Henry David Thoreau

by Laura Dassow Walls

  59. Corr., 1:152 (HDT to Richard Fuller, April 2, 1843); Hawthorne, American Notebooks, 369, 371.

  60. Corr., 1:158–59 (Elizabeth Hoar to HDT, May 2, 1843); LRWE, 3:172.

  61. Corr., 1:159–61 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, May 11, 1843).

  62. The Snuggery burned down in 1855, and no sign of it remains; the neighborhood is still called Emerson Hill.

  63. Week, 181; Fuller quoted in Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson, The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 343.

  64. Corr., 1:184 (HDT to John and Cynthia Thoreau, June 8, 1843); LRWE, 3:182, 162–63.

  65. Corr., 1:174 (HDT to RWE, May 23, 1843), 170 (HDT to Sophia Thoreau, May 22, 1843), 198 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, July 7, 1843).

  66. Ibid., 174–75 (HDT to RWE, May 23, 1843).

  67. Ibid., 181, 185 (HDT to RWE, June 8, 1843), 210 (HDT to Helen Thoreau, July 21, 1843).

  68. Ibid., 184. Emerson complained of this, too: “The tyranny of Space I feel in this long long city: three or four calls will consume a day unless one is a skilled geographer” (LRWE, 3:27, emphasis in the original).

  69. Corr., 1:171–72 (HDT to Sophia Thoreau, May 22, 1843), 175 (HDT to RWE, May 23, 1843).

  70. Ibid., 174 (HDT to RWE, May 23, 1843), 180–81 (HDT to RWE, June 8, 1843).

  71. Ibid., 181–82 (HDT to RWE, June 8, 1843); 198 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, July 7, 1843); William Emerson quoted in Bosco and Myerson, Emerson Brothers, 343.

  72. LRWE, 7:542–43; Corr., 1:163 (Henry James Sr. to HDT, May 12, 1843), 179 (HDT to RWE, June 8, 1843); 252 (RWE to HDT, October 25, 1843); LRWE, 7:566–67.

  73. Corr., 1:225 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, August 29, 1843), 238 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, October 1, 1843), 210 (HDT to Helen Thoreau, July 21, 1843), 180. Henry McKean had also done editorial work for Emerson.

  74. Ibid., 211 (HDT to Helen Thoreau, July 21, 1843).

  75. RP, 35, 42. Thoreau’s review bears comparison with Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Railroad,” which Emerson praised to Thoreau about this time; see Corr., 1:192 (RWE to HDT, June 10, 1843).

  76. Corr., 1:214 (John O’Sullivan to HDT, July 28, 1843), 250 (HDT to Helen Thoreau, October 18, 1843).

  77. Ibid., 185 (HDT to John and Cynthia Thoreau, June 8, 1843), 238 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, October 1, 1843).

  78. Ibid., 224 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, August 29, 1843), 233–34 (HDT to RWE, September 14, 1843), 238 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, October 1, 1843).

  79. Ibid., 199 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, July 7, 1843), 218–19 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, August 6, 1843), 221 (HDT to RWE, August 7, 1843).

  80. Ibid., 164 (RWE to HDT, May 21, 1843), 174 (HDT to RWE, May 23, 1843), 203 (HDT to RWE and LJE, July 8, 1843).

  81. JMN, 9:9–10. But Channing liked this essay, which Greeley excerpted in the New-York Daily Tribune for October 27, 1843, and the New-York Weekly Tribune for November 4, 1843.

  82. Corr., 1:229 (RWE to HDT, September 8, 1843), 245 (HDT to RWE, October 17, 1843). Emerson normalized Thoreau’s prose, muting his meaning; see Francis B. Dedmond, “‘Pretty Free Omissions’: Emerson Edits a Thoreau Manuscript for the Dial,” TSB 227 (Spring 1999): 8.

  83. Corr., 1:208, 222, 229, 252 (Emerson prompting Thoreau), 216 (HDT to O’Sullivan, August 1, 1843), 234 (HDT to RWE, September 14, 1843).

  84. Ibid., 164–65 (RWE to HDT, May 21, 1843), 192 (RWE to HDT, June 10, 1843). It helped that Channing himself sustained his friendship with Thoreau, roundly defending “Winter Walk” to Emerson’s face, and that Thoreau genuinely admired Channing’s book of poems, just published: “I have read his poems two or three times over” with growing appreciation; “tell him I saw a man buying a copy at Little and Brown’s” (ibid., 175).

  85. Thoreau Log, 94; Corr., 1:164 (RWE to HDT, May 21, 1843); JMN, 8:399.

  86. LRWE, 3:149, 137, 183. On Emerson, Waldo and Tappan, see Harmon Smith, “Henry Thoreau and Emerson’s ‘Noble Youths,’” Concord Saunterer 17.3 (December 1984): 4–12; see also Smith, My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau’s Relationship with Emerson (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 78–94.

