Thoreau lectures on “White Beans and Walden Pond” at the Unitarian Church for the Concord Lyceum (Concord Lyceum records. Special Collections, Concord (Mass.) Free Public Library; Concord Saunterer, 17, no. 3 (December 1984):23; Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 164-165).
Thoreau attends Bronson Alcott’s “Saturday Evening Conversations” in Boston. On the topic of wordy love and Christian love, Thoreau “thought the difficulty to be, that love is practical. He would not call it love: love is the action of the whole being in its intensest form.”
Mr. Browne asked if the house be not often a refuge for passions . . .
Mr Alcott said, yes, if it be the beast that burrows there, then the house is a den.
Mr Thoreau asked, if doves were there if it be not a nest.
James Lorin Chapin writes in his journal:
Ticknor & Co. writes to Thoreau: Ticknor & Co. writes to Thoreau:
We find on looking over publishing matters that we cannot well undertake anything more at present. If however you feel inclined we will publish “Walden or Life in the Woods” on our own ace, say one Thousand copies, allowing, for 10 pr.ct. copyright on the Retail Price on all that are sold. The style of printing & binding to be like [Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s Essays.
Respy
Ticknor & Co.
Thoreau writes to George Augustus Thatcher:
California, mad dogs, and rail-roads are still the great topics here as everywhere. About half a dozen are gone and going to California from Concord. Mr Hoar’s second son Edward, who was a lawyer in New York, has just taken leave of his friends here to go to the new Ophir. Many are going from the neighborhood of Boston of whom one would not have expected it. For my part, I should rather have gone before the gold was found. I think that those who have delayed thus long will be prudent if they wait a little longer and hear from their acquaintances who went out early. It is impossible yet to tell what is truth. After all we have had no quite trustworthy and available report yet. We shall have some rich stories to read a year or two hence.
I am interested in George’s progress in Engineering. I should say let him begin with Algebra at once, and soon, or at the same time, if convenient, take up Geometry—it is all important that he be well grounded in this. In due time will come Trigonometry & Nat. Philosophy—A year hence he might profitably commence Surveying. I talked lately with Samuel Felton, Chief Engineer and Superintendent of the Fitchburg RR, and brother of Prof. Felton of Cambridge, with reference to George. He considers “Davies’ Surveying”—a West Point book—the best. This is the one I used in teaching Surveying eight or nine years ago. It is quite simple & thorough—and to some extent national or American.
I would have George study without particular reference to the Scientific School and so he will be best prepared to suck its whole me at in the shortest time—
There is “Bigelows Technology” a popular and not expensive book in 2 vols. used, recently at least, at Cambridge. I am sure that i t will interest him if he has a taste for mechanics. He never need study it, but only read it from time to time, as study and practice make it more intelligible. This is one of the best books for him to own that I know of. There is a great deal of interesting & valuable matter for his or any body’s reading in the Penny Magazine—the best periodical of the kind that was ever printed.
In the mean time he should improve his opportunities to visit machine shops of all kinds. It should be a part of every man’s education today to understand the Steam Engine. What right has a man to ride in the cars who does not know by what means he is moved? Every man in this age of the world may and should understand pretty thoroughly—the Saw and Grist mill—Smelting—casting—and working in iron—cotton and woolen machinery—the locomotive & rail-road—the Steamboat—the telegraph &c &cA man can learn from a few hours of actual inspection what he can never learn from books—and yet if he has not the book-knowledge to generalize & illuminate his particulars he will never be more than a journeyman & cannot reach the head of his profession.
I lately spent a day at the repair shop of the Eastern RR. company, East Boston, and at Hinckley & Drury’s in Boston—the largest Locomotive manufactory in this country. They turn out 7 a month worth from 8 to 9000 dollars apiece. I went into it, and knowing the principle before, saw and understood the use of every wheel & screw, so that I can build an engine myself when I am ready. I now read every paragraph in which the word locomotive occurs with greater interest and profit than before.
I have no news to send respecting Helen—She is about the same that she has been for some months, though it may be a little weaker, as she thinks; Her spirits are very good and she is very comfortable for a sick person. Sophia & Mother would perchance be sick if Helen were not.
I look wishfully towards the woods of Maine, but as yet I feel confined here.
Please remember me to Rebecca Jane?? Cousins Charles & Mary &c — yrs truly
Henry D. Thoreau
—I have just received your letter for which I thank you. I should be glad to come to Bangor.—I hope that I shall so conduct as to deserve your good wishes—Excuse my business like scroll.
Thoreau writes in reply to Ticknor & Co.’s letter of 8 February. Ticknor & Co. replies 16 February (The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 237-238).
Thoreau writes to George Augustus Thatcher:
I am going as far as Portland to lecture before their Lyceum on the 3d Wednesday in March.-By the way they pay me $25.00. Now I am not sure but I may have leisure then to go on to Bangor and so up river. I have a great desire to go up to Chesuncook before the ice breaks up-but I should not care if I had to return down the banks and so saw the logs running; and I write you chiefly to ask how late it will probably do to go up the river-or when on the whole would be the best time for me to start? Will the 3d week in March answer? . . .
Boston, Mass. Ticknor & Co. writes to Thoreau:
Henry D. Thoreau Esq
In reply to your fav. of 10th inst. we beg to say that we will publish for your acc “A Week on the Concord River.”
The following general Estimate based upon vol. ⅓ larger than [Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s Essays first series (as suggested by you) we present for your consideration—
Say—1000 Cops. 448 pages like Emerson’s Essays 1st series printed on good paper @ $4.00 pr ream will cost in sheets $381.21. The binding in our style fine cloth.
12¢ pr Copy—of for the Edn 120.00
$501.24
In the above Estimate we have included for alterations and extractions say $15.00—It may be more or less—This will depend on yourself. The book can be condensed & of course cost less. Our Estimate is in accordance with sample copy. As you would not perhaps, care to bind more than ½ the Edn at once,—you would need to send $450.—to print 1000 cops. & bind ½ of the same.
Your very truly,
W. D. Ticknor & Co.
Nothing came of this proposal to publish The Week.
Nathaniel Hawthorne writes to Thoreau:
The managers request that you will lecture before the Salem Lyceum on Wednesday evening after next—that is to say, on the 28th inst. May we depend on you? Please to answer immediately, if convenient.
[A. Bronson] Alcott delighted my wife and me, the other evening, by announcing that you had a book in prep. I rejoice at it, and nothing doubt of such success as will be worth having. Should your manuscripts all be in the printer’s hands, I suppose you can reclaim one of them, for a single evening’s use, to be returned the next morning; or perhaps that Indian lecture, which you mentioned to me, is in a state of forwardness. Either that, or a continuation of the Walden experiment (or, indeed, anything else,) will be acceptable.
