After a storm

 

My ex gave me some boots, so the rain didn’t prevent me from going to the lake.

Who was Thoreau?

I've finished the magnificent Walls biography of Henry David thoreau.

Thoreau was a naturalist, surveyor, philosopher, poet, lecturer, graphite producer, pencil maker, writer, educator, friend and lifelong bachelor, transcendentalist, Harvard graduate, river sailor, and fire starter—literally and figuratively, politically and personally. 

He was daft and judgmental towards native Americans, and curious and perceptive about them, appreciating them, seemed to easily alternate between the two stances of judgement and curiosity. 

Some gays claim him, detect a sense of a secret self in his writings. He was wary of Whitman but was disappointed when the women put the kibosh on inviting him to stay in Concord. He asked a woman to marry him, but she declined. An older woman asked him to marry and he declined. We don’t know if his attention to young boys was purely motivated by his desire to share knowledge and educate. He seems to have been a real character of Concord. His proposal of marriage to a woman makes him nominally hetrosexual. Looking at no known sexual activity makes him asexual. Like many people in history, we just don't know, and have to tolerate not knowing. I'm not sure what the obsession is beyond Foucault's pointing out that at some point in history sexuality became a part of who and what you are. Not really anyone's business in a way.

He was a decided homebody who traveled down to Philadelphia and up to Quebec, and wrote books about Massachusetts, Maine and Cape Cod. He wrote about his trip to Canada. He worked hard to become a writer. He could also dance and sing. He loved walking, and could tell you what week it was based on the wildflowers. He lived in Staten Island for a year but could get his literary career off in New York. At the end of his life he went out west to Minnesota.  

His first book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers took him 3 years to pay off because it was essentially self published if it didn't sell enough copies, and it didn't sell enough copies. It was a book about a trip he took with his brother who died soon after the trip, and it never mentioned his brother. Many of his books were posthumously published. "The Succession of Forest Trees" is supposedly his most read essay and work in his life, reprinted in newspapers across the country.

He was disgusted by meat and killing but ate and enjoyed it anyway. He wrote about his disgust of the fur trade. 

He was disappointed in slavery and was a stop on the Underground Railroad. He wrote about it once in his journal, but it's suspected that he did more than what he wrote.

He organized to support Irish laborers families with knitting coats for children. He gave a worker $50 to get his wife and family to America. He bought wood from Irish laborers to build his hut on Walden Pond. His trip to Cape Cod took a somber note when an Irish hunger ship crashed and he was presented with the recent wreckage and pillagers. 

He utterly rejected Puritanism. He disliked government, the Mexican war, supporting slavery even in the north, but worked well with people, except stupid editors who altered the meaning of his texts. He inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King with his civil disobedience. He could also imagine city planners who made sure the environment wasn't destroyed by greedy single minded people who ignored other's concerns. Did he think up the idea of public parks in towns and cities as Walls suggests? I have a hard time believing it, European cities had parks already. Boston Commons was established in 1634. There's a park in Budapest called Varosliget that was established in the 13th century that lays claim to the oldest park in Europe. Walls was suggesting the seed of the idea in America may have been influenced by Thoreau, not that he thought up the idea of municipal parks. 

"In Queens, the oldest parks are Daniel Carter Beard Memorial Square (known as Flushing Park until 1942), which was acquired by the town of Flushing in 1875" (NYC). I go walking every week in Flushing Meadows Park, by Willow Lake. 

He was friends with all the fascinating transcendentalists, and other naturalists, businessmen and scholars. He cared for Emerson’s family when Emerson went to England, traveled and hiked with poet Ellery Channing. He went to Fire Island to see if he could recover Margaret Full’s body. Caroline Healey Dall stayed a few extra days with the Thoreau's after her lecture in Concord. He met Whitman once, and loved his Leaves of Grass. He wanted to invite Whitman to stay in Concord but the women dislike him and vetoed an invitation. He met John Brown and introduced him to Emerson. He met Frederick Douglass, and possibly Harriet Tubman. 

He read Indian ancient texts but probably didn’t know the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism.

He accidentally started a wildfire that destroyed hundreds of acres but tried to get the town to fight it, some were indifferent. When Wentworth started a fire he warned against it and a bit of a wildfire started on Mount Washington, Tuckerman’s Ravine, in New Hampshire killing ancient forest.

His mother was pregnant with him in 1816 when there was no summer, and many moved west. He was against the Mexican War, slavery and the fugitive slave laws. He lived through the 1857 panic, in part triggered by the Dred Scott decision. He saw the beginning of the Civil War but not the end of it.

He got to read Darwin's Origin of the Species, with his friends aloud. In the context of the times, the book supported the ideas of abolition of slavery. He saw the arguments verified in his experience as a hiking naturalist. It gave him new ideas about how to study nature, and he both stayed on a mountain for a long time, and culled his journals for patters across the seasons. He thought about seeds and tree succession. 

