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26 October 1856, Sunday; ca. 7:30 p.m.
Perth Amboy, New Jersey; Unionists’ Hall, Eagleswood Community
"Moosehunting"
[Back to Calendar of Lectures]
NARRATIVE OF EVENT: (See also lectures 52 and
53 below.) Thoreau’s three New Jersey lectures were the result of his commission to
survey the proposed Eagleswood community to be developed near Perth Amboy by the wealthy
Quaker abolitionist Marcus Spring. Eagleswood, situated on two hundred acres on the shore
of Raritan Bay, was to be a residential community of small estates for steamboat commuters
to New York City. In 1852 Spring had purchased this same land as the home for a new
cooperative community incorporated as the Raritan Bay Union. Despite the construction of a
large headquarters building with dormitories, apartments, and schoolrooms, the Union
community did not flourish. In 1856 Spring decided to convert the Raritan Bay Union tract
into Eagleswood.1 A timely mention from a Spring
friend, the visiting Bronson Alcott, resulted in an invitation to Thoreau to survey the
project (Days, p. 370). That Thoreau was expected to do more than survey, however,
is confirmed by his palimpsest draft of an October 1856 letter to Spring, in which he
stated, "bringing compass & lectures as you request."2
Thoreau’s journal entry for 24
October reads:
Friday. 12 M.—Set out for
Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, N.J.
Spent the afternoon in Worcester
By cars in evening to Allyn’s Point
and Steamer Commonwealth to New York. (J, 9:133)
His 25 October entry describes another visit to P. T. Barnum’s New York museum
(see lecture 45 above), where he saw "the stuffed skin of a cougar that was found
floating dead in the Hudson many years ago." Thoreau also reported having "seen
a clergyman in Worcester the previous afternoon (at [T. W.] Higginson’s) who told me
of one killed near the head of the Delaware, in New York State, by an acquaintance of
his." Whether the Worcester cougar account and the Barnum’s visit were
coincidence or the former motivated the latter, Thoreau was sufficiently intrigued by
cougars to spend part of his day in New York reading about them at the Astor Library.
After recording his findings in some detail, he closed the day’s journal entry with
the notation, "Arrived at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, Saturday, 5 P. M., October
25th" (J, 9:133-34).
Sunday, 26 October 1856, the day of
Thoreau’s first Eagleswood lecture, generated nothing but botanical observations in
his journal, with the exception of the comment, "Saw and heard a katydid about the
1st of November" (J, 9:136). (If the November citation is accurate, Thoreau
obviously penned some or all of this entry after its assigned date, a practice not unusual
for him.) Whatever his journal omissions, a long, detailed letter to his sister Sophia,
written on the Saturday evening of 1 November, recounts Thoreau’s lecture
presentation and a good deal else about his excursion to that point. It also suggests an
apparently good-humored skepticism about the quaint company of holdover Raritan Bay
Unionists he encountered at Eagleswood.
I have hardly had time & repose
enough to write to you before. I spent the afternoon of Friday (it seems some months ago)
in Worcester, but failed to see [H. G. O.] Blake, he having "gone to the horse
race"! in Boston;—to atone for which I have just received a letter from him,
asking me to stop at Worcester & lecture on my return—I called on [Theo] Brown
& [T. W.] Higginson, & in the evening came by way of Norwich to N. Y. in the
steamer Commonwealth, and though it was so windy in land, had a perfectly smooth passage,
and about as good a sleep as usually at home. Reached N Y about 7 Am, too late for the
John Potter (there was’nt any Jonas) so I spent the forenoon there, called on
Greeley, (who was not in) met [F. A. T.] Bellew in Broadway and walked into his workshop,
read at the Astor Library &c &c—I arrived here about 30 miles from N. Y.
about 5 pm Saturday, in company with Miss E[lizabeth]. Peabody, who was returning
in the same covered wagon from the Landing to Eagleswood, which last place she has just
left for the winter. This is a queer place—There is one large long stone building,
which cost some $40000, in which I do not know exactly who or how many work—(one or
two familiar faces, & more familiar names have turned up)—a few shops &
offices, an old farm house and Mr [Marcus] Spring’s perfectly private residence
within 20 rods of the main building. "The City of Perth Amboy" is about as big
as Concord, and Eagleswood is 1 1/4 miles S W of it, on the bay side. The central fact
here is evidently Mr [Theodore] Weld’s school—recently established—around
which various other things revolve. Saturday evening I went to the school room, hall, or
what not, to see the children & their teachers & patrons dance. Mr Weld, a kind
looking man with a long white beard, danced with them, & Mr [E. J.] Cutler his
assistant, lately from Cambridge, who is acquainted [with F. B.] Sanborn, Mr
Spring—and others. This Sat. eve-dance is a regular thing, & it is thought
something strange if you dont attend. They take it for granted that you want society!
