Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend (File 2 of 5)

Edward Waldo Emerson

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[PAGE 021] and that evening resigned the place where such methods were required. One of the pupils, then a little boy, who is still living, all through life has cherished his grievance, not understanding the cause. But we may be sure his punishment would not have been cruel, for Henry Thoreau always liked and respected children. Later this pupil came to know and like him. He said “he seemed the sort of a man that would n’t willingly hurt a fly,” and, except on this occasion, had shown himself mild and kindly.
            [030] But next year began a different sort of teaching. John and Henry took the Concord Academy. John was the principal, perhaps twenty-three years old, of pleasant face, gay, bright, sympathetic, while the more original and serious younger brother was, I think, troubled with consciousness, and though very human, un- [PAGE 022] demonstrative. He mainly took charge of the classical department. Twenty-seven years ago I had the fortune to talk or correspond with six of their pupils and found that all remembered the school pleasantly, several with enthusiasm, and in their accounts of it, the influence of the character of the teachers and the breadth and quality of the instruction appear remarkable. One scholar001 said: “It was a peculiar school, there was never a boy flogged or threatened, yet I never saw so absolutely military discipline. How it was done I scarcely know. Even the incorrigible were brought into line.”
            [031] This scholar, who, it should be remembered, was only John’s pupil and one who craved affection, said to me: “Henry was not loved. He was a conscientious teacher, but rigid. He would not take a man’s money for nothing: if a boy, were sent to him, he could make him do all he [PAGE 023] could. No, he was not disagreeable. I learned to understand him later. I think that he was then in the green-apple stage.”
            [032] Another scholar,002 who was more with Henry, told a different story, remembering both brothers with great affection and gratitude. He said that after morning prayers, one or other of the brothers often made a little address to their scholars, original and interesting, to put their minds in proper train for the day’s work. Henry’s talks especially remain with him: on the seasons, their cause, their advantages, their adaptation to needs of organic life; their beauty, which he brought actually into the school-room by his description; on design in the universe, strikingly illustrated for children’s minds; on profanity, treated in a way, fresh, amusing, and sensible.003 At these times you could have heard a pin drop in the school-room. More than this, he won [PAGE 024] their respect. Such methods seem natural enough now, but were quite novel in those days.
            [033] Another004 says: “What impressed me, then and later, was Henry’s knowledge of Natural History; a keen observer and great student of things, and a very pleasant talker. He reminded me more of Gilbert White of Selborne than any other character.”
            [034] These brothers were just enough unlike to increase the interest and happiness of their relation. It was one of closest sympathy. It is believed that they were both charmed by one young girl: but she was denied them and passed out of their horizon. In reading what Thoreau says of Love and the two poems relating to his loss one sees that even his disappointment elevated his life.
            [035] The first of these is called “Sympathy,”005 in which the lady is disguised [PAGE 025] as “a gentle boy.” I give verses of the other below.

TO THE MAIDEN IN THE EAST

Low in the eastern sky
Is set thy glancing eye;
And though its gracious light
Ne’er riseth to my sight,
Yet every star that climbs
Above the gnarlèd limbs
      Of yonder hill
Conveys thy gentle will.

Believe I knew thy thought;
And that the zephyrs brought
Thy kindest wishes through,
As mine they bear to you;
That some attentive cloud
Did pause amid the crowd
      Over my head,
While gentle things were said.

Believe the thrushes sung,
And that the flower-bells rung,
That herbs exhaled their scent
And hearts knew what was meant,
The trees a welcome waved,
And lakes their margins laved,
      When thy free mind
To my retreat did wind
   .     .     .     .     .     .

[PAGE 026] Still will I strive to be
As if thou wert with me;
Whatever path I take
It shall be, for thy sake,
Of gentle slope and wide
As thou wert by my side
   .     .     .     .     .     .

