American literature has always abounded with nature speculation and research. Bryant[37] was a true poet of nature; he loved woods, mountain, and river, and his “To the Yellow Wood Violet,” and “The Blue Gentian” are gems of pictorial nature-writing. Whittier[38] transfigured the beauty of New England life in one poem “Snowbound,” and in his “Autumn Walk” leisurely strolled to the portals of immortality. Whitman stalked about on the open road like a pantheist.[39]
Yet none had the faculties of discovery and interpretation like John Burroughs, the intimate knowledge, the warm vision, to which a wood-pile can become a matter of contemplation, and a back yard or a garden patch become as interesting as any scenery in the world. None of them could have lectured on apple-trees or gray squirrels with such intimacy as Burroughs. Burroughs has never any sympathy with the “pathetic fallacy of endowing inanimate objects with human attributes,” nor would he indorse Machin's propaganda idea of the antagonism of animals against their human masters.
A trout leaping in a mountain stream, the lively whistle of a bird high in the upper air, a bird's nest in an old fence post—these are some of the topics nearest his heart. No nature-writer has ever shown such diversity of interest. Even Rip Van Winkle did not know the mountains as well as does this camper and tramper for a lifetime on the same familiar grounds; over and over again he makes the round from Riverby to Slabsides, to Roxbury in the western Catskills, and back again to the rustic studio near the river. He knows every pasture, mountain-side, and valley of his chosen land. He even named some of the hills. One of them, much frequented by bees, he named “Mount Hymettus,”[40] because there “from out the garden hives, the humming cyclone of humming bees” liked to congregate.
But is his minute observation of weed seeds in the open field or insect eggs on tree-trunks not disastrous to literary expression? Can this style of writing soar above straightforward nature-writing of men like Wilson,[41] Muir,[42] White,[43] and Chapman?[44] Burroughs is capable of making a long-winded analysis of the downward perch of the head of the nut-hatch, but he is no Audubon.[45] As a literary man he is an essayist who etches little vignettes, one after the other, with rare precision. How fine is his sentence about the unmusical song of the blackbirds! “The air is filled with crackling, splintering, spurting, semi-musical sounds which are like salt and pepper to the ear.” Here the poetic temperament finds an utterance far beyond the broad knowledge of nature.
And there is his fine appreciation of Walt Whitman, his grasp of literary values despite working in a comparatively smaller field of activity. John Burroughs has a good deal of Whitman about him, whom he called “the one mountain in our literary landscape.” The man of Riverby is not large of stature, but has the same nonchalance of deportment, the flowing beard, and the ruddy face, a few shades darker than that of the good gray poet; for Whitman was, after all, a city man, while Burroughs always lived his life out of doors.
We talked about the looks of Whitman, whom he had known in Washington in the sixties.
“Yes, he had a decided vitality, although he was already gray and bent at that time. Yes, he would talk if one could draw him out.”
“I believe he talked only for Traubel,”[46] I dryly remarked, at which Burroughs was greatly amused.
Emerson[47] was the god of Burroughs's youth, but Whitman undoubtedly exercised the more lasting influence. This, however, never touched Burroughs's own peculiar nature-fresh-and-homespun style. It lingered only as a vague inspiration in the under rhythm of his work. Whitman had the macrocosmic vision,[48] while Burroughs is an adherent of microcosm. Few can combine both qualities.
Burroughs is an amateur farmer and gardener. He prunes his cherrytrees, cures hay, and thinks of new methods of mowing grain. He experimented with grape-vines, a rather futile occupation at this period of social evolution. He has been a great cherry-picker all his life, and I remember with keen pleasure how delicious those wild raspberries tasted that I shared with him one summer day. He has a celery farm at Roxbury, his birthplace, and when I was last at Slabsides, his bungalow in the hills near West Park, I saw nothing but beets for cattle. I was astonished at this peculiar, indeed, prosaic pastime. And still more so that he had chosen for residence a site in a hollow of the mountain-side, while only a few steps above one can enjoy a most gorgeous view of the surrounding country. Did he make the selection because the place is more sheltered? No, I believe he chose the place intuitively, because it expresses his particular point of view of life. The keen breeze and the wide view serve only for occasional inspiration; but the undergrowth vegetation, the crust of soil, the hum of insects, the little flowers—these are the true stimulants of his eloquent simplicity of style.