April 10, 2005

Genius of Walden Pond and the No.2 Pencil

Thoreau’s cabin illustrating his book: “Walden, Life In The Woods”

The world best remembers Henry David Thoreau as a hermit who isolated himself at Walden Pond, near Concord, Mass., in the mid-nineteenth century to muse about the virtues of nature and responsibility of humans to defy offensive laws.

With all due respect to transcendentalism, let us make a case for his invention of the No.2 pencil.

First, some background of his early life -- as gleaned from “Genius Ignored” by biographer Ann Woodlief of Virginia Commonwealth University.

"Thoreau was born in Concord, Mass, in 1817. His father made pencils, which then was a popular but expensive and messy improvement of the quill pen and liquid ink.

The family was engaged in the tedious work of grinding plumbago (a low-grade lead ore), mixing it with various oils and stuffing the mixture into slots of slim, wood staves.

“Henry grew up very close to his older brother, John, who taught school to help pay for Henry’s tuition at Harvard. While there, Henry was inspired by a small book titled ‘Nature’ by his famous Concord neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“In a sense, Henry never finished exploring its ideas – although always definitely on his own terms, just as he explored everything,” writes Woodlief.

A neighbor described him:

“After leaving college, he was eccentric and did not like to work and so would not -- the opposite of John in every particular. He was a thin, insignificant, poorly dressed, careless-looking young man.”

Henry pursued several romances. He proposed, by letter, to one maiden in 1840, but she rejected him. He never again tendered marriage to any one.

He and his brother started the Concord Academy for boys, but it lasted only a short while. Parents disapproved its lack of discipline.

John cut himself while shaving in 1842 and died of lockjaw in his brother’s arms. This untimely death traumatized Henry.

Walden Pond

Thoreau worked for a couple of years as a surveyor and by making pencils with his father before deciding to become a writer.

At age 28, he went to Walden Pond – a body of water more like half-mile lake 100 feet deep -- a mile or so south of Concord. There, he built a one-room cabin with $86 of lumber on land owned by Emerson.

Thoreau read extensively and wrote about his observations while on a canoe trip he and John had taken on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He also spent much time ‘sauntering’ in nature.

He went to town every several days to eat with his family, buy supplies, and visit friends.

On one such trip, Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax required of white men for the privilege of voting. Blacks were not allowed to vote.

The fine was small, but Thoreau objected to its discrimination and would not pay. He accepted incarceration as a protest against slavery and the Mexican War. His mother paid the fine -- over his strenuous objection – but the marshal ordered him out.

Historian Lucius Furius explains why Thoreau was so adamant:

“His townsmen wanted to know why he had gone to jail rather than pay the poll tax?

“Thoreau explained in a lecture at the Concord Lyceum: ‘The Relation of the Individual to the State.’ A year later, it was published as an essay: ‘Resistance to Civil Government” -- and after his death as “Civil Disobedience.’”

Nature Man

During Thoreau’s two years, two-months and two days at Walden Pond, he also made copious notes about the animals, birds, trees, flowers and insects. He planted a field of beans and a grove of pines to observe genetic changes in the plants.

He gathered these observations in a series of Lyceum lectures about the wonders of nature. The first of these was titled “A History of Myself.”

These were so successful that Thoreau decided to compile them into another book titled “Walden, Life In The Woods” – his masterpiece.

Furius recounts Thoreau’s magical relationship with animals as described by Frederick Willis in July 1847:

“He was talking to Mr. Alcott of the wild flowers in Walden Woods when, suddenly stopping, he said: ‘Keep very still and I will show you my family.’

“Stepping quickly outside the cabin door, he gave a low and curious whistle. Immediately a woodchuck came running towards him from a nearby burrow.

“With varying note, yet still low and strange, a pair of gray squirrels were summoned and approached him fearlessly.

“With still another note, several birds, including two crows, flew towards him. One of the crows nestled upon his shoulder.

