Henry David Thoreau

by Laura Dassow Walls

  With Thoreau’s voice stilled, other voices took over. Reverend Reynolds opened the funeral with a few verses from the Bible, and the choir sang a hymn written by Ellery Channing: “His perfect trust shall keep the fire, / His glorious peace disarm all loss!” Bronson Alcott rose and read Thoreau’s early poem “Sic Vita” and passages from A Week: “May we not see God?” he had Thoreau ask.99 Emerson’s sermon had grown so long that it filled the lengthening afternoon. As he said near the end of this eulogy to his closest lifelong friend, “The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost.” After Reverend Reynolds ended with a prayer, six of Thoreau’s friends lifted his coffin to their shoulders and carried it across Bedford Road to his grave in the New Burying Ground, followed by the procession of his friends and over three hundred of Concord’s schoolchildren. There, among the violets and under the pines, they laid him between his brother and his father. There went, thought Sophia Hawthorne, “Concord itself in one man.”100

  Years later—no one thought to record exactly when—the graves of Henry Thoreau and his family were moved from the slope behind Bedford Road to the edge of the glacial ridge overlooking Sleepy Hollow, where they joined the Emersons, the Alcotts, and the Hawthornes on what folks took to calling “Authors’ Ridge.” Thoreau had been no fan of Sleepy Hollow when it opened, and had made a point of boycotting the dedication ceremony, but when the architects called for a new pond in the meadow behind the ridge, Thoreau leveled for it—the only job he accepted during the summer of 1855, when his illness first threatened his life. Thoreau had often visited the place since, watching skeptically as workmen shoveled the artificial pond out of the meadow, finally finishing it in the summer of 1859.

  What happened next had stunned him: only months later, the cemetery gardeners were hauling in good-sized fish—bream!—and pickerel!—and then not a year later, in October 1860, he found it graced with great yellow pond lilies, and little kalmiana lilies too. Where had they come from, these unplanned, undesigned wild settlers? It was a revelation: “You will no sooner have your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it,” he marveled. “Thus in the midst of death we are in life.”101 The insight had jolted him awake, as awake as he had ever been at Walden Pond, and sent him back outdoors day after day throughout the fall of 1860, writing in a kind of ecstasy of nature’s bottomless vitality. How fitting that from his grave on Author’s Ridge, Thoreau looks down upon the pond he helped create, the spring of wild life there in the midst of death—a constant new creation.

  As for Tahatawan’s arrowhead, Thoreau never found its maker. But his final advice to Edward Emerson, about to leave on his own journey West to the Rocky Mountains, was to carry an arrowhead in his pocket and hold it up to every Indian he met, until he found the one who could tell him the secret of how it was made.102 The charge Henry had been given, back in September 1837 on the banks of the Musketaquid, was now in the hands of his heirs.

  Acknowledgments

  It has been a very long journey since the day I walked into Island Books, on Mercer Island, Washington, and found Walden on its shelves; I’m happy to report that this fine independent bookseller continues to thrive. In the decades since, I have accumulated a literal lifetime of debts, far too many to acknowledge properly. I’m deeply grateful to all my friends, colleagues, students, and audiences who have so patiently borne with my Thoreau obsession, and even fostered it through lively questions and discussions. At the University of Washington, Martha Banta and Robert Abrams first showed me how to turn passion into scholarship. At the University of Iowa, Robert Sayre introduced me to Transcendentalism with the stunning news that some of Thoreau’s best writing had never been published. Nearly a decade later, at Indiana University, Lee Sterrenburg introduced me to science studies and turned me loose to explore Thoreau’s writings, with the aid of Kenneth Johnston, Jim Justus, Christoph Lohmann, and Cary Wolfe; the encouragement of Scott Russell Sanders and Christoph Irmscher; and the inspiration of Richard Nash and my cohorts in the Science and Literature Affinity Group—special thanks to Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour for giving us, in those heady days, the pluriverse. Those rich exchanges became the foundation for my Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science, which George Levine generously helped shepherd into print. During those years, I was teaching at Lafayette College, where I have too many debts to list—but a tip of the hat to James Woolley, who, when I said my first book had paid my debt to Thoreau, replied, Don’t be too sure about that. He was right.

