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22 February 1852, Sunday; 10:00 a.m.
Plymouth, Massachusetts; Leyden Hall
"Life in the Woods" (I)
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NARRATIVE OF EVENT: In late December 1851, the
horticulturist B. Marston Watson and his wife Mary Russell Watson began making plans to
improve the cultural life of their small town, Plymouth, Massachusetts, by establishing a
series of lectures "for those who choose not to go to church on Sundays."1 One of the people Mr. Watson contacted about their
plans was Emerson, whose wife Lidian was Mrs. Watson’s very good friend. Emerson
first responded to Watson from Buffalo, New York, where Emerson was lecturing. In his
letter, dated 4 January 52, Emerson suggested that Watson might want to contact Ellery
Channing about delivering one or more of three lectures Channing had in his portfolio at
the time. Emerson had heard two of the three lectures and had thought them "full of
wit and criticism and sarcasm."2 Back in
Concord eleven days later, Emerson wrote and "apologized to Watson for taking so long
in answering and indicated his own commitment to lecture in Plymouth on the topic
‘Culture and Worship.’"3 Watson was
able to get firm commitments from at least three other speakers, so he finalized his plans
and announced on 31 January 1852 in the columns of the Plymouth Old Colony Memorial
that "a series of discourses on the leading social and moral questions of the day at
Leyden Hall" would begin the next day, Sunday, 1 February. The "Leyden Hall
Congregation," as they were soon to become called, would be addressed by a different
speaker each Sunday, first from 10:00 a.m. to noon, and then again at 7:00 p.m. To offset
expenses, a five-cent admission fee would be charged, or members could purchase dollar
packages of tickets for the series. Each speaker would receive ten dollars and expenses,
which was a fairly paltry sum at the time but which Watson used to extraordinary purpose;
in addition to Emerson and Channing, the following luminaries spoke to the Leyden Hall
Congregation that year: Bronson Alcott, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, James Russell Lowell, E. P. Whipple, and Horace Greeley.4
Yet another luminary who spoke to
Watson’s congregation that year was Thoreau. Emerson, in his letter of 15 January,
also told Watson, "I showed your letter to Mr. Thoreau who likes [your project] well
and replied that he will come to you on that errand at any time you please if you will
give him sufficient notice before hand."5 On
Sunday, 15 February, Watson wrote to Thoreau:
I am very much obliged to you for your
interest in our meetings here, and for your promise to come down some Sunday. I will look
for you or for Mr Channing or for Mr [Daniel] Foster on the next Sunday, Feby 22,—
Mr. Channing very kindly wrote to me at Mr Emerson’s suggestion saying that he would
come any time named. I learn from Mr Alcott he is now in Providence, and so I send my
message to him thro’ you— I hope that one of you will be quite sure to come.
Could you write me by Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning—? If he is at Providence
I would not consult him, but decide at once to come. Mr Foster I have not written to, but
he has been so valiant in the good cause, that a good audience is ready to rec[eive] his
word. My regards to him, & say we shall be very glad to hear him on Sunday if you or
Mr C. cannot come, & I shall be also glad to have him name some day when he can come.
Watson added the following postscript:
Our meetings go on finely—Rev. Sam. Johnson, Mr Alcott, Ed. Quincy so far. People
were delighted at Mr A. and listened with great enthusiasm. Young Johnson is magnificent,
and you may safely go a hundred miles to hear. I hope nothing will prevent one of you from
coming, & let me know as early in the wk. as you can. Can’t you [read to] us from
your Life in the woods, which Mr Alcott pronounces just the thing for us—
I will meet you at the cars.6
In his response to Watson’s urging, probably sent on 17 February, Thoreau wrote:
I have not yet seen Mr. Channing,
though I believe he is in town,—having decided to come to Plymouth myself,—but I
will let him know that he is expected. Mr. Foster wishes me to say that he accepts your
invitation, and that he would like to come Sunday after next; also that he would like to
know before next Sunday whether you will expect him. I will take the Saturday afternoon
train. I shall be glad to get a winter view of Plymouth Harbor, and to see where your
garden lies under snow. (C, p. 276)
Thoreau took the train from Concord to
Boston on Saturday, 21 February, and stopped in to see Alcott, who wrote in his diary that
day, "Henry Thoreau is here on his way to meet the Leyden Hall Congregation at
Plymouth, and read his ‘Walden paper’ to them, to morrow."7 In his journal entry the following day, Thoreau wrote,
"Went to Plymouth to lecture or preach all day." He also commented on the
weather—"A mild misty day"—and, ever the natural historian, observed
"red? oaks about Billington Sea fringed with usneas which in this damp air appear in
perfection." Of the locale’s venerable human history, he remarked, "I
understood that there were 2 only of the sixth generation from the Pilgrims still
alive" (PEJ4, pp. 362-63).
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: None known.
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: By this
time Thoreau had refined and expanded his "Walden; or, Life in the Woods"
manuscript very considerably, but as we suggested in our comments on lecture 15 above, he
seems to have kept intact and continued to read from his earlier three-lecture draft,
identified by Lyndon Shanley as version II and III.8
For the content of this draft of "Economy," the first of the three "Life in
the Woods" lectures, see lecture 15 above.
Notes
1. Quoted from an
uncited source in L. D. Geller, Between Concord and Plymouth: The Transcendentalists
and the Watsons (Concord: Thoreau Foundation Inc., 1973), p. 16. [Back to Text]
2. Quoted in Geller, Between
Concord and Plymouth, p. 24. [Back
to Text]
3. Geller, Between
Concord and Plymouth, p. 25. [Back
to Text]
4. Geller, Between
Concord and Plymouth, pp. 23-24. [Back
to Text]
5. Quoted in Geller, Between
Concord and Plymouth, p. 25. [Back
to Text]
6. MPlPS; quoted from a
typescript at the Thoreau Textual Center, CU-SB. [Back to Text]
7. Alcott, MS "Diary
for 1852," entry of 21 February, MH (*59M-308). [Back to Text]
8. Shanley, Making of
Walden, p. 28. [Back to Text] |