Thoreau defended John Brown and saw his actions as noble. His way of seeing perhaps influenced Boston and the north regarding his actions, created a noble narrative. He wrote 3 essays about John Brown. John Brown's daughter Annie through Thoreau was a little like John Brown. His two daughters were adopted by Concord Transcendentalists and they went to school in Concord. Thoreau helps smuggle a co-conspirator, a Mr. X, out of the USA to safety in Canada. People ignored the summons regarding John Brown's conspiracy. The schoolmaster Sanborn was seized by marshals, and the town rescued him before they could get out of town. He showed up on court the next day and the warrant was canceled. It was reissued, but he wasn't caught before the secession of South Carolina and the start of the Civil War.

He seems to have had tuberculosis since age 18, and yet lived to age 44, only living 3 years longer than his father who had a longer life. His one expressed regret that comes down to us is that he wished he wasn't so offish. “ When his orthodox Aunt Louisa asked, "Henry, have you made your peace with God?" he answered pleasantly, "I did not know we had ever quarreled, Aunt."”(p.495 Walls)

Thoreau and Muir, and his end

Thoreau was in Madison Wisconsin June 23rd 1861, traveling back from Minnesota to Concord Massachusetts. John Muir was 23 and just got out for the semester and was walking back to Portage. He had just finished his first semester of college. His parents had him working on the farm up till then. I read a biography of Muir and when I think about Thoreau, I think about Muir, who was a great naturalist too. The idea that while they didn't meet, they were close to each other perhaps, maybe in the same city, maybe not too far apart. 

The end of life is of course sad. I feel like Thoreau was coming into his own and dying at the age of 44 was too young. What could he have done with another 20 years, even at a diminished capacity. Unfortunately his traveling companion Horace Mann, the famous one's son, would die at age 26. Maybe I'm getting older, but when you read biographies, they seem to be quite punctuated by death. I know my grandparents deaths were quite shocking to me, uncles and friends now. I remember in my 20s reading the obituary pages of the Times and not knowing the people who died.

This year we lost a lot of celebrities. This year we lost Tommy Smothers, a Dixie Chick, the original drummer for AC/DC, Norman Lear, Shane MacGowan, the saxophonist for the Psychedelic Furs, Matthew Perry, Suzanne Somers, Louise Gluck, Jimmy Buffett, Bob Barker, the school teacher on Little House on the Prairie, the guy who wrote the ballad "Hey Paula", Robbie Robertson, The keyboardist for the Kinks, Paul Reubens, Sinéad O'Connor, Tony Bennett. the rhythm guitarist for Journey, Robert De Niro's grandson, Alan Arkin, the woman in Slackers who claimed to have a pubic hair from Madonna, Glenda Jackson, Cormac McCarthy, Pat Robertson, Tina Turner, Martin Amis, the bassist for the Smiths, Jim Brown, Jerry Springer, Harry Belafonte, Bob Newhart's wife, Tevye actor, Shirley from Laverne and Shirley, David Crosby, Gina Lollobrigida, Lisa Marie Presley, Raquel Welch, Astrud Gilberto, and last but not least Wayne Shorter, and many more faces and names I recognized (source). Tim Wakefield, a pitcher who helped break the Sox's curse, was my age. A lot of people were on TV shows I never watched, or otherwise never heard of them. I'm sure I missed someone too. NY Times collection.

Thoreau died on May 6, 1862. This photo was taken August 21 1861. It was his last trip "away from home" to take the photo, but he would ride in a carriage to Walden Pond in September. His last comment in his journal was that he could tell the direction of the storm by how it cleared the mud off pebbles. 

He was chipper on his deathbed, I think another sign of his greatness. He refused opiates, and Channing was with him a lot at the end. His last words might have been, "Now comes good sailing."

I had insomnia and finished the book at 4:55am on January 8th 2024. 

Emerson's eulogy of Thoreau.

Yikes

“Thoreau had watched his world slip deeper and deeper into the "hell" he had denounced in "Slavery in Massachusetts." On May 19, 1856, his friend Senator Charles Sumner delivered to the Senate a scathing speech condemning Southern aid to proslavery insurgents who were forcibly taking control of the government of Kansas. Two days later, a proslavery militia of several hundred men attacked the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas, founded two years before by New England immigrants. The raiders sacked, looted, and burned the town, killing most of its male population, as many as two hundred men and boys. The next day, while Sumner sat alone writing at his desk on the Senate floor, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked him with a heavy cane, beating him on the head with its gold tip until Sumner, covered in blood, collapsed unconscious. Brooks kept beating Sumner's bleeding body while his South Carolina colleague, Representative Laurence Keitt, held off horrified spectators with a pistol. Finally the cane broke. Brooks threw it down and walked away. For this act he was levied a $300 fine and given neither jail time nor reprimand.” (P.445 Walls)

Caroline Healey Dall

I dislike coming to the end of the biography of Thoreau, I feel like I'm just getting to know him. His father dies in the summer of 1859, and then Caroline Healey Dall comes to give a lecture, and stays over with the Thoreaus. 

She has a diary, essays and sketches (another), and other documents, including a history of Transcendentalism you can read in it's 38 pages. She's only 5 years younger than Thoreau. Before that she wrote Margaret and Her Friends: Ten Conversations with Margaret Fuller (Gutenberg).

