The Vagabond in Literature Part 8

"The wonderful purity of Nature at this season is a most pleasing fact. Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rush of the dead leaves of autumn are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields and trickling woods see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it; and accordingly whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of st.u.r.dy innocence, a Puritan toughness."

But Th.o.r.eau's pleasant gossips about the woods in Maine, or on the Concord River, would pall after a time were they not interspersed with larger utterances and with suggestive ill.u.s.trations from the Books of the East. Merely considered as "poet-naturalist" he cannot rank with Gilbert White for quaint simplicity, nor have his discursive essays the full, rich note that we find in Richard Jefferies. That his writings show a sensitive imagination as well as a quick observation the above extracts will show. But unfortunately he had contracted a bad attack of Emersonitis, from which as literary writer he never completely recovered.

Salutary as Emerson was to Th.o.r.eau as an intellectual irritant, he was the last man in the world for the discursive Th.o.r.eau to take as a literary model.

Many fine pa.s.sages in his writings are spoiled by vocal imitations of the "voice oracular," which is the more annoying inasmuch as Th.o.r.eau was no weak replica of Emerson intellectually, showing in some respects indeed a firmer grasp of the realities of life. But for some reason or other he grew enamoured of certain Emersonian mannerisms, which he used whenever he felt inclined to fire off a plat.i.tude. Sometimes he does it so well that it is hard to distinguish the disciple from his master. Thus:-

"How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not a seedtime of character?"

Again:-

"Only he can be trusted with goods who can present a face of bronze to expectations."

Unimpeachable in sentiment, but too obviously inspired for us to view them with satisfaction. And Th.o.r.eau at his best is so fresh, so original, that we decline to be put off with literary imitations, however excellently done.

And thus it is that Th.o.r.eau has been too often regarded as a mere disciple of Emerson. For this he cannot altogether escape blame, but the student will soon detect the superficiality of the criticism, and see the genuine Th.o.r.eau beneath the Emersonian veneer.

Th.o.r.eau lacked the integrating genius of Emerson, on the one hand, yet possessed an eye for concrete facts which the master certainly lacked.

His strength, therefore, lay in another direction, and where Th.o.r.eau is seen at his best is where he is dealing with the concrete experiences of life, ill.u.s.trating them from his wide and discursive knowledge of Indian character and Oriental modes of thought.

III

Insufficient attention has been paid, I think, to Th.o.r.eau's sympathy with the Indian character and his knowledge of their ways.

The Indians were to Th.o.r.eau what the gypsies were to Borrow. Appealing to certain spiritual affinities in the men's natures, they revealed their own temperaments to them, enabling them to see the distinctiveness of their powers. Th.o.r.eau was never quite able to give this intimate knowledge such happy literary expression as Borrow. Apprehending the peculiar charm, the power and limitations of the Indian character, appreciating its philosophical value, he lacked the picturesque pen of Borrow to visualize this for the reader.

A lover of Indian relics from his childhood, he followed the Indians into their haunts, and conversed with them frequently. Some of the most interesting pa.s.sages he has written detail conversations with them. One feels he knew and understood them; and they no less understood him, and talked with him as they certainly would not have done with any other white man. But one would have liked to have heard much more about them.

If only Th.o.r.eau could have given us an Indian Petulengro, how interesting it would have been!

But, like the Indian, there was a reserve and impenetrability about Th.o.r.eau which prevented him from ever becoming really confidential in print. If he had but unbended more frequently, and not sifted his thought so conscientiously before he gave us the benefit of it, he would certainly have appealed to our affections far more than he does.

One feels in comparing his writings with the accounts of him by friends how much that was interesting in the man remains unexpressed in terms of literature. Partly this is due, no doubt, to his being tormented with the idea of self-education that he had learnt from Emerson. In a philosopher and moralist self-education is all very well. But in a naturalist and in a writer with so much of the Vagabond about him as Th.o.r.eau this sensitiveness about self-culture, this anxiety to eliminate all the temperamental tares, is blameworthy.

The care he took to eliminate the lighter element in his work-the flash of wit, the jocose aside-a care which pursued him to the last, seems to show that he too often mistook gravity for seriousness. Like Dr. Watts'

bee (which is not Maeterlinck's) he "improved the s.h.i.+ning hour," instead of allowing the s.h.i.+ning hour to carry with it its own improvement, none the less potent for being unformulated. But beside the Emersonian influence, there is the Puritan strain in Th.o.r.eau's nature, which must not be overlooked. No doubt it also is partly accountable for his literary silences and austere moods.

To revert to the Indians.

If Th.o.r.eau does not deal dramatically with his Indians, yet he had much that is interesting and suggestive to say about them. These are some pa.s.sages from _A Week on the Concord_:-

"We talk of civilizing the Indians, but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest-life he preserves his intercourse with his native G.o.ds, and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has glances of starry recognition to which our salons are strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. .

