Thoreau at Walden: pure at all times

"The pond was my well, ready dug," wrote Henry David Thoreau in his well-known book Walden; or, Life in the Woods. "For four months in the years its water is as cold as it is pure at all times; and I think that it is as good as any, if not the best in the town." Yes, Thoreau drank from the titular Walden Pond in his native town of Concord, Massachusetts.

It was on March 6, 1846, he particularly observed the potability of Walden, as well as its temperature: 42°, one degree less than water from "one of the coldest wells in the village." This fortuitous coolness stayed true in the summer, as Thoreau notes in Chapter IX, "Walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth." The water, he adds, does not have the additional taste that comes from a town pump.

Walden was more than just Thoreau's water source, it also provided a food source. In his next paragraph, he notes the fish there. Much as he did with the water itself, he also describes these fish in superlative terms: their great size, speed, and variety. He mostly engaged in catching pickerel, including ice fishing for them in the winter. Going into the water might change one's perception of it: At first appearing black of dark brown, it seems yellowish once inside. But, he notes, "this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness."The shape of the pond along the shore, he notes, "is irregular enough not to be monotonous." Later in the chapter, Thoreau included a short poem:

It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a line;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.

For Thoreau, living at Walden was a spiritual experience of exploring his own nature as well as the nature around him. His friend, poet Ellery Channing, once remarked that The Walden Pond Society was one of the local places of worship. Thoreau ended the experiment after two years, two months, and two days. Contrary to popular assumption, however, his book Walden was not written at the pond. Instead, he was working on his earlier book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Walden would not be published for another 8 years after his March 6, 1846 observation of water.

Today, visitors still can visit and observe Walden Pond as well as a recreation of Thoreau's house there, and have a spiritual experience of their own. Much like Thoreau did in the 1840s, they can also go swimming there (though it's not clear if drinking the water is recommended).

The literary influences of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The universe hangs on moral foundations...There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." There is something which justifies James Russell Lowell in saying, "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future.

Martin Luther King, Jr. used these lines in his essay, "Going Forward by Going Backward," in April 1954, but he often reused the sentiment and the quotes. He references Bryant's 1839 poem "The Battlefield" and Lowell's 1844 poem "The Present Crisis." King frequently quoted Lowell in particular, including lines like "Beyond the dim unknown God keeps watch over His own."

In the 1840s, Lowell was at his strongest as an advocate for civil rights, particularly in the abolition of slavery in the United States. His poem, "The Present Crisis," remains recognized one of his greatest works and its title was later adopted for the official magazine of the NAACP (the name was chosen with its first issue in 1910, edited by W. E. B. DuBois). Elsewhere, Dr. King quoted from Lowell's equally powerful "Stanzas on Freedom": "They are slaves who fear to speak / For the fallen and the weak." As he said in 1954:

These words from the pen of James Russell Lowell are quite expressive of all that I intend to say this morning. Usually we think of slavery in the physical sense, as an institution inflicted on one group of people by another group. But there is another type of slavery which is probably more prevalent and certainly more injurious than physical bondage, namely mental slavery.

Among his other inspirations, Dr. King also often cited Henry David Thoreau and, in particular, Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience." In his autobiography, he refers to first reading that essay as a college freshmen:

During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience" for the first time. Here, in that courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance... I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau.

*For this post, I am particularly indebted to an edition of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. VI: "Advocate of the Social Gospel" (University of California Press, 2007), Clayborne Carson, senior editor.

Something more substantial than fame

After nearly two years, the publisher ("falsely so called") was tired of storing unsold copies of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in his basement. Finally, the author, Henry David Thoreau, asked him to return those copies to him. "They have arrived to-day by express, filling the man's wagon," Thoreau wrote in his journal for October 28, 1853. He was now burdened with 706 copies of the original 1000 print run.

The book was inspired by Thoreau's extended boating trip with his brother John; the first draft was completed while the author was living at Walden Pond. Unable to find a publisher, he subsidized its printing himself in 1849, leaving him in debt. "[I] have been ever since paying for it," he noted. Though these unsold copies represented his lack of literary success, Thoreau joked that it was more than symbolism: "They are something more substantial than fame, as my back knows, which has borne them up two flights of stairs." With both humor and indignation, the author also noted, "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself."

