In Our Time - Thoreau and the American Idyll

Episode Date: January 15, 2009

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Anti-slavery activist and passionate environmentalist, Thoreau was above all a champion of self-reliance and individualism. He was also a champion of the simple life, a lover of nature and an enemy of the modern who lived alone in a log cabin in the woods away from society. In his seminal work, Walden, published in 1854, he wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Thoreau has become emblematic of one version of American values and his work has been an inspiration to politicians and writers alike, from Martin Luther King to Gandhi, Yeats and Tolstoy. Yet in many ways Thoreau remains a mystery, a man of contradictions who advocated self-sufficiency but was happy to let his mother do his washing and cook his meals.With Kathleen Burk, Professor of American History at University College London; Tim Morris, Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Dundee; Stephen Fender, Honorary Professor in English Literature at University College London.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, forward slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. Quote, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. Thus wrote the American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau in his seminal work Walden, published in 1854. A fierce opponent of slavery, a champion of the simple life,

a lover of nature and an enemy of the modern, Thoreau has become emblematic of one version of American values. His work has been an inspiration to politicians and writers alike from Martin Luther King to Gandhi, Yates and Tolstoy. Yet in many ways, Thorough remains a mystery, a man of contradictions who advocated so. self-sufficiency, but was happy now and then to let others, including his mother, to do his

washing and cook his meals. With me to discuss Thorough and an American Idol, Kathleen Burke, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London, Stephen Fender, honorary professor in English, also at University of College London, and Tim Morris, lecturer in American literature at the University of Dundee. Cathy Burke, Thorough's birthplace in Concord, Massachusetts, played a major role in his life and work. What kind of town was it and how his early years spent there?

Well, Concord was, in a sense, one of the sacred places of America. In 1775, it had seen the first shots with its neighboring village of Lexington in the American Revolution. And indeed, Emerson,

whom one might call, we'll talk about later, Thorough's mentor, wrote in the Concord hymn, this was where the embattled farmer stood and fired the shot herd round the world. Now, in 17th, 75, the town was a declining town. It always, it was the same difficulty, one might say,

when Thorough was born. The land was bad, hard-scrabbling. It would only support a farm would support one family, so youth left. Boys had to go elsewhere to find a place to live. After the revolution for about 20 years, you saw a real surge of prosperity, and that's when roads were straightened and there was more building. But when Thorough was born, it was again in the grip of depression, one might say. And by the time he is born, it's iconic, again, because of the sacred places, but it was also because it was so close to Boston and Cambridge. It was an intellectual area as well, because you could rapidly get to some place where you could find ideas and so forth. and it was well on its way to its present status,

I think, as an intellectual bedroom community for Boston and Cambridge. His father started off a pencil business, making superior-led pencils, and Thorough worked in that factory for a while, didn't he? That's right. We think of Thorough as a man sort of wandering around the grass in the woods, but he was also very inventive, and indeed he made the pencil a better instrument,

he improved the graphite center and so forth. and I mean his father had done other things he'd been a shopkeeper and he'd been a teacher and so forth but he found some success in this pencil factory and Thoreau was connected with it. People forget, I think, that he had an entrepreneurial edge to him as well as the intellectual edge.

And we're talking about a good education, educated well locally and then off to Harvard. That's right. He was early in. The family put together the money to support this. He went early to Boston Latin school where you learned Latin and Greek and languages and so forth, and then went to Harvard at 16, which was not such an unusual thing then as it is now. Spent four years at Harvard.

Reading to minister. Reading for the ministry. But that also meant that you had Latin and Greek and so forth. It wasn't just theology. He had an inordinate affection for Concord. He left it now and then, obviously, to go to Harvard and then occasionally on little trips. But basically that was the center of his world in almost a strange sense, given his life possibilities.