. . We would not always be soothing and taming Nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo. The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something n.o.ble and cleanly in the former's distance. In civilization, as in a southern lat.i.tude, man degenerates at length and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes.

'Some nations yet shut in With hills of ice.'

"There are other savager and more primeval aspects of Nature than our poets have sung. It is only white man's poetry-Homer and Ossian even can never revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how these cities are refreshed by the mere tradition or the imperfectly transmitted fragrance and flavour of these wild fruits. If one could listen but for an instant to the chant of the Indian muse, we should understand why he will not exchange his savageness for civilization.

Nations are not whimsical. Steel and blankets are strong temptations, but the Indian does well to continue Indian."

These are no empty generalizations, but the comments of a man who has observed closely and sympathetically. All of Th.o.r.eau's references to Indian life merit the closest attention. For, as I have said, they help to explain the man himself. He had a sufficient touch of wildness to be able to detach himself from the civilized man's point of view. Hence the life of the woods came so naturally to him. The luxuries, the excitements, that mean so much to some, Th.o.r.eau pa.s.sed by indifferently.

There is much talk to-day of "the simple life," and the phrase has become tainted with affectation. Often it means nothing more than a pa.s.sing fad on the part of overfed society people who are anxious for a new sensation. A fad with a moral flavour about it will always commend itself to a certain section. Certainly it is quite innocuous, but, on the other hand, it is quite superficial. There is no real intention of living a simple life any more than there is any deep resolve on the part of the man who takes the Waters annually to abstain in the future from over-eating. But with Th.o.r.eau the simple life was a vital reality. He was not devoid of American self-consciousness, and perhaps he pats himself on the back for his healthy tastes more often than we should like. But of his fundamental sincerity there can be no question.

He saw even more clearly than Emerson the futility and debilitating effect of extravagance and luxury-especially American luxury. And his whole life was an indignant protest.

Yet it is a mistake to think (as some do) that he favoured a kind of Rousseau-like "Return to Nature," without any regard to the conventions of civilization. "It is not," he states emphatically, "for a man to put himself in opposition to society, but to maintain himself in whatever att.i.tude he finds himself through obedience to the laws of his own being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one."

This is not the language of a crank, or the words of a man who, as Lowell unfairly said, seemed "to insist in public in going back to flint and steel when there is a match-box in his pocket."

Lowell's criticism of Th.o.r.eau, indeed, is quite wide of the mark. It a.s.sumes throughout that Th.o.r.eau aimed at "an entire independence of mankind," when Th.o.r.eau himself repeatedly says that he aimed at nothing of the sort. He made an experiment for the purpose of seeing what a simple, frugal, open-air life would do for him. The experiment being made, he returned quietly to the conditions of ordinary life. But he did not lack self-a.s.surance, and his frank satisfaction with the results of his experiment was not altogether pleasing to those who had scant sympathy with his pa.s.sion for the Earth.

To be quite fair to Lowell and other hostile critics one must admit that, genuine as Th.o.r.eau was, he had the habit common to all self-contained and self-opiniated men of talking at times as though his very idiosyncrasies were rules of conduct imperative upon others. His theory of life was sound enough, his demand for simple modes of living, for a closer communion with Nature, for a more sympathetic understanding of the "brute creation," were reasonable beyond question. But the Emersonian mannerism (which gives an appearance of dogmatism, when no dogmatism is intended) starts up from time to time and gives the reader the impression that the path to salvation traverses Walden, all other paths being negligible, and that you cannot attain perfection unless you keep a pet squirrel.

But if a sentence here and there has an annoying flavour of complacent dogmatism, and if the note of self-a.s.sertion grows too loud on occasion for our sensitive ears, {102} yet his life and writings considered as a whole do not a.s.suredly favour verdicts so unfavourable as those of Lowell and Stevenson.

Swagger and exaggeration may be irritating, but after all the important thing is whether a man has anything to swagger about, whether the case which he exaggerates is at heart sane and just.

Every Vagabond swaggers because he is an egotist more or less, and relishes keenly the life he has mapped out for himself. But the swagger is of the harmless kind; it is not really offensive; it is a sort of childish exuberance that plays over the surface of his mind, without injuring it, the harmless vanity of one who having escaped from the schoolhouse of convention congratulates himself on his good luck.

Swagger of this order you will find in the writings even of that quiet, una.s.suming little man De Quincey. Hazlitt had no small measure of it, and certainly it meets us in the company of Borrow. It is very noticeable in Whitman-far more so than in Th.o.r.eau. Why then does this quality tend to exasperate more when we find it in _Walden_? Why has Th.o.r.eau's sincerity been impugned and Whitman escaped? Why are Th.o.r.eau's mannerisms greeted with angry frowns, and the mannerisms, say of Borrow, regarded with good-humoured intolerance? Chiefly, I think, because of Th.o.r.eau's desperate efforts to justify his healthy Vagabondage by Emersonian formulas.

