The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

Against these great merits are to be set, no doubt, some formidable literary defects: an occasional mistiness of expression, like the summit of Katahdin, as he himself describes it,—one vast fog, with here and there a rock protruding; also, an occasional sandy barrenness, like his beloved Cape Cod. In truth, he never quite completed the transition from the observer to the artist. With the power of constructing sentences as perfectly graceful as a hemlock-bough, he yet displays the most wayward aptitude for literary caterpillars'-nests and all manner of disfigurements. The same want of artistic habit appears also in his wilful disregard of all rules of proportion. He depicts an Indian, for instance, with such minute observation and admirable verbal skill that one feels as if neither Catlin nor Schoolcraft ever saw the actual creature; but though the table-talk of the aboriginal may seem for a time more suggestive than that of Coleridge or Macaulay, yet there is a point beyond which his, like theirs, becomes a bore.

In addition to these drawbacks, one finds in Thoreau an unnecessary defiance of tone, and a very resolute non-appreciation of many things which a larger mental digestion can assimilate without discomfort. In his dealings with Nature he is sweet, genial, patient, wise. In his dealings with men he exasperates himself over the least divergence from the desired type. Before any over-tendency to the amenities and luxuries of civilization, in particular, he becomes unreasonable and relentless. Hence there appears something hard and ungenial in his views of life, utterly out of keeping with the delicate tenderness which he shows in the woods. The housekeeping of bees and birds he finds noble and beautiful, but for the home and cradle of the humblest human pair he can scarcely be said to have even toleration; a farmer's barn he considers a cumbrous and pitiable appendage, and he lectures the Irish women in their shanties for their undue share of the elegancies of life. With infinite faith in the tendencies of mineral and vegetable nature, in human nature he shows no practical trust, and must even be severe upon the babies in the Maine log-huts for playing with wooden dolls instead of pine-cones. It is, indeed, noticeable that he seems to love every other living animal more unreservedly than the horse,—as if this poor sophisticated creature, though still a quadruped and a brother, had been so vitiated by undue intimacy with man as to have become little better than if he wore broadcloth and voted.

Yet there was not in Thoreau one trait of the misanthrope; his solitary life at Walden was not chosen because he loved man less, but because he loved Nature more; and any young poet or naturalist might envy the opportunities it gave him. But his intellectual habits showed always a tendency to exaggeration, and he spent much mental force in fighting shadows, Church and State, war and politics,—a man of solid vigor must find room in his philosophy to tolerate these matters for a time, even if he cannot cordially embrace them. But Thoreau, a celibate, and at times a hermit, brought the Protestant extreme to match the Roman Catholic, and though he did not personally ignore one duty of domestic life, he yet held a system which would have excluded wife and child, house and property. His example is noble and useful to all high-minded young people, but only when interpreted by a philosophy less exclusive than his own. In urging his one social panacea, "Simplify, I say, simplify," he failed to see that all steps in moral or material organization are really efforts after the same process he recommends. The sewing-machine is a more complex affair than the needle, but it simplifies every woman's life, and helps her to that same comparative freedom from care which Thoreau would seek only by reverting to the Indian blanket.

But many-sided men do not move in battalions, and even a one-sided philosopher may be a boon to think of, if he be as noble as Thoreau. His very defects are higher than many men's virtues, and his most fantastic moralizings will bear reading without doing harm, especially during a Presidential campaign. Of his books, "Walden" will probably be permanently reckoned as the best, as being the most full and deliberate exhibition of the author's mind, and as extracting the most from the least material. It is also the most uniform in texture, and the most complete in plan, while the "Week" has no unity but that of the chronological epoch it covers,—a week which is probably the most comprehensive on record, ranging from the Bhagvat-Geetha to the "good time coming,"—and the "Excursions" no unity but that of the covers which comprise them, being, indeed, a compilation of his earliest and latest essays. Which of his four volumes contains his finest writing it would really be hard to say; but in structure the present book comes nearest to "Walden"; it is within its limits a perfect monograph of the Maine woods. All that has been previously written fails to portray so vividly the mysterious life of the lonely forest,—the grandeur of Katahdin or Ktaadn, that hermit-mountain,—and the wild and adventurous navigation of those Northern water-courses whose perils make the boating of the Adirondack region seem safe and tame. The book is also more unexceptionably healthy in its tone than any of its predecessors, and it is pleasant to find the author, on emerging from his explorations, admitting that the confines of civilization afford, after all, the best residence, and that the wilderness is of most value as "a resource and a background."

There yet remain for publication Thoreau's adventures on Cape Cod; his few public addresses on passing events, especially those on the Burns Rescue and the John-Brown affair, which were certainly among the very ablest productions called forth by those exciting occasions; his poems; and his private letters to his friend Blake, of Worcester, and to others,—letters which certainly contain some of his toughest, and perhaps also some of his finest writing. All these deserve, and must one day receive, preservation. He who reads most books reads that which has a merely temporary interest, and will be presently superseded by something better; but Nature has waited many centuries for Thoreau, and we can hardly expect to see, during this generation, another mortal so favored with her confidence.

