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

[Thoreau’s Visit to Plymouth in 1851] (1894)

[178] UT [Thoreau’s Visit to Plymouth in 1851] (1894) Ellen Watson Author and teacher Ellen Watson (1855–1926) was the daughter of Thoreau’s friends Benjamin Marston Watson (1820–1896) and Mary Russell Watson (1820–1906), who lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In this essay, Ellen Watson revises and improves on her mother’s account of Thoreau’s visit to Plymouth in 1851. Her description of an animated, chatty Thoreau enjoying his informal audience brings to mind similar scenes in Cape Cod. when thoreau was a young man he visited Plymouth and Duxbury, and as enthusiastic pedestrians never tire of walking, he attempted to continue his stroll around Captain’s Hill to the north shore of Clark’s Island. When the tide is at its lowest ebb this does not look so impossible! The sand flats even invite one to pace their shining surface! The channel looks narrow enough to be jumped across, and the three miles, which at high tide are a foaming sea or a level blue sheet of water, look but a short stretch to traverse. Mr. Thoreau gauged everything by his beloved Concord River:—there, an island could be walked to: here was evidently an island:—let us wade over there! But there are islands and islands, channels and channels! And a rising tide on a flat in Plymouth harbour is a swift river full of danger. Fortunately for our Concord guest a small fishing boat was at hand just at the nick of time to save him for his task of writing many volumes for the future joy of all lovers of nature! The skipper landed him at the North End—the back door of the “Island,” so to speak, and there he was greeted by the “Lord of the Isle” known to all his friends as “Uncle Ed”—Edward Winslow Watson, and a worthy representative of the Pilgrims who spent their first Sunday on this Island. Bluff and hearty was his welcome, and his first question was “Where d’ye hail from?” Mr. Thoreau, fresh from the rescue, must have been breathless from climbing the cliff, and overcome with the mighty clap on his slender back that welcomed his answer: “From Concord , Sir . . . My name is Thoreau, and . . .” “You don’t say so! Well, I’ve read some where in one of your books that you ‘lost a friend, a horse and a [179] dove! Now: What d’yer mean by it?’”—Mr. Thoreau looked up with shy, dark blue eyes:—as someone said, he looked like a wild woodchuck ready to run back to his hole—and he was very ruddy of complexion, with reddish brown hair and wore a green coat—he looked up then in shy astonishment at this breezy broad-shouldered, white-haired sea-farmer, reader of his books! “Well Sir, I suppose we have all had our losses!” “That’s a pretty way to answer a fellow,” replied the unsatisfied student of a fellow-poet and lover of nature. Mr. Thoreau meekly followed him to the hospitable “Old House” where so many Concord philosophers have eaten the asparagus, turnips, clams and lobsters that are better there than in any other dining room even in New England, where those fruits of the sea and the soil are always good. After he had borne patiently the well-deserved reproofs for his great rashness—“Where would you have been now if Sam Burgess hadn’t happened to get belated hauling in his lobster pots, I’d like to know, eh?!”— the talk turned to tales of Norsemen, of adventure by sea and land,—the wood-fire was blazing to dry our wet and weary traveler—the lamps were lighted, and from the depths of the big old-fashioned arm-chair rose and fell the long arms of the teller of tales. Excited by his ever increasing audience , who peered in at the open windows and stopped to listen, until all the Island flocked to hear what “that man that thought he could wade across from Duxbury” had to say for himself.—and egged on by “Uncle Ed’s” questions and unreserved criticism, he talked far into the night,—a night never-to-be forgotten by those who were there to see and to hear! “The Watson boys,” four in number, tall, stalwart followers of the sea, and all handsome, fresh and ready listeners, sat round in fascinated silence, their blue eyes getting bigger and bigger as Mr. Thoreau launched out into tales...