Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers Part 30

And Th.o.r.eau looked upon his work and p.r.o.nounced it good.

Stripped of the fact that a man of culture and education built the shanty and lived in it, the incident is scarcely worth noting. Boys pa.s.sing through the shanty stage, all build shanties, and forage through their mothers' pantries for provender, which they carry off to their robbers' roost. Th.o.r.eau was an example of shanty-arrested development.

But as the import of every sentence depends upon who wrote it, and the worth of advice hinges upon who gave it, so does the value of every act depend upon who did it. Thus when a man, who was in degree an inspiration of Emerson, takes to the woods, it is worth our while to follow him afield and see what he does.

Th.o.r.eau set to work to clean up two acres of blackberry brambles for a garden-patch. He did not work except when he felt like it. His plan was to go to bed at dusk, with window and door open, and get up at five o'clock in the morning. After a plunge in the lake he would dress and prepare his simple breakfast. Then he would work in his garden, or if the mood struck him, he would sit in the door of his shanty and meditate, or else write. In the arrangement of his home he followed no system or rule, merely allowing the pa.s.sing inclination to lead.

His provisions were gotten of friends in the village, and were paid for in labor. It was part of Th.o.r.eau's philosophy that to accept something for nothing was theft, and that the giving or acceptance of presents was immoral. For all he received he conscientiously gave an equivalent in labor; and as for ideas, he always considered himself a learner; if he had thoughts they belonged to anybody who could annex them. And that Emerson and Horace Greeley were alike in their capacity to absorb, digest and regurgitate, is everywhere acknowledged. To paraphrase Emerson's famous remark concerning Plato: Say what you will, you will find everything mentioned by Emerson hinted at somewhere in Th.o.r.eau. The younger man had as much mind as the elder, but he lacked the capacity for patient effort that works steadily, persistently, and weighs, sifts, decides, cla.s.sifies and arranges. The voice was the voice of Jacob, but the hand was the hand of Esau. That is to say, Th.o.r.eau lacked business instinct. During the Winter at Walden Pond, all the work Th.o.r.eau had to do was to gather firewood. There was plenty of time to think and write, and here the better part of "Walden" and "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" were written. He had no neighbors, no pets, no domesticated animals--only the squirrels on the roof, a woodchuck under the floor, the scolding blue jays in the pines overhead, the wild ducks on the pond, and the hooting owls that sat on the ridgepole at night.

Th.o.r.eau loved solitude more because he prized society--the society of simple men who could talk and tell things. Th.o.r.eau was no hermit--at least twice a week he would go to the village and meander along the street, gossiping with all or any. Often he would accept invitations to supper, but on principle refused all invitations to remain overnight, no matter what the weather. Indeed, as Hawthorne hints, there is a trace of the theatrical in the man who leaves a warm fireside at nine or ten o'clock at night and trudges off through the darkness, storm and sleet, feeling his way through the blackness of the woods to a cold and cheerless shanty which he with unconscious humor calls home. Hawthorne hints that Th.o.r.eau was a delightful poseur--he posed so naturally that he deceived even himself. On one particular visit to the village, however, he did not go back home for the night. It seems that he had been called upon by the local taxgatherer for his poll-tax, a matter of a dollar and a quarter. Th.o.r.eau argued the question at length, and among other things, said, "I will not give money to buy a musket, and hire a man to use this musket to shoot another." And also, "The best government is not that which governs least, but that which governs not at all."

"But what shall I do?" said the patient publican.

"Resign," said the philosopher.

Th.o.r.eau seemed to forget that officeholders seldom die and never resign.

In the argument the publican was worsted, but he was not without resource. He went back to town and told the other officials what had happened. Their dignity was at stake. Alcott had been guilty of a like defiance some time before, and now it was the belief that he was putting the younger man up to insurrection.

The next time Th.o.r.eau came over to the village for his mail he was arrested and lodged in the local bastile.

Emerson, hearing of the trouble, hastened to the jail, and reaching the presence of the prisoner asked sternly, "Henry, why are you here?"

And the answer was, "Waldo, why are you not here?" Emerson had no use for such finespun theories of duty, and the matter was too near home for a joke, so he turned away and let the culprit spend the night in limbo.

The next morning Th.o.r.eau was released, the tax having been paid by some unknown person--Emerson, undoubtedly. This was a tame enough ending to what was rather an interesting affair--the hope of the best citizens being that Th.o.r.eau would get a goodly sentence for vagrancy. The townfolk looked upon Th.o.r.eau and Alcott with suspicious eyes. They both came in for much well-deserved censure, and Emerson did not go unsmirched, since he was guilty of harboring and encouraging these ne'er-do-wells.