We shall expect you at 14 Mall Street.
Very truly yours,
Nathl Hawthorne
Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
I will come to your house in Mall Street on the 28th inst. and go from thence to the Lyceum.
I am glad to know of your interest in my book, for I have thought of you as a reader while writing it. My MSS. are not even yet in the hands of the printer, but I am doing my best to make him take them into his hands. In any case the MSS which he will begin with is not that from which I shall read.
I wish to be remembered and read also by Mrs Hawthorne.
Yrs. sincerely
Henry D. Thoreau
Boston, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes to Thoreau:
I send you herewith the names of a select company of gentlemen, esteemed as deserving of better acquaintance, and disposed for closer fellowship of Thought and Endeavor, who are hereby invited to assemble at No. 12 West Street, on Tuesday, the 20th of March next, to discuss the advantages of organizing a Club or College for the study and diffusion of the Ideas and Tendencies proper to the nineteenth century; and to concert measures, if deemed desirable, for promoting the ends of good fellowship. The company will meet at 10 a.m. Your presence is respectfully claimed by
Yours truly,
A. Bronson Alcott
“This invitation was the start of the Town and Country Club, established in July. It became the ancestor of a much more famous group, the Saturday Club, out of which grew the idea for the Atlantic Monthly. It does not appear that Thoreau ever wanted to be active in either club, in fact, we know that he declined to take part in the Saturday Club.”
The Salem Observer notes:
Salem, Mass. Thoreau lectures on “Student Life, its Aims and Employments” at Lyceum Hall for the Salem Lyceum (Historical sketch of the Salem Lyceum, 50; Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 165-167).
Salem, Mass. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne writes to Mary Tyler Mann in Washington, D.C.:
Concord, Mass. Thoreau’s aunt Marie writes to Prudence Ward:
I was quite amused with what Sophia told me her mother said about it the other day, she poor girl was lying in bed with a sick head ache when she heard Cynthia (who has grown rather nervous of late) telling over her troubles to Mrs. Dunbar, after speaking of her own and Helen’s sickness, she says, and there’s Sophia she’s the greatest trial I’ve got, for she has complaints she never will get rid of, and Henry is putting things into his Book that never ought to be there, and Mr. Thoreau has faint turns and I don’t know what ails him, and so she went on from one thing to another hardly knew where to stop, and tho it is pretty much so, I could not help smiling at Sophia’s description of it.
As for Henry’s book, you know I have said, there were parts of it that sounded to me very much like blasphemy, and I do not believe they would publish it, on reading it to Helen the other day Sophia told me, she made the same remark, and coming from her, Henry was much surprised, and said she did not understand it, but still I fear they will not persuade him to leave it out . . .
By the way have you heard what a strange story there was about Miss Ford, and Henry, Mrs Brooks said at the convention, a lady came to her and inquired, if it was true, that Miss F—had committed, or was going to commit suicide on account of H—Thoreau, what a ridiculous story this is. When it was told to H—he made no remark at all, and we cannot find out from him anything about it, for a while, they corresponded, and Sophia said she recollected one day on the reception of a letter she heard H—say, he shouldn’t answer it, or he must put a stop to this, some such thing she couldn’t exactly tell what.
Thoreau receives the proof sheets of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Revising Mythologies, 255).
The Salem Observer reviews Thoreau’s lecture of 28 February:
Some parts of this lecture—which on the whole we thought less successful than the former one—were generally admitted to be excellent. He gave a well-considered defence of classical literature, in connection with some common sense remarks upon books; and also some ingenious speculations suggested by the inroads of railroad enterprise upon the quiet and seclusion of Walden Pond; and told how he found nature a counsellor and companion, furnishing
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
We take the purpose of Mr. T.’s lecture to have been, the elucidation of the poetical view of life—showing how life may be made poetical, the apprehensive imagination clothing all things with divine forms, and gathering from them a divine language.
To bring their word to men.”
And here we may remark that the public are becoming more critical. The standard of Lyceum lectures has been raised very considerably within a few years, and lecturers who would have given full satisfaction not long since, are “voted bores” at present. This is certainly a good indication, and shows that Lyceums have accomplished an important work. We doubt if twenty years ago such lecturers as Professors [Louis Rodolphe] Agassiz, Guyon, and Rogers, would have been appreciated by popular audiences.—But now they instruct and delight great multitudes.
In regard to Mr. Thoreau, we are glad to hear that he is about issuing a book, which will contain these lectures, and will enable us to judge better their merit.
Thoreau lectures on “White Beans and Walden Pond” at the Centre School House for the Lincoln Lyceum (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 168).
Lincoln, Mass. James Lorin Chapin (1824-1902) writes in his journal:
The Daily Evening Traveller notes Thoreau’s Salem, Mass. lectures: “a delectable compound of oddity, wit and transcendentalism, from Mr. Thoreau, of Concord” (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 167).
Thoreau’s aunt Maria writes to Prudence Ward:
Thoreau writes to George Augustus Thatcher:
I shall lecture in Portland next Wednesday. It happens, as I feared it would, that I am now receiving the proof sheets of my book from the printers, so that without great inconvenience I can not make you a visit at present. I trust that I shall be able to ere long. I thank you heartily for your exertions in my behalf with the Bangor Lyceum —but unless I should hear that they want two lectures to be read in one week or nearer together, I shall have to decline coming, this time.
Helen [Thoreau] remains about the same.
Yours in haste,
Henry D. Thoreau
Thoreau attends a meeting of the Town and Country Club at 12 West Street with 27 other men. This is the only meeting of the club Thoreau attends and he never becomes a member (Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 8 (1957), 2).1
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal on 24 March:
See Kenneth Walter Cameron’s “Emerson, Thoreau, and the Town and Country Club” (Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 8 (1957), 2–17).
Thoreau lectures on “Economy” at Exchange Hall for the Portland Lyceum (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 169).
William Willis writes in his journal:
Thoreau writes to George Augustus Thatcher:
The first thing I saw on being introduced to the Portland Lyceum last evening was your letter . . . Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson follows me here. I am just in the midst of printing my book, which is likely to turn out much larger than I expected. I shall advertise another, “Walden, or Life in the Woods,” in the first which by the way I call “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” When I get through with this business, if nothing else occurs to prevent I shall enjoy a visit to you and to Maine very much, but I do not promise myself as yet, nor do I wish you or Maine to promise yourselves ot me. I leave for Boston in a few moments. Remember me to all friends—
Yours in haste
Henry D. Thoreau.
