uncle George
consented to serve as their guide. They would lose nothing by this.
With a neighbouring settler whom they persuaded to join the party,
there were six of them in a boat that played in the cleverest fashion
with the current, the rapids, the whirlpools and rocks on a level
with the water. George and his neighbour Tom were quick and sure-eyed
boatmen. Henry was enraptured with the sport, which was all new to
him. This was the logging country, where the great felled trunks
adventurously jostled their way down the watery road and came to a stop
in piles, waiting for the flood to dislodge them. It was a country of
lakes too, big and little and strewn with islands. They were now on
North Twin Lake; it was evening, and in the moonlight they rowed by
turns, singing, pausing now and then to listen to the voices of the
solitude. Henry no longer knew where he was nor what adventures lay
before them through these interlacing waters and islands....
At the loggers’ camp where the expedition halted in the afternoon, they
had had some tea and sweet cakes; this was the last human vestige in
the direction they were going. And now as evening had come they made
camp, cooked their supper, and then, stretching out with their feet to
the fire, gossiped a little before going to sleep while they studied
the starry sky. By daylight, through the clouds that encircled it, they
had already caught a glimpse of the giant’s brow. This was a trout
country too, and the fish fell upon the bait ravenously, shimmering
like flowers as you heaved them out of the water and flung them on the
bank. Henry, the veteran fisherman, had a dream about them. He dreamed
that he was fishing the whole night long in a miraculous shower of
these flower-fishes. The vision was so acute that he was compelled
to get up early in the morning and go and see whether it was true or
whether he had only dreamed it. He went to the bank, cast his line and
in the moonlight caught as many as ever he could want: trout and roach
leaped and fluttered just as they had in his dream. They were like
flying-fish.
The party was obliged now to leave the boat and turn towards the
mountain on foot. Uncle George had never been further than this spot.
So now it was Henry, rover of the woods, who took the head of the
column. Following his old custom he took the compass and steered
straight through the dense forest for the foot of the mountain,
without seeing it. By noon they had breasted their way over so many
firs and birches that their stomachs were groaning, and they broiled
some trout on sharpened sticks, each with his own fish and stick.
Gathered about the fire, they were like six sorcerers fishing in the
flames. That night they camped within sight of the summit. But the
guide was too impatient to wait for the next day; he scrambled up
alone, on all fours, hanging by branches, slipping and recovering
himself, till at last he reached a rocky plateau where he could reach
with his finger the skirt of a cloud. And the next morning, while his
companions were still struggling in a chaos of rocks, there he was on
the summit, on the last ridge, pressed on all sides by the clouds.
He had hardly expected to find the Giant in such a savage humour. The
little man who had come to pay him a visit felt rather overwhelmed; the
spirit in him was silent, intimidated. He had hoped for some sort of
rugged smile. But no, the Giant sounded as if he were muttering between
his granite teeth: “What the devil are you doing here, you little worm?
Go back to your mother.” The Giant had no invitations for a little
man who had made such a long journey and run the risk of breaking his
neck to see him. He was a crabbed, secretive Giant who didn’t like
people to meddle in his affairs. Had this rather cold welcome somewhat
disheartened Henry? The country through which he passed on his return,
after having tumbled down the mountain by the bed of a torrent,
drenching himself to his heart’s content, was stamped with an almost
menacing severity that chilled him at times. The desolation of these
dense, infinite forests, without a suggestion of a path, without the
faintest sign of anything akin to this biped who was groping his way
and had to scramble up to the top of a fir-tree to get his bearings was
so enormous that he felt excluded, baffled, effaced--so utterly that
he wondered, as he touched his own body, if it was not itself matter
without a soul.... Had he had to come all this way then to find the
limits of his own wilderness? Was such a region as this, absolutely
devoid of any relation to humanity, outside his domain? Would the gods
of his own wilderness at home refuse to haunt the forests of Upper
Maine? In that case Walden would find its master here. Was that so?
Strange, anyway--very strange.
He did not become himself again till he heard the laughter of running
water and found the boat once more. That was human at least. The
Giant no longer weighed on him, nor the mighty roof of the forest.
They descended the stream; the rapids were terrible. You should
have seen the two men with their spike-poles, catching hold again
of the empty boat after letting it drop over a fall, leaping into
it and allowing themselves to be whirled down the rapids, cool and
collected, familiar with all the tricks of this crafty water. When they
reached the neighbourhood of Tom’s house, whom should they see but
Louis Neptune and his companion, each in his own canoe! In their old
clothes, broad-brimmed hats, broad capes, they looked like veritable
blackguards. And their explanations were like their looks. It was not
their fault that they had missed the rendezvous; they had been the
victims of a wild jollification and had not yet recovered from the
effects, poor devils. It was all right. And they were welcome to their
muskrats too.
A glass of beer at Tom’s, a farewell to Uncle George, whose dogs were
mad with joy at the sight of their master and fairly devoured him; then
off for Bangor, Boston and Concord.
Henry was coming back to see his cousin again. This mass of virgin
forest, with its watery veins, dappled with lakes as the lakes were
dappled with islands, attracted him as a kind of challenge; and this
ursine wilderness disturbed a little the thought of his own. Seven
years later, the pair were off again, in an open wagon, on the road
from Bangor to Moosehead Lake. This time the Indian they had engaged
as guide and paddler met them as he had promised. No drunken Louis
Neptunes this time. Joe was a good-looking lad of twenty-four, short
and stout, with small feet, a broad face, eyes narrow and slanting
towards the temples, wearing the red flannel shirt of the lumberman.
Although he knew all the American slang, he was a full-blooded Indian.
This time they were not going to disturb a Giant in his stony
meditation. They were setting out by water for Lake Chesuncook, another
solitary majesty but a less lofty one. After crossing Moosehead Lake
on a little steamboat, they carried their canoe and provisions over to
the Penobscot. It was a joy to Henry to watch Joe tarring the little
boat, which was nineteen and a half feet long and painted green. They
sat in the bottom on birch-bark mats, and there were two big paddles
which they used by turns; they sat with their legs stretched out or
tailor-wise and sometimes knelt. Whenever a bird appeared, Joe said
its name in the Indian language--a strange melody, as if the bird were
naming itself. You couldn’t help thinking how happy the creatures would
have been at the Creation if that great poet, the Redskin god, had been
there in his paradise to name them.
This was the country of the moose, as big as a bull or even a powerful
horse, with two palm-leaves on his head for horns and delicate hoofs
that divide very far up and are flexible when he bends over. It was a
long time since Henry had done any hunting, but his curiosity was too
lively for him not to accompany the two others when they pursued the
moose, whose tracks they saw on all sides.
Joe, in the silence in which they glided along in the moonlight,
imitated the call of the animal by blowing into a birch-bark
hunting-horn. No reply this evening: nothing but an occasional dry
rushing sound as of the closing of some faraway door in the forest,
a falling tree. But later, as they were ascending a little tributary
stream, a great head appeared which, when they took good aim, dropped
into the water. It was not Henry’s shot, needless to say. The animal
was as big as a good-sized mare; the long fall from the high shoulders
to the receding rump gave it almost the look of a giraffe. Henry
watched Joe, skilfully removing the skin, making a fearful butchery
of what the moment before had been a clothed and perfect form. Henry
was no milksop, but he did not like to see life destroyed. It was true
that this evening he did not refuse to eat a moose steak, which tasted
rather like pickled veal. It was also true that three comrades eating
together fried moose-meat cut directly from the animal and cooked over
live coals in the open wind, in a magnificent solitude, while they sat
with their backs against the towering fir-trees to the sound of the
rippling water that rocked their canoe, was a very different thing
from seeing a similar scene pictured in the almanac or in the tales of
missionaries. You felt as if you were living a mighty life. And as for
savagery, you didn’t have to aspire to it any longer; you were eating
it, you were partaking of it.
In the moonlight, the fairies had taken possession of the prospect,
erected their scenery, arranged their lighting effects, and Henry half
thought he was some personage of the forest of Arden in the brain of
Shakespeare and not just a little fellow from Concord crouching in a
canoe with Joe the Indian and his cousin the lumber-merchant. Henry
was sleepy and he fell into a dreamy state: he was floating through
prodigious gardens and avenues bordered with fantastic architecture
where he heard the sound of Joe’s horn calling the moose: _ugh, ugh,
ou-ou-ou ... ou-ou-ou_.... The venison had gone to Henry’s head. The
others were hoping for the chance of a second shot. But for him the
hunting was finished. One moose was enough. That great despoiled
carcass had impressed him too painfully, and he had not digested the
moose-steak very well. He had not made the journey with any such
intentions as these. And there were enough of these red-shirted
woodsmen coming in the pay of employers or a company to massacre
trees and animals; the forest should know the face of at least one
disinterested friend.
Henry left the others to their pleasure and sat down by the camp-fire
to examine the fruits of his own hunt--the botanical specimens he had
collected that afternoon. Then he took out his notebook and jotted
down his impressions, just as if he had been in his own bedroom at
Concord. But his room was vast this evening, and what an evening it
was here for a solitary man with that stream of moonlight on the river
... with those great shafts surrounding him with their sombre profiles
... friendly shafts destined for the axe, destined for the saw, for
the crime of being great and brawny and for holding under their skins
the promise of such beautiful timber. The common destiny of trees and
men, to be doomed to trade, to be sold in planks or pencils, instead
of being understood, loved and glorified. In the dancing light of the
flames the little men and the tall trees looked as if they were bending
over the shoulder of a boy who was writing instead of joining in the
chase.
At Chesuncook, that great log-house belonged to Ansell Smith, who
had cleared a good stretch along the lake. It was enough to see the
assembled logs of which it was made, lapping over one another several
feet at the corners, enough to see that forester’s broad-axe leaning
by the door to love the fine, manly air of the place and be happy at
the prospect of spending the night there in a beautiful room where
the wooden partition creaked with every movement. On the way back to
Bangor, they stopped at an island that had been left as a reservation
for the Indians. The Governor was a rare old boy whom they found
sitting on the edge of his bed, in his shanty, dressed in a frock-coat
and well-worn black pantaloons, with a red silk handkerchief about
his neck and a straw hat. He was deaf, but he had hardly a grey hair
in spite of his eighty-nine years. His corpulent squaws were gathered
about him. They were tamed, Christianized, slatternly Indians. They
were interested in politics, and were not in agreement on the question
of the school which the priest, the sole holder of the Roman candles,
wanted to close. Henry stopped for some time by an Indian who was
making canoes. He would have liked to spend a whole season there, as an
apprentice, and master this fine, primitive art. But he was obliged to
take the trail for Concord again.
How was he going to like it after having gorged himself with this wild
nature? Very much indeed, you may be sure. It had variety and all sorts
of fine shades, and he never wearied of his old domain as he would have
wearied after a while of the deep, monotonous forest. These solitudes
of Upper Maine were like a strong wine that he liked to have a taste
of now and then as a tonic. But they would never have done for every
day. Those dear old attaching surroundings at home were ... how was
he to put it?... “nature humanized.” Exactly. You would never have
believed it perhaps: hu-man-i-zed. A fellow does not come back from
Upper Maine, you see, without a curious little memory to accompany the
indigestibleness of the moose.
Four years later the taste of this strong wine tempted Henry again. He
had made another visit to Cape Cod early in the season and had scarcely
been home a month when he started for Bangor. This time it was not his
cousin who was going to make the journey with him but his friend Edward
Hoar, the beloved companion of many a ramble about Concord--including
the one when the two “damned rascals” set fire to the woods. Rambles
of long ago, for Edward had been living for eight years in California.
They meant to reach the Allegash Lakes and return by the East Branch
of the Penobscot. In this way they would encircle Ktaadn, giving it a
sufficiently wide berth not to disturb the Giant.
They could not do this without a guide. The Bangor cousin recommended
one whom he had known from boyhood. He was another Joe--Joseph Polis; a
very different sort of fellow from the Joe of four years back. This Joe
was a grown-up man, forty-eight years old, who had spent his childhood
exploring the solitudes around the sources of the St. John. He now
lived with his wife in a pretty house surrounded by a vegetable garden,
just like a New England villager who subscribed to the county paper.
A stoutly built chap, of rather more than middle height, with a broad
face--the true Indian type. He spoke a passable English, using l’s
for r’s. He belonged to the aristocracy of his tribe. Joe was glad to
join the expedition and agreed to the price. He was to carry his own
canoe--literally, for he bore it on his head to the stage, where he
installed himself beside the driver. As an old hand, he brought with
him, along with the great knife that dangled in a sheath from his belt,
nothing but his axe, his gun, a blanket and a good supply of tobacco.
Joe had bought a new pipe. He was very economical with his words; when
you spoke to him, he muttered some vague phrase, as if all such things
interested him very little. At the tavern, when a tipsy man asked
him if he smoked, adding, in reply to a kind of yes: “Won’t you lend
me your pipe a little while?”, Joe looked straight over his head and
answered with an absent air: “Me got no pipe.” Joe’s silence would be
the greatest relief after the palaver and smartness of white people.
As there were three of them in the bark canoe, with their baggage,
there was no room for them to stretch their legs, but even so it was
better than it was in the stage. And in the evening how much better
than the inn was the little tent, set up in a dense wood where it was
as black as an oven. They were in no need of a lullaby to put them to
sleep as they rolled up in their blankets; but Joe, at Henry’s request,
sang in Indian a slow, rather nasal chant on some well-known themes,
obligingly furnished by the missionaries, about the only and sole
Almighty, ruler of the world. But there was such a fine simplicity
about it that you utterly forgot the flatness of the performance: it
was like a child singing his childish thoughts. Henry, who slipped
outside the tent some time after midnight, saw a bit of phosphorescent
wood. With his knife he shaved off a few chips which, when he placed
them in the hollow of his hand, lighted up the lines of the palm.
It was the first time he had seen this. He was so entranced by his
discovery that he had to go and wake up Edward and show him his magic
night-lamp.
In the morning, the piercing _ah, te-te-te, te-te-te, te-te-te_ of the
white-throated sparrow ringing through the wood sounded the Sunday
reveille. Joe wanted to stop for the day. Joe was a good Protestant and
he had principles; at home he never failed to go to church. Of course
if they were absolutely determined to go ahead, he would have to go
with them, but the money he earned would be the wages of sin.... Well,
perhaps this could be arranged ... later.
Joe was exquisitely ingenuous. He was full of admiration for pious
people. He said his prayers on his knees, in a loud voice, in his
own language, morning and evening. If, by inadvertence, he happened
to lie down at night without having said them and remembered it, he
immediately scrambled out of his blanket and said them in double-quick
time. You could see that he had been to a good school. This evening, to
atone for having worked on Sunday, he said a particularly long prayer.
But how much more natural a Joe he revealed when, glued to the bank on
his stomach, he began to talk to the muskrats in their own language,
calling them with a strange squeaking sound with his lips.... Or better
still, when he named in his own tongue some incident of the forest
life. The Indian word for echo was _Pockadunkquaywayle_: kindly place
the accent where it belongs and see if you can find anything like it in
your own language. Henry was quick to note every scrap of this music;
it enchanted him. The words of his own tongue had been worn away like
pennies that have been passed from hand to hand for centuries. Joe’s
words were like butterflies--he wanted to catch them without hurting
them at a moment when they were motionless on a leaf, with their wings
open and still beating. How he would have liked to write a dictionary
of all these earthy words, which had the quality of the pressed leaves
he brought home in his old music-case or those veiny pebbles on the
beaches of Cape Cod.
Two white men and an Indian plunged into the immense forest of
fantastically shaped larches, where the mosquitoes poisoned them
and made an infernal buzzing din about the fire when they stopped.
Sometimes, in the depths of the night, a man rolled up, still awake,
in his blanket on his arbor-vitae mattress heard in the dense silence
the long-drawn call of the loon, rather like the hallooing of a man on
a very high key. They reached Lake Apmoojenegamook, the goal of the
excursion, and then Heron Lake, where a procession of sheldrakes passed
them.
But no creature could have been odder than this odd fish Joe. As
sharp as a weasel, by turns lively and taciturn, sparing of words and
gestures, he was always master of himself except when he had made a
good shot, when he trembled with emotion like a novice. If you asked
him the same question twice, his silence gave you to understand that
you had asked him once too often, and if you suggested that he might
explain one of the numerous tricks he knew, he would oblige you to
swallow this reply: “There are some things a man does not even tell
his old woman.” And then sometimes, along the trail, or when he was
paddling, or, more often, in the evening, after he had said his
prayers, when you were not asking him anything he would suddenly begin
to tell you some interminable yarn. You should have heard him describe
his interview with the famous Daniel Webster whom he had gone to see
in Boston. After an endless wait, he was received like a dog by the
great man, so rudely that Joe said to himself: “You’d better take care.
If you try that I shall know what to do.” A humbug, that Webster,
a talking-machine. No Indian would ever have received a visitor so
bluntly.
Joe had preserved the old Indian custom of leaving a trace of his
passing by making an inscription on a tree or hanging up a bit of
birch-bark. Once all of a sudden he said to Henry: “Me make a bet. We
two follow the path. I take canoe and you take the rest. See which gets
there first.” And he at once pulled off his boots and stockings, tossed
the boots to Henry and set out ahead. To make up a bundle of all the
utensils, the moose-skin, axe, paddle, gun, frying-pan and the rest,
would have taken time for a little white man who merely gathered up
everything he could, dashed off in pursuit, overtook the Indian, passed
him.... But he was forced to stop, for the innumerable utensils slipped
out of his arms, and Joe overtook him in turn. The obstinate little
white man, however, hugging all his traps desperately to his sides,
outran the Indian again and saw him no more. When the man-canoe came
up with him, both were out of breath. Joe explained that he had cut
his feet on the rocks and concluded with a laugh: “Oh, me love to play
sometimes.”
One night Henry had a bad scare. In a desolate region where a great
stretch of the forest had been destroyed by fire, he suddenly noticed
that Edward was missing. It was inexplicable. Among the standing
or fallen corpses of the trees, he vainly searched for him in the
twilight. Near a waterfall that made the earth tremble, Henry camped
with Joe, but he could not sleep. From time to time he thought he heard
the voice of his friend calling him through the roar of the water.
What could have happened to him? He was nearsighted, and he might have
fallen over some precipice. On the morning after this terrible night,
Edward was found again, smoking his pipe to soothe the cry of his
hollow stomach which had been empty since the day before. He thought
they were ahead of him when they were behind. After this they could
have eaten two moose-steaks each for breakfast.
The great journey was ended. They were back again among men, or
almost. That evening, the new-mown hay on which they were sleeping in
an open barn was like a foretaste of the feather beds that awaited
them; the hay was full of grasshoppers, but the smell was delicious.
Now, from time to time, they met an Indian in a canoe on the river, and
Joe would exchange a word with him in his own language. Before reaching
the end of the voyage, Joe, who had taught Henry the proper way to
paddle, asked: “How you like ’em your pilot?” There was his house at
last. The two friends stopped there for an hour to rest after the rough
journey. They caught a glimpse of Mrs. Polis, who was wearing a hat and
a silver brooch; but the Indian did not introduce his fellow-travellers
to his “old woman.”
That very evening, two veterans climbed into the train for Bangor, with
their battered belongings, back again from the lakes of Finland perhaps
or, who knows, from a journey across some _terra incognita_ of the map.
What a beautiful trip! Joseph Polis.... He was just a poor devil of a
denatured Indian who said his prayers like a theological student--a
fallen sovereign who hired himself out as a guide to strangers. Just
the same, it was Joe who had made of this fortnight the richest of
the three expeditions to Upper Maine. Henry was full of him. He could
talk of nothing else but their guide, mentioned him in his letters
to friends, thought of him every time he ate something that Joe had
taught him to like. Joe had entered his life for good and all. Poor Joe
was going to find himself placed, without knowing it, on a level with
heroic and immortal figures; he had earned on this expedition a great
deal more than his dollar and a half a day.
Joe had spoken for his whole race, which had always appealed so
strongly to Henry’s heart. Every time he had found himself in the
presence of an Indian--degenerate, catechised, mere shadow as he
might be--the blood had spoken in him; not the old Norman blood, nor
the Scottish, nor the English, nor the Welsh, but this subtler blood
that is mixed, in everybody, with the red blood. There was no romantic
passion in this cult; it was like an avowal of a secret kinship. Yes,
it was of Joe especially that he would think if he was able to carry
out some day the work he dreamed of composing so lovingly on the North
American Indian. Joe’s coat-of-arms should be a bear paddling a canoe.
There were far less proud artists than these to whom America could turn
for the designs of its armorial bearings.