  I was introduced to Thoreau studies in the best possible way: at the Thoreau Society Golden Jubilee of 1991. I will always honor Edmund Schofield for putting me, an unknown graduate student, onto a panel, and my fellow panelists Bob Sattelmeyer and Bill Rossi for their generosity then and many, many times thereafter. The Thoreau Society offers a home for Thoreauvians of all kinds, and I have been deeply grateful, through all the years and meetings since, to my many friends and colleagues there. Among them—too many to name!—I must thank Walter Harding for bringing Thoreau into our time; Walter Brain for Thrush Alley; Tom Potter for holding us all together; Joe Wheeler for preserving Thoreau’s Birth House; and Beth Witherell for steadfastly anchoring Princeton’s Thoreau Edition, bringing new revelations with every volume. I owe special thanks to Mike Berger, Shirley Blancke, Ron Bosco, Kristen Case, Patrick Chura, James Finley, Mike Frederick, Jayne Gordon, Ron Hoag, Samantha Harvey, Bob Hudspeth, Rochelle Johnson, Linck Johnson, John Kucich, John and Lorna Mack, Dan Malachuk, Ian Marshall, Andrew Menard, Austin Meredith, Wes Mott, Dan Peck, Nikita Pokrovsky, David Robinson, Dick Schneider, Corinne Hosfeld Smith, Richard Smith, Robert Thorson, and all of you who have so cheerfully sweated with us through hot summer days in Concord’s Masonic Temple and cooled off with drinks at Concord’s Colonial Inn: may it long continue. Above all, to Francois Specq, for France; to Sandy Petrulionis, for comradeship; and, finally and forever, to Brad Dean. Everyone who knew Brad knew that Thoreau lived on in him.

  To Larry Buell, who has supported me in innumerable ways, I offer the most profound thanks; to Bob Richardson, I owe more than I can ever say; to Bob Gross, I owe thanks for showing how the highest scholarship and the deepest generosity go hand in hand. I thank Wai Chee Dimock for her aid and insight on so many occasions, and Phyllis Cole and Jana Arbersinger for their solidarity: Exaltadas! My understanding of all things Thoreau would be far poorer were it not for the ongoing aid and inspiration of Joel Myerson; this biography was born in our conversations at the University of South Carolina. In my years there I benefitted immensely from the steady wisdom of Paula Feldman, the wry wit of David Shields, John Muckelbauer’s nonstop intellectual fireworks, Jerry Wallulis’s deep grace, and Ed Madden’s unswerving solidarity. My South Carolina graduate students put me on my toes and kept me there; my thanks especially to Jessie Bray for keeping the faith, and to John Higgins, Brad King, Jeffrey Makala, and my research assistant Michael Weisenburg.

  This biography could not have been completed without the generosity of the University of Notre Dame, and of the William P. and Hazel B. White Foundation. My deepest thanks to John McGreevy, Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, who opened the door; John Sitter, who lights up the path; and Valerie Sayers, in whom the moral urgency of Transcendentalism lives on. Notre Dame has proven the most exciting of intellectual homes: my thanks to all my colleagues in the English Department, particularly Steve Fallon and Jesse Lander for their support, and to Kate Marshall, Steve Fredman, and Steve and Maria Tomasula for making literature, art, and science alive in our time. My colleagues in the History and Philosophy of Science Program have opened a wealth of interdisciplinary insights: of them all, particular thanks to Katherine Brading, Anjan Chakravartty, Chris Hamlin, Don Howard, and Philip Sloan. My friends in the Sustainability Program remind me daily why Thoreau matters today: of them all, specia
l thanks to Phil Sakimoto, Rachel Novick, and Celia Deane-Drummond. Finally, I honor my dear friend and colleague Jacque Brogan, for her poetry, her intellectual passion, and not least for her brave reading of this manuscript when it was still a raw draft. My Notre Dame graduate students persuade me that we have a future worth fighting for: Erik Larsen, Joel Duncan, Aleksandra Hernandez, Margaret McMillan, Tyler Gardner, Caitlin Smith, Justin Saxby, Jay Miller: you all, singly and together, make Thoreau and Transcendentalism matter. And for making this book better, additional thanks to Erik, Joel, and Aleks, my ever-patient research assistants.