PS. I thank you again and again for your exertions in my behalf
The Eastern Argus Semi-Weekly reviews Thoreau lecture of 21 March:
Thoreau surveys a proposed road in front of the family’s home:
A.B. is a road laid out & given by D. Loring, 50 feet wide, & running on its northern boundary from the center of the post at the south western angle of J. Thoreau’s land N 88½º E146¾ feet to the western rail of the railroad.
B.C. is a continuation of the same, 38 feet wide, & coinciding with the former by its northern boundary—running on said boundary N 65¾º E 183½ feet to the point of intersection of the western boundary of the road from Main Street toward the depot with the northern boundary of the road by Mr Wilde’s house continued.
These pieces of road were surveyed by Henry Thoreau on the 24th. Ult. the day they were laid out by the subscribers, & the descriptions above given & the plan referred to, are his & are believed to be correct.
The only party which has claim to damages is the Fitchburg Railroad Company. It is presumed as the Corporation was not present by agent to oppose the laying out of this road, & as they have greatly encroached without authority upon the public highways in the town, that they will lay no claim to damage for the land taken from them in laying out this road should it be accepted by the town. But it will be percieved [sic] upon reference to the accompanying plan, that it this way is accepted it will require a small part of the milk track, as it is called, to be discontinued, & the switch near the same to be removed a few feet, & some little additional planking to be laid between the rails. this we suppose it will be required of the town to do at their own expense, & if the road is accepted this question of expense, whether it should be borne by the town or by the individuals for whose particular benefit is is incurred, is to be determined. It would also seem to be the duty of the town, if they accept of our doings, to choose a committee to carry them into effect.
All of which is Respectfully Submitted-
F. R. Gourgas Selectmen
Daniel Clark { of
Richd Barrett. Concord.
April 2nd 1849.
See entry 2 April.
The Transcript reviews Thoreau’s lecture of 21 March:
See entry 18 April.
Thoreau is first among 400 Concord inhabitants who sign a petition to outlaw capital punishment after the hanging of Washington Goode in Boston, Mass. (Thoreau Society Collection at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, Lincoln, Mass.).
New York, N.Y. The New-York Daily Tribune notes Thoreau’s recent lectures:
See entries 7 and 10 April.
Concord, Mass. Thoreau’s father’s petition to have a road built out to his and other properties is approved:
They also request them to continue the same easterly across the said Railroad track, to the road leading by the House occupied by Mr Wilde which is 453 4/10 feet from the switch to said road to be 50 feet in width.
John Thoreau
Nathan W. Brooks
Eben Hubbard
Francis Buttrick
Phillip J. Johnson
Thoreau’s aunt Maria writes to Prudence Ward:
Thoreau writes to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody:
I have so much writing to do at present, with the printers in the rear of me, that I have almost no time left, but for bodily exercise; however, I will send you the article in question [“Resistance to Civil Government”] before the end of next week. If this will not be soon enough will you please inform me by the next mail.
Yrs respectly
Henry D. Thoreau
P. S. I offer the paper to your first volume only.
New Bedford Daily Mercury reprints the New-York Daily Tribune article of 2 April (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 172).
The New-York Daily Tribune publishes a letter to the editor from a “Timothy Thorough”:
How to Live—Mr. Thoreau’s Example.
To the Editor of the Tribune:
I notice in your paper of this morning a strong commendation of one Mr. Thoreau for going out into the woods and living in a hut all by himself at the rate of about $45 per annum, in order to illustrate the value of the soul. Having always found in The Tribune a friend of sociability and neighborly helping-each-other-along, I felt a little surprise at seeing such a performance held up as an example for the young men of this country, and supposed I must have mistaken the sense of your article. Accordingly I called in my wife, Mrs. Thorough, and we studied it over together, and came to the conclusion that you really believed the Concord hermit had done a fine thing. Now I am puzzled, and write in a friendly way to ask for a little light on this peculiar philosophy. Mrs. T. is more clear in her mind than I am. She will have it that the young man is either a whimsy or else a good-for-nothing, selfish, crab-like sort of chap, who tries to shirk the duties whose hearty and honest discharge is the only thing that in her view entitles a man to be regarded as a good example. She declares that nobody has a right to live for himself alone, away from the interests, the affections, and the sufferings of his kind. Such a way of going on, she says, is not living, but a cold and snailish kind of existence, which, as she maintains, is both infernal and internally stupid.
Yours, truly, TIMOTHY THOROUGH.
Le Roy Place, April 2, 1849.
Reply.
Mr. Thorough is indeed in a fog—in fact, we suspect there is a mistake in his name, and that he must have been changed at nurse for another boy whose true name was Shallow. Nobody has proposed or suggested that it becomes everybody to go off into the woods, each build himself a hut and live hermit-like, on the vegetable products of his very moderate labor. But there is a large class of young men who aspire to Mental Culture through Study, Reading, Reflection, &c. These are too apt to sacrifice their proper independence in the pursuit of their object—to run in debt, throw themselves on the tender mercies of some patron, relative, Education Society, or something of the sort, or to descend into the lower deep of roping out a thin volume of very thin poems, to be inflicted on a much-enduring public, or to importune some one for a sub-Editorship or the like. Now it does seem to us that Mr. Thoreau has set all his brother aspirants to self-culture, a very wholesome example, and shown them how, by chastening their physical appetites, they may preserve thier proper independence without starving their souls. When they shall have conned that lesson, we trust, with Mr. Thorough otherwise Shallow’s permission, he will give them another. [Ed. Trib.
The Yeoman’s Gazette publishes an article entitled “Our Townsman-Mr. Thoreau” lauding the New-York Daily Tribune article of 7 April (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 173).
The North American and United States Gazette publishes a notice of the New-York Daily Tribune letter to the editor of 2 April:
SOLITUDE SEEKING.
We see notices mad in different newspapers concerning a young man who is lecturing on “Life in the Woods,” and the material of his discourse may be judged of by the following account which we take from the Tribune:—
[see entry 2 April]
It has been written by one who had the poet’s understanding of human nature, that
“Man the hermit pined, till woman smiled”—and that sentiment may well be taken as a guide for all such peculiar subjects as this of which we now speak. It is a law of nature to be social, to seek communion, to gather friends; and the history of man is fraught with examples which prove that they who are the readiest to seek solitude and separate themselves from the world, have had bitter experience as the moving impulse, and checked and dried-up sympathies to make them weak enough to forego companionship. The would-be hermit of Concord may or may not be a worldly-disappointed man: better for him that he were, then he should deliberately sit down in the woods, A Timon without cause, to reject and despise the common charities and duties, the pleasures and pains of life, among his fellow men. We would not be thought worldly beyond bounds; but in our estimation, every man should make his life useful to the extent of his ability.—there is upon us all the obligation of labor; it is the command of the Creator: but let it be supposed that each individual following the example of this idle young student, were simply to comply with the duty as he has done,—hide away in the bush, laboring no more than barely to maintain his own single, selfish existence,—where, then, would be obedience to the divine command and all the immense and beneficent consequences of obedience—the increase and happiness of the human race—union, communion, civilization to the masses; with—to the individual—all those sweet amenities, the silent but powerful influences which exalt as well as restrain; which give to morality her sway and to religion her true observance? Where would be the gentle ties of kindred, the love which glows around the family hearth, and the confidence which derives support from the faith and truth of other? Where would be the learning which has attested the power, at the same time that it has elevated the ming?—the healing arts,—the knowledge which has resolved the uses and the order of elements, the planets and the stars? What would follow, but mental and moral degradation? What is such solitary life, after all, but a voluntary abandonment of civilization and return to barbarism?
