Thoreau in Love

By John Schuyler Bishop

In 1843, two years before he goes to Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau, twenty-five, leaves Concord, Massachusetts, with no thought of ever returning. His destination is New York, where the new America is bursting into life. But before he even gets there he falls in love—with a young man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626758063

Book preview

journals.

At Sea

1

Bundled against the chilly spring wind, Henry David Thoreau held tight to the gunwale as he leaned over Dahlia’s worn bow to watch splash after brilliant splash thrown off onto the ice-blue sea. Though the wind roared, his ears ached and his stomach churned, he thrilled in his new state. I am at sea! A spray of salt water spattered him, but, undeterred, he shook off the cold and wiped his face. To be daring, he inched out over the bowsprit. The schooner’s bow dipped, then rose high on a wave, higher than Henry wanted to go. He scrambled back and wedged himself into the crook of the bow, and as Dahlia plunged into the trough, he watched in amazement as plumes of icy white water shot into the air. At sea, he said. Literally and figuratively. But finally away from that stifling small town!

Henry was 25 years old and on his way to New York, where everything was new, where everything that was America was exploding with volcanic excitement, where he would make his career in publishing. It was early May, 1843, and as far as Henry was concerned, that morning he’d seen the last of Concord, Massachusetts.

Up before dawn, Henry had tried to tell himself the day was like any other, but he was so excited about starting his adventure that, pulling on his trousers, he lost his balance and, one leg in, one leg caught, he hopped laughingly around the bare attic floor until his sister Helen called up asking, Henry? Are you all right?

I’m fine, he said and fell back onto his bed. I just can’t get my legs to do what they should.

You have a schedule to keep. If you miss the morning stage, Mrs. Emerson will leave without you. And you must eat some breakfast.

I shall be down in a minute. Henry lay on his back and looked up at the peaked ceiling. And then I’ll be gone. Turning his head, he took in his room: the desk where he’d spent so much time writing; the gabled window he’d gazed out for hours; the yellow-washed wallboards he and his brother, John, had painted. What a mess we made. And, of course, John’s empty bed. Henry let out a breath, sat up and caught his reflection in the mirror.

Most of the time when Henry saw his face he thought, Ugly egg. But today was different. Quietly, he said, I look good. With his fingers he combed his wavy brown hair over his ears and across his high forehead. He turned a bit to the side, better to see the droop of his long nose, which John loved to tease him about. Even if my nose does look like my penis. And his chin, which John said looked like a baby’s bottom in miniature. Time to get these stumps atrot. He grabbed his stuffed duffel bag. To the room, he said, Good-bye, my friend, my attic aerie. And to the empty bed: Good-bye, John, my Indian guide.

At breakfast, listening to his mother and his sisters all laughing and talking too much, Henry thought, This might be the last time I hear my mother’s voice. As the melancholy washed over him he sank in his chair.

Don’t get sad now, Henry, said his mother.

No, no, I’m fine, he said, forcing a smile. For a moment everyone at the table became quiet, then Helen, using her know-it-all, bossy voice, said, Eat your porridge, Henry. Henry smiled wanly, lifted his spoon and said, What will you do when you can’t tell me what to do?

Boss me around, said little Sophia, the way she always does. Even their father laughed, but it was nervous, pained laughter, and Henry knew, like him, they were thinking about John, who’d died of lockjaw the year before. Don’t worry, Helen, said Henry, you’ll always be able to boss me around.

Wooo-wooo, said Sophia, waving her fingers, pretending to be a spooky ghost. And how will she do that, Transcendentally? Everyone laughed and relaxed.

His mother said, I don’t know who’ll do your laundry. Certainly not Mrs. Emerson.

I shall have to learn to do it myself.

That’ll be the day, said Sophia. Their father then pushed out his chair, saying, I nearly forgot, I have something for you. As he shuffled back to his workroom, Sophia said, I know what it is.

Don’t tell, said Helen. Henry’s father returned with his hands behind his back. Henry rose from his chair. What is it, Pa?