So many dreams of childhood, affinities, old desires, found their
embodiment in Joe.... The artist’s love of the finest shades of
instinct, admired in a descendant of the race that scattered music
as it scattered words along the way. The taste for the primeval so
ingrained in a man to whom, in spite of college and the classics and
his environment, a valueless arrow-head spoke more intimately than
a verse of the Bible. The ambition also of a writer to secrete the
flint-flakes under his phrases, so that other vagabonds, finding them
there some day, might make a collection of them and keep them in their
dens. All this found something in Joe.
VII
At the end of October, 1856, Henry was asked to go down and survey
an estate in New Jersey, giving some lectures at the same time.
Alcott persuaded him to go. The two friends took the boat at Norwich,
Connecticut, so as to reach New York by way of the Sound. Norwich was
on the Thames: breezes blew there that seemed to come from afar.
Henry was leading a very dissipated life these days: visits to friends,
expeditions, lectures. For here and there, outside of Concord, people
were inviting him to come and utter those obscure or unpleasant truths
that fell on the fallow ground of their understandings. It was all the
same to him: he sowed as chance directed him, and the sower for his
pains gathered in a little cash that had a more genuine ring in his ear
than the applause of the audience.
Just two years before, during a brief trip to New York, Philadelphia
and back to New York, he had had another glimpse of Horace Greeley
who had taken him to the new Opera House to hear Grisi. (It was
like a dream when you went to the theatre with a man as well-known
as Greeley; you didn’t pay for your seat, and you even had a little
usher to conduct you to your place as if you were the Ambassador from
Brobdingnag.) He could offer as an excuse the long, long period of
vegetation from which he was just emerging and the natural desire, as
soon as he felt less limp, to get out and see a little of the world.
And yet he reproached himself for this dissolute life. You see what it
means to have a few dollars in your pocket at last; you squander them
as fast as you can, just like the “fortunate ones of this world.” It’s
a foolish business, and you will soon deserve to end your days at the
Poor Farm with those half-witted souls whom one sees planted about the
fields like boundary-posts at the foot of Brister’s Hill.
Surveying.... For he was not just treating himself to these delightful
outings. He was obliged to earn his daily bread, even if he no longer
baked it in the open air in the woods where its fragrance mingled so
well with the aroma of the pines. Of all the various little manual
trades that Henry had practised since his youth, surveying had turned
out to be the most substantial and profitable. When they spoke of Henry
in the village they now said: “Oh, yes, the surveyor....” You were free
to suppose that there was a touch of malice in these words and that the
good people really meant: “That fool who goes off every afternoon to
survey the waste lands instead of making pencils with his father....”
Well, perhaps they did mean this--not that it mattered to Henry. As
for lecturing, that was just another way of surveying the waste lands,
the swamps, property, propriety and the improprieties. It was even a
preferable way, for it was much less trying to spin words than to drag
the geometer’s chain.
A surveyor: not everybody can boast of becoming that at thirty-five,
after having tried many other trades without any dazzling success.
Henry was decidedly unjust in accusing his fellow-townsmen of not
finding any use for his talents. The people of the village were
very glad to turn to him when occasion arose, for they knew he was
scrupulously exact in his measurements. To draw up a plan of other
people’s land was to remain free to gather there what seemed good to
himself, without the knowledge of the owner, whose only desire was
to keep within his own little bounds. With his instruments, made to
suit himself and partly with his own hands, the compass, the staff and
the chain, Henry was ready to make surveys for anyone who asked him,
whenever he had the time. It was often in the winter, the slack season
on the farms, and then, when he was aiming at the staff, he could no
longer distinguish so clearly against the snow the white trunks of the
birches which were usually so useful. But the work occurred also at
the season when he took off his coat for greater comfort. Sometimes
it was a matter of a few days, sometimes an operation that required
a week or two weeks of brisk work (a loafer turned then into a model
workman ...). There were times, of course, when, in the face of this
landscape that flouted them, he consigned all these boundaries, and all
this business of fixing them, to the devil; naturally, but no layman
could guess all the pleasure this work brought with it, aside from the
routine and the wages.
In the first place, you must have a companion to carry the chain, set
up the staff, etc. You shout something to your helper over there, and
the echo joyously replies as if some practical joker had hidden himself
to play a trick on you; whereupon you feel like shouting at the top
of your lungs till the rascal shows his mug. And then, no matter how
seriously you apply yourself to your work it cannot completely absorb
you. You are out of doors and there are two of you; the helper is not
always as stupid as a surveying-staff. Sometimes the work lies in the
woods, where you are most at home; sometimes through a swamp where you
sink in up to your knees. Then at noon you fish out of your pocket a
bit of bread and cheese and have your lunch there on the ground. Or you
happen to have a meal at your employer’s table with the farm-hands.
If your employer is a fool, there is nothing for it but to hold your
tongue and enjoy his vulgarity on a bit of bread for your dessert.
If he is a really decent farmer, as some of them about here are after
all, it is a pleasure to share his simple meal after these hours in
the open. In the evening you are certainly tired, after having tramped
about all day with your mind fixed on your work; you are much more
tired than if you had come back from a long walk. But there is another
self within you who is grateful for your rested nerves and head and
who suddenly appears, after the day is over, refreshed and keen, ready
to catch any sound and gather in any shade of beauty that is entirely
free from toil and wages. No, no, you haven’t the slightest idea how
light the surveyor’s chain is or how pleasant to carry through the
woods or over the wet fields, compared with all those chains that I
see you dragging about after you, my friends, condemned as you are to
the “liberal professions”.... You don’t know how valuable it is for a
writer to survey other people’s lands in this fashion; you don’t know
how much else a man measures as he goes about, without the aid of the
compass and the staff.
In the mid-winter of 1852-3, Henry had even given himself a stronger
dose of surveying than he could have wished. In his finances the debits
and credits were usually in a sound equilibrium, but at this time he
found himself confronted with a large debt. He had to settle with the
publisher for his book.
The matter was quite simple. They had printed a thousand copies and in
three years had sold some two hundred. Since the cost of publishing
had not been covered, the author remained in debt for the balance,
according to the contract. It was all as smooth as silk. The method of
publishing “at the author’s risk” is just as simple a bit of machinery
as the “royalty” method: the only difference is that instead of
receiving money you spend it. You see? There’s nothing complicated
about that. Two hundred-odd copies sold of a work of which at least
three reviews (in the _Athenæum_, the _Tribune_ and the _Massachusetts
Quarterly_, all well-established publications) on all the press copies
that had been sent out had served to launch it, was a very impressive
result for an author who was making his debut before the public. But
the summer before, after various disappointments in regard to articles
on which he had built some reasonable hopes, the happy author, in order
to meet a note that was falling due, had been obliged to borrow eighty
dollars from his friend Horace Greeley--merely a small advance which
he had expected to be able to repay shortly. A responsible magazine
had just accepted his _Yankee in Canada_. And then, lo and behold,
after printing the first part of it, without his name (houses like
this are so discreet, you know), and adorned with fearful misprints,
the magazine proposed, for the remainder, to exercise its right to
make cuts--owing to certain bold statements that were too shocking for
a respectable review. The author would not hear of this and simply
demanded that his article should be returned to him, neither more
nor less: in this way the sensibilities of the readers of _Putnam’s
Magazine_ would not suffer and Henry would keep his manuscript intact
for better days. As you please, dear editors. Literature was decidedly
a paying business. Henry was sailing before the wind. Just one more
little effort and he would get there.
But what was the use of cultivating sarcasm? The thing to do was to pay
his debts. He didn’t owe Horace the whole State of California, but just
the same the sum was large enough for a man who as a rule owned nothing
in the world but his own joy in living, a stout pair of corduroy
trousers and a boat. When you have hands you use them to pay your
debts, instead of attempting, like a mere government, to make a new
loan in order to pay off the first one. A man has more decency than a
government. Manual labour is quite willing to pay for the loving labour
of the soul.
With a will he set to work surveying in mid-winter for sixty, eighty
days without intermission, at a dollar a day. To pay for that _Week on
the Concord_ he spent fortnights tramping over the snow-covered ground,
measuring and calculating, forgetting all about his reading, his
Journal, everything. It was all in the day’s work. Penal servitude, if
you like. But you take it in good part if you are a man. Deprivations
like this toughen your hide. They are like a long journey into the
land of trivialities--from which you never return empty-handed if you
have the eye of a good huntsman; on your return, you have a better
perception of some things, including your own naked self. Besides,
if literature fed its servitors too well, wouldn’t it be setting a
premium on obesity, on growing fat and flabby? That thought soon
lightens the snow-clogged steps of a man who, while he spends a winter
day surveying, is thinking all the time of the evening when he will
relight his little stove in the attic and find himself alone once
more with his abandoned meditations.... For the rest, these months of
intensive geometry were only a stage along the road he would have to
survey to be quits with the publisher. Two years before, to pay off a
former instalment, he had had to set to work with all his might making
pencils, grosses and grosses of them, which were worth hundreds of
dollars. And then, unable to dispose of all this merchandise quickly
enough, he found himself reduced to carting it to New York and selling
the lot for a hundred dollars. A bad stroke of business, but what are
you to do when you have to get hold of money at any price?... At the
time he had even considered speculating on his friends the cranberries
in order to meet that confounded debt. A vile thought, as vain as it
was impious, for after looking up the market price in both Boston and
New York he had quickly perceived that it was the same with cranberries
as it was with pencils: those mean souls would only take them at the
meanest price. And now, after these bouts of surveying, he had still to
make up the full sum that was due to Munroe. It was costing him $290,
that precious book.
But after all these troubles he had a substantial reward. For more than
a year Munroe had been asking him what he should do with the unsold
copies that were encumbering his basement. Space comes high in Boston,
as you know. And Henry, who had nothing but his attic, had at last
taken pity on his poor over-burdened publisher and told him to send
all the unsold copies to Concord. So one fine day the express-wagon
unloaded all this merchandise on the Thoreaus’ doorstep, like riches
fallen from the skies. They kept pouring out of the wagon as if there
were enough of these poor _Weeks_ to fill a century. Take them all,
Henry; they are your property. They are like the waste lands; no one
will dispute them with you. In the end the work returns to the worker.
Isn’t that fair? Don’t despise your work. It is a weighty book. You
will have the best proof of this presently when you lug these bundles
up to the third floor. See, there’s the receipt--seven hundred and six
copies--most of them in sheets. This Munroe is certainly an honest man.
And how imposing these piles are in your attic! Towering there, they
humiliate your few beloved old odd volumes. The latter are quite taken
aback at finding themselves all of a sudden the property of a rich man.
An army of comrades, free and equal companions, has joined forces with
them, and over them all you will henceforth reign, a sceptical and
tolerant sovereign. They bear on their brows the stamp of fidelity,
these newcomers. You can safely wager that they will be your companions
for life. See how firmly their feet rest on the floor. Of course if
some of them now and then are seized with a desire to travel you are
not the man to hold them back; they are free. For now to his former
trades Henry has added that of a bookseller. He will sell his book
directly to admirers who send a small sum of money with their order.
All he has to do is to tie up the package. There is no commission to
be paid to any agent. This simplifies things so much. And the work
acquires all the more value, coming straight from the writer without an
intermediary. It is wrapped up and addressed by the author of the book
in person, and thus you have an autograph in addition for the price of
the volume. Purchasers, book-lovers with a real flair, what more do you
want? You should order _Weeks_ by the dozen, ten, twenty copies at a
time.... Stupid bibliophiles.
Two years went by before another surprise comparable to this befell
the master of the library in the attic. It was another enormous bundle
of books, but this time it came from across the sea. It smelt not of
Munroe’s basement but of the hold of a transatlantic liner. A surprise
from that English friend, the tall, fair-haired fellow with the silky
beard who had boarded with the Thoreaus the year before and accompanied
Henry on his walks. And what books! “Cholmley,” knowing Henry’s taste
for the beautiful things of Asia, had sent him all the most famous
Oriental books that he had been able to find. Good heavens, what an
Arabian Nights’ dream!... The great sacred books of India, translated
into English, French, Latin and Greek, and even some in Sanscrit....
This procession entered the house like the three Magi with their
retinue, bearers of gifts for heaven knew what new-born being ...
forty-four rare volumes, most of them not to be found on a continent
that was prodigal in corn and wheat but not in fruits of this kind ...
things of which you had dreamed and that appealed to you so powerfully,
and now here they were, right under your hand, day and night.... The
Hindu side by side with the Indian, your nearest kindred touching one
another! Precious stones flashing their fire about your den, lighting
up the pale arrow-heads. I can laugh at you now, pretentious libraries!
At first Henry was simply astounded by this patrician generosity, which
had gathered together all these treasures for him; astounded by all
these illustrious personages who surrounded him, who had come from the
other end of the world as friends, come with their veiled faces, great
black eyes, wide with dreams, their dark skins, strange faces, slow
gestures, to offer the son of a pencilmaker the flower of their wisdom
so that he might place it among the flowers of his own country. But
the sages of the Orient smiled at the seven hundred _Weeks_ and did
not seem to be in the least offended by the pile of nuts in the corner
of the little room. Henry soon felt quite at home beside them, and all
these presences, the new and the old, mingled in one friendship in the
warmth of the old stove.
But when you have distinguished visitors who have made a long voyage
in the belly of an ocean liner, you must offer them lodgings that are
worthy of them. Henry had some well-seasoned wood, gathered along the
river, and he had tools. For these beautiful books he was going to make
a new bookcase, a bookcase of honour that would be a sort of Asiatic
province royally accommodated on the third floor of the house on Main
Street.
There could never be any question of repaying the magnificent Thomas
such a debt of gratitude as this. Whole seasons of surveying would
not be enough. But he did send him a few American books, among them a
novelty--not a rarity, for nobody bought it--that scandalized its few
readers, a bewildering book, powerful as a buffalo, multitudinous as a
seaport, torrential, insolent, shameless. Henry regarded it as a work
of the grandest kind. Emerson also. Thomas would see. A purely American
product and, what was astonishing, something that made you think of the
Orient. It was written in Biblical verse, like the Song of Songs or the
Rig-Veda, and it had the strange title, _Leaves of Grass_. The book was
not signed. A very slender present, you see, friend “Cholmley.” You
must tell me what you think of my buffalo.
In a den where stones, birds’ eggs and plants had long swamped the
books there was now almost an affluence of tops and backs. Among the
newcomers there was one which had arrived all alone, quite modestly,
the year between the two surprises. It had not come as a surprise,
however; it was an expected visitor. It entered there familiarly, as if
it had come back from a journey and knew the ways of the house and the
fellow who lived there. Its name was Walden. But it was not a pond. It
was Henry’s latest born. A responsible publisher had taken charge of
it; and this time there was no need to run into debt or do surveying
for the sake of a book which the author was the only one to love. The
name of Ticknor covered it like a flag.
To be sure, there was no wild scramble to buy it. But it sold a little.
And responses came to the unknown author; new friends rose out of the
ground along his path. You write a book for your own pleasure, without
thought of any good or harm it may do, and lo and behold, it sets out
alone, in its own right, and makes conquests for you all over the
world. Is it possible that you wrote a book in order to discover your
friends? It is as if the book were grateful to you for having brought
it to light and courteously wished to show its gratitude.
It bears under its title a picture of the cabin (the poor cabin that
will never again be able to gossip with the pines--it is doing penance
now in the bean-field). It is a book that carries a cabin across the
world and invites you to enter and inspect it and inhale the resinous
fragrance. It will not carry you off to dance for a week on the
water in a nut-shell. It requests your company on a ramble around a
transparent pond where you can contemplate your own image in water that
is clearer than your mirror. It is not Narcissus that you will see
there, returning your own smile to you, but the face of a man who is
studying the curious effect of his big nose in the water.
Between Henry’s two offspring there have been more than five years of
growth. Although they have both been nourished on the same sap that
has been accumulating for fifteen years in the Journal, _Walden_ is
the book of a writer who has reached his full stride--a little too
full, if you like--with the same unpardonable waywardness in his
composition. You will never turn a pate like that into the saw-mill of
a _littérateur_. Well then, call him a liberator instead. That is the
way Henry himself expresses it.
* * * * *
To return, then, towards the end of October, 1856, the surveyor set
out with all his paraphernalia for Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He didn’t
want to pass through New York without seeing that good Greeley, but
not finding him at his newspaper office he walked up Broadway, meeting
a friend, and then went and settled himself in the Astor Library. You
can’t study these great brawling cities as you can study a book in a
sanctuary of silence; coming from Concord, you are deafened by the
’busses and the trampling crowds. Whither are all those feet rushing?
Who is waiting for them at their appointed meeting-places? That is,
unless these people are not all simply out of their heads. Here is a
blissful refuge! Let’s go and sit down for a while and read.
Perth Amboy, on Raritan Bay, faces the island, shaped like a bunch
of grapes, that recalls to Henry the rather melancholy days when he
was a tutor. A mile and a quarter from the town a friend of Margaret
Fuller’s, Marcus Spring, whom he had seen on his journey to find the
poor woman’s remains, owned some property: the estate was situated on
the edge of the bay and was called Eagleswood. They had tried to start
a phalanstery there, and now the eagles had gathered to establish a
“colony.”
The question was one of drawing up plans for the future village, a
very proper task for a surveyor who had come expressly from Concord.
When you happen to know a good surveyor, nothing can be more natural
than to have recourse to his compass. Henry’s friends had not
forgotten him--for instance, there was Marston Watson, who had asked
him two years before to come and survey his park on the hillside
above Plymouth (no need of a helper that time, for Alcott himself,
with his tall frame, platonically carried the chain, assisted by the
owner in person). Henry assuredly had very noble friends who not only
appreciated his talents but loaded him down with little gifts: in the
space of a few days had he not received from Marston, who had presented
him with those magnificent big glow-worms the previous summer, some
pear-trees the very name of which was like a juicy fruit that melted
in your mouth, and a hummingbird’s nest from Blake, and a box of
mayflowers from somebody else? Quite apart from the Christmas season,
the express-company evidently had permanent agencies in fairyland.
The surveyor set to work, plunged into the woods and salt marshes,
regardless of rips and tears; before each meal it took him fifteen
minutes to pick off the burs that clung to him. These are the little
pleasures of the trade. While it awaits the promised village,
Eagleswood contains an old farmhouse and a big stone building, together
with Marcus Spring’s private residence, and it glories in some shops
and offices and a school where the teaching is done by various
dignified greybeards. Rather too many people and rather too much
dignity to suit the taste of Henry, who prefers the informality of the
burs; and creditable as the work may be, he longs to have done with it
and get home again. There is an accursed wood-pigeon that begins to coo
every night at the slightest sound from the house. Perhaps it is the
former janitor of the phalanstery.
Yes, the work begins to drag, and he cannot drop it because it has been
entrusted to him. Nor does the society of these worthy greybeards, the
atmosphere of the “colony,” offer any great attraction. The big city,
where Alcott has stayed behind, is close at hand, and Henry feels like
a molecule subject to the law of gravitation. He longs to make a trip
to New York and go and see his friend and have a little vacation from
these old fossils. Just for one little week-end. On Friday, November
7th, he enters Alcott’s room and finds a guest there, to whom he is
introduced, John Swinton. This young man, a delightful fellow, full of
fire and revolutionary instinct, is a good friend of the author of
_Leaves of Grass_. Do tell us something about your friend. Alcott has
already seen this Walt Whitman who sounds his barbaric yawp over the
roofs of the world. Henry is most anxious to meet him.
To-day he is invited to go with Alcott to a certain lady’s house, but
he means to let his friend go alone: a drawing-room and a lady in New
York must be very much like a lady and a drawing-room anywhere else. He
knows all about such things even at Concord, in a small way, and he has
very little desire to see them in a large.
The next day they meet Horace Greeley at the station and go and
spend the day at his farm at Chappaqua. For every Saturday the
editor-in-chief of the _Tribune_ shakes the dust of the city and his
editorial office off his feet and hurries out to look after his little
farm, of which he is very proud (his turnips have taken the prize at
the County Fair). A friend, the poetess Alice Cary, is also one of
the party. For some ten years Horace has more than once shown his
friendship for Henry; he would have liked very much to keep him in his
family as a tutor for his children. (Horace is a great man who has
already had a big book written about him in his own lifetime, and Henry
is fond of him and grateful for all the attention he shows a little
village scribbler, but ... but to give up once more that precious
independence, to leave Concord where there are so many friends, from
Easterbrook to Nine Acre Corner, who have only himself to count upon
... no, never, Horace must excuse him....) At Chappaqua the guests
admire the crops and the farm-buildings, but when he sees how much
trouble and expense it has cost the owner to transform swamp-land into
fertile ground, Henry remarks to himself how much more attractive a
beautiful swamp is than a model farm. And they come back to town for
the night.