  Without the financial support of major foundations, we teachers would spend our lives dreaming of books we never have time to write. I owe deepest thanks to the Guggenheim Foundation, whose fellowship allowed me to begin this book, and to the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose fellowship granted me time to finish it. Publication costs were supported in part by the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame; I offer a special note of gratitude to Ken Garcia, the Institute’s Associate Director, for his absolutely peerless assistance with all aspects of grant proposals and administration.

  This biography could not have been completed without the help of Leslie Perrin Wilson, who so generously opened to me the rich archives of the Concord Free Public Library, and Conni Manoli, who assembled the bulk of the images. At the invaluable Concord Museum, Carol Haines helped me think about outreach, and David Wood helped me grasp Thoreau’s words—literally, putting some of Thoreau’s most precious possessions into my hands. My thanks to Kathi Anderson and the Walden Woods Project for working to protect Thoreau’s landscape and legacy, and to Jeff Cramer at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods for so generously sharing his knowledge and the Thoreau archives. My deep thanks to Christine Nelson and the staff of the Morgan Library for their careful stewardship of some of Thoreau’s most precious papers; to the Boston Public Library and the New York Public Library’s Berg Collection, where the staff so kindly brought out treasure after treasure; and to Paul Schacht, Alan Harding, and the dedicated curators of the Harding Collection at SUNY-Geneseo. My journey would have been incomplete without the guidance and inspiration of Huey, the filmmaker (James Coleman); working with him on his documentary film, Henry David Thoreau: Surveyor of the Soul, sharpened my sense of plot and narrative. Thoreau’s crucial journeys in the Maine Woods would have been mere tourist excursions had it not been for the Penobscot elders of Indian Island, who welcomed him and opened his eyes. For helping me see how fully the Penobscot Nation lives on today, I offer my humble thanks to the members of the Penobscot Nation, particularly James Francis and Chris Socka-lexis of the Penobscot Nation Cultural and Historic Preservation Department; Charlie Brown (Chris Francis), Penobscot guide; and James Neptune, Coordinator of the Penobscot Nation Museum on Indian Island.

  The University of Chicago Press has been at every stage a model of professionalism. Christie Henry opened the way with her support and encouragement. Kerry Wendt’s editorial good sense helped lift this book from clotted printouts to readable pages; Johanna Rosenbohm smoothed them still further, and the book’s designer, Jill Shimabukuro, made them beautiful to behold; Levi Stahl enthusiastically ushered those pages into the world; Randy Petilos and Jenni Fry kept it all on track. At every stage, everyone on the staff has made the process of publication a pleasure. Above all, I am forever grateful to Alan Thomas for his shrewd advice and continuing guidance: whatever reach this book attains beyond the Ivory Tower is thanks largely to him. Randall Conrad provided the index, and much more. My anonymous readers smoothed many snags and repaired many errors; those that remain are, of course, my own, which I hope a second edition may someday correct.

  My parents, John and Ethel Dassow, made sure their child had a Walden Pond nearby; my godparents, John and Polly Dyer, fought hard to protect the wild places on Seattle’s horizon. Finally, above, behind, and through it all, my deepest and most loving thanks to Bob Walls, who has walked this long journey always by my side, no matter where we were.

  Abbreviations

  ABAJ The Journals of Amos Bronson Alcott. Edited by Odell Shepard. Boston: Little, Brown, 1938.

  ABAL The Letters of Amos Bronson Alcott. Edited by Richard L. Herrnstadt. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1969.