  87. Giles Waldo quoted in Harmon, “Henry Thoreau and Emerson’s ‘Noble Youths,’” 5; Corr., 1:180 (HDT to RWE, June 8, 1843), 207 (RWE to HDT, July 20, 1843).

  88. Corr., 1:187 (Charles Lane to HDT, June 9, 1843).

  89. Ibid., 199 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, July 7, 1843), 208 (RWE to HDT, July 20, 1843), 211–12 (HDT to Helen Thoreau, July 21, 1843).

  90. Ibid., 224 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, August 29, 1843); 228 (RWE to HDT, September 8, 1843).

  91. Ibid., 218 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, August 6, 1843); 240 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, October 1, 1843).

  92. PEJ, 1:465 (September 24, 1843), 478 (October 21, 1843).

  93. For details, see Sterling F. Delano, “Thoreau’s Visit to Brook Farm,” TSB 221/222 (Fall 1997/Spring 1998): 1–2; and Edmund A. Schofield, “The Date(s) and Context of Thoreau’s Visit to Brook Farm,” TSB 258 (Spring 2007): 8–10.

  94. Delano, “Thoreau’s Visit,” 221–22.

  95. JMN, 8:433; Corr., 1:258 (Charles Lane to HDT, December 3, 1843).

  96. Corr., 1:202 (HDT to RWE and LJE, July 8, 1843); PJ 1:495.

  97. LRWE, 3:4, 168; Corr., 1:191 (RWE to HDT, June 10, 1843), 228 (RWE to HDT, September 8, 1843).

  98. JMN, 9:7; Corr., 1:229 (RWE to HDT, September 8, 1843), 171 (HDT to Sophia Thoreau, May 22, 1843).

  99. Corr., 1:239 (HDT to Cynthia Thoreau, October 1, 1843), 246 (HDT to RWE, October 17, 1843).

  100. Hawthorne, American Notebooks, 395–96; Corr., 1:236 (Margaret Fuller to HDT, September 25, 1843); JMN, 7:590.

  101. Edward Emerson interview notes with Marshall Miles, series 1, box 1, folder 11, CFPL.

  102. PEJ, 2:289; JMN, 9:77.

  103. LRWE, 7:597; the artist was Caroline Sturgis. The old-style writing pencils were graded numerically from one to four, while the new, highest-quality drafting pencils were graded alphabetically with S for “soft” and H for “hard.” Both systems are still used today today—hence the ubiquitous “number 2” pencil, although today artists’ pencils are graded B for “soft,” instead of S.

  104. Days of HT, 157–59; Henry Petroski, “H. D. Thoreau, Engineer,” Invention and Technology 5.2 (Fall 1989): 8–16.

  105. JMN, 9:45.

  106. “Homer. Ossian. Chaucer,” in EEM, 154–55, 173; PEJ, 2:59. For Thoreau on making arrowheads, see PEJ, 2:58–60.

  107. To Set This World, 36–40.

  108. Helen Thoreau’s Scrapbook, CFPL; Robert A. Gross, “Helen Thoreau’s Anti-slavery Scrapbook,” Yale Review 100.1 (January 2012): 103–20.

  109. JMN, 9:70–71; “Young American,” in Collected Works of Emerson, 1:226. O’Sullivan’s Democratic Review coined the phrase in July–August 1845, in regard to the annexation of Texas, and used it famously that December—echoing Emerson’s language.

  110. Thoreau spoke on March 10, 1844, at 10:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. The afternoon featured a discussion of “Non-Resistance”; it is likely, but not certain, that Thoreau participated; see TL I, 143; E&L, 593, 598, 607, 608. See also Linck C. Johnson, “Reforming the Reformers: Emerson, Thoreau, and the Sunday Lectures at Amory Hall, Boston,” ESQ [Emerson Society Quarterly] 37.4 (1991): 235–89.

  111. RP, 182–83; Corr., 1:250–51 (HDT to Helen Thoreau, October 18, 1843).

  112. RP, 183–185.

  113. Rogers quoted in ibid., 49–51. Thoreau’s early lecture has apparently never been published, but his notes survive: see ibid., 379–92.

  114. Rogers quoted in To Set This World, 39–40.

  115. LRWE, 3:243, 7:595.

  116. David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Knopf, 1995), 82; Sanborn, Life of Thoreau, 129; E&L, 465; Elizabeth Hall Witherell, “Thoreau as Poet,” in The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau, edited by Joel Myerson. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 60, 68n10.

  117. PEJ, 3:75–76.
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br />   118. Ibid., 80, 85.

  119. Daniel F. Potter (whom Thoreau had feruled at school, now a grown man), in Edward Emerson interview notes, series 1, box 1, folder 14, CFPL.

