Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls

Not the “hermit” of Walden but a public intellectual

Laura Dassow Walls, a professor emerita of English at the University of Notre Dame, happens to have written books about a few fascinating figures whom I admire greatly. Luckily for me, Walls is a very good researcher and writer. I previously read her biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Passage to Cosmos. She followed that excellent book with a biography of another interesting and important figure, Henry David Thoreau: A Life, published in 2017.

In Thoreau’s case, how do you write a biography about someone who devoted most of his life to autobiographical writings? Well, for starters, Walls doesn’t spend a lot of time at Walden Pond. She assumes the reader has already read Thoreau’s best-known work, so she doesn’t devote a lot of time summarizing it. Instead, she concentrates more on Thoreau’s family life, literary career, and the behind-the-scenes story of how Walden became a book. In regards to other Thoreau works, however, such as The Maine Woods and Cape Cod, Walls does quite a bit of recapping. Although Thoreau: A Life is largely a factual biography, it includes a fair amount of literary criticism, as well as considerable speculative psychoanalysis of the man in question.

For those who know little about Thoreau, there’s a popular misconception of him as a hermit who abandoned society to live as a recluse deep in the forest. For most anyone who would be interested in reading this biography, however, it’s likely common knowledge that Walden Pond was just outside of town, Thoreau’s house in the woods was not very far off the beaten path, and while he lived there he still had a great deal of social interaction with friends, family, and the citizens of Concord, Mass. Thoreau’s experiment at Walden was more about domestic economy, environmental awareness, and spiritual clarity than about self-imposed isolation. Walls also reveals that the relationship between Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson was more complicated than simply the kindred spirits of a mentor and mentee. She delves deeply into their friendship and shows that the two were as much rivals as friends. Beyond the expected cast of Transcendentalists, Walls also recounts Thoreau’s encounters with many important literary and historical figures of his day, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Horace Greeley, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown.

One surprise to me was the extent of Thoreau’s celebrity during his lifetime. At least in Massachusetts, and to some extent farther afield, he was well-known as a naturalist and as an author who was popular on the lecture circuit. When he published an essay on a current issue, both the intelligentsia and the general public paid attention and reacted. That’s not to say, however, that his books sold well. He struggled to make ends meet during his lifetime and made most of his living on carpentry and surveying. Instead of just Thoreau the guy who wanders in the woods, Walls’s biography really provides a good look at Thoreau the writer and man of letters who had to promote himself and deal with publishers and critics just like any other literary figure. We also get a glimpse at Thoreau the natural scientist, who counted Harvard faculty like Louis Agassiz among his colleagues. Walls has already published an entire book on Thoreau’s contributions to science entitled Seeing New Worlds, which I look forward to reading.

Thoreau may not have lived as exciting a life as Humboldt (who has?), but the two share much common ground. Both explored the intersection between literature and science, both were early pioneers of ecological thought, and both have been served well by Walls’s thorough research and thoughtful writing. In Thoreau: A Life, Walls skillfully combines factual data, intellectual history, and philosophical analysis into a well-crafted biography that does justice to this illustrious and complex individual.  

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The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau

Roughing it in the Pine Tree State

Henry David Thoreau was a native of Concord, Massachusetts and lived there most of his life, with the exception of his years at Harvard and his sojourn at nearby Walden Pond. Thoreau did get around, however, and his travels and natural explorations make up the bulk of his books. From 1846 to 1857 Thoreau made three trips to Maine that resulted in three lengthy essays that comprise the book The Maine Woods. Although two of these essays had previously been printed in magazines, the book as a whole was unfinished at the time of Thoreau’s death and was published posthumously in 1864.

In Thoreau’s time, the line between civilization and wilderness was not as sharply defined as it is today. Nowadays, however, his three excursions to Maine would probably qualify as “wilderness adventure travel,” meaning he slept outdoors, often traveled by foot and canoe, and his primary objective was to experience nature through hunting, fishing, birding, botanizing, and simply enjoying the scenery. In the first essay, “Ktaadn,” Thoreau climbs to the top of Maine’s highest mountain, now Mount Katahdin. He also observes the lives of the loggers and boatmen who work amid the woods, lakes, and rivers of Maine. In “Chesuncook,” Thoreau accompanies some moose hunters to the lake of the same name. Apparently there were no moose in Massachusetts, so Thoreau enlightens his readers on this fascinating creature. He also shares his views on hunting. Hunting for sport makes him sad, but he’s OK with hunting for subsistence. The third essay, “The Allegash and East Branch,” is a more rambling journey with no apparent objective other than the appreciation of scenery and the collecting of plant specimens.