Well, it is interesting. He commiserated with those who lived in London and Paris and Rome because they weren't able to live in Concord. He felt all the world could be found in Concord because what was important, of course, not only was context, was nature. And everything you needed to learn, everything you needed to find out could be found in Concord. I mean, it was also the fact that he was, it linked him with the whole history of the United States, of America, of course. Again, you could see that, the microcosm of all

the changes. The transcend, a group called the transcendentalists could be said to have been based or centered, at least in Concord. And in the 1830s, he joined that movement. Could you tell us what that stood for? Well, there's, one might, well, it was a combination of, of religion and philosophy, one might say. It had, I think, perhaps three strands. Partly it came out of the European Romantic movement, which put priority on emotion over reason,

emphasized nature, usually with a capital N. Gertrto, Coleridge, Wordsworth. That's right. Yes, he said later, well, anyhow, we won't talk about Wordsworth at this point. But, so you had the ideas of emotion and of man against authority and nature, as I say.

Secondly, there was the whole Unitarian basis, the point of Unitarianism, which Emerson and the other transcendentalists largely were Unitarians, was, first of all, free will instead of predestination, that the Bible is written by men. It doesn't come down by the finger of God, in fact, and also that Christ is a good man, but not divinity. So this goes entirely against the whole Puritan tradition, which is, of course, New England is the the origins and center. And thirdly, the idea of the Quaker inner light, that what's important is you follow your inner feelings of morality,

you don't do what men say. And we can see all of this, I think, in Thorough and due course. Tim Morris, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who's a writer and philosopher and leading light of the transcendentalist, they met at his house in Concord, was highly, he was a sole mentor figure for Thorough, wasn't it? Could you tell him, in what, could you tell us, sorry, in what way Thorough took up his ideas? Well, even before he met at Emerson's house, we might say that Thoreau had attended Emerson's famous American scholar address at Harvard. That's the commencement ceremony of 1837. And this was an address which was really energizing Thoreau's class, indeed Thore's generation. After that, the two became very close. And the ideas, I think, which were probably most important.

important to throw were the ideas of nature which Emerson had expressed in his major book Nature, which is published 1836. Now, in this book, Emerson outlines really a program of nature which is based on individual self-reliance in the face of nature, but also that nature in a way is the manifestation and design of a divine plan. That is nature is a text which is readable out, if you like, as the... Let nature be your teacher. Let nature be your teacher, yes. And Emerson had met words with previous to that.

1832. 1833. So Emerson had come back, was a very authoritative and superior figure in Concord at that time, had brought these ideas with him. and so Thoreau I think probably takes most of all this transcendental philosophical idea of nature which of course then in Walden later which will turn to he starts to live and embody

So do we see him as a pupil of Emerson's in the sense that Emerson gave him his central ideas Yes I think so Remember though that Thoreau had also studied natural sciences at Harvard, zoology, botany, and so was not merely coming into this entirely cold. I think what Emerson gave Thoreau was a philosophic design, an idealism, an insistence on subjectivity,

and the possibility of an individual intuitive knowledge of the divine through nature and through the study of nature. Can we develop that, please, Tim, this intuitive notion. Emerson famously at the time gave a lecture which Cadiz alluded to saying Jesus was a man and not a god. Previous people who did that, the Cathars were subject to a crusade and slaughtered and blinded and put to the stake. He simply wasn't invited back to Harvard for 30 years.

Bad enough punishment, perhaps, but not quite in the same league. So let's talk about that because it's fascinating because we're talking about religious men, Unitarians, they were against the Trinity, but then they went further. So anyway, can you just explore that? further. Yes. What Emerson is particularly concerned with is, and subsequently thorough, is the removal, if you like, of any mediation between consciousness and knowledge of the divine.

