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22 January 1851, Wednesday
Medford, Massachusetts
"Economy"
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NARRATIVE OF EVENT: All that is known of this
lecture delivery is that on his way to Medford Thoreau stopped in Boston to visit Alcott,
whose diary entry for 22 January 1851 is of interest:
Thoreau passed this morning and dined
with me. He was on his way to read a paper at Medford this evening—his "Life in
the Woods at Walden"; and as refreshing a piece as the Lyceum will get from any
lecturer going at present in New England—a whole forest, with forester and all,
imported into the citizen’s and villager’s brain. A sylvan man accomplished in
the virtues of an aboriginal civility, and quite superior to the urbanities of cities,
Thoreau is himself a wood, and its inhabitants. There is more in him of sod and shade and
sky lights, of the genuine mold and moistures of the green grey earth, than in any person
I know. Self dependent and sagacious as any denizen of the elements, he has the key to
every animal’s brain, every flower and shrub; and were an Indian to flower forth, and
reveal the secrets hidden in the wilds of his cranium, it would not be more surprising
than the speech of this Sylvanus.
He belongs to the Homeric age, and is
older than fields and gardens; as virile and talented as Homer’s heroes, and the
elements. He seems alone, of all the men I have known, to be a native New
Englander,—as much so as the oak, or granite ledge; and I would rather send him to
London or Vienna or Berlin, as a specimen of American genius spontaneous and unmixed, than
anyone else. I shall have occasion to use him presently in these portraits. We must grind
him into paint to help brown and invigorate Channing’s profile, when we come to it.
Here is coloring for half a dozen Socialisms. It stands out in layers and clots, like
carbuncles, to give force and homeliness to the otherwise feminine lineaments. This man is
the independent of independents—is, indeed, the sole signer of the Declaration, and a
Revolution in himself—a more than ‘76—having got beyond the signing to the
doing it out fully. Concord jail could not keep him safely: Justice Hoar paid his tax,
too; and was glad to forget it thereafter, till now, his citizenship, and omit his
existence, as a resident, in the poll list. Lately he has taken to surveying as well as
authorship, and makes the compass pay for his book on "The Concord and Merrimac[k]
Rivers," which the public is slow to take off his hands. I went with him to his
publishers, Monroe and Co., and learned that only about two hundred of an edition of a
thousand copies were sold. But author and book can well afford to wait."1
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: None known.
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: See
lecture 15 above. We assume that this is the only time Thoreau delivered one of his
"Walden; or, Life in the Woods" in Medford and that he would therefore have
delivered "Economy," the first of the three lectures, the other two being
more-or-less contextually dependent upon the first.
Notes
1. Alcott, Journals,
pp. 238-39. [Back to Text] |