Part 16

When his floor was dirty, he merely set all his furniture out of doors on the grass, dashed water on the floor of his hut and sprinkled it with white sand, and then with a broom swept it clean. By the time other people were just getting up his house was dry again and his work finished.

The first year at Walden he worked a great deal in his garden. Then he had his cooking to do, and he studied very carefully the art of making bread, baking it at first out of doors on the end of a stick of timber over an open fire. He made experiments and discoveries with foods, cooking odd wild plants and weeds. He proved that a man in that land could support himself on what he grew. He could, for instance, grow his own rye and Indian corn and grind them in a hand-mill, and sugar he could extract from beet and pumpkins or from maples, which abound in that country. You could avoid, he said, going to any shops at all, and he was sure that to maintain yourself on the earth simply and wisely was not a hardship at all, but a pleasure.

Sometimes during this first year Thoreau did nothing at all but sit in his doorway dreaming, quite undisturbed and in silence, except for the flittering and twittering of birds. He would not realize how the time had flown until he saw the sunlight lighting up his west window, or heard the sound of some horse and wagon in the distance going home to rest. He did not feel this to be a waste of time, for he seemed, he said, to grow under these conditions like the corn in the night.

Not very far from where he lived was a railway line, and a train would pass at certain intervals. In spite of his love of solitude Thoreau liked the sound of it, and the whistle of the engine he likened to the cry of a hawk. He would listen to the passage of the moving train with the same feeling he had about the rising sun. It was so punctual and regular, and when the train had passed with its clang and clatter Thoreau felt more alone than ever, for it had made him feel the peacefulness and contrast of his own solitary yet not lonely life. On Sundays he would listen to the bells of distant towns, when the wind was in the right direction—the sounds would come floating faint and sweet over the trees, as if it were the music of the woods: so Thoreau describes it.

In the warm summer evenings he would spend a good deal of time in his boat, playing the flute and watching the fish. He would make echoes by smacking the water with his paddle till every corner of the wooded hills cried and answered him. Sometimes he would fish at midnight to get something for his next day’s dinner, and he would listen to the owls he loved so much, and to the foxes crying, or to the call of some mysterious night-birds; and the fish he describes as dimpling the moonlit surface of the water with their tails.

His days passed probably very quickly—if you are contented and happy the day is all too short. Thoreau said he hadn’t got to look for amusement anywhere, as his life had become his amusement, it was so real and full of interest. But he did not cut himself off from people altogether. Sometimes he would go to the village to hear some talk. He usually went in the evening, and he liked to stay very late there, especially when it was dark and stormy, because it was so pleasant to leave some bright, warm village room and to go out into the black night to find his harbor in the woods. He did not mind how wild the weather was—in fact, he preferred it wild and often faced severe storms. Those who have never been in the woods by night have no idea how dark they can be. They would frighten and bewilder most people, but not Thoreau. He would feel his way with his feet on the faint track he had worn, or he would steer with his hands, feeling particular trees and passing between two pines, perhaps not more than eighteen inches apart; or he might sometimes guess his whereabouts by seeing a piece of light above him—a glimpse of the sky through a well-remembered break in the trees. One can understand the satisfactory and joyful feeling of reaching at last the little hut, always unlocked and open to any traveler who cared to enter. When Thoreau went away for a time he left it thus, hoping that some wayfarer might care to enter, to sit in his chair and read the few books which lay on his table.

In October, Thoreau collected his stores for the winter. He would go a-graping, but this, he says, more for the beauty of the grapes than for any nourishment they gave him, and he would get wild apples and store them, and principally he would make expeditions to the chestnut woods, to get chestnuts, which are a good substitute for bread. He would have a sack on his back and a stick in his hand with which to open the prickly burrs, and as he gathered them up the squirrels and jays called angrily to him for taking any of their food. Thoreau also discovered, while digging the ground near, a sort of potato used by the first peoples who lived in America; it had a sweetish taste like a frostbitten potato.

When visitors called on Thoreau, which they did sometimes, he describes the manner in which, if he were out, they would leave their cards—either a bunch of flowers, a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow leaf or chip. If he had friends in summer days he took them into his best room, or drawing-room, which was the pine wood behind his house. Travelers did sometimes come out of their way to see Thoreau, having heard of the strange man living in the woods, and they were curious to see him and the inside of his hut. They would make an excuse for calling by asking for a glass of water, and Thoreau would direct them to the pond, where he always drank himself, and hand them a cup. It interested him to observe the effect the woods and solitude had on people. Girls and boys and young women, he said, seemed very happy to be there, but men, even farmers, thought only of the loneliness and how far it was from somewhere, adding that of course they enjoyed a ramble in the woods.