Now, these mediations may come in many forms. It could be dogma, certain forms of pre-established ideologies, even received ideas at a lower level, and that the immediate intuitive knowledge of the divine can be read through nature as a text. Now, this takes, of course, if you like, an intensely powerful, creative imagination in order to be able to do so. And part of the textual, the written program of both of them in their writings

is to insist very often on the inability of many of their townsmen, even many of their fellow Americans, to be able to do so. both Emerson and Thoreau are often using ideas of the division of labour in particular the social is a divided state that needs to be reintegrated back into an individual consciousness in order for this intuition to be as I've said in touch with divine spirit

the over-soul as Emerson often called it this idea of the world wisdom yes indeed Stephen Fender, in 1845, Thoreau made the great move. He moved out of the family house in Main Street. He would be 28 about that time, wouldn't he? In Main Street, Concord, and build himself a hut on a patch of ground about a mile and a half outside the little town

at a place called Walden. Can you give us an idea of why he did that and what Walden was like when he got there? Yes. He went there in the first instance, I think, for a bit of solitude, not at first, I think, to commune with nature, but at first to clear his mind

and clear his decks, the decks, as it were, to write about his brother, who had recently died, brother John had recently died of Lockjaw, or tetanus, as is technically known as, I think. And they had made, he was very close, very, very close to his brother. They started a school together.

They'd made a trip up the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in a kind of camping dingy, and Thorough's first book, in fact, was about that trip, called the Concord of Merrimack River, a voyage up it or down it or something. And he wanted to go there and write that book. That was the first thing he wanted to do. But bit by bit, as he stayed there,

as he began to make notes and began to notice the attraction, really, of the everyday events in nature, began to note them down in his journal. And this became, this gradually grew, into through a series of steps into Walden itself. Now this land was owned by Amossey. Yes. The Walden was a pond. What do you mean, what do Americans

mean in this instance? That's a very, that's a good question, one which is not asked often enough. A pond in New England usage is a body of water not fed by a river. It's one fed by the groundwater table. And in fact, Walden is a, is a cattle hole shaped by a retreating glacier. So it's a nearly oblong body of water, not terribly big, but big enough to be called a lake in some other in this country, perhaps. As you said, it's about a

mile and a half south of Concord Village. As you stand on the north shore, which is where his hut was, and where the reproduction today of it still is, to your right, which is the western shore,

runs the railroad. Very important, of course, in this whole story. And to the right, runs presently, Route 126, State Route 126, which goes down Bristol's Hill, past Emerson's House. So he could get to Emerson's House down the old Concord Road on the left, and he could get to his sister and mothers down by walking the tracks. They took you right down

to the station, and their house was only about two blocks from the station. This hut, he built it, did it? He did. He actually did, because there's one or two things he said it did. He didn't. So he did build the hut. What's the hut like? You said to it. I haven't seen it. There's a reproduction.

And in the summer there's a, and it's a state park, and there's a reproduction. And in the summer there's an intern who dresses up or maybe I should say dresses down. But what's the hut like? I'm not worried about the answer. Okay.

The hut is a very, well, it's about the size of... Don't say this to you. No, I won't say this studio because nobody can see it. But, you know, let's say, 15 by 10 feet or maybe 20 by... Has it got windows? It has one big...

Is it just one room? one door and one room, yes. And a storm porch, because he was very pleased with a storm porch. Yes, that's right, yes, and a stone fireplace. So that's where he lived. And he was, yeah, sorry, go ahead. And he was there about two years. Now, how, how, can we, before we go into how he lived there,

can we, can you just define as clearly as you can what his reasons were for going for a sort of solitude? I mean, goodness knows, Concord was quiet enough. I think probably really, as I say, initially to write up the memoir to his brother. So it's almost like at the bottom of a garden at the bottom of a garden.

It is really. At that first day. In effect, he was camping out. If you reckon that he got a lot of his meals and his washing and so on was done by his mother and sister. So he wasn't really living

non-stop in Walden. But he's living, we'll come back to him and Kathy, you want to get in? Cathy By. I just had a question, actually. That area around Walden, I understand, was where outcasts went. Yes.

