The Life of Henry David Thoreau. By H. S. Salt. (Bentley.)
Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers. By Henry David Thoreau. Selected and Edited by H. S. Salt. (Sonnenachein.)
Excepting one small circle, Thoreau, during is lifetime, was a prophet without honour either in his own country or elsewhere. All that was generally known of him—and it was not much—seemed to show him to be a person of peculiar and impracticable ideas, and of unfriendly if not actually morose disposition. The notion was inaccurate enough, but hose who held it were not without excuse. Connected with what has been termed the Transcendental Revival of New England were several queer apostles of individualism, but none on the surface more queer or underneath the surface more solid than the subject of the works now under review. He impressed his own small circle with the conviction that he was a man of genius, but it was not for some time after his death that he became known to the world at large. In 1862, when he died, it would have been easy to predict that he and his works would soon be forgotten.
It is now seen that the impression Thoreau made on his friends was the right one; and he was not well appreciated by the world outside, simply because he was not well known. A change has taken place. The voice which thirty years ago was crying in the wilderness is now listened to with respected attention in the drawing-room, and, what is more important, in the study. It said to society—make straight your paths. The paths of society were crooked then and they are crooked still, while measures, far different from Thoreau’s, intended to improve them, are in favour at present. Yet Thoreau is not unheeded; and, when the honest but mistaken attempt of Socialism to save society in the mass has proved to be ineffectual, Thoreau’s appeal to the individual is likely to be better understood and approved.
Of Thoreau’s critics a few have estimated him justly, while others of whom better things were to be expected have misapprehended him. Emerson recognised him early, and never faltered in his admiration. Emerson found it “a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him,” and described him to Carlyle as “a noble, manly youth, full of melodies and inventions.” Alcott’s testimony was equally emphatic. Mr. Sanborn and Mr. Ellery Channing have written their reminiscences at length, while Mr. Blake has prefixed a few significant words to the volume called Early Spring in Massachusetts, which he edited. Hawthorne, a man not easy of access, made a friend of Thoreau. On the other hand, Mr. James Russell Lowell failed to admire him; for the reason, according to Emerson, that Mr. Lowell had a great deal of self-consciousness, and never forgave Thoreau for wounding it. Beyond this circle we have the enthusiastic estimate of Mr. H. A. Page, an essay which does not enlighten by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, miscellaneous magazine articles, and not much besides.
There is, therefore, ample room for Mr. Salt’s biography, and it is timely. It is not a great critical study, nor is it such a revelation of the inner man as a discreet disciple could give. I should say Mr. Salt has been neither a profound student nor a disciple of Thoreau, but has considered him and learned what he knows about him mainly for the purposes of this biography. He has taken pains to make his work complete and accurate, and the mistakes are few and not important. He gives the details of Thoreau’s career, describes his person, his habits, his works and his opinions. He provides just the book on the subject that is needed at the present time. It enables the reader to know all about Thoreau, the necessary preliminary to knowing the man himself. I am glad this book is free from the slightly patronising tone that Mr. Salt adopted when he gave an account of James Thomson (B.V.); but who could patronise Thoreau, even in a book?
It does not detract from the merit of the work that Mr. Salt has little to tell that is new to persons who have already interested themselves in Thoreau. The sources of information which were open to him had been, for the most part, open to them. His communications with personal friends of Thoreau have enabled him in some cases to amplify certain incidents and characteristics; but Thoreau’s best friend, Emerson, long since gave the pith of the subject in the biographical sketch which he prefixed to Thoreau’s collected works. Elsewhere in H. A. Page’s pleasant volume, or scattered up and down in magazines and books, or gathered together in disorder that rivals Teufelsdröckh’s paper bags, by Mr. Ellery Channing and Mr. Sanborn, were fuller particulars. Lastly, there were Thoreau’s writings to furnish the key to his actions and character. All these Mr. Salt has handled with patience and skill, producing now, for the first time, a clear, systematic story of Thoreau’s remarkable career.
Mr. Ellery Channing—the poet, Thoreau’s intimate friend—has named Thoreau a “poet-naturalist.” It is a good name in its way, has a pleasant sound, and is likely to be used on that account. There is much to justify it; but it does not by any means cover the whole nature of the man, or even indicate his leading characteristic. Primarily, Thoreau was not a poet of a naturalist, or both in one; but a critic of society. White of Selborne was a poet-naturalist; or, coming to our own times, Richard Jefferies might be correctly described as such. But while neither While or Selborne nor Richard Jefferies was a closer or more interested observer of nature than Thoreau, this, to them, was an end in itself, whereas to him nature always had aspect and relation. In the case of White, who was a clergyman, more than in htat of Jefferies or of Thoreau, we might fairly expect to find the human application or “moral” to his observations. But it is not there. The habits of martens, rooks, and rats interested him as such, and not because of any analogy between them and human habits or any influence they might exercise over human interests. Much the same is true of Jefferies. But Thoreau declares that
“nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with human affections, such as are associated with one’s native place, for instance. She is most significant to a lover. If I have no friend, what is nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant.”
He comes “to the hill to see the sung go down, to recover sanity” by putting himself “in relation with nature.” To him “nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure.” In the sky he discerns the symbol of his own infinity. “If we go solitary to streams and mountains,” he says, “it is to meet man there, where he is more than ever man.” He was a critic of society and student of mankind, who found the symbol of a purer society in the woods and fields.