Thoreau's book is more than just an account of his geographical travels. He writes poetically, "we seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts." Throughout A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, he muses about the world in which he lives, offers philosophical observations and, perhaps most often, his own questions about religion and mythology. In particular, he discusses not only the Christian God but also Greek gods, Hindu gods, the Buddha, and even Emanuel Swedenborg. "There are various, nay, incredible faiths," he writes, "Why should we be alarmed at any of them?" Further, he says:

The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

Guest post: Death of Henry David Thoreau

May 6, 1862: Henry David Thoreau died 150 years ago today. Throughout the winter of 1861-62 Thoreau was confined to the house as his health deteriorated. He had picked up a cold in the winter of 1860 from Bronson Alcott which eventually developed into bronchitis, then tuberculosis. Thoreau even took a trip to Minnesota in the early spring of 1861 in search of health, but the change of scenery and climate made him no better.

Now that he was house-bound, Thoreau began to busily prepare several of his old essays for publication. In February 1861 he had gotten a request from his publisher, James T. Fields, to submit his works for the Atlantic Monthly. Thoreau gladly accepted Fields's offer but his previous run-ins with publishers left him cautious. He wrote Fields, "Of course, I should expect that no sentiment or sentence be altered or omitted without my consent." Throughout the late winter and early spring Thoreau re-worked several of his old lectures and put them into publishable form. "Walking," "Life Without Principle," "Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples" were all submitted to Fields for publication.

Thoreau was so weak at times that he couldn't even lift a pen, and his sister Sophia worked on the manuscripts while her brother dictated. By April Thoreau couldn't even climb the stairs to his bedroom, so his family brought his old Walden Pond cot downstairs to the front parlor. Bronson Alcott reported that Thoreau was "feeble," yet his spirits remained high. A friend later commented that he had never seen "a man dying with so much pleasure and peace." When asked by his aunt if he'd made his peace with God, Thoreau replied, "I did not know we had ever quarreled, Aunt."

On May 6, 1862 the end was near and, as his family gathered around him, Thoreau slipped into his final rest. He'd been working on his "Maine Woods" manuscripts and his thoughts remained on writing until the end; his sister and mother distinctly heard him say "moose" and "Indian" before he passed. Henry Thoreau died at 9:00 a.m. His sister Sophia commented that she felt as if "something very beautiful had happened — not death." Henry David Thoreau was just 44 years old. "Walking" appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in June 1862.

*Richard Smith is an independent historian specializing in the antebellum period, with a special interest in the Transcendentalists. He has been involved in Living History for 20 years and for the last 11 years has portrayed Henry David Thoreau in and around Concord, Massachusetts. For more on today's guest blogger, visit www.MeetHenryDavidThoreau.com.

Bread that nourished the brain and the heart

Writing to a friend on May 2, 1848, Henry David Thoreau theorized what humanity needs to sustain itself:

"We must have our bread." But what is our bread? Is it baker's bread? Methinks it should be very home-made bread... Man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow... I have tasted but little bread in my life... Of bread that nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any.

Bread, Thoreau says, varies based on the person: a laborer and a scholar sustain themselves on different types of bread. In the letter, he also tells his friend he has moved:

I do not write this time at my hut in the woods. I am at present living with Mrs. [Lidian] Emerson, whose house is an old home of mine, for company during Mr. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson's absence.

Thoreau first moved into Bush, as the Emerson family called the home, in 1841. There, he served as a handyman and companion to the Emerson children. After his two years at Walden Pond, as early as September 1847, he moved back and stayed through July 1848 (with the exception of that night he spent in jail). During that period, Ralph Waldo Emerson toured through Europe, mostly England, Scotland, and Ireland. Thoreau and Lidian Emerson built a particularly close friendship during this time. While in Europe, Mr. Emerson wrote to his friend Thoreau: "It is a pity that you should not see this England, with its indescribable material superiorities of every kind." Upon his return, Thoreau found Emerson a changed man and soon their friendship dissolved. Thoreau referred to their friendship as a cherished flower, "till one day my friend treated it as a weed."

*This letter is collected in Letters to a Spiritual Seeker (2005) edited by Bradley P. Dean. See also The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau (1995).

