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8 October 1854, Sunday; 7:00 p.m.
Plymouth, Massachusetts; Leyden Hall
"Moonlight"
[Back to Calendar of Lectures]
NARRATIVE OF EVENT: On 17 September 1854,
Thoreau’s Plymouth friend and former Harvard schoolmate Benjamin Marston Watson sent
him this invitation to lecture in Plymouth:
Mr James Spooner and others here, your
friends, have clubbed together and raised a small sum in hope of persuading you to come
down and read them a paper or two some Sunday. They can offer you $10 at least. Mr Alcott
is now here, and I thought it might be agreeable to you to come down next Saturday and
read a paper on Sunday morning and perhaps on Sunday Evening also, if agreeable to
yourself. I can assure you of a very warm reception but from a small party only.
In a postscript Watson added:
I will meet you at the Depot on
Saturday evening, if you so advise me. Last train leaves at 5—
This is not a "Leyden Hall
Meeting" but a private party—social gathering—almost sewing circle.
Tho’ perhaps we may meet you at Leyden Hall. (C, pp. 337-38)
Two days later, on 19 September,
Thoreau responded to Watson with an acceptance and a question:
I am glad to hear from you & the
Plymouth men again. The world still holds together between Concord and Plymouth, it seems.
I should like to be with you while Mr Alcott is there, but I cannot come next Sunday. I
will come Sunday after next, that is Oct 1st, if that will do,—and look out for you
at the Depot.
I do not like to promise now more than one
discourse. Is there a good precedent for 2? (C, p. 338)
The acceptance is no surprise at all, but Thoreau’s question is. In 1852, on both
of his previous lecture trips to Plymouth, Thoreau had made two lecture presentations on
each visit. Thoreau’s concern over presenting the requested two lectures is
understandable, however, as at that time he had only one lecture that he wished to use,
and all indications are that it was not yet written.1
Thoreau faced a larger problem at this
time than the need to hurry a lecture into shape for a just-made engagement. He was, in
fact, caught in a dilemma, on the one hand wanting to take advantage of Walden’s
publication to propel his career as a lecturer, on the other hand fearful of the loss of
authentic life that stepped-up lecturing might entail. His journal entry for 19 September,
the day of his acceptance message to Watson, conveys these two conflicting attitudes, one
overtly and the other at least in part by implication:
Thinking this afternoon of the prospect
of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter, I realized how
incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long
(and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical,
leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. I have
given myself up to nature; I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and
winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment
they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly,
having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have
afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have
thriven on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I
could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger
now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter? (J,
7:46)
Between Thoreau’s questioning, in his letter to Marston, of the precedent for a
second Plymouth lecture and this same day’s journal questioning of the unprecedented
tradeoffs demanded by a more ambitious career as lecturer, there is perhaps less distance
than one would first assume. Despite these expressed doubts, however, one should not
overlook in this journal lament for the impending loss of a personal Golden Age the
suggested reasons for this loss. First, Thoreau presumed that the post-Walden
public would want to hear him speak; and, second, he apparently proposed to do so.
Indeed, on 21 September, two days after
his message to Watson and his journal elegy for innocence, Thoreau elaborated on his
predicament in a letter to H. G. O. Blake in Worcester. Here he made explicit his
intention to pursue lecturing as never before.
I have just read your letter, but I do
not mean now to answer it, solely for want of time to say what I wish. . . . As for the
excursion you speak of [apparently to Mt. Wachusett], I should like it right
well,—indeed I thought of proposing the same thing to you and [Theo] Brown, some
months ago. Perhaps it would have been better if I had done so then; for in that case I
should have been able to enter into it with that infinite margin to my
views,—spotless of all engagements,—which I think so necessary. As it is, I have
agreed to go a-lecturing to Plymouth, Sunday after next (October 1) and to Philadelphia in
November, and thereafter to the West, if they shall want me; and, as I have
prepared nothing in that shape, I feel as if my hours were spoken for. (C, p. 339)
While still reflecting his doubts, this letter clearly acknowledges his plan to go on
the road as a lecturer, traveling a great deal elsewhere than in Concord.
Pressed for time as he was, Thoreau must
have been relieved by Watson’s letter of 24 September, postponing the lecture and,
incidentally, commissioning a survey of his extensive garden.
