Chapter XI: Personal Traits and Social Life

The face of Thoreau, once seen, could not easily be forgotten, so strong was the mark that genius had set upon it. The portrait of him, which has been commonly engraved, though it bore some resemblance at the time it was taken (by S. W. Rowse, in 1854), was never a very exact likeness. A few years later he began to wear his beard long, and this fine silken muffler for his delicate throat and lungs, was also an ornament to his grave and thoughtful face, concealing its weakest feature, a receding chin. The head engraved for this volume is from a photograph taken, in 1861, at New Bedford, and shows him as he was in his last years. His personal traits were not startling and commanding like those of Webster, who drew the eyes of all men wherever he appeared, but they were peculiar, and dwelt long in the memory. His features were prominent, his eyes large, round, and deep-set, under bold brows, and full of fearless meditation; the color varying from blue to gray, as if with the moods of his mind. A youth who saw him for the first time, said with a start, "How deep and clear is the mark that _thought_ sets upon a man's face!" And, indeed, no man could fail to recognize in him that rare intangible essence we call _thought_; his slight figure was active with it, while in his face it became contemplative, as if, like his own peasant, he were "meditating some vast and sunny problem." Channing says of his appearance:--

"In height he was about the average; in his build spare,
with limbs that were rather longer than usual, or of which
he made a longer use. His features were marked; the nose
aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits of Cæsar
(more like a beak, as was said); large overhanging brows
above the deepest-set blue eyes that could be seen,--blue
in certain lights and in others gray; the forehead not
unusually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and
purpose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with
meaning and thought when silent, and giving out when open
a stream of the most varied and unusual and instructive
sayings. His whole figure had an active earnestness, as
if he had no moment to waste; the clenched hand betokened
purpose. In walking he made a short cut, if he could, and
when sitting in the shade or by the wall-side, seemed
merely the clearer to look forward into the next piece of
activity. The intensity of his mind, like Dante's, conveyed
the breathing of aloofness,--his eyes bent on the ground,
his long swinging gait, his hands perhaps clasped behind
him, or held closely at his side,--the fingers made into a
fist."

It is not possible to describe him more exactly.

In December, 1854, Thoreau went to lecture at Nantucket, and on his way spent a day or two with one of his correspondents, Daniel Ricketson of New Bedford,--reaching his house on Christmas day. His host, who then saw him for the first time, thus recorded his impressions:--

"I had expected him at noon, but as he did not arrive,
I had given him up for the day. In the latter part of
the afternoon, I was clearing off the snow, which had
fallen during the day, from my front steps, when, looking
up, I saw a man walking up the carriage-road, bearing a
portmanteau in one hand and an umbrella in the other. He
was dressed in a long overcoat of dark color, and wore
a dark soft hat. I had no suspicion it was Thoreau, and
rather supposed it was a pedler of small wares."

This was a common mistake to make about Thoreau. When he ran the gauntlet of the Cape Cod villages,--"feeling as strange," he says, "as if he were in a town in China,"--one of the old fishermen could not believe that he had not something to sell, as Bronson Alcott had when he perambulated Eastern Virginia and North Carolina in 1819-22, peddling silks and jewelry. Being assured that Thoreau was not peddling spectacles or books, the fisherman said at last: "Well, it makes no odds what it is you carry, so long as you carry Truth along with you."

"As Thoreau came near me," continues Mr. Ricketson, "he
stopped and said, 'You do not know me.' It flashed at once
on my mind that the person before me was my correspondent,
whom in my imagination I had figured as stout and robust,
instead of the small and rather inferior-looking man before
me. I concealed my disappointment, and at once replied,
'I presume this is Mr. Thoreau.' Taking his portmanteau,
I conducted him to his room, already awaiting him. My
disappointment at his personal appearance passed off on
hearing his conversation at the table and during the
evening; and rarely through the years of my acquaintance
with him did his presence conflict with his noble powers
of mind, his rich conversation, and broad erudition. His
face was afterwards greatly improved in manly expression
by the growth of his beard, which he wore in full during
the later years of his life; but when I first saw him he
had just been sitting for the crayon portrait of 1854,
which represents him without the beard. The 'ambrotype' of
him, which is engraved for your volume, was taken for me
by Dunshee, at New Bedford, August 21, 1861, on his last
visit to me at Brooklawn. His health was then failing,--he
had a racking cough,--but his face, except a shade of
sadness in the eyes, did not show it. Of this portrait,
Miss Sophia Thoreau, to whom I sent it soon after her
brother's death, wrote me, May 26, 1862: 'I cannot tell you
how agreeably surprised I was, on opening the little box,
to find my own lost brother again. I could not restrain
my tears. The picture is invaluable to us. I discover a
slight shade about the eyes, expressive of weariness; but a
stranger might not observe it. I am very glad to possess a
picture of so late a date. The crayon, drawn eight years
ago next summer, we considered good; it betrays the poet.
Mr. Channing, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Alcott, and many other
friends who have looked at the ambrotype, express much
satisfaction.'"

