Henry David Thoreau

by Laura Dassow Walls

  91. PEJ, 8:161–62; RP, 109.

  92. New-York Daily Tribune, August 2, 1854; Greeley’s prefatory paragraph is printed in Thoreau Log, 298. For Thoreau’s shift from the quietism of “Reform and Reformers” to the “shriller tones of the radical activist,” see Linck C. Johnson, “Reforming the Reformers: Emerson, Thoreau, and the Sunday Lectures at Amory Hall, Boston,” ESQ [Emerson Society Quarterly] 37.4 (1991): 280–81.

  93. “Historical Introduction,” in RP, 331–32; PEJ, 8:221.

  94. PEJ, 8:247; Corr., 2:213–14 (Charles Scribner, circular letter, May 1854). Scribner’s Cyclopaedia was published in 1855, and the notice of Thoreau appears in 2:653–56.

  95. Fields and Emerson both had already written Richard Bentley, the London publisher, about publishing Walden in England, and Fields also sent a copy of Walden to Bentley’s agent, asking him to find a London publisher. On July 2, Fields sent sample proof sheets to Bentley asking, again, if he would publish it. Bentley was not interested. Walden was not published in England until 1884; the first new English edition was published in 1886 (“Historical Introduction,” in Walden, 370).

  96. Corr., 2:221 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, August 8, 1854); PEJ, 8:259. Thoreau used X’s to indicate the intensity of such cyclical phenomena as the periodical blooming of plants and onset of fall colors.

  97. Walden, 4, 8, 16.

  98. Quoted by Martin Bickman, “Walden”: Volatile Truths (New York: Twayne, 1992), 18.

  99. The landmark treatment of this dimension of Thoreau’s writing is Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

  100. I make the following argument at length in “As You Are Brothers of Mine.”

  101. Walden, 221–22. On the problem of “double consciousness,” see Joel Porte, Consciousness and Culture: Emerson and Thoreau Reviewed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 3–10. For the significance of the flute—bequeathed from John to Henry—see “Thoreau’s Flute,” Louisa May Alcott’s elegy for her friend, in THOT, 53–54. On Thoreau’s subtle process of conversion, signified here by the flute, see Lawrence Buell, “Thoreau and the Natural Environment,” in The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau, ed. Joel Myerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 186.

  102. Walden, 223–25; PEJ, 4:291, January 26, 1852 (emphasis in the original).

  Chapter Nine

  1. LRWE, 4:460; ABAJ, 273–74.

  2. Corr., 2:235–36 (T. H. Higginson to HDT, August 13, 1854). Higginson bought one for himself, the other for Harriet Prescott Spofford, a promising young writer he knew would like it.

  3. Corr., 2:238–39 (Richard Fuller to HDT, August 31, 1854), 267 (Charles Sumner to HDT, October 31, 1854); LRWE, 4:460.

  4. Thoreau Log, 327, 330. Hawthorne send two copies of Walden to friends in England, one of whom, Monckton Milnes, stayed up until 2:00 a.m. to finish it. See Edward C. Peple Jr., “Hawthorne on Thoreau: 1853–1857,” TSB 119 (Spring 1972): 2.

  5. Walden reviews are quoted from Joel Myerson, ed., Emerson and Thoreau: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 371–406; see also Bradley P. Dean and Gary Scharnhorst, “The Contemporary Reception of Walden,” Studies in the American Renaissance (1990): 293–328.

  6. New-York Daily Tribune, September 20, 1854; Corr 2:245–46 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, September 21, 1854; emphasis in the original); J, 7:46, 48. Thoreau had prepared himself for lecturing by studying the lecture styles of others, defining his own goals of truthful sincerity through critiques of his friends; see, for example, PEJ, 4:249–50 (“Noggs,” Channing’s name for Thoreau, hence a self-critique), 274 (Higginson), 284–85 (Foster), 303–4 (Channing).

  7. Apparently a fourth portrait, an ambrotype, was taken on January 17, 1857, but according to Ellen Emerson it was “such a shocking, spectral” picture that she had to return it. Thoreau was supposed to have had it retaken, but no such image has surfaced. The Letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson, ed. Edith E. W. Gregg, 2 vols. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1982), 1:125.

  8. The friend was Eben Loomis. See Thomas Blanding and Walter Harding, A Thoreau Iconography (Geneseo, NY: Thoreau Society Booklet 30, 1980), 1–4; and Mark W. Sullivan, Picturing Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau in American Visual Culture (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2015), 2–8.