There is to be a meeting here on Oct
1st that we think will interfere with yours, and so if the Lord is willing and you have no
objections we will expect you on the next Sunday 8th October.
I think Mr. A. [Alcott] will stay till
that time.
I have been lately adding to my garden,
and now have all that joins me—so I am ready to have it surveyed by you; a pleasure I
have long promised myself. So, if you are at leisure and inclined to the field I hope I
may be so fortunate as to engage your services.
Watson added in a postscript, "The survey might be before the Sunday or after as
you please, and I will meet you at the Depot any time you say—" (C, pp.
339-40).
Watson’s next letter to Thoreau,
written on 30 September (but misdated 30 October), acknowledges Thoreau’s acceptance
through an intermediary of the new lecture date and the request for a survey:
I am glad to learn from Mr Spooner that
you are really coming down, with the tripod too, which is so good news that I hardly dared
to expect it.
It seems a little uncertain whether you
intend to read in the morning as well as evening, and so I write to enquire, that there
may be no mistake in the announcement. Please let me know by return mail which will be in
time. (C, p. 340)
The intermediary mentioned here was James Walter Spooner, who had met Thoreau and heard
him lecture in Plymouth on at least one previous occasion, recording their May 1852
contact in his diary (see lecture 40 in the "Before Walden" calendar).
Spooner, who became an ardent admirer, was one of the sponsors of Thoreau’s upcoming
lecture. Spooner visited Thoreau in Concord ten days before the lecture, joining him in a
lengthy walk on 29 September. Thoreau noted the walk in his journal but did not mention
his companion, while Spooner’s own account, in a letter to his parents written that
evening from Concord’s Middlesex House, is richly detailed.2
The next day he returned to Plymouth and made his report to Watson.3
In a letter misdated Wednesday, 3 October
1854 (Wednesday was the fourth), Bronson Alcott confirmed Watson’s 24 September
impression that he would stay in Plymouth to hear Thoreau lecture. Writing to his wife
from Watson’s home, "Hillside," Alcott confessed his delinquency but gave
several reasons for protracting his visit, among them that
as . . . Henry Thoreau is to be here surveying and to read something to a circle of
Watson’s neighbors on Sunday next, and so into the week, they have persuaded me
somewhat against my sense of duty to you and the Girls, to remain and see him back to
Boston sometime in the week , by Wednesday say, or Thursday at farthest, I should think;
and you may then expect me, if you have or can get to send the $1.50 . . . for road
ticket, and 37 1/2 for hack to bring me and my copied reams to your board again.4
On 4 October, Thoreau wrote again to
Watson, clearing up once and for all the question of how many lectures he intended to give
in Plymouth. His two-sentence letter declares, "I meant to read to you but
once;—in the evening, if it is convenient for all parties. That is as large a taste
of my present self as I dare offer you in one visit."5
Two letters to Blake, both involving the
Plymouth trip and its impact on their planned excursion to Mt. Wachusett, complete the
extant correspondence relating to this lecture. On 5 October, Thoreau wrote:
After I wrote to you Mr. Watson
postponed my going to Plymouth one week i.e. till next Sunday, and now he wishes me to
carry my instruments & survey his grounds, to which he has been adding. Since I want a
little money, though I contemplate but a short excursion, I do not feel at liberty to
decline this work. I do not know exactly how long it will detain me—but there is
plenty of time yet—& I will write to you again—perhaps from Plymouth—
Thoreau then mentioned his new friend Cholmondeley and told Blake, "He is a
well-behaved person, and possibly I may propose his taking that run to Wachusett
with us—if it will be agreeable to you" (C, pp. 342-43). In a letter from
Concord dated Saturday p.m., 14 October, Thoreau wrote again to Blake, saying in part:
I have just returned from Plymouth,
where I have been detained surveying much longer than I expected.
What do you say to visiting Wachusett next
Thursday? (C, p. 344)
Blake must have said yes as Thoreau’s journal entry for Thursday, 19 October,
records his trip to the mountain, where the next day they "saw the sun rise from the
mountain-top" (J, 7:65).