Of Thoreau's appearance then (at the age of thirty-seven), Mr. Ricketson goes on to say:--

"The most expressive feature of his face was his eye,
blue in color, and full of the greatest humanity and
intelligence. His head was of medium size, the same as that
of Emerson, and he wore a number seven hat. His arms were
rather long, his legs short, and his hands and feet rather
large. His sloping shoulders were a mark of observation.
But when in usual health he was strong and vigorous, a
remarkable pedestrian, tiring out nearly all his companions
in his prolonged tramps through woods and marshes, when in
pursuit of some rare plant. In Thoreau, as in Dr. Kane,
Lord Nelson, and other heroic men, it was the spirit more
than the temple in which it dwelt, that made the man."

A strange mistake has prevailed as to the supposed churlishness and cynical severity of Thoreau, which Mr. Alcott, in one of his octogenarian sonnets, has corrected, and which all who knew the man would protest against.

Of his domestic character Mr. Ricketson writes:--

"Some have accused him of being an imitator of Emerson,
others as unsocial, impracticable, and ascetic. Now, he was
none of these. A more original man never lived, nor one
more thoroughly a personification of civility. Having been
an occasional guest at his house, I can assert that no man
could hold a finer relationship with his family than he."

Channing says the same thing more quaintly:--

"In his own home he was one of those characters who may
be called household treasures; always on the spot with
skillful eye and hand, to raise the best melons, plant
the orchard with the choicest trees, and act as extempore
mechanic; fond of the pets,--his sister's flowers or sacred
tabby--kittens being his favorites,--he would play with
them by the half hour."

He was sometimes given to music and song, and now and then, in moments of great hilarity, would dance gayly,--as he did once at Brooklawn, in the presence of his host, Mr. Ricketson, and Mr. Alcott, who was also visiting there. On the same occasion he sung his unique song of "Tom Bowline," which none who heard would ever forget, and finished the evening with his dance.

Hearing Mr. Ricketson speak of this dance, Miss Thoreau said:--

"I have so often witnessed the like, that I can easily
imagine how it was; and I remember that Henry gave me some
account of it. I recollect he said he did not scruple to
tread on Mr. Alcott's toes."

Mr. Ricketson's own account is this:--

"One afternoon, when my wife was playing an air upon the
piano,--'Highland Laddie,' perhaps,--Thoreau became very
hilarious, sang 'Tom Bowline,' and finally entered upon an
improvised dance. Not being able to stand what appeared to
me at the time the somewhat ludicrous appearance of our
Walden hermit, I retreated to my 'shanty,' a short distance
from my house; while my older and more humor-loving friend
Alcott remained and saw it through, much to his amusement.
It left a pleasant memory, which I recorded in some humble
lines that afterwards appeared in my 'Autumn Sheaf.'"

After Thoreau's return home from this visit, his New Bedford friend seems to have sent him a copy of the words and music of "Tom Bowline," which was duly acknowledged and handed over to the musical people of Concord for them to play and sing. It is a fine old pathetic sailor-song of Dibdin's, which pleased Thoreau (whose imagination delighted in the sea), and perhaps reminded him of his brother John. As Thoreau sang it, the verses ran thus:--

"Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowline,
The darling of our crew;
No more he'll hear the tempest howling,
For death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty;
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful, below, he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft.

"Tom never from his word departed,
His virtues were so rare;
His friends were many and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair.
And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly;
Ah, many's the time and oft!
But mirth is changed to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.

"Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather
When He who all commands
Shall give, to call life's crew together,
The word to pipe all hands.
Thus death, who kings and tars dispatches,
In vain Tom's life has doffed;
For though his body's under hatches,
His soul is gone aloft!"

Another of his songs was Moore's "Canadian Boat Song," with its chorus,--

"Row brothers, row."