And I was just wondering whether, in fact, the fact that that's an outcast area also had any influence in why he chose there. Or is it just that Emerson was willing to have him take some of the land? I think what we, the modern Americans especially forget, is that Walden was less wooded and less country-like

and in Thorough's time that any time before or after it had been largely denuded by charcoal making industry and the tall pines had been cut down to make railway ties or sleepers and it was Emerson's purpose

in sending Thorow there or granting him squatting rights on the woodlot that he owned was to get Thorough to plant some trees so he went to, the first thing he did was he went to Walden to plant some trees not commonly understood nowadays of people who go The other thing about Walden is that it was, I mean, today the pond has the highest concentration of urine, of any pond in New England.

That's a fact that we needed to know. No. But the important thing is that that's not what you, that's not, it doesn't mean what you think it means. I don't know what I think of me. You're going to tell me what I think of it. Suddenly become degraded by the modern world. It was almost, ever since the railway came, Walden Pond was a resort. It's still a resort.

It's a popular swimming hole. It has a path around it. It's very beautiful, but it's widely used by the populace, by Bostonians, by people from Cambridge and so on. Right, we've got to get on with this. Kathy, what's of a life did you leave briskly at Walden? We've heard mothers doing the washing ground. It's as if he just popped down now and popped back again.

But there was a sense, he had a sense of wilderness, he had a sense of presence of being there. He talks about staying there, nights, snow, drum, do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-m. So just give us briskly an idea of what was going. on in those two years. What he did a lot was to walk. He, in fact, he often didn't want people with them. He looked at things very closely.

He'd sit and watch until birds came out. He'd look at every flower as it went. He kept a journal in which he daily would put down what he saw, and he said that if he could tell what day of the year it was by whether a certain flower bloomed. So essentially, he spent his time looking at nature.

And he became an expert in a short... He became a serious observer of nature. Indeed. He He published odd botanical books and so forth. He was an expert in that sense. He wasn't just an amateur. And there is, sorry, you want to come in. Well, can I just add that it's also the case that for Thoreau,

his time at Walden was a very serious personal, spiritual inquiry as well. And this is something which is very important for Walden's book. So while it's certainly true that Thoreau was honing his skills as a naturalist, as an observer of nature, and skills which would come to fruition in later works, succession of forest trees and other serious scientific works that he would publish, really the main, first of all,

that is as a personal spiritual autobiography. But that does tie in with the idea of nature with a capital end, that nature is immutable truth, and you find immutable truth by concentrating on it. So I don't think he went out to be able to tell that a certain flower had a leaf. He went out because the truth of that flower, which no man could really influence,

conveyed itself to him. Now there's been a lot of talk about him going back to Concord and this mother doing his washing and having a meal there a few times and so forth. But he did achieve a sense of, and he certainly transferred it in Walden, a sense of being independent. That's one of the great powers of the book

as I think you say yourself in your writing. Stephen. So we've got to hold on to that. We can sort of fritter it away if we're not careful. He did feel he was independent. He did feel he was cut off. The book certainly, compresses the two years into one year

and gives that impression an impression which becomes a fact not only a myth so is there something I mean do you agree with that I do thanks okay the railroad came to Concord Tim Morris in 1844 as Stephen

pointed out Boston was only used to be four hours just a narrow way his view expressed was if you wanted to go 30 miles which was to Boston the best thing was to walk because by the time saved it with the money, spent the time getting the fare, it would be a waste of your time, a waste of your effort,

it's easier just to walk. Now, of course, 30 miles is wanting 300 to another, but he was very opposed to the railroad, and then to the telegraph. Can you give us some background to that? Indeed. Well, I think the railroad for throw became

a notable example of many aspects of modernity which he deplored. He calls it atropos at one point, that is, that it's a sort of a fateful atropos being the last of the fates. He suggests that the locomotive engine should be named this.

