| The Emerson-Thoreau
Correspondence: The Dial Period By F. B. Sanborn The Atlantic Monthly, May 1892 Thoreau Reader: Home - Emerson in Europe - The Dial Period - Next In explanation of the passages concerning Bronson Alcott, in this letter, it should be said that he was then living at the Hosmer Cottage, in Concord, with his English friends, Charles Lane and Henry Wright, and that he had refused to pay a tax to support what he considered an unjust government, and was arrested by the deputy sheriff, Sam Staples, in consequence. CONCORD, January 24, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND, — The best way to
correct a mistake is to make it right. I had not spoken of writing to you,
but as you say you are about to write to me when you get my letter, I make
haste on my part in order to get yours the sooner. I don’t well know what
to say to earn the forthcoming epistle, unless that Edith takes rapid strides
in the arts and sciences — or music and natural history — as well as over
the carpet; that she says “papa” less and less abstractedly every day,
looking in my face, — which may sound like a Ranz des Vaches
to yourself. And Ellen declares every morning that “papa may come
home to-night;” and by and by it will have changed to such positive statement
as that “papa came home larks night.”
Elizabeth Hoar still flits about these clearings, and I meet her here and there, and in all houses but her own, but as if I were not the less of her family for all that. I have made slight acquaintance also with one Mrs. Lidian Emerson, who almost persuades me to be a Christian, but I fear I as often lapse into heathenism. Mr. O’Sullivan was here three days. I met him at the Atheneum [Concord], and went to Hawthorne’s [at the Old Manse] to tea with him. He expressed a great deal of interest in your poems, and wished me to give him a list of them, which I did; he saying he did not know but he should notice them. He is a rather puny-looking man, and did not strike me. We had nothing to say to one another, and therefore we said a great deal! He, however, made a point of asking me to write for his Review, which I shall be glad to do. He is, at any rate, one of the not-bad, but does not by any means take you by storm, — no, nor by calm, which is the best way. He expects to see you in New York. After tea I carried him and Hawthorne to the Lyceum. Mr. Alcott has not altered much since you left. I think you will find him much the same sort of person. With Mr. Lane I have had one regular chat à la George Minott, which of course was greatly to our mutual grati- and edi- fication; and, as two or three as regular conversations have taken place since, I fear there may have been a precession of the equinoxes. Mr. Wright, according to the last accounts, is in Lynn, with uncertain aims and prospects, — maturing slowly, perhaps, as indeed are all of us. I suppose they have told you how near Mr. Alcott went to the jail, but I can add a good anecdote to the rest. When Staples came to collect Mrs. Ward’s taxes, my sister Helen asked him what he thought Mr. Alcott meant, — what his idea was, — and he answered, “I vum, I believe it was nothing but principle, for I never heard a man talk honester.” There was a lecture on Peace by a Mr. Spear (ought he not to be beaten into a ploughshare?), the same evening, and, as the gentlemen, Lane and Alcott, dined at our house while the matter was in suspense, — that is, while the constable was waiting for his receipt from the jailer, — we there settled it that we, that is, Lane and myself, perhaps, should agitate the State while Winkelried lay in durance. But when, over the audience, I saw our hero’s head moving in the free air of the Universalist church, my fire all went out, and the State was safe as far as I was concerned. But Lane, it seems, had cogitated and even written on the matter, in the afternoon, and so, out of courtesy, taking his point of departure from the Spear-man’s lecture, he drove gracefully in medias res, and gave the affair a very good setting out; but, to spoil all, our martyr very characteristically, but, as artists would say, in bad taste, brought up the rear with a “My Prisons,” which made us forget Silvio Pellico himself. Mr. Lane wishes me to ask you to see if there is anything for him in the New York office, and pay the charges. Will you tell me what to do with Mr. [Theodore] Parker, who was to lecture February 15th? Mrs. Emerson says my letter is written instead of one from her. At the end of this strange letter I will not write — what alone I had to say — to thank you and Mrs. Emerson for your long kindness to me. It would be more ungrateful than my constant thought. I have been your pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free as under the sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it, — I who have failed to render even those slight services of the hand which would have been for a sign, at least; and, by the fault of my nature, have failed of many better and higher services. But I will not trouble you with this, but for once thank you as well as Heaven. Your friend, H. D. T.
