Thoreau in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

From “Sketch of Henry D. Thoreau” (1902)

[171] UT From “Sketch of Henry D. Thoreau” (1902) Daniel Ricketson Daniel Ricketson (1813–1898), a wealthy Quaker and abolitionist from New Bedford, first met Thoreau after becoming enamored of Walden and inviting him to visit. A minor author, Ricketson published a few books, including A History of New Bedford, New Bedford of the Past, and two collections of poems, An Autumn Sheaf and Factory Bell and Other Poems. Like Thoreau, Ricketson was a nonconformist. As a young man, he had studied law, but his primary interest became establishing a literary and solitary life. To that end he settled with his wife and family on a small farm near New Bedford, where, inspired by Thoreau, he eventually built a “shanty” on the back of his property. There he often entertained Thoreau as well as their mutual friends Ellery Channing and Bronson Alcott. At Ricketson’s urging, Thoreau had his ambrotype taken during a visit to New Bedford in the summer of 1861, the year before he died. The gaunt image pleased Sophia Thoreau, who regarded it as “one of the most successful likenesses we ever saw” (qtd. in Harding, Days, 452). Ricketson’s detailed sketch, composed as it is by a close friend of Thoreau’s and ardent devotee of his ideas, is especially valuable. “Thoreau” My first interview with him was so peculiar that I will venture to state it. The season was winter, a snow had lately fallen, and I was engaged in shovelling the accumulated mass from the entrance to my house, when I perceived a man walking towards me bearing an umbrella in one hand and a leather travelling-bag in the other. So unlike my ideal Thoreau, whom I had fancied, from the robust nature of his mind and habits of life, to be a man of unusual vigor and size, that I did not suspect, although I had expected him in the morning, that the slight, quaint-looking person before me was the Walden philosopher. There are few persons who had previously read his works that were not disappointed by his personal appearance. As he came near to me I gave him the usual salutation, and supposing him to be either a pedler or some way-traveller, he at once remarked, “You don’t know me.” thoreau in his own time [172] The truth flashed on my mind, and concealing my own surprise I at once took him by the hand and led him to the room already prepared for him, feeling a kind of disappointment—a disappointment, however, which soon passed off, and never again obtruded itself to the philosopher’s disadvantage . In fact, I soon began to see that Nature had dealt kindly by him, and that this apparently slender personage was physically capable of enduring far more than the ordinary class of men, although he had then begun to show signs of failure of strength in his knees. “Henry D. Thoreau” The names of Thoreau and Emerson are not properly placed together on account of any great similarity in the character of the two men; yet from some cause, probably from their being fellow-townsmen more than any other, they are in many minds associated as of the same class. Although Thoreau was many years younger than Emerson, his mind was equally as mature, and I place his name first out of respect to the dead. While Emerson is the product of New England institutions, the ripest fruit and the best specimen, perhaps, Thoreau is one of those remarkable instances of wisdom and philosophy that grow out, as it were, of the order of nature, and may be born in any age or nation. They who drink at the fountain-head of knowledge and truth need not the artificial training of the schools. Still Henry Thoreau had the best advantages of New England in his education. He was a graduate of Harvard College, a good classical scholar, well versed in the mathematics, had been a teacher of youth, and a land surveyor in his own town, which brought him into an intimate acquaintance with the topography of the surrounding country. He was an excellent naturalist, particularly in his knowledge of plants and birds. In fact, nothing escaped his notice or interest. He was, indeed, a most consummate observer and recorder of the works of nature and the ways of men. It was my privilege to know him during the last eight years of his life, when in the full maturity of...