It is Sunday, and they cannot begin the Lord’s Day better than by
going to hear an astonishing man who is preaching at Plymouth Church
in Brooklyn. There are crowds to listen to him, crowds that have come
there to be thrilled by this magician who makes them turn pale, laugh,
weep or exult as he wills, as if he were developing and unfolding
before them the most moving drama. But it is not the art of an actor,
even the greatest actor, that makes such an impression here; it is an
elemental force. It is such a beautiful spectacle in that pulpit that
you forget you are in the presence of a churchman. He is something
better than that--a man, Henry Ward Beecher, the brother of Harriet,
author of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. Henry thinks this other Henry deserves
to be called a pagan; the whole ghastly race of preachers is forgotten,
the setting of the church disappears, a great wind has passed over
these people to purify and uplift them, like a rush of autumn leaves.
Henry is thoroughly delighted.
Such a capital Sunday must have a worthy finish. Suppose they go and
see Walt Whitman, since he lives in Brooklyn? So, after lunching with a
lady who knows Alcott, the two companions set out for his house. Here’s
Portland Avenue, where the buffalo lives, and here is his number.
Disillusionment; he has gone out. The mother, with her kind face, tells
them this and asks them to come in. Henry has a mother too over yonder,
a lively mother who would be only too happy to talk to two visitors who
had come to see her son; and she too would be unlikely to say anything
unkind to them about her boy. He thinks of her as he listens to this
smiling woman of sixty, as simply dressed as a farmer’s wife, uttering
a maternal eulogy on her son Walter. These gentlemen have come to see
him because he is the author of a book; and she, who is the author of
the author of the book, can only tell them how proud she is of this
son, and how much he means to his brothers and sisters, and what a
blessing his presence is to them all at home. “If you can come back
to-morrow morning, not too late, you will be sure to find him, for
he will be very sorry to have missed you to-day.” All right, Mother
Whitman, we shall be back to-morrow, and thank you for your welcome. We
have not seen your Walter, but in the little wrinkles about your eyes
and lips there is something that seems to foretell what he is like.
On Monday morning there are three of them to take the ferry and make
their way to Portland Avenue, through streets that sound like a
country town after the jam they have left; a lady from Philadelphia
has asked to go with them. They knock at the door and are invited to
come in just as they were the day before. Walter is at home, expecting
them. Presently the three visitors are sitting face to face with a
great hairy, ruddy animal, who has nothing sinister about him at all.
Strange, this fellow is simplicity itself and everything in the room
is quite ordinary, but from the very first instant, seeing him planted
there, you think of a great sailing ship at sea or of a beautiful tall
tree in summer. You would think you were out of doors. Henry feels
quite at home in a house where you drink in the fresh air as freely as
you do the friendly glass on the table.
It is a house like many other houses that has gathered under its roof
to-day Walt and Henry, the Manhattanese and the Concordian.... But the
walls of the house still stand, they bear up bravely under the shock.
It is roomy, the Whitmans’ house, and built by the hand of a clever
workman, as strong as if the father, who died last year, had set up
the frame himself. But that muffled sound which echoes and rolls away,
very far away, is the detonation of these mingling spirits, though no
one hears anything in the house or the neighbourhood but the sounds of
a quiet street.
Four persons are talking together as friends in the innocence of Monday
morning, three of them observing and the other, without the least
embarrassment, allowing himself to be observed. The appointments of the
room, the old, worn furniture which has known so many dwellings are
swallowed up in this masculine figure, which is enigmatic because of
its very nonchalance and abundant ease. There are so many questions one
might address to the high vault of that pronounced eyebrow, the right
one. The visitors ask him this and that, seeking to penetrate beneath
the brick-coloured skin of the enigma, tanned by all the suns of Long
Island; all constraint has vanished, so complete is the absence of
ceremony in the man they have come to see, so strong his expression of
virile goodness. In a rich, musical voice, in direct, everyday words,
he speaks of what he loves--the ever-changing crowds of his city, the
ebb and flow at the foot of those cliffs with their myriad windows, the
human flood rolling through the ferry-boats, the stages, the popular
theatres, the squares. The enigma does not give up its secret, but it
becomes more and more attractive. Henry also has loves that he might
confess, but he only asks the lover of the poetry of the streets if he
has read the great Oriental poems. “No, tell me about them....” It is
an encounter in which each puts out these verbal feelers. Their words
are less clear perhaps than their attitudes and the expressions of
their faces. But the visitors do not dream of going away.
How had Henry pictured to himself the Manhattanese, “eating, drinking
and breeding,” of the _Leaves_--“one of the roughs”? Perhaps he had
not pictured him at all. Perhaps he had thought that this rude sketch
was only the fantasy of a poet who was enamoured of bright colours and
had no prototype in reality. However this may have been, there was
the “rough” before him. And he was beautiful, a little coarse, but
beautiful. With that whole person, in its radiance of life and vigour,
Walt signed his book, signed it with a far more striking truthfulness
than the portrait he had used as a frontispiece. Here was the flesh and
the blood and the colour. Henry looked and looked again, seeking to
fathom the nature of the radiance that passed over him in the presence
of the phenomenon. He did not challenge this thing that bathed him and
seemed to make him float; he noted his reactions, that was all. This
fellow had too much blood in him, perhaps. Perched on a stage beside
the driver, amid the hubbub of Broadway, did he not shout out verses as
if he were alone on some beach! A wild man indeed!--but with a wildness
that did not intimidate Henry’s, like that sullen summit of Ktaadn, but
stirred his curiosity, provoked him. That strong aroma of masculine
health, which he smelled, did not tell him very much. But how did it
happen that with this luxuriance of the flesh, which was brutal enough
to be offensive, there mingled an exquisite perfume that utterly defied
your power to define it? With a disconcerting naturalness this big
fellow spoke or listened (he was a most astonishing listener) as this
invitation emanated from his ruddy body to the three others--the tall
fellow, the little fellow and the lady sitting opposite: “Do take as
much of my health as you like. You can see I shall always have enough.
Call this irritating, if you like, but it’s quite real; and mine is a
presence that does not wait for your consent to warm you.”
Henry, with his habit of absorbing phenomena, sits there, all
eyes--with those eyes that know how to look--seeking to understand,
to pierce to the bottom. Henry, the dry little animal, all nerves and
tendons, with his drooping shoulders and his narrow chest (look at
that great thorax over there, ready for any fist to strike it, where
the weariest head might lie without covering it ...); Henry, with his
receding chin, lost in the little apish beard which he is allowing
to grow just now, his pursed lips, his big, contemptuous nose, his
absorbed, reflective, alert air, his whole life gazing with implacable
seriousness out of the blue-grey windows of those eyes that are so
round, sagacious, keen, vigilant, shining with perpetual use like a
spade; Henry whose lean body refuses to speak for his soul, with his
frail health and his tempered will, crouching behind his own glance
like a hunter on his knees in some thicket, face to face with this
demi-god beaming with nonchalance and carnal opulence; Henry, saturated
with the woodland life of his village, beside this other whose soul is
peopled with his own Broadway.... And each is trying to catch the scent
of the other.
With his rather sluggish glance, the big animal absorbs the little
as he absorbs everything--tranquilly. He accepts without any mental
reservations these friendly people who have come to see him--the tall
man, the short man and the lady; there is room for them too in his
universe. The Leaves exclude no one from their shadow; they spread out
as far as Concord and Philadelphia. He is happy to welcome them, though
he sees nothing in them that particularly surprises him. He lets them
talk, as his way is, draws his own profit from what the speakers say
and replies without opening himself particularly or abandoning his
reserve. These two birds have come from the land of phantoms. They are
intellectuals, bred in the colleges. Not much of a recommendation
in his eyes. It would never occur to you to say to this lanky New
Englander: “Henry, let’s go and have a drink.” He’s not cut out for a
comrade. Just the same, these fellows are friends of the man to whom
he owes enough to call him “master” and who has written, thanking him
for his book, that unforgettable letter which he always carries there
in his pocket, like a patent of nobility. They are two Yankees, one of
whom has begun to sing for himself, who have come on a pilgrimage to
greet the boys of Manhattan.
The great animal is not insensible to such an homage and he accepts it
cordially, in the name of his own people, as a wholesome response. But
Walt’s interest is not aroused. Henry, on his part, would have dearly
liked to be alone with this extraordinary fellow so that the two of
them might start one of those talks like his old talks in the cabin,
when some full-minded friend came to see him and not a syllable that
was not sonorous echoed between the plank walls. But there are four
of them and the conversation begins to wander. They don’t get hold of
one another, and what a pity it is! For surely they have things to say
to one another that are worth saying, points of contact they might
establish together. Henry’s big grey-blue eyes express this wish and
this regret. For isn’t it vexatious to be face to face with such a huge
puzzle and not be able to grasp it and turn it round so as to discover
in the end, as likely as not, that the same flame burns in that big
chest and under that narrow, grouse-like throat? Isn’t it? _Isn’t_ it?
(Ah, my two friends, the future opens out, furrowed with very different
paths from this hour that brings you together here.... You have
decades to live still, Walt.... You are to pass through the horrors
of the great war; you are to see it lying on beds of torture and to
be tortured yourself. Will you then be the man who stood for a fight
to the finish? In your great ripe heart, a comradeship as ardent as
love will have seized upon you, so painful that you will flee from the
world, you will take flight with your sorrow by paths untrodden to the
shores of pond waters, to gather the fragrant calamus root--(it grows
also on the shores of Walden Pond)--and partake of it mystically with
your known and unknown friends.... And then, when you are past the age
for stormy passions, you will find one day the Passage to India: that
little chap found it long ago, you big simpleton.... And many other
discoveries are reserved for the consolation of your mellow age: after
so many other things have lost their lustre, the trees, the seasons
and the skies will offer you their balm and you will voluptuously
anoint yourself with it, bathing in the mud of Timber Creek to ease
your aching body. Then you will take more pleasure in a squirrel’s play
than in the shuffling feet of crowds. And how well you will understand
the thought of that old chap who said that he was seldom less alone
than when alone! Yes, and then, as you approach your sixtieth year,
you will seek by a little pond what men refuse you, and you will find
it, and you will be stirred through and through with gratitude, my
friend.... And the day will come when, as an old gaffer leaning on a
stick, you will visit Concord and receive a whole-hearted welcome in
the land of phantoms at a time when the land of the living rejects you,
and you will step down from your friend’s carriage and add your stone
to the cairn that marks the spot of Henry’s cabin.... You will have
your florid complexion still, set off by the bushy, snow-white beard
that adorns it.... And you will still be the same Walt, enjoying this
miraculous life and rejecting nothing. You will simply have come to
understand certain things....
The future opens out, and in the distant perspective paths take shape
where your feet, my friends, have left their prints.... Is it possible
that lovers like you should never, never meet there? Listen.... How
strange it is!... You might think you were listening to words that
cross one another.... Does it not sound like an intermittent dialogue
in which two voices reply back and forth over some field that catches
their harmony?
HENRY:--He would be a poet who ... nailed words to their primitive
senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the
frost has heaved ... whose words were so true and fresh and
natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the
approach of spring, though they lay half-smothered between
two musty leaves in a library,--ay, to bloom and bear fruit
there, after their kind, for the faithful reader ...
WALT:--Roots and leaves themselves alone are these.... Frost-mellow’d
berries and Third-month twigs offer’d fresh to young persons
wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and
bring form, colour, perfume, to you,
If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers,
fruits, tall branches and trees.
HENRY:--True verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath
of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and
fragrance.... There are two classes of men called poets.
The one cultivates life, the other art--one seeks food for
nutriment, the other for flavour.... The true poem is not
that which the public reads. There is always a poem not
printed on paper ...
WALT:--Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my
poem ...
HENRY:--It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the test
of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight.
WALT:--Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by
trees, stars, rivers ...
HENRY:--I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for
walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted
in the house.
WALT:--I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a
house ...
If you would understand me go to the heights or watershore ...
HENRY:--When I stand in a library ... Alas! that so soon the work of
a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!
WALT:--... in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or
dead ...
HENRY:--The very names of the commodities ... poetic, and as
suggestive as if they had been inserted in a pleasing
poem--Lumber, Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, Logwood.
WALT:--Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar,
rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp!...
HENRY:--I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts
will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky--our
understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our
plains--our intellect generally on a grander scale, like ...
our rivers and mountains and forests--and our hearts shall
even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our
inland seas.
WALT:--... a bard is to be commensurate with a people ... he
incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and
lakes. Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes,
Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and St. Lawrence with the
Falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where
they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him ...
HENRY:--There are poets of all kinds and degrees, little known to
each other.... I meet these gods of the river and woods with
sparkling faces (like Apollo’s), late from the House of
Correction, it may be.... What care I to see galleries full
of representations of heathen gods, when I can see actual
living ones by an infinitely superior artist?
WALT:--Accepting the rough deific sketches ...
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves
driving the mallet and chisel ...
Lads ... no less to me than the gods of the antique wars ...
HENRY:--There is this moment proposed to me every kind of life
that men lead anywhere.... By another spring I may be a
mail-carrier in Peru, or a South African planter, or a
Siberian exile, or a Greenland whaler, or a settler on the
Columbia River, or a Canton merchant, or a soldier in
Florida, or a mackerel fisher off Cape Sable, or a Robinson
Crusoe in the Pacific, or a silent navigator of any sea....
These are but few of my chances, and how many more things may
I do with which there are none to be compared!
WALT:--I am a real Parisian ...
I am a habitan of Vienna ...
I am of Adelaide ...
I am of London ...
I am of Madrid ...
I belong in Moscow ... or in some street in Iceland ...
HENRY:--Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good.
WALT:--I am enamour’d of growing outdoors ...
HENRY:--When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have
said attaches to them, they are so simple and remote.
WALT:--When I heard the learn’d astronomer ...
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself ...
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
HENRY:--A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to
whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can
call me, and is entitled to my love and service.
WALT:--What am I after all but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my
own name? repeating it over and over ...
HENRY:--You may have the extraordinary for your province, if you
will; let me have the ordinary.
WALT:--The Commonplace I sing ...
And the rest of the dialogue is lost in the distance like the path
on which the two drinkers of space have walked a little of the way
together, before taking their separate roads, one in this direction,
the other in that.
Yes, there are these lost paths that both have trodden, paths where
they have only never met because one has followed them a few hours,
a few seasons before the other. It is a thousand pities, my friends.
If you had encountered each other once, not under the roof of a house
in Brooklyn, during a call, but in the fields, while you, Henry, were
surveying, or on a beach after the two of you had been bathing in
the sea, how much the sand and the tufts of grass would have helped
you to the beautiful understanding that is impossible for you now,
Henry, withdrawn as you are in your shell, and for you, Walt, great
unconscious animal that you are.
But after all, these dreams do not cover an atom of the reality that is
in you. How much better it is that the future should close again, that
you, Walt, should be there in the house on Portland Avenue with your
mother and your family (cherish them, they are so dear to you), ruddy
and strong, and that the roar of Broadway should murmur in your ears!
How much better it is that you should be there, good soul that you
are, the youngest of the three, with your thirty-seven years and your
perfect health, your intransigence, your youthful, inordinate faith,
and that this little creature should not interest you too much. These
are not imaginary beings here but four very ordinary persons of solid
flesh and blood, and how much better it is that they are!)
* * * * *
In the course of the conversation, Walt, speaking of his friends, the
young fellows of the capital, to whom he owes even more than he owes
to Emerson, and of the place they hold in his poems, expresses his
conviction that they are America, Democracy, the key of the politics
of the New World. At this the tight-lipped Henry discharges a cutting
remark. They are the mob, and the mob is like peat. It may give out
any amount of heat, but it smokes, it reeks, it goes to your head. A
fellow who can make a fire of stumps in a clearing doesn’t care to
warm himself at any such blaze as that. The mob, universal suffrage,
the rabble marching in procession over the pavements of a big city or
wallowing like pigs to keep warm in the litter of a stable.... Can you
see that clamorous rout of human insects crowding into the porch of
those great W’s that rise at the threshold of your name, Walt Whitman?
Don’t you want to close the portal?
And the son of Manhattan says to himself: “That fellow certainly comes
from the land of mummies. Those New England people have plenty of
brains--if only the gods had given them a little more guts. That clever
little devil will never be bowled over by the music of the bugles that
grips your very vitals, or the pride of belonging to such a brawny
country. He’s too skinny, the poor little chap.”
Walt, though he conceals it, has been wounded to the quick in his
affections. The America of his poems is not looking for the homage of
apostles like this: it is a lively, warm-blooded America that responds
to the passion of males. Walt calmly faces the cold disdain expressed
by this little shrimp for a Person whom he loves with a terrible love,
not separating the good from the evil. “You don’t understand me,” he
says simply. From that moment he is enlightened. They can go on talking
amicably enough. Henry can say anything he likes, black or white; Walt
has taken his measure. The “no” has worked. A thunderbolt has suddenly
dissipated the fog that veiled a gulf between them immensely wider
than the East River which the visitors have crossed.
Would you imagine that such a chasm could yawn between two beings who
are talking quietly there in a house on Portland Avenue--an apparently
impassable chasm, in spite of all the foot-bridges that reach from
one to the other?... Between two poets who are united in a sovereign
contempt for the literature of the literati--two plebeians, each in
his own way--two children who go forth every day, one of whom could
no more do without his daily walk on the populous pavements where,
from their glances, he gathers in the affection of men and women, than
the other could do without his ramble among the people of the trees,
the plants and the waters of Concord, with the track of the railroad
for his Broadway between trains--two loafers who have remained free
and unmarried for “reasons”--both of them drawing as it were from a
spring of elemental joy--both passionate idealists who, with equal
cheerfulness, might so easily “go and live with animals”--both mystics,
with a great appetite for the concrete--both affirming to the point
of arrogance their quality as individuals--both equally secretive and
reticent--both great friends of the Indian--both poor in money and
refusing to earn the bread of galley-slaves--both having to record the
practical failure of their first books, printed at their own expense
(lucky Henry has disposed of more than two hundred copies of his, while
as for that big fellow, his sales can be counted on his ten fingers
...)? Yet there they are, looking at each other, from opposite banks,
while the tumultuous tide rushes down between them, scouting the frail
bridges they have attempted to fling across its violence. And what
an uproar fills the Narrows, as if to affirm that for all time the
continent and the island shall remain as they are, two separate worlds!
On the continent there are men with whom you feast on friendship,
crowds of comrades, day and night, never too numerous for a hearty
fellow who is hungry for the presence of other hearty fellows like
yourself. There are those who call you by your first name as you pass
or with whom you walk with your arm about their shoulders; they are
as thick as the trees along the rivers and the Great Lakes. They are
the mass to which you give of yourself with immense confidence, well
knowing what will be the return from this investment. Here reigns
the “beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh” that absorbs the
radiance of your own strong, sensual, loving masculinity and sends it
back to you in the flash of the eyes that turn towards you. Where can
one find such delights, richer food for the soul? What should I do in
your blessed retreat, where the golden days pass with one companion?
I should be devoured by homesickness in a moment--for the streets and
faces of Manhattan, their sounds and their vibrating movement.
Frown as much as you like at these delights, little man on your island
who hold men and women at a distance as if you were afraid of touching
pitch. You, brother of the live-oak that joyously spreads its branches,
alone in the fields, with no companion near it. You to whom the company
of your own dear thoughts suffices. You who crouch in the midst of your
own distrust, with your fists clenched, bitter, satisfied, sarcastic,
devoid of magnetism, without any indulgence for your neighbour. You
whom no one would ever think of calling by a nickname. You who have no
more friendship for your own body than for those of others. You for
whom no woman waits.
Make your wry face, Henry, but throw out your narrow chest, just
the same! For you have no particular reason to feel humiliated. The
contrast with that great animal may overwhelm your puny frame. Your
head barely reaches to his shoulder, but in that head, little Henry,
burns the flame of a spirit that assures you at least this superiority:
you have felt his grandeur, while he has not been able to see anything
in you. He is not very discerning, the great animal. Go back to Concord
with your head high.
They parted indeed after two hours of conversation, with a promise
to see each other again the next morning. Matters could not rest
there. Walt was going to return the visit of the two Yankees at
their hotel. But at the appointed hour, the loafer, the dawdler, had
either forgotten the meeting or thought it best to be somewhere else:
there was no big ruddy fellow to be seen. They could not resume the
conversation.
And on November 24th, Amos and Henry returned to the fold, the one to
Concord, the other to northern Connecticut where he was living at the
moment, full of memories of their call in Brooklyn--still under the
charm of a presence that was vastly more impressive even than the voice
of Beecher at Plymouth Church.
