ire of the critics, it may be well to re-examine that incident.
From his earliest years Thoreau was a lover of the open air. It was not merely a poetic appreciation such as Emerson had of the beauties of nature—though a genuine poetic imagination coloured all that he wrote—but an intellectual enthusiasm for the wonders of the natural world, and, most important of all, a deep and tender sympathy with all created things characteristic of the Eastern rather than the Western mind. He observed as a naturalist, admired like a poet, loved with the fervour of a Buddhist; every faculty of his nature did homage to the Earth.
Most of us will admit to a sentimental regard for the open air and for country sights and sounds. But in many cases it reduces itself to a vague liking for “pretty scenery” and an annual conviction that a change of air will do us good. And so it is that the man who prefers to live the greater part of his life in the open is looked upon either as a crank or a poser. Borrow’s taste for adventure, and the picturesque vigour of his personality, help largely in our minds to condone his wandering instinct. But the more passive temperament of Thoreau, and the absence in his writings of any stuff of romance, lead us to feel a kind of puzzled contempt for the man.
“He shirks his duty as a citizen,” says the practical Englishman; “He experienced nothing worth mentioning,” says the lover of adventure. Certainly he lacked many of the qualities that make the literary Vagabond attractive—and for this reason many will deny him the
right to a place among them—but he was neither a skulker nor a hermit.
In 1839, soon after leaving college, he made his first long jaunt in company with his brother John. This was a voyage on the Concord and Merrimac rivers—a pleasant piece of idling turned to excellent literary account. The volume dealing with it—his first book—gives sufficient illustration of his practical powers to dissipate the absurd notion that he was a mere sentimentalist. No literary Vagabond was ever more skilful with his hands than Thoreau. There was scarcely anything he could not do, from making lead pencils to constructing a boat. And throughout his life he supported himself by manual labour whenever occasion demanded. Had he been so disposed he could doubtless have made a fortune—for he had all the nimble versatility of the American character, and much of its shrewdness. His attacks, therefore, upon money-making, and upon the evils of civilization, are no mere vapourings of an incompetent, but the honest conviction of a man who believes he has chosen the better part.
In his Walk to Wachusett there are touches of genial friendliness with the simple, sincere country folk, and evidence that he was heartily welcome by them. Such a welcome would not have been vouchsafed to a cold-blooded recluse.
The keen enjoyment afforded to mind and body by these outings suggested to Thoreau the desirability of a longer and more intimate association with Nature. Walden Wood had been a familiar and favoured spot for many years, and so he began the building of his
tabernacle there. So far from being a sudden, sensational resolve with an eye to effect, it was the natural outcome of his passion for the open.
He had his living to earn, and would go down into Concord from time to time to sell the results of his handiwork. He was quite willing to see friends and any chance travellers who visited from other motives than mere inquisitiveness. On the other hand, the life he proposed for himself as a temporary experiment would afford many hours of congenial solitude, when he could study the ways of the animals that he loved and give free expression to his naturalistic enthusiasms.