CONCORD, February 10, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND, — I have stolen
one of your own sheets to write you a letter upon, and I hope, with two
layers of ink, to turn it into a comforter. If you like to receive a letter
from me, too, I am glad, for it gives me pleasure to write. But don’t let
it come amiss; it must fall as harmlessly as leaves settle on the landscape.
I will tell you what we are doing this now. Supper is done, and Edith —
the dessert, perhaps, more than the desert — is brought in, or even comes
in per se; and round she goes, now to this altar, and then to that,
with her monosyllabic invocation of “oc,” “oc.” It makes me think of “Langue
d’oc.” She must belong to that province. And like the gipsies she talks
a language of her own while she understands ours. While she jabbers Sanscrit,
Parsee, Pehivi, say “Edith go bah!” and “bah” it is. No intelligence passes
between us. She knows. It is a capital joke, — that is the reason she smiles
so. How well the secret is kept! she never descends to explanation. It
is not buried like a common secret, bolstered up on two sides, but by an
eternal silence on the one side, at least. It has been long kept, and comes
in from the unexplored horizon, like a blue mountain range, to end abruptly
at our door one day (Don’t stumble at this steep simile.) And now she studies
the heights and depths of nature
On shoulders whirled in some eccentric orbitAnd how she runs the race over the carpet, while all Olympia applauds, — mamma, grandma, and uncle, good Grecians all, — and that dark-hued barbarian, Partheanna Parker, whose shafts go through and through, not backward! Grandmamma smiles over all, and mamma is wondering what papa would say, should she descend on Carlton House some day. “Larks night” ‘s abed, dreaming of “pleased faces” far away. But now the trumpet sounds, the games are over; some Hebe comes, and Edith is translated. I don’t know where; it must be to some cloud, for I never was there. Query: what becomes of the answers Edith thinks, but cannot express? She really gives you glances which are before this world was. You can’t feel any difference of age, except that you have longer legs and arms. Mrs. Emerson said I must tell you about domestie affairs, when I mentioned that I was going to write. Perhaps it will inform you of the state of all if I only say that I am well and happy in your house here in Concord.
Your friend, HENRY.
[A part of the same letter, though bearing a date
two days later, and written in a wholly different style, as of one sage
to another, is the following postscript.]
February 12, 1843.
DEAR FRIEND, — As the packet
still tarries, I will send you some thoughts, which I have lately relearned,
as the latest public and private news.
How mean are our relations to one another! Let us pause till they are nobler. A little silence, a little rest, is good. It would be sufficient employment only to cultivate true ones. The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand. A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest grati tude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remote parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me. When such divine commodities are so near and cheap, how strange that it should have to be each day’s discovery! A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me. I am no more of this earth; it acts dynamically ; it changes my very substance. I cannot do what before I did. I cannot be what before I was. Other chains may be broken, but in the darkest night, in the remotest place, I trail this thread. Then things cannot happen. What if God were to confide in us for a moment! Should we not then be gods? How subtle a thing is this confidence! Nothing sensible passes between; never any consequences are to be apprehended should it be misplaced. Yet something has transpired. A new behavior springs; the ship carries new ballast in her hold. A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused. It should be cause to lay down one’s life, — which would not be to lose it. Can there be any mistake up there? Don’t the gods know where to invest their wealth? Such confidence, too, would be reciprocal. When one confides greatly in you, he will feel the roots of an equal trust fastening themselves in him. When such trust has been received or reposed, we dare not speak, hardly to see each other; our voices sound harsh and untrustworthy. We are as instruments which the Powers have dealt with. Through what straits would we not carry this little burden of a magnanimous trust! Yet no harm could possibly come, but simply faithlessness. Not a feather, not a straw, is entrusted; that packet is empty. It is only committed to us, and, as it were, all things are committed to us. The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, — the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker’s lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain. We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love. How much more full is Nature where we think the empty space is than where we place the solids! — full of fluid influences. Should we ever communicate but by these? The spirit abhors a vacuum more than Nature. There is a tide which pierces the pores of the air. These aerial rivers, let us not pollute their currents. What meadows do they course through? How many fine mails there are which traverse their routes! He is privileged who gets his letter franked by them. I believe these things. HENRY D. THOREAU
NEW YORK, February,
1843.
