Part 2 (2/2)
Mr. Burroughs was born April 3, 1837, on a small farm amid the Catskills at Roxbury, New York, where he lived during the early years of his life.
The love of the farm still clings to him, and you will frequently hear him say, ”Anything that savors of the farm is very pleasant to me, and recalls my early years at Roxbury on the old home farm.” He belongs to that cla.s.s of men who got an education by working most of the time and going to school when there was little work to do. In order to gain his way to the academy, he had to earn his own money, as his parents were poor and there were nine children in the family. To earn the necessary money, he taught school and with the money he thus earned, went to Ashland Academy. Afterwards, he closed his school days at Cooperstown in 1854, where he studied one term. Upon leaving school, the spirit of adventure seized him, and he went to Illinois and spent some time teaching. But because of the girl he loved, he soon returned to New York, and married in 1857, while teaching in a small town in the east central part of the state. The two have enjoyed a wide acquaintance among the literary characters of America for the last half century. To them has been born one child, Julian Burroughs, who is already known in the literary world as a Nature writer.
III
Mr. Burroughs was teaching when his first essay was accepted and printed in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1860. He continued teaching till 1863, when he went to Was.h.i.+ngton City to enlist in the army, but finding many objections to such a life, he entered the Treasury Department in January, 1864. Here he served in various capacities, and finally became chief of the organization division of the Comptroller of Currency. In 1873, he resigned to become receiver of a bank in Middletown, N. Y. He was afterwards made bank examiner in the Eastern part of New York state, which position he held till 1885. Since then he has relied on his writings and his fruit farm for a living.
He has always been an optimist, and at 72 years of age is full of suns.h.i.+ne. In religious belief he is perhaps, a fatalist. He is willing to bide his time fearlessly, for his portion. His experience is largely a home experience, though he has been to England twice, to Alaska once, and to the island of Jamaica, and for the past two years has spent his winters in California and Hawaii. These visits have each been the inspiration for several essays. His literary work has always been a labor of love, and with these few exceptions, together with several short papers on men and literature, his essays have been the outgrowth of his contact with Nature up on the Hudson River and around Was.h.i.+ngton City. His books number 18 volumes of essays and one volume of poems.
Since the recent school of Nature fakers has come so prominently into public notice, his mind has shown remarkable activity in his efforts to hold Nature writers to the truth. Only a few years ago he added some land over the mountain to his estate, and in a beautiful rich valley, about a mile from Riverby, he has built with his own hands, out of rough bark-covered slabs, his rustic retreat called ”Slabsides.” For several years he has spent part of his time in this primitive-looking house, which he says was built because he wished to get back to Nature.
Many books and periodicals are in this sylvan home, and its owner has often spent days at a time there, communing with Nature, and taking notes on the return of Spring, the songs of new bird visitors, and the ways of wood folks. Nothing has ever made so deep an impression on the writer as the sight of Mr. Burroughs in and around ”Slabsides.”
No man of the century has put himself in an att.i.tude to get more out of life than Burroughs. His peace of mind and satisfaction with life as he finds it and makes it, are largely responsible for his power as a writer. No man can read his sane, wholesome truths about Nature, men, and literature, without growing better and more satisfied with life, and more resigned to the ways of the Powers that be.
Most of what follows is the result of conversations in the evenings with Mr. Burroughs on natural history, literature and people, the three things about which he talks very freely when you know him. The first evening he was with us the discussion led to his recent essay, ”The Divine Soil,” and he, with a soul full of this interesting subject, went into the matter at length, giving his idea of Man and Nature, of the possible age of the earth, and the gradual wearing away of the continents. As well as I remember, he said:
”It will take only about 6,000,000 years--a brief period in the history of creation--for all the continents to wear away, at the present rate.
In trying to indicate what is meant by the long periods of time that it has taken for Nature to reach the present stage of development, one author used this figure: That it had existed and had been forming as long as it would take to wear away the Alps Mountains by sweeping across them with a thin veil once every thousand years.
”What progress man is making upon the earth! At the present rate, he will soon be able to harness the winds, the waves of the sea and even the tide waters. He will store up electricity in batteries to be used at his will. All these things will become necessary when the population grows out of proportion to our present resources. No doubt man's progress will be as great in the future as it has been in the past, and just what he will be found doing when all the present supplies of Nature are exhausted, no one can tell. One thing becomes evident, he will learn to use much of the energy that is now lost. Necessity will soon become the mother of many inventions.