Close your eyes. Henry did, and his father held before him a bundle of twelve lead pencils, tied with a ribbon. Henry’s father was one of only five pencil makers in the Boston area; though his pencils were much more expensive than Joseph Dixon’s machine-made pencils—and not nearly as good—his were made with love. Henry’s sisters and mother oohed and aahed, and then his father said, All right, you can open them.

Henry couldn’t believe his eyes. No, Dad, I can’t. I know how long they took you to make.

Though Henry protested, he was used to being spoiled by his family. His mother cleaned his room and did all his laundry, and even when they’d had no money at all, Helen and John had taken jobs so Henry could attend Harvard. Without undoing the ribbon, he examined the pencils. They’re beautiful.

They’re my best work, said his father. I made them for you, for your writing career, with the thought that you’ll write good words with them.

In a rare moment of spontaneous emotion, Henry took his father by the arms. Tears dribbled down everyone’s cheeks, but then breaths were drawn as everyone realized it was time for Henry to go.

The air was crisp, and as the Thoreaus huddled by the Concord Stage depot, sobriety prevailed until they saw the eastbound stage approaching and, from the north, running full-tilt, calling Henry’s name, Ellery Channing.

Look out, said Sophia. It’s that crazy fool Ellery Channing. Henry beamed. The stagecoach driver pulled up his horses just as Ellery tripped and fell into Henry, grabbing him to keep himself from falling. Sophia laughed and said, Ellery, you’re mad.

In just three months, Ellery had earned the reputation of being the oddest young man in Concord, more peculiar even than Henry. Though Henry was fond of Ellery, he was also afraid of him. He and Ellery had a bit of history, from their days at Harvard, and when he heard Ellery and his wife were moving to Concord, Henry knew it was so Ellery could be near him. And didn’t Ellery prove Henry right when, three weeks after their arrival, he moved out on his wife and wanted nothing more to do with her—and everything to do with Henry. Ellery always wanted more. It was in his every look, his every gesture. For Ellery, it was never enough to be just friends. Henry was glad to be putting distance between them.

Still holding on to Henry, Ellery said, I was afraid I wouldn’t make it. Mrs. Thoreau, Mr. Thoreau. Girls.

You shouldn’t have come, said Henry.

And not see my dear friend off?

The stationmaster announced the eastbound coach.

Here I go, said Henry.

You’re going to grind them up, Henry! said Ellery.

The stationmaster, assessing Henry’s height, offered him the use of the ladies’ steps. Scowling, Henry took a giant step up to the twelve-passenger stagecoach, reached only air and stumbled. Good start! said Ellery. Sophia snickered; then everyone laughed and Henry awkwardly climbed aboard. Once more the stationmaster called, Eastbound stage, and Henry, feeling guilt about being so excited to leave, leaned out his window and said, Why am I going east? I thought New York was west of here.

You’re always going the wrong way, Henry, said Ellery. Take care. I’ll miss you.

The stagecoach jerked into motion, and as it picked up speed, everyone waved and called their goodbyes. Disappointed that the Emersons hadn’t come to see him off, Henry sat back. Soon, though, the horses broke stride, and Henry, hoping he knew why they were slowing, looked out and saw, standing in the road, the handsome, renowned, 40-year-old Ralph Waldo Emerson. Waldo!

In a landscape of luminaries, Waldo was the golden glow, the sun and the moon. Because of him the great thinkers and writers of America descended on Concord, not to pay their respects, but to argue and theorize and dream. At Waldo’s house, everything that wasn’t supposed to be spoken about in polite conversation was heatedly debated: religion and politics, love, even sex. Did masturbation drive people insane? Were women equal to men? Was there life after death? Was the abolition of slavery fair to the South? They discussed the classics, Roman and Greek, the Romantic poets, industrialization, the flood tide of Irish immigrants. Was anything worthwhile? Did God exist in the lowly worm? Did God even exist? Was there an actual American spirit? Was everyone somehow connected, a part of the same life of the mind? Was a shared life the ideal, or was the individual all that mattered? What role did the senses play? When those topics were exhausted, they raised their voices in favor of or against Brook Farm, the communal living experiment, and those tawdry, sensational penny newspapers everyone read. Did American publishers care only about British authors, whose work they freely stole? Were railroads, one being built even to Concord, harbingers of great things to come or merely noisy, dangerous, cinder-spewing incursions? No matter who was in attendance, Waldo made sure to include his gray-eyed young friend with the brown curls covering his high forehead.