And what he really deplores about it, I think, is that, firstly, that it changes the character of Concord. I mean, really, Concord becomes a suburb where it became, it was previously sort of a market town, that it changes the character of Concord, but also particularly that it changes the character of the inhabitants of the area, too. that a particular bugbear of the rose's bustle and speed and he particularly likes slowness and simplicity that's part of it simplicity simplicity simplicity of course

that's the phrase from Walden of course the simplification of one's life is a hugely important prerequisite to any subsequent philosophical thinking so speed is part of it but also that he sees this changing the character of his area and particularly the people

of that area. And in fact, Concord does suffer a decline because Boston begins to suck the remaining straight out of it, as happens all over the place. Particularly for example, in the previous conveyance industries, you know, horse and carriages,

the way of getting goods to market. Just to point, this is absolutely true and accurate and needs to be said. It's very hard for Americans sometimes to understand that Concord had to be come provincial, because we always think of it, as Kathy described it, as our great sort of sacred spot where the revolution began. But don't forget the other side of it is that intellectuals from Boston and Cambridge

could come out on the train and go back the same night, so that the lectures at the Lyceum and the meetings that the Tansidotalists and others had didn't decline, but indeed increased after the railway came. So we mustn't forget that. It became the centre where they published the dial, the magazine the Dyer, which With Thorough edited for a woman. Margaret Fuller, which we see it. So you did have an intellectual community to that.

I think it was strengthened by the railway strangely enough, you know, probably was. But I think the other point, Railway introduced something that we've since learned to call I suppose globalization, except it was on a very local level. That is to say that specialisms and, you know, market shifted

and there was no longer. After all, Concord had been a county sessions town, a town where they had the County Sessions, County Court, and that disappeared. It became less important. in that respect. But it wasn't just the way he didn't like the telegraph. He said, Maine can now talk to Texas. What does

Maine have to say to Texas? Maybe he had nothing important to communicate. I also like the one about the transatlantic cable. He said perhaps the first news that will leak through to the broad, flapping American ear is that Princess Adelaide has the hooping cough whoever Princess Adelaide was.

So he was a ginnet. If it was new he was a ginnit. He was against the general idea, which is a very American idea, and which I frankly believe myself that the new things are always better than the old. They were always making some kind of progress. Even in the depths of depression, there's always, you know, we always have a bomber to hope for, we always have something to look forward to.

He hated that idea. He thought it was fatuous. But to take it seriously, because it seems how foolish to be against the railroad, how foolish to be against the telegraph, what a foolish person. But he was after something, wasn't it, Jim Morris? He was really onto something very serious in his opposition. He wasn't just saying, Abba. No. It wasn't just a negative, was it? He was putting forward a positive idea of life? Yes, I think so. Again, it's what is the basis of, I won't say the good life exactly. It's not quite that.

But from what basis can one realistically and properly philosophies and go inward, improve the self? and these things were the telegraph, etc that we're talking about are forth a very serious distractions to that business, that hugely important business. On the quotation I read at the beginning of the programme I want to live life deliberately. It's a bit like Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living.

And they were on to that. Cathy Boe. I mean the point is that he tried to bring it all together. I do think that he, although he was against the railway and so forth. He had a sneaking admiration for entrepreneurs and inventors

and therefore, although he didn't like the outcome of the railway, and what it did the concord and what it did the people, he couldn't help admiring the inventiveness and so therefore the railway had a slight tinge of goodness about it. I mean the invention

itself was good, the outcome was bad. He was very interesting in the way he could look at things in a different put a difference to it, wasn't it? the railway he talked about, but he also talked about the construction of the road. Every sleeper, the actual sleeper, he said, that's a dead body of an Irishman or a Yankee. Every single piece of wood there.

The other thing, and following that train of thought, the experts and scientists, I guess you'd say, in Massachusetts, have been for years trying to work out how to improve agriculture in the state. the old method of the way that English men settled America, New England especially, was the slash and burn method. They'd cut down trees.