I am not speaking of his sane and comprehensive philosophy of life. The Vagabond has his philosophy of life no less than the moralist, though as a rule he is content to let it lie implicit in his writings, and is not anxious to turn it into a gospel. But he did not always realize the difference between moral characteristics and temperamental peculiarities, and many of his admirers have done him ill service by trying to make of his very Vagabondage (admirable enough in its way) a rule of faith for all and sundry. Indeed, I think that much of the resentment expressed against Th.o.r.eau by level-headed critics is due to the unwise eulogy of friends.

Th.o.r.eau has become an object of wors.h.i.+p to the crank, and in our annoyance with the crank-who is often a genuine reformer dest.i.tute of humour-we are apt to jumble up devotee and idol together. Idol-wors.h.i.+p never does any good to the idol.

IV

As a thinker Th.o.r.eau is suggestive and stimulating, except when he tries to systematize. Naturally I think he had a discursive and inquisitive, rather than a profound and a.n.a.lytical mind. He was in sympathy with Eastern modes of regarding life; and the pantheistic tendency of his religious thought, especially his care and reverence for all forms of life, suggest the devout Buddhist. The varied references scattered throughout his writings to the Sacred Books of the East show how Orientalism affected him.

Herein we touch upon the most attractive side of the man; for it is this Orientalism, I think, in his nature that explains his regard for, and his sympathy with, the birds and animals.

The tenderness of the Buddhist towards the lower creation is not due to sentimentalism, nor is it necessarily a sign of sensitiveness of feeling.

In his profoundly interesting study of the Burmese people Mr. Fielding Hall has summed up admirably the teaching of Buddha: "Be in love with all things, not only with your fellows, but with the whole world, with every creature that walks the earth, with the birds in the air, with the insects in the gra.s.s. All life is akin to man." The oneness of life is realized by the Eastern as it seldom is by the Western. The love that stirs in your heart kindled the flower into beauty, and broods in the great silent pools of the forest.

But Nature is not always kind. That he cannot help feeling. She inspires fear as well as love. She scatters peace and consolation, but can scatter also pain and death. All forms of life are more or less sacred. The creatures of the forest whose ferocity and cunning are manifest, may they not be inhabited by some human spirit that has misused his opportunities in life? Thus they have an affinity with us, and are signs of what we may become.

And if a measure of sacredness attaches to all life, however unfriendly and harmful it may seem, the gentler forms of life are especially to be objects of reverence and affection.

In one particular, however, Th.o.r.eau's att.i.tude towards the earth and all that therein is differed from the Buddhist, inasmuch as the fear that enters into the Eastern's Earth-wors.h.i.+p was entirely purged from his mind. Mr. Page has inst.i.tuted a suggestive comparison between Th.o.r.eau and St. Francis d'a.s.sisi. Certainly the rare magnetic attraction which Th.o.r.eau seemed to have exercised over his "brute friends" was quite as remarkable as the power attributed to St. Francis, and it is true to say that in both cases the sympathy for animals is constantly justified by a reference to a dim but real brotherhood. The brutes are "undeveloped men"; they await their transformation and stand on their defence; and it is very easy to see that inseparably bound up with this view there are certain elements of mysticism common to the early saint and the American "hut builder." {106}

And yet, perhaps, Mr. Page presses the a.n.a.logy between the medieval saint and the American "poet-naturalist" too far. St. Francis had an ardent, pa.s.sionate nature, and whether leading a life of dissipation or tending to the poor, there is about him a royal impulsiveness, a pa.s.sionate abandonment, pointing to a temperament far removed from Th.o.r.eau's.

Prodigal in his charities, riotous in his very austerities, his tenderness towards the animals seems like the overflowing of a finely sensitive and artistic nature. With Th.o.r.eau one feels in the presence of a more tranquil, more self-contained spirit; his affection is the affection of a kindly scientist who is intensely interested in the ways and habits of birds, beasts, and fishes; one who does not give them the surplus of the love he bears towards his fellow-men so much as a care and love which he does not extend so freely towards his fellows. I do not mean that he was apathetic, especially when his fellow-creatures were in trouble; his eloquent defence of John Brown, his kindliness towards simple folk, are sufficient testimony on this score. But on the whole his interest in men and women was an abstract kind of interest; he showed none of the personal curiosity and eager inquisitiveness about them that he showed towards the denizens of the woods and streams. And if you are not heartily interested in your fellow-men you will not love them very deeply.

I am not sure that Hawthorne was so far out in his characterization "Donatello"-the creature half-animal, half-man, which he says was suggested by Th.o.r.eau. It does not pretend to realize all his characteristics, nor do justice to his fine qualities. None the less in its picture of a man with a flavour of the wild and untameable about him-whose uncivilized nature brings him into a close and vital intimacy with the animal world, we detect a real psychological affinity with Th.o.r.eau. May not Th.o.r.eau's energetic rebukes of the evils of civilization have received an added zest from his instinctive repugnance to many of the civilized amenities valued by the majority?