Reason this subject as they may, those who encourage such economic and philosophic perversion of life, encourage idleness and the most egotistic meanness, and the exemplification is given by the young student himself. Does he live for others or for himself? For himself solely; and if his own statement be true, while starving his body and depriving himself of the opportunities of doing any good service to his fellow man, he has been continually dependent, himself, upon the kindness of others for his subsistence. He “squats” upon another man’s land, where he is permitted to live rent-free; but something more is necessary to supply even his narrow wants than his garden and his own solitary effort can supply. He flies his philosophic cell, at intervals, to seek the aid of those who live by aiding one another—to ask the place of the prodigal or the beggar among the swine and their husks, or at the foot of the rich man’s—or the poor man’s table,—to purchase with his labor, or obtain from their liberality, the necessaries of life which the desert refuses,—then, suddenly, to turn his back upon the world which had befriended him in his hour of need, and resume the life of fancied independence and philosophy, which is only of uselessness, folly and mendicancy. What can there be in a mind, so trained, in the slightest degree tinctured with one generous sentiment? Such a life affords no example that can be imitated or ought to be imitated,—that can be or ought to be tolerated, or spoken of in any terms short of censure, Such a life is, indeed, above all other lives,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing:
It is a tale told by an idiot—it is a life lived by an idiot.
It is a weakness of mind to be afraid of annoyances; and they who look upon evils and afflictions and meet them with the boldest aspect and the stoutest heart, will have a far greater and more keenly appreciated allotment of pleasure than those who flee from pain and trouble by self-isolation.
The remark at the close of the paragraph quoted, conveys a just and proper warning. But while it is a perilous adventure often too rashly resolved on by young men who rush from the country into crowded cities, or spread their sails for California, in the quest of sudden wealth, it would be an infinitely worse and more dangerous speculation to abscond from society and attempt the existence of a wild Indian in the forest, in the dream of happiness and conceit of merit. He who lives thus for himself alone, should expect to forego the needed aid of friends to meliorate the bed of sickness by patient care and assiduous kindness, and, on that of death should hope for no hand of affection to close the filming eye, and no voice of love to sob the last farewell to the fleeting spirit. There can be no fate more terrible than that of him who finds that, having, miser-like, hoarded up, during life, his sympathies and refused all exchange of regard with others, he is himself at length deserted at that moment when he would give worlds for the support of one friendly, or the devotion of one living spirit. There must come a day in the existence of every solitary man when the scales will fall from his eyes, and in bitterness of regret, he will be forced to say, as was said, in the beginning of the world, by Him who rules it,—“it is not good that man should be alone.”
The Saturday Evening Post reprints the New-York Daily Tribune article of 2 April (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 172).
Thoreau writes to H. G. O. Blake:
It is my intention to leave Concord for Worcester, via Groton, at 12 o’clock on Friday of this week. Mr Emerson tells me that it will take about two hours to go by this way. At any rate I shall try to [secure] 3 or 4 hours in which to see you & Worcester before the lecture.
Yrs in haste
Henry D. Thoreau
The Washington Daily National Intelligence reprints the North American and United States Gazette article of 11 April (Transcendental Log, 44; Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 173).
Thoreau lectures at Worcester City Hall on “Economy” (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 175).
The Palladium reports on Thoreau’s lecture of 20 April:
The Worcester Daily Spy publishes a notice:
Thoreau lectures on “Life in the Woods” at Brinley Hall (Studies in the American Renaissance 1995, 178).
Worcester, Mass. The Worcester Daily Spy publishes a notice:
The Transcript publishes a letter to the editor:
“Life In The Woods.”
Messrs. Editors:—I was well pleased with your excellent paper of the 31st of March, and especially with the account you gave of Mr. Thoreau’s lecture, entitled “Life in the Woods.” Perhaps to some it would appear almost incredible that a gentleman should live “Mr. Thoreau’s fashion,” and at the same time enjoy life and be happy.
But in reply, we might say, “there are many man of many minds,” and “use is second nature,” and as the lecturer enjoyed his house, 10 by 15, probably he is of that happy make that he can be happy and enjoy himself in any situation, provided he has liberty and health.
His account of himself brought afresh to my mind a circumstance that I witnessed last summer, which I think quite equaled if not exceeded his tact in living independently. As his story awa graced with a “hero,” this will be with a “heroine,” and of course so much the better, as we do not usually expect such great exploits from the “weaker canoe.”
But to my story. One day last summer I heard voices in the street, and looking out of the window I saw a very small woman with a pleasant countenance, and three small children and a little dog. The children’s ages were between three and ten years. The woman had a large bundle which she laid down by the fence and went into the house opposite ours. A little while afterwards I stepped over to the house and found the strange lady (I call her lady, because I found she was quite independent and clever, and quite able and willing to maintain herself and family and what lady could do more? and besides she could speak two languages fluently which every lady can do,) was seated, and very industriously at work, ,and her children with the little puppy playing about the door. — Well, thought I, this look “about right.” She don’t eat the bread of idleness. In a few hours she finished the work and received two shillings for it. Several of the neighbors stepping in and admiring her work, wished her to work for them; she replied, “if they would allow her to occupy a piece of land near the brook in the pasture, not far from the house, she would do the work they desired.” Consent was obtained, and she took her bundle and children and went to the spot selected, near a pleasant wood and brook and in less than a day she had her house or camp completed, and like Mr. T. she cooked out-doors. The oldest boy (about 10 years old) when out of school, for he and his sister attended our school, would catch fish at the river, and she would cook them in her kettle, that she like the lecture’s “Mr. James Collins,” had carried in her “immense bundle.” As for vegetables, the neighbors gladly paid her for her work in meal, potatoes, green corn, beans, &c., and occasionally a good piece of pork and beef—and as for money, I will venture to say, she took more for her work the few months she live in the neighborhood than every other lady within some miles of her humble dwelling.