They'd burn them, they'd use the potash for the first crop or two as fertilizer, and then the land would give out and they'd move west. Matthew Arnold comments on this, and lots of people do. And so the agricultural experts worked very hard to come up with, you know, fertilizers,

plowing the field, making sure that you get it properly cultivated, animals concentrated in small spaces and so on. And Thoreau hated this. You know, he thought if you plow a field before you sow it, all the wildflowers disappear. And, you know, the animals are kept in a kind of muck and terrible sort of confusion,

and the farmers and the family and the animals are all mixed up together. And then he planted, so he decided to plant a field of beans. and this is very funny actually because it's a, it's directly, runs directly counter to the commercialization of agriculture as he saw it that he planted a crop not suitable for the soil, he planted too late in the season,

he didn't prepare the ground, he didn't mind sharing it with his chipmunks, and as a result, he harvested seven or eight bushels of beans per acre, as against the 20 or so bushels that the professionals were managing, but he was quite happy with that. And this was his sort of statement And that's interesting because it's not just a verbal argument.

It is a physical enactment of what he believed. Kathy Buck. Well, it's just, excuse me, I mean, bringing together Concord. He was very proud of being in Concord. He was ineluctibly tied to Concord. But he was also aware that it was declining. It was declining in population. For example, it was declining in importance.

And what he was trying to do was to say, in a sense, Concord is important because this is the sort of place where I'm showing you that you can live the good life, you don't need the distractions, and therefore that even though it might in worldly terms be declining, this is really the centre of the world spiritually

and intellectually. Tim Morris, we're going to move on, but we've probably flit past, we flitted quite swiftly past the romantic influence, with the capital R, Gertr, more known here would be Coal Ridge and Words with, these the ideas that they had about nature,

but it says, look on nature and you will be taught about treating nature properly about cultivating your own guy. So these were with him all the time, right? He was a massive reader, we haven't brought that in, classics. But this was part of his thinking as well as his reading. Yes, indeed so. I mean, there's a chapter, of course, on his reading, where he sort of outlines what exactly, he has been reading on what ought to be read, perhaps more importantly.

Now, the Romantics are... This is, again, through Emerson, I think, basically, because, of course, Emson had met them. So Thoreau could have... In his tour of Europe. In his tour of Europe, in 32, 33. And perhaps even more importantly, Carlisle, actually. Now, of course, there are the British romanticist views of the landscape. We need to be a bit careful, though, because the landscape is not always, first and foremost, ideal for Emerson.

Excuse me, for Thoreau. That is that he tends to extrapolate those idealisms. out of minute observation in ways which perhaps Coleridge and Wordsworth would not have done. Can you just give us an instance of that? Well, for example, go back to the railroad again. While this incredible technology in development is happening, the really central part of the description of the railroad for Fero is to go down to the sandbank upon which it is built

and look at the thaw and look at the rivulets of no way. water coming off this. So he's an observer in this way, which is not primarily and first and foremost an observer of landscape, at least not in the first instance. It's of specifics first and foremost. Whereas I think the British Romantics would have been working perhaps with landscape in a larger sense. Cathy Buck, he was fascinated by the Native American Indians. What did he find there? Do you think he idealised them? Well, it seems to me that what he found was the sort of life he thought was worth living. He saw the Indians as tied to nature. I mean, he, Concord is full of Indian artifacts. A lot of tribes have lived there, and you could look down on the ground. He's walking

with a friend, and the friend says, are there arrowheads around here? And he looks down, and there's one right in front of him. He said, yes, here it is. And he saw the Indians as the only people left as a people who were actually so tied to nature. They tied to the seasons, they're tied to what the food around them, and their whole response, he says, he thinks, is not tied to

civilization as we know it. It's tied to their own natures and their surroundings. Tim Morris, he writes Walden, it's published in 1854. How is it received then? Much better than his first book, that's for sure, which is rather disastrous for thorough. There are

