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Walter Harding
(1917-1996)
Thoreau's Feminine Foe
As Henry Seidel Canby pointed out in
his life of Thoreau, in 1939 there is a strange gap in the biography
of Thoreau that has never been filled. In Sanborn's edition of the
Familiar Letters of Thoreau (Boston, 1894), there is a letter
of 14 November 1847 to Emerson, travelling in England at the time,
stating in part:
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 on it? I sent back a
distinct No, as I have learned to pronounce after considerable
practice, and I trust this No succeeded. Indeed I wished that
it might burst like hollow shot after it had struck and buried
itself, and make itself felt there. There was no other way. I
really had anticipated no such foe as this in my career. (p166)
For a major writer whose
relationship with women has always been a problem, this is indeed a
strange omission. And Canby, after some astute detective work,
hazarded the guess that the blank was never filled in the original
manuscript but that Thoreau was referring to one Sophia Foord
(sometimes spelled Ford) who had been governess for the Emerson
children.(1)
Canby's (second and more important guess) was confirmed a year later
when Arthur Bestor, Jr., published a review of his book in the
American Historical Review (XLVI, 196) and cited few lines from
the little known life of Elizabeth Buffum Chace (Boston,
1924), by Lillie B.C. and Arthur Wyman, which stated that in 1854
Sophia Foord "confided to Mrs. Chace her conviction that Thoreau's
soul was twin to hers and that in 'the Other World' her spirit and
his would be united" (I, 130). There the matter was permitted to
drop. But there is more to be said about Sophia Foord, and with the
help of a great many people I have been able to gather some of it
together in the hope that it might both shed some light on the
personality of Thoreau and give us a broader picture of this
mysterious foe to Thoreau's career.
Sophia Foord was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on 8
June 1802 (she was thus more than fifteen years older than Thoreau),
the twelfth and next-to-youngest child of James and Hannah Blake
Foord.(2)
James Foord, whose ancestors came to
this country on the Fortune, only a year after the
Mayflower, had been a private in the American Revolution. Later
he settled down in nearby Dedham, Massachusetts, as a school teacher
and Registrar of Deeds for Norfolk County. Unfortunately almost
nothing is known about Sophia's childhood, although we can perhaps
assume from her father's position and the fact that a brother
attended Brown University, that the family was at least in moderate
circumstances. She was admitted into membership in the First Parish
Church in Dedham on 12 November 1820. And about 1833 she started
teaching in the First Middle School in Dedham.
There has been a tradition that Miss Foord spent some
two years at the Brook Farm community. And indeed there were two
Foord sisters there, described by John Thomas Codman as "the lovely
and pretty Misses Foord. The one a dimpled blond, lovely rosy
complexioned, with large wonderful blue eyes and her sister with her
clear skin and dark eyebrows, both wearing their contrasted and
unbound tresses flowing over graceful shoulders."(3)
If this description were accurate, we might wonder at even Thoreau
(who could say that he could see no point at looking at a pretty
women unless she could speak intelligently) turning her down; but,
unfortunately, according to the records of Brook Farm these were an
entirely different set of Foord sisters C. Abby Foord and A.M.
Foord, nieces of one Miss Russell and none of their names occur in
Sophia Foord's family tree.
But there is a slight possibility of Miss Sophia Foord's
having attended one of the Transcendentalist communities, for she
apparently lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the 1840's,(4)
and there, in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry,
was one of the leading, if now little-known, experimental
communities. Unfortunately it extant records are too meager to
authenticate whether or not she were a member. But if she were, it
would make a logical explanation for her acquaintance with so many
of the Transcendentalists by the mid-forties.
In the summer of 1843, Amos Bronson Alcott founded his
ill-fated Fruitlands community at Harvard, Massachusetts. It
unfortunately was a failure from its very beginning and by January
of the next year had closed its doors. Its collapse was a deep blow
to Alcott, and he nearly died of a broken heart. But by the next
summer he had recovered sufficiently to tour some of the more
successful communities and by fall was writing his brother Junius of
a plan to establish a "consociate family" in Concord.(5)
The few Transcendental communities that had flourished had found
their school their strongest nucleus, and Alcott had already devoted
many years to teaching. Thus, wanting to put the proposed community
on a firm foundation, he decided to center it at a school. Somewhere
he met Sophia Foord we can conjecture that it was at the
Northampton community and asked her to join his teaching staff.
Although Alcott did settle down in Concord, at Hillside,
the community failed to materialize and Miss Foord and Charles Lane,
one of the founders and backers of Fruitlands, were put to work
teaching the Alcott children, Lane as director and Miss Foord in
charge of "recreations and chares."