  120. The daughter of A. H. Wheeler, quoted in Days of HT, 161; Edmund A. Schofield, “‘Burnt Woods’: Ecological Insights into Thoreau’s Unhappy Encounter with Fire,” Thoreau Research Newsletter 2.3 (July 1991): 3.

  121. PEJ, 3:76–78, 4:68–69.

  122. He may have shortened his journey by taking the train and/or the stage part of the way; see Thomas Woodson, “Thoreau’s Excursion to the Berkshires and Catskills,” Emerson Society Quarterly 21.1 (1975): 82–92; see also Week, 202–9.

  123. Week, 182. The woman has been tentatively identified as Rebecca Darling Eddy; Thoreau writes that she reminded him of his cousin—likely Rebecca Thatcher, whom he’d met in 1838 while seeking a teaching position in Bangor, Maine. See Donald Murray and Susan Denault, “Thoreau’s Dark Lady Was Probably a Darling,” TSB 165 (Fall 1983): 1–3.

  124. Week, 183–90; Channing quoted in Bernard A. Drew, “Thoreau’s Tarn Identified: Guilder Pond,” Concord Saunterer, n.s., 9 (2001): 128.

  125. Walden, 323; W. E. Channing II, Poet-Naturalist (1902), 34.

  126. PEJ, 2:155. Drew, “Thoreau’s Tarn Identified,” identifies this tarn as Guilder Pond.

  127. To Set This World, 40–43.

  128. Anna Whiting and George Curtis both witnessed the event and told this story; for George Curtis’s account, see Sterling Delano and Joel Myerson, “‘The General Scapegoat’: Thoreau and Concord in 1844,” TSB 264 (Fall 2008): 1–2; for Anna Whiting’s report to the Herald of Freedom, see To Set This World, 44.

  129. Corr., 1:267 (HDT to James Munroe and Company, October 14, 1844), 275 (James Munroe and Company to HDT, September 17, 1844); see Richardson, HDT: Life of the Mind, 146.

  130. Corr., 1:257 (Charles Lane to HDT, December 3, 1843). Hecker had, like Thoreau, experienced his first Lebenstag with Orestes Brownson; Charles Lane had encouraged Hecker and Thoreau to meet.

  131. Thoreau Log, 106; Corr., 1:259 (Isaac Hecker to HDT, July 31, 1844).

  132. Corr., 1:261–62 (HDT to Hecker, August 14, 1844).

  133. Ibid., 264 (Isaac Hecker to HDT, August 15, 1844), 266 (HDT to Hecker, after August 15, 1844).

  134. George Curtis quoted in Delano and Myerson, “General Scapegoat,” 2; Walden, 10.

  135. JMN, 9:103.

  Chapter Five

  1. It has been assumed that Henry Thoreau built this house with the help of his father and a carpenter, though how such a significant expenditure of time and hard labor could have been completed in a few months over a New England winter, without leaving significant documentation, is unclear. A newly discovered letter by Frances Jane Hallett Prichard states that the building was purchased and moved from another site: “Building houses and moving them seems to be the rage now—Mrs Thoreau has bought that house Mrs. Marshall lives in & is to move it onto a piece of land Mr Loring gave them. . . . Tis nothing to our enterprising citizens to carry a house from one spot to another—I cannot say where you may find us” (Frances Jane Hallett Prichard to her mother Jane Hallett Prichard, April 16, 1844, Prichard, Hoar, and Related Family Papers, vault A45, Prichard unit 2, box 2, folder 4, CFPL). Sadly, the house burned in 1938, along with troves of Thoreau pencils and other artifacts, and the ruins were bulldozed away in 1959.

  2. The deed was filed on September 14, 1844, and was witnessed by John, Cynthia, Helen, and Henry Thoreau; see TSB 191 (Spring 1990): 5–6. John Thoreau paid off the mortgage on the Texas House in September 1855. Thoreau Log, 363.

  3. Annie Russell Marble, Thoreau: His Home, Friends, and Books (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1902), 265.

  4. J, 14:99, October 3, 1860.

  5. LRWE, 3:262–63; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Joseph Slater, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 2:369. For details, including previous ownership by Thomas Wyman, see W. Barksdale Maynard, “Emerson’s ‘Wyman Lot’: Forgotten Context for Thoreau’s House at Walden,” Concord Saunterer, n.s., 12/13 (2004–5): 63–68.

  6. LRWE, 3:263; CCE, 2:101–02; ABAJ, 178. See also Raymond Adams, “Emerson’s House at Walden,” TSB 24 (July 1948): 1–5.

  7. Corr., 1:94 (HDT to Margaret Fuller, October 18, 1843), PEJ, 1:347. On the contemporary rage for rural and suburban retreats and Thoreau’s ongoing conversation with their various conventions and ideals, see W. Barksdale Maynard, “Thoreau’s House at Walden,” Art Bulletin 81.2 (1999): 303–25.