about, I think, just over 90 contemporary reviews of Walden, which have been collected and examined. And in general, they're quite positive. They tend to emphasize its novelty, the fact that there are a sturdy common sense to be had within Walden, but also the negative aspects of this would be that this is just more of the transcendentalist disease, as Edgar Allan Poe called it. We have to remember that the transcendentalist movement,

although intellectually powerful was not without its very serious critics within the States as a whole. And so, you know, there are equivocations about it, but quite positively. There's one particularly interesting reviewer called Charles Frederick Briggs, I think his name was, who calls Arthur a Yankee Diogenes, which is an interesting comparison. Diogenes, of course, being the cynic poet from Greece 412 BC or so, who lived in Athens, at least allegedly, in a tub, swore on poverty as the greatest virtue, and Thore was considered by these very urban New York critics

to be youthfully compared to this. Almost, Cathy Buck, almost diametrically opposite to the life at Walden, or you may find a way to bring them together, is his interest in slavery, not only interest, these activism in slavery. There were these, can you just tell us how active it was and his position as a conductor on the Underground Railway? He's very active.

There are two fugitive slave acts, one of which in fact was promulgated in 1793 and the second much worse one in 1850. And more or less what they had in common was that if a slave escaped, it was the owner's right to take him back. And what these two slave acts did, did, and especially the second one, was involve every person in the country, every state,

every locality, in the responsibility to actually send these back. Now, the way that you could, the only way really you could be sure of being free was getting to Canada. But if you went, if a slave, an escaping slave, or even a free black, in some cases, was out in the street, he was liable to actually be grabbed off the street. So they developed what was called the Underground Railway, which was essentially a series of safe houses. They'd travel at night from safe house to safe house. And what the conductor did was actually to get them from safe house to safe house.

But Thorough went further than that. His own family home was also used as a safe house. He was adamantly anti-slavery. I mean, philosophically, you would be because that's a man who's not free. But spiritually, and just as a good man, the idea of slavery was just so appalling to him. that he actually emerged from Walden, one might say, and was actively involved, as you say, in the agitation and actual involvement against it.

Stephen Fender, can you tell us a bit, can we develop this a bit more? He refused to pay his poll tax at one stage because he wanted to make a stand against the Mexican-American war again to do his slavery and he was put in jail. So he was pushing it very far now. He was. I mean, he went to jail for not paying his poll tax.

That's his federal tax. He was perfectly willing to pay local taxes to upkeep of roads and schools and so on, but he didn't want to support a government which also supported slavery. And he went to jail. Somebody, as he then rather ungenerously said, somebody interfered and paid the tax. So, in fact, he was out the next morning. He only spent one night in jail.

But he made the point. And he then wrote an essay called A Resistance to Civil Government, which later was retitled on C. civil disobedience. An important title because it plays on the English philosopher, the moral philosopher, William Paley's essay on the duty of civil obedience. Paley argued in effect that if a resistance to civil government was going to cause an uproar, then it was better just to obey. In other words, no revolution, but Thorough's line was very different. And the basic premise of this essay was that the consent of in government must,

be grounded on the individual conscience of the citizen. And this is quite important because it doesn't derive from Massachusetts polity at all, but from the polity of a man banished from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, who said, I commend that man, whether Jew or Turk or Papist or whoever, steers no otherwise than his conscience does, and introduced the first community in America, therefore, in which religious test was no barrier against full participation in the government.