* * * * *
Friendship! This had been the torment of Henry’s life also, a torment
revealed to one confidant alone, the Journal, as the great lover
confided it to his Leaves to be spread abroad.... Always with this vast
difference between their two aches: Walt was tormented because he could
never be sufficiently intoxicated with it, while Henry suffered from a
virtual powerlessness to express it at all.
A sad, sad story and so secret. To whom could this shy soul confide
what was concealed behind the mask of his fierce reserve? The trees
could not understand it, and they were his closest friends. So there
remained only a white page that would receive the confession without
blanching.
That the mean interests and commonplace cares of ordinary people should
disgust and bore him was natural enough. Should he fall on his knees,
beat his breast and bewail the demands of a stomach that cannot endure
smugness and vulgarity? He is a mighty walker, he can roll off an
infinite number of miles, splash about in a swamp or shovel snow for
hours, weed in the blazing sun for a whole morning, split stumps as
hard as iron: but your accursed society is utterly beyond him. Protest
as you like. He is a lucky chap when he can afford to digest anything
or anybody.
But with the few who are dear to him why is there so little real
intimacy? As a rule, he finds nothing but disappointment in their
company. He does not get into touch with them. He feels this too keenly
not to suffer from it. Complete friendship, the only sort worthy of the
name, is not the commonplace gossip of good neighbours; it asks to be
able to go freely at all hours into your friend’s house, without even
the need of knocking. Give me the freedom of your friendship if you do
not wish to make me unhappy.
With those whom, in spite of all, he calls his friends, Henry always
has this feeling of painful dissatisfaction. His constraint paralyses
him. He leaves their company still hungry for what he came to seek;
so great is his discomfiture that he carries home with their strings
untied the packages he had meant to open before them. They were things
before which it would have been such a pleasure to marvel together. Is
there any disenchantment equal to this? Instead of communing together
and admiring one another, it is as if they had put each other out or
wounded each other. It is a collision where it ought to have been a
jubilee.
So he cares more for his friends at a distance where their image
recovers its shape and petty things are forgotten. He is an
over-exacting man: he refuses to have the most beautiful thing in the
world profaned by being decked out in false ornaments. He insists that
it must be absolutely naked, and thus he has only fleeting glimpses of
it.
Why is this? Why this lack of sympathetic understanding between true
friends? Is it their fault? Do they lack naturalness or sincerity? Do
they encumber friendship with compliments, manners or shallow words? Or
is it his fault, this fault he imputes to others? Would his friends, by
any chance, like him to be a little different?
They have often complained that he is stiff, abrupt, that he remains
silent when they expect him to say something. They are not over-fond
of his rather crabbed way of speaking the truth and demanding it in
return. Perhaps they are not entirely in the wrong. But does all the
trouble, all his pain, come from these differences? They have known
him for a long time, they know what a firm friend he is, and they are
as willing to pardon his singularities as he is to forgive their habit
of excessive sociability. Is he asking too much of them--a nobility
that is impossible to human clay? Possibly; but even so there must be
something else that he has forgotten in scrutinizing his conscience.
Come, my friend, what is it you complain of to your confidant in the
evening? That your friends are this or that instead of being their own
natural selves, that they answer so incompletely to what you expect of
them? You are wounded, you are hurt because they seem to turn up their
noses at the good things you were bringing them, and it is not a wound
to your pride, it is not just a question of wretched vanity. It is
much more serious than that--you are wounded in your affections, poor
Henry....
Well, but how about yourself? Are you so sure that you respond to their
expectations? Suppose, instead of withdrawing into your shell, at the
least discord, you were simply to accept what they have to offer you?
Suppose you were to show them a little indulgence? Instead, you roughly
pull away. Must it always necessarily be they who take the first step?
You insist that they should come and seek you out in the depths of your
den, after opening as many locks as if it were an enchanted palace.
And suppose they haven’t the key, suppose they don’t know the open
sesame? You expect your friends to be magicians, seers who can divine
the warmth hidden far down beneath that icy exterior. All very well, no
doubt; but tell us, you who left the door of your cabin at Walden open
to all comers, why you lock yourself up in this fashion. What robbers
do you fear? You can see for yourself that this is no philistine who
stands before you, that his face is the face of a friend. You can be
frank, you can speak out that desire you have in you--which is going to
cause you pain later just because you have obliged it to remain silent
and it has its own way of protesting. To no indifferent person, rest
assured, will you be showing your gifts.
There you are, so unhappy, with your affectionate impulses shattered,
leaving your friend with the feeling that you have been simply an
intruder. Are you so sure he would have disappointed you so if you had
taken out your specimens, mystery-maker--if you had merely offered him
what you brought, offered it simply, directly? You refuse to explain
yourself because it is humiliating. Friends don’t explain, they
understand. No doubt; but suppose your attitude took the place of an
explanation, made it unnecessary, dissipated the cloud? Instead of
looking for reasons and fining them down like a casuist, suppose you
tried to give a little of yourself? Just a little, why not?
You stand there, frozen, waiting--waiting for what?--with that
bashfulness, that infernal bashfulness that makes you shrink back from
your chin to your fingers instead of making the gesture the other may
be waiting for--whatever it may be, a touch on the shoulder, a glance
from those eyes that you keep lowered as if you were planning some
dreadful deed, a handclasp long enough to establish the contact, long
enough for the current to begin to flow.... Don’t you realize, subtle
as you are, fool that you have suddenly become, the importance of a
little familiar gesture that will set you both free? Come, you who are
so brave, so resolute in attack, you who profess to be liberating men
who are prisoners of their own sordid existence, confess that you lack
the courage....
You should live your friendship a little, you should put into practice
the principles of that exalted affection which you say cannot be
satisfied among men, live it instead of singing its praises, you
infernal New England prude! Your hands are skilful enough for anything,
except when it comes to friendship--hands that are so delicate when
they pick a frail little flower and so clumsy when they lift this plant
that thrusts its pale roots into you. You can’t stick this in the
lining of your hat where you carry your most fragile discoveries....
Yes, they may have their faults, your friends. They may be too
intelligent to understand. They have a gift for whetting your spirit
of contradiction, which is so destructive of friendship. But don’t you
see that you, with your antagonism, are most to blame? You who do not
lay aside at the outset, like an objectless accessory in a friendly
house, the mask of that provoking, that insupportable chilliness? If
you are not “incapable of expansion and generosity,” why do you keep
all these treasures hidden for your own morose delectation, why are you
so absurdly timorous, so savagely bashful? When you have given your
hand, why do you withdraw it so quickly, as if your precious ego were
in danger of dissolving in the warmth of another palm? Suspicious!
Distrustful! Infernal idiot! Barbarian, barbarian, barbarian, who
suffer and triumph in being what you are!... Don’t accuse others till
you have accused yourself.
Whether the fault is his or theirs, it is very sad in any case. At
times this man who is so rich feels very poor indeed, and all the joy
of the river, all the friendship of the woods does not suffice to fill
the void in this imploring heart.
What a tragedy, for instance, in his relations with his oldest, his
greatest friend, lies behind the appearance of the most harmonious
understanding.... The one man in all the world to whom he is bound by
the brightest hours of his life ... the light of his youth ... not to
be able to love him as he would like to love him, completely, because
... because.... Waldo and Henry cannot quite mingle, as the names of
Eden and Waldo mingle in Walden.
Because Waldo--the flower of a long line of ministers, so rich a
flower in the garland which the established order wears on its
brow--is offended by inelegances that clash with his philosophical
decorum, a decorum full of grace and suave respect for the venerable
conventions. Because a dry, unalterable “no,” rebellion carried even
into the smallest details, the frank assumption of the character of a
bad citizen, revolutionary language ruffle his serenity. And because
Henry, on his side, is irritated, cannot approve of that timidity, that
spirit of compromise, and will never believe that instead of showing
your disgust for what is disgusting you should cover it up with cream
sauce and ask people to taste it.
Because, as an illustrious Sage, the elder, with his delightful smile,
slightly--oh! so slightly--patronizes his junior, this dear, crabbed,
odd, aggressive Henry, this cool iconoclast in whom he recognizes a
force superior to his own that he would like to mollify, bring into
line, civilize. This dear Henry who does not want to have the smile
that would comfort his friend Waldo and, like the latter’s, electrify
an audience instead of petrifying it. This dear Henry who is galled
by any touch of protectiveness, faint as it may be, and conceives of
friendship as the region of equals. This dear Henry who had not waited
till a great Sage came to illuminate Concord in order to exist himself,
who is not the sort to allow himself to be worked up like all those
visionaries whom the dazzling star attracts. Make no mistake, dear
Waldo. Yet there is nothing to prevent us from being very fond of each
other, even if we do wound each other.
Because almost insensibly Henry feels each day a little further from
Waldo, further from his tastes, his habits and the people who surround
him, the more pronounced his own personality becomes, the more it
reacts and frees itself from the influences of his twentieth year ...
till he refuses to write an article on his great friend which Greeley
has been asking him to write for years and has accepted in advance ...
till he at last realizes the uselessness of those conversations from
which each comes away disappointed with the other ... till there are
longer and longer intervals between those visits to the little white
house that merely waste his time and cause him pain ... till the day
comes when the distance is so great that Henry confesses it is dead,
the beautiful friendship, that it lies there, motionless as a corpse,
on a bed of twenty years....
For years he had seen this moment coming, but when it was there, in
all the harshness of the confession, what a rent it made! The face of
the dead on that couch spoke of happy hours passed by the fireside,
of those trees and that garden he had cared for ... spoke of those
walks together, that confidence, that life side by side. Henry felt
an intense pain in his head, in his chest, which prevented him from
working and grew worse towards evening. In the confusion, the infinite
desolation of that black hour, all the friendship of all men seemed to
crumble. And yet at the very moment when this affection was vanishing
and he was bidding it farewell, why did he feel so strangely _near_ the
dead friend, yes, in spite of everything, so near, with that pain in
his chest, that it was as if the friendship contained a touch of the
love that eludes death?
But all should not be lost for a man disappointed in relations
that intellectual tastes shared in common cannot save from ruin.
There remain his friends the simple folk, whom he relishes with a
natural sympathy, without any philosophical seasoning. With them, at
least, Henry feels at ease. No more than himself do they enjoy the
consideration of the world. They are untainted by manners. With them
he can visit freely back and forth. Here he can go straight ahead.
And look at him.... He watches them, in silent satisfaction--from a
distance. What a good sort that fellow is, how close akin to him you
feel.... At a distance Henry admires them, they go straight to his
heart; but does he take a step towards them? Never. And why? What is it
that restrains him from following his inclination and seeing whither
it leads? Among these people are familiar and friendly faces to whom
he has never addressed a word in his whole life, whose very names are
unknown to him. The rover who respects neither wall nor hedge but
walks directly to his goal remains obstinately on the borders of a
land--beautiful, as it seems to him--where he does not dare to venture.
Strange reserve! Why deprive yourself of the offered feast, epicure
of huckleberries, epicure of a humanity that you are content to eat
with your eyes? One might think you were afraid of all contact, afraid
that everything would be spoiled if you rubbed shoulders with anyone
else. Where are those senses of yours that are so fine, so alert, so
eager to possess things? Do they hold prisoner among them the sense
of attachment? Well, there are so many beautiful things that your
intellect grasps but that you do not know how to untie, strange man who
watch men and women whom you would like go by, and remain apart, with
your tenderness under lock and key.
Strange or not, it is so, and when you are a Stoic, you stifle your
secret and your grief and go on your way as if everything in the world
were just right. If there are no friends to visit, give them up. You
can visit them in thought, and they will come in the same way and join
you in your walks: only so can you feel really close to them. If they
do not understand that for some people friendship is as serious a
passion as love, if they find you cold, nature at least will welcome
you without vain words. With her you do not feel an intruder; you and
she do not irritate each other; she never disappoints you or provokes
a “no”; she never sends you away with your enthusiasms crushed. And so
you exaggerate your stiffness, you swagger, you carry your head high,
even when you are alone with yourself. You are a happy mortal who has
rid yourself of men; you feast on solitude; it has a taste of nuts
and sour apples; you laud it to the skies. It is a heroic remedy. You
may not always succeed in deceiving yourself. You are not always the
dupe of these pathetic boasts. But this makes no difference. You are a
savage who leaves these idiots of civilized people to eat the dust of
the highway. It is beautiful, this wild life, and you are proud of it,
even if it sometimes makes a shy, silent fellow suffer. You are that
happy man, made in the image of Walden Pond, self-sufficient, having no
communication with the impure waters about it, smooth and serene--yet
dreaming perhaps, now and again in the evening, dreaming in its depths
of the running, singing waters with which it would be so good to run
and sing, thinking how sad it is to be unable to mingle its life with
that of the neighbouring ponds, its brothers. You are as rigid and as
pure as the ice that encloses it in winter.
And so, because of that impotence from which you suffer, you are
regarded as a misanthrope--just as a deaf man is thought to be
unsociable. Hear that without laughing, enemy of the human race, you
who can laugh, at your own times, so heartily.
To carry every day, over all the paths of the waste lands, like a
burden you could not do without, your anxious care for men. To return
from your ramble, with the thought sticking to you like a bur. To
cherish Nature in your heart and consecrate to her your best hours
because there is no friend in the world who, like this companion, gives
you the savour of your own humanity, yours and that of all your kind.
Not to despair of others or of this world, even in the moments when you
are bitterest in your scorn--though it would be so easy to send it to
the devil and go your way whistling, with your hands in your pockets.
To feel yourself strong enough to build a tower on a little fragment
of love, ever so precarious and disillusioned but so hardy. To carry
with you that longing for a land where these people who irritate you
would have become a society after your own heart. (Does not a mere
bonfire of dead leaves in the country bring you the news from that
land?) To try your very best to find new words to make your neighbour
understand that he should open his window and let in a breath of the
out-of-doors while he is working. To have planned for the title-page
of your book a cock waking up the neighbours before dawn and dragging
them out of the slumber they call their existence. Yes, and then to
find yourself described as a cynical egoist, to figure among your kind
as the perfect skulker.... Henry, the echo of your laugh sounds at last
on the shore of the encircled pond--sounds and salutes this disguise in
which you see yourself decked!
And this is your portrait. What can you expect? So it is, so you have
willed it. It is a beautiful portrait. The only objection is that it
is so unlike you. Perhaps they are going to use it as the frontispiece
of your book. You are the enemy of men when you have much to give and
do not know how to give it--when you seek your brothers and do not
find them, or find them so rarely, on such false terms. The enemy of
men, with these yearnings repressed (oh, so stoically repressed!),
this secret hunger which you would not confess for the whole empire of
the Indies--with that need of love crowded into your meagre chest, and
finding vent at times in spite of you.
VIII
A special session at the Boston Court-house, where the Supreme Court
is sitting under the protection of the militia. Free men are judging a
man-tool, the property of another man. Perhaps, under his black skin
and his woolly hair, the tool has a kind of soul--you never can tell:
but since he has run away, the tribunal ordains, in its sovereign
independence, that he shall be returned to the hands of his master.
If, weary of digging up your ground, a hoe for which you have paid
with your good money should take it into its head one fine evening to
scamper off, what would you say? The article that has vanished should
be restored to its rightful owner. The law is sacred and the judges
are there to apply it without flinching. There is no joking with these
respectable judges of the Boston Court-house. They have very grave
faces with white skins and not the least suggestion of wool on their
skulls. They represent His Majesty the Right and His Holiness the Moral.
Are you surprised? Then where do you come from? Don’t you know how
little it matters before the law whether you are innocent or guilty?
The important thing is not you but respect for the law. The judge is
there to grind out his judgments, the notes are printed in the record,
and at the end of the month the fees fall with all the precision
of music. And you fail to take this way of administering justice
seriously? You feel no respect for this machine?
Henry’s chief feeling was one of humiliation. He had never cherished
any great illusions about judges and justice, and in a similar case
three years before he had received a painful shock. But this judgment
was beyond anything. _Walden_ was appearing at this moment, and the
book was utterly forgotten in the thought of this negro whom they
were cold-bloodedly sending back to his master, like a package. The
solemnity of the judgment added to this redelivery of the stolen
article a sort of diabolical pomp. In any case, another theft had
been committed, for Henry perceived that they had taken from him an
essential part of himself. In vain had he tried to find among the
friendly fields forgetfulness of these unclean human beings; they had
lost their charm for him, for the baseness of men had blighted them.
The “enemy of the human race” came back from his walks utterly unable
to regain his serenity. He was haunted by the thought of those men
who were in prison for having tried to mob the court and snatch the
“package” out of its hands. He almost envied those fellows. An honest
man belonged in prison in these times of ignominy: at large, he felt
almost an accomplice in the legal crime. As he thought of it, Henry’s
hand went through the motions of touching off a bomb that would send
the machine and the machinists to the devil.
You strange fellow, what concern is it of yours--one negro more or less
from the plantations of the South? Are you mad? He is just as much
merchandise as a barrel of molasses; he can be sold and used up, but
he has got to stay in the shop of the man who has paid his good money
for him. Besides, all this business is going on a long way from your
village: leave Boston and that good Virginia to their own affairs.
Can’t you see that, after a passing flutter, the people around you go
on with their own little concerns? There is nothing so momentous in
this affair to interfere with the thoughts of a solitary walker.
To write a few pages in his Journal, in the privacy of his own soul,
is no relief. Faces, not white pages, are what he needs to have before
him in order to express his emotion. On the Fourth of July Henry goes
to Framingham, where the friends of the cause are holding a meeting,
and delivers there the most vigorous speech he has ever written (he
never speaks _ex tempore_), the richest in blood and fire. The Chief
Justice and the Governor of the State take part in the ceremony: the
orator has not failed to bring these puppets along in his bag to
produce them in his Punch and Judy show. The honourable Governor is
playing dummy. Bang! A good rousing whack on his ear. That will teach
him what it means to let the August Work of Justice follow its course.
The honourable Governor refuses to hand in his resignation. A good
smack in the face will root him out of his chair. The puppet catches
it for being Governor; there is very little of him left. He gets all
the raps on the nose that are intended for the slave-masters whose
interests His Nothingness serves. And to crown the festival, they
publicly burn the Constitution of the United States. The organizer of
the meeting is William Lloyd Garrison, the veteran abolitionist, whom
once the mob dragged through the streets of Boston at the end of a
rope. This brave man, who is ready for anything, asks Henry for the
text of the famous discourse so that he can publish it in his magazine,
the _Liberator_.
Always that fierceness in resistance. Friends who entirely approve
of Henry’s purposes regard this violence, this extremism, as very
unfortunate. Destroy, if you think it good to do so, but don’t bring
into it that savage conviction, as if you wanted to uproot the old tree
of the earth. Keep at least a touch of scepticism. You make no effort
to settle things by arrangement. Always this unsmiling gracelessness.
See what an accommodating smile your old friend Waldo keeps.... It’s
just like the time when you refused to pay your poll-tax and let
them put you in jail, and your friends said it was “mean and in bad
taste.” Is not tolerance the proper thing in a philosopher? He should
accept frauds, great and small, magnanimously, as one tolerates
the faults of old friends. One shouldn’t be so anti-Philistine as
to scout all the respectabilities. One shouldn’t declare, in this
virulent way, one’s utter contempt for the Church and the State. One
shouldn’t go about insisting that the State is the enemy of free, proud
men and the natural protector of the basest elements of a people:
officials, capitalists, flunkies, policemen, speculators, shopkeepers,
moneymakers, gospel-mongers. There are charming people in all these
groups who are offended by this wholesale censure. And suppose you do
consider this court-room--judges, lawyers, public, jury and all--just
as criminal as the accused, is that any reason for calling down thunder
on its head?
Do you never read the presidential messages in the newspapers? Perhaps
you despise the newspapers too? Of course those who produce them are
more interested in cultivating their subscribers than the truth, but is
that any reason to lump them all together, the liberal ones included,
as the “filthy press?” From your point of view, those sensational
events which our friend the saloon-keeper confounds under the one
name of “politics” are simply ridiculous beside a sunset watched from
Fairhaven Cliffs where you go to get your evening paper and the latest
news.
Just look at this pitiful specimen of a citizen who has nothing but a
ridiculous “no” for his country in time of war! A war that brings the
conqueror all sorts of booty is, he tells you bluntly, nothing but an
expedition of brigands, sufficiently well armed to impose their will. A
poor, silly isolated thief steals something and is put under lock and
key, but if he swells to the proportions of an army he comes back, with
flags flying and a band at the head of the procession, bombarded with
flowers and hurrahs by respectable men and women. An evil deed, you
see, becomes a great deed if it is conceived on a large enough scale:
the enthusiasm excited by a war is the rapture of a childish people
before this stupendous metamorphosis.