  9. John Lewis Russell, “Visit to a Locality of the Climbing Fern,” Magazine of Horticulture, March 1855, 132.

  10. PEJ, 8:273–76; J, 8:421–25, 11:170–80. See also Ray Angelo, “Thoreau’s Climbing Fern Rediscovered,” Arnoldia 45.3 (Summer 1985): 24–26.

  11. Corr., 2:268–69 (Adrien Rouquette to HDT, November 1, 1854), 274 (HDT to Adrien Rouquette, November 13, 1854).

  12. Corr., 2:227–31 (Daniel Ricketson to HDT, August 12, 1854), 248–49 (HDT to Daniel Ricketson, October 1, 1854), 256–58 (Daniel Ricketson to HDT, October 12, 1854); Anna Ricketson and Walton Ricketson, Daniel Ricketson and His Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902), 280.

  13. Corr., 2:275–76 (HDT to Bronson Alcott, November 15, 1854).

  14. LRWE, 4:479.

  15. On September 29, Spooner came to Concord in person to confirm the arrangement; see Francis B. Dedmond, “James Walter Spooner: Thoreau’s Second (though Unacknowledged) Disciple,” Concord Saunterer 18.2 (December 1985): 35–44; and Annie Root McGrath, “As Long as It Is in Concord,” Concord Saunterer 12.2 (Summer 1977): 9–11.

  16. For a superb discussion of “Moonlight” and of Thoreau’s moonlight walks, see David N. Robinson, Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 140–47.

  17. TL II, 249–55.

  18. Corr., 2:258–59 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, October 14, 1954); J, 7:64–65.

  19. J, 7:64–65; Corr., 2:272 (Daniel Foster to HDT, November 6, 1854).

  20. The surviving correspondence appears in Corr., 2:259–60 (Asa Fairbanks to HDT, October 14, 1854), 264 (Charles B. Bernard to HDT, October 26, 1854), 270 (Asa Fairbanks to HDT, November 6, 1854), 278 (HDT to William E. Sheldon, November 17, 1854), 278 (HDT to Charles B. Bernard, November 20, 1854), 279 (HDT to John D. Milne, November 20, 1854), 280 (Andrew Whitney to HDT, November 27, 1854).

  21. J, 7:72–73.

  22. TL II, 259; J 7:74–75; Blanding and Harding, Thoreau Iconography, 4–6.

  23. J, 7:75–76. Fans of Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo will recall it was the cast of I Puritani that the mad Irish dreamer was bringing to the heart of the Amazon.

  24. PEJ, 3:194, RP, 174; the Bible quotation is Mark 8:36. See also TL II, 243.

  25. J, 7:79, 46.

  26. Corr., 2:259–60 (Asa Fairbanks to HDT, October 14, 1854); J, 7:79; Corr., 2:283 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, December 19, 1854).

  27. J, 7:79.

  28. Corr., 2:256–58 (D. Ricketson to HDT, October 12, 1854); Ricketson and Ricketson, Ricketson and Friends, 280; Corr., 2:289 (HDT to D. Ricketson, December 19, 1854), 290–91 (D. Ricketson to HDT, December 20, 1854).

  29. Thomas Blanding, “Daniel Ricketson’s Reminiscences of Thoreau,” Concord Saunterer 8.1 (March 1973): 8–9; for a later version of this story see Ricketson and Rickeston, Ricketson and His Friends, 11–12, repr. in Corr., 2:291.

  30. J, 7:90.

  31. TL II, 266; Corr., 2:300–01 (D. Ricketson to HDT, January 9, 1855).

  32. Corr., 2:298–99 (HDT to D. Ricketson, January 6, 1855); J, 7:92–93. For additional sources for Thoreau’s thinking on reforestation, see Robert D. Richardson Jr., Henry David Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 303–5.

  33. TL II, 267–68; J, 7:96.

  34. J, 7:166, 172.

  35. Ibid., 171–73, 202, 215.

  36. Corr., 2:310 (Franklin Sanborn to HDT, January 30, 1855). The anonymous student was Edwin Morton.

  37. Sanborn quoted in Days of HT, 353.

  38. Leslie Perrin Wilson, In History’s Embrace: Past and Present in
Concord, Massachusetts (Concord, MA: Concord Free Public Library, 2007), 66.

  39. J, 7:263–67.

  40. Ibid., 364–65; Thoreau as Seen, 79–80.

  41. LRWE, 4:512; Corr., 2:332 (HDT to H.G.O. Blake, June 27, 1855); J, 7:417.

  42. J, 7:417; Corr., 2:333–34 (HDT to H.G.O. Blake, June 27, 1855).

  43. J, 7:431–43; Corr., 2:337 (HDT to H.G.O. Blake, July 14, 1855).

  44. “Historical Introduction,” in CC, 262–77; J, 7:455.