In all three trips, Thoreau was accompanied by traveling companions, and they enlisted the help of Indian guides. The companions never really develop into characters, and Thoreau usually doesn’t even name them. The Native guides, however, are important presences in the book, particularly in the second and third essays. In “Chesuncook,” Thoreau is guided by Joe Aettion, and in “The Allegash and East Branch” by Joe Polis, both of whom he describes as Penobscot Indians. Aettion competes with the moose for attention in his essay, but Polis is very much the main focus of “The Allegash and East Branch.” In both cases, Thoreau wants to illustrate the character and personality of the Native Americans through character studies of these two individuals, but at the same time he points out how Native life has been altered by colonialism. He sees these men as a bridge between the old ways of the pre-Colombian past and ostensibly “civilized” White America. As a naturalist, Thoreau clearly admires and envies their woodcraft and wilderness survival skills. At times they call to mind Natty Bumppo of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (except he was White), but Thoreau’s two Joes are more realistically drawn than the noble savages of Cooper’s novels. Given his love of wilderness, Thoreau not surprisingly thinks White America could learn some from the Natives on how to live a life more respectful of nature. .

Unlike Walden, which is permeated with Thoreau’s philosophical musings, The Maine Woods is more of a straightforward travelogue and nature study, though Thoreau does occasionally reveal his thoughts on ecology and environmental ethics. In particular, he has a lot to say about logging and laments the rampant cutting of the forests. Because it was published after his death, “The Allegash and East Branch” has an unfinished feel to it, but all three are exceptional pieces of nature writing. Thoreau not only describes the natural environment but also delves into the cultural aspects of Maine life, which results in essays that read like they might have been articles in National Geographic or Outside magazine. Thoreau really transports the reader into the Maine wilderness and vividly encapsulates this period in American history..
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The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings, edited by Lawrence Buell

An excellent guide to the movement as a whole
While Transcendentalism was an extremely important development in the history of American literature and philosophy, likely few readers today could define the movement beyond calling up the names of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. A few enlightened souls might stretch so far as to mention Margaret Fuller. Despite its name recognition, Transcendentalism is a very difficult school of thought to pin down. Many of the Transcendentalists themselves, and Emerson in particular, denied the existence of any “school” or “movement,” likening the group to an amorphously diverse congregation of vaguely like-minded individuals. Nevertheless, Transcendentalism was a genuine movement with concrete philosophical precepts and an agenda for social change. In the 2006 book The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings, editor Lawrence Buell not only amasses an excellent collection of writings but also delivers a thorough demystification of this crucial and confusing period of development in American thought.

Buell opens the book with an enlightening introduction that outlines the history of American Transcendentalism, its intellectual origins, and a summary of the philosophical views common to its members. The movement originally arose when a number of liberal Unitarian ministers including Emerson, influenced by German philosophers, departed from the strict confines of the Unitarian church to found their own independent congregations. These heretics embraced a more pantheistic conception of deity in which a divinity exists in all human beings. This philosophy emphasized the sacredness of the individual, who, to live up to the divinity within, must follow his or her own path to personal actualization and spiritual fulfillment. An intimate experience of nature, as evident from the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, was a means toward accomplishing this, as was a love for one’s fellow man exerted through virtuous social activism. Emerson at first was reluctant to get involved in social issues, wishing to keep Transcendentalism on a purely intellectual plane, but over time the movement’s members became more outspoken as advocates for religious liberty, educational reform, feminism, and the abolition of slavery.

The writings included here are a mix of essays, journal entries, memoirs, letters, aphorisms, utopian constitutions, articles from the group’s journal The Dial, and a generous helping of poetry. Many of the selections are relatively brief, well-chosen excerpts from longer works, but a few major manifestoes are reproduced in their entirety, such as Emerson’s “Nature,” “Divinity School Address,” “Self-Reliance,” and “The American Scholar,” and Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” This collection goes well beyond the two household names to feature many of the movement’s lesser-known movers and shakers. Highlights include Fuller’s feminist manifesto “The Great Lawsuit,” Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s essay on nature and health “Saints, and Their Bodies,” Theodore Parker’s antislavery writings “The Function of Conscience” and “The Fugitive Slave Law,” and the poetry of William Ellery Channing II and Jones Very. Buell also includes commentary, some of it critical, from notable writers outside the movement such as Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James. In all cases, Buell provides excellent introductions that provide insightful historical context.