As for soldiers, Henry has no flowers for an idiot who, whether he
is victor or vanquished, has allowed himself to be seduced by fine
feathers and high pay. He has nothing but a glance to give him, enough
to divine, under the automaton who fires to the right or left at
command and would shoot his brother just as readily, a vestige of a
man who is rather ashamed of the work he is made to do and would be
only too happy to desert if he dared. The instruction which they give a
soldier should logically lead him to distinguish his natural enemy, the
instructor. But this professional brave man is a coward. For the sake
of dressing up in a fine uniform, he has allowed himself to be stripped
of his dignity as a man, just as some young fellows throw their pride
to the winds for a foolish girl. Weak souls, unhappy souls. But in
spite of all this there is less contempt than pity in the look he
gives these fools, yes, even this masquerade of the militia with their
puppets’ gestures. Little as one may sympathise with their stupidity,
everything that debases man is a menace that touches you in your own
person.
You see how far a village good-for-nothing can carry his sarcasm--a
lover of wild flowers and beautiful trees and the unknown things that
might be equally beautiful. He is not responsible for his country,
this “land of liberty” which is subject to the omnipotences of money
and morality; he despises the majority and the ballot. He is no
pistareen-patriot. He ought to take a lesson from his friend Walt
Whitman, whom he has seen in Brooklyn and admires--Walt who stands
whole-heartedly for the flag and for war to a finish, brigand war or
holy war.... Henry has not read his articles in that wretched Brooklyn
sheet, for he never reads the papers at all. It’s a great pity. Walt is
not the man to belittle the National Honour and cynically ask to see
this interesting creature of which they are talking in the newspapers.
Henry had never met this famous bird on his walks, or that other
chanticleer, National Sentiment. Among his own people, among those
whom he would like to regard as his compatriots, even among those who
are nearest to him, he often feels as lost as among strangers. The
prejudices of colour and the flag do not correspond with anything in
his geography. Whether you are an American or a South Sea Islander,
whether you wear a cap or a turban, whether your hair is in a queue or
parted on the side is all one to him. All he asks is, Are you a man,
and what can you do? Play me a little of your music, and I shall know.
A man, you understand; that comes first, first. You can tell me later
what kind of dessert you like or what your nationality is, if you have
a moment to spare: those things are very interesting, of course, but
begin with essentials. Talk music.
You see?... How can anybody hit it off with a fellow who defends his
ideas in this revolutionary way? Henry has only one excuse. If there is
in his sarcasms something more than the pride of a solitary man and the
revolt of the individual, it is because he feels and speaks as a man
whose hands know certain things that philosophers do not know. He has
not allowed himself to be caught up in the machinery of the workaday
world, but he has had to drudge just the same. He knows better than by
hearsay what it means to be exploited. Of all those lies that other
people complacently accept, sweetening them with the honey of a lofty
philosophy, he has felt the effects in his own person ever since he
left college. A man who works with his hands for wages has definite
and personal reasons for criticising these lies a little more sharply
than a humanist in his study or a journalist at his editorial desk.
The elements and materials he has touched have given him a sensibility
of a subtler kind. “_The callous palms of the labourer are conversant
with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the
heart, than the languid fingers of idleness._” This quality, whether
he wills it or not, gives him the more fraternal accent of the comrade
of the poor. Is it a mere philosopher who, as he follows the railroad
that skirts Walden, can ask, as he places his foot on a sleeper, if
it is not going to rise up, if every sleeper is not going to take the
form of one of those hard-working Irishmen who have placed it there and
over whom the train passes at fixed hours, filled with people who roll
comfortably along while the others are rolled over?
The older he grows the more sensitive Henry becomes to the injuries
which, with the precision of a rite, the armed man inflicts upon the
unarmed. The experience of life avails nothing; instead of blunting,
it sharpens his susceptibility. That nameless one whom the Supreme
Court in Boston has just sent off like a package is an intolerable
humiliation--it is enough to blot out the five continents. It is the
State burying its fangs in the flesh of a fugitive. The victim may
not be a great philosopher, but he has nerves--like the distinguished
Governor himself. His thick lips cannot afford to keep smiling.
In an age swollen with the sense of its own importance, this negro
slavery was the most brutal form of the exploitation of man by man.
Since Uncle Tom had brought all the lovers of sentimental scenes and
tears-in-the-eyes flocking about his Cabin, the abolitionist propaganda
had made headway. Henry had joined in it from afar, in his own way. To
further the desertion of the blacks, it had developed a whole secret
organization, the Underground Railroad, with its system, its branches,
switches, waiting-rooms, regulating station. Henry had his share in
the administration. He was station-master at one of those little
halting-places in the country where only a few trains stop from time
to time but that are all the safer in the transit of smuggled goods.
Concord was only a middling-sized village, but it was one that counted
in no small way in the scheme of anti-slavery sympathies. At the very
dawn of the movement, when Henry was just preparing to enter college, a
society of women had been founded there for the abolition of slavery,
and several particular friends of the family were members of it. Ten
years later, Wendell Phillips came there, three winters in succession,
and aroused the most violent excitement in the village frog-pond by
denouncing a Constitution that openly supported the ignominy. If the
old people were outraged and scandalised by this audacity, the young
were enraptured by it; Henry, at that time secretary of the Lyceum,
sent the _Liberator_ a paper on the first lecture. On August 1st, 1844,
an abolitionist meeting was held in the Court-house at which Waldo had
spoken. William Lloyd Garrison was there, and Henry rang the bell to
fling to the winds the good news and the challenge.
The friends of the cause did not forget Concord in their rounds. One of
them, whom a friend introduced to him in March, 1857, made a profound
impression on Henry. A big fellow in his fifties, round-shouldered,
grizzled, rough-hewn, with the rugosity that went with the frontier
type; he came from Kansas, in fact, where with his sons he led,
in those hazardous regions, the far from rose-coloured existence
of a defender of the cause. And what a face he had.... That mouth
like a sabre-cut, the metal of those eyes, that stiff, projecting
hair planted thick on the low, determined brow, those perpendicular
wrinkles between the eyebrows, how much they told.... You could imagine
unforgettable figures like this in old times on a rowers’ bench,
chained by the feet.... That astonishing face, hard as steel, stood out
so magnificently from the crowd of weak masks--the face of a pirate, a
condottiere or a martyr. Another one who did not smile.
Henry felt at once that he was in the presence of a member of his
own family. They talked. But he did not need to be convinced by
the arguments or the stories of what was going on out there on the
frontier. This presence was enough for him: it carried conviction
with it. What did it matter if the man talked like an illiterate,
narrow-minded, old sanctimonious Puritan pietist? Henry looked at
that face, that naked grandeur, that pure force of heroism and
self-sacrifice. He drank in the wind that had swept that brow from its
childhood, saw all that the horizon of the prairie had left in that
glance. It was arranged that the man should come back to Concord and
give a lecture. His name was John Brown--in other words, he was as good
as nameless. You felt like saying simply the man, for short.
The little station-master acquitted himself of his duties with the
decision and the punctuality which, as a ne’er-do-well, he always put
into his work. They signalled to you that someone was on the way; you
had to be there to receive the “package,” before dawn or at nightfall,
put him up if necessary, and in great mystery (the whole family was
in the conspiracy and protected the fugitive, but evil tongues and
spies were not lacking at Concord any more than elsewhere), then
quietly ship him off again, to a safe place over the Canadian border.
Pass the ball. One more Southern planter would have to make the best
of his loss. Henry, a veteran with a sure eye, had the qualities of
a smuggler. You had charge of a man with the police on his tracks,
stimulated by a “good reward,” and while you were on the way to
get a ticket for him at the station you would notice a man with a
gallows-face roaming about, looking very much like a sleuth from
Boston; so you would decide to wait for the next train. The runaway
could stay a little longer at the house, where he was in good hands.
While he was living at Walden, Henry had put one of them up in his
cabin. There were certainly risks in this smuggling business. But when
did risks ever weaken the resolution of an honest man? They strengthen
it.
For the rest, Henry was an abolitionist of an altogether special kind,
very far from orthodox. If the exploitation of the negroes was the most
patent form of slavery, how many other slaves there were beyond the
horizon of the cotton-fields, everywhere, to infinity, whom he would
have liked to free.... The views of the Boston friends were limited by
the famous Cabin. They didn’t see them increasing among the people of
the North, those white-skinned, thin-lipped, fair or chestnut-haired
slaves with heads anything but woolly! Henry saw them all around him,
innumerable and more brutalized than he would have been able to say. He
reckoned fully a million of them in Massachusetts, without the least
suspicion of their state, poor souls--which was the saddest part of the
whole business.
When are you going to start a campaign to enable all these white
negroes to escape, these slaves who are so busy under the eye of their
overseers growing the evil cotton from which the web of our days is
woven? To make them want to bid farewell for good and all to their
servile habits and gestures? If people would listen to you, Henry,
Canada would be so full that there would be no place to house them.
* * * * *
One morning such a big piece of news spread abroad that a man who never
read the newspapers could not help glancing at it. It was the paper for
October 18th, 1859. Henry read it. A handful of men, almost unarmed,
had seized the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia during
the night and intrenched themselves there, after making a prisoner of
a colonel, the great-grand-nephew of George Washington; they had held
it for twenty-four hours. A regular siege had been necessary to get
the better of the rebels, or rather the survivors, for more than half
of them had been killed. It was his friend John Brown’s work.... That
morning and for days to come, Henry could devour more newspapers than
his good father had nibbled in a whole lifetime.
But if John Brown had struck, it was not solely to enable his friend
Thoreau to give at last the full measure of his egoism. Old Brown had
more substantial reasons than that.
Henry saw again the face of the old peasant or galley-slave, the
expression of the bluish eyes that brightened up when the man spoke
of the cause. It was not six months since he had seen him the last
time, and his image was as fresh as yesterday. Old Brown was wearing
now a long white beard that gave him a patriarchal look. They had
dined together at Henry’s. Waldo had come over and the three had found
themselves there together. In the evening Old Brown had spoken at the
Town Hall; and as he told them how his son had been made prisoner by
the Border Ruffians, he had even shown them the chain which the latter
had made him wear. The effect was a little crude, but this man so
excluded the idea of anything theatrical that you couldn’t look at this
gesture ironically. As for his plans, Henry had no anxiety at the time;
you could have entire faith in such a figure as that.
Old Brown’s plans.... That was what had been suddenly revealed by the
incident of the Arsenal, the long, long story of which that low brow
and those inexorable eyes had spoken. Born in Connecticut, of good
English and Dutch stock, he had found himself, a boy of five, cast in
the middle of Ohio, whither his father, a penniless tanner, had come
from New England to seek his fortune. A boy who grew up in buckskin
trousers, among the animals and the friendly Indians; a sensitive boy
who remained inconsolable after losing the only marble he had ever
possessed; a boy who, at twelve, was already conducting cattle long
distances and had learned just enough to read and reckon a little.
As a big lad of twenty, strong and serious, working in a tannery with
his father, he appeared very shy and rather haughty. The Bible and the
Church absorbed him, together with an anxious fear for the salvation
of his soul, even suggesting to him for a while the idea of becoming
a preacher. He married, moved his tannery to Pennsylvania, where he
had no very brilliant success, ran into debt, remarried, returned to
Ohio and set up in business with a partner. Another failure. He threw
himself into land-speculation, went into bankruptcy, then, a poor,
uncertain soul, tried any and every means of conjuring away his ill
fortune. Long journeys took him across country, buying and selling
cattle and sheep. In spite of everything, divine Providence did not
assist John the Shepherd and his thirteen children--whom, as a brutally
fierce believer, he ruled with a rod of iron: little matter whether
they had any education or not as long as they feared the Lord and
his representative, their father. The wholesale sheep-trade which
he followed for ten years with a partner still failed to bring him
prosperity, and at the end of their enterprise left him the same poor
John as before. In incessant litigation with his creditors, always
clumsy in business, he found himself lost in a maze of speculations,
plans, combines, and was not entirely free from those barely honest
little trickeries to which the perfect devotee does not refuse to stoop
in order to save his worldly goods along with his soul.
It was in the midst of these vicissitudes, as he was approaching his
fortieth year, that an idea took possession of him, an idea that he
revealed to his family, one evening, in the kitchen of the old farm
in Ohio--to “break the jaws of the wicked and pluck the spoil out of
his teeth.” What he meant in his pietistic jargon was to free the
blacks from slavery, and to free them by violence. From that moment
John the Shepherd underwent a gradual transformation into Old Brown,
Partisan and Freebooter. In Springfield, Massachusetts, he rented a
little wooden house where he stored his wool; his principal object
in coming there was to place himself in touch with the militants of
Boston, whose debating societies and philosophic views, for the rest,
interested him very little. Words, nothing but words. The sheep-raiser
explained his programme to them. Brother Brown was going to strike with
a vengeance, rise openly against the authorities and crush those who
resisted. The direct route this time, no more Underground Railroads.
It was in the South, on its own ground, that the slave-power must be
attacked. Towards the time of his first visit to Concord, Old Brown,
without taking anybody into his confidence, was already thinking,
among the important points he had in view, of that Arsenal which was
so well situated at the intersection of the three States of Maryland,
Pennsylvania and Virginia. After this, he pondered his plan, perfected
it, minutely prepared to carry it out. But in the meantime, as he had
to live, and the market-price of wool had fallen because of the war,
he embarked for Europe, where he hoped to make an advantageous sale.
London--Paris--Brussels--Hamburg: it was a very fine journey for a
Westerner, but the traveller had carried his old bad luck along with
him in his bag; he was obliged to sell his bales of wool at ridiculous
prices. From Europe he returned with a loss of $40,000 for his partner
and himself and the still more firmly fixed reputation of a man who had
no understanding of business.
Then, one fine day, he bade farewell to trade and went off and
established his family in the midst of the solitude of the Adirondacks,
at North Elba. He would go and see them up there when he had the time,
for he was almost always in Kansas, where three of his older sons
were settled and his mission claimed him. The Border was his sphere;
he was at the front there, in contact with the enemy--the slaver.
Business, litigation, cattle, the price of wool, all these things
counted for nothing now in Old Brown’s mind: it was as if the victim
of eternal combines, the old veteran upon whom earthly fortune had
been unwilling to smile, was meditating a last stroke of business, a
supreme speculation, in which he would risk everything, even his skin,
without regret, for the triumph of a great cause--would sacrifice
as a visionary the rest of his mortal life, the rest of this rough,
storm-tossed, agitated life, for a beautiful share of eternity....
Thanks to all this travelling about, managing men and animals and hides
and wool and pushing his famous plan, he was clothed with a kind of
authority that impressed people. He was going to find this useful
enough in holding his own with the Border Ruffians who roamed about
the country, well-armed, in their red or blue flannel shirts, with a
dagger boldly thrust through their leather belts, with an unspeakably
villainous air--cut-throats in the pay of the planters, who were
determined to remain the masters in their own house and protect the
free disposal of their black work-hands. To earn his living, he did
surveying, a trade that permitted him to study the ground in more ways
than one. Between whiles, there were surprises--hangings, lynchings,
tar-and-featherings, raids, cold-blooded butcheries with the sabre--all
work for a soldier.
Old Brown was appropriately free from sentimentality. For instance,
to avenge the abominable sacking of Lawrence, when the partisans of a
Free Kansas had allowed themselves to be trampled upon like cowards by
their enemies, he arranged a little party of his own. With a sort of
company of which he was captain and cook, he intended to show these
swine that they were not always going to triumph with impunity and
spread among the band a wholesome terror. In the old man’s camp, they
sharpened the cutlasses on the grindstone and got ready for business. A
list had been drawn up of the condemned persons who were to pay for all
the rabble. While he was getting ready, one of his companions who was
a little anxious came and recommended caution to the chief. The latter
replied: “Caution, caution, sir. I am eternally tired of hearing that
word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice.” The chief was
greatly excited and ready for anything. Forward, men; let the cowards
stay behind.
They were soon there; the little troop collected for a moment not
far from Pottawatomie, where the birds they were going to catch
had their nest. There were three brothers here, Germans by birth,
known for their pro-slavery sympathies--big brutes with whom he had
already had a bone to pick as a neighbour, together with a family of
poor devils from Tennessee, a father and his two grown sons, who had
followed the lead of the Germans. There was also a member of that
pseudo-Legislative Assembly which claimed to rule the State in the name
of the slave-holders. At ten o’clock in the evening the little troop
got under way, taking all precautions. They knocked at the door of the
Tennesseeans, made the father and his two sons come out, conducted
them two hundred yards from the house and cold-bloodedly put them to
the sword. A bullet in the father to finish the business and make it
surer. One of the two brothers who had offered resistance had his
arms cut off, his body mangled, his skull torn open, a hole in the
jaw. All this made less noise than a musket volley; it was a thorough
job, swift and stimulating. A little further away, at midnight, at
the “Representative’s” house, a similar scene. The wife was ill with
measles; the condemned man asked to be allowed to stay with her till
they found someone to look after her. “It matters not,” said Old Brown;
“you have neighbours.” And he did not even allow the man to pull on
his boots. Off with him. Shortly afterwards the “Representative” lay
in a thicket, with his head and side run through; they had sent him to
represent his friends the slave-holders in the Legislative Assembly on
high. There remained the three Germans, one of whom turned out to be
spending the night with neighbours. The same ceremonial. The next day
he was found in the ravine, with his skull split in two places and half
emptied, a hole in his chest, his right hand cut off, hanging to the
wrist by a rag of skin. The work finished, they went off and washed
their sabres in the river and the butchers started for home, rather
disgusted. They needed some good hot coffee to settle their nerves. But
it was all in the day’s work and Old Brown regretted nothing.
The hand of the Lord had smitten these infidels a little roughly. These
were the ways of the frontier, where sober notions of good and evil
were not in vogue. But one of the sons of Old Brown who took part in
the expedition lacked the iron nerves of the old man, although his
Christian name was John also. The night after the deed, returning half
out of his wits to the house of an uncle, he cried to his brother Owen,
who had joined him: “Out with you, you filthy murderer ...” and then
wandered off into the brush, his poor mind gone.... With Jason, another
of his brothers, the demented man was soon captured by the Ruffians,
who had hurried out in search of them. Jason saw the rope that was
about to encircle his neck hanging from a tree over his head. But for
days and days, both of them, chained together by their ankles, their
hands tied like convicts, were led about the roads, while John, who
had not recovered his right mind, imagined that he was the officer in
charge of the troop, shouted his commands and told his keepers how they
ought to kill his brother, the stammerer. And the Ruffians of the guard
bullied and tortured their prisoners with all the more zest because
they thought the poor madman was pretending. During all this time they
were scouring the region to dislodge Old Brown, who was actually not
far away. He was roaming about in the neighbourhood, waiting for an
opportunity to free his two boys. But it was impossible to lay hands
on him. With four of his other sons and a few faithful followers, he
had gained the brush. He had also gained the reputation of a bird
whose feathers it was not good to stroke and who could not be safely
approached without plenty of precautions. Be sufficiently energetic
and people will respect you. When they shouted in the fields: “Look
out! There’s Old Brown!” well-armed people whom you would have supposed
were brave, if only because of their numbers, ran as if the devil were
coming out of the bushes. Old Brown had become a bugbear. And years
followed, full of guerilla warfare, raids and forays, and through them
passed a man on horseback or marching along with bent shoulders beside
a wagon, who was now here, now there, but never where you expected
to catch him. You could burn, destroy the village where he had his
headquarters, but to catch the Old Man was another pair of breeches.
A new stage in the march towards the goal which Old Brown had fixed.
He published a tract in which he urged the army to disobey orders,
“respectfully and amicably offered to the Officers and Soldiers of the
American Army in Kansas.” He summed up his argument in these words: “It
is as much the duty of the common soldier of the U. S. Army, according
to his ability and opportunity, to be informed upon all subjects in any
way affecting the political or general welfare of his country, and to
watch with jealous vigilance the course and management of all public
functionaries both civil and military; and to govern his actions as a
citizen soldier accordingly: as though he were President of the United
States.” This appeal, signed “A Soldier,” did not win the approval
of the friends in Boston; but the Old Man could get along without
their approval. The Old Man was collecting his wits for a still more
serious action. He set to work, quietly, to instruct a little troop of
voluntary followers. His war budget was not very heavy, and often he
had not enough to eat. Then, on a brief raid in Missouri, he entered
a planter’s house, revolver in hand, killed another man, freed the
slaves, ransacked the dwelling, took two prisoners. All this just to
keep his hand in. In mid-winter, with a single companion, the Old Man
travelled more than six hundred miles escorting to Canada a wagon full
of negro women and children; his fingers and his ears were frozen,
but his skin was tough and he could stand it. There was a constant
reward of $3000 for anyone who arrested him. It was worth the effort,
but no one interfered with him, even when on one occasion Old Brown
calmly entered a town, made a speech, and calmly went off again, after
a glance at the handbills in big letters in which his admirers were
invited to capture him. Didn’t anyone want $3000?