Th.o.r.eau's cabin-life continued for two Summers and Winters. He had proved that two hours' manual work each day was sufficient to keep a man--twenty cents a day would suffice.

The last year in the woods he had many callers: Aga.s.siz had been to see him, Emerson had often called, Ellery Channing was a frequent visitor, and picnickers were constant. Lowell had made a few cutting remarks to the effect that "as compared with shanty-life, the tub of Diogenes was preferable, as it had a much sounder bottom," and Hawthorne had written of "the beauties of conspicuous solitude."

Th.o.r.eau felt that he was attracting too much attention, and that perhaps Hawthorne was right: a recluse who holds receptions is becoming the thing he pretends to despise. Besides that, there was plenty of precedent for quitting--Brook Farm had gone by the board, and was but a memory.

Th.o.r.eau's shanty was turned over to a utilitarian Scotchman with red hair. Later the immortal shanty was a useful granary. Th.o.r.eau went back to the village to live in a garret and work at odd jobs of boat-building and gardening.

Now only a pile of boulders marks the place where the cabin stood. For some years, each visitor to the spot threw a stone upon the heap, but recently the proposition has been reversed, and each visitor takes a stone away, which reveals not a reversal in the sentiment toward the memory of Th.o.r.eau, but a change in the quality of the Concord pilgrim.

Th.o.r.eau's early death was the direct result of his reckless lack of common prudence. That which made him live, in a literary way, curtailed his years. The man was improperly and imperfectly nourished, physically.

Men who live alone do not cook any more than they have to: men and women, both, cook for emulation. That is to say, we work for each other, and we succeed only as we help each other.

Th.o.r.eau was such a p.r.o.nounced individualist that he cared for no one but himself, and he cared for himself not at all. It is wife, children and home that teach a man prudence, and make him bank against the storm. "At Walden no one bothered me but the State," said Th.o.r.eau. If Th.o.r.eau had had a family and treated his household as he treated himself, that scorned thing, the State, would have stepped in and sent him to the workhouse, and his children to the Home for the Friendless.

If he had treated dumb animals as he treated himself, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have interfered. The absence of social ties and of all responsibilities fixed in his peculiar temperament an indifference to hunger, heat, cold, wet, damp, and all bodily discomfort that cla.s.ses the man with the flagellants. He tells of whole days when he ate nothing but berries and drank only cold water; and at other times of how he walked all day in a soaking rain and went to bed at night, supperless, under a pine-tree. Emerson records the fact that on long tramps Th.o.r.eau would carry only a chunk of plum-cake for food, because it was rich and contained condensed nutriment.

The question is sometimes asked, "How can one eat his cake and keep it too?" but this does not refer to plum-cake.

A few years of plum-cake, cold mince-pie and continual wet feet will put the petard under even the stoutest const.i.tution.

During his shanty-life Th.o.r.eau was imperfectly nourished, and for the victim of mala.s.similation, tuberculosis hunts and needs no spygla.s.s.

It is absurd for a man to make a G.o.d of his digestive apparatus, but it is just as bad to forget that the belly is as much the gift of G.o.d as the brain.

In childhood, Th.o.r.eau was frail and weak. Outdoor life gradually developed on his slight frame a splendid strength and a power to do and endure. He could outrun, outrow, outwalk any of his townsmen. In him developed the confidence of the athlete--the confidence of the athlete who dies young. Th.o.r.eau was an athlete, and he died as the athlete dieth. Irregular diet and continued exposure did their work--the vital powers became reduced, the man "caught cold," bronchitis followed, and the tuberculae laughed.

During Th.o.r.eau's life he published but two volumes, and these met with scanty sale. Since his death ten volumes have been issued from his ma.n.u.scripts and letters, and his fame has steadily increased.

Boston had no recognition for Th.o.r.eau as long as he was alive. Among the most popular writers of the time, feted and feasted, invited and exalted, were George S. Hillard, N. P. Willis, Caroline Kirkland, George W. Green, Parke G.o.dwin and Charles F. Briggs. These writers, who had the run of the magazines, would have smiled in derision if told that the name and fame of uncouth Th.o.r.eau would outlive them all. They wrote for the people who bought their books, but Th.o.r.eau dedicated his work to time. He wrote what he thought, but they wrote what they thought other people thought.

In the publication of "The Dial," Th.o.r.eau took a hearty interest, and was a frequent contributor. The official organ of the transcendentalists, however, paid no honorariums--it was both sincere and serious, and died in due time of too much dignity. The "Atlantic Monthly" accepted one article by Th.o.r.eau, and paid for it, but as James Russell Lowell, the editor, used his blue pencil a trifle, without first consulting the author, he never got an opportunity to do so again.