Occasionally Thoreau preferred to give some direct and immediate application of his principles to a topic of the hour. This was notably the case in connection with John Brown’s arrest after his attack at Harper’s Ferry. Thoreau’s was the first voice publicly raised in behalf of the hero. Mr. Salt has done well to collect, in the volume of Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, the several utterances of this description. That he should expressly choose these from all Thoreau’s writings for perseverate publication, and yet maintain, as he does, in the Introductory Note, that “Thoreau considered the real business of his life” to be “the study of wild nature,” is certainly curious. Thoreau was a social critic and reformer none the less because his method of reform was not by invoking mechanical contrivances but by example. His sojourn at Walden Pond was not for the purpose of studying “wild nature”; but for the purpose of protesting against chaotic society, and proving, first to himself and afterwards to others, how exceedingly simple human life might be. “I wished to live deliberately,” he explained, “to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived.” His experiment served to teach him that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals and yet retain health and strength. After leaving Walden he continued to live simply. For more than five years, during which he maintained himself by the labour of his hands, he found he could meet all the expenses of living by working for about six weeks in each year.
Such an arrangement harmonised well with Thoreau’s peculiar notions about labour. He was no “skulker,” as Mr. Stevenson has called him, but, on the contrary, and unusually energetic and hard-working man. But he believed that labour was sanctified only when it was in the direction of a man’s life. It was valuable just so far as it contributed to develop the labourer. The incident of the pencil has been often quoted. He made one so excellent that people said there was a fortune in it. But it had already yielded him all he desired. He would not do the same thing again and again, as though he were a machine. Having the education he did not want the commodity. Yet he was the last man to shirk labour by transferring it to others. He never accepted leisure or convenience on such terms as these, for in his opinion
“the student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labour necessary to man, obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.”
He complained that because he walked in the woods for love of them he was in danger of being regarded as a loafer, while men who esteemed the forests only for their timber were considered to be industrious and enterprising citizens—“as if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down.” Yet a time came when his family needed the labour of his hands for their support, and he was not found wanting. His purpose was neither to shirk labour nor to do it, for labour was not an end in itself. But he was thrifty, and would not waste live on anything that was useless. Herein he believed he served the Supreme Being best; and so when he was dying, and someone asked him, “Have you made your peace with God?” he was justified in replying that “he had never quarrelled with Him.”
That, with all this, Thoreau was still a profoundly interested nature-love is not to be disputed. Had he not been so he would have emphasised his protest against society in some other way than by retiring to the woods. The creatures of the woods and even the very trees were, in his eyes, his friends. He loved every season and every aspect. His senses were peculiarly acute, so in this way he was physically well adapted to the life he chose. If every sight and sound in nature yielded also a spiritual meaning to his mind, so much the greater was the gain. It made him a “poet-naturalist,” and something more.
When the reader has learned all he can about Thoreau, if he wants to understand Thoreau himself he must turn to his writings. Of these probably the most interesting is Walden, which contains, in addition to a careful account of his experiment, much philosophical musing on men and things. He is, however, at his best in the journals which he wrote so diligently and from which Mr. H. G. O. Blake has published copious selections. These journals have none of the elaboration and not much of the bitterness to be found in the writings he prepared for publication. Yet such essays as “A Winter’s Walk” and “Autumnal Tints” are marked by unvarying serenity and much poetic power. Thoreau may fairly be described as a poet, but he was not a singer. His verses stumble and halt. There is more of the tone and grace of poetry in some of his prose passages than in them.
Great as Thoreau really was, and admitting the natural independence of his character, there is yet a suggestion, here and there of an affectation of eccentricity. He seemed to choose to like precisely what others disliked, and to dislike whatever they might favour. In conversation and writings he was overfond of paradox. There seems to have been a little acting “for effect.” At any rate, his peculiarities were not wholly unconscious. The fault in his case was not serious; for, though it detracted a little from his qualities as a critic, it involved no insincerity. At the worst, he did not pretend to be what he was not, but only exaggerated his idiosyncrasies. A born protestant, he sometimes emphasised his protest with quaint and unnecessary gestures—that was all.
That Thoreau was a brusque and unfriendly man those who knew him little agree in affirming. But to his friends and to all who had any claim upon him, whether by virtue of domestic ties or of their need for help, he was tender and affectionate. His parents and sisters found him
“a household treasure; always on the spot with skilful eye and hand to raise the best melons, plant the orchard with choicest trees, and act as extempore mechanic; fond of the pets, his sister’s flowers or sacred tabby.”
He loved children, and, while grudging his time to older persons, would spend many a precious hour berrying in the woods with them. The hunted negroes had good cause to thank him, not only for public speech on their behalf, but for private aid. The hunt at Walden sheltered more than one fugitive from slavery. Birds and beasts, also, knew he was their friend. He did not wrong them, perhaps because he was a poet as well as a naturalist, but more likely because he felt a kinship with all living things. It is good to consider the wise teaching of this free and independent thinker and to study his methods; but the man himself, with all his sterling qualities, is the most valuable study of all.
The Academy, Vol. 38, October 25, 1890, pp. 357-358
Book Reviewed: Life of Henry David Thoreau