In this way she lived and maintained herself, her three children and a dog. She always appeared cheerful and constantly at work, and when she removed she had, besides her huge bundle, a purse full of money. The last I heard from her she had removed about forty miles from here, and was still living in her economical, independent manner.
Now, Sirs, it is my opinion if this poor widow’s story and character had such a narrator as Mr. T., it would far exceed many of the stories with which “All Europe rings from side to side.”
As Mr. T. did not name his trade, perhaps I need not name hers; suffice it to say, her work was light, fine, very pretty and very useful.
Mary.
Western Part of Maine.
Thoreau’s aunt Maria writes to Prudence Ward on 1 May:
Thoreau’s essay “Resistance to Civil Government” is published in Æsthetic Papers (Henry David Thoreau: A Descriptive Bibliography, 191).
Thoreau’s aunt Maria writes to Prudence Ward:
Henry has been to Worcester twice and is going again next Friday tho I understand one of the papers there criticised the first lecture very severely, Henry says he does not know what they will say to the last, for that they will not like (it is the one I was so disgusted with), but the next one they may like better, however it was their own proposition to have him come, and I think they will have enough of him.
The Palladium reviews Thoreau’s lecture of 28 April:
Thoreau lectures on “White Beans and Walden Pond” at Worcester City Hall (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 182).
Worcester, Mass. The Worcester Daily Spy publishes a notice of Thoreau’s lecture of the same day and a review of his lecture of 27 April:
The lecturer stated that he never had more than three letters that were worth the postage. That might possibly be accounted for by his limited correspondence, or by the character of his correspondents, or even by the relative estimate which he may put upon the amount of the root of evil which is required to pay the postage of a letter. At any rate, there is one consolation for him in the case—that probably another year will not pass away without a reduction in the rates of letter postage . . .
The third lecture of this course will be given at Brinley Hall, this evening . . . We hope our readers will go to the lecture, this evening, and hear for themselves. We would not miss going on any consideration of an ordinary character. We are to have, among other things, the lecturer’s experience, during his two years’ seclusion from the world, in raising beans! Farmers and horticulturalists will probably be elevated upon the philosophical influence of that avocation.
The Worcester Daily Spy reviews Thoreau’s lecture of 3 May:
Thoreau, the youth who writes this has implicit faith in your power of drawing inspirations from nature, in your thorough enjoyment of “Forest Life,” in your er for the eternal melodies that nature sounds forever, for the inner soul’s tympanum, if we will but remove the cotton wading which deadens and excludes them. But he has not faith in you ability to become an effective prophet and priest of this true worship, of the Divine in Nature, of the simply true you found us, (some dozens) clogged with custom, with the aggregated results of human contact, which may have been forced down to us, and upon us, through the centuries: for a moment as you came before use there seemed a glimpse to open (out of those clogging “clothes,” Carlyle, you know) into a lovely forest-land, where dwelt primitive simplicity, with the purest culture, intellectual and practical.
Ah, Thoreau, if you had left us with that hint, that one, it had been a suggestion to the advantage of our should [souls?]. But after, the crowd says (that is the same dozen say) that you winged but a stupid flight, on wings of Carlyle, or Emerson, through formless mist-clouds or smoke of burning brush-heaps, where snapped and crackled, wit or nonsense, as the case may be, and I am certain that you dropped us amid diagrams on Walden pond, upon that patch of cleared ground, barren to my apprehension of witty product, your Bean field—A as [sic] Thoreau, I’ve got the blues this morning. How is transcendentalism shop fallen. Simplicity, rurality is a drug on the market. Mechanism exults in the clank of machinery, on every back street mocks the mortified poet-philosopher. Routine triumphs; fine houses and furniture put on an elegantly impudent aspect; a philosopher having flatted out, philosophy may step in to the back-ground. We return with new zest to the “surface of things” and idly float on it [in] our light pleasant gondola not diving again for pearl-oysters in the next six months, I warrant me. [signed] Z.
The Boston Transcript reviews the first and only issue of Æsthetic Papers, listing Thoreau as one of the contributors (Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 182 (Winter 1988):4).
The Boston Post reviews the first and only issue of Æsthetic Papers, saying the essay “by Thoreau is crazy” (Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 182 (Winter 1988):4).
The Literary World announces: “Messrs James Munroe & Company have in press a book by Mr. Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord, entitled ‘A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,’ in one 16mo. volume.”
Boston, Mass. The Boston Post reprints The Literary World announcement from the same day (Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 182 (Winter 1988):4?).
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to Ellen Rendal in London, England:
Thoreau surveys the “Sawmill Woodlot” near Sandy Pond Road, leading to Flint’s Pond for Ralph Waldo Emerson (A Catalog of Thoreau’s Surveys in the Concord Free Public Library, 7).
Emerson writes in his journal around this time:
Boston, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
“A Week on Concord and Merrimack Rivers”
– 12 mo. pp. 413
An American book, worthy to stand besides [Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s Essays on my shelves.
A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
Boston Daily Advertiser announces that A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is published on this day (The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 4:145).
The Evening Post reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
New York, NY. The Literary World announces that James Munroe & Co. publishes A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Boston, Mass. The Boston Transcript announces the publication of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to Theodore Parker:
Parker replies 15 June.
The New-York Daily Tribune reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Thoreau’s sister Helen dies of consumption (Concord Saunterer, 14, no. 4 (Winter 1979):18).
Theodore Parker writes in reply to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s letter of 11 June:
Boston, Mass. The Liberator reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
We have not yet been able to give this volume such an examination as would justify us in pronouncing absolute judgment upon it. For its amiable author, we have much respect. His mode of life is sui generis—all alone by himself in the woods of Concord, an enthusiastic child and lover of Nature, in spirit an occupant of an ideal world, and with the eye of genius ‘in a fine phrenzy rolling’—and this production of his is equally peculiar. We have spent many years ‘on the Merrimack river,’ our dear, native stream; but this was ‘long, long age.’ We shall accept this invitation of Mr. Thoreau to pass ‘a week’ with him on the same river, and, making that the starting-point from which to ascent to ‘cloud-land,’ we shall accompany him on the wings of imagination as far as we can sustain such a flight. Of our entertainment and success, we may report hereafter.
The numerous admirers of [Thomas] Carlyle and [Ralph Waldo] Emerson will read this book with a relish; for Mr. T. writes in their vein, and to some extent in their dialect, and is a match for them in felicitous conceits and amusing quaintnesses; yet he is not a servile imitator—only an admirer, by affinity and kindred one of a trinity, having his own sphere in which to move, and his own mission to consummate. As a specimen of his thinking and speaking, take the following, suggested by a grave-yard:
It is remarkable that the dead lie every where under stones,— . . . ‘Having reached the term of his natural life;’—would it not be truer to say, Having reached the term of his unnatural life?