Sunday forenoon, I attended a sort of
Quaker meeting at the same place—(The Quaker aspect & spirit prevails
here—Mrs Spring says "—does thee not?") where it was expected that the
spirit would move me (I having been previously spoken to about it) & it, or something
else, did, an inch or so. I said just enough to set them a little by the ears & make
it lively. I had excused myself by saying that I could not adapt myself to a particular
audience, for all the speaking & lecturing here has reference to the children, who are
far the greater part of the audience, & they are not so bright as N. E. children[.]
Imagine them sitting close to the wall around a hall—with old Quaker looking men
& women here & there. There sat Mrs. Weld (Grimke) & her sister, two elderly
grayheaded ladies, the former in extreme Bloomer costume, which was what you may call
remarkable; Mr [Arnold] Buffum with broad face & a great white beard, looking like a
pier head made of the cork tree with the bark on, as if he could buffet a considerable
wave;—James G. Birney, formerly candidate for the Presidency, with another
particularly white head & beard—Edward Palmer, the anti-money man (for whom
communities were made) with [word] ample beard somewhat grayish. Some of them I suspect
are very worthy people. Of course you are wondering to what extent all these make one
family—to what extent 20. Mrs [Caroline] Kirkland, and this [a] name only to me, I
saw—She has just bought a lot here. They all know more about your neighbors &
acquaintances than you suspected.
On Sunday evening, I read the moose-story
to the children to their satisfaction. Ever since I have been constantly engaged in
surveying Eagleswood—through woods ravines marshes & along the shore, dodging the
tide—through cat-briar mud & beggar ticks—having no time to look up or think
where I am—(it takes 10 or 15 minutes before each meal to pick the beggar ticks out
of my clothes—burrs & the rest are left—rents mended at the first convenient
opportunity) I shall be engaged perhaps as much longer. Mr Spring wants me to help him
about setting out an orchard & vineyard—Mr Birney asks me to survey a small piece
for him, & Mr Alcott who has just come down here for the 3d Sunday—says that
Greeley (I left my name for him) invites him & me to go to his home with him next
Saturday mnorning & spend the Sunday.
It seems a twelve-month since I was not
here—but I hope to get settled deep into my den again ere long. The hardest thing to
find here is solitude & Concord. I am at Mr Spring’s house—Both he & she
& their family are quite agreeable.
I want you to write to me
immediately— (just left off to talk French with the servant man—) & let
Father & Mother put in a word. . . . (C, pp. 439-40)
An interesting contrast to Thoreau’s opinion of the Eagleswood children as
"not so bright" as their New England counterparts is Bronson Alcott’s
description, in a 21 October letter to his wife, Abigail, of presumably the same children
at a similar meeting the Sunday before Thoreau’s lecture. Wrote Alcott, "the
children, some thirty or more, and all intelligent and attentive, and making our audiences
worthy of our themes, ‘Home and Housekeeping, Marriage and Culture.’"3
For a discussion of the remarks Thoreau
may have made at the "sort of Quaker meeting" he attended the morning of the day
he lectured, see Appendix A below.
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: The only recovered response to the lecture is Thoreau’s impression,
recorded in the above-quoted letter to his sister, that he had "read the moose-story
to the children to their satisfaction." He too was apparently satisfied.
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: When he
read this same lecture before his hometown lyceum on 14 December 1853 (see lecture 42 in
the "Before Walden" calendar), Thoreau called it "An Excursion to
Moosehead Lake," but the few times he referred to the lecture thereafter he called it
"Moosehunting." His lecture manuscript would have taken him about an hour and a
half to read. On 23 January 1858, he wrote a letter to James Russell Lowell, editor of the
newly formed Atlantic Monthly magazine, and said that the lecture "is an
account of an excursion into the Maine woods in ‘53; the subjects of which are the
Moose, the Pine Tree & the Indian. . . . It consists of about one hundred manuscript
pages, or a lecture & a half, as I measure" (C, p. 504). When revising the
manuscript for publication as the essay "Chesuncook" in early 1858, he seems
only to have added more material to fill out the narrative of his excursion.
Notes
1. Maud Honeyman
Greene, "Raritan Bay Union, Eagleswood, New Jersey," Proceedings of the New
Jersey Historical Society, 68, no. 1 (Janurary 1950), pp. 1-20. [Back to Text]
2. Quoted from the
manuscript at MCo. [Back to Text]
3. Alcott, Letters,
pp. 203-204. [Back to Text] |