Mrs. W. H. Forbes, who knew him in her childhood, from the age of six to that of fifteen more particularly, and who first remembers him in his hut at Walden, writes me:--

"The time when Mr. Thoreau was our more intimate playfellow
must have been in the years from 1850 to 1855. He used
to come in, at dusk, as my brother and I sat on the rug
before the dining-room fire, and, taking the great green
rocking-chair, he would tell us stories. Those I remember
were his own adventures, as a child. He began with telling
us of the different houses he had lived in, and what he
could remember about each. The house where he was born was
on the Virginia road, near the old Bedford road. The only
thing he remembered about that house was that from its
windows he saw a flock of geese walking along in a row on
the other side of the road; but to show what a long memory
he had, when he told his mother of this, she said the only
time he could have seen that sight was, when he was about
eight months old, for they left that house then. Soon
after, he lived in the old house on the Lexington road,
nearly opposite Mr. Emerson's. There he was tossed by a cow
as he played near the door, in his red flannel dress,--and
so on, with a story for every house. He used to delight
us with the adventures of a brood of fall chickens, which
slept at night in a tall old fashioned fig-drum in the
kitchen, and as their bed was not changed when they grew
larger, they packed themselves every night each in its own
place, and grew up, not shapely, but shaped to each other
and the drum, like figs!

"Sometimes he would play juggler tricks for us, and swallow
his knife and produce it again from our ears or noses.
We usually ran to bring some apples for him as soon as
he came in, and often he would cut one in halves in fine
points that scarcely showed on close examination, and then
the joke was to ask Father to break it for us and see it
fall to pieces in his hands. But perhaps the evenings most
charming were those when he brought some ears of pop-corn
in his pocket and headed an expedition to the garret to
hunt out the old brass warming-pan; in which he would put
the corn, and hold it out and shake it over the fire till
it was heated through, and at last, as we listened, the
rattling changed to popping. When this became very brisk,
he would hold the pan over the rug and lift the lid, and a
beautiful fountain of the white corn flew all over us. It
required both strength and patience to hold out the heavy
warming-pan at arm's length so long, and no one else ever
gave us that pleasure.

"I remember his singing 'Tom Bowline' to us, and also
playing on his flute, but that was earlier. In the summer
he used to make willow whistles, and trumpets out of the
stems of squash leaves, and onion leaves. When he found
fine berries during his walks, he always remembered us,
and came to arrange a huckleberrying for us. He took
charge of the 'hay rigging' with the load of children,
who sat on the floor which was spread with hay, covered
with a buffalo-robe; he sat on a board placed across the
front and drove, and led the frolic with his jokes and
laughter as we jolted along, while the elders of the family
accompanied us in a 'carryall.' Either he had great tact
and skill in managing us and keeping our spirits and play
within bounds, or else he became a child in sympathy with
us, for I do not remember a check or reproof from him,
no matter how noisy we were. He always was most kind to
me and made it his especial care to establish me in the
'thickest places,' as we used to call them. Those sunny
afternoons are bright memories, and the lamb-kill flowers
and sweet 'everlasting,' always recall them and his kind
care. Once in awhile he took us on the river in his boat,
a rare pleasure then; and I remember one brilliant autumn
afternoon, when he took us to gather the wild grapes
overhanging the river, and we brought home a load of
crimson and golden boughs as well. He never took us to walk
with him, but sometimes joined us for a little way, if he
met us in the woods on Sunday afternoons. He made those few
steps memorable by showing us many wonders in so short a
space: perhaps the only chincapin oak in Concord, so hidden
that no one but himself could have discovered it--or some
remarkable bird, or nest, or flower. He took great interest
in my garden of wild flowers, and used to bring me seeds,
or roots, of rare plants. In his last illness it did not
occur to us that he would care to see us, but his sister
told my mother that he watched us from the window as we
passed, and said: 'Why don't they come to see me? I love
them as if they were my own.' After that we went often,
and he always made us so welcome that we liked to go. I
remember our last meetings with as much pleasure as the old
play-days."

Although so great a traveler in a small circle--being every day a-field when not too ill,--he was also a great stay-at-home. He never crossed the ocean, nor saw Niagara or the Mississippi until the year before his death. He lived within twenty miles of Boston, but seldom went there, except to pass through it on his way to the Maine woods, to Cape Cod, to the house of his friend, Marston Watson at Plymouth, or to Daniel Ricketson's at New Bedford. To the latter he wrote in February, 1855:--

"I did not go to Boston, for, with regard to that place I
sympathize with one of my neighbors (George Minott), an old
man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was
compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at
home."

What took him from home in the winter season was generally some engagement to lecture, of which he had many after his Walden life became a little known abroad.