MY DEAR HENRY,
— I have yet seen no new men in New York (excepting young Tappan); but
only seen again some of my old friends of last year. Mr. [Albert] Brisbane
has just given me a faithful hour and a half of what he calls his principles;
and he shames truer men by his fidelity and zeal. Already he begins to
hear the reverberation of his single voice from most of the States of the
Union. He thinks himself sure of W. H. Channing (2)
as a good Fourierist. I laugh incredulous while he recites (for it seems
always as if he was repeating paragraphs out of his master’s book) descriptions
of the self-augmenting potency of the solar system, which is destined to
contain one hundred and thirty-two bodies, I believe, and his urgent inculcation
of our stellar duties. But it has its kernel of sound truth; and
its insanity is so wide of New York insanities that it is virtue and honor.
February 10.
I beg you, my dear friend, to say to those faithful
lovers of me who have just sent me letters which any man should be happy
and proud to receive — I mean my mother and my wife — that I am grieved
they should have found my silence so vexatious. I think that some letter
must have failed, for I cannot have let ten days go by without writing
home. I have kept no account, but am confident that that cannot be. Mr.
Mackay has just brought me his good package, and I will not at this hour
commence a new letter, but you shall tell Mrs. Emerson that my first steps
in New York on this visit seem not to have been prudent, and so I lose
several precious days.
February 11.
A society invited me to read my course before them in
the Bowery, on certain terms, one of which was that they guaranteed me
a thousand auditors. I referred them to my brother William, who covenanted
with them. It turned out that their church was in a dark, inaccessible
place, a terror to the honest and fair citizens of New York; and our first
lecture had a handful of persons, and they all personal friends of mine,
from a distant part of the city. But the Bereans felt so sadly about the
disappointment that it seemed at last, on much colloquy, not quite good-natured
and affectionate to abandon them at once, but to read also a second lecture,
and then part. The second was read with faint success, and then we parted.
I begin this evening anew in the Society Library, where I was last year.
This takes more time than I could wish, a great deal, and I grieve that
I cannot come home. I see W. H. Channing and Mr. [Henry] James at leisure,
and have had what the Quakers call “a solid season “once or twice; with
Tappan a very happy pair of hours, and him I must see again.
I am enriched greatly by your letter, and now by the dear letters which Mr. Mackay has brought me from Lidian Emerson and Elizabeth Hoar; and for speed in part, and partly because I like to write so, I make you the organ of communication to the whole household, and must still owe you a special letter. I dare not say when I will come home, as the time so fast approaches when I should speak to the Mercantile Library. Yesterday eve I was at Staten Island, where William had promised me as a lecturer. and made a speech at Tompkinsville. Dear love to my mother. I shall try within twenty-four hours to write to my wife. Thanks, thanks for your love to Edie! Farewell.
R. WALDO E.
NEW YORK, 12
February,
1843.