Horace Greeley had interested himself in Th.o.r.eau's writings and gotten several articles accepted by Graham's and also Putnam's Magazine. "The Week" had been published on the author's guaranty that enough copies would be sold the first year to cover the cost. After four years, of the edition of one thousand copies only three hundred were disposed of, and these were mostly given away. To pay the publisher for the expense incurred, Th.o.r.eau buckled down and worked hard at surveying for a year.

The only man he ever knew, of whom he stood a little in awe, was Walt Whitman. In a letter to Blake he says:

Nineteenth November, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six.--Alcott has been here, and last Sunday I went with him to Greeley's farm, thirty-six miles north of New York. The next day Alcott and I heard Beecher preach; and what was more, we visited Whitman the next morning, and we were much interested and provoked. He is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen, kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to. A remarkably strong though coa.r.s.e nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, he is essentially a gentleman. I am still somewhat in a quandary about him--feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but I am surprised by the sight of him. He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine.

Seventh December, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six.--That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote you, is the most interesting fact to me at present.

I have just read his second edition (which he gave me), and it has done me more good than any reading for a long time. Perhaps I remember best the poem of "Walt Whitman an American" and the "Sundown" poem. There are two or three pieces in the book which are disagreeable, to say the least, simply sensual.... As for its sensuality--and it may turn out to be less sensual than it appears--I do not so much wish that those parts were not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read them without harm.

On the whole, it sounds to me very brave and American, after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that have been preached in this land, put together, are equal to it for preaching. We ought greatly to rejoice in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more than human. You can't confound him with the other inhabitants of Brooklyn. How they must shudder when they read him!

To be sure, I sometimes feel a little imposed on. By his heartiness and broad generalities he puts me into a liberal frame of mind, prepared to see wonders--as it were, sets me upon a hill or in the midst of a plain--stirs me well up, and then--throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem, an alarum or trumpet-note ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that, when I asked him if he had read them, he answered, "No; tell me about them."

Since I have seen him, I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least of a braggart of all, having a better right to be confident. Walt is a great fellow.

A lady once asked John Burroughs this question: "What would become of this world if everybody in it patterned after Henry Th.o.r.eau?" And Ol'

John replied, "It would be much improved."

But your Uncle John is a humorist--he knows that Henry Ward Beecher was right when he said, "G.o.d never made but one Th.o.r.eau--that was enough, but we are grateful for the one."

Th.o.r.eau was a poet-naturalist, and the lesson he taught us is that this is the most beautiful world to know anything about, and there are enough curious and wonderful things right under our feet, and over our heads, and all around us, to amuse, divert, interest and instruct us for a lifetime. We need only a little.

Use your eyes!

"How do you manage to find so many Indian relics?" a friend asked Th.o.r.eau. "Just like this," he replied, and stooping over, he picked up an arrowhead under the friend's foot. At dinner once at a neighbor's he was asked what dish he preferred, and his answer was, "The nearest." To him, everything was good--he uttered no complaints and made no demands.

When asked by a clergyman why he did not go to church, he said, "It is the rafters--I can't stand them--when I look up, I want to gaze straight into the blue sky." Then he turned the tables and asked the interrogator a question: "Did you ever happen, accidentally, to say anything while you were preaching?" Yet preachers of brains were always attracted to him: Harrison Blake, to whom he wrote more letters than to any one else, was a Congregational preacher. And when Horace Greeley took Th.o.r.eau to Plymouth Church, Beecher invited him to sit on the platform and quoted him as one who saw G.o.d in autumn's every burning bush.

The wit of the man--his direct speech, and all of his beautiful indifference for the good opinion of those whom others follow after and lie in wait for--was sublime. Meanness, hypocrisy, secrecy and subterfuge had no place in Th.o.r.eau's nature.

He wanted nothing--nothing but liberty--he did not even ask for your applause or approval. When walking on country roads, laborers would hail him and ask for tobacco--seeing in him only one of their own kind.

Farmers would stop and gossip with him about the weather. Children ran to him on the village streets and would cling to his hands and clutch his coat, and ask where the berries grew, or the first spring flowers were to be found. With children he was particularly patient and kind.

With them he would converse as freely as did George Francis Train with the children in Madison Square. The children recognized in him something very much akin to themselves--he would play upon his flute for them and whittle out toy boats, regardless of the flight of time.

Imbeciles and mental defectives from the almshouse used occasionally to wander over to his cabin in the woods, and he would treat them with gentle consideration, and accompany them back home.