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13 January 1858, Wednesday; ca. 7:00 p.m.
Lynn, Massachusetts; John B. Alley’s Parlor
"An Excursion to the Maine Woods" (?)
[Back to Calendar of Lectures]
NARRATIVE OF EVENT: In his journal entry for 13
January 1858 Thoreau wrote, "Go to Lynn to lecture, via Cambridge" (J,
10:243). On the way he stopped at Harvard Library and charged out, for his research on
North American exploration and settlement, a volume from the Collections of the New
York Historical Society and two volumes from the Jesuit Relations.1 His entry continues, "4:30 P. M.—At Jonathan
Buffum’s, Lynn. Lecture in John B. Alley’s parlor" (J, 10:243).
Although the lecture is not mentioned again, the richly detailed journal record of
Thoreau’s two-day visit to Lynn is another demonstration of his ranging interest in
human history, natural history, and the conjunction of the two. It also demonstrates once
again that he tried to improve the opportunity of his lecture trips by making them serve
more than just Mammon.
In his 14 January entry, Thoreau
wrote,"Mr. Buffum says that in 1817 or 1819 he saw the sea-serpent at Swampscott, and
so did several hundred others. The road from Boston was lined with people directly, coming
to see the monster. Buffum says he has seen him twenty times. . . . Buffum is about sixty,
and it should be said, as affecting the value of his evidence, that he is a firm believer
in Spiritualism" (J, 10:243-44). The entry also describes two naturalist
excursions that same day. A morning junket with Buffum to the beach at Nahant called forth
comments on ornithology, geology, and forestry. An afternoon ride with J. Buffum, Parker
Pillsbury, and an amateur Lynn geologist named Mr. Mudge inspired detailed observations of
rock formations and, a human counterpart, the formation of rocks into millstones by
erstwhile residents (J, 10:244-46).
Near the end of his journal account, after
noting a stop at the Lynn Quarry, Thoreau enlarged his perspective from the ground then
underfoot to this timeless oceanic panorama peopled with aborigines and explorers still
visible in his mind: "From these rocks and wooded hills . . . we had an extensive
view of the ocean from Cape Ann to Scituate, and realized how the aborigines, when
hunting, berrying, might perchance have looked out thus on the early navigators sailing
along the coast,—thousands of them,—when they little suspected it,—how
patent to the inhabitants their visit must have been. A vessel could hardly have passed
within half a dozen miles of the shore . . . without being seen by hundreds of
savages." Here Thoreau’s trip to Lynn is implicitly yoked to his reading about
exploration and contact, the impressions he formed from life and from literature evoking
and coloring each other. Next, after recording some rock specimens given him by Mudge and
Buffum, the journal offers this tidbit of folk-and-nature lore: "Mr. Buffum tells me
that they never eat the sea-clams without first taking out ‘the worm,’ as it is
called, about as large as the small end of a pipe-stem. He supposes it is the penis"
(J, 10:246-47).
For 15 January, the day of Thoreau’s
return to Concord, his journal entry is devoted to natural history. At the "Natural
History Rooms, Boston," he examined, among other specimens, a "velvet duck . . .
commonly called ‘coot’ on salt water," the same species that he thought he
might have seen the previous day (J, 10:243-47). Not recorded in the journal is his
checking out, from the Boston Society of Natural History library, a volume of
Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes of the United States.2
On 16 January, the day after his return to
Concord, Thoreau wrote in a letter to John Lewis Russell, a well-known lichenist who lived
in Salem:
I received your note inviting me to
Salem after my lecture Wednesday evening. My first impulse was to go to you; but I
reflected that Mr [Parker] Pillsbury had just invited me to Lynn, thro’ Mr Buffum,
promising to be there to meet me, indeed, we had already planned some excursions to
Nahant, &c—and he would be absent on Friday;—so I felt under obligations to
him & the Lynn people to stay with them. They were very kind to me, and I had a very
good time with them—Jonathan Buffum & Son, Pillsbury & Mr. [Benjamin?]