  45. Corr., 2:353 (William D. Ticknor and Company to HDT, September 29, 1855).

  46. CHDT, 465–66 (Ticknor and Fields to HDT, n.d.), 532–33 (Ticknor and Fields to HDT, December 15, 1858).

  47. Sleepy Hollow was designed in 1855 by pioneer landscape architects Robert Copeland and Horace Cleveland, hired by Emerson and others on the cemetery board to carry out their plans for an open-space public park that would communicate the deep relationship of human mortality to the eternal processes of nature. Both Sleepy Hollow and Emerson’s writings were a strong influence on Frederick Law Olmsted; see Wesley T. Mott, ed., Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism, s.v. “Landscape Architecture,” by Daniel Joseph Nadenicek, 99–100, and “Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,” by Nadenicek, 199–200.

  48. J, 14:109, 7:417. This note, dated September 16, appears in the Journal entry for June 11, showing that Thoreau was by then writing out entries from notes that he had not been strong enough to expand into the Journal. It is possible that during the worst of his illness, Channing was bringing him plants and observations, allowing Thoreau to keep up his Journal record.

  49. Corr., 2:345–46 (D. Ricketson to HDT, September 23, 1855), 354 (HDT to D. Ricketson, September 27, 1855), 349 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, September 26, 1855).

  50. Ricketson and Ricketson, Ricketson and His Friends, 281–83; J, 7:463–82.

  51. Corr., 2:354–55 (William Allen to HDT, October 3, 1855); J, 7:505 (October 21, 1855).

  52. Corr., 2:355–56 (Thomas Cholmondeley to HDT, October 3, 1855).

  53. Ibid., 367 (HDT to D. Ricketson, October 16, 1855).

  54. ABAJ, 281–82.

  55. J, 7:485, 495 (oak leaf), 513–14 (old trees).

  56. Ibid., 7:502 (wood on the fire); J, 8:18, 25 (bookshelves); 7:521 (“eaten in the wind”).

  57. Ibid., 7:527 (emphasis in the original).

  58. Ibid., 8:7–8, 36–37.

  59. Corr., 2:378–79 (HDT to Thomas Cholmondeley, November 8 and December 1, 1855); for the packing list, see 371–75 (John Chapman to HDT, October 26, 1855).

  60. Ibid., 378–79; 394 (HDT to D. Ricketson, December 25, 1855).

  61. CHDT, 485 (HDT to Calvin Greene, July 8, 1857).

  62. J, 8:146, 104–14.

  63. Ibid., 8:158, 192–93, 9:178–79.

  64. Ibid., 8:217 (March 21, 1856).

  65. Ibid., 229–30.

  66. J, 12:38 (ladder); J, 8:269 (spring sap).

  67. Ibid., 8:269.

  68. Ibid., 315, 335.

  69. The CFPL holds the extensive records of the Concord Farmers’ Club, including transcripts of their lectures and several volumes of detailed meeting minutes; they offer a rich and underutilized trove of information.

  70. Emerson, “Thoreau,” 424–25.

  71. See Corr., 2:469 (Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley to HDT, September? 1856?): this letter suggests Thoreau and Ripley were discussing the problem of spontaneous generation as early as the fall of 1856.

  72. LRWE, 5:42.

  73. The word ecology was not coined until 1866, by Ernst Haeckel. Starting points for information on Thoreau as a pioneer of ecological science include my own Seeing New Worlds (1995); Michael Benjamin Berger, Thoreau’s Late Career and “The Dispersion of Seeds”: The Saunterer’s Synoptic Vision (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000); and Frank Egerton, “History of Ecological Sciences, Part 39: Henry David Thoreau, Ecologist,” Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 92.3 (2011): 251–75.

  74. J 9:115–17 (his 1906 editors deleted Thoreau’s too-realistic drawing of the phallic mushroom); Corr., 2:449 (HDT to Calvin Greene, May 31, 1856); 454 (Greene to HDT, June 29, 1856).

  75. Corr., 2:440–41 (Horace Greeley to HDT, May 7, 1856), 447 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, May 21, 1856).

  76. JMN, 14:76, c. March 1856; J, 8:199 (March 4, 1856).

  77. JMN, 14:91–92; Emerson repeated some of these observations in “Thoreau,” 423.

  78. Blanding and Harding, Thoreau Iconography, 11–19; M. W. Sullivan, Picturing Thoreau, 17–21; Corr., 2:452 (HDT to C. Greene, June 21, 1856).