Much later, on the night of October 16th-17th, a wagon descended the
hill which, on the Maryland side, leads to the peninsula where Harper’s
Ferry rises, formed by the confluence of the two rivers. The horse
stiffened its legs, for the wagon was full of pikes and ammunition.
A round-shouldered old man with a white beard and eighteen other men
accompanied the convoy. The plan, matured through long years, was
being executed. It had definitely ceased to be a question of Uncle Tom
and his Cabin; it was a question now of bayonets and bullets. Do you
understand, Boston friends?
The plan was to surprise and carry the place, cost what it might. And
then, who could say?... Once masters of this important point, they
could fortify themselves in the mountains, the blacks would rise, they
would run from all the cotton fields; they would arm (they had pikes--a
thousand of them, specially made), and there would be a general
conflagration, the war carried into Africa. They would establish a
provisional government, of which the constitution was already drawn up
on paper and the principal parts were assigned. There was $600 in the
treasury.
Meanwhile, the little troop advanced, made a prisoner of the watchman
on the bridge, who thought it was a joke, a few passers-by, and then
the janitor of the armory, which they entered with the game all in
their own hands. John Brown’s company were masters of the Arsenal,
in the dead of night. The hardest part was over; from this point
they could strike out. Five miles off, on the heights of Bolivar,
there lived a landed proprietor, a slave-holder who was no other than
Colonel Lewis Washington, a descendant of the great man. He had in his
possession the pistol given by Lafayette and the sword presented by
Frederick the Great to the Liberator. At midnight, by the flickering
light of a torch, the colonel saw, outlined against the door of his
bedroom, four armed men who informed him that he was their prisoner and
ordered him to hand to one of them--a black--the sword of the Great
Frederick. Then they courteously conducted the colonel away in his own
carriage, made the slaves climb into a big wagon, and the procession
turned towards the Arsenal. They stopped on the way at a neighbour’s,
where the scene was repeated. The latter was also treated to a ride,
with his six blacks. At the Arsenal Old Brown distributed the pikes to
the negroes, placed them in charge of their former masters and thus
addressed the colonel: “I shall be very attentive to you, sir, for I
may get the worst of it in my first encounter, and if so, your life is
worth as much as mine.” Then the Old Man calmly girded himself with the
sword of Frederick the Great. The trains were stopped on the bridge
where he had placed a guard. The alarm was given. The fire-bell rang.
The good citizens of the little town took down their shot-guns, since
the more formidable weapons were in the hands of the rebels. The Old
Man, very much master of himself, ordered breakfast for forty-five
persons at the hotel nearby. And the day rose on this astonishing
victory, as clean as the Liberator’s sword.
Twenty-four hours later, in the engine-room, Old Brown, his body torn
with bayonet thrusts, his head gashed, his hair matted and his face
stained with blood, was stretched out with his son Oliver, who had
ceased to beg them to kill him, motionless at his side, and his other
son Watson dying. Of the twenty-one men involved in the raid only four
remained who were alive. Seven had escaped, including those who had
remained at the farm to guard the stock of arms and two of those who
had occupied the Arsenal, who had succeeded in getting away during the
night. And on a rock, in the middle of the Potomac, was the huddled
body of the youngest of the company, a boy of eighteen who, while he
was attempting to escape by swimming, had been overtaken and riddled
with bullets. There his body was, perched in mid-stream, a fine target
for the troops that had passed in the afternoon. It was altogether
too tempting for everybody not to take a shot at it before dropping
in for a drink at the hotel, which had made a lot of money to-day. In
the bed of the river lay another corpse, and as it was not very deep
in that spot they could see it clearly, with its face drawn in death
and seeming to move with the water. Another fine target for the clever
sharpshooters: this man too was one of the companions of the raid.
In the Arsenal they were waiting for the Governor of Virginia. Already
officers, reporters, congressmen, curiosity-seekers were filing past
the Rebel, lying there on his mattress. Old Brown did not look at all
like a man who had been beaten; he spoke calmly, weighing his words,
as if he were at home on his old farm. Meanwhile, the town began to
be filled with shouts, brawls and a general fanfaronade in preparation
for the saturnalia when the militia and the brave population would be
fraternizing in an orgy of victory.
* * * * *
Henry was agitated to the depths of his soul, depths that one might
have supposed were better sheltered from squalls. Agitated at the
thought of the gallows-rope strangling the tough neck of his friend Old
Brown. Agitated by the cowardice of the worthy disciples with all their
good intentions who, since the raid, the crime against the safety of
the State, had run for cover, desperately disavowing the rebel.... No,
gentlemen, no, gentlemen, we hadn’t the faintest suspicion of it; you
can see we are as white as snow.... It was a stampede of runaways, a
chorus of denials. Even the _Liberator_ treated the raid as an act of
madness. Not one of these people was capable of seeing how beautiful
it was, just because it was mad--with a madness that purged the world
of its reasonable reason! The Knight of the Umbrella and the Bundle
had always been for madnesses like this against the niggardly prudence
of the sham humanitarians. That obstinate, that furious old lunatic,
with his hobby of carrying the war into Africa, had actually carried it
there. That old Trojan who continued to believe, with a belief as tough
as a stump, in other realities than the price of wool, who was ready
to sacrifice himself for an idea.... He himself had staked his fortune
on a folly. John Brown, murderer or madman, was a brother. And that
brother was going to be hanged.
In Henry’s innermost sanctuary there was no security left--the gods
were tottering on their socles. It was no longer possible to think of
anything else, to resume the thread of one’s dear old thoughts. Nothing
but a few passages from the greatest poems corresponded with the
obsession of this hour and seemed to meet the circumstances. When he
went out his ramble was finished before it had begun: what was waiting
for him at the end of his solitary walk rose up, from the moment he
set out, to demand its due. His eyes no longer saw what they had seen;
when he lifted his head, he saw rising against the woods a face with a
low brow and bluish grey eyes, the hard face of the old cattle-driver,
the driver of a whole people towards the Promised Land, the face of the
martyr, imposing silence on all nature. The sun set behind a gibbet.
Wachusett, over there, was like a judge delivering a sentence. The
beauty of the world could no longer vie with this beauty of the man who
was dying for a mad cause.
Henry was unable to sleep. At night, he would relight his candle,
seize a scrap of paper within reach of his hand and cover it with
lines. No event, near or far, had ever inflamed him to this degree.
He was another Henry, unknown to himself. Old Brown, what have you
done to a man who had such a beautiful equanimity and such a disdain
for the affairs of the world? What power is this within you that can
arouse such a mad passion? You have thrown him into a pitiable state.
He is much less strong than another fellow who lives in Brooklyn and
whom your fate does not prevent from eating and sleeping. For this
latter at least a man who is going to be hanged for his crime does not
blot out the universe; luckily for him, he remains the master of his
serenity. He is not like Henry, astonished at the sight of all these
villagers, these good citizens who have the heart to go about their
little affairs, as if nothing were burning their vitals. For him the
whole life of the world seems to be in abeyance, as on the eve of a
cataclysm. Will it not rise in one mass to free this upright man and
avenge his defeat? The wildness in Henry’s soul is boiling up, boiling
over with rebellion; it runs to Harper’s Ferry and bars the exits of
the Arsenal.
He must speak, and at once, dissociate himself from these wavering
souls, these cowards, utter all his admiration for the criminal, while
the latter is still alive. For they have condemned him hastily, in all
the heat of public indignation, as an altogether special criminal.
They have actually had to carry him into court on a stretcher because
of his wounds, of which those in his head have made him half deaf. And
they are waiting, from one day to another, to pronounce the sentence.
It is vain to tell Henry that he is mad, that he is almost alone in
his opinion, for a man who, alone, rushes to the defence of a friend,
marches surrounded by a whole army. To counsels of caution he replies
as Old Brown replied at Pottawatomie. To hell with your caution, you
skulkers.
Henry announced that he would speak the following Sunday, October 30th,
in the vestry of the parish church. At the last moment, when some
advisers still tried to stop him, he replied roughly: “I did not send
to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak.” And he spoke.
The defence had succeeded in causing a postponement of the sentence,
but there was no doubt what it would be. Henry’s object, however, was
not to save Old Brown’s neck; it was merely to celebrate the beauty of
his character and his act. Henry Thoreau, fool of nature and the beauty
in man, as Hokusai in his Japan was the fool of drawing, was ready to
maintain against the whole world that John Brown, his friend, convicted
of high treason, was right, and this to the very foot of the gallows if
they judged him worthy of being hanged also. That is what beauty means,
that is what friendship means. It does not consist in lending you
half a dollar in case of need or an umbrella if it happens to rain. It
consists in accepting blows of your own free will and bearing witness
at any risk. In not letting go of your own kind if he has fallen into
the hands of the enemy. Henry spoke. His listeners were all ears. It
was no philosophical lecture this time. There may have been a few
stifled growls in certain corners of the hall. But no one protested. It
was as if his conviction had stirred that soft dough. When it was over,
the few rabid people were no longer talking of the gallows for John
Brown: they held their peace. The general impression was excellent. One
good mark for Concord.
Henry was very anxious to repeat his “plea” at Worcester, where
his friend Blake lived. He would have liked to repeat it without
remuneration in every county in New England. Meanwhile, he spoke in
Boston, two days after Concord. It was November 1st; the sentence had
not yet been pronounced. Perhaps it would be to-morrow. Half an hour
before the moment set for the lecture, the hall was full. For an hour
and a half the people listened religiously to this fervent little man
who, far from attempting to excuse the crime, celebrated it. Henry had
more expression and enthusiasm than usual. He was no longer a man bored
with the necessity of uttering fine-spun sarcasms and over-concise
aphorisms before rows and rows of eyes that could not make him out at
all: he was an embattled soul, stirred by friendship and emotion. There
was electricity in the air and in the applause. Even in his casual
remarks before and after the lecture it was as if he had lost all his
old savage shyness and discovered how to communicate with men. Henry
spoke fluently, in a tone of exaltation, thundered against the Union,
the President, the State. It was as if there were no more barriers
left.
As for Old Brown, in his prison at Charlestown, nothing remained for
him, after the sittings of the court, but to lend himself to the little
ceremony that was being arranged in his honour. He was preparing for
it with no ill grace; was it not the final touch of the great plan
that bore his signature? He had formally refused to countenance any
attempt of his followers to enable him to escape. If they left the
prison door wide open he would not go out; he had made this statement
to the warden, who was a very kind man. John Brown was an obstinate
old soul. Even his wife, who had come down from North Elba and was in
the neighbourhood, was obliged, the first time, to go away without
seeing him, broken-hearted but well aware that nothing could avail
against the will of the Old Man; this will might have weakened at the
farewell scene. He had only consented to see her yesterday, at the last
extremity. The warden had invited them both to his own family table.
When the time came to part, after these too happy moments, the Old
Man would have liked to keep her longer. But they had had to bid each
other good-bye, agreeing to meet again at Harper’s Ferry; she was going
to wait there for his body, which was to be turned over to her. The
condemned man had spent his time, since the sentence, writing letters
in his peasant hand to his friends. “Yesterday Nov. 2nd I was sentenced
to be hanged on Dec. 2nd next. Do not grieve on my account. I am still
quite cheerful. God bless you all.” It was a whole month now since he
had been condemned to death; his wounds were healed, and it would have
been good not to be lying idle in prison. A true old stager is bored by
this inactivity.
On December 2nd, in the morning, he left his cell, surrounded by
uniforms. It was a clear dawn and mild enough for the season. As far
as he could see, on all sides, there were massed troops as if for the
arrival of some great personage. Old Brown was a little surprised; he
had had no idea he was so important. A van was waiting for him. He was
only fifty-nine years old, but as he climbed into the wagon he had the
air of a very old man; his white beard, which he had clipped a little
for the raid, completed his patriarchal appearance. That box there in
the van was quite long enough to serve as a bench for three persons,
and he sat down between his friend the warden and the sheriff on his
coffin.
The man they had come for was as calm as a traveller who had come out
to see the country after having kept in his room for six weeks. Perhaps
he was thinking that his last great combine was not ending so badly for
him, on the whole, since, at the cost of a few seconds of fluttering at
the end of a rope, he could see as far as the eye could reach fields
golden as glory. But nothing actually lay before him save the winter
landscape of the valley. “What a beautiful country this is,” he said.
“I have never been down this way before.” The journey was not long.
They were there at last. Old Brown climbed down, more briskly than he
had climbed up, and ascended the steps of the scaffold, from which he
descried the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a spectacle to fill eyes that
had taken in many horizons during their lifetime. When he became once
more aware of the scaffold, he shook hands with the warden and the
sheriff. Then they pulled the cap over his head, tied his arms behind
his back and passed the noose around his neck, taking care not to let
it catch in his beard. In his old trousers, in his old slippers, Old
Brown stood upright there, as if he were in command of the three parade
companies who were taking ten minutes to find their places. Perhaps he
was counting these minutes, but nothing appeared from under his cap. In
a natural voice, he merely said: “Be quick,” and stood there, without a
tremor, awaiting his reward. A signal, the floor gaped, and at the end
of the rope a great body hung, oscillated a moment and was still.
But Old Brown had come out of his prison that morning with the prospect
of a much longer journey than those few hundred yards to the scaffold.
His wife was waiting for him at Harper’s Ferry. Fifteen men escorted
his remains, which were not unpunctual at the rendezvous. And then the
pine coffin set out, accompanied by the widow and a few friends. In the
towns where the train stopped, the crowds surged about the station,
the bells rang, the reception committees stepped forward, a guard of
honour watched the corpse all night in the court-house. The body of the
condemned man seemed to be armed with an even more formidable strength
than that of the Old Man when his head had had a price on it out there
in Kansas. At last there remained only twenty-five miles to be covered,
feet foremost, by the Old Man who had so often travelled them with his
great peasant strides. And then he was at home, after his five days’
pilgrimage, at the family farm, under a great rock opposite White Face
Mountain, and very calm as the hymns that he had loved, sung about the
grave by the blacks of the neighbourhood, faded away in the silence of
the mountains.
Since December 2nd, Henry had been haunted by the feeling that his
friend was the only living man in New England. The others did not need
to have a rope passed round their necks in order to die; they did not
exist. In a number of towns, to celebrate this living man, they fired
a salute of a hundred shots at the hour when he at last received
his full reward--towns where enormous crowds gathered in the church
to pray in memory of him. Concord was a village, but Henry had been
chosen by a few people to request the Selectmen to allow the parish
bell to be rung at the hour of the execution. Did not Concord owe this
attention to John Brown, who had twice been a visitor there? But the
authorities refused for fear of compromising themselves; these people
were among those million slaves who carried Virginia into the very
heart of Massachusetts. So they met in the afternoon at the Town Hall,
among themselves, Waldo, Alcott, William, Sanborn and those of the
Concordians who were not dead, in solemn commemoration of the condemned
man who had already judged his judges. Some words were spoken by Henry
and Waldo, and they all sang a funeral hymn. After the ceremony,
William and Henry vanished into the fields, their minds full of a
figure that would go so well in a triptych, as Henry sometimes thought,
between those of ruddy Walt in Brooklyn and Joe the Indian.
That same evening, on his return, Henry found his good friend Sanborn
waiting at the house with a word for him: “To-morrow morning, Emerson’s
covered wagon and mare will be hitched up at sunrise. Will you call for
it, pick up a traveller at my door, take him to the station at South
Acton and put him on the first train for Canada? He is a friend, but
he’s a queer chap. Pay no attention to what he says to you.” Henry
did not inquire further. It froze hard that night, but at the hour
mentioned he was at Sanborn’s with the rig, and was soon on his way
with the queer fellow, who was quite a young lad. He had put him on the
back seat of the wagon as a precaution. Starting so early, the poor
fellow had not had time to brush his teeth, and this made him feel
ill. In short, this brother seemed to be a little cracked. He rambled
on in a steady stream. He absolutely insisted that his driver was Mr.
Emerson; and on the way he suddenly flung himself out of the wagon
insisting that he was going back to Concord. Henry, who was bent upon
carrying out his mission, was obliged to place his hand on his shoulder
and force him, with the little arts one uses with a man who is not in
his right mind, to get back into the wagon. Hastening the mare, they
at last reached the station, which was only three or four miles away.
There was scarcely anyone about, the train arrived and the traveller
started off. Then Henry returned the wagon and the mare to the stable,
and before going home for breakfast stopped at his friend’s house to
tell him that everything had gone well. There was no need for either
of them to know more. If someone asked you to do a friendly service
and you were employed in the system of the Underground Railroad, what
difference did it make to you to know whether you had taken to the
station on a December morning someone who had escaped in a raid with a
price on his head or a mere traveller who thought you were Mr. Emerson?
Henry said nothing whatever at home about his early morning drive, and
everything passed quietly, as it should. There would be plenty of time
to tell about these things some day.
Three months later, his friend Sanborn himself was obliged to decamp to
Canada. Summoned to appear before the committee of the Senate charged
with investigating the great conspiracy, he had not presented himself
and was threatened with arrest as a defaulting witness. As he refused
to testify, there was nothing for him to do but to disappear. After a
short absence he returned, and one fine day in April a police-sergeant
with five men came out from Boston to arrest him at his house in
Concord. The fire-alarm rang and the village was instantly up in arms;
they were not going to allow Sanborn to be kidnapped. The helpless
sergeant and his men were obliged to leave their prisoner in the
custody of a guard of citizens. Another good mark for Concord.
The following day, he appeared before the court in Boston. The friends
were there, ready for anything, to save Frank Sanborn if the case went
against him. And look over there, by the door, at that big bearded
fellow with a greenish coat: what a florid complexion he has, and how
attentively he is following the discussion! In the name of all the
gods, it’s Walt! Happening to be in Boston, to see through the press
the third edition of his _Leaves_, which Thayer and Eldridge are going
to bring out (these Boston guys are beginning to swallow the satyr
whole), he has turned up to give his comrades a strong hand if there is
any need for it. But there is no occasion to intervene, for the court
declares the arrest of Sanborn illegal, and he returns home in triumph.
It was through his friend Sanborn, who had once been introduced to
Henry by Waldo and who kept a little school in the village, as Henry
himself had done at twenty, that the latter had met Old Brown at the
time of his first visit to Concord. But all the “confederates” in the
plot, or those at least who were accused of having aided it, were not
of the same stripe as Sanborn. Seized with panic, some of them had
placed the frontier between themselves and their responsibility, real
or supposed. There was even one of them, an old friend of John Brown,
whose constitution had been so little able to endure the uproar of the
raid and the fear of being compromised that he had had to be shut up as
a lunatic.
And a year and a half after the raid--scarcely ten months after the
commemoration of the Fourth of July at North Elba, before the rock
under which the tough carcass of the Old Man rested in the solitude of
the Adirondacks (Henry, who was invited, was unable to go, but he had
sent a few pages that were read)--the same Governor of Virginia who
had come to see the traitor and conspirator lying, a prisoner, on his
mattress at the Arsenal seized the same Arsenal himself, and the next
day, April 10th, 1861, the decree of Secession was voted. War was on.
The troops of Massachusetts, defiling through the streets of Boston,
sang the song of John Brown, the song of the soldiers. The dead of
Antietam were strewn over the earth on the outskirts of the town which
the Old Man had entered with his eighteen companions, armed with pikes.
It was war, and thousands of young fellows were going to kill one
another for ... for ... for.... You, Walt, you know what it’s all
about, don’t you?... And you, Henry?... Mark you, this is no war of
conquest: it is civil war, holy war.
IX
Early in the month it was delightfully warm: one saw the little yellow
butterflies fluttering about, encouraged by this smiling Indian Summer.
And then it turned cold after the middle of November; it was necessary
to pull up the last turnips in the garden to save them from the frost.
What joyous walks one had during the days when the first crust of ice
resisted the sun! But it was December now. The winter was driving down
as brutally as a wedge. Over the fields the crows flocked together in
vast protesting flocks. A heavy snow covered the countryside. It was
a beautiful soft mantle that you trampled down in silence, carrying
the feathers on your boots and leaving behind you a long chain of
footprints.