Thoreau: Nature does not recognize it

"I begin my letter with the strange sad news that John Thoreau has this afternoon left this world," wrote Lidian Emerson, wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson on January 11, 1842. "He died of lockjaw occasioned by a slight cut on his thumb." John, age 27 at the time, was the older brother of Henry David Thoreau. The two shared a love of the outdoors and spent a week together traveling along the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (the younger Thoreau later wrote about it while living at Walden Pond).

John's lockjaw came from accidentally cutting himself on New Year's Day. The cut, bandaged without initial concern, soon became infected. His death within ten days was anything but peaceful: he suffered violent muscle spasms and his body stiffened in painfully difficult positions. It is said that he finally died in the arms of his younger brother, who soon developed what he called "sympathetic lockjaw" and showed similar symptoms to his brother, despite never suffering any cut. "It is strange — unaccountable," Emerson wrote in a letter. Just as Henry recovered, the Emersons' son Waldo died of scarlet fever.

Though observers called him calm, Henry David Thoreau stopped recording in his journal for a time and temporarily lost interest in the natural world he loved so much. "How plain that death is only the phenomenon of the invidividual or class," he mused. "Nature does not recognize it, she finds her own again under new forms without loss." Soon, however, the death of his brother inspired him to embrace his own life more.

The death of friends should inspire us as much as their lives. If they are great and rich enough they will leave consolation to the mourners before the expenses of the funerals. It will not be hard to part with any worth, because it is worthy. How can any good depart? It does not go and come, but we. Shall we wait for it? Is it slower than we?

This journal entry was later re-worked into a passage from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Here, Thoreau concluded, "our Friends have no place in the graveyard."

*For this post, I must acknowledge Jeffrey S. Cramer's I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (2007) and Robert Sullivan's The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant (2009).

Guest post: Thoreau leaves Walden

The second to last chapter of Walden ends:

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.

After 2 years, 2 months and 2 days, Henry Thoreau left his house at Walden Pond and moves back home in Concord.

Thoreau's stay at Walden was a great success and he would never again have such a productive literary period. He finished two drafts of the book he went to the Pond to write, A Week on The Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which would be published in 1849. He wrote a lecture and had it published as an essay, "Thomas Carlyle and His Works," and also began another essay on his 1846 trip to Maine. And he also started a lecture entitled "A History of Myself," an account of his "housekeeping" at Walden Pond. This lecture would eventually become Thoreau's masterpiece, Walden; or, Life in The Woods — but that wouldn't be for another seven years!

Why did Thoreau leave the Pond? In the conclusion of Walden he writes, "I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one." And Thoreau did accomplish a great deal in those two years, and not just in a literary sense. He grew up in those two years. He lived a relatively self-reliant life and discovered what it meant to "be alive." At Walden, Thoreau lived his life on his terms and and, in his words, endeavored to live the life that he imagined.

When Thoreau left the Pond he moved back into his parents house for about a month. In October, Ralph Waldo Emerson began a one year lecture tour in England. Thoreau would move into Emerson's house as a caretaker/handy man in order to watch over the Emerson family and handle RWE's business affairs while he was gone. Near the end of 1848 Thoreau would move home to his parents' house and would remain with them for the rest of his life.

*Richard Smith is an independent historian specializing in the Antebellum period, with a special interest in the Transcendentalists. He has been involved in Living History for 20 years and for the last 11 years has portrayed Henry David Thoreau in and around Concord, Massachusetts. For more on today's guest blogger, visit www.MeetHenryDavidThoreau.com.

Walden published; waxwork yellowing

According to an 1854 journal entry by Henry David Thoreau:

Wednesday Aug 9th To Boston Walden Published. Elder berries XXX. Waxwork yellowing X.

Thoreau may have been understating his excitement over the first publication of what became his most famous book. In the week between receiving his sample copy and the official publication date, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson noted Thoreau was "walking up & down Concord, firm-looking, but in a tremble of great expectation."

The slender book was published by Ticknor & Fields; Thoreau went into Boston that day for the personal copies he was given for his own distribution to friends. Copies were given to Bronson Alcott, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and others.