Mudge—My reason for not running over to Salem for an hour, or a fraction of the day,
was simply that I did not wish to impair my right to come by & by when I may have
leisure to take in the whole pleasure & benefit of such a visit—for I hate to feel
in a hurry.3
Thoreau added in this letter, "I suppose that I saw the genista tinctoria
in the N.W. part of Lynn—on my way to the boulders & the mill-stone ledge" (C,
p. 504).4 Later, in a 22 March 1858 letter to
Cambridge, Massachusetts, resident Mary Loomis, Sophia Thoreau confirmed that "Henry
had a good time at Lynn. . . ."5
For 24 January 1858, Bronson Alcott
recorded in his journal, "Evening: We are at Thoreau’s, my wife and myself, for
an hour. Thoreau has been lately to Lynn and read some papers of his in drawing rooms to a
good company there."6 In a 25 January letter to
Ainsworth R. Spofford of Cincinnati, Alcott noted, "Last evening I saw Thoreau, who
is trenchant and masterly as ever. He had been reading some papers in Drawing rooms to a
good company lately at Lynn." Alcott also mentioned that "I am to go to Lynn and
New Bedford presently."7 A clue to the size and
character of the gathering at Thoreau’s lecture is perhaps afforded by Alcott’s
journal entries for 1 and 2 March 1858 concerning his own visit to Lynn, during which he,
like Thoreau, held forth at John B. Alley’s: "I leave for Boston and Lynn this
morning, dine at M. Sewall’s and go out to Lynn at 6. Sup at Mr. Alley’s, and
meet a good company of thirty persons there in the evening. Discourse on Private Life till
after 10, and go home with Shackford and spend the night."8
Alcott’s journal entry for the next day adds to the description of this good company,
especially Alley himself:
Talk with Shackford and wife till
dinner. We ride into the village, and I find the same company with additions assembled at
Mr. Alley’s. These persons are thoughtful, catholic, and meet our questions generally
in a becoming temper . I am rather well pleased with them, and with our evenings. I pass
the night at Mr. Alley’s and find him intelligent and on the right side of things. He
has been an active and leading member of the Massachusetts Senate, is an intimate of
Sumner and Wilson, and stands a fair chance of being elected to Congress. He is of Quaker
descent, and has many of the plain qualities of that persuasion.9
Both the Reverend Charles C. Shackford and Alley were active in the Lynn Library
Association, which may have sponsored the visits of Thoreau and Alcott, although the fact
that both men lectured at Alley’s home suggests that the lectures may not have been
sponsored by any formal organization.10
ADVERTISEMENTS, REVIEWS, AND
RESPONSES: On 18 September 1857, the New-York Daily Tribune again included
Thoreau’s name in an announcement of lecturers available for bookings in the upcoming
fall-through-spring season.
A belated and implicit response to this
lecture is the fact that Shackford later invited Thoreau back to Lynn to deliver another
lecture before a public, rather than a private audience (see lecture 63 below).
DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC: Our
conjecture that Thoreau read his third Maine Woods lecture, the one that was published
posthumously as the third chapter of The Maine Woods, in Lynn at this time is based
primarily on the fact that he had just recently completed writing out his lecture text. On
1 January 1858, he told his cousin George Thatcher, "I have written out a long
account of my last Maine journey—part if which I shall read to our Lyceum. . ."
(C, p. 502). With a new lecture in his portfolio, we regard it as unlikely Thoreau
would opt to read one of the older lectures that he had available at this time:
"Moosehunting," "Walking, or the Wild," and "What Shall It
Profit."
Notes
1. Raymond Borst, The
Thoreau Log: A Documentary Life of Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862 (New York: G. K.
Hall, 1992), p. 469. [Back to Text]
2. Borst, Thoreau Log,
p. 469. [Back to Text]
3. C, pp. 503-504;
the editors of Thoreau’s correspondence mistakenly conjectured that Thoreau sent this
letter to another Salem resident, Jones Very. [Back to Text]
4. For more on Russell,
including an argument that Russell was the recipient of Thoreau’s letter, "A Sketch of Thoreau’s Friend, John Lewis Russell," Thoreau
Research Newsletter, 2 (April 1991): 4-5. [Back to Text]
5. Quoted from the
manuscript letter in the Loomis-Wilder Collection, CtY. We are grateful to Thomas Blanding
for bringing this letter to our attention. [Back to Text]
6. Alcott, Journals,
p. 304. [Back to Text]
7. Alcott, Letters,
p. 279 [Back to Text]
8. Alcott, "Diary for
1858," entry of 1 March, MH (*59M-308). [Back to Text]
9. Alcott, "Diary for
1858," entry of 2 March, MH (*59M-308). [Back to Text]
10. Both Shackford and
Alley are mentioned in most of the notices for the Lynn Library Association that ran in
the Lynn Weekly Reporter throughout the fall and winter of 1857-58. [Back to Text] |