Not every selection in this volume is a pleasure to read, as some of the writers are deliberately obscure and overly mystical in their delivery. As a whole, however, this is an excellent collection that provides a fascinating and comprehensive education into the history, literature, and philosophy of the Transcendentalists.
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Excursions by Henry David Thoreau

Hikes with Henry
Excursions, a collection of essays by Henry David Thoreau, was published in 1863, the year after the author’s death. The nine essays collected here had all been published previously in magazines and journals. The book opens, however, with a “Biographical Sketch” of Thoreau, written by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. This tribute, penned after Thoreau’s death, is far more than a “sketch” but rather a full-blown eulogy, and perhaps one of the greatest literary eulogies every written. Through personal anecdotes drawn from his close friendship with the deceased, Emerson really gives the reader a deep insight into Thoreau’s personality, convictions, philosophy, and humor.

Thoreau is of course best known for his classic memoir Walden, in which he combined vivid and poetic nature writing with his personal manifesto of individualism and nonconformity. Many readers may also be familiar with his more politically tinged works of social commentary like “Civil Disobedience” or “Life Without Principle.” The essays in Excursions, however, are absent of politics, light on philosophy, and almost solely concerned with nature. The contents really do represent a series of excursions in which Thoreau uses a particular hike as a starting point to expound on topics of natural history. Though Thoreau may offer the occasional poetic stanza or nugget of social commentary, here he primarily acts as naturalist, regaling the reader with his empirical observations of the woods, fields, and mountains. The one exception that does have the qualities of a manifesto is his 1862 essay “Walking,” in which Thoreau criticizes the culture of so-called civilized society as a shameful rejection of nature. He asserts that only by constructing a culture around nature rather than in spite of it can mankind truly advance intellectually.

The relative success of the other eight selections depends on how well Thoreau conveys the sublime experience of his walks and how much interesting scientific information he imparts in the process. “Wild Apples,” for example, is a pleasant read because you really do learn a lot about apple trees, and Thoreau makes apple-tasting sound like it’s the most enjoyable activity ever. “Autumnal Tints” is another fine piece in which he examines various species of colorful New England flora. Essays like “A Winter Walk” and “Night and Moonlight,” on the other hand, are less successful because they provide less practical naturalism and instead opt for more poetic observations and allusions to mythology, meaning the reader learns less about nature. “Natural History of Massachusetts,” “A Walk to Wachusett,” and “The Succession of Forest Trees” all strike a fine balance between keen empirical observation, home-spun wisdom, and charming travel writing. The one anomaly in the book’s contents is “The Landlord,” which isn’t nature writing at all but rather Thoreau’s tribute to the profession of country innkeeper.

In general I prefer Thoreau’s writings of the philosophical manifesto variety, so I was less impressed by this volume of nature writings. There are passages in Excursions where Thoreau’s descriptions of the natural world rival those found in his masterpiece Walden, but with the exception of “Walking,” the pieces here never ascend to the level of an inspirational guide to living or a stirring call to arms the way his greatest works do. Still, reading Excursions is often almost as enjoyable as a real walk in the woods, and if you consider yourself a nature lover, who better to guide you on your virtual hike than Thoreau?

Essays in this collection

Biographical Sketch by Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Natural History of Masachusetts

A Walk to Wachusett 

The Landlord

A Winter Walk

The Succession of Forest Trees 

Walking

Autumnal Tints

Wild Apples 

Night and Moonlight

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Life Without Principle by Henry David Thoreau

American Stoic

Henry David Thoreau

Life Without Principle, an essay by Henry David Thoreau, was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1863. It briefly encapsulates much the same argument in favor of individuality and nonconformism that Thoreau championed in his classic memoir Walden, without all the attention paid to natural phenomena. Here Thoreau focuses strictly on human nature and how one should conduct him- or herself in society. In tackling the question of how to live an ethical and happy life, Thoreau, as always, proves himself a wise and insightful teacher.

He begins by talking about business. He points out that too many people are busy working to make a living when they should be working to make a life. One who is engaged in work he doesn’t enjoy is trading away his life for a paycheck, or “sell[ing his] birthright for a mess of pottage.” A better strategy would be to find work that one enjoys doing and do it for the satisfaction of doing it, the money being merely icing on the cake. The natural and eternal joys of life rarely have a high monetary value; instead, far too much effort is expended on material trivialities in the pursuit of keeping up with the Joneses. The more one lives his life according to his own nature, disregarding the popular conception of fortune, the happier and richer he will be.