Henry loved being part of this new movement of American thinkers who questioned every institution, so much so that many of Waldo’s admirers wondered why Henry would ever want to leave Concord. But Henry knew he had to get away; there was something pulling him, a terrifying force he couldn’t put words to, whose tug was ferocious. Waldo understood, but then Waldo understood everything—even that his own wife, Lidian, had become an albatross around Henry’s neck.

As the stage slowed to a halt, Lidian, lifting her long gray skirts, burst out the front door of their house and hurried down the path. Standing on the carriage stone, she reached into the coach, kissing and hugging Henry, pleading through tears, Henry, don’t go, please don’t go.

Thankfully for Henry, the driver said, Come along, Mr. Emerson, I’ve a schedule to keep.

Just a moment, Tom, said Waldo, firmly holding his wife. Lidian, let Henry alone. Then: Here’s a package I want you to deliver to Giles Waldo, that young man I told you about. Godspeed, my friend. Write to me.

Henry waved to his adoring friends until they were out of sight, then he sank into his seat and sighed, feeling for once not like a son but a grown man. Behind him in the coach two men engaged in a conversation about commerce. The commerce of the world. The world Henry was on his way to join. You wait, said one. Morse’s telegraph will change the world.

Bah, said the other. It’s a waste of our taxes. Leave business to the businessmen. Harden Express can deliver me a letter or a package before ten men could decipher that code. Are they going to be able to send packages over those wires? The two men talked and talked, as if they alone knew the secrets of trade, stopping only when a rutty bump tossed the passengers and made them laugh or cuss. Jolted out of his stupor, Henry took hold of the window frame to steady his gaze as the spring green countryside he knew so well scrolled by. Often when Henry was alone with his thoughts, he whistled or unconsciously sang softly what was going on in his mind; this morning, on the way to a new life, the song was Old Rosin the Beau:

I have travell’d this wide world over,

And now to another I’ll go

I know that good quaters are waiting

To welcome old Rosin the beau.

Edmund Sewell, who was a student at Henry and John’s experimental school, loved to sing that song, and when he and Henry were together in private, he would change the last line to, To welcome old Henry my beau. Henry smiled at the thought of Edmund, then his mind went to Margaret Fuller, who with Waldo had created The Dial as a forum for new American writing. Not that again, he said quietly to the passing trees.

Emerson had told Henry his poem Sympathy was brilliant, filled with passion. Give it to Margaret, he’d said, She’s taking charge of the next issue. I’m sure she’ll want it. Henry gave Margaret the poem he’d written about Edmund, and eagerly awaited her verdict. But after not hearing a word for two very long days, he went to her and asked what she’d thought of his poem.

Your poem? I thought you were kidding. It wasn’t a joke?

A joke? You thought my poem was a joke?

Margaret gaped. Then she shrugged and, her head twitching, said, It’s a love poem to a boy.

Yes, Henry had written the poem in a passion, but having Margaret put it so bluntly caused him to flush with shame. Still, he waited for pearls, a criticism, a "We’d love to put it in The Dial. Better a Henry, it’s magnificent. But when again she spoke, all she could say was, It’s a love poem to a boy. She called for Waldo, and when Emerson entered the room, Henry thought he was saved. But what did the Great One do? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Margaret said, Waldo, help me on this." And Henry thought, No. Help me on this.

It’s a love poem to a boy, she said, not to Henry, but in explanation for her inability to say anything else. Waldo blushed.

At last, Henry found his tongue. You said you wanted new writing, something different. Experimental poetry. He looked to Waldo for an encouraging word, but Waldo seemed too intent on his own shoes. Henry plowed on. It’s not base love, it’s Platonic love, in the Greek tradition. Anacreon. Still nothing from the Great One. When Margaret repeated, yet again, It’s a love poem to a boy, Henry stormed from the room.

Two hours later, he returned from tramping through the fields and woods and found Margaret and Waldo in Waldo’s study, with Sympathy on the table beside Margaret’s chair. Calmly, he asked, "Is there no chance you’ll put it in The Dial?"