“He fed them all from his hand, taking food from his pocket, and petted them gently before our delighted gaze.

“Then, he dismissed them by different whistling – always strange and low and short. Each little wild thing departed instantly at hearing his special signal.”

Poor Sales

Thoreau’s first book about his canoe trip sold only 294 copies of 1,000 printed, and he had to buy the unsold copies. He wryly noted: “I now have a library of nearly nine-hundred volumes, over seven-hundred of which I wrote myself.”

Undaunted, Thoreau continued to expand and rewrite his “Walden” manuscript while working in his family’s pencil business.

Finally in 1854, Thoreau felt his composition was really done. Ticknor & Fields agreed to publish 2,000 copies. In the year following, 1,700 copies were sold. Sales declined in subsequent years.

Thoreau continued to explore the wilds of New England and record his observations in a two-million- word journal. It and “Walden” are a priceless, literary legacy.

On a trip to Maine with an Indian guide, he was horrified when his companion killed and skinned a moose to get a couple of steaks for supper.

When Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862 at age 44, his last words were “moose” and “Indian.”

Pencils Galore

During these nature excursions, Thoreau continued active in the family’s pencil business.

John H. Lienhard, professor at the University of Houston’s college of engineering, fills us in about another side of Thoreau.

Charles Dunbar in 1821 discovered “plumbago” in New Hampshire. He set up a pencil factory with his brother- in-law John Thoreau.

"Pencils leads were made by filling a grove in a piece of wood with a mixture of ground graphite -- and some kind of vegetable oil.

"Plumbago had a greasy, smeary quality. English graphite was superior, but was expensive and heavily taxed. Thoreau solved the problem by using clay as the binder.

"In addition, he invented a grinding mill of four stones stacked vertically to reduce plumbago into finer grains. This, with clay, produced a smear-free pencil whose hardness was controllable.

"The Thoreau Company offered four grades of pencils from soft to hard. The No.2 all-purpose pencil was most popular. Henry’s innovations made the family company the leading pencil maker in America.

"Thoreau also invented a pipe forming machine and several water wheels to drive his machinery.

"They probably never told you in your English Literature class that Thoreau often appended the words ‘Civil Engineer’ after his signature," says Lienhard.

"Yet, Thoreau was content to walk away from an invention without making personal profit of it. He was, after all, the same man who wrote:

"'The seventh day should be man’s day of toil …. and the other six his Sabbath of the affections and the soul …. in which to range this widespread garden, and drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of Nature.'

"Henry David Thoreau is sometimes painted as ineffective in the real world. He certainly did separate himself from the mad ambitions of twentieth century America.

"But his legacy to us was shaped by an engineer’s intimacy with firm-rooted reality. He knew the shores of Walden Pond were solid earth as much as they were a flight of the mind."

Author: Lindsey Williams

CUTLINES

1 – 3 col – pond scene

Photo courtesy University of Illinois

SYLVAN SETTING – Cove at Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau lived alone for two years to muse about nature and politics.

2- 2 col—portrait head and shoulders.

Portrait by Samuel Rowse courtesy of Virginia

Commonwealth University

YOUNG WRITER – Life portrait of Thoreau at age 28 when he lived at Walden Pond.

3 – 3 col. – cabin in pines

Cover illustration from “Walden, Life In The Woods”

HIDEWAY HUT – Thoreau built a one-room cabin in the woods at Walden Pond where he could read and write – with a pencil – about nature.

4 – 3 col. – two-story home

Illustration courtesy Thoreau Society

FACTORY-HOME – Concord, Mass., home of Thoreau family that also was a factory for producing pencils.

5 -- 2 col OPTIONAL -- grave stone

Photo courtesy Nanosft.com

RIP POETS – Henry David Thoreau is buried in family plot at Poets’ Ridge cemetery, Concord. Burial spot is at the small headstone, left foreground.

END