The Lure of the Camera

by Charles S. Olcott

The other visitor is Henry D. Thoreau, a young man of twenty-five, then living with the Emersons. The two guests and their host are sitting bolt upright in stiff-backed chairs. The host speaks scarcely a word except to ask, for the sake of politeness, a few formal questions, which Thoreau answers with equal brevity. Emerson alone talks freely, but his words, however much weighted with wisdom, are those of a monologuist and do not beget conversation. Yet there is something in the manner of all three that seems to betray the unspoken thought. Hawthorne’s observing eyes seem to be saying, “So this is Emerson, the man who, they say, is drawing all kinds of queer and oddly dressed people to this quiet little village,—visionaries, theorists, men and women who think they have discovered a new thought, and come to him to see if it is genuine. Perhaps he might help solve some of my problems. What a pure, intellectual gleam seems to be diffused about him! With what full and sweet tones he speaks and how persuasively! How serene and tranquil he seems! How reposeful, as though he had adjusted himself, with all reverence, to the supreme requirements of life! Yet I am not sure I can trust his philosophy. Let me admire him as a poet and a true man, but I shall ask him no questions.”

Then while Thoreau is talking, Emerson gazes at Hawthorne and reflects: “This man’s face haunts me. His manner fascinates me. I talk to him and his eyes alone answer me; and yet this seems sufficient. He does not echo my thoughts. He has a mind all his own. He says so little that I fear I talk too much. Yet he is a greater man than his words betray. I have never found pleasure in his writings, yet I cannot help admiring the man. Some day I hope to know him better. I have much to learn from him.”

Meanwhile Hawthorne’s gaze has turned upon the younger visitor. “What a wild creature he seems! How original! How unsophisticated! How ugly he is, with his long nose and queer mouth. Yet his manners are courteous and even his ugliness seems honest and agreeable. I understand he drifts about like an Indian, has no fixed method of gaining a livelihood, knows every path in the woods and will sit motionless beside a brook until the fishes, and the birds, and even the snakes will cease to fear his presence and come back to investigate him. He is a poet, too, as well as a scientist, and I am sure has the gift of seeing Nature as no other man has ever done. Some day I must walk with him in the woods.”

Every man in the room loves freedom, and hates conventionalities. The ordinary formalities of polite society are unendurable. Therefore the four walls seem oppressive and the straight-back chairs produce an agonizing tension of the nerves. They are all glad when the call is over.

WALDEN WOODS

Now let the scene change. It is winter and the river behind the house is frozen. In the glory of the setting sun, its surface seems a smooth sea of transparent gold. The edges of the stream are bordered with fantastic draperies, hanging from the overarching trees in strange festoons of purest white. Once more our three friends appear, but the four walls are gone and the wintry breeze has blown away all constraint. All three lovers of the open air are now on skates. Thoreau circles about skillfully in a bewildering series of graceful curves, for he is an expert at this form of sport and thinks nothing of skating up the river for miles in pursuit of a fox or other wild creature. Emerson finds it harder; he leans forward until his straight back seems to parallel the ice and frequently returns to the shore to rest. Hawthorne, if we may recall the words of his admiring wife, moves “like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave,” as though acting a part in some classic drama, yet fond of the sport and apparently indefatigable in its pursuit.

Once more let the scene change. Summer has come again. The icy decorations have given place to green boughs and rushes and meadow-grass which seem to be trying to crowd the river into narrower quarters. A small boat is approaching the shore in the rear of the old house. In the stern stands a young man who guides the craft as though by instinct. With scarcely perceptible motions of the single paddle, he makes it go in whatsoever direction he wills, as though paddling were only an act of the mind. The boat is called the Musketaquid, after the Indian name of the river. Its pilot, who is also its builder, quickly reaches the shore, and we recognize the man of Nature, Thoreau. Hawthorne, who has been admiring both the boat and steersman, now steps aboard and the two friends are soon moving slowly among the lily-pads that line the margin of the river. Hawthorne is rowing. He handles the oars with no great skill, and as for paddling, it would be impossible for him to make the boat answer his will. Thoreau plucks from the water a white pond-lily, and remarks that “this delicious flower opens its virgin bosom to the first sunlight and perfects its being through the magic of that genial kiss.” He says he has “beheld beds of them unfolding in due succession as the sunrise stole gradually from flower to flower”; and this leads Hawthorne to reflect that such a sight is “not to be hoped for unless when a poet adjusts his inward eye to a proper focus with the outward organ.” We fancy that under these conditions their talk “gushed like the babble of a fountain,” as Hawthorne said it did when he went fishing with Ellery Channing.

But we must not linger at the gate of the Old Manse indulging these dreams, for we have other pleasures in store. A hundred yards beyond, we turn into the bit of road, at right angles with the highway, now preserved because it was the scene of the famous Concord fight. A beautiful vista is made by the overarching of trees that have grown up since the battle, and in the distance we see the Monument, the Bridge, and the “Minute Man.” The Monument marks the spot where the British soldiers stood and opened fire on the 19th of April, 1775, while the “Minute Man” stands at the place where the Americans received their order to return the fire. The Monument was dedicated on the sixty-first anniversary of the battle, Emerson offering his famous “Concord Hymn,” the opening stanza of which, thirty-nine years later, was carved on the pedestal of the Minute Man, erected in commemoration of the centennial of the event:—

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.”

The bridge is of no significance. It is a recent structure of cement, the wooden bridge over which the Minute Men charged having disappeared more than a century ago.