So we're talking still on the subject of slavery, Tim Morris. He supported John Brown. Now, in a way, John Brown, whose cell goes marching on, that John Brown, stood for things that Walden disapproved of. So can you tell us what that meant, sorry, that Thoreau disaplewed off, so can you tell us where he was there? Well, yes, I mean, the Thoreau of Walden may be seen to be simple, a pacifist. He's even advocating with the world in all sorts of, if like, withdrawal, you know,

from social life, from social activity. And John Brown, of course, is entirely the opposite, but Brown is really the most radical, tip of the spear, if you like, of the abolitionist movement. and is willing, of course, to turn this to violence and to arm slaves. He leads attacks on arms depots to get weapons for the slaves, John Brown. Brown's career really starts in Bloody Kansas after the Nebraska Kansas Act in 1854. And, of course, Thoreau meets John Brown in, I think 1858 in Boston with Emerson,

when Brown is trying to collect funds for precisely that later attack on Harper's Ferry, which is an attack really to seize arms and then head south, arming slaves as he went and to produce a sort of rolling insurrection. This was Bram's idea. People are killed, Brown's arrested, there's uproar, but at that time, Thorough comes out and defends it,

even though Brown has been anything but a pacifist and in that sense contradicts some of Thorough's ideas. So that's quite an interesting contradiction. There were stages of this, though. I mean, Thore doesn't just go from the civil disobedience essay, which is inspired by Mexican-American War and his distaste for funding it, there's a sort of intermediate stage, really,

which is his paper, slavery in Massachusetts. So throughout the 1850s, you could say that Thoreau becomes increasingly radicalized about this. But yes, he stands up and supports Brown, which is a really quite an unusual thing to do. The majority view of John Brown's actions at Harper's Ferry, is that she's crazy to do this. And most abolitionists sort of retreat from Brown's actions.

Yes, I think this is an interesting case because something else he says in civil disobedience is it's no good being progressive, it's no good opposing the Mexican war in theory or being against slavery, if you aren't willing to do something that makes you uncomfortable about it. I mean, he said that the opponents to a return in Massachusetts,

The opponents to reform in Massachusetts are not 100,000 politicians in the South, but 100,000 merchants and farmers here who are more interested in commerce in agriculture than they are in humanity. He felt that, you know, you had to... I mean, this may be part of the contradiction you're talking about. It's all very well being a pacifist,

but if you have to go to war to defend your conscience or your conscientious sense of the right, then so be it. Does this link up, Katha, with Amazon describing Thornton, Having Thoreau in his eulogy is he, someone who found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed to every class of reformer. Interesting. Yes, I think.

The difficulty is that there were reformers, there were those who paid their dues to abolitionist societies, but as Stephen has emphasized, wouldn't actually want to do anything. Thoreau, it's interesting because although we see him as a man who was individual, but focused on the locality, the specific, he's actually, as famous now, one might say, because of his activity, because his engagement with the great public events of his time, that there comes a time when you have to leave the pond

and you have to go out and put your body where it belongs, that you can't be neutral towards slavery, you can't be neutral toward a war which is nothing but a cynical land grab. And also the whole ecological business has worked as it were. Everyone wants to use this term in his favour because of what he did out in Walden Ponds. And the book, Walden, which started in a fairly undistinguished way in terms of sales and reviews,

200 English editions, translated all over the world and so on. He died only as 45 of TB. Briskly, what do you think his influence is now, Tim? Morris. Partly that throws it immediately teachable, so he sort of remains in the academy, I think, in quite a direct way, but also in a larger sense that really there's a throw for everybody, you might say. There's the ecologist throw.

There's the proto-environmentalist, protectionist of nature. But also, for some people, Therogue is read really as an anarchist too in his sort of political writings. So this wide variety of approach, I think, has increased. his reputation over the years since. And that would include, you would have to include in that his enormous impact on Gandhi, his enormous impact on the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., who put his, who read him, and put his principles, especially in civil disobedience. And up to Vietnam, up to Vietnam.

In Vietnam protests, exactly. Well, yes. Which Kathy knows about, first hand. Indeed. What we have forgotten about Thoreau, and one reason he actually is, continues his impact, is his writing, that he took nature and put it in beautiful prose that is a pleasure to read now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Cathy Burke, Tim Morris and Stephen Fender.

Next week we'll be discussing the history of the writing of history, how Western history has been written through the ages. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com. slash radio 4.