CHAPTER XIII
THE ADIRONDACK CLUB—EMERSON AND AGASSIZ
In the main, our occupations were those of a vacation, to kill time and escape from the daily groove. Some took their guides and made exploration, by land or water; after breakfast there was firing at a mark, a few rounds each, for those who were riflemen; then, if venison was needed, we put the dog out on the hills; one boat went to overhaul the set lines baited the evening before for the lake trout. When the hunt was over we generally went out to paddle on the lake, Agassiz and Wyman to dredge or botanize or dissect the animals caught or killed; those of us who had interest in natural history watching the naturalists, the others searching the nooks and corners of the pretty sheet of water with its inlet brooks and its bays and recesses, or bathing from the rocks. Lunch was at midday, and then long talks, discussions de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis; and it was surprising to find how many subjects we found germane to our situation.
Emerson has told the daily life in verse in "The Adirondacs," adding his own impressions of the place and time. It is not generally considered among the most interesting of his poems, being a narrative with reflections, and such a subject could hardly rise above the interest of the subject of the narration, which was only a vacation study; but there are in it some passages which show the character of Emerson's intellect better than anything else he has written. His insight into nature, like that of the primitive mind as we find it in the Greek poetry, the instinctive investment of the great mother with the presence and attribute of personality, the re-creation from his own resources of Pan and the nature-powers, the groping about in that darkness of the primeval forest for the spiritual causes of the things he felt,—all this is to me evident in the poem; and it is the sufficient demonstration of the antique mould of his intellect, serene, open-eyed to natural phenomena, seeing beyond the veil they are, to the something beyond, but always questioning, hardly concluding, and with no theories to limit his thought or bend it to preconceived solutions. Knowing that all he saw in this undefiled natural world, this virgin mother of all life (for around Follansbee Pond, at the time we went, there was the primeval woodland, where the lumberer had not yet penetrated, and the grove kept still the immaculacy of the most ancient days), that all this was the mask of things, he was ever on the watch if perchance he might catch some hint of the secret,—secret never to be discovered, and therefore more passionately sought. This seems to me contained in "The Adirondacs" as in no other work of the philosopher. And to me the study of the great student was the dominant interest of the occasion. I was Agassiz's boatman on demand, for while all the others had their personal guides and attendants, I was his; but often when Emerson wanted a boat I managed to provide for Agassiz with one of the unoccupied guides, and take the place of Emerson's own guide. Thus Emerson and I had many hours alone on the lake and in the wood. He seemed to be a living question, perpetually interrogating his impressions of all that there was to be seen. The rest of us were always at the surface of things,—even the naturalists were only engaged with their anatomy; but Emerson in the forest, or looking at the sunset from the lake, seemed to be looking through the phenomena, studying them by their reflections on an inner speculum.
In such a great solitude, stripped of the social conventions and seeing men as they are, mind seems open to mind as it is quite impossible for it to be in society, even the most informal. Agassiz remarked, one day, when a little personal question had shown the limitations of character of one of the company, that he had always found in his Alpine experiences, when the company were living on terms of compulsory intimacy, that men found each other out quickly. And so we found it in the Adirondacks: disguises were soon dropped, and one saw the real characters of his comrades as it was impossible to see them in society. Conventions faded out, masks became transparent, and for good or for ill the man stood naked before the questioning eye,—pure personality. I think I gathered more insight into the character of my companions in our greener Arden, in the two or three weeks' meetings of the club, than all our lives in the city could have given me.
And Emerson was such a study as can but rarely be given any one. The crystalline limpidity of his character, free from all conventions, prejudices, or personal color, gave a facility for study of the man, limited only by the range of vision of the student. How far my vision was competent for this study is not for me to decide; so far as it went I profited, and so far as my experience of men goes he is unique, not so much from intellectual power, for I should be indisposed to accept his as the mind of the greatest calibre among those I have known, but as one of absolute transparency of intellect, perfect receptivity, and devotion to the truth. In the days of persecution and martyrdom Emerson would have gone to the stake smiling and undismayed, but questioning all the time, even as to the nature of his own emotions. It was this serene impassibility in his study of human nature which gave the common impression of his coldness,—an impression which is shown, by the anecdote I have elsewhere recorded of Longfellow, to have been shared by one who might have been supposed to know him well for years. But Emerson was not cold or disposed to make mere subjects of analysis of his friends, as Longfellow thought; he was an eager student of men as of nature, but superficial men he tired of and dropped, nothing being to be learned from them, though where he found what he looked for in a character he never tired of it. His friendships were of the most constant because of this temper, and it was only their serenity and almost impersonality that made them seem frigid to those whose temperament was widely different. Wrong, injustice to man or beast, roused his warmth in indignation,—he could be hot enough on occasion; though the quiet warmth of his affection for his friends was like the sun of May. But undoubtedly his greater passion was for the truth in whatever form he could find it.