Apparently she was a highly successful teacher according
to Transcendental standards, for Lane was sufficiently impressed
with her to recommend her several years later for a position in
another experimental school that never materialized.(6)
And one little wonders at her success, for the Alcott children left
a record of her school that sounds like a century ahead of its
time. Louisa May Alcott wrote of botany lessons in the woods and
lessons on the bones of the human body that led to her moralizing in
her journal, "I must be careful of mine, I climb and jump and run so
much."(7)
But it was not Miss Foord's aim to repress the lively young Alcotts,
as is witnessed in a letter Louisa May wrote to a friend describing
a walk to "Finch" (Flint's) Pond in nearby Lincoln:
Now if you won't laugh, I'll
tell you something if you will believe it, Miss F______ and
all of us waded across it, a great big pond a mile long and half
a mile wide, we went splashing along making the fishes run like
mad before our big claws, when we got to the other side we had a
funny time getting our shoes and unmentionables, and we came
home all wet and muddy; but we were happy enough, for we came
through the woods bawling and singing like crazy folks.
(8)
Bronson Alcott, in his most Orphic Manner, once made a chart(9)
of the children's program for the Foord-Lane school. They rose at
five, bathed and dressed. From six to nine they were in Miss
Foord's care for breakfast, "housewifery", and "recreations
(chares)." For an hour and a half they studied with Mr. Lane, then
a half hour of recreations followed by an hour of study with Mr.
Alcott. Lunch at noon, rest from one to two, then two hours of
sewing, conversation, and reading with Mrs. Alcott and Miss Foord.
From four to six, "Errands and (Chares) Recreations, followed by
supper, recreation, conversation, music and bed at eight-thirty. A
rigid schedule but Miss Foord apparently made the most of it.
Her teaching soon impressed Ralph Waldo Emerson and in
the spring she was hired to teach the Emerson children, the Ellery
Channing children, as well as the young Alcotts, in Emerson's barn.
The happy time continued, with the feature of the spring's
activities a Maypole party. As early as 20 April they trimmed the
pole, and when 1 May arrived, Mr. Alcott hired a Mr. Watt's hay-cart
to take the children in festive procession to the Emersons'.(10)
That night he recorded
in his own journal:
Mother and children all very
active in preparing to celebrate May Morning at Mr. Emerson's
Miss Ford having prepared a Maypole, dressing it gaily with
evergreens.
Brought a load of trees
from the woods spruce, larch and pines. Conveyed the children,
consisting of several from the neighborhood, with May-pole and
Miss Ford to the Emerson's. The wagon was neatly trimmed with
running pines, and a wreath of the same on our bonnets and hat,
and as we passed along the road we sang, "Merrily we do." At
Emerson's several joined us, with the mothers and other company,
and then the children danced around the Maypole.(11)
The festivities continued throughout
the summer, with lectures on strawberries and "gypsying" trips. By
fall the school seemed permanently established and Emerson made
plans to build a bedroom into the barn for Miss Foord. But in
mid-October illness overcame her and she was forced to leave,
abandoning the school. However she kept on good terms with the
Emersons and continued to correspond with them.(12)
Unquestionably it was during this period of
schoolteaching in Concord that Sophia Foord became acquainted with
Thoreau, for he was an intimate friend of the Emersons, the Alcotts,
and the Ellery Channings. But any affection that developed, like
their correspondence, was apparently one-sided. When Thoreau wrote
Emerson about the "tragic correspondence" between the two, Emerson
could only reply, "You tell me in your letter one odious
circumstance, which we dismiss from remembrance henceforward."(13)
But the "odious circumstance" was not destined to be forgotten. On
28 February Thoreau's Aunt Maria wrote a letter in which she said in
part:
By the way have you heard what a
strange story there was about Miss Ford. and Henry, Mrs. Brooks
said at the convention, a lady came to her and inquired, of it
was true, that Miss F______ had committed, or was going to
commit suicide on account of H______ Thoreau, what a ridiculous
story this is. When it was told to H______ he made no remark at
all, and we cannot find out from him anything about it, for a
while, they corresponded, and Sophia said that she recollected
one day on the reception of a letter she heard H______ say, he
shouldn't answer it, or he must put a stop to this, some such
thing she couldn't exactly tell what. (Canby, p258)
But as we have already
seen in Mrs. Chace's comment, Miss Foord survived her broken heart
and lived on for some years. In the mid-fifties she went to Valley
Hills, Rhode Island, as a governess for the Chace children. While
they thought her "an admirable instructor,"(14)
it is obvious she did not succeed in winning them over as she had
the Concord children and they remembered her chiefly as "a
dark-skinned, pudgy-faced woman who always remained a spinster."
As the years passed by, Miss Foord did not fail to keep
in touch with Thoreau, even if necessarily indirectly, apparently
corresponding with some regularity with Louisa May Alcott.
Unfortunately only one of these letters has apparently survived, but
it is a six hundred word epistle written shortly after Thoreau's
death on 6 May 1862, and worthy of quoting at some length since it
reflects both Louisa May Alcott's and Sophia Foord's tender feelings
for Thoreau:(15)
Dear Miss Ford,
As I promised to write to you when Henry died, I
send these few lines to fulfill that promise though I suppose
you have seen the notices of the event in the papers.
[She then reports on Bronson Alcott's last visit to
Thoreau on 5 May. He was] very weak but suffered nothing and
talked in his old pleasant way saying "it took Nature a long
time to do her work but he was most out of the world ." [At 8
o'clock the next morning Thoreau asked to be lifted,] tried to
help do it, but was too weak and lying down again passed quietly
and painlessly out of the old world into the new.