                [036] During the summer vacation of their school the brothers made together that happy voyage, since famous, on the Rivers, but it was not in their dreams how soon Death, coming suddenly and in strange form, was to sunder their earthly lives. John, in full tide of happy life, died in a few days of lock-jaw following a most trifling cut. The shock, the loss, and the sight of his brothers terrible suffering at the end, for a time overthrew Henry so utterly that a friend told me he sat still in the house, could do nothing, and his sisters led him out passive to try to help him.
            [037] Near the same time died suddenly a [PAGE 027] beautiful child, with whom he had played and talked almost daily, in the house of near friends where he had a second home.006
            [038] He had gone into a Valley of Sorrow, but when, first, the dream of helpmate and guiding presence passed away, and then his nearest companion was taken from him, who shall say but that the presence of these blessings would have prevented his accomplishing his strange destiny? For his genius was solitary, and though his need for friendly and social relation with his kind was great, it was occasional, and to his lonely happiness the world will owe the best gifts he has left. And even as these his most prized and his coveted ties were parting or becoming impossible, new ones, more helpful if less desired, were presenting.
            [039] It is hard to name another town in Middlesex where the prevailing influ- [PAGE 028] ences would have given the same push to the growth of his strong and original character as did those which were then in Concord. For from various causes, there early came that awakening of thought and spirit soon to spread wide in New England, then lethargic in physical prosperity, formal and sleepy in religion, selfish in politics, and provincial in its literature. At this period the young Thoreau came into constant contact with many persons resident or visiting there, full of the courage, the happiness, and the hope given by thoughts of a freer, nobler relation to God, and simpler and more humane ones to man. But be it distinctly understood that Thoreau was not created by the Transcendental Epoch, so-called, though, without doubt, his growth was stimulated by kindred ideas. His thoughtfulness in childhood, his independent course in college themes [PAGE 029] and early journals, prove that Thoreau was Thoreau and not the copy of another. His close association, under the same roof, for months, with the maturer Emerson may, not unnaturally, have tinged his early writings, and some superficial trick of manner or of speech been unconsciously acquired, as often happens. But this is all that can be granted. Entire independence, strong individuality were Thoreau’s distinguishing traits, and his foible was not subserviency, but combativeness in conversation, as his friends knew almost too well. Conscious imitation is not to be thought of as a possibility of this strong spirit.
            [040] Henry bravely recovered himself from the blow his brother’s loss had been at first, when those who knew him said it seemed as if a part of himself had been torn away. Music seems to have been the first consoling voice that came to [PAGE 030] him, though great repairing Nature had silently begun to heal her son. He was thrown more upon himself than before, and then he went out to her. Yet he cherished his friends, as his fine letters at this time show. In the next few years he worked with his father in the pencil shop (where now the Concord Library stands), and wrote constantly, and the woods and river drew him to them in each spare hour. He wrote for the Dial as the organ of the new thought of the region and hour, though it paid nothing for articles, and he generously helped edit it. He relieved his friend Emerson from tasks hopeless to him by his skill in gardening and general household works, and went for a time to Staten Island as a private tutor to the son of Emerson’s older brother, William.007 In this visit to New York he became acquainted with Horace Greeley, who appreciated his work and [PAGE 031] showed himself always generous and helpful in bringing it to publication in various magazines, and getting him paid for it.
            [041] Of Henry Thoreau as a mechanic thus much is known: that he helped his father more or less in his business of making lead-pencils; was instrumental in getting a better pencil than had been made up to that time in this country, which received a prize at the Mechanics’ Fair; and that, when this triumph had been achieved, he promptly dropped the business which promised a good maintenance to himself and family: which unusual proceeding was counted to him for righteousness by a very few, and for laziness by most.
            [042] This is the principal charge made against him in his own neighbourhood. Many solid practical citizens, whose love of wild Nature was about like Dr. Johnson’s, asserted that he neglected a good [PAGE 032] business, which he might have worked with profit for his family and himself, to idle in the woods, and this cannot be forgiven.
            [043] From my relation to the Thoreau family I knew something of their black-lead business after Henry’s death, while carried on by his sister, and later investigated the matter with some care and with results that are surprising. I will tell the story briefly.
            [044] John Thoreau, senior, went into the pencil business on his return to Concord in 1823. He made at first such bad pencils as were then made in America, greasy, gritty, brittle, inefficient, but tried to improve them, and did so. Henry found in the College library, in an encyclopædia published in Edinburgh, what the graphite (“black lead”) was mixed with in the good German pencils, viz., a certain fine Bavarian clay; while [PAGE 033] here, glue, with a little spermaceti, or bayberry wax, was used. The Thoreaus procured that clay, stamped with a crown as a royal monopoly, and baked it with the lead, and thus got a harder, blacker pencil than any here, but gritty. Then it appears they invented a process, very simple, but which at once put their black lead for fineness at the head of all manufactured in America. This was simply to have the narrow churn-like chamber around the mill-stones prolonged some seven feet high, opening into a broad, close, flat box, a sort of shelf. Only