Lidian described in a letter to her husband the happy domestic scene he was missing. “It is ‘after dinner,’” she wrote,
and your peerless Edith is looking most beautifully as she dances with Henry or lays her innocent head on his music-box that she may drink yet deeper of its sweetness. Now am I interrupted by an exclamation from all present—the cherub face appears above the screen for Uncle Henry takes care that Edie shall take as high flights in Papa’s absence as ever—she rides on his shoulder or is held high up in the air—I think he adds to her happiness, and she no less to his. I wish you had seen her this morning.131
Lidian went on to recount the popping of the corn: “I brought the warming pan into the dining-room and the corn was quickly shelled into it and held over the fire by Henry who was master of ceremonies—and enjoyed the frolic as well as any child of us all. When the snapping was heard in full chorus I with my napkin lifted the hot cover the pan was taken off and the corn flew over the rug and the children like a snow storm.”132
In the first week of February Lidian described Thoreau recovering from an unspecified illness, and that he “has so far improved in health as to be quite able, as he thinks, to shovel snow once more, deep though it be. He has made very handsome paths from both doors and the great blocks of snow lie on each side attesting that they were no trifle to dispose of—I don’t know that I ever saw the snow deeper on a level.” She told Emerson that Thoreau was not going to write him at this time, “has deferred writing with my consent till you have answered his first one.”133
Emerson had told Lidian how occupied he was, previously saying that he had “received with great contentment Henry’s excellent letter but what kept me from writing to you kept me from him.”134 In a letter to Thoreau he wrote, “I think that some letter must have failed for I cannot have let ten days go by without writing home. I have kept no account but am confident that that cannot be.”135 Emerson was lecturing in Philadelphia, then was in New York visiting his brother William. While he was away Thoreau gave one of his earliest lectures in Concord, “The Life and Character of Sir Walter Raleigh,” and Emerson enthusiastically urged Lidian to “not fail to tell me every particular concerning Henry’s lecture when that comes—and the brightest star of the winter shed its clear beams on that night!”136 Lidian wrote that
Henry’s Lecture pleased me much—and I have reason to believe others liked it. Henry tells me he is so happy as to have received Mr. Keye’s suffrage and the Concord paper has spoken well of it. I think you would have been a well pleased listener. I should like to hear it two or three times more. Henry ought to be known as a man who can give a Lecture. You must advertise him to the extent of your power. A few Lyceum fees would satisfy his moderate wants—to say nothing of the improvement and happiness it would give both him and his fellow creatures if he could utter what is “most within him”—and be heard.137
When Thoreau did write, possibly without waiting for a letter from Emerson, he told of the family that “it will inform you of the state of all if I only say that I am well and happy in your house here in Concord,” and made only a passing mention to his talk, though referencing Emerson’s wish for a bright starlit night: “I lectured this week. It was as bright a night as you could wish. I hope there were no stars thrown away on the occasion.”138
Days passed without further correspondence. “I think you have made Henry wait a reasonable—or unreasonable time for an answer to his letter,” Lidian wrote.139 Emerson did write Thoreau on that same day, but only on business matters. Thoreau also wrote that day, with an overt nod to their disrupted correspondence,
As the packet still tarries, I will send you some thoughts, which I have lately relearned, as the latest public and private news.
How mean are our relations to one another! Let us pause till they are nobler. A little silence, a little rest, is good. It would be sufficient employment only to cultivate true ones.
The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand. A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remote parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me. When such divine commodities are so near and cheap, how strange that it should have to be each day’s discovery! A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me. I am no more of this earth; it acts dynamically; it changes my very substance. I cannot do what before I did. I cannot be what before I was. Other chains may be broken, but in the darkest night, in the remotest place, I trail this thread. Then things cannot happen. What if God were to confide in us for a moment! Should we not then be gods?
How subtle a thing is this confidence! Nothing sensible passes between; never any consequences are to be apprehended should it be misplaced. Yet something has transpired. A new behavior springs; the ship carries new ballast in her hold. A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused. It should be cause to lay down one’s life,—which would not be to lose it. Can there be any mistake up there? Don’t the gods know where to invest their wealth? Such confidence, too, would be reciprocal. When one confides greatly in you, he will feel the roots of an equal trust fastening themselves in him. When such trust has been received or reposed, we dare not speak, hardly to see each other; our voices sound harsh and untrustworthy. We are as instruments which the Powers have dealt with. Through what straits would we not carry this little burden of a magnanimous trust! Yet no harm could possibly come, but simply faithlessness. Not a feather, not a straw, is entrusted; that packet is empty. It is only committed to us, and, as it were, all things are committed to us.
The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort,—the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker’s lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain. We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love. How much more full is Nature where we think the empty space is than where we place the solids!—full of fluid influences. Should we ever communicate but by these? The spirit abhors a vacuum more than Nature. There is a tide which pierces the pores of the air. These aerial rivers, let us not pollute their currents. What meadows do they course through? How many fine mails there are which traverse their routes! He is privileged who gets his letter franked by them.
I believe these things.140
When