Of all the mental experiences of my past life nothing else survives with the vividness of my summers in the Adirondacks with Emerson. The last sight I had of him was when, on his voyage to Egypt, he came to see me at my home in London, aged and showing the decay of age, but as alert and interrogative as ever with his insatiate intellectual activity. And as I look back from the distance of years to the days when we questioned together, he rises above all his contemporaries as Mont Blanc does above the intervening peaks when seen from afar, not the largest in mass, but loftiest in climb, soaring higher if not occupying the space of some of his companions, even in our little assemblies. Emerson was the best listener I ever knew, and at the other meeting-place where I saw him occasionally, the Saturday Club, his attention to what others were saying was far more notable than his disposition to enter into the discussions. Now and then he flashed out with a comment which lit up the subject as an electric spark might, but in general he shone unconsciously. I remember that one day when, at the club, we were discussing the nature of genius, some one turned to Emerson and asked him for a definition of the thing, and he instantly replied, "The faculty of generalizing from a single example;" and nobody at the table could give so good and concise a definition. There is a portrait of him by Rowse, who knew and loved him well, which renders this side of Emerson in a way that makes it the most remarkable piece of portraiture I know, the listening Emerson.
His insatiability in the study of human nature was shown curiously in our first summer's camp. He had the utmost tenderness of animal life and had no sympathy with sport in any form,—he "named the birds without a gun,"—and when we were making up the outfit for the outing he at first refused to take a rifle; but, as the discussion of make, calibre, and quality went on, and everybody else was provided, he at length decided, though no shot, to conform, and purchased a rifle. And when the routine of camp life brought the day of the hunt, the eagerness of the hunters and the passion of the chase, the strong return to our heredity of human primeval occupation gradually involved him, and made him desire to enter into this experience as well as the rest of the forest emotions. He must understand this passion to kill. One Sunday morning, when all the others went out for the drive of the deer,—necessary for the larder, as the drive the day before had failed,—Emerson asked me to take him out on the lake to some quiet place for meditation. We landed in a deep bay, where the seclusion was most complete, and he went into the woods to meditate. Presently we heard the baying of the hound as he circled round the lake, on the hillsides, for the deer at that season were reluctant to take to the water, and gave a long chase; and, as he listened, he began to take in the excitement of the hunters, and finally broke out abruptly, "Let us go after the deer;" and down the lake we went, flying at our best, but we arrived too late,—Lowell had killed the deer.
He said to me later, and emphatically, "I must kill a deer;" and one night we went out "jack-hunting" to enable him to realize that ambition. This kind of hunting, as most people know, is a species of pot-hunting, much employed by the hunters for the market, and so destructive to the deer that it is now forbidden by the law in all the Adirondack country. The deer are stalked by night along the shores, where they come in to feed, the hunter carrying in his boat a light so shaded that it illuminates only the space directly in front of the boat, the glare blinding the animal so that he does not see the boat or the boatman. In this way the deer may be approached within a few yards if the paddler is skillful; but as he stands perfectly still, and is difficult to see in the dim light, the tyro generally misses him. We paddled up to within twenty yards of a buck, and the guide gave the signal to shoot; but Emerson could see nothing resembling a deer, and finally the creature took fright and ran, and all we got of him was the sound of galloping hoofs as he sped away, stopping a moment, when at a safe distance, to snort at the intruders, and then off again. We kept on, and presently came upon another, toward which we drifted even nearer than to the first one, and still Emerson could see nothing to distinguish the deer from the boulders among which he stood; and we were scarcely the boat's length from him, when, Emerson being still unable to see him, and not caring to run the risk of losing him, for we had no venison in camp and the luck of the morning drive was always uncertain, I shot him. We had no other opportunity for the "jack-hunt," and so Emerson went home unsatisfied in this ambition,—glad, no doubt, when he recalled the incident, that he had failed.
The guides—rude men of the woods, rough and illiterate, but with all their physical faculties at a maximum acuteness, senses on the alert and keen as no townsman could comprehend them—were Emerson's avid study. This he had never seen,—the man at his simplest terms, unsophisticated, and, to him, the nearest approach to the primitive savage he would ever be able to examine; and he studied every action. When the dinner was over, and the twilight coming on, he sometimes asked me to row him out on the lake to see the nightfall and watch the "procession of the pines," that weird and ghostly phenomenon I have before alluded to.