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3 January 1849, Wednesday; 7:00 p.m.
Concord, Massachusetts; Unitarian Church, Vestry
"White Beans and Walden Pond"
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NARRATIVE OF EVENT: According to the records of
the Concord Lyceum, "Jany 3d 1849 Lecture by D. H. Thoreau Concord. Subject: White
Beans & Walden Pond" (MassLyc, p. 163). Thoreau’s lecture was the
fifth in a course of nineteen, although, as Thomas Blanding has argued, Thoreau may have
been "a last minute substitute."1 The
evidence for this conclusion is a journal entry by James Lorin Chapin of Lincoln, who on 3
January 1849 wrote, "I had calculated to have gone to the Lyceum but heard that the
man who was expected could not come and so I did not go. Have spent most of the evening in
reading, but feel so drowsy that I think I cannot sit up longer than nine
o’clock."2 Chapin could not have meant
that he had planned to go to the Lincoln Lyceum because it met only on Tuesdays and, in
fact, had met the previous evening, 2 January (MassLyc, p. 218).
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: None known.
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: With the
exception of a few that have been lost or scattered, the manuscript pages Thoreau read
from are at CSmH (HM 924) and contain passages that he later used in the
"Sounds" and "The Bean-Field" chapters of Walden. Also see
entries for lecture 15 above about the three-lecture "Walden; , or, Life in the
Woods" course and lecture 19 below about James Lorin Chapin’s journal entry
after hearing a later delivery of this same lecture.
Notes
1. Blanding,
"Thoreau’s Local Lectures," 23. [Back to Text]
2. Quoted in Blanding,
"Thoreau’s Local Lectures," 23. [Back to Text] |