From the year 1847 Thoreau may be said to have fairly entered on his career as author and lecturer; having taken all the needful degrees and endured most of the mortifications necessary for the public profession of authorship. Up to that time he had supported himself, except while in college, chiefly by the labor of his hands; after 1847, though still devoted to manual labor occasionally, he yet worked chiefly with his head as thinker, observer, surveyor, magazine contributor, and lecturer.

His friends were the first promoters of his lectures, and among his correspondence are some letters from Hawthorne, inviting him to the Salem Lyceum. The first of these letters is dated, Salem, October 21, 1848, and runs thus:--

"MY DEAR SIR,--The managers of the Salem Lyceum, sometime
ago, voted that you should be requested to deliver a
lecture before that Institution during the approaching
season. I know not whether Mr. Chever, the late
corresponding secretary, communicated the vote to you;
at all events, no answer has been received, and as Mr.
Chever's successor in office, I am requested to repeat the
invitation. Permit me to add my own earnest wishes that you
will accept it; and also, laying aside my official dignity,
to express my wife's desire and my own that you will be
our guest, if you do come. In case of your compliance, the
Managers desire to know at what time it will best suit you
to deliver the lecture.

"Very truly yours,

"NATH^L HAWTHORNE,

"_Cor. Sec'y, Salem Lyceum_.

"P.S. I live at No. 14 Mall Street, where I shall be very
happy to see you. The stated fee for lectures is $20."

A month later, Hawthorne, who had received an affirmative answer from Thoreau, wrote to him from Boston (November 20, 1848), as follows:--

"MY DEAR THOREAU,--I did not sooner write you, because
there were preëngagements for the two or three first
lectures, so that I could not arrange matters to have you
come during the present month. But, as it happens, the
expected lectures have failed us, and we now depend on you
to come the very next Wednesday. I shall announce you in
the paper of to-morrow, so you _must_ come. I regret that
I could not give you longer notice. We shall expect you on
Wednesday at No. 14 Mall Street.

"Yours truly,

"NATH^L HAWTHORNE.

"If it be utterly impossible for you to come, pray write me
a line so that I may get it Wednesday evening. But by all
means come.

"This secretaryship is an intolerable bore. I have traveled
thirty miles, this wet day, on no other business."

Apparently another lecture was wanted by the Salem people the same winter, for on the 19th of February, 1849, when the "Week on the Concord and Merrimac" was in press, Hawthorne wrote again, thus:--

"The managers request that you will lecture before the
Salem Lyceum on Wednesday evening _after_ next, that is
to say, on the 28th inst. May we depend on you? Please to
answer immediately, if convenient. Mr. Alcott delighted my
wife and me, the other evening, by announcing that you had
a book in press. I rejoice at it, and nothing doubt of such
success as will be worth having. Should your manuscripts
all be in the printer's hands, I suppose you can reclaim
one of them for a single evening's use, to be returned the
next morning,--or perhaps that Indian lecture, which you
mentioned to me, is in a state of forwardness. Either that,
or a continuation of the Walden experiment (or indeed,
anything else), will be acceptable. We shall expect you at
14 Mall Street.

"Very truly yours,

"NATH^L HAWTHORNE."

These letters were written just before Hawthorne was turned out of his office in the Salem custom-house, and while his own literary success was still in abeyance,--the "Scarlet Letter" not being published till a year later. They show the friendly terms on which Hawthorne stood with the Concord Transcendentalists, after leaving that town in 1846. He returned to it in 1852, when he bought Mr. Alcott's estate, then called "Hillside," which he afterward christened "Wayside," and by this name it is still known. Mr. Alcott bought this place in 1845, and from then till 1848, when he left it to reside in Boston, he expended, as Hawthorne said, "a good deal of taste and some money in forming the hill-side behind the house into terraces, and building arbors and summer-houses of rough stems, and branches, and trees, on a system of his own." In this work he was aided by Thoreau, who was then in the habit of performing much manual labor. In 1847 he joined Mr. Alcott in the task of cutting trees for Mr. Emerson's summer-house, which the three friends were to build in the garden. Mr. Emerson, however, went with them to the woods but one day, when finding his strength and skill unequal to that of his companions, he withdrew, and left the work to them. Mr. Alcott relates that Thoreau was not only a master workman with the axe, but also had such strength of arm, that when a tree they were felling lodged in some unlucky position, he rushed at it, and by main strength carried out the trunk until it fell where he wanted it.