[Emerson desired that his friend's funeral be at the
church,] a thing Henry would not have liked. [Lousia comments,
not too enthusiastically, on Emerson's famous eulogy and quotes
from it briefly.
After stanzas by Channing had been sung and Mr.
Alcott had read from Henry's own books,] we all walked after
Henry's coffin with its pall of flowers, carried by six of his
townsmen. [Describing the journey to the graveyard:] It seemed
as if Nature wore her most benignant aspect to welcome her
dutiful & loving son to his long sleep in her arms. As we
entered the church yard birds were singing, early violets
blooming in the grass & the pines singing their softest lullaby,
& there between his father & his brother we left him, feeling
that though his life seemed too short, it would blossom & bear
fruit for us long after he was gone & that perhaps we should
know a closer relationship now than even while he lived.
I can never mourn for such men, [the letter
concludes,] because they never seem lost to me but nearer &
dearer for the solemn change. I hope you have this consolation,
& if these few words of mine can give you anything you have not
already learned I am very glad. I can only add much love from
us & a heart full from your
Lou
[In a postscript, she invited
Miss Foord to visit the Alcotts and says she is enclosing a bit
of andromeda] his favorite flower, a wreath of which we put in
his coffin.
Miss Foord had
apparently returned to Dedham, where she spent the rest of her days
living with her sister Esther, taking a kindly interest in the
education of her niece Lydia Ford Stow, who had been left an orphan
at an early age, and in the rapidly growing woman's suffrage
movement. She died on 1 April 1885 at the age of eighty-two, the
cause, according to town records: "old age." She was almost
forgotten by the younger generation that had grown up around her.
Only one Boston newspaper mentioned her passing, and that merely
gave her name and age.(16)
But one friend remembered her Louisa May Alcott, famous now, but a
tired, worn-out invalid. She took time to write a word of tribute
and send it to the suffragette Women's Journal, where it
was printed in the issue of 11 April 1885:
Editors Women's Journal:
The columns of a paper devoted to the record of
woman's worth and word seem a proper place for a brief tribute
to the memory of an estimable woman lately gone to her rest.
Sophia Foord was one of those who, by an upright
life, an earnest sympathy in all great reforms and the influence
of a fine character, made the world better while here, and left
a sweet memory behind her.
She is one of the most prominent figures in my early
Concord days, when she kept school for the little Emersons,
Channings and Alcotts in the poet's barn. Many a wise lesson
she gave us there, though kindergartens were as yet unknown;
Many a flower-hunt with Thoreau for our guide, many a Sunday
service where my father acted as chaplain, and endless revels
where young and old played together, while illustrious faces
smiled on the pretty festivities under the pines.
The warmth and vigor of her own nature were most
attractive, and sincerely made her friendship worth having, and
her lifelong desire for high thinking and holy living won for
her the regard of many admirable persons, of whom she was too
modest to boast.
I regret that I know little of her later years, but
I take comfort in the knowledge that a devoted sister cheered
her long illness, and that after the refining discipline of
pain, age and death, her strong spirit rejoices in the larger
life she aspired to know.
L.M.Alcott(17)
Miss Foord's body now
rests nearly forgotten in the Dedham Cemetery. It is useless to
speculate how Thoreau's career might have been changed had she been
successful in her assault, but we trust, for her sake, that her
spirit is united with his in "the Other World".
Footnotes:
1. Thoreau (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1939) pp.260ff.
2. Family records in Dedham (Mass.) Historical Society & Descendants
and Ancestors of Nathaniel Smith, Jr. and Mary Elizabeth Phillips
(privately printed).
3. Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs (Boston:
Arena,1894) p. 49.
4. Margaret Lathrop, The Wayside (New York: American Book
Co., 1940), p73.
5. Odell Shepard, Pedlar's Progress (Boston: Little, Brown,
1937) p. 388.
6. Clara Endicott Sears, Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1915) p. 140.
7. Ednah D. Cheney, Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and
Journals (Boston: Roberts, 1889), p42.
8. Annie M.L. Clark, The Alcotts in Harvard (Lancaster, Mass.:
Clark, 1902), p.41.
9. Honore Willsie Morrow, The Father of Little Women
(Boston: Little, Brown. 1927).
10.Caroline Tucker, May Alcott, A Memoir (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1928), pp.21-211.
11.The Journals of Bronson Alcott (Boston: Little, Brown,
1938) , p.178.
12.Caroline Ticknor, p. 22; The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson
(New York: Columbia, 1939) III, 343,347,358.
13.Canby, p. 268.
14.Wyman,I, 130-131.
15.Unpublished letter reprinted in part with permission of Alcott
heirs.
16.Boston Transcript, 3 April 1885.I am indebted to Mr. Anton
Kovar of Arlington, Mass., for searching the Boston newspapers for
me, for checking the Dedham court records, and for photographing her
gravestone.
17.Letter
transcribed by Mr. John Cooley.
A
Note on the Text:
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