lead-dust that was fine enough to rise to that height, carried by an upward draught of air, and lodge in the box was used, and the rest ground over. I talked with the mechanic who showed me this, and who worked with the Thoreaus from the first, was actively helpful in the improvements and at last bought out the [PAGE 034] business from Mrs. Thoreau and carried it on for years,—and with others who knew something of the matter. The evidence is strong that Henry’s mind and hand were active in the rapid carrying of this humble business to the front. It seems to be probable that, whether the father thought out the plan alone or with Henry, it was the latter’s mechanical skill that put it into working shape. Henry is said also to have made the machine used in making their last and best pencil, which drilled a round hole into a solid wood and cut lead to fit it, as an axle does a wheel-box, instead of the usual method of having the wood in two parts glued together after filling.008
            [045] A friend who attended, in 1849, a fashionable school in Boston, kept by an English lady, tells me that the drawing-teacher used to direct the pupils to “ask at the art store for a Thoreau pencil, for [PAGE 035] they are the best”; for them they then had to pay a quarter of a dollar apiece. Henry Thoreau said of the best pencil when it was achieved, that it could not compete with the Fabers’ because it cost more to make. They received, I am told, six dollars a gross for good pencils.009
            [046] But there is another chapter to the black-lead story not so well known. About 1848-49 the process of electrotyping was invented, it is claimed, in Boston. It was a secret process, and a man engaged in it, knowing the Thoreau lead was the best, ordered it in quantity from Mr. John Thoreau, the latter guarding carefully the secret of his method, and the former concealing the purpose for which he used it. Mr. Thoreau, senior, therefore increased his business and received good prices, at first ten dollars a pound,—though later it gradually fell to two dollars,—and [PAGE 036] sometimes selling five hundred pounds a year. After a time the purpose for which their lead was bought was found out by the Thoreaus and they sold it to various firms until after the death of Mr. John Thoreau and his son Henry, when the business was sold by Mrs. Thoreau.
            [047] Now, when Henry Thoreau succeeded in making his best pencil and deliberately renounced his partnership, saying that he could not improve on that product, and that his life was too valuable to him to put what remained of it into pencils, the principal trade of the family was in lead to the electrotypers, and after 1852 few pencils were made, and then merely to cover up the more profitable business, for, if the secret were known, it might be destroyed.
            [048] As his father became feebler Henry had to look after the business to some degree for the family, and to give some [PAGE 037] help after his father’s death, though Miss Sophia attended to the correspondence, accounts, and directing and shipping the lead (brought in bulk, after grinding, to the house, that its destination might not be known) to the customers in Boston and New York. Yet Henry had to oversee the mill, bring the lead down, and help at the heavier part of boxing and packing, and this I am assured by two friends he did until his fatal sickness. The work was done in an upstairs room in the L, but the impalpable powder so pervaded the house, owing to the perfection of its reduction, that a friend tells me that, on opening Miss Sophia’s piano, he found the keys coated with it. Thoreau’s exposure to the elements and spare diet have been charged with shortening his life. He would probably much earlier have succumbed to a disease, hereditary in his family, had he held [PAGE 038] more closely to his trade with its irritant dust. The part he was obliged to bear in it certainly rendered him more susceptible to pulmonary disease, which his out-of-door life delayed.
            [049] Thus it appears that this ne’er-do-well worked at, and by his reading and thought and skill so helped on the improvements in the family’s business, that they were far in advance of their competitors, and then, though he did not care to put his life into that trade, preferring trade with the Celestial City, yet found time quietly to oversee for the family the business which gave them a very good maintenance, and, when it was necessary, to work at it with his hands while health remained.
            [050] Yet he did not think fit to button-hole his neighbours on the street and say, “You mistake, Sir; I am not idle.”
            [051] His own Spartan wants of plain food, [PAGE 039] strong clothing, and telescope, and a few books, with occasional travel in the cheapest way, were supplied in a variety of other ways. For he had what is called in New England, “faculty”; was a good gardener, mechanic, and emergency-man. He could do all sorts of jobbing and tinkering well at home and for other people. One or two fences were standing until lately, in town, which he built; he planted for his friend Emerson his barren pasture by Walden with pines. He especially loved to raise melons. I once went to a melon-party at his mother’s with various people, young and old, where his work had furnished the handsome and fragrant pink or salmon fruit on which alone we were regaled; and he, the gardener, came in to help entertain the guests.
            [052] He wrote articles for magazines which brought him some money, and books, [PAGE 040] now classics, but hardly saleable in his day.
            [053] But his leading profession was that of a land-surveyor. In this, as in his mechanics, he did the best possible work. I remember his showing me some brass instrument which he had made or improved, with his own hands. Those who assisted him tell me that he was exceedingly particular, took more offsets than any other surveyor in these parts, often rectified bounds carelessly placed before. It amused him to call his friend Emerson from his study to ask him why he would steal his neighbour’s meadow, showing him his hedge and ditch well inside the land that his good-natured neighbour, Sam Staples, had just bought and was entitled to by his deed, though the latter said, “No matter, let the ditch be the line,” and would take no money.
            [054] Our leading surveyor, following Tho-