Contrary to popular assumption, Thoreau did not write Walden at Walden Pond. His two year, two month, and two day-long stay at his modest cabin was, in fact, the period in which he wrote about his excursions on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He began writing Walden as early as 1846 and spent the winter of 1854 correcting his manuscript.Thoreau intended his time at the cabin by the pond to be an exploration of nature — both the world around him, and the world within. From his chapter "Where I lived and what I lived for":

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry,—determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream ? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigour, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses... Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that allusion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is.

My third excursion to the Maine woods

"I started my third excursion to the Maine woods Monday, July 20th, 1857, with one companion, arriving at Bangor the next day at noon." Thus wrote Henry David Thoreau in his book, The Maine Woods.

He and his one companion hoped to find a Native American to guide them through, but were told many had fled the area due to an outbreak of small pox. Thoreau finally found a man named Joseph Polis, "stoutly built, perhaps a little above the middle height, with a broad face, and, as others said, perfect Indian features and complexion." Thoreau asked if he knew a guide and "Joe" answered back, "Me like to go myself." He was hired.

Thoreau tried to strike up a conversation with Joe. "In answer to the various observations which I made by way of breaking the ice, he only grunted vaguely." Conversation got easier a little later on and the trio went on their excursion, mostly by canoe. Thoreau observed everything: the landscape, the vegetation, the animal life and, of course, the way Joe used language. He asked Joe the meaning of the word "Musketicook," the original name of the Concord River. "Dead-water," he replied. Thoreau agreed it was an appropriate name. Here, some of his observations about birds:

The birds sang quite as in our woods, — the red-eye, red-start, veery, wood-pewee, etc., but we saw no bluebirds in all our journey.... Ducks of various kinds — sheldrake, summer ducks, etc. — were quite common, and ran over the water before us as fast as a horse trots. Thus they were soon out of sight.

Fuller: that the anguish may be brief

Their trip was full of problems from the beginning. To save money, the family chose to leave Europe in a merchant freighter, the Elizabeth, with a crew accustomed to transporting cargo, not people. First delayed by rain, the ship was also delayed by an outbreak of smallpox which claimed the life of the captain, who was replaced by an inexperienced first mate. Then, within 100 yards of the shore of Fire Island, New York, the Elizabeth hit a sandbar and was heavily damaged. It was July 19, 1850, about 3:30 or 4:00 a.m.

It was there that, within sight of shore, the critic/feminist/reformer/editor/travel writer Margaret Fuller died, along with her husband Giovanni Ossoli and baby Angelino. Most of the crew survived and onlookers on shore waited patiently for cargo from the ship to arrive on shore for their plundering. The bodies of Margaret Fuller and her husband were never found, despite a search by both William Henry Channing and Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was sent by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who years earlier hand-picked Fuller as the first editor of The Dial, the official journal of the Transcendentalists. Thoreau wrote back what some of the witnesses saw of the ship as it broke apart. He also noted how little of the family's belongings were found: "the broken desk... a large black leather trunk... a carpetbag... and one of his shoes are all the Ossoli effects known to have been found." The wreck of the Elizabeth would be sold for scrap the day he wrote the letter.

Fuller had ominous premonitions about her trip. She wrote at the time about "praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves." In fact, Angelino contracted smallpox at the same time as the Elizabeth's captain. If the boy did die, however, she asked that the whole family "may go together, and that the anguish may be brief." While delayed by rain, Fuller wrote to her mother back in Massachusetts, who she hadn't seen after a few years living in Europe (primarily Italy):

Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty.... I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise, here and hereafter, my dearest mother, [I am] your loving child, Margaret.

Birth of Henry David Thoreau

In a small farmhouse well outside the center of the village of Concord (pictured at left), on July 12, 1817, David Henry Thoreau was born. The town had 2,000 people then and Boston was just under 20 miles away - a four hour ride by stage coach. Years later, the boy (the third of four children) swapped his first and middle names. Today, he is best known to history as Henry David Thoreau.

The family was never particularly well-off and often struggled financially. The boy's father was a storekeeper, later to manufacture pencils with the help of his son. His mother was a talker, always willing to speak her mind, even about political issues. Because of her anti-slavery views, for example, the family later housed fugitive slaves en route to Canada. Perhaps most importantly, Mr. and Mrs. Thoreau loved nature and tried to take time to walk together. A friend later noted that Thoreau's own love of nature was inherited from his parents.