  79. George Hendrick, ed., Remembrances of Concord and the Thoreaus: Letters of Horace Hosmer to Dr. S. A. Jones (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 5–6.

  80. Ricketson and Ricketson, Ricketson and His Friends, 286–87.

  81. J, 8:392–94, Ricketson and Ricketson, Ricketson and His Friends, 290–94.

  82. J, 8:390–92.

  83. Corr., 2:406–7 (D. Ricketson to HDT, February 26, 1856), 414–15 (D. Ricketson to HDT, March 3, 1856), 420 (HDT to D. Ricketson, March 5, 1856), 424 (D. Ricketson to HDT, March 7, 1856).

  84. Ibid., 442 (D. Ricketson to HDT, May 10, 1856; Ricketson did not mail this letter until August 1857); Ricketson and Ricketson, Ricketson and His Friends, 285.

  85. J, 8:199 (March 4, 1856); the second “friend” Thoreau speaks of in this Journal entry is, I am convinced, Ellery Channing.

  86. Ricketson and Ricketson, Ricketson and His Friends, 297, 209–10. Ricketson’s voluminous journal, which he kept from youth until just before his death in 1898, was largely destroyed by his children, Anna and Walton Ricketson. See Don Mortland, “Thoreau’s Friend Ricketson: What Manner of Man?” Concord Saunterer 18.2 (December 1985): 1–19; and Mortland, “Ellery Channing and Daniel Ricketson: Thoreau’s Friends in Conflict,” Concord Saunterer 19.1 (July 1987): 22–43.

  87. J, 8:438–39, 444–45.

  88. Anonymous, THOT, 168; J, 8:451–56, with a sequel in 9:26–28.

  89. J, 9:65; Corr., 2:303–4 (Ann Wetherbee Brown to HDT, January 25, 1855).

  90. CHDT, 472 (unpublished letter); Corr., 3: [in press, previously unpublished] (HDT to Mary Brown, March 8, 1857).

  91. ABAJ, 283–85.

  92. Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 322–26.

  93. Corr., 2:477–80 (HDT to Sophia Thoreau, November 1, 1856). For the text of what the spirit moved Thoreau to say, see TL II, 355.

  94. Corr., 2:483 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, November 19, 1856); ABAL, 209, ABAJ, 287.

  95. ABAJ, 287–89.

  96. Ibid., 290–91, ABAL, 210–11; Corr., 2:484 (HDT to H.G.O. Blake, November 19, 1856), 489 (HDT to H.G.O. Blake, December 7, 1856).

  97. Corr., 2:483–84 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, November 19, 1856).

  98. J, 9:149; Corr., 2:488–89 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, December 7, 1856).

  99. Walter Harding, “Thoreau’s Sexuality,” Journal of Homosexuality 21.3 (1991): 37; Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, “Emerson and His Friends in Concord,” New England Magazine III (1890), repr. in Concord Saunterer 16.1 (Spring 1981): 21–22; THOT, 112. Sanborn also claimed that Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau wanted to invite Whitman to Concord in 1860, but Lidian, Abigail, and Sophia all refused to countenance the invitation (Sanborn, Life of Thoreau, 310).

  100. Corr., 2:486–87 (HDT to H. G. O. Blake, December 6, 1856).

  101. J, 9:139, 141.

  102. Ibid., 150.

  103. Ibid., 151, 160 (“countrymen”), 207 (“exist for joy”), 167 (“grand old poem”), 160 (“nick of time”).

  104. Ibid., 214 (January 11, 1857).

  105. Ibid., 187–90 (December 18, 1856).

  106. Ibid., 236–38; TL II, 285.

  107. J, 9:195, 198.

  108. Ibid., 258.

  109. Ibid., 210–11 (January 7, 1857).

  110. Ibid., 246–47.

  111. Ibid., 249–50, 276; LRWE, 5:63.

  112. See also Harmon Smith,
My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau’s Relationship with Emerson (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 165–66.

  113. Corr., 2:501–503 (Thomas Cholmondeley to HDT, December 16, 1856).

  114. ABAL 1857; Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years, 2 vols. (Boston: Gorham Press, 1909), 2:397. “Anonymous” remembers another time when the sound of the piano drew Henry downstairs to sing with zest, and soon he began to dance, “all by himself, spinning airily round, displaying most remarkable litheness and agility,” until “he finally sprang over the center-table, alighting like a feather on the other side,” not the least out of breath, continuing his waltz until his enthusiasm finally abated (THOT, 170).