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NOTES

        001 Page 22, note 1. This scholar was Horace R. Hosmer, whose account of the senior Thoreaus [PAGE 126] has been already quoted. His older brother had also been a pupil. Hosmer wrote to me as follows:—
            “Every one in that school had their duties assigned, as on a Cunard steamer, and did their own part.
            “When I first came, a little boy, John said ‘I want you to be a good boy and study, because you are my friend’s little brother.’ Soon after, I was called to his desk by John. He had spoken to me once or twice, but I had not heard, and he thought I was sulky. I said I had not heard him, and he looked at me and believed me, and to make amends opened his desk and took out Lazy Lawrence and gave it to me to read.
            “When the second term was to begin, he said to me, ‘If your father does n’t feel able to send you next term, you come, and you shall have your tuition free.’
            “Sometimes he used to take me by the hand and lead me home to dinner. I never forgot those dinners; the room was shaded and cool, there was no hustle. Mrs. Thoreau’s bread, brown and white, was the best I had ever tasted. They had, beside, vegetables and fruit, pies or puddings; but I never saw meat there.  [The Thoreaus were not vegetarians exclusively, but this was at a time of saving.] Their living was a revelation to me. I think they were twenty years ahead of the times in Concord.
        [PAGE 127] “At the house there was nothing jarring. Mrs. Thoreau was pleasant and talkative and her husband was always kind. If I ever saw a gentleman at home, it was he. John would carry melons from his garden for the scholars. Once I found a piece of melon in my desk and should have supposed it was put there as a joke, but I caught the fragrance. It was the first citron melon I ever had seen.
            “In reading about Arnold of Rugby I have often thought that John Thoreau resembled him in conducting his school. To me that man seemed to make all things possible.’ Henry was not loved in the school. He had his scholars upstairs. I was with John only. John was the more human, loving; understood and thought of others. Henry thought more about himself. He was a conscientious teacher but rigid.”… Here follows the passage, quoted in the text, of Henry’s then being “in the green-apple stage.”
As I parted from Mr. Hosmer, whom the memory of his loved master had deeply stirred, he exclaimed, “When I hear of Henry Thoreau’s growing fame the lines in Byron’s ‘Isles of Greece’ from our old Reading Book rise in my mind,—

‘Ye have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,—
            Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons why forget
            The nobler and the manlier one?’”