Thoreau gave his lecture to a small
audience of friends, among them Bronson Alcott, James Spooner, Marston Watson and his
wife, Mary Russell Watson, in whom Thoreau had had a romantic interest in the early 1840s
and for whom he wrote the poem "To the Maiden in the East."6 (Days, p. 107). In view of the duration of his Plymouth
lecture trip and the correspondence it generated, Thoreau’s journal record is a
disappointment. His entry dated 7 October begins, "Went to Plymouth to lecture and
survey Watson’s grounds. Returned the 15th." His brief account mentions a few
botanical encounters on or near Watson’s property and calls "Spooner’s
garden a wilderness of fruit trees" (J, 7:63-64), but says nothing of the
lecture or anything else. While the apparent misdating of his return from Plymouth (see 14
October letter to Blake) perhaps suggests a belated journal entry, the sparseness of
information here is indicative of the time shortage he faced that fall.
Bronson Alcott’s diary entries add
more information but do not include the entire time of Thoreau’s stay. Wrote Alcott:
Saturday 7 [October 1854].... Evening,
Thoreau arrives to supper and we discuss the Genesis till bed time, Thoreau sleeping with
me in my chamber.
Sunday 8. We walk about Hillside, and ride
around Billington Sea after dinner.
Evening, Thoreau reads an admirable paper
on "Moonlight" to a small circle at Leyden Hall.
Monday 9. I help Thoreau survey Hillside,
also discuss matters generally.
Tuesday 10. Again survey with Thoreau and
Watson.
Evening, Company at Hillside and a
conversation on Health, Thoreau and some of the ladies, Mrs Watson, the Misses
Kendall’s, taking part.
Wednesday 11. Carry Chain in surveying
"the Orchard" with Thoreau: also, about Hillside Walks. Orchard contains 6 1/3
acres.7
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: The growing importance of lyceum-style lectures in America, and of Henry
Thoreau as a lecturer, is indicated by a notice in the 20 September 1854 New-York Daily
Tribune, which reads in part:
The Lecture Season.
Our advices by letter and otherwise
justify the inference that the Lecture Season of 1854-5 will be more brilliant than any of
its predecessors—that there will be more Popular Lectures delivered, and to larger
audiences, than during any preceding autumn and winter. Nearly every City in the Free
States, with many of the Southern, will have its regular Course or Courses; some of them
as many as three; while at least half the considerable villages throughout the North and
West will have at least one Course. The most acceptable lecturers are overrun with
invitations, and are proffered compensation at much higher rates than were current a few
years ago. The largely increased attendance last winter over that of any former season
justified this advance; and, even at the highest rate, two or three of those most in
request will be unable to answer all the demands upon their time.
We proceed to give, as last year, the
names and post office address of those hitherto widely invited as Lecturers, for the
convenience of those who are now making out their lists and addressing invitations. . . .
We believe the popular taste for this sort
of exercise has sensibly increased of late, and that buffoonery and clap-trap are at
considerable discount from the early quotations, while solid information and grave,
practical suggestion are more generally sought and appreciated. We believe this tendency
will be more and more evinced, until the Winter Course of Lectures of each city and
village shall come to be truly regarded as an important and beneficent instrumentality for
dispelling intellectual stagnation and training the American Mind to habits of healthful
activity, fearless investigation, and generous, manly thought.
Included in this notice was a list of thirty-one lecturers available for the coming
season, one of whom was "Henry D. Thoreau, Concord, Mass." While Thoreau’s
friendships with New-York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley and the influential
Emerson may have influenced his inclusion here, his own past lecturing experience coupled
with the recent publication of Walden, his second book, presumably would have
warranted his initial listing in any case. Updated and expanded annually, this list
thereafter included Thoreau’s name till 1861, the year he became too ill for
lecturing.
Other than Alcott’s above-mentioned
comment that Thoreau’s lecture was "admirable," the only recovered response
to this 8 October 1854 lecture is the implied praise in this undated letter from Mary
Moody Emerson, presumably from later that same month. Miss Emerson, who apparently had
heard some favorable report of Thoreau’s talk, wryly addressed her envelope to
"Mr H. D. Thoreau[,] Proffessor of lectures." She wrote:
If Mr. Thoreau took the least dislike
at the close of his last visit to me—why it is not the home of genius to notice
trifles. Why not have visited my deeper solitude? Why not bring me the Plymouth lecture?