Maybe Waldo will put it in, but not while I’m in charge.

The stagecoach bounced down the roadway, squeaking and squealing, the horses hooves and wooden wheels thundering on the hard dirt. Henry focused on the greening fields outside the window, his mind filled with fond memories of being in a tent with Margaret’s brother Richard. His thoughts then turned to Ellery, who’d married Margaret’s younger sister. Serves her right, snickered Henry. At Harvard, they all knew Ellery dropped out because Henry, fed up with Ellery’s fawning, rebuked him right there in the market-place and told him he never wanted to see him again. What was it about Ellery? He and Henry were so similar in so many ways. They were the same height with a similar build and a passion for walking and for nature. But there was something in the way Ellery looked at Henry that terrified him. Didn’t everyone in Concord see that the one Ellery wanted to spend all his time with was Henry.

What I need is a friend like Emerson, but closer my age. Someone like me, who’s just beginning to live. Looking at the slim package Waldo had given him, he said, Maybe Giles Waldo? Or Will Tappan?

Speculations about what Giles and Will might be like turned to thoughts of Edmund. From the day Master Sewell entered their classroom, Henry was sure they would be friends forever, but now he was forbidden to see him. Most likely I’ll never see him again. Then to Stearns Wheeler, his roommate at Harvard, dazzling in his Byronic collar: Gone to Europe. And left me behind. Henry smirked; what with the other passengers screaming to be heard over the sounds of the now speeding stage, no one could possibly hear his quiet interjections. And John. Henry focused on the spring green fields and trees, the oxen and the cows, the brooks and ponds that disappeared quickly from sight. Thinking of the harebrained, get-rich-quick schemes he and his brother came up with and just as quickly abandoned, he smiled, then sucked in his lower lip.

It was just sixteen months before that John had his accident and came down with lockjaw. But Henry still wondered, though he never gave voice to it, whether it really had been an accident. John was distraught after Henry moved out of the family’s house and into the Emersons’, where he did odd jobs in exchange for his room and board. Henry tried to mollify John, but John was unforgiving.

On the first of January, 1842, Henry went to his family’s house on Main Street to get one of his old journals. As he opened the back door, Helen laid into a lively piece on the piano in the front parlor, so Henry, not wanting to disturb the musicale, snuck up the stairs to his old attic aerie. And there was John, bleeding profusely, having badly gashed the tip of his left hand’s ring finger. I was stropping my razor. But there was too much blood. To Henry, it seemed he’d caught John in the act. But the act of what? Don’t tell mother, said John.

Henry took him by the arm and said, Downstairs, we’ve got to bandage this.

I have to put it in snow, said John. He ran down the stairs and out the back door. Henry stood stunned for a moment, surveying the bloody mess, then he took after John and found him out on the side of the road, shivering, his hand buried in a pile of dirty snow. Back inside, John’s finger was tightly bandaged. The bleeding stopped, and everyone thought that was that. But eight days later, suffering from a painful swelling of his jaw, John unwrapped the bandage and discovered that the skin beneath had mortified. He went to his mother. Mother, look. And my jaw, it hurts so. By that night, he was having convulsions.

A doctor called in from Boston confirmed their worst fears. John had lockjaw, horribly painful, incurable lockjaw. Henry moved back home, to take care of his brother. But there was no taking care possible. Anytime anyone even touched John he screamed in pain, and then he convulsed with muscle spasms so painful he flew off the mattress, flipped and flopped and curled in a ball, trying to relieve the pain. So Henry just sat with him. Two days later, John died, his last breath sucked while Henry held him. The whole family was in shock, but especially Henry. While the others grieved vocally and in each other’s arms, nothing they tried could rouse Henry. For ten days he said little and did nothing but sit slumped in a chair, shivering from chills. Then his throat swelled, just as John’s had. Convinced that he too had lockjaw, Henry took to his deathbed. For two days he experienced muscle contractions and spasms so painful he screamed through his clenched jaw. But not having lockjaw, Henry recovered.

Still, death was in the air, and the day Henry got out of bed, Emerson’s son Waldo, just five years old, came down with scarlet fever. Three days later he succumbed, and what had been a frigid, miserable January became even bleaker.