And the tears stood in his eyes. [Back to text]
         002 [PAGE 128] Page 23, note 1. This pupil was Dr. Thomas Hosmer of Bedford, for many years a practitioner of dentistry in Boston. He and another Bedford boy, B. W. Lee, later of Newport, Vermont, used to walk to the Academy, four miles, and back, every day and were praised for never having been absent or tardy. In winter they could skate up the river part way. Henry taught the older classes Latin and Greek, also Natural Philosophy. Both of these boys valued the school and their teachers highly.
        Mr. Lee wrote to me, “There is one thing which I shall never forget of them, and that is their kindness and good will shown me while at their school, and their great desire to impress upon the minds of their scholars to do right always.”
Dr. Hosmer added this pleasant picture to his story of Henry: “I have seen children catch him by the hand, as he was going home from school, to walk with him and hear more.”
        Thoreau’s morning talks, Dr. Hosmer said, “showed that he knew himself there to teach broadly, and to awaken thought,—not merely to hear lessons in the rudiments of letters.” [Back to text]
         003 Page 23, note 2. Henry thus treated of profanity: “Boys, if you went to talk business with a man, and he persisted in thrusting words having no connection with the subject into all parts of every sentence—Boot-jack, for instance,—would n’t you think he was tak- [PAGE 129] ing a liberty with you, and trifling with your time, and wasting his own?” He then introduced the “Boot-jack” violently and frequently into a sentence, to illustrate the absurdity of street bad language in a striking way. [Back to text]
        004 Page 24, note 1. Mr. George Keyes, of Concord, spoke of that school as “very pleasant indeed.” He told me that the brothers organized a survey of Fairhaven Hill in Concord and the river-shore below it, to give the boys an idea of the field-work of surveying, and the use of instruments. In this he remembers Henry as the more active of the two.
        Mr. Keyes said: “We boys used to visit him on Saturday afternoons at his house by Walden, and he would show us interesting things in the woods near by. I did not see the philosophical side. He was never stern or pedantic, but natural and very agreeable, friendly,—but a person you would never feel inclined to fool with. A face that you would long remember. Though short in stature, and inconspicuous in dress, you would not fail to notice him in the street, as more than ordinary.” [Back to text]
        005 Page 24. note 2. Thoreau sent to his friend a copy of these verses. In Mr. Emerson’s journal for August, 1839, is written: “Last night came to me a beautiful poem from Henry Thoreau, ‘Sympathy.’ The purest strain, and the loftiest, I think, that has yet pealed from this unpoetic American forest. I hear his verses [PAGE 130] with as much triumph as I point to my Guido when they praise half poets and half painters.”             [Carlyle had sent to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson a fine engraving of The Aurora.]
Three years later. the older friend was more exacting in his praise of the younger. In November, 1842, he wrote: “Henry Thoreau wrote me verses which pleased, if not by beauty of particular lines, yet by the honest truth, and by the length of flight and strength of wing, for most of our poets are only writers of lines or of epigrams. These of Henry’s at least have rude strength, and we do not come to the bottom of the mine. Their fault is that the gold does not yet flow pure, but is drossy and crude. The thyme and marjoram are not yet made into honey.” [Back to text]
        006 Page 27, note 1. Thoreau wrote soon after little Waldo’s death to Mrs. Emerson’s sister:—
            “As for Waldo, he died as the mist rises from the brook which the sun will soon dart his rays through. Do not the flowers die every autumn? He had not even taken root here. I was not startled to hear that he was dead; it seemed the most natural thing that could happen. His fine organization demanded it, and Nature gently yielded his request. It would have been strange if he had lived.” [Back to text]
        007 Page 30, note 1. In 1843, after he had lived more than a year with the Emersons, Thoreau went to Staten Island as tutor to one of Mr. [PAGE 131] William Emerson’s sons for several months. After his return, Mr. Emerson went to England and again he kindly came to live and look after things in his friend’s home. After Mr. Emerson’s return his daughter Ellen, ten years old, the eldest child, went to visit her Staten Island relatives. Thoreau, perhaps remembering his homesickness while there, kindly wrote the following home letter to the little girl:—