  8. LRWE, 3:231; Harmon Smith, “Henry Thoreau and Emerson’s ‘Noble Youths,” Concord Saunterer 17.3 (December 1984): 4–12.

  9. Charles Lane, “Life in the Woods,” Dial 4.4 (April 1844): 422, 424. Lane’s essay gave Thoreau his original subtitle for Walden, or Life in the Woods, which was dropped in the second edition.

  10. Robert N. Hudspeth, Ellery Channing (New York: Twayne, 1973), 31; Corr., 1:268 (Ellery Channing to HDT, March 5, 1845).

  11. ABAJ, 178–79; Adams, “Emerson’s House.” Neither lodge nor tower was ever built.

  12. Francis B. Dedmond, “George William Curtis to Christopher Pearse Cranch: Three Unpublished Letters from Concord,” Concord Saunterer 12.4 (Winter 1977): 6.

  13. LRWE, 8:13, 15–16 (RWE to Samuel Gray Ward, March 13?, 1845).

  14. “Wendell Phillips before Concord Lyceum,” in RP, 60–61. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, featuring prefaces by Garrison and Phillips, was published months later.

  15. RP, 61; Corr., 1:181 (HDT to RWE, June 8, 1843).

  16. PEJ, 2:121, 124; RP, 74.

  17. PEJ, 2:107; “Reminiscences of Thoreau,” Concord Freeman (September 1, 1882), quoted in TL I, 146.

  18. PEJ, 2:134–35; Walden, 43–44. Emerson described the shanty ruins to Carlyle: see Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, 1:399 (May 14, 1846).

  19. Walden, 42; PEJ, 2:140; ABAJ, 317 (“dreadful dissenter”); “a bit of life as Arcadian as any at Brook Farm,” said George Curtis of the house-raising (Dedmond, “Three Unpublished Letters,” 8).

  20. Walden, 54–55, 251, 155; PEJ, 2:129, 158–59. On the location of the beanfield, which for many decades was mistakenly said to be on the flat land just above Thoreau’s house, see Bradley P. Dean, “Rediscovery at Walden: The History of Thoreau’s Bean-Field,” Concord Saunterer, n.s., 12/13 (2004–5): 86–137.

  21. Walden, 20–21; cf. PEJ, 2:132–33.

  22. PEJ, 2:155.

  23. “Walden,” in CEP, 516; Walden, 193.

  24. JMN, 9:195, 1845. Roland Robbins, who excavated the original house site, noted that of Thoreau’s nearly one hundred references to his house in Walden, “eighty odd of the number are ‘house.’ He says ‘lodge’ three times, ‘dwelling’ twice, ‘apartment’ twice, ‘homestead’ once; and on only one occasion does he use the word ‘hut’” (Roland Wells Robbins, Discovery at Walden (1972; Lincoln, MA: Thoreau Society, 1999), 10.

  25. RP, 193; William Ellery Channing II, Thoreau: The Poet-Naturalist, ed. F. B. Sanborn (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1902), 7–8. Emerson was astonished: “Ellery lives with H. T. at the pond, in these days, in the absence of his wife!” (LRWE, 8:52).

  26. Edward Emerson interview notes, Mrs. White, box 1, folder 20, CFPL.

  27. PEJ, 2:156.

  28. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1932, 1960, 1972), 369; JMN, 9:121.

  29. PEJ, 2:156–57, 165.

  30. Brad Dean calculated, from timetables in the Boston Daily Evening Transcript, that by 1846 ten trains passed Walden daily, eight passenger and two freight; by 1847 that number had at least doubled (personal communication).

  31. PEJ, 2:170–74, 156.

  32. Ibid., 148, 160–61, 151–52.

  33. Walden, 153; Thoreau as Seen, 94, 106.

  34. Walden, 157; George Hendrick, ed., Remembrances of Concord and the Thoreaus: Letters of Horace Hosmer to Dr. S.
A. Jones (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 53.

  35. Quoted in Henry Seidel Canby, Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939), 216 (January 20, 1846).

  36. Mabel Loomis Todd quoted in Thoreau as Seen, 187; Marble, Thoreau: Home, Friends, Books, 129; John S. Keyes quoted in Thoreau as Seen, 174.

  37. Edward Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend (1917; Concord, MA: Thoreau Foundation, 1968), 61–62.

  38. Corr., 1:276 (RWE to HDT, October 8, 1845), 282 (RWE to HDT, late September 1846); J, 10:61–62. Emerson’s payments are recorded in Walter Harding, “Thoreau in Emerson’s Account Books,” TSB 159 (Spring 1982): 1–3.