Henry spent the rest of that winter with the Emersons, helping out, doing chores, grieving with Lidian. Waldo was inconsolable. He withdrew into his study; then, unable to bear the thought that at any minute his little boy might scamper into the room and onto his lap—or, worse, that he wouldn’t—he scheduled lectures in Boston, New York, up and down the New England coast, anywhere but Concord, where the memories were too painful.

Lidian, left in the cold by her husband, heaped her attentions on Henry, giving him hope, bringing him back to life and relieving him of the awful feeling that if he’d just stayed living at home, John might not have died.

That April, on one of his short visits home, Waldo gave Henry a stack of scientific surveys he’d picked up in Boston, and an assignment: Use all your outdoor knowledge and write a natural history of Massachusetts. For The Dial. Henry threw himself into his writing. Lidian knew not to disturb Henry while he was writing, but the minute he came down the stairs, she was on him. Henry understood the pain Lidian felt, and he tried to help her, sitting with her, taking her for walks, reading together, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Carlyle and Chaucer, holding her when she burst into tears, but it was never enough. To escape her entreaties, Henry took to the woods, feeling like the meanest young man in the world. But as he walked and focused on and studied the life around him, his spirits rose. It was on these walks that he came to understand that he was alive, that his life, like all life, was fleeting, and that it was time for him to start living fully and to devote himself to his writing. By early May, Henry had sixty pages for Waldo to read.

Lidian was thrilled when Waldo said he wanted to publish Henry’s Natural History in the July issue of The Dial. Now that you’re finished with that, we’ll have more time to spend together.

Lidian, I’m not finished, I’m just beginning.

Spring turned to summer, Henry held to the hope that Waldo would return from a lecture tour and become again Lidian’s loving husband. But on his short stays home, Waldo wanted nothing to do with Lidian. And then he was off again, to Brook Farm, to New York or Boston. Henry threw himself into his writing as never before. And when he wasn’t writing, he went boating on the river with another struggling writer, his new neighbor and friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or sauntered the woods in search of what he called the Wild Holy Land. He also took a four-day walk to Wachusett Mountain with Margaret Fuller’s brother Richard. And all the while he resented having to take care of the emotional needs of Emerson’s wife.

He didn’t want to alienate Waldo, but he could no longer bear Lidian’s clinging, her endless sadness. Summer turned to autumn and, as always in Concord, to dark winter. Though he was often ill and coughing that autumn, Henry sometimes wondered if being ill wasn’t easier than having to put up with Lidian. He wrote up as an essay his Walk to Wachusett, but Emerson didn’t like it, wouldn’t put it in The Dial. Henry knew he had to leave Concord. But where would he go?

Since what had become known as the Panic of 1837, hundreds of Concord’s families, unable to pay their mortgages, had loaded their belongings onto wagons and gone west, to the frontier or the Oregon Trail, never to be seen or heard from again. Henry had thought many times of joining one of those families, but he knew in his heart that the West, though it had a wildness he craved, was not for him. So where?

Nowhere just yet. He needed to rework his translation of Prometheus Bound, which Waldo said he would publish in January’s Dial. The trip he and his brother had taken on the Concord and Merrimac rivers was just coming together in his mind as an essay. In addition, he was scheduling lectures for the Concord Lyceum, including one he’d give himself on Sir Walter Raleigh. And, though Emerson was rarely home, when he was it was like old times, with brilliant people and lively debate. Yes, Henry was sick for weeks on end, but then his health and spirits recovered.

Candlemas Day of 1843 the sun shone bright, foretelling six more weeks of winter, but in early March Waldo came home and warm winds blew from the south, melting the snow and thawing the ground. In a burst of enthusiasm, Henry threw open the parlor windows, and said to Lidian, who was of course following just behind him, Isn’t the fresh air splendid?

Lidian held herself and said, Do we really need the windows open? Her face was waxy white.

No, fine, we don’t need fresh air. We don’t need anything different. Let’s just carry on the way we are. His anger grew with each shut window, and after they were all closed he announced he was going for a walk and, knowing she wouldn’t go out in the melting snow, snidely asked Lidian to join him.