Concord, July 31st, 1849.
Dear Ellen,—
        I think that we are pretty well acquainted, though we never had any very long talks. We have had a good many short talks, at any rate. Don’t you remember how we used to despatch our breakfasts two winters ago, as soon as Eddy could get on his feeding-tire, which was not always remembered before the rest of the household had come down? Don’t you remember our wise criticisms on the pictures in the portfolio and the Turkish book, with Eddy and Edith looking on,—how almost any pictures answered our purpose and we went through the Penny Magazine, first from beginning to end, and then from end to beginning, and Eddy stared just as much the second time as the first, and Edith thought that we turned over too soon, and that there were some things which she had not seen? I can guess pretty well what interests you and what you think about. In- [PAGE 132] deed I am interested in pretty much the same things myself. I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it. You love to write or to read a fairy story, and that is what you will always like to do, in some form or other. By and by you will discover that you want what are called the necessaries of life only that you may realize some such dream.
        Eddy has got him a fish-pole and line with a pin-hook at the end, which he flourishes over the dry ground and the carpet at the risk of tearing out our eyes; but when I told him that he must have a cork and a sinker, his mother took off the pin and tied on a cork instead; but he doubts whether that will catch fish as well. He tells me that he is five years old. Indeed I was present at the celebration of his birth-day lately, and supplied the company with onion and squash pipes, and rhubarb whistles, which is the most I can do on such occasions. Little Sammy Hoar blowed them most successfully, and made the loudest noise, though it almost strained his eyes out to do it. Edith is full of spirits. When she comes home from school she goes hop, skip and jump down into the field to pick berries, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and thimbleberries; if them is one of these [PAGE 133] that has thoughts of changing its hue by tomorrow morning, I guess that Edith knows something about it and will consign it to her basket for Grandmama.
        Children may now be seen going a-berrying in all directions. The white-lilies are in blossom, and the john’swort and goldenrod are beginning to come out. Old people say that we have not had so warm a summer for thirty years. Several persons have died in consequence of the heat,—Mr. Kendal, perhaps for one. The Irishmen on the railroad were obliged to leave off their work for several days, and the farmers left their fields and sought the shade. William Brown of the poor house is dead,—the one who used to ask for a cent—“Give me a cent?” I wonder who will have his cents now!
I found a nice penknife on the bank of the river this afternoon, which was probably lost by some villager who went there to bathe lately. Yesterday I found a nice arrowhead, which was lost some time before by an Indian who was hunting there. The knife was a very little rusted; the arrowhead was not rusted at all.
        You must see the sun rise out of the ocean before you come home. I think that Long Island will not be in the way, if you climb to the top of the hill—at least, no more than Bolster Island, and Pillow Hills, and even the Lowlands of Never-get-up are elsewhere.
        Do not think that you must write to me be [PAGE 134] cause I have written to you. It does not follow at all. You would not naturally make so long a speech to me here in a month as a letter would be. Yet if some time it should be perfectly easy and pleasant to you, I shall be very glad to have a sentence.

Your old acquaintance,
Henry Thoreau. [Back to text]

        008 Page 34, note 1. This passage in Mr. Emerson’s journal in 1834 carries us back to the young mechanic period: “Henry Thoreau said he knew but one secret, which was, to do one thing at a time, and, though he has his evenings for study, if he was in the day inventing machines for sawing his plumbago, he invents wheels all the evening and night also; and if this week he has some good reading and thoughts before him his brain runs on that all day whilst pencils pass through his hands.” [Back to text]
        009 Page 35, note 1. In 1890, I talked with Mr. Warren Miles of Concord, who, having worked with the Munroes, earlier pencil-makers of Concord, came into the employ of John Thoreau, Sr. He told me that the graphite came from the Tudor Mine at Sturbridge for many years, until that mine was closed. Later, it was procured from Canada, but was not so good. It seems that the Germans got their lead, such as is used in the Fabers’ pencil, from Ceylon. Miles suggested the improvement of stones, [PAGE 135] instead of iron balls, for grinding. Presumably this was after the Thoreaus’ invention of the air-blast which gave the wonderfully fine powder to which they owed their success, for, before that, the grit of the stones would have spoiled the product. Mr. Miles thinks that John Thoreau, Sr., may have thought of the air-blast plan, but that Henry at any rate worked out the details. Mr. Miles took me to his mill to see the perfection and simplicity of the operation.
         Mr. Horace Hosmer, who, for a time, was the travelling selling agent of the pencils, stated that the Bavarian clay was used here at that time by the New England Glass Company, and by the Phœnix Crucible Company of Taunton. Perhaps the Thoreaus bought it through these companies. The old pencils were filled by applying the warm mixture of graphite, glue and spermaceti or bayberry wax with a brush to the grooved half of the pencil. The Thoreaus’ clay and graphite mixture, after casting into “leads,” hardened like stone and could stand intense heat. [Back to text]