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Thoreau had built his house to last. It’s easy to imagine him living there for the rest of his life, growing old and crotchety among the pines. Indeed, the iconic hermit of American lore lives there still. But Thoreau the living person did leave, and in later years the reason puzzled him:
“Why I left the woods? I do not think that I can tell. I have often wished myself back. . . . Perhaps I wanted a change— There was a little stagnation it may be. . . . Perhaps if I lived there much longer I might live there forever—One would think twice before he accepted heaven on such terms.” Perhaps, he added in Walden, he had “several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”
More prosaically, he left because he was called away by someone he could not refuse—Lidian Emerson. Waldo was planning a yearlong lecture tour in Europe, where interest in Transcendentalism and in Emerson himself was growing. As late as August 29, it still appeared that Lidian would board with a friend while her husband was away, but suddenly she invited Henry to live with her and the children instead. Thoreau’s life at Walden had been Emerson’s greatest gift to him; if his friends needed a favor in return, he would say yes. A week later, on September 6, 1847, Henry Thoreau loaded up his books and furniture, closed his door, and left his house on Walden Pond. There would be no going back. On September 17, Emerson bought the house and leased it to his gardener, Hugh Whelan. With that done, on October 5, Henry, Lidian, and the Alcotts saw Waldo Emerson off at Boston Harbor, sailing for his great trip to Europe. Abba Alcott wept “convulsively,” but Lidian, as was her way, didn’t shed a tear.117 As Waldo’s ship disappeared over the horizon, Lidian and Henry returned to Concord to take up housekeeping together. Thoreau the hermit was history. Never again would Henry live alone.
Laura Dassow Walls
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