MY DEAR HENRY,
— I am sorry I have no paper but this unsightly sheet, this Sunday eve,
to write you a message which I see must not wait. The Dial for April, what
elements shall compose it? What have you for me? What has Mr. Lane? Have
you any Greek translations in your mind? Have you given shape to the comment
on Etzler?(3) (It was about some
sentences on this matter that I made, some day, a most rude and snappish
speech. I remember, but you will not, and must give the sentences as you
first wrote them.) You must go to Mr. [Charles] Lane,
with my affectionate respects, and tell him that I depend on his important
aid for the new number, and wish him to give us the most recent and stirring
matter that he has. If (as he is a ready man) he offers us anything at
once, I beg you to read it; and if you see and say decidedly that it is
good for us, you need not send it to me; but if it is of such quality that
you can less surely pronounce, you must send it to me by Harnden. Have
we no more news from Wheeler? Has Bartlett none?(4)
I find Edward Palmer here, studying medicine and attending medical lectures. He is acquainted with Mr. Porter, whom Lane and Wright know, and values him highly. I am to see Porter. Perhaps I shall have no more time to fill this sheet; if so, farewell. Yours, R. WALDO E.
CONCORD, February 15, l843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
— I got your letters, one yesterday and the other to-day, and they have
made me quite happy. As a packet is to go in the morning, I will
give you a hasty account of the Dial. I called on Mr. Lane this afternoon,
and brought away, together with an abundance of good will, first, a bulky
catalogue of books without commentary, — some eight hundred, I think he
told me, with an introduction filling one sheet, — ten or a dozen pages,
say, though I have only glanced at them; second, a review — twenty-five
or thirty printed pages — of Conversations on the Gospels, Record of a
School, and Spiritual Culture, with rather copious extracts. However, it
is a good subject, and Lane says it gives him satisfaction. I will give
it a faithful reading directly. [These were Alcott’s publications, reviewed
by Lane.] And now I come to the little end of the horn; for myself, I have
brought along the Minor Greek Poets, and will mine there for a scrap or
two, at least. As for Etzler, I don’t remember any “rude and snappish speech”
that you made, and if you did it must have been longer than anything I
had written; however, here is the book still, and I will try. Perhaps I
have some few scraps in my Journal which you may choose to print. The translation
of the Æschylus I should like very well to continue anon, if it should
be worth the while. As for poetry, I have not remembered to write any for
some time; it has quite slipped my mind; but sometimes I think I hear the
mutterings of the thunder. Don’t you remember that last summer we heard
a low, tremulous sound in the woods and over the hills, and thought it
was partridges or rocks, and it proved to be thunder gone down the
river? But sometimes it was over Wayland way, and at last burst over our
heads. So we ‘ll not despair by reason of the drought. You see, it takes
a good many words to supply the place of one deed; a hundred lines to a
cobweb, and but one cable to a man-of-war. The Dial case needs to be reformed
in many particulars. There is no news from Wheeler, none from Bartlett.
They all look well and happy in this house, where it gives me much pleasure
to dwell.
Yours in haste, HENRY.
Wednesday Evening, February 16.
DEAR FRIEND, — I have time to
write a few words about the Dial. I have just received the three first
signatures, which do not yet complete Lane’s piece. He will place five
hundred copies for sale at Munroe’s bookstore. Wheeler has sent you two
full sheets — more about the German Universities — and proper names, which
will have to be printed in alphabetical order for convenience; what this
one has done, that one is doing, and the other intends to do. Ham-mer-Purgstall
(Von Hammer) may be one, for aught I know. However, there are two or three
things
in it, as well as names. One of the books of Herodotus is discovered to
be out of place. He says something about having sent to Lowell, by the
last steamer, a budget of literary news, which he will have communicated
to you ere this. Mr. Alcott has a letter from Heraud, and a book written
by him, — the Life of Savonarola, — which he wishes to’ have republished
here. Mr. Lane will write a notice of it. (The latter says that what is
in the New York post office may be directed to Mr. Alcott.) Miss
[Elizabeth] Peabody has sent a “Notice to the readers of the Dial,” which
is not good.
Mr. Chapin lectured this evening, and so rhetorically that I forgot my duty and heard very little. I find myself better than I have been, and am meditating some other method of paying debts than by lectures and writing, — which will only do to talk about. If anything of that “other” sort should come to your ears in New York, will you remember it for me? Excuse this scrawl, which I have written over the embers in the dining-room. I hope that you live on good terms with yourself and the gods. Yours in haste, HENRY.