Jennie Juneiana: Talks on Women's Topics. By Jennie June. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 12mo. pp. 240.

Great are the resources of human invention, and the tiresome passion for alliterative titles may possibly have culminated in some name yet more foolish than that of this little green and gold volume. If so, the rival has proved too much for the trump of Fame to carry, and has dropped unnoticed. In the present case, the title does perhaps some injustice to the book, which is not a silly one, though it contains very silly things. It seems to be written from the point of view afforded by a second-rate New-York boarding-house, and by a person who has never come in contact with any refined or well-bred people. With this allowance, it is written in the interest of good manners and good morals, and with enough of natural tact to keep the writer from getting far beyond her depth, although she does talk of "Goethe's Mignion" and "Miss Werner,"—whoever these personages may be,—and of "the substantial fame achieved by the unknown author of 'Rutledge.'" It is written in the prevalent American newspaper-style,—a style which is apt to be graphic, piquant, and dashing, accompanied by a flavor, slight or more than slight, of flippancy and slang,—a style such as reaches high-tide in certain "popular" native authors, male and female, and in ebbing strands us on "Jennie June."

Of course, writing from the windows of Mrs. Todgers, "Jennie" manifests the usual superfluous anxiety of her kind not to be called strong-minded. She is prettily indignant at the thought of female physicians: there is nothing improper in having diseases, but to cure them would be indelicacy indeed. Girls out of work, who wish for places in shops, are only "patriotic young ladies who desire to fill all the lucrative situations at present occupied by young men." She would even banish Bridget from the kitchen and substitute unlimited Patricks, which will interest housekeepers as being the only conceivable remedy worse than the disease. Of course, a female lecturer is an abomination: "Jennie" proves, first, that a "strong-minded woman" must be either unmarried or unhappy in marriage, and then turns, with rather illogical wrath, upon Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, for being too domestic to make speeches since their marriage. To follow the court phraseology, "This reminds us of a little anecdote." When the fashion of long, flowing wigs was just vanishing in Boston, somebody wore one from that town down to Salem, where they were entirely extinct. All the street-boys ran after him all the morning, to ask him why he wore a wig. He, wishing to avoid offence, left it in the house at dinner-time; and was pursued all the afternoon by the same boys, with the inquiry why he did not wear a wig. These eloquent women find it equally hard to please their little critic by silence or by speech. The simple truth probably is, that they hold precisely the same views which they always held, and will live to trouble her yet, when the epoch of the nursery is over. The majority of women's-rights advocates have always been wives and mothers, and, for aught we know, excellent ones, since that dear, motherly old Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, first broached the matter; and the great change in our legislation on all the property-rights of that sex is just as directly traceable to their labors as is the repeal of the English corn-laws to the efforts of the "League." If, however, "Jennie" consoles herself with the reflection that the points made in this controversy by the authors of "Hannah Thurston" and "Miss Gilbert's Career" are not much stronger than her own, she must remember her favorite theory, that all foolishness sounds more respectable when uttered from masculine lips.

1. Woman and her Era. By Eliza W. Farnham. In Two Volumes. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.

2. Eliza Woodson; or, The Early Days of one of the World's Workers. A Story of American Life. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.

In the three and a half centuries since Cornelius Agrippa, no one has attempted with so much ability as Mrs. Farnham to transfer the theory of woman's superiority from the domain of poetry to that of science. Second to no American woman save Miss Dix in her experience as a practical philanthropist, she has studied human nature in the sternest practical schools, from Sing-Sing to California. She justly claims for her views that they have been maturing for twenty-two years of "experience so varied as to give it almost every form of trial which could fall to the intellectual life of any save the most favored women." Her books show, moreover, an ardent love of literature and some accurate scientific training,—though her style has the condensation and vigor which active life creates, rather than the graces of culture.

The essence of her book lies in this opening syllogism:—

"Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and functional complexity;

"Woman's organism is more complex and her totality of function larger than those of any other being inhabiting our earth;

"Therefore her position in the scale of life is the most exalted,—the sovereign one."

This is compactly stated and quite unequivocal, although the three last words of the conclusion are a step beyond the premises, and the main fight of her opponents would no doubt be made on her definition of the word being. The assumption that either sex of a given species is a distinct "being" cannot probably be slid into the minor premise of the argument without some objection from the opposing counsel. However, this brings us at once to the main point, and the chapter called "The Organic Argument," which opens with this syllogism, is really the pith of the book, and would, perhaps, stand stronger without the other six hundred pages. In this chapter she shows the strength of a system-maker, in the rest the weaknesses of one; she feels obliged to apply her creed to everything, to illustrate everything by its light, to find unexpected confirmations everywhere, and to manipulate all the history of art, literature, and society, till she conforms them all to her standard. She recites, with no new power, historical facts that are already familiar; and gives many pages to extracts from very well known poets and very ill known prose-writers, to the exclusion of her own terse and vigorous thought. All this is without a trace of book-making, but is done in single-hearted zeal for views which are only damaged by the process.