She grew up in Boston, got married and lived in Toronto. Her son was a naturalist, she spent her later years living with his family in DC. Her husband moved to Calcutta to preach. Doesn't say what happened to her other child or what eventually happened to her husband. I guess he died in India. 

I'd like to read: Woman Thinking: Feminism and Transcendentalism in Nineteenth-Century America by Wayne, Tiffany K, and Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-century Woman, Caroline Healey Dall.

She attended Fuller's conversations.

Reading Thoreau and Thoreau biography thoughts today.

I listed the major works of Thoreau and I'm going to try and read through them. It's possible I'll quit, I have to admit that. But I already crossed on thing off the list, and I'm working on another. Looking for similar people who did the same thing, I came across a fellow who had to put post it notes over his eyes because his wife though they were creepy. I think it's weird that women find things creepy when they're not and you have to cater towards their feelings because we live in a age where women's feelings were over run for so long that it's verboten to continue to do it. It doesn't matter that she's wrong, she has the feeling. Therefore if you are her husband reading the book, you put post it notes over the eyes so she doesn't feel creepy.

Reading Aulus Persius Flaccus (1940) 

Aulus Persius Flaccus is a roman poet and satirist. (More on him)

I come across this: "Ipse semipaganus Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum,"

Which translates to: I half pagan bring my verses to the shrine of the poets.

Here's a fun quote: "Scarcely can you distinguish one harmonious sound, amid this unmusical bickering with the follies of men."

Thoreau is listing poets: "...Homer, and Shakspeare [sic], and Milton, and Marvel, and Wordsworth."

Who is Marvel? Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)? 

I love it how the importance of spelling wasn't that great in Shakespeare's time and even up to Thoreau's time spelling wasn't of the utmost importance. 

People were so judgemental in the past: "measured faultfinders at best"

Itarticeps crimints means "It's time for the criminals".

I like how Thoreau tries to undercut the sanctimonious voice. I think. "...while no evil is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate." 

He prefers love over hate. I don't actually know who Perseus is, he's an early hero in mythology. He's got a lot of statues where he's holding a head he cut off. There's even a complicated genealogy. 

"Hand cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque. Tollere susurros de templis ; et aperto vivere voto."

Translation: A hand is ready for every one, and a murmur is humble

Remove the whispers from the temples; and with an open desire to live.

I feel exhausted, I'm nowhere close to finishing this.

"Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum An passim sequeris corvos, testave, lutove, Securus quo per ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?"

Translates: Is there something at which you aim, and at which you direct the bow? Do you follow the ravens here and there, or the shell or the clay, Easy to carry through, and you live from time?

And then I'm finally done after reading a section of something. It reads like a school assignment. I think it was his first published work in The Dial in 1840.

There are lots of things I don't write about in the biography. But I find it interesting he spent a month in New Jersey surveying, east of Perth Amboy on Raritan Bay for Marcus and Rebecca Spring. He was expected to attend a dance. He read the lecture Moosehunting and Walking. Thoreau chaffs at working. Alcott came down to see if he wanted to live at this commune, and then took Thoreau to Greeley's farm in Westchester. Greeley had invited Thoreau to live there for a year or two. They went to Brooklyn to attend a Henry Ward Beecher sermon. The crowd was "weeping, laughing and devout". Alcott was impressed, Thoreau thought it was pegan. They visited Walt Whitman. He wasn't there but his mother fed them some cakes. 

“The year before, when Whitman published Leaves of Grass, he had mailed a copy straight to Emerson, who, seeing yet again a brilliant new poet to mentor, had written him one of his thrilling trademark letters of support. The buoyed Whitman seized on the letter's most quotable line and, to Emerson's horror, blazoned it right across the spine of his next edition: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." In one stroke Whitman had given birth to the modern cover blurb, quite without Emerson's permission.” (p. 394 Walls)

They meet and Whitman says he's America, and Thoreau pours water on him and says he's not really into American politics. They bring up the quoting on his book by Emerson and Whitman brushes it off. They part without really a connection. A great naturalist and a great poet don't necessarily connect. But Whitman gave him a copy of Leaves of Grass second edition, and Thoreau went home and read it. He liked it, and carried it around Concord. It was a bit scandalous of a book and the ladies didn't want them to invite Whitman to Concord. They didn't want a fag who couldn't politely hide it better. 

There's a wonderful movie, Separate Tables (1958), where the prudery of old women doesn't win out. It's on one of the Cohen brothers favorite movies list.

Thoreau seems to have loosened up with reading Whitman, and enjoyed himself and passionately embraced his likes.

One was singing Tom Bowling, of which I found this version. A version and lyrics:

1

Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, 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, but now he’s gone aloft.

2

Tom never from his word departed, his virtues were so rare,

His friends were many and true-hearted, his Poll was kind and fair,

Ah, then he’d sing so blithe and jolly, a-many’s the time and oft,

But mirth has changed to melancholy, now Tom has gone aloft, now Tom has gone aloft.

3

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, his soul is gone aloft.

Another version on Spotify. I can't seem to find an unvarnished one.

There's a 25 page document on Joe Polis, Thoreau's guide on a trip in Maine.

First Native American book by a Native American which Thoreau read.