In November of the first year he was at Walden, Thoreau built his chimney, having studied masonry, and he lingered about the fire-place of his house, as being, he says, the most important part of a house. Then he plastered the hut in freezing weather, fetching the sand for the purpose from the shore below. Then, he says, “I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.” When he had finished this work the pond was frozen and snow covered the ground. Thoreau, happy and serene, retired still further into his shell, keeping a bright fire in his house and within his breast. All this time he wrote a good deal, and his employment out of doors was to collect dead wood and to drag it into his shed. He loved his woodpile, and would build it where he could see it in front of his window. For many weeks in the snow Thoreau would spend cheerful evenings by his fireside, and no visitors would come to the woods—only woodmen came occasionally to cut and take wood on sleds back to the village. But no weather interfered with Thoreau’s walks. He managed to make a little pathway by always treading on the same track, and he would go thus in deepest snow to keep, as he expressed it, an appointment with an old beech-tree or a birch, or an old friend among the pines. His descriptions of winter in the woods are perhaps more fascinating and romantic than any other part of his “Walden,” and he tells of the wonders of the coming spring, the gradual melting of the ice, the longer days, the note of some arriving bird.

His second year at Walden was, he said, the same as the first, and when he left it in September he had lived there rather over two years. He left, he said, for as good a reason as he entered it. He does not tell the reason, but it was an unselfish one. His father had died, and his relations needed some one to work for them and to make a little money; so, much as he hated it, as we know he must have done, he returned to the world to make pencils and to write and to lecture till the end of his life.

When Thoreau emerged from his seclusion, you can imagine the questions he was asked by curious people who wanted to know all about it. Why did he do it; wasn’t he lonely; what did he do with himself; what did he eat? So he decided to publish an account of his experiment, filling out the diary he had written daily at Walden, and giving his reasons for his retirement and the conclusions he had formed about life and the world through his experiment. He learned, he tells us, that if you have a dream or some sort of idea of what a perfect life should be, or anyhow the life that appears to you to be the most lovely, the most useful, or the most satisfactory, you should advance quite confidently in that direction—that is to say, in the direction of your dreams; and that if you do this you will meet with a great deal of success. Also, that in proportion as you simplify your life the world will appear less complicated, you will be less poor and less lonely; the simple natural things will never fail to interest you, your requirements will be few, and your life full of enjoyment. Instead of three meals a day, eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce everything in proportion. Life, says Thoreau, is simply frittered away by detail. And about clothes—Thoreau describes how he asked his acquaintances if they would appear with a neat patch on their trousers, and most of them thought they would be disgraced for life. Apparently, Thoreau says, they would rather have a broken leg than a trouser with a rent in it. It is certain that a man’s clothes are more important to some people than the man himself, and all these things, to one who lives a natural life, appear almost too absurd to be tolerated; and Thoreau, I think, did a useful work in drawing attention to these fallacies, which we are all inclined to take as a matter of course.