These are merely literary defects; but Mrs. Farnham really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged to assume a tone of habitual antagonism towards men, from which the advocates of mere equality are excused. Indeed, the technical Woman's-Rights movement has always witnessed a very hearty coöperation among its advocates of both sexes, and it is generally admitted that men are at least as ready to concede additional rights as women to ask for them. But when one comes to Mrs. Farnham's stand-point, and sees what her opinion of men really is, the stanchest masculine ally must shrink from assigning himself to such a category of scoundrels. The best criticism made on Michelet's theory of woman as a predestined invalid was that of the sensible physician who responded, "As if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman!"—and Mrs. Farnham certainly proves too much in undertaking to expose the blunders of Deity in the construction of a man. Assuming, as she invariably does, the highest woman to be the typical woman, and the lowest man to be the typical man, she can prove anything she pleases. But even this does not content her; every gleam of tenderness and refinement exhibited by man she transfers by some inexplicable legerdemain of logic to the feminine side, and makes somehow into a new proof of his hopeless inferiority; and she is landed at last in the amazing paradox, that "the most powerful feminine souls have appeared in masculine forms, thus far in human career." (Vol. II. p. 360.)

In short, her theory involves a necessity of perpetual overstatement. The conception of a pure and noble young man, such as Richter delineates in his Walt or Albano, seems utterly foreign to her system; and of that fine subtilty of nature by which the highest types of manhood and womanhood approach each other, as if mutually lending refinement and strength, she seems to have no conception. The truth is, that, however much we may concede to the average spiritual superiority of woman, a great deal also depends on the inheritance and the training of the individual. Mrs. Farnham, like every refined woman, is often shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous men; but she does not tell us the other side of the story,—how often every man of refinement has occasion to be shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous women. Sexual disparities may be much; but individual disparities are even more.

Mrs. Farnham is noble enough, and her book is brave and wise enough, to bear criticisms which grow only from her attempting too much. The difference between her book and most of those written on the other side is, that in the previous cases the lions have been the painters, and here it is the lioness. As against the exaggerations on the other side, she has a right to exaggerate on her part. As against the theory that man is superior to woman because he is larger, she has a right to plead that in that case the gorilla were the better man, and to assert on the other hand that woman is superior because smaller,—Emerson's mountain and squirrel. As against the theory that glory and dominion go with the beard, she has a right to maintain (and that she does with no small pungency) that Nature gave man this appendage because he was not to be trusted with his own face, and needed this additional covering for his shame. As against the historical traditions of man's mastery, she does well to urge that creation is progressive, and that the megalosaurus was master even before man. It is, indeed, this last point which constitutes the crowning merit of the book, and which will be permanently associated with Mrs. Farnham's name. No one before her has so firmly grasped this key to woman's historic position, that the past was an age of coarse, preliminary labor, in which her time had not yet come. This theory, as elucidated by Mrs. Farnham, taken with the fine statement of Buckle as to the importance of the intuitive element in the feminine intellect, (which statement Mrs. Farnham also quotes,) constitutes the most valuable ground logically conquered for woman within this century. These contributions are eclipsed in importance only by those actual achievements of women of genius,—as of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rosa Bonheur, and Harriet Hosmer,—which, so far as they go, render all argument superfluous.

In this domain of practical achievement Mrs. Farnham has also labored well, and the autobiography of her childish years, when she only aspired after such toils, has an interest wholly apart from that of her larger work, and scarcely its inferior. Except the immortal "Pet Marjorie," one can hardly recall in literature a delineation so marvellous of a childish mind so extraordinary as "Eliza Woodson." The few characters appear with an individuality worthy of a great novelist; every lover of children must find it altogether fascinating, and to the most experienced student of human nature it opens a new chapter of startling interest.

The Cliff-Climbers; or, The Lone Home in the Himalayas. A Sequel to "The Plant-Hunters." By Captain Mayne Reid, Author of "The Desert Home," "The Boy-Hunters," etc., etc. With Illustrations. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Beloved of boys, the adventurous Mayne Reid continues from year to year his good work as a story-teller. Since he held the youthful student a spellbound reader of "The Desert Home," he has sent abroad a dozen volumes, all excellent in their way, for the entertainment of his ever-increasing audience. He has not, however, dealt quite fairly by his boy-friends. He kept them waiting several years for the completion of "The Plant-Hunters," and it is only now that he has found time to add "The Cliff-Climbers" as a sequel to that fascinating story. While we thank him for the book that gives us farther acquaintance with those stirring individuals, Karl and Caspar, we cannot help reminding him how long ago it is since we read "The Plant-Hunters," and wished for more.

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