The family moved around often but, as an adult, Thoreau noted his permanent connection to Concord, calling it "the most estimable place in the world."

The family left the home when young Thoreau was about a year old. In more recent history, the building was scheduled for demolition. In the 1990s, however, a community organization saved the property and now, as of 2010, the site of Thoreau's birth is now open to the public for the first time in history. Though its open hours are relatively limited, the journey is worth the effort (only two turns past the Orchard House and The Wayside). What makes this property unique is that Thoreau was the only Concord author (unlike Emerson, Hawthorne, and the two Alcotts) actually born in that town.

*Much of the information on Thoreau's birth and family comes from Milton Meltzer's Henry David Thoreau: A Biography.

Emerson's first wife and Wild Apples

The death of Wallie, son of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was not the first loss in the life of the Concord Sage. Eleven years earlier, his first wife Ellen Tucker succumbed to tuberculosis on February 8, 1831.

The couple met in Concord, New Hampshire when she was 16. She was an intelligent young woman who enjoyed reading (she named her dog Byron). She did not hold back her affection for the slightly-controversial young minister. "I am entirely yours now and ever shall be," she wrote to him. Emerson took a full-time job, soon earning a whopping $1800 salary at the Second Church in Boston. Emerson and Tucker were married in 1829, two years after meeting, and they settled in Boston. She was already quite sick with the disease that would kill her.

Emerson was riding a wave of success and living a life of luxury thanks to his high salary. And, yet, he wrote of "a fair counterbalance to the flatteries of fortune." The counterbalance came in the form of Ellen's death at 9 o'clock in the morning on February 8, 1831. Her last words were recorded as, "I have not forgot the peace and joy." She was just under 20 years old.

Emerson's grief over the death of Ellen Tucker lasted a long time. He often visited her grave, wrote to her, and, most infamously, entered her tomb and opened the coffin in 1832. He began questioning his role as a minister and started thinking radical thoughts about religion. He also eyed Ellen's money. She had left him a fair amount of wealth, but her family did not want to pass it on. Emerson sued them and, in July 1837, the court granted him $11,674.79, making him an incredibly wealthy man.

Emerson later married again (to Lydia Jackson), and the new couple named their first daughter Ellen (allegedly at Jackson's insistence).

Exactly 29 years after Ellen Tucker's death, Emerson's protege Henry David Thoreau presented a lecture at the Concord Lyceum on February 8, 1860. In "Wild Apples," Thoreau praised the natural qualities of the fruit. "They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at," he noted. Though wild apples are spicy or tart, Thoreau spoke of how much he enjoyed them, and suggested a brisk walk in the November air might make them more palatable. Emerson's daughter Ellen Emerson wrote "there were constant spontaneous bursts of laughter and Mr. Thoreau was applauded."


*Image of Ellen Tucker Emerson from "The Living Legacy of Ralph Waldo Emerson," Harvard Square Library.

Thoreau resists government

Henry David Thoreau presented a lecture on January 26, 1848 to the Concord Lyceum which he titled, "The Relation of the Individual to the State," elsewhere known as "On the Resistance to Civil Government." He had only recently left his humble cabin near Walden Pond and had not yet published his book about his experience (or that of his time on two rivers with his brother John). He was, at the time, barely known as anything more than a disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In attendance at Thoreau's lecture was Transcendentalist and educator Bronson Alcott, who wrote in his journal "[I] heard Thoreau’s lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State – an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience... I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau’s."

Another admirer of the speech was Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who had the work published in the first and only issue of the magazine she created, Aesthetic Papers, in May 1849. She gave it the title "Resistance to Civil Government." It later evolved into "Civil Disobedience."

In its published form, "Civil Disobedience" opened with the shocking statement:

I heartily accept the motto, – "That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, – "That government is best which governs not at all."

Thoreau's words are often mistaken for those of an anarchist. Those who think as much haven't read past the first page; only a few paragraphs later, he adds:

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

Because of the poor circulation of Peabody's magazine and, perhaps, Thoreau's provincialism, "Civil Disobedience" had very little impact during the author's lifetime. However, in later years, it served as an inspiration to other advocates of passive resistance, the nonviolent refusal to follow unjust laws, including Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.