Lidian’s response was from Julius Caesar, which they’d recently read: I do observe you now of late: / I have not from your eyes that gentleness / And show of love as I was wont to have.

Henry fumbled for Brutus’s response to Cassius, but not remembering it said, "A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi."

You love to lord your knowledge over me.

I’ve a cliff before me, wolves behind.

Don’t you see, Henry, you’re the only reason I’m alive.

Henry erupted. Don’t you see what you’re doing to me? Then, understanding what she’d meant, he said, I trust you’re not serious.

Lidian’s large, sad eyes locked plaintively on Henry’s, provoking him into a fury.

It’s that laudanum, isn’t it? You took it again.

Lidian cast her eyes downward. You’re never here.

I’m always here; don’t you blame it on me. You said you’d stop taking it, Lidian. Don’t you see what it’s doing to you?

Henry, is everything all right? came Waldo’s voice from the study.

Everything’s fine, boomed Henry sarcastically. Then, quietly to Lidian, Go to him. He came home for you.

He doesn’t want me.

He does, lied Henry. Lidian’s sad face, obviously intended to suck Henry back into her world, instead infuriated him. Forget Waldo. You have Edith and Ellen. They need you.

They’re girls. They don’t need me. They’re hardly even mine.

They are yours, and they do need you.

He’s been hiding in his library since the hour he returned. He’d be thrilled if I died. Then he could say how much he loved me. And take up with his devoted Margaret.

Lidian, that’s not fair. She’s not even here.

But she will be, won’t she?

"They’re working on The Dial."

Indeed they are. You’d think it was the only thing that mattered. Don’t you see, Henry? He doesn’t want me. I’m the albatross he’s forced to lug about.

Henry wanted to say, No, Lidian, you’re the albatross I’m forced to carry about, but he knew he couldn’t. I don’t know what to say.

Henry, I want only you. I love you. She took Henry’s arms.

Lidian, you must stop this madness.

Henry? Waldo again, from his study. Henry flushed, sure that Waldo had heard. Come here for a minute, will you?

Excuse me, Henry said to Lidian, happy for an excuse to get away.

Of course, said Lidian. The master calls.

Lidian knew how to get Henry’s goat. Though he liked to think he and Waldo were equals, Henry worried that Waldo had published his poems and his Natural History of Massachusetts merely to keep him caring for Lidian.

At the door to Waldo’s study, Henry knocked.

Come in, come in. Handsome Waldo, whose boyish good looks made him appear much younger than 40, sat in his reading chair, his stern attention on the letter he held. After letting Henry stew in fear for a few moments, Waldo said gravely, I forgot all about this contract. My brother William needs a tutor for his children. Of course. . . . Ominously, he lifted his dark eyebrows, looked Henry in the eyes, and broke into his beautiful smile. You’d have to move to New York.

It was Henry’s turn at last.

A couple of deep ruts brought Henry’s mind back to the stagecoach, and though he was tossed around, his spirits were high. After another hour and many stops to take on mail and pick up and discharge passengers, the clacking and squeals of the wheels became more rhythmically monotonous, and the incessant thundering of the horses’ hooves changed to an even more annoying clompety-clomping on the wooden toll road as they approached the city.

The Boston railroad terminal was located at the harbor, by the wharves. There Henry was to meet up with Susan Emerson, whose children he was to tutor. As he entered the station, he heard Susan calling his name. He lifted himself to his tiptoes, trying to find Susan among the crowd, and saw a vivid green, cloth-covered arm waving. Over here, Henry. He wasn’t the only one looking; this was prim and proper Boston, where people didn’t call greetings. Henry sidled through the men and women toward the ebullient voice, and there, in a circle of gawkers, aglow in an emerald silk dress, stood Susan. Henry could hardly believe his eyes. Susan, what happened? You look. . . . Beautiful was the word tripping on his tongue.

Susan had come to Boston three days earlier after staying a month with the Emersons in Concord. There, she’d seemed to Henry pretty enough in a plain sort of way, but here in the railroad terminal she was a vision. The bodice of her emerald dress was tight around her breasts and waist, and she was festooned with a ruby-colored, full-length, rose-embroidered sash. Her skirts ballooned like the