Thoreau’s doctrine in this essay sounds a lot like the teachings of the ancient Stoic philosophers Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, who urged their students to take a rational, detached look at what was truly important in life. One should distinguish between those occurrences in life over which he has control and those over which he does not have control, focus on the significance of the former, and disregard the distraction of the latter. After thoroughly discussing business and financial matters, Thoreau applies his rational individualism to science and philosophy, religion, journalism, slavery, and politics. The latter category is where Thoreau perhaps diverges the furthest from ancient Stoicism. The Stoics encouraged active involvement in civic life, while Thoreau advocates a deliberate abstention from public affairs. Though on social issues Thoreau was a liberal, as far as politics go he was a libertarian. If everyone were to take care of himself and get his own house in order, he suggests, we would have no need for politics at all.

Thoreau’s vision of life in accordance with nature does not seem as attainable as it may have been a century and a half ago. I’m not sure I would want to live in a society where everyone behaved according to Thoreau’s precepts. Nevertheless, I’m glad there’s a Thoreau, and I think we can all learn a lot from him. We could all stand to take a step back and think about what’s important in life, reconsider the importance of our lives outside of work, waste less time on the pointless trivialities of news and social media (“Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.”), and cultivate our own person rather than slavishly live our lives in response to others’ opinions or conventions. Overall, Life Without Principle is one of Thoreau’s most accessible pieces of writing. Despite references to gold prospectors and slavery, most of the issues he discusses reflect universal aspects of human nature that are still very much applicable to life in the 21st century. This essay will take up less than an hour of your time, and the food for thought Thoreau serves up makes it an hour well spent.
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Walking by Henry David Thoreau

A green manifesto
Walking is a lecture written by Henry David Thoreau. It was first published in print form in 1862, as either a long essay or a short book, depending on how you look at it. As the title indicates, Thoreau discusses the act of walking, specifically in the woods, but the scope of the piece is much broader than that. Thoreau extols the virtues of wilderness and its necessity to mankind, not only for its advantages to our physical health, but also for its emotional, intellectual, and spiritual benefits.

This work bears a great deal of thematic similarity to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Nature. Both are manifestoes for the Transcendentalist movement, and both advocate the appreciation of nature for its own sake, rather than merely for the material benefits it provides to mankind. This was a revolutionary concept in the mid-19th century, and the works of Emerson and Thoreau mark the beginning of the American environmental movement. Yet despite the philosophical common ground they shared, Thoreau and Emerson were distinctly different writers. Emerson’s style is more loftily cerebral, at times difficult to decipher. Thoreau’s writing is much more down-to-earth and practical, and at times even tongue-in-cheek. Emerson was the chief conceptual thinker of Transcendentalism, but Thoreau put the group’s philosophical ideas into practice, and encouraged others to do so as well. To oversimplify, one could say that Emerson talked the talk, while Thoreau walked the walk.

To become closer to nature, one need not exile oneself to a remote log cabin, as Thoreau himself did when he wrote his masterpiece Walden. To experience the wonders of the natural world around you, all you have to do is walk. Of course, Thoreau could stroll outside his front door and enjoy twenty miles of fenceless forest. Few of us today are so lucky. Yet the broader message of the work is still valid. Thoreau confesses that he feels like a prisoner when confined within the borders of a town or within the conventions of society. His prescription for this ill is the rejuvenating effects of the wild. When one immerses oneself in the timeless workings of nature, it becomes apparent that the concerns of human society are petty and insignificant by comparison. Thoreau criticizes culture in general as a shameful removal from nature. Only by constructing a culture around nature rather than in spite of it can mankind truly advance intellectually. Instead of gazing back at the achievements of civilizations past, we should be focusing our thoughts and energies on the world outside our front door and the present moment in time.

The essay is about as serpentine and spontaneous as one of Thoreau’s hikes. Under the vast canopy of his guiding thesis he rambles through all manner of topics, from the uselessness of names to the superiority of mythology over literature to the description of a particularly beautiful sunset. It’s a difficult work to summarize because each passage is a succinct nugget of brilliantly quotable wisdom. The essay’s bits and pieces don’t readily appear to fit together, yet somehow all the disparate elements are ultimately unified by Thoreau’s overarching message. Walking is a beautiful piece of writing, perhaps not as easily accessible to the general reader as Walden, but fans of the latter work will certainly derive much valuable knowledge and inspirational pleasure from this profound paean to the wild.
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Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