It was one of the serious doctrines of the Transcendentalists that each person should perform his quota of hand-work, and accordingly Alcott, Channing, Hawthorne, and the rest, took their turn at wood-chopping, hay-making, plowing, tree-pruning, grafting, etc. Even Emerson trimmed his own orchard, and sometimes lent a hand in hoeing corn and raking hay. To Thoreau such tasks were easy, and, unlike some amateur farmers, he was quite willing to be seen at his work, whatever it might be (except the pencil-making, in which there were certain secrets), and by choice he wore plain working clothes, and generally old ones. The fashion of his garments gave him no concern, and was often old, or even grotesque. At one time he had a fancy for corduroy, such as Irish laborers then wore, but which occasionally appeared in the wardrobe of a gentleman. As he climbed trees, waded swamps, and was out in all weathers during his daily excursions, he naturally dressed himself for what he had to do.

As may be inferred from his correspondence with Horace Greeley, Thoreau's whole income from authorship during the twenty years that he practiced that profession, cannot have exceeded a few hundred dollars yearly,--not half enough in most years to supply even his few wants. He would never be indebted to any person pecuniarily, and therefore he found out other ways of earning his subsistence and paying his obligations,--gardening, fence-building, white-washing, pencil-making, land-surveying, etc.,--for he had great mechanical skill, and a patient, conscientious industry in whatever he undertook. When his father, who had been long living in other men's houses, undertook, at last, to build one of his own, Henry worked upon it, and performed no small part of the manual labor. He had no false pride in such matters,--was, indeed, rather proud of his workmanship, and averse to the gentility even of his industrious village.

During his first residence at Mr. Emerson's in 1841-43, Thoreau managed the garden and did other hand-work for his friend; and when Mr. Emerson went to England in 1847, he returned to the house (soon after leaving his Walden hut), and took charge of his friend's household affairs in his absence. In a letter to his sister Sophia (October 24, 1847), Thoreau says:--

"... I went to Boston the 5th of this month to see Mr.
Emerson off to Europe. He sailed in the 'Washington Irving'
packet ship, the same in which Mr. Hedge went before him.
Up to this trip, the first mate aboard this ship was, as
I hear, one Stephens, a Concord boy, son of Stephens, the
carpenter, who used to live above Mr. Dennis. Mr. Emerson's
state-room was like a carpeted dark closet, about six feet
square, with a large keyhole for a window (the window
was about as big as a saucer, and the glass two inches
thick), not to mention another skylight overhead in the
deck, of the size of an oblong doughnut, and about as
opaque. Of course, it would be in vain to look up, if any
contemplative promenader put his foot upon it. Such will be
his lodgings for two or three weeks; and instead of a walk
in Walden woods, he will take a promenade on deck, where
the few trees, you know, are stripped of their bark."

There is a poem of Thoreau's, of uncertain date, called "The Departure," which, as I suppose, expresses his emotions at leaving finally, in 1848, the friendly house of Emerson, where he had dwelt so long, upon terms of such ideal intimacy. It was never seen by his friends, so far as I can learn, until after his death, when Sophia Thoreau gave it to me, along with other poems, for publication in the "Boston Commonwealth," in 1863. Since then it has been mentioned as a poem written in anticipation of death. This is not so; it was certainly written long before his illness.

"In this roadstead I have ridden,
In this covert I have hidden:
Friendly thoughts were cliffs to me,
And I hid beneath their lee.

"This true people took the stranger,
And warm-hearted housed the ranger;
They received their roving guest,
And have fed him with the best;

"Whatsoe'er the land afforded
To the stranger's wish accorded,--
Shook the olive, stripped the vine,
And expressed the strengthening wine.

"And by night they did spread o'er him
What by day they spread before him;
That good will which was repast
Was his covering at last.

"The stranger moored him to their pier
Without anxiety or fear;
By day he walked the sloping land,--
By night the gentle heavens he scanned.

"When first his bark stood inland
To the coast of that far Finland,
Sweet-watered brooks came tumbling to the shore,
The weary mariner to restore.

"And still he stayed from day to day,
If he their kindness might repay;
But more and more
The sullen waves came rolling toward the shore.

"And still, the more the stranger waited,
The less his argosy was freighted;
And still the more he stayed,
The less his debt was paid.

"So he unfurled his shrouded mast
To receive the fragrant blast,--
And that same refreshing gale
Which had woo'd him to remain
Again and again;--
It was that filled his sail
And drove him to the main.

"All day the low hung clouds
Dropped tears into the sea,
And the wind amid the shrouds
Sighed plaintively."