Just one year, day for day, after he had taken that young lunatic to
the station, Henry had gone out for his walk and stopped for a long
time before some old stumps, to count the concentric rings that marked
their age. He liked to know how old his friends the trees were, even
when they were no more. Was it there he caught his cold, in spite of
his overcoat? No one will ever know. That same day, as the day before
had been the anniversary of John Brown’s death, he was talking about
the old man with two fellows who maintained that he had no right to
risk his life. But how about Jesus then? Would he have hesitated if
he had foreseen Calvary? That is what people always say when a man
has made such a simple sacrifice of his life.... But this evil cough
persisted. Henry had certainly made a mistake in paying no attention
to his bronchitis and going off to deliver a promised lecture in the
neighbourhood. He was taking some care of himself, but without any
great results. There was nothing to do but to let the illness wear
itself out. He had had bad times before and pulled through.
Henry had never been a colossus. In his youth he had had to interrupt
his studies at Harvard for a year because of his health; since then it
had been toughened by the open air of his great farm but it had always
been liable to relapses. A serious attack of bronchitis had kept him
for weeks at home when he was twenty-four. Then, at the time of the
hermitage, he had received a kick from a horse which stretched him on
the earth, and he had felt the effects of this in his chest for years.
His frame had held out well, however, and whenever he needed to be
repaired, well, the cabinet-maker had plenty of odds and ends of wood
in a corner of his workshop.
Even as an invalid, kept in the house, he was able to profit by his
days and find a good flavour in life. But now and then, especially at
the hour when he ought to be setting out for his walk, it was all he
could do to resist a flood of black thoughts as he dreamed of the daily
appointments he was missing again. At such moments as these, sunk in
a chair or flattening his nose against the window, he was a very sad
little soul whose life had been turned into prose and who, in a fit of
depression, could easily understand how, in some circumstances, Tom,
Dick or Harry would commit suicide. When that accursed frame won’t go
any more, what are we good for, great gods! He would have liked to pull
down the blinds so that the daylight could not offend him any more
with its sneering remarks and slumber away the hours waiting for the
end like a mortally wounded animal that has resigned itself. But these
moments quickly passed, for if the daylight defied him, his guest, the
imagination, marched in and defied the daylight in turn; it had plenty
of ways of making game of that blockhead. And then he had sometimes
undergone those phases when, though he was not actually ill and was
even out for adventure, nothing spoke to him in the spectacle that had
always had such a powerful attraction for his senses; the dulled body
remained cold and refused to touch the offered nourishment. Inspiration
deserted him, as if his friend found the lodging decidedly too narrow,
as if this frame were too puny for him to hang his pictures there.
As he approached his fortieth year this discord had taken the
proportions of a long-standing quarrel. Since the spring of 1855,
Henry had been feeling rather limp without knowing exactly why. A
great languor spread through him, condemning him to inactivity as he
awaited the end of the crisis. Spoiled were the beautiful plans he had
cherished for this summer, a new trip to the Maine woods. He was good
for nothing but to drag his reluctant carcass along under the elms
of the village, like an invalid. The excursion he had determined to
attempt, in July, to Cape Cod, had not remedied this strange weakness
to any great extent; he had his ups and downs but always the same
debility in the end. Autumn wandered by. And then, towards the end of
the year, the strength came back to his legs and the spirit returned to
the soul of a powerless wretch; perhaps the arrival of the magnificent
Oriental books sent by his friend “Cholmley” had something to do with
it. So he could go out this winter and not lose all his pleasure.
When the first fine days came, Henry could not pretend that he was
absolutely fit for a long excursion, but there was no doubt that spring
had come back to his limbs as well as to the world, and he was seized
with a sudden hunger for the open, for work, for adventures, the more
he felt his strength returning--excursions, visits, the trip to New
York, with those two hours spent in Brooklyn face to face with that
mass of ruddy health. And this continued the following summer, when he
went off to revisit the beaches of the Cape and Upper Maine; didn’t he
have to give himself a thorough cleansing for those seasons when he
had been shut up? His fortieth year had just struck. And this year can
give a good sound if the bell is not cracked. Yes, even if one’s oldest
friendship is broken, like a branch that has had to bear too much snow.
You too no doubt have gone off on these adventurous excursions, when
you were young, set out for discovery and slept out of doors with one,
two, three companions. But the cooling of the years has relaxed your
ardour, and the comrades of yesterday are too busy to fritter away
their precious time; you only make journeys now by your own fireside,
or by train, very comfortably, and you put up at the best hotel with
your wife. You have become sedate and sober, sparing of your legs
and your enthusiasm. Your beautiful youth has been left behind you,
loitering in some glade. But this fellow has too generous a heart to
leave such a charming companion on the road; he still wants to go off
on a jaunt with him, even if he himself is past forty. This is just
the age when his presence is most dear. So he carries him off for a
fortnight, in July, 1858, to the White Mountains in New Hampshire,
which he has not seen since the famous week when he went off boating
with his brother.
But to tell the truth, this was not at all the same story. The
suggestion of the journey came from Edward Hoar, the companion of his
last expedition to Maine; and with his friend Edward he had to travel
in a hired wagon like a pasha, stop at inns where he was devoured by
flies and put up at tiresome hotels, crowded with people he would much
rather not have seen. The real moment came when, leaving the wagon
behind, they set out with their knapsacks on their backs to explore a
wild ravine on Mount Washington. But then, in leaping over the rocks,
Henry sprained his ankle and was obliged to rest for several days under
the tent in the bottom of the ravine before he was able to take the
trail again. On returning from this expedition, the companions who had
joined them and who had worn their good clothes looked as ragged as
runaway thieves while Henry, who had set out with old clothes suitable
for the road and the season, looked almost dressed up beside them; and
yet it was he, prudent soul, who provided the needle and thread to
repair their rips. He had more liberty and pleasure on his excursion
with William, the following summer, to Monadnoc. Not that William was
always charmed with his old crony who upbraided him when William, tired
to death, felt his head buzzing and wanted to stop. So much the worse
for him: he should have known what to expect when he started out for
discovery with the intrepid Henry. You don’t go to Monadnoc to have the
fidgets. But they had camped five nights on the summit under a fragrant
shelter of spruce branches; Henry had brought his hatchet with him.
Then the whole world vanished out of their minds, including the hotels
with their orchestras and dancing. They were alone with the mountain,
which did not offer the same welcome to strangers as to intimates.
William could growl as much as he pleased because he did not have all
his precious comforts, but Henry was rich enough in enthusiasm to sow
the whole mountain-top with it.
Scarcely had the son regained his old strength when another invalid
took his place in a chair at home; it was the father’s turn not to
feel quite himself. Past seventy now, he had begun to cough, like his
own father, and he fell into a rapid decline, so rapid that since the
middle of the winter of 1859 there remained no great hope of saving
this good father Thoreau who, in spite of all, after the bad luck
that had pursued him at the outset, had succeeded with his pencils
in sketching for his family a kind of existence that was not too
unprosperous. With this excellent father, who was so self-effacing and
who read his newspaper so devotedly and did not contain an ounce of
anything that remotely resembled pride and revolt, his boy may never
have had very much in common so far as aspirations were concerned, but
he loved him dearly. And now, seeing him old and ill and more silent
than ever, less and less able to attend to his business and his garden,
he could not do enough for him. His mother was touched by this; well
as she knew the fund of tenderness that was buried in the heart of
her son--deep enough down to be protected from the frost--she was
continually surprised to see him expressing it to the old man with all
the little shades she would have thought peculiarly feminine. Then,
at the beginning of February, fully conscious, after saying good-bye
to his family (he had only been in bed for a week, and on Sunday he
had been up again for a little while), as modestly as he had lived the
little man quietly went out--as a candle of good wax bids you farewell,
after shining for its hour, with no glitter that fatigues the eyes,
leaving behind it only a fragment of sunken wick. So the circle in the
little house, where once there had been half a dozen, was now reduced
to a mother of seventy-two, who had also had her troubles, and her son
and daughter--for the aunts did not live under the same roof.
Since the last months of his father’s illness, the weight of the
business that kept the family alive had fallen on Henry. He assumed
it without any discussion, since from now on they had only one man in
the family to count upon. An annual income of $1200 to $1500 was not to
be found in a blackbird’s nest. Sophia, his sister, took charge of the
book-keeping and the correspondence, but he had the work of overseeing
the mill at Acton, where Warren Miles did the grinding for the Thoreau
concern, together with the packing and boxing in the workshop adjoining
the house. The plumbago was ground so fine at the mill that, in spite
of every care, it leaked from the workshop into the house, where they
breathed it in every room; you might not have noticed it perhaps, but
your lungs, like a miller’s, had to get used to it and put up with it.
Perhaps too the manual labour amounted to less than it had been in
the days of the pencil-making, but Henry had to devote himself to the
routine of the business and be on hand. And so during the whole year
when his father died he was scarcely able to go out; to steal a moment,
to escape and go huckleberrying was a rare victory. And this caused him
even more suffering than the plumbago caused his lungs. With his always
absorbing personal occupations, the tasks in the workshop composed a
very full existence. Never had the days appeared so short, so precious.
His friends must not insist upon his writing to them often.
* * * * *
So Henry carried into the new year this infernal cough that would not
hear of the desires of a rambler who wanted to breathe the fragrance
of winter in his own haunts, on the Cliffs skirting the meadows where
the flocks of crows were lighting. But why worry? With the fine days
all the good things would return. His spirits remained, shut up as he
was, his spirits and his taste for a good, solid book that warmed his
heart. There was nothing to do, in his confinement, but to recall, by
noting it in his Journal, with what skill, what astounding celerity,
the squirrel attacks a pine-cone, crunching the seeds, holding it
between his paws upside down, turning it over like a top as he tears
off the scales where they are soft and nibbles at their base: the vivid
recollection was enough for one who kept coughing to make him feel once
more that he had the soul of a wood-sprite.
The winter came quickly to a close. The prisoner profited by every
afternoon when the air was less harsh to make an expedition to the
post-office. Great was his desire to go and tell his friends and
acquaintances in the swamps that a cheerful soul who was doing penance
for sins of which he was unaware had not forgotten them, in spite of
appearances, and was only waiting for the sky to brighten to resume his
walks. At the end of February the bluebirds were already spreading the
good news along the roads. He had heard them, one fine day, on his way
to old Minot’s who was now quite alone with his eighty years in the
little house on the hillside, for his old companion, his sister Mary,
had just died of pneumonia. But Henry could not walk far without having
to sit down on the first stump he came to. He had difficulty now in
keeping warm. At the end of March the snow fell in such abundance that
the trains could not run any more; and it had driven so since yesterday
that this morning one side of the houses was covered with a white
mattress that choked the windows; the people were almost prisoners
behind their own doors. Just the time, when he couldn’t think of
stepping outside, to finish that letter to Ricketson he had begun: let
his thought at least escape to New Bedford and the fishing-boats, since
it was utterly impossible for him to put on his best pair of boots and
go and spend a Sunday with his friends. The other day, Blake, with a
companion, arrived in Concord, where they spent the night; they had
walked from Worcester and went back the same way, the lucky devils....
William dropped in to see the prisoner and would have liked so much to
be able to pull him through this tight place. Since his strength was
not coming back, in spite of all the little strolls they took together,
stopping constantly (it was no longer the intrepid Henry who dragged
William on), why not try a change of air, a long journey? William
had lived in the West and extolled its tonic quality; this would be
a thousand times better than the climate of the West Indies which
the doctor recommended. They could set out together for two or three
months. You’ll see, Henry, what a gay blade you will be when you come
back.
Henry agreed, not that he had any particular desire for such a grand
tour as that, but because he had a very particular desire to be a man
again, to lose that perpetual cough, lose it far, far away, so that it
would never find its way back. Let’s go. Then, at the last moment--from
caprice or lack of money--William changed his mind; and Henry, who now
wanted to go, had to find another travelling companion. A son of Horace
Mann, who was also called Horace Mann and had dedicated himself to the
natural sciences, offered to join him. He was a very sober young fellow
and not much of a talker; he didn’t have a particle of that liveliness
of William’s which would have been such a great resource in stirring up
a tottering companion.
The itinerary was drawn up and the date of departure fixed for the
middle of May. They were going to make several stops _en route_,
for the veteran walker no longer felt that he had the strength to
accomplish in one stage such a journey as this to Saint Paul in
Minnesota, the land of wheat. The two travellers set out, reached
Niagara, the first stage, then Detroit, Chicago, and finally East
Dubuque on the Mississippi, which they ascended by boat for two
days between the high bluffs of the river to Saint Paul, where they
found one of the Thatcher cousins from Bangor. This was the main
stopping-place. They stayed there three weeks, in the course of which
Henry went on an expedition with a naturalist he had met; he made a new
acquaintance, the prairie squirrel, an odd little customer with his
cope of six light and dark stripes, feet like a marmot’s and an air
that was anything but shy, sitting bolt upright before his burrow. Then
they embarked on the Mississippi as far as Redwood, where there was a
Sioux Agency; there were also said to be buffalo in these regions, but
they failed to catch a glimpse of one. It was the annual pay-day, and
the Indians had come in on their ponies; they offered the travellers a
performance of dancing and music and feasted on an ox. Not bad; but all
this was a little stagey and not worth an hour of Joe Polis’s company.
On the return, a stop of a few days at Red Wing on the Mississippi;
Henry wrote “Concord” on the envelopes instead of decorating his
letter-paper with these two dear syllables. The ray no longer shone
from the centre; no, the ray turned back towards the centre. And then,
by railroad or boat, Prairie du Chien, Milwaukee, Mackinaw, with
another stop. It was July, but it was rather cold, and a man who had
become shivery appreciated the chimney-corner in the hotel. At last
Toronto, the long sail across blue Ontario, the Thousand Islands, the
Saint Lawrence and, stop of stops, old Concord at the end of the long,
long railroad. Henry was tired.
It was very fine, assuredly, the Mississippi, the prairie, and all
those images he had seen filing past. All the same, he had taken few
notes on the way, and they were dry and often very trivial; the points
of interest were dispersed over such a vast distance and unrolled
so quickly that he had hardly had the time to absorb them. And then
his senses no longer took hold of things. This journey had nothing
in common with the other beautiful journeys, when he had carried his
belongings in a handkerchief tied by the four corners; there was the
wearisomeness of the hotels and the cars, not to speak of those vile
medicines the invalid had taken along in his bag. Henry’s hope in this
air-cure had not been great when he started; and in fact, he would have
covered his two thousand miles and spent his hundred and fifty dollars
for nothing if he had not had the joy of seeing at last with his own
eyes the aboriginal crab-apple, that tree which refuses to be grafted,
with its terribly acid fruit, of which he had often dreamed and which
was no longer a myth now that he had touched its branches with his
hands and brought back a flower in his herbarium.
The sad thing was that he had also brought back his cough and his
weakness. The change of air, the movement, the distraction had roused
him a little, invigorated him in appearance, but at bottom it was
still the same story: Helplessness and Co. He was thinner than ever,
he who had so little flesh to lose, and remained incapable of resuming
his occupations. For a long time he had not been able to walk like a
real walker, dig with any vigour in his garden, manage a boat on the
river or even write to any effect, till health seemed to him a human
attribute that was visible only in dreams.
But he still wanted to make the most of the summer and go and see
that good Ricketson. Five days stolen from the wretchedness of his
monotonous existence, five good days of intimacy, sea air and relived
memories were a conquest for a weak man who scarcely had the strength
to go to the post-office any longer. His friend took him out driving
and carried him to a photographer in New Bedford, who turned his camera
on a full-bearded Henry, just back from Minnesota, with a rather
wandering eye. Then Ricketson returned his visit, spent three days at
Concord, where they even went bathing together once in Walden, the
water of which ought to have paid off an old debt of gratitude and
friendship by delivering from his cough the unfortunate fellow who had
so often placed on its banks the figure of a lean but infernally tough
young man.
At Minneapolis Henry had seen some volunteers drilling and a detachment
of others leaving for the front. For war, the call to arms was rising
all about the sick man, who remained sufficiently himself, however, to
keep clear of the collective madness. Insults to the national flag, the
election of Old Abe to the presidency, the whole jingo phraseology was
for him nothing but newspaper talk, and he would not have given two
cents for a hundred yards of it; he did not read the papers any more
willingly, in spite of the upheaval, and the _Tribune_ was much less
timely in his eyes than a book he was reading at the moment: _Six Years
in the Desert of North America_. During the two months of his journey,
he had hardly looked at one of those sheets the people were devouring.
Abolition, yes, that was his cause; but who knew whether the other
interests involved in this war had not brought greater weight to bear
upon it than the question of the four million men to be liberated? You
admire the regiments that march across Manhattan in their brand-new
uniforms--but how about that old ironsides in his seedy trousers and
his old slippers whom they strung up on a gibbet? He did not call the
newspapers and Old Abe and the uniforms to his aid; he simply made a
gift of his own life to the cause, and that was all.
But this was war, nevertheless, that immense, stupid horror from which
you couldn’t withdraw your mind. How could a sick man get better in
this atmosphere of a people who were entirely absorbed in the business
of killing one another?
As the struggle grew graver and graver, as the piles of victims rose,
the reality of the war penetrated him more and more; even in the
village, even for one who despised the newspapers and the bulletins, it
floated into the house, like the plumbago powder. After Bull Run and
the panic, confusion and stupor, Concord was plunged in the blackest
gloom. Henry, who had just come back from Minnesota, seemed full of
interest and even enthusiasm. A good defeat, there would be nothing
like it for putting these people into their right minds again: all
these hare-brained souls who have been assuring you with a smile that
it would be over in the turn of a hand, that they would soon see the
famous warriors of the North coming back again leading by the nose the
little swaggering Southerners.... How this good drubbing would wake
them up!
Then autumn came and this beastly bronchitis had not gone; it seemed
to have settled down to live with him and, finding the house to its
liking, refused to leave. Henry was unwilling to try the experiment of
another climate a second time. And he hadn’t the hundredth of an ounce
of confidence in medicine and doctors.
The only remedy was to make the most of these last beautiful days. His
walks were at an end; every five yards he had to stop. Mr. Hoar, who
was away, had placed his horse and carriage at the sick man’s disposal,
and he made use of them almost every day. September and October were
very pleasant, and Henry drove out in the carriage like a man of
substance, escorted by Mr. Hoar’s dog preceding his friend the horse.
These drives brought back his appetite and a semblance of strength.
He made a trip to the causeway, his old boulevard; he noticed there
the curious hatchings which the storm of the preceding night had made
by whipping the sand of the road. Often Sophia accompanied him, and
for her he did the honours of some of his favourite haunts. Together
they went and spent an hour at Walden one inviting September afternoon;
while his sister sat down to make a sketch, Henry very gently picked
some wild grapes that were growing on the edge of the pond. These wild
grapes that he picked and ate, for the last time perhaps before the
great winter buried everything, were not as sour as one might have
supposed. And this little trip of the brother and sister to Walden, in
the ripeness of September, had itself the taste of grapes.
Soon the cold spread over the earth, and the dampness: it was no longer
possible for such a fragile body to brave the open air. Henry accepted
this humiliation which his body inflicted on him. This body, of which
he had demanded so much, would have no more of it and turned a deaf
ear. It had reached its limit.
Too long had the master expected it to be a thing of steel and obedient
to him, as a sharp plane eats its way jerkily into a piece of tough
wood. He had always treated it without consideration as a bond-servant
that had to march at his beck and call and be silent. Nothing was
too hard for this unhappy retainer: dragging immense logs out of the
river, clambering up trees, remaining for hours buried in the snow or
in the mud of a swamp, climbing the steepest mountain-sides without
resting, sleeping out of doors in the thinnest of clothes, enduring
hunger without relaxing its muscular effort, leaving behind it all
the walkers, climbers, skaters and surveyors in Christendom. It even
seemed as if the master were wreaking his spite on it a little, as if
the overseer took a perverse pleasure in overstraining the strength
of his negro, without tolerating the slightest complaint from him. He
had trained him to make up for the massive strength that his narrow
frame rendered impossible by an incomparable dexterity, by the strength
beyond strength that says “I will” and does it. The drudge had never
demurred: at most, on two or three occasions, it had stopped for breath
in spite of all gee-ups and blows of the whip, like a cart-horse that
comes to a halt, determined not to take another step. But then its whim
would pass and the animal would set off again, resigned to its tasks
like the submissive old servant that it was. Sometimes, as you saw it
working itself to death, you were stirred to an immense feeling of pity
for its lot. But who could make a tyrant like that listen to reason!
Now at last the body no longer wearied with reproaches the master who
had persecuted it with his demands. It was foundering, it was leaving
him, without a complaint, without any bitterness at having had so
few holidays. You must get yourself out of your fix as best you can,
master, and good luck to you. It was going away very quietly, young in
years but spent with fatigue, to the bourne of workers that can work no
more. And as it went, with little breathless steps, it was going to pay
the toll-gatherer a debt of its master. John and Helen had paid it very
early, that sum owed by the line of Thoreaus in America, though the
father, never very brilliant in his business, had not settled it till
seventy years had passed. Sometimes Henry had felt so happy that he had
wondered if some day the debt would not have to be settled for good and
all. Well, pay it, my servant, since the debt is due, and make an end
of it.
