Many of Thoreau’s admirers—including Mr. Page and Mr. Salt—defend him stoutly against the charge of unsociability, and they see in this feeling for the brute creation an illustration of his warm humanitarianism. “Thoreau loves the animals,” says Mr. Page, “because they are manlike and seem to yearn toward human forms.” It seems to me that Thoreau’s affection was a much simpler affair than this. He was drawn towards them because he felt an affinity with them—an affinity more compelling in its attraction than the affinity of the average human person.
No doubt he felt, as Shelley did when he spoke of “birds and even insects” as his “kindred,” that this affinity bespoke a wider brotherhood of feeling than men are usually ready to acknowledge. But this is not the same as loving animals because they are manlike. He loved them surely because they were living things, and he was drawn towards all living things, not because he detected any semblance to humankind in them. The
difference between these two attitudes is not easy to define clearly; but it is a real, not a nominal difference.
It is argued, however, as another instance of Thoreau’s undervalued sociability, that he was very fond of children. That he was fond of children may be admitted, and some of the pleasantest stories about him relate to his rambles with children. His huckleberry parties were justly famous, if report speaks true. “His resources for entertainment,” says Mr. Moncure Conway, “were inexhaustible. He would tell stories of the Indians who once dwelt thereabouts till the children almost looked to see a red man skulking with his arrow and stone, and every plant or flower on the bank or in the water, and every fish, turtle, frog, lizard about was transformed by the wand of his knowledge from the low form into which the spell of our ignorance had reduced it into a mystic beauty.”
Emerson and his children frequently accompanied him on these expeditions. “Whom shall we ask?” demanded Emerson’s little daughter. “All children from six to sixty,” replied her father.
“Thoreau,” writes Mr. Conway in his Reminiscences, “was the guide, for he knew the precise locality of every variety of berry.”
“Little Edward Emerson, on one occasion, carrying a basket of fine huckleberries, had a fall and spilt them all. Great was his distress, and offers of berries could not console him for the loss of those gathered by himself. But Thoreau came, put his arm round the troubled child, and explained to him that if the crop of huckleberries was to continue it was necessary that some should be scattered. Nature had provided that little boys and girls should now and then stumble and sow the berries. ‘We shall,’ he said, ‘have a grand lot of bushes and berries on this spot, and we shall owe them to you.’ Edward began to smile.”
Thoreau evidently knew how to console a child, no less than how to make friends with a squirrel. But his fondness for children is no more an argument for his sociability, than his fondness for birds or squirrels. As a rule it will be found, I think, that a predilection for children is most marked in men generally reserved and inaccessible. Lewis Carroll, for instance, to take a famous recent example, was the reverse of a sociable man. Shy, reserved, even cold in ordinary converse, he would expand immediately when in the company of children. Certainly he understood them much better than he did their elders. Like Thoreau, moreover, Lewis Carroll was a lover of animals.
Social adaptability was not a characteristic of Thackeray, his moroseness and reserve frequently alienating people; yet no one was more devoted to children, or a more delightful friend to them.
So far from being an argument in favour of its possessor’s sociability, it seems to be a tolerable argument against it. It is not hard to understand why. When analysed this fondness for children is much the same in quality as the fondness for animals. A man is drawn towards children because there is something fresh, unsophisticated, and elemental about them. It has no reference to their moral qualities, though the æsthetic element plays a share. Thoreau knew how to comfort
little Edward Emerson just as he knew how to cheer the squirrel that sought a refuge in his waistcoat. This fondness, however, must not be confused with the paternal instinct. A man may desire to have children, realize that desire, interest himself in their welfare, and yet not be really fond of them. As children they may not attract him, but he regards them as possibilities for perpetuating the family and for enhancing its prestige.