  CC Henry David Thoreau. Cape Cod. Edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

  CEP Henry David Thoreau. Collected Essays and Poems. Edited by Elizabeth Hall Witherell. New York: Library of America, 2001.

  CFPL Concord Free Public Library

  CHDT The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau. Edited by Walter Harding and Carl Bode. New York: New York University Press, 1968.

  Corr., 1 Henry David Thoreau. The Correspondence, Volume 1: 1834–1848. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.

  Corr., 2 Henry David Thoreau. The Correspondence, Volume 2: 1849–1856. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming.

  Corr., 3 Henry David Thoreau. The Correspondence, Volume 3: 1857–1862. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming.

  Days of HT Walter Harding. The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography. 1965. New York: Dover, 1982.

  E&L Ralph Waldo Emerson. Essays and Lectures. Edited by Joel Porte. New York: Library of America, 1983.

  EEM Henry David Thoreau. Early Essays and Miscellanies. Edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer et al. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.

  Exc Henry David Thoreau. Excursions. Edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.

  J Henry David Thoreau. The Journal of Henry David Thoreau. Edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis Allen. 14 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906; New York: Dover, 1962.

  JMN The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by William Gilman et al. 16 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960–1982.

  LRWE The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by Ralph L. Rusk and Eleanor M. Tilton. 10 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939–91.

  MW Henry David Thoreau. The Maine Woods. Edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.

  PEJ Henry David Thoreau. The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (Princeton edition Journal). 8 vols. to date. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981–.

  RP Henry David Thoreau. Reform Papers. Edited by Wendell Glick. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.

  Thoreau as Seen William Harding, ed. Thoreau as Seen by His Contemporaries. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960; New York: Dover, 1989.

  Thoreau Log Raymond R. Borst. The Thoreau Log: A Documentary Life of Henry David Thoreau, 1817–1862. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.

  THOT Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, ed. Thoreau in His Own Time. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012.

  TL I Bradley P. Dean and Ronald Wesley Hoag. “Thoreau’s Lectures before Walden: An Annotated Calendar.” Studies in the American Renaissance (1995): 127–228.

  TL II Bradley P. Dean and Ronald Wesley Hoag. “Thoreau’s Lectures after Walden: An Annotated Calendar.” Studies in the American Renaissance (1996): 241–362.

  To Set This World Sandra Harbert Petrulionis. To Set This World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

  Translations Henry David Thoreau. Translations. Edited by Kevin P. Van Anglen. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.

  TSB Thoreau Society Bulletin.

  Walden Henry David Thoreau. Walden. Edited by J. Lyndon Shanley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.

  Week Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Edited by Carl F. Hovde et al. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

  Notes

  Preface

  1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “History,” opening pa
ragraph (E&L, 237); Walden, 9.

  2. Emerson, “History,” in E&L, 254.

  3. Walden, 82; Ellery Channing quoted in Henry S. Salt, The Life of Henry David Thoreau (London: Richard Bentley, 1890; revised version of 1908, edited by George Hendrick, Willene Hendrick, and Fritz Oehlschlaeger. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993, 2000), 55. See Alan D. Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 190; see also Philip Cafaro’s Thoreau’s Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), an excellent introduction to Thoreau’s ethics of simplicity.

  4. Exc., 202. For Thoreau and climate science, see the work of Richard B. Primack, starting with Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau’s Woods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). The word ecology was coined by the German scientist-artist Ernst Haeckel in 1866, four years after Thoreau’s death. Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 191–93.

  5. Henry Seidel Canby, Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939), xvi–xx.

  6. As Sophia Thoreau wrote to Ellen Sewall Osgood, May 23 [1875?]: “By accident one letter alone of dear John’s has escaped the flames. I will enclose it at y’r request. I have found it a painful task to destroy my family letters—many sad duties fall to the lot of the last of a race.” Thoreau-Sewall-Ward Papers, IVJ: Ellen Sewall Papers, letter #70, Thoreau Society Archives, Henley Library.