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

[Considerations of Thoreau’s Death, 1862]

[45] UT [Considerations of Thoreau’s Death, 1862] Sophia E. Thoreau, Caroline Wells Healey Dall, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, and Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley Thoreau’s death on 6 May 1862 inspired poignant letters by activist and author Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822–1912), artist and neighbor Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809–1871), friend and neighbor Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (1793–1867), and Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau (1819–1876), the youngest of the four Thoreau children and the only sibling to outlive Henry. A teacher and an abolitionist, Sophia Thoreau shared her brother’s interests in social reform and in natural history. Together, they collected botanical specimens, which she carefully identified and preserved in scrapbooks. Author Irving Allen describes Sophia as sharing with her brother “a certain weight and gravity of thought and utterance”; he calls attention especially to sister and brother as “pre-eminent and sincere reformers in an era and an atmosphere where reformers were radical by a sort of necessity of environment ” (“American Women to Whom the World Is Indebted,” 988). No one was more adamant and resolute in preserving her brother’s reputation than Sophia Thoreau. Her careful assistance in the months immediately preceding his death allowed Henry Thoreau to compile and prepare several natural history articles for posthumous publication in the Atlantic Monthly. With Waldo Emerson and Ellery Channing, Sophia coedited a number of Henry’s unpublished letters and other manuscripts, including The Maine Woods and Cape Cod. Her letter below to Henry’s close friend Daniel Ricketson draws attention to her brother’s ability during his final days to keep his mind alive as well as to appreciate the comfort offered at this time by friends and neighbors. To Daniel Ricketson, 20 May 1862 Profound joy mingles with my grief. I feel as if something very beautiful had happened, not death; although Henry is with us no longer, yet the memory thoreau in his own time [46] of his sweet and virtuous soul must ever cheer and comfort me. My heart is filled with praise to God for the gift of such a brother, and may I never distrust the love and wisdom of Him who made him, and who has now called him to labor in more glorious fields than earth affords. You ask for some particulars relating to Henry’s illness. I feel like saying that Henry was never affected, never reached by it. I never before saw such a manifestation of the power of spirit over matter. Very often I have heard him tell his visitors that he enjoyed existence as well as ever. He remarked to me that there was as much comfort in perfect disease as in perfect health, the mind always conforming to the condition of the body. The thought of death, he said, could not begin to trouble him. His thoughts had entertained him all his life, and did still. When he had wakeful nights, he would ask me to arrange the furniture so as to make fantastic shadows on the wall, and he wished his bed was in the form of a shell, that he might curl up in it. He considered occupation as necessary for the sick as for those in health, and has accomplished a vast amount of labor during the past few months in preparing some papers for the press. He did not cease to call for his manuscripts till the last day of his life. During his long illness I never heard a murmur escape him, or the slightest wish expressed to remain with us; his perfect contentment was truly wonderful. None of his friends seemed to realize how very ill he was, so full of life and good cheer did he seem. One friend, as if by way of consolation, said to him, “Well, Mr. Thoreau, we must all go.” Henry replied, “When I was a very little boy I learned that I must die, and I set that down, so of course I am not disappointed now. Death is as near to you as it is to me.” There is very much that I should like to write you about my precious brother, had I time and strength. I wish you to know how very gentle, lovely, and submissive he was in all his ways. His little study bed was brought down into our front parlor, when he could no longer walk with our assistance, and every arrangement pleased him. The devotion of his friends was most rare and touching; his room...