What is the use of complaining when an old servant leaves you, even if
you are unable to replace him? Henry did not lament over his failing
body. As he had endured without frowning the sunlight that had roasted
his bare arms and the cold that had nibbled his fingers and toes, why
not endure this lethargy with the same equanimity? You never heard
him speak of what he had parted from and left down there without news
of himself, his friends the trees, the ponds, the little coves of the
river, his boat. All these things lay as if in a corner, wrapped up
in the silk of a great reserve. The invalid slept now on the ground
floor, in the parlour opening on Main Street; through the open door he
could see in a corner of the dining-room the garden of green plants
that Sophia lovingly cared for. His good friends would drop in for a
little chat and bring him the scents of the out-of-doors. Sometimes
they read a deep sadness in his emaciated features, for a child-man
who had gone out every day could not help feeling a little dismal to
be lolling here in a chair while others were taking part in the play.
His shoulders drooped more and more, as if they were melting, his lean
body wasted away, his bony nose shrank, there was a little vagueness
in the big eyes. But Sanborn dropped in, or William, or Alcott, and
they gossiped as gaily as in old times--better than ever now that
gossiping had become the sole form of activity and companionship that
was permitted him. An invalid does not speak of his illness, since it
is understood. One doesn’t keep repeating what is plain enough; when it
rains all day, are you one of those people who are perpetually saying
that the weather is beastly? Just once, standing by the window, he said
to William: “I cannot see on the outside at all. We thought ourselves
great philosophers in those wet days when he used to go and sit down by
the wall-sides.” And as William, who had lost his walking companion,
was down in the dumps, the prisoner continued: “It is better some
things should end.” One didn’t feel grief in Henry’s company. One left
him with the impression that life goes on and that a man can easily
attach an exaggerated importance to his own disappearance.
And isn’t existence still beautiful when you can read, write, dream?
Once Henry would have thought that if he had been deprived of his life
in the open it would not have been life any longer. What a mistake! See
how well you can get along without your body. Another discovery. Go and
take your holiday, my body, if you can’t hold out any longer; I shall
go on my way alone. The mind can get along perfectly well without its
servant.
Henry made haste to place some of his papers in order and put one or
two of his projects on foot; he worked on his manuscripts whenever his
strength permitted him to do so. This was the heart of his life now,
since he could no longer cling to branches to reach a mountain-top.
He had not learned to indulge himself; on the contrary, he was harder
than ever on himself and more punctilious. You have to dust every
corner with the greatest care when you don’t know what great personage
you are going to receive. Three years before the _Atlantic Monthly_
had published one of his essays and mutilated it, and the author had
instantly demanded the rest of his manuscript back again, for he was
unwilling to leave it in the hands of such vandals. Now the review,
under a new editor, asked him to contribute again. He could give them
such pieces as _Walking_ and _Wild Apples_, in which he had put as much
of himself as words were able to contain. It was on these especially
that he was working. He also wanted to complete his pages on the Maine
Woods, of which the two first parts had already been published,
so that they might form a whole. If he could only leave behind him
something besides fragments, apart from those two still-born books....
These were great plans for a man whose strength was ebbing, but the
will to carry them out as well as he could gave a singular value to
the rather insipid scrap of life that was melting in his mouth like a
gumdrop.
In the warmth of the rooms, sitting in his rocking-chair, the prisoner
dreamed--for his mind in the breakdown of his body remained quite
clear--dreamed, as he watched the cat playing or the plants in the
dining-room that accepted their imprisonment with all that greenness.
He dreamed of many things, things behind and things before him.
Regrets, old Henry, under that calm surface? Why? When forty years of a
full life have left you with this pleasant taste.... What better taste
could life leave in the mouth of one who is about to quit it? The taste
of a shop, of cosmetics, of rare roast beef, of incense, of loving
lips, of rum, of medicine, of an old book, of a mother’s tenderness?
For him, as he thought it over, it had the taste of huckleberries.
Regrets would have been inconsistent with this feeling that he had
spent his existence well. To have preserved the brightness of that
marvellous gift. Not to have allowed it to tarnish. Not to have let it
grow mouldy. Not to have spoilt it. To have remained an artist who,
behind his varied occupations, behind his apparent idleness, behind
his very savagery, had firmly practised an art, trained himself in it,
perfected it unceasingly. Was not that worth the sacrifice of some of
the little things to which men seem to cling so desperately? One cannot
have everything, and as he reckoned it all up he did not repent his
choice. He saw especially what advantages he had had. Certainly they
were very appreciable. For instance, in remaining a bachelor, had he
not escaped the drudgery that usually falls to newly-married couples
in the country? He had not been a hog-reeve, charged by the town with
running after wandering pigs that go about grubbing in the fields of
honest farmers. But during this time he had been able to run after a
good many other animals....
Henry weighs the results of an experiment that is finished and finds
them of sterling quality. See, you can turn them over in your hand;
there is nothing unsubstantial about them. To have remained poor. To
have left to others who care for such things the burden of possessions
in order to savour the free pleasure of the world. Never to have been
tempted to sacrifice for a little ease the most succulent part of life,
like those who reach their end without knowing that they have lived.
Yes, to have been this fool who is handling now the returns of wisdom:
how does the reckoning strike you? And not to be any the prouder
because of it. Not even to offer yourself as an example for other
people’s children. To have succeeded in not being for a moment one of
the people who count. Not even a failure. Absolutely nothing at all,
at the age of forty-five. No more a man of letters than a shopkeeper.
Simply H. D. T. A man whose sole desire has been to live, who has
looked forward to nothing but the satisfaction of being alive. To have
dared to live against the grain of one’s whole merchant line and to
find oneself at the end so comfortable. In short, _to have succeeded
in one’s business_, and with such a tiny capital.... Isn’t that luck,
isn’t it almost fantastic? Is it not as if, from the paradise of
merchants above, the sailor of Saint-Helier who made his money in a
shop on Long Wharf were sending you his grand-paternal congratulations?
(We accept them, grandfather, you who are recalled to the memory of
your descendants in this germ you have left them with your blood.)
There are some people who have no right to die, because they have never
lived; but Henry fancies that he deserves it, really deserves this
reward and this proof.
In a box within reach of the hand of the dreamer, a box that he had
carpentered himself, the silent notebooks confirm him. There they are,
thirty or forty irrefutable witnesses. Whoever wishes to question them
will hear convincing words.
They contain the biography of a man. Through the jungle of their
thousands and thousands of pages, paths wander in every direction
leading towards other perspectives than a pond where you look at
yourself. They enclose all the wildness of the brush, the swamps,
meadows, running waters that a Saunterer can trace again and again
without coming to the end of them--with vistas over the sea and over
the hills and beyond. From the country of the Rising Sun to the country
of the Setting Sun the whole space is filled with surprises that will
invite him to pause. He will find there fruits to refresh him on the
way--inspirations at many a turning of the path--guide-posts leading
him to precious discoveries--if only the discovery of himself. And
as he walks along he will stoop down from time to time to pick up an
arrow-head, dropped there as if on purpose; he will soon have a whole
pile of flint-flakes in a corner of his attic. This jungle is a present
which the mysterious Henry in his turn wishes to make, a surprise for
his own kindred. Of all he has received he has kept nothing back. It
was given him in trust, it seems. Henry has never believed in private
property; if he has seemed to be collecting and treasuring things
during his lifetime, it has always been with this legacy in view,
always to enrich the common good.
Especially he owes something to his own parish. To this little town
with its church-tower which has regarded him as a ne’er-do-well he will
show how generous he can be. It is a beautiful thing, a church-tower,
so beautiful that it hides the universe from many of the village folk
who creep confusedly in its shadow. It would never occur to them to use
it as an antenna, set up there to catch communications from the larger
world. A church-tower is a beautiful tower that does not merely sound
at church-time. The tower has a soul that speaks in its own language
to the souls of men and sings because it is beautiful to be a tower
stirred by the messenger winds. When this Concord with its woods and
waters and dewy fields grouped about the tower vibrates and dances with
joy at the great news come from below the horizon and falling from the
tower, the spirit of the tower becomes the master-spirit of time and
space. The bell sounds for the world; it has a sound that is caught
from afar. Yes, the bell of the parish ought to be of a rare metal
when, in these notebooks here, its vibration extends to the remotest
village where men dream in the shadow of their own church-towers: it is
as if it were the voice of their own wonder, their own revolt and their
own love of life....
The dreamer does not weigh very much as he sits there in his
rocking-chair. But all this is so evident, so plain, so full of comfort
that even if he is torn by this cough he can rock very happily in his
chair and regard himself with a certain detachment in his decay as if
he were contemplating a tree that has been stripped of its leaves or as
if he were someone else than himself.
So the winter flows by for a man whose voice is dying, is nothing
now but a murmur (those rolling r’s of old are only a memory now).
To finish the year he has had pleurisy, and he has scarcely been out
since November. Even the post-office has faded away in the withdrawal
of the old world. What remains of Henry is buried in his manuscripts.
The spirit is bent upon proving that, without this miserable servant
who has given it the slip, it can carry on just the same, for a man
who has been dogged so long does not so easily give up his old delight
in contradiction. As for living at this slackened pace, it is, truth
to tell, hardly worth the trouble; his only regret is for those two
women, for whom his departure is perhaps going to make things rather
difficult. But aside from this, it doesn’t mean the end of the world
because a fellow named Henry is going away. You might as well tell us
that the lilacs and the bluebirds are not coming back with the spring.
Rubbish!... See, there it is already. That comrade is quite capable of
getting along without an invalid who once would have run to meet it,
hailing it joyously from afar even before he had seen it. And then, for
a man who is stealing away at forty-five with his fortune made, what a
good thing it is to be thus escaping extreme old age, when you grow fat
if you don’t ridiculously shrivel. Say what you like, Henry has surely
been a lucky dog all along the line.
From behind the parlour window that comprises his universe, he sees the
children passing on their way to school. Many of them are comrades who
have indefeasible rights over the heart of their old friend. When they
do not come in to greet him as they pass, he complains that they are
not exercising these rights, a custom that is so sweet to him. Since
he cannot go huckleberrying with them any more, they should come and
tell their old friend what they are thinking of him in the outskirts of
Concord, among the little people whose habits the children know. It is
well known, however, that behind this window lies a prisoner whose soul
is hungry for this love that is silent because it prefers to remain
anonymous. It is known, for people stop in to see him whose charitable
words, alas, are so far from being as precious as the simple presence
of three little scraps just out of school. To-day it is the Rev. Mr.
Reynolds, a neighbour, who is astonished to find a sick man working so
assiduously. “You know,” Henry explains, “it’s respectable to leave an
estate to one’s friends.” The following day it is that blockhead who
thinks it is his duty to say to you by way of consolation: “Well, Mr.
Thoreau, we must all go.” To him this departing soul replies: “When I
was a very little boy, I learned that I must die.... So of course I am
not disappointed now. Death is as near to you as it is to me.” Or it
is Sam, the old innkeeper, still jailor and tax-collector, and on his
way to becoming one of the bigwigs of Concord, who does not find him
greatly changed since the night when he had him as a boarder; he is as
cool as ever and almost contemptuous in his calm strength. This time it
is not the poll-tax the collector has come for but the ground-tax, and
to-day he will not meet with a “no.” The tax-payer knows perfectly well
what he owes, he has made his provisions. He has even jotted down on a
paper the names of friends to whom he wishes to have one of his books
or some knick-knack given in memory of their mad Henry. To William, the
Chronicles of Froissart, to Eddy, Waldo’s son, his microscope, and the
shells to his sister Edith. Good Aunt Louisa will receive the sum of
$50, which will please her. There will still be enough for the other
gifts. It is as if the purse of a poor dying man had a double bottom.
In the street an organ begins to grind out an old air that suddenly
calls up the fragrance of his childhood, like a bouquet that has been
placed suddenly under his nose. His illness has not obliterated Henry’s
sense of smell. What neither suffering nor a breach of faith nor a
misunderstanding has ever been able to do this hackneyed air ground
out by a street-organ accomplishes in an instant. He is torn asunder.
All the old repressed tenderness, compelled to remain rigid for so
long, makes wild leaps in his heart that has such a short time to beat,
throws itself against the bars of its cage, tries to escape, poor
thing, get out into the free air, before it is extinguished. Tears bead
these eyes that have so rarely wept, save under the lash of the winter
wind. “Give him some money! Give him some money!”
In a room where once it would have seemed pure madness to think of
living permanently, a prisoner ends by discovering between four walls
interests enough to create a very good imitation of existence. Insomnia
is a nuisance, but he prefers it to the drugs that would have brought
him sleep. When he slips off, his slumber is engarlanded with fantastic
dreams, as if the doors of an unknown world were opening to enchant
him, in compensation for all he has had to leave. When he was in good
health, he had often enough had dreams at night, very strange ones, but
now they load him with favours, lavish attentions upon him, as if they
could not devise enough ways of amusing a prisoner. Kindly sleep hangs
in curious festoons about the bed of a sick man who has at last dozed
off. Now it is in his lungs that the railroad labourers are digging a
trench, placing the ties and the rails; the train is going to pass;
look out, you man down there, following the track on foot; don’t be
afraid to flatten yourself against the bank. It is Henry’s lung; you
can observe its curious little caverns and, if you keep a Journal, note
them down. The prisoner tells his dreams to the people who come to
see him, and that is one pleasure more. They remind him of a dream he
used to have as a boy in which at one moment he was rebounding from a
surface as hard as rock which hurt him frightfully and at the next was
lying cosily in a feather bed.
Good dreams, coming so graciously to visit a condemned man, good dreams
not coming with moral counsels but simply in friendship, with beautiful
images for one who has dreamed so often wide-awake, coming when he
is there all alone with his courage and his helplessness before the
certain issue. To receive them more handsomely in his prosaic room, he
asks Sophia to arrange the furniture in such a way that in the light of
the night-lamp the shadows seen from his bed will create on the wall a
kind of phantasmagoria. He would like to conform to the laws of this
strange world which is so comforting to the sick; he wishes that his
bed were in the form of a shell at the bottom of which he could roll
himself up like a voluta, roll himself tighter, much tighter than a
tired spaniel who curls up before the fire after a long winter’s day
of hunting. How much more pleasant to touch than the sheets would be a
sheath of mother-of-pearl!
The daylight, far from interrupting the phantasmagoria, merely
transforms it. Spring has come back, and as Henry can no longer go
out for the first flowers their fragrance comes to him. Just now some
cultivated flowers are addressing him in the name of the whole floral
circle. They are the offering of the gardens of Concord to a gardener
who cannot wield the spade. It is not merely his intimate friends who
stop in and bring them; village people whom Henry does not know at
all send him bouquets, sweetmeats and even game, which might tempt a
man who hasn’t much of an appetite. People whom, when he was well, he
would have dumped into the same sack and powdered with the salt of
his sarcasms return the sarcasms in advance changed into flowers and
delicacies. Henry is stirred as he had been by the organ-grinder’s
tune. Isn’t this bunch of hyacinths an almost terrible pleasure for a
man who is so soon to disappear and finds so many friends who cannot be
kind enough to him? One reason more for going; it is a simple matter
of decency. “I should be ashamed to stay in this world after so much
has been done to me ...” is the simple utterance of a stricken heart
which even now would bolt all its locks if certain sacred words that
are forbidden were pronounced before it. And there are all the things
of which he knows nothing.... Can he guess that in Michigan a workman
who does not know him at all except through his writings is making
a beautiful walking-stick for him out of a rare wood, with a silver
head and an inscription, and that another man in Indiana.... But no,
enough, enough; this would send him under the earth at once. A wave of
indulgence has spread into the room with the spring and the flowers.
He must pardon a dear aunt who does not understand the language of
flowers when she asks him, with a very confidential air that is full
of responsibility, if he has made his peace with God, and reply that
this is impossible, dear aunt, since he has never quarreled with that
illustrious personage of antiquity. He must pardon even that pious soul
who speaks to him of another world as familiarly as if he had been
there, replying mildly: “My friend, one world at a time....” He who is
about to dive into the black pond thinks rather of the loon that dived
in Walden, and like the latter he has a mind to fling a mighty laugh of
defiance into the face of this honest soul.
From time to time Sophia writes a letter to his friends at her
brother’s dictation, and she reads to him the letters that arrive--from
unknown persons sometimes. He must not leave unanswered the letter from
that young man in Leedsville who has written such charming things
about the _Week on the Concord_. Just a word to thank him and tell
him that he is getting along well enough, even if he has only a few
months before him. When he does not feel too feeble, Henry continues to
read, jots down a few notes, brushes up his manuscripts. The illness
that consumes him progresses steadily, though he keeps his old calm.
The explorer of Upper Maine was never cooler on the rapids when he
was steering Joe’s canoe. The eye and the hand have not abandoned the
direction on the current that is bearing him on at this moment; if he
capsizes, it will be because the river is obstructed by a whirlpool
from one bank to the other. Most of the time he is silent, like a good
pilot who does not wish to have his attention distracted. But there is
nothing morose in this silence; it is a sort of self-communion, and
so natural. His voice has become so feeble, so feeble, that it cannot
express very much. And his mournful whisper might even becloud the end
of such a beautiful day.
* * * * *
Since seven o’clock in the morning, this Tuesday, the sixth of
May, 1862, a dying man has been turning and turning, as if to free
himself.... Tender hands have had to lift him on his pillow.... One
last time, just after eight o’clock, an old mother, a sister, a good
aunt, gathered about the little cot, raise the narrow frame of a man
who makes a sign for them to lift him still higher, upright, supporting
with the pillows his last more and more feeble breaths ... listening,
as they bend over, to the vague murmur of words in which pass “moose”
... “Indian” ... and the Wanderer is at the end of his journey. Or
perhaps he has departed for some faraway hunt in the footsteps of the
Indian, in the Happy Hunting Ground....
Three days later, a coffin passes, covered with wild May flowers, on
the way to the church. If it contained Henry, it would almost have
realized his wish to live in one of those tool-chests of the Irishmen
who worked on the railroad. But it is so light that it can hardly
contain the body of a man--unless it is his chrysalis.... Perhaps on
this splendid May morning, another Henry has emerged who has not needed
to go out into the air, to raise the lid of the coffin, because he has
practised so many of the tricks and fathomed the art of metamorphosis.
Another Henry than the one who is there, as they say, under the flowers
that his friends have brought--Henry as he was ten years ago, but quite
new, though he wears his old corduroy trousers.
For one chap who knows him better than all the people in the procession
has seen him, mingling with those who are looking on, seen him
chuckling because they are carrying this body to the church. (Though,
after all, if it gives them pleasure ... it is all the same thing to
a chrysalis. Those who once had the best of Henry by paying the tax
for him can have the best of him still. And besides, Waldo, who was a
churchman, thinks so much of these things....) But why the devil didn’t
they make the coffin of good, dry driftwood? Isn’t a man worth as much
as all the sacred books of the East? Floating in a wooden shell, a
vagabond might have gone on voyaging so comfortably.... The dull souls!
Then the same fellow has seen him resuming his grave air as he listens
to the fine words pronounced over the coffin and filtering through the
field flowers strewn over it. And when the coffin finally comes out
of the church, he has seen him resolutely follow it, as if it were
journeying towards a familiar spot and one where he also wished to go.
About the grave it is not the spring daylight nor the company nor the
sad faces of these women that seem to stir this other brand-new Henry.
What attracts him is this open earth, exposed by a fellow-digger. This
beautiful earth. This good earth. It beckons to him. It surely has
something to confide to him.
He wants to lie down in the earth, deep in the earth, so that it may
clasp him and whisper in his ear its old secret. This must be something
astonishing.
He is sure now that the earth alone can speak to him the words he has
been waiting for. The earth alone can feel the fervour with which he
thinks of the beautiful life that might open like this gaping soil--of
the great rambles he would take, with a miraculous knapsack on his
back, drunk with adventure--of the page that he would write on his
return, a page too rich for any magazine to publish it--of the friends
from whom no misunderstanding would ever, ever, separate him any more
(friendship, friendship, he would taste it now, for the husk would be
off at last!)--of the joy of unbosoming himself fully--and of all the
men whom he has loved from afar without ever letting them know and who
would know at last, at last....
How beautiful it would all be! So beautiful that no notebook would ever
be able to contain it, so beautiful that he would have to fling himself
into this trench and carry it with him like a warm thought under the
earth.
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