HENRY David Thoreau was a man for our austere times. His own time, in mid-19-century America, convinced him of the need to live a simpler life, free of the “quiet desperation” to which he saw his contemporaries driven. And his most famous experiment to this end began 165 years ago tomorrow,
July 4th, 1845 – when he declared his personal independence and moved into a one-room cabin, built by his own hands, at Walden Pond, Massachusetts.
It was not exactly the wilderness. In fact, the cabin was barely a mile from his home village, on land supplied by a friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He remained sufficiently close to civilisation there that his two-year stay was interrupted by, among other things, an arrest for poll-tax evasion (he refused to pay on principle, as a protest against slavery) and a night in jail.
Even his admirers would admit that, unlike many of those he hoped would follow his example, Thoreau could afford to be eccentric. He came from a comfortable background, was Harvard educated, and had very good connections. He also had a practical motive for his retreat to the woods: an ambition to become a writer, duly achieved.
Furthermore, in at least one aspect of his self-denial – a belief in the importance of sexual continence – he may have had a head-start. A fellow writer, Hawthorne, suggested Thoreau was “as ugly as sin”, albeit adding that the ugliness suited him better than beauty would have done.
But all reservations aside, Thoreau's experiment in simple living was a success, if only because it produced a classic of American Literature, Walden, which still exerts a big influence today, even on many who have never read it.
It became a holy book of the back-to-nature movement. It helped inspire the protest-culture of the 1960s. It evoked what remains a favourite fantasy of wage-slaves everywhere. And since, for most, this will never be more than fantasy, it also spawned a branch of modern tourism, catering for those who want to turn their backs on the world of industry and commerce and experience something more elemental, if only for the weekend.
The lasting influence of Thoreau’s cabin is also illustrated by a short but famous poem he unwittingly inspired. The author was WB Yeats, who as a child had Walden read to him, thereby sowing the idea that, some day, he too would live in a cabin, remote from the world. He once recalled, self-mockingly, how as a young man in Sligo he planned, “Having conquered bodily desire and the inclination of my mind towards women and love, I should live, as Thoreau lived, seeking wisdom”. As a down-payment, he set out one evening in his teens with the intention of spending a night in Slish Wood, opposite Innisfree, on a bed of rock. Sleep did not come, however, and when he wandered wearily home later, a female servant laughingly attributed his nocturnal prowl to the pursuit of something other than wisdom.
More famously, the cabin idea haunted Yeats when, years afterwards, he was walking in London's Fleet Street, "very homesick", and heard the trickle of water from a shop-window fountain. Suddenly, he was back in Sligo. And from that memory arose The Lake Isle of Innisfree, which he later described as the "first lyric with anything in its rhythm of my own music".
The poem was of its moment. Yeats said that, even a couple of years later, he would not have written its first line with the “conventional archaism – ‘Arise and go’.” But it became one of his best-loved poems, even so. In fact, in a millennium poetry poll in this newspaper in 1999, it emerged as readers’ all-time favourite: evidence not only of the beauty of Yeats’s words, but the enduring power of the fantasy that Henry Thoreau lived out a century and half ago.
SPEAKING OF SLIGO, I’ve been asked to mention a very unusual event (by Irish standards) that continues there over the weekend. The “Lovin’ Life Festival” it is called; the novelty arising from it being entirely alcohol-free. Thoreau would have approved, believing as he did that “water is the only drink for a wise man” and that “Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?” In this spirit, the festival promises a wide range of non-alcoholic intoxication opportunities, including at least one that also involves going back to nature. That will be Sunday’s mass “Dip in the Nip” for charity, in Sligo Bay. Details of this and other activities are at www.lovinlife.ie.
If you’ve had enough of nature, on the other hand, and you want to get back to technology, you should considering visiting Terenure College, Dublin, tomorrow for the Irish Jaguar and Daimler Club’s annual car show (www.irishjagclub.ie). More than 1,000 vintage vehicles will be on display. But the place of honour belongs to a 1965 Jaguar 2.4 litre being auctioned to raise funds for the Laura Lynn House, the Republic’s first children’s hospice.
The navy-blue car was donated by its generous owner of many years, Martin Roche. Others have given their labour to ensure that it runs as well as it looks. And although market value might be in the region of €10-11,000, it is hoped that when the hammer falls tomorrow afternoon, somebody with deep pockets and an appreciation for the good cause will have parted with even more for the privilege of driving such a beauty home.