Helen Thoreau’s funeral is held (Concord Saunterer, 14, no. 4 (Winter 1979):18).
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to his brother William:
The Boston Courier reviews the first and only issue of Æsthetic Papers, including Thoreau’s essay “Resistance to Civil Government”:
William Ellery Channing reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in the New Bedford Mercury.
The Liberator publishes an obituary of Thoreau’s sister Helen:
ANOTHER FRIEND OF THE SLAVE GONE.
Died. In Concord, on Thursday, June 14th, Miss Helen Thoreau, aged 36 years.
Our friend, Miss Thoreau, was an abolitionist. Endowed by nature with tender sensibilities, quick to feel for the woes of others, the cause of the slave met with ready response in her heart. She had a mind of fine native powers, enlarged and matured by cultivation. She had the patience to investigate truth, the candor to acknowledge it when sufficient evidence was presented to her mind, and the moral courage to act in conformity with her convictions, however unpopular these convictions might be to the community around her. The cause of the slave did not come before her in its earliest beginnings; but as soon as it was presented, she set herself to inquire how it was, that a system which imbrutes man so cruelly, which tears asunder all the tenderest ties so ruthlessly, which puts out the life of the soul, by denying it the means of growth and progress so effectually, was supported. She saw the religious denominations with which she had been connected vehemently crying out against the Catholics for denying the Bible to the people, and yet one-sixth part of the people of the Protestant United States were legally deprived of the right to read God’s word, nay, worse than the Catholics, the right of learning to read. She ascertained that the actual number of slaveholders in the land was not more than two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand. How, she said, can these keep three millions of people in bondage? why do not eh slaves rice, as did our fathers in the revolution, and demand their rights at the point of the bayonet? She ascertained that the bayonets of the North were pledged to unite with those of the Southern tyrants, in case of any attempt at insurrection, and put down the poor crushed bondman, if, in his agony, he would strike down the oppressor. She saw that the nation had written in the Constitution the grievousness it had prescribed to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right form the poor of the people, that widows might be its prey, and that it might rob the fatherless. This Constitution, every man, either by himself or his deputy, held up his hand to heaven, and swore, So help me God, I will sustain. She saw that in the same Constitution, they agreed, by the same solemn oath, if the poor victim of oppression should flee to any of the so-called free States, braving incredible danger, facing death in its most terrible forms, to obtain deliverance from his oppressors, and appeal to Northern men for protection, being pursued by his enslaver, they must perjure themselves, or allow his being delivered up to his pursuer, and sent back again to the most cruel bondage, without lifting a finger in his defence—thus stifling the noblest feelings of their natures.
In despair, she turned to the church. Surely, she said, the church of Christ is free from these abominations. But she found the church made up of men from all the political parties, alike pledged to the support of the accursed institution. In keeping with this, she saw the church, almost universally, giving to the slaveholder or his abettor, the right hand of Christian fellowship—calling him dear brother in Christ. She saw the pulpits of the North open to Southern divines, while the advocates of the slave knocked in vain for admission at the door of almost every church in the land. She said to herself, Is this the church of Christ, and has it come down so low? She repudiated such a church. Immediately did she turn her back upon its communion, and if she went to the house of prayer, as she occasionally did, she went to see if the spirit of Christ and humanity might not be rising among them. Again and again has she called upon the writer of this notice, when returning from church, and said, with strong emotion, it is all darkness and gloom. It was not eloquent declamation which led her from the church; but it was the array of strong, incontrovertible facts, which impelled her to the course she felt called upon to pursue and she knew that the eloquence of anti-slavery owed its source to these same facts, and endowed with eloquence the most ungifted tongues. To her, as to many others, it was pleasant to go to the church on the Sabbath, and worship with her friends; and nothing but an entire conviction of its wrongfulness, in her case, would have prevented her constant attendance upon the institutions of religion. But he call to her was imperative—‘Come out of her, that ye be not partaker of her plagues,’ and she obeyed. This obedience brought peace in health, and peace in sickness. Not an hour of gloom did she experience during her protracted illness. Though constitutionally timid, the gloom of death was all taken away, and the king of terrors became to her an angel of hope and joy, opening before her bright visions of beauty, to use her own expression. One day, in conversation, she expressed her gratitude for what anti-slavery had done for her, in opening new and juster views of God, and truth, and duty, and exclaimed—‘O how much has anti-slavery done for me, and how little have I done for it! I wanted health, that I might keep school, and in this way do something for the cause I so much love. But it is ordered otherwise.’
She experienced in its fullest extent the fulfillment of the promise—‘Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord shall be with him upon his bed of languishing, and make all his bed in his sickness.’ Her long continued illness made the suffering virtues, patience and resignation, to shine brightly, and smoothed away the sharp edges of her character, fitting her, we doubt not, for a polished stone in the great temple above.
The abolitionists of Concord will mourn deeply her loss; for, few and feeble as they are, they can ill afford to lose one so intelligent and so true. But they feel, that thought no longer present with them in the flesh, she will still be a co-laborer with them in the great and good cause in which they have so long been associated.
William Ellery Channing moves to a house on Main Street, opposite the Thoreau house (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1990, 166n).
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes in his journal:
Thoreau writes to Louis Agassiz:
Being disappointed in not finding you in Boston a week or two since, I requested Dr. [Augustus A.] Gould to make some inquiries of you for me; but now, as I shall not be able to see that gentleman for some time, I have decided to apply to you directly.
Suffice it to say, that one of the directors of the Bangor (Me.) Lyceum has asked me to ascertain simply—and I think this a good Yankee way of doing the business—whether you will read two or three lectures before that institution early in the next lecture season, and if so, what remuneration you will expect. Of course they would be glad to hear more lectures, but they are afraid that they may not have money enough to pay for them.
You may recognize in your correspondent the individual who forwarded to you through Mr [James Elliot] Cabot many firkins of fishes and turtles a few years since and who also had the pleasure of an introduction to you at Marlboro’ Chapel.
Will you please to answer this note as soon as convenient?
Yrs. respectfully,
Henry D. Thoreau
Agassiz replies 5 July.
Holden’s Dollar Magazine has a review of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers that makes comparisons to Emerson’s writings.
Louis Agassiz writes in reply to Thoreau’s letter of 30 June:
I remember with much pleasure the time you used to send me specimens from your vicinity and also our short interview in the Marlborough Chapel. I am under too many obligations of your kindness to forget it, and I am very sorry that I missed your visit in Boston, but for 18 months I have now been settled in Cambridge.