CONCORD, February 20, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
— I have read Mr. Lane’s review, and can say, speaking for this
world and for fallen man, that “it is good for us.” As they say in geology,
time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism
never fails; but if I go and read elsewhere, I say it is good, — far better
than any notice Mr. Alcott has received, or is likely to receive from another
quarter. It is at any rate “the other side,” which Boston needs to hear.
I do not send it to you, because time is precious, and because I think
you would accept it, af ter all. After speaking briefly of the fate of
Goethe and Carlyle in their own countries, he says, “To Emerson in his
own circle is but slowly accorded a worthy response; and Alcott, almost
utterly neglected,” etc. I will strike out what relates to yourself, and,
correcting some verbal faults, send the rest to the printer with Lane’s
initials.
The catalogue needs amendment, I think. It wants completeness now. It should consist of such books only as they would tell Mr. [F. H.] Hedge and [Theodore] Parker they had got; omitting the Bible, the classics, and much besides, — for there the incompleteness begins. But you will be here in season for this. It is frequently easy to make Mr. Lane more universal and attractive; to write, for instance, “universal ends” instead of “the universal end,” just as we pull open the petals of a flower with our fingers where they are confined by its own sweets. Also he had better not say “books designed too. This is that abominable dialect. He has just given me a notice of George Bradford’s Fénelon for the Record of the Months, and speaks of extras of the Review and Catalogue, if they are printed, — even a hundred, or thereabouts. How shall this be arranged? Also he wishes to use some manuscripts of his which are in your possession, if you do not. Can I get them? I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal their eggs still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor, — it is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens. Do not think that my letters require as many special answers. I get one as often as you write to Concord. Concord inquires for you daily, as do all the members of this house. You must make haste home before we have settled all the great questions, for they are fast being disposed of. But I must leave room for Mrs. Emerson. Yours, HENRY.
MY DEAR HUSBAND, — Thinking that Henry had decided to send Mr. Lane’s manuscript to you by Harnden to-morrow, I wrote you a sheet of gossip which you will not ultimately escape. Now I will use up Henry’s vacant spaces with a story or two. G. P. Bradford has sent you a copy of his Fénelon, with a freezing note to me, which made me declare I would never speak to him again; but Mother says,” Never till next time!” William B. Greene has sent me a volume of tales translated by his father. Ought there to be any note of acknowledgment? I wish you may find time to fill all your paper when you write; you must have millions of things to say that we would all be glad to read. Last evening we had the “Conversation,” though, owing to the bad weather, but few attended. The subjects were: What is Prophecy? Who is a Prophet? and The Love of Nature. Mr. Lane decided, as for all time and the race, that this same love of nature — of which Henry [Thoreau] was the champion, and Elizabeth Hoar and Lidian (though L. disclaimed possessing it herself) his faithful squiresses — that this love was the most subtle and dangerousof sins; a refined idolatry, much more to be dreaded than gross wickednesses, because the gross sinner would be alarmed by the depth of his degradation, and come up from it in terror, but the unhappy idolaters of Nature were deceived by the refined quality of their sin, and would be the last to enter the kingdom. Henry frankly affirmed to both the wise men that they were wholly deficient in the faculty in question, and therefore could not judge of it. And Mr. Alcott as frankly answered that it was because they went beyond the mere material objects, and were filled with spiritual love and perception (as Mr. T. was not), that they seemed to Mr. Thoreau not to appreciate outward nature. I am very heavy, and have spoiled a most excellent story. I have given you no idea of the scene, which was ineffably comic, though it made no laugh at the time; I scarcely laughed at it myself, — too deeply amused to give the usual sign. Henry was brave and noble; well as I have always liked him, he still grows upon me. Elizabeth sends her love, and says she shall not go to Boston till your return, and you must make the 8th of March come quickly. 2. Nephew and biographer of Dr. Channing, and cousin of Ellery
Channing, the poet, soon to be named. - back
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