by Henry David Thoreau

To Ralph Waldo Emerson:

I have been to see Henry James, and like him very much. It was a great pleasure to meet him. It makes humanity seem more erect and respectable. I was never more kindly and faithfully catechised. It made me respect more to be thought worth of such wise questions. He is a man, and takes his own way, or stands still in his own place. I know of no one so patient and determined to have the good of you. It is almost friendship, such plain and human dealing. I think that he will not write or speak inspiringly; but he is refreshing forward-looking and forward-moving man, and he has naturalized and humanized New York for me.

I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meaner than I could have imagined. It will be something to hate,--that's the advantage it will be to me; and even the best people in it are a part of it and talk coolly about it. The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population. When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man? But I must wait for a shower of shillings, or at least a slight dew or mizzling of sixpences, before I explore New York very far. The sea-beach is the best thing I have seen. It is very solitary and remote, and you only remember New York occasionally. The distances, too, along the shore, and inland in sight of it, are unaccountably great and startling. The sea seems very near from the hills but it proves a long way over he plain, and yet you may be wet with the spray before you can believe that you are there. The far seems near, and the near far. Many rods from the beach, I step aside for the Atlantic, and I see men drag up their boats on to the sand, with oxen, stepping about amid the surf, as if it were possible they might draw up Sandy Hook.

Henry David Thoreau
June 8, 1843

Hard as it may be to imagine the great nature writer and reclusive sage of Walden Pond let loose in New York City, Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) did spend a few moths on Staten Island in 1843, as tutor to William Emerson's son, Haven. He communed with as much nature as he could find around Sandy Hook, while also making numerous trips to Manhattan to drum up business for future articles. In this respect, Thoreau exemplified Walter Benjamin's remark that the nineteenth century writer came to the city market ostensibly to observe, but actually to sell his wares. Thoreau found few takers, and left the city with relief.--Phillip Lopate, August 2000