It would give me great pleasure to engage for the lectures you ask from me, on behalf of the Bangor Lyceum; but I find it has been last winter such an heavy tax upon my health, that I wish for the present to make no engagements, as I have some hopes of making my living this year by other efforts and beyond the necessity of my wants, both domestic and scientific. I am determined not to exert myself, as all the time I can thus secure to myself must be exclusively devoted to science . You see this does not look much like business making; but my only business is my intercourse with nature and could I do without draughtsmen, lithographers &c &c I would live still more retired. This will satisfy you, that whenever you come this way, I shall be delighted to see you, since I have also heard something of your mode of living.
With great regard
Sincerely yours
L R Agassiz
A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
Ralph Waldo Emerson pays Thoreau $13 for work (Ralph Waldo Emerson’s account books. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.).
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes includes Thoreau in a list of people to whom he sends copies of John Aitken Carlyle’s translation of Dante’s Inferno (The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 11:134-135).
The Youth’s Companion reprints the New-York Daily Tribune article of 2 April (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1995, 173).
The New Hampshire Patriot carries a review of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
Thoreau writes to Ellen Emerson:
I think that we are pretty well acquainted, though we never had any very long talks. We have had a good many short talks, at any rate. Dont you remember how we used to despatch our breakfast two winters ago, as soon as Eddy could get on his feeding tire, which was not always remembered, before the rest of the household had come down? Dont you remember our wise criticisms on the pictures in the portfolio and the Turkish book with Eddy and Edith looking on,—how almost any pictures answered our purpose, and we went through the Penny Magazine, first from beginning to end, and then from end to beginning, and Eddy stared just as much the second time as the first, and Edith thought that we turned over too soon, and that there were some things which she had not seen—? . . .
Your own Mother
I trust you will really answer it, just as if he had spoken what it contains, to your face. Address him “Mr Thoreau” or any thing you like better. Papa and I both read his letter (with his leave, of course,) and liked it much. I hope it gave you pleasure too.
Isaac Thomas Hecker writes a long letter to Thoreau in which he attempts to convert Thoreau to Catholicism (The Paulist Archives, Washington, D.C.).
Knickerbocker Magazine publishes a notice of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal:
Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
Thoreau writes to H. G. O. Blake:
I am in too great haste this time to speak to your, or out of my, condition. I might say,—you might say,—comparatively speaking, be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested. What a pity if we do not live this short time according to the laws of a long time, the eternal laws! Let us see that we stand erect here, and do not lie along by our whole length in the dirt. Let our meanness be our football, not our cushion. In the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread of life. We must act with so rapid and resistless a purpose in one direction, that our vices will necessarily trail behind. The nucleus of a comet is almost a star. Was there ever a genuine dilemma? The laws of earth are for the feet, or inferior man; the laws of heaven expanded, even as the radii from the earth’s centre go on diverging into space. Happy the man who observes the heavenly and the terrestrial law in just proportion; whose every faculty, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, obeys the law of its level; who neither stopps nor goes tiptoe, but lives a balanced life, acceptable to nature and to God.
These things I say; other things I do.
I am sorry to hear that you did not receive my book earlier. I addressed it and left it in Munroe’s shop to be sent to you immediately, on the twenty-sixth of May, before a copy had been sold.
Will you remember me to Mr. Brown, when you see him next; he is well remembered by
Henry Thoreau
I still owe you a worthy answer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal on 18 August:
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal:
Mr Thoreau a Report on Fort Pond, the Cromlech, & the remains of a swamp fort near the Pond.
Mr E. called attention to the Ebbahubbard park.
Miss E. Hoar presented a bunch of Linnaea Borealis found in Concord.
Mr C read a paper on the foliaceous & spongelike formations by spring-thaw in the argillite of the Deep Cut in the Rail Road—& so forth.
Though the authorship is mistaken, Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
James Anthony Froude writes to Thoreau:
I have long intended to write you, to thank you for that noble expression of yourself you were good enough to send to me. I know not why I have not done so; except from a foolish sense that I should not write till I had thought of something to say which it would be worth your while to read.
What can I say to you except express the honour & the love I feel for you. An honour and a love which Emerson taught me long ago to feel, but which I feel now “not on account of his word, but because I myself have read & know you.”
When I think of what you are—of what you have done as well as of what you have written, I have a right to tell you that there is no man living upon this earth at present, whose friendship or whose notice I value more than yours; What are these words? Yet I wished to say something—and I must use words though they serve but seldom in these days for much but lies.
In your book and in one other also from your side of the Atlantic “Margaret” I see hope for the coming world. all else which I have found true in any of our thinkers, (or even of yours) is their flat denial of what is false in the modern popular jargon—but for their positive affirming side they do but fling us back upon our human nature, stoically to bold on by that with our own strength—A few men here & there may do this as the later Romans did—but mankind cannot and I have gone near to despair—I am growing not to despair, and I thank you for a helping hand.
Well I must see you sometime or other. It is not such a great matter with these steam bridges. I wish to shake hands with you, and look a brave honest man in the face. In the mean time I will but congratulate you on the age in which your work is cast, the world has never seen one more pregnant.
God bless you
Your friend (if you will let’him call you so)
J A Froude
Ralph Waldo Emerson includes Thoreau in a list of people to whom he sends his Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 11:156). Emerson inscribes Thoreau’s copy “Henry D. Thoreau from R. W. E. 7 September 1849.”
Cambridge, Mass. Thoreau checks out Mahabharata. Harivansa, ou Histoire de la famille de Hari, ouvrage formant un appendice du Mahabharata, et traduit sur l’original sanscrit par M. A. Langlois, vols. 1 and 2, and Histoire de la littérature hindoui et hindoustani by Joseph Héliodore Garcin de Tassy, vols. 1 and 2?, from Harvard College Library.
Concord, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
Concord, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes in his journal:
Cambridge, Mass. Jared Sparks, president of Harvard, writes:
Thoreau writes to Jared Sparks:
Will you allow me to trouble you with my affairs?
I wish to get permission to take books from the College library to Concord where I reside. I am encouraged to ask this, not merely because I am an alumnus of Harvard, residing within a moderate distance of her halls, but because I have chosen letters for my profession, and so am one of the clergy embraced by the spirit at least of her rule. Moreover, though books are to some extent my stock and tools, I have not the usual means with which to purchase them. I therefore regard myself as one whom especially the library was created to serve. If I should change my pursuit or move further off, I should no longer be entitled to this privilege.—I would fain consider myself an alumnus in more than a merely historical sense, and I ask only that the University may help to finish the education, whose foundation she has helped to lay. I was not then ripe for her higher courses, and now that I am riper I trust that I am not too far away to be instructed by her. Indeed I see not how her children can more properly or effectually keep up a living connexion with their Alma Mater than by continuing to draw from her intellectual nutriment in some such way as this.
If you will interest yourself to obtain the above privilege for me, I shall be truly obliged to you.