And a budget of literary news? Are you under no obligation to benefit or gratify your
neighbours? Age loves the old fashion of catechising the young. Love to your parents &
Aunts & forget not
MME8
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC:
Anticipating that he would be able to capitalize on the success of Walden; or, Life in
the Woods by lecturing around New England and in the Midwest, Thoreau began a
wholesale revision of his earlier "Walking, or the Wild" lecture manuscript, a
portion of which involved moonlit walks (see lectures 31-32 and 40-41 in the "Before Walden"
calendar). He extracted this portion of the lecture manuscript, tentatively titled the
selection "The Moon," and began searching through his journal of 1850-54 for
passages about his nighttime excursions. When he located such passages, he wrote brief,
descriptive citations of them on sheets of paper and used these "indexes" to
arrange the passages before transcribing the passages from his journal to form a
preliminary draft of the lecture, the title of which he decided would be "Moonlight
(Introductory to an Intended Course of Lectures)." William L. Howarth has asserted
that Thoreau originally transcribed passages from his journal in a mensal order but,
encountering difficulties with such an unorthodox structure, soon changed to a more
orthodox topical structure.9 In any case, based on
the now widely scattered manuscript leaves surviving from this project and from other
projects Thoreau was working on during the fall and winter of 1854, the lectures Thoreau
had in mind for his "Intended Course" were not all related to walks at night;
instead, he appears to have wanted to assemble a course of lectures relating to the
various topics in his earlier 163-page draft of "Walking, or the Wild." His
published essay "Walking" retains two such topics: the joys and other benefits
to be derived from sauntering, and the bracing effect that the tonic of wildness has upon
human beings. Another lecture that grew out of "Walking, or the Wild" and that
Thoreau apparently intended to include in his "Intended Course of Lectures," the
lecture that would eventually be published as "Life without Principle" (see
lecture 46 below), elaborated the consequences of our failure to enjoy the benefits of
periodically sauntering into the wild.10 In
"Moonlight" Thoreau explored the realm that the English poet John Milton in his
epic Paradise Lost referred to as "Chaos and Old Night." The lecture
describes the salutary effects on the saunterer of nocturnal excursions into familiar
territory that had become de-familiarized by the perspective-altering light of the moon on
the landscape, a light that compels the saunterer to experience what Emerson in Nature
called "an original relation to the universe."
Notes
1. According to William
L. Howarth, "Between 26 September and 7 October [1854] Thoreau labored constantly on
the lecture, so constantly during the last five days that he wrote no Journal entries at
all" ("Successor to Walden? Thoreau’s ‘Moonlight—An
Intended Course of Lectures,’" Proof, 2 [1972]: 101). [Back to Text]
2. Anne Root McGrath,
"As Long as It Is in Concord," Concord Saunterer, 12, no. 2 (Summer
1977), pp. 9-11. [Back to Text]
3. Francis B. Dedmond,
"James Walter Spooner: Thoreau’s Second (Though Unacknowledged) Disciple," Concord
Saunterer, 18, no. 2 (December 1985), p. 38; see also Dedmond, "Thoreau as Seen
by an Admiring Friend: A New View," American Literature, 56 (October 1984):
334-43. [Back to Text]
4. The Letters of A.
Bronson Alcott, ed. Richard L. Herrnstadt (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1969),
pp. 185-86. [Back to Text]
5. Although the Thoreau
Textual Center, CU-SB, has a photocopy and a typescript of this letter, the location of
the original letter is unknown. We quote here from the typescript. [Back to Text]
6. Quoted in Walter
Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 143.
Hereafter cited in the text as Days. [Back to Text]
7. Alcott, "Diary for
1854," entries of 7-11 October, MH (*59M-308). [Back to Text]
8. The Selected Letters
of Mary Moody Emerson, ed. Nancy Craig Simmons (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1993), p. 551. Based on Thoreau’s lecture at Plymouth on 22 February 1852 (see
lectures 35-36 in the "Before Walden" calendar) and on Thoreau’s
visits to Miss Emerson on 13 November 1851 and 8 January 1852, Simmons conjectures that
this letter was written in 1852 rather than in 1854. [Back to Text]
9. Howarth,
"Successor to Walden?," 94, 98. [Back to Text]
10. Bradley P. Dean found
that Thoreau drew nineteen of the paragraphs used in his first lecture version of
"What Shall It Profit" from his earlier "Walking, or the Wild" lecture
manuscript; see Dean, "Reconstructions of Thoreau’s Early ‘Life without
Principle’ Lectures," Studies in the American Renaissance 1987, ed. Joel
Myerson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987), p. 291. [Back to Text] |