“That government is best which governs least”
In Civil Disobedience, first published in 1849, Henry David Thoreau asserts that when a government acts in a way contrary to the conscience of one of its individual subjects, that individual has a duty to deny any allegiance to that government by ceasing to pay taxes and refusing to obey unjust laws. While Thoreau was focused on the issues of slavery and the Mexican-American War, much of the rhetoric in Civil Disobedience is broad enough that it can be used as an inspirational rallying cry for dissenters of every stripe, from anarchists to Tea Partiers. By today’s standards, Thoreau’s own political thought was a fiercely individualistic mix of liberalism and libertarianism. He was a staunch pacifist, anti-military, and critical of the judicial and penal systems, yet he was also against big government, trade regulation, and taxation. In Thoreau’s view, all governments are inherently corrupt. Just because democracy is based on majority rule doesn’t make it any less corrupt, because the approval of the majority is no guarantee of justice and right. Instead of waiting for their government to become just, citizens should behave justly, even if that means breaking the law.

Civil Disobedience amounts to about thirty pages in printed form, and takes about an hour to read, depending on how much time you want to spend dissecting Thoreau’s antiquated grammar and syntax. From the perspective of the language alone, this is a more difficult, less accessible read than his best-known work, Walden. More effort is required to decipher Thoreau’s prose in order to extract the kernel of his message. The Kindle file that’s available for free on Amazon was created by Project Gutenberg. The text was typed rather than scanned, but doesn’t seem to have been proofread, as it still contains several typographical errors. The file includes only the text of Thoreau’s essay, with no introduction or notes. In this case, notes can be helpful in clarifying some of Thoreau’s historical references, so a well-edited paperback edition may provide a more helpful reading experience for first-time readers. For those familiar with Thoreau and this great work, however, a digital, highlightable copy makes for a welcome addition to your portable e-book library.
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Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Go your own way
In 1845 Henry David Thoreau built a 10 x 15 foot cabin in the woods on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, and lived there for two years, two months, and two days. Out of this experience came the book Walden, first published in 1854. Embarking on this sojourn of solitude was an attempt to escape the distractions, conventions, and frivolous fashions of urban society, to reconnect with the essentials of existence, and to get at the very root of life. By practicing a simpler way of living, engaging in a more direct relationship with nature, and replacing the hubbub of civilization with quiet contemplation, Thoreau hoped to experience life more fully and richly. The result of this experiment is this classic of American literature, an inspirational combination of philosophy, poetry, and natural history.

Walden is a manifesto of nonconformity and individualism. Thoreau urges readers to forget how society says you should live and to live by your own compass, by what you feel is right. Disregard public opinion and take command of your own fate. The materialistic culture of modern, civilized society distracts us from finding our true direction in life. Solitude and introspection are the means by which to recover one’s bearings. Through a simplified, more natural way of life, Thoreau was able to strip away the unnecessary psychic baggage of society’s traditions and expectations, allowing him to examine his life objectively. By Thoreau’s account, even in the mid-19th century Americans were slaves to the rat race, working themselves like beasts of burden, ever accumulating debt, all for the sake of luxuries that were supposed to bring pleasure to their lives but only compounded their misery. He begins the book by laying bare all the absurdities of this unhealthy cycle, insightfully picking apart the ills of his contemporary society with a biting, sarcastic wit. It is remarkable how well his critique of “modern life” has held up over the past 150 years. His opinion of the railroad, for example, can be just as accurately applied to today’s internet when he questions the benefit of all this high-speed communication if people have nothing meaningful to say to one another. “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life,” he writes, “are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” To experience the true joy of life, quit living for your possessions and get your mind and spirit in order. Though the language of Thoreau often sounds antiquated to the 21st century reader, the message of Walden is still as vital as the day it was written.

In describing his two years in the woods, Thoreau provides poetically beautiful and scientifically accurate depictions of the scenery, inhabitants, and processes of the natural world. Yet for Thoreau these empirical observations are only a means to an end. As a member of the Transcendentalist movement, Thoreau saw nature as a medium through which the higher philosophical truths of the universe are revealed. It is to nature that we should turn to seek guidance in living our lives, not to the traditions, mores, and manners agreed upon by civilized society. One need not retreat to the wilderness to lead a natural life. In fact, Walden Pond was only a few miles out of town, and Thoreau had visitors almost daily. Isolation was not the point of his experiment, but rather self-reliance, in thought as well as deed. To find direction in life one must seek inwardly. Nature is free to all, and all are free to learn its lessons and live by them. Let Walden be your guide. There is profound wisdom to be gleaned from each paragraph for those willing to seek it.
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