Yrs respectly
Henry D. Thoreau
Concord, Mass. A. Bronson Alcott writes to his wife Abigail:
The Literary World reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Concord, Mass. Thoreau’s father purchases a house on Main Street for $1,450 from Henry L. Shattuck. Due to repairs and renovations, the Thoreaus don’t move in until 29 August 1850 (Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 24 (July 1948):1).
Boston, Mass. The Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser notes a recently published translation of Prometheus’s first soliloquy, comparing it to Thoreau’s translation in the Dial:
See entry October.
New York, N.Y. The first and only issue of Æsthetic Papers is reviewed in The Literary World:
The Universalist Quarterly reviews of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
Cornelius Conway Felton writes a review of Henry William Herbert’s translation of Prometheus of Aeschylus in the North American Review, comparing it with that of his former pupil, Thoreau.
Thoreau writes in Cape Cod:
We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, October 9th, 1849. On reaching Boston, we found that the Provincetown steamer, which should have got in the day before, had not yet arrived, on account of a violent storm; and, as we noticed in the streets a handbill headed, “Death! one hundred and forty-five lives lost at Cohasset,” we decided to go by way of Cohasset . . . The brig St. John, from Galway, Ireland, laden with emigrants, was wrecked on Sunday morning; It was now Tuesday morning, and the sea was still breaking violent on the rocks.
Thoreau writes in Cape Cod:
Thoreau writes in Cape Cod
When we reached Boston that October, I had a gill of Provincetown sand in my shoes, and at Concord there was still enough left to sand my pages for many a day; and I seem to hear the sea roar, as if I lived in a shell, for a week afterward
The Spectator reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
The London Athenæum reviews A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
Thoreau surveys land on Lexington Road for Isaac Watts (A Catalog of Thoreau’s Surveys in the Concord Free Public Library, 12; Henry David Thoreau papers. Special Collections, Concord (Mass.) Free Public Library).
New Haven, Conn. The New Englander reviews the first and only issue of Æsthetic Papers and comments on Thoreau’s contribution:
Thoreau checks out A comprehensive history, ecclesiastical and civil, of Eastham, Wellfleet and Orleans, county of Barnstable, Mass., from 1644 to 1844 by Enoch Pratt, Antiquités américaines d’aprèss les monuments historiques des Islandais et des anciens Scandinaves by Carl Christian Rafn, and an item recorded as Massachusetts Historical Society: Collections from Harvard College Library.
Thoreau’s aunt Maria writes to Prudence Ward:
Last week some Indians from the Rocky Mountains exhibited here. Henry was much gratified, you know he has quite a passion for Indians . . .
I am sorry you were not at home when H—was in Cohasset. You will be pleased to hear Henry give a description of that tour, sleeping in a lighthouse etc.,—but I believe it was projected before the shipwreck which you appear to think was the occasion of it.
As for Brother’s new house, we shall not get into it this winter, but hope to early in the spring. The tenants were not obliged to move till it was too late to do anything to it, for as you suppose, it will need considerable alteration, as for Henry he never liked the idea of moving at all tho it is probably he will have the pleasantes[t] and most convenient room in the house that he has ever had yet.
Thoreau writes to H. G. O. Blake:
At present I am subsisting on certain wild flowers which nature wafts to me, which unaccountable sustain me, and make my apparently poor life rich. Within a year my walks have extended themselves, and almost every afternoon (I read, or write, or make pencils, in the forenoon, and by the last means get a living for my body.) I visit some new hill or pond many miles distant. I am astonished at the wonderful retirement through which I move, rarely meeting a man in these excursions, never seeing one similarly engaged, unless it be my companion, when I have one. I cannot help feeling that of all the human inhabitants of nature hereabouts, only we two have leisure to admire and enjoy our inheritance
“Free in this world, as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who have practiced the yoga gather in Brahma the certain fruit of their works.”
Depend upon it that rude and careless as I am, I would fain practise the yoga faithfully
“The yogin, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he heards wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to a nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts, as animating original matter.”
To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogin.
I know little about the affairs of Turkey, but I am sure that I know something about barberries and ches[t]nuts of which I have collected a store this fall. When I go to see my neighbor he will formally communicate to me the latest news from Turkey, which he read in yesterday’s Mail-how Turkey by this time looks determined & Lord Palmerston-Why, I would rather talk of the bran, which unfortunately, was sifted out of my break this morning and thrown away. It is a fact which lies nearer to me. The newspaper gossip with which our hosts abuse our ears is as far from true hospitality as the vians which they set before us. We did not need them to feed our bodies; and the news can be bought for a penny. We want the inevitable news, be it sad or cheering- wherefore and by what means they are extant, this new day. If they are well let them whistle and dance; If they are dyspeptic, it is their duty to complain, that so they may in any case be entertaining. If words are invented on a bad invention. Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.
I thank you for your appreciation of my book. I am glad to have had such a long talk with you, and that you had the patience to listen to me to the end. I think that I have the advantage of you, for I chose my own mood, and in one sense your mood too, that is a quiet and attentive reading mood. Such advantages has the writer over the talker.
I am sorry that you did not come to Concord in your vacation. Is it not time for another vacation? I am here yet, and Concord is here.
You will have found out by this time who it is that writes this, and will be glad to have you write, to him, without his subscribing himself.
Henry D. Thoreau
P. S. It is so long since I have seen you, that as you will perceive, I have to speak as it were in vacuum, as if I were sounding hollowly for an echo, & it did not make much odds what kind of a sound I made. But the gods do not hear my rude or discordant sound, as we learn from the echo; and I know that the nature toward which I launch these sounds is so rich that it will modulate anew and wonderfully improve my rudest strain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson includes Thoreau in a list of people to whom he sends his Representative Men (The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 11:188-9).
James Russell Lowell writes a review of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers for the Massachusetts Quarterly Review:
M. M. Colburn writes to Thoreau:
Some years since, you repeated to me a quotation from an old book (Saxon I think)—part of the speech of a British noble on the question of admitting Christian teachers into England. The substance of the quotation was a comparison of ife with the flight of a bird through a warm & lighted room—coming from darkness, and going into darkness again. Can you favor me with the quotation in full, and also inform me of the source from which it was taken? By so doing you will lay me under great obligation to you.
Respectfully Yours
M. M. Colburn
The Worcester Daily Spy publishes a notice of James Russell Lowell’s review of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, stating that it was “what might be expected from J. Russell Lowell, when reviewing Thoreau.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal:
Thoreau’s aunt Maria writes to Prudence Ward:
Samuel Cabot writes to Thoreau:
The Christian Inquirer publishes a notice of James Russell Lowell’s review of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers that appeared in the December issue of the Massachusetts Society Quarterly.