But Thoreau, because he went into the woods to live alone, did not wish every one to do so; indeed, he thought there should be as many different kinds of people in the world as possible. What he wanted people to do was to find out for themselves the best thing for themselves, and not necessarily to follow in the footsteps of their fathers and mothers and friends, to be Republicans because these were Republicans or Democrats because they were Democrats, to think as they did and to live as they did without giving any thought at all to it. He wanted people to have the courage to experiment and to take risks. But he did not wish to make rules for strong, courageous natures, nor did he wish to alter the way of living of those who found encouragement and happiness in their present manner of life. He did not speak at all to those who were well employed, but he did want to help people who complained, who were discontented and saw life as a desert, dull and joyless and without hope. He had in his head chiefly what he calls “that seemingly wealthy but most terribly impoverished class of all,” the people who have accumulated money and property and so have forged their own gold and silver fetters. He was tremendously scornful about the rich, and perhaps not pitiful enough. On the other hand, everything he has said against the possession of money and the futility of luxury is so perfectly reasonable and true and without any exaggeration, that no arguments can really be found to meet him. A good many of us admit that riches do not bring happiness, and that they undoubtedly increase our responsibilities and make us less free, but we all fail to act up to our beliefs, and continue to wish for more money in order to have a larger house, more servants, more clothes—and thus, as Thoreau says, we become “the tools of our tools” and the slaves of our own helpers and servants; in fact, these things are a hindrance to our development. “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.” This is one of Thoreau’s maxims. It was certainly easier for Thoreau than for some to live a perfectly natural life in the woods. He had not been brought up in luxury. What he named luxuries we most of us call comforts. He was frugal by training as well as by inclination. Therefore in criticizing as he did the life that is led by most people in the world he was not very generous, because he had never felt their temptations. He was, some have thought, hardly human. In fact, he had very few weaknesses, and to be almost perfect is not a very attractive quality. We like to find imperfections in people and faults like our own. Thoreau was very little troubled by indecisions or doubts as to whether a thing was right or wrong for himself. He was quite sure of what he wanted; he went to look for it, and he found it. He was determined to improve himself, to be good and to be happy, and he succeeded. Even when he was dying of consumption he said in a letter he was enjoying existence as much as ever. When he believed in things he believed in them wholly, and principally he believed in the invigorating power of nature. He loved books; he loved writing and wood-cutting and walks in the country. He has written a delightful essay on walking, and has told us that he wrote in proportion to his rambles—if he was shut up indoors he could not write at all. He liked, too, association with simple, genuine people who were spending their lives in the open—fishermen, woodmen, and sometimes farmers—so that it cannot be said that he was a misanthropist—one who hates his fellow-creatures; if they were real and natural he enjoyed them and cared for them, but he had not got to depend on human beings for his entertainment. His interests and resources lay within himself, and he could always fall back on nature. “You may,” he says, “have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode. The snow melts before its door as early in the spring.”

Thoreau’s enjoyment was calm and level. From his writings we do not gather that he was ever desperately unhappy, unless it was perhaps in a crowded street or in a luxurious drawing-room. He did mind very much the struggle and bustle, the ugliness of city life and all it stands for. It had a bad, cramping effect upon him, and he shunned it. Once back again in his woods and fields, his whole nature expanded. On cheerless, bleak days, when he was out of doors and the villagers would be thinking of their inn, he would, he says, come to himself and feel himself to be part of it all. “This cold and solitude are friends of mine.” In the country and alone he would see things as they are, “grand and beautiful,” and forget “all trivial men and things.” The stillness and solitude inspired him. His brain and mind worked and his nerves were steadied.

To some, Thoreau appeared to have a cold personality. One man said of him he would as soon think of taking his arm as taking the arm of an elm-tree. “You could not,” said Carlyle, “nestle up to him.” There are others who put a man down as a coward if he runs away from the world as it is, and does not face it and make the best of it. On this question there must always be a good deal of dispute, but it is really rather an absurd thing to argue about, because we are all made so differently. What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison. One person may not physically be able to stand a certain climate, but finds another to suit him, and so, as regards a man’s nature, he must discover how he may make the best of himself in order to develop his character and disposition. Thoreau’s argument was that if you cannot put a great proportion of your powers and enthusiasm into what you are doing, it is not of much use to yourself or mankind. He valued a man’s work in proportion to how much it enlarged and improved his soul.

To those who remain to fight in the hurly-burly while saying they dislike it, it probably has some bracing quality of which they are conscious, but Thoreau, as we have seen, felt himself in the streets to be “cheap and mean.” So he helped in his own way. To have forced him to sit on an office stool or to have a regular profession would have been a crime. If he had been more conventional and less peculiar, “Walden” would never have been written. Besides, he saw for what futile and ignoble reasons men chose their professions; sometimes not even because they had to make a living or to keep a wife and children, but for the sake of having expensive cigars and wines, a man-servant or a large house; and for these things, he observed, people will toil and make others toil at some stupid or sordid work, leaving themselves no time for thought, for true friendship, or for the enjoyment of books or nature or any real things. “There is no more fatal blunderer,” says Thoreau, “than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.” He calculated for himself that six weeks’ work would bring him in all the money he required to live. So that the whole of his winter and most of his summer would be free for study and enjoyment of country life. But it must not be thought that Thoreau was lazy or had never worked himself. In early days he had perfected himself in the craft of pencil-making and surveying. He had also worked very hard at his writing. He had learned industry, and in everything that he did he showed a peculiar thoroughness and skill.

If we want to find fault with Thoreau, it must be that he was perhaps too bent on improving himself. Thoreau and Emerson both believed very strongly in the importance of making oneself more interesting. Thoreau had a corresponding horror of consciously _doing good_ to people, and of philanthropy generally. “Philanthropy,” he says, “is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind”; and again, “If you give money spend yourself with it. Do not merely abandon it to them” (the poor).