”The largeness of the Universe has always been a subject of much thought for me. I like to think that we are making our voyage on such a large scale. The Heaven and h.e.l.l that we used to hear so much about, are no longer considered the one up and the other down. There is no up nor down in Nature, except relative to our own earth. The farthest visible star, so many million times a million miles away, is only a short distance in infinite s.p.a.ce, from which we could doubtless see as much further, and as many more worlds as we now see from our old earth. I like Whitman because his largeness puts one in tune with Nature in the larger sense. No other poet with which I am acquainted, gives one such large and wholesome views about the world in which we live.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: AT THE BARS IN FRONT OF THE OLD HOME BURIAL GROUNDS]
IV
On the following evening, which was the evening of March 5, Mr.
Burroughs entered fully into a discussion of Emerson, Th.o.r.eau and Whitman. His conversation ran about as follows:
”Th.o.r.eau was somewhat eccentric and did not reach a large cla.s.s of people like Emerson, who always savored of youth, and stimulates all who read him. Th.o.r.eau was original, however, and his books breathe the breath of real things. Whitman was larger than Th.o.r.eau, and encompa.s.sed the whole world, instead of a little nook of the woods like Walden Pond. He used to breakfast with us on Sunday mornings when we lived in Was.h.i.+ngton, and he never reached our house on time for meals. Mrs.
Burroughs would fret and worry and get hot while the breakfast would get cold. One moment she would be at the door looking down the street, another she would be fanning with her ap.r.o.n, wis.h.i.+ng that man would come on. Presently, Walt could be seen, and he would swing off the car, whistling as if a week was before him in which to get to his breakfast.
To have him in our home was a great pleasure to us. He always brought suns.h.i.+ne and a robust, vigorous nature. Once Mrs. Burroughs had prepared an extra good meal, and Walt seemed to enjoy it more than usual. After eating most heartily he smiled, saying: 'Mrs. Burroughs knows how to appeal to the stomach as Mr. Burroughs does to the mind.' I often saw him on the front of a horse car riding up the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton. Far down the street, before I could see his face, his white beard and hair could be seen distinctly. He usually rode with one foot upon the front railing, and was with Peter Doyle, a popular cab driver, oftener than he was with any one else. Doyle was a large Irishman with much native wit, and was a favorite of Whitman's.
”The Atlantic is my favorite of American periodicals, and I like to see my papers printed in it. It seems always to hold to a very high standard of excellence. I remember well when the magazine was launched in November of 1857. I was teaching at the time, and having purchased a copy, in the town in which I was teaching, I returned home and remarked to Mrs. Burroughs that I liked the new magazine very much and thought it had come to stay. Somehow, the contents made me feel a.s.sured of its success. I was married in September before the magazine appeared in November. My first essay was printed in the Atlantic in November of 1860, three years after it had been launched. I was very proud, indeed, when I had received the magazine and found my own work in print in it.
The essay was 'Expression' and was purely Emersonian. Now I knew it would never do for me to keep this up, if I hoped for great success.
This essay was so like Emerson, that it fooled Lowell, the editor of the Atlantic, and Mr. Hill, the Rhetorician, who quoted a line from it giving Emerson as the author. (Here Mr. Burroughs laughed.) You know, it was not customary to sign names to articles written for periodicals in those days. I was so much worried about this Emersonian mask that I resolved to lay it off. So I began to write of things that I knew about, such as birds and flowers, the weather and all out-door Nature. I soon found that I had hit upon my feet, that I had found my own.
”The t.i.tle of my first book was 'Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person,' and was published in 1867. Later I wrote a book on 'Whitman: A Study.' Since I first turned attention to Whitman, he has never released hold upon me. I found a more wholesome air in his than in any other poetry, and when I met him and learned to love him, his attractive personality strengthened my love for his writings. He is the one mountain in our American Literary Landscape. There are some beautiful hills.
”I don't seem to be in a mood to write poetry. One cannot write when he thinks to do so. He must have a deep consciousness of his message, if he would say something that will hold water. Probably I shall find my muse again some day; I don't know.
”I have always been a lover of the farm. I am a man of the soil. I enjoyed the smell of that manure as we pa.s.sed up the road today. It recalled my early days when I used to put it out on the farm. Anything that savors of the farm and of farm life is pleasant to me. Nothing makes me happier than my annual visits back to my old home in the Catskills. When Mrs. Burroughs and I decided to buy a home and move away from Was.h.i.+ngton, I could not decide just where would be best for us to settle, so we thought to get near New York and at the same time as near the old home as possible. We have enjoyed our life at Riverby very much, and it is convenient in every way. We have a great many visitors, and like to see them come.
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