There are those who accuse Thoreau of being odd on purpose, and speak of his writing as paradoxical. It is much more likely that we who are doing and thinking exactly like our neighbors, without thinking if it is a good thing in itself, are the odd ones, or rather the lazy ones, because we cannot be bothered to disagree, to incur the disapproval of our friends, or to have them laughing at us. Emerson said that in life you must choose between Truth and Repose. By repose he means that you swallow your convictions for the sake of a quiet life—that you act always with the majority, or largest number of people, and shout with the biggest crowd. It is very comfortable to have people agreeing with you, and to live at ease and in accord with your neighbors, but to do this you must make up your mind to think very little and never to have a cause too much at heart, or you will be sure to offend somebody. You must shut your eyes to the horrors of war, of poverty, of hungry children, and say it is no use bothering or criticizing, as these things cannot be remedied. The man who says they can be remedied is often looked upon with suspicion or contempt, and even anger. All the greatest men and women have given their allegiance to truth, as we know by reading history. Thoreau was one of these. He lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when people were no longer sent to the stake for holding independent views, but they were made, as they still are now, to suffer all the same. Thoreau, like Garrison and Tolstoy and others of our heroes, thought that conscience should be above the State, and that men should be men first and subjects afterwards. But he was much more consistent than most people. He put himself to a great deal of trouble to carry out his principles. It was not enough for him to preach against the things he disapproved of—he lived and acted his disapproval. He pleaded in public for John Brown when he was condemned to death, and went to prison for a night for refusing to pay a tax in support of what he considered an unjust war. He did not enjoy this; it was a trouble and a bother, but Thoreau did what he thought right.

His was a pure and courageous spirit; he never said a thing for the sake of pleasing, and he saw with a clear, unprejudiced eye the futility, the stupidity, the waste of energy, and the sadness of much we have come to look upon as part of existence itself. But Thoreau was always, to the end of his rather short life, full of hope and trust. He would set about improving things by improving himself. His greatness lay in his originality and independence of character. He thrashed out questions for himself, and threw a fresh and illuminating light on them. He was a rebel in his quiet way, as Garibaldi or Cromwell were rebels on the field of battle.

XII

TOLSTOY

1828–1910

The true life is the common life of all—not the life of the one. All must labor for the life of others.

Tolstoy, one of the greatest novelists and the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, was a Russian.

His father, Count Nicholas Tolstoy, and his mother, Princess Marie Volkonsky, were both aristocrats, whose ancestors had been well known and important people for some generations.

Yasnaya Polyana (which means “Bright Glade”), where Leo Tolstoy was born, belonged to his mother. It was a very pretty place, and consisted of a large wooden house surrounded by woods and avenues of lime-trees, and with a river and four lakes and a lot of property belonging to it.

Tolstoy’s mother died when he was a year and a half old, so he could not remember her; but all he heard about her made him love her memory. He tells us that she appeared to him as “a creature so elevated, fine, and spiritual,” that often, during his struggles to be good and overcome temptation, he prayed to her soul to help him, and that such prayer always did. She seems to have been a gifted and delightful woman, speaking five languages and playing the piano exceptionally well. She had a gift for telling stories too. At balls, it is said, her young girl-friends would leave the dance and gather together in a dark room to hear her tell a story, for the Princess had to have the room darkened or she felt shy.

Tolstoy’s mother was hot-tempered, yet self-controlled. She was generous and hardly ever condemned anybody, and she was very truthful. Her son Leo inherited many of her qualities.

Tolstoy lost his father when he was nine years old, but he remembered him quite well, and writes of him as a good, conscientious man, who spent his life looking after his estate, not very cleverly, but who was especially humane and kind for those days, as he never beat his serfs and was considered lacking in firmness. He was, however, an independent-minded man, who refused to bow down before the will of the Russian Government: indeed, he refused always to serve under it. Tolstoy had a great love and admiration for his father, but nothing like the feeling he had for the memory of his mother.

Tolstoy and his three brothers and a sister were brought up at Yasnaya Polyana by a distant relative, whom they called Aunt Tatiana. She was rather a remarkable character, and Leo was devoted to her. He tells us she greatly helped to form his character. Writing about her, he says: “Aunt Tatiana had the greatest influence on my life. From earliest childhood she taught me the spiritual delight of love. She taught me this joy not by words, but by her whole being she filled me with love. I saw, _I felt_ how she enjoyed loving, and I understood the joy of love. This was the first thing. Secondly, she taught me the delights of an unhurried, quiet life.”