When his “A Walk to Wachusett” was published in the January 1843 issue of the Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion, Thoreau had trouble getting paid by the publisher. “Did I tell you,” Lidian wrote her husband, “that Bradbury & Soden have refused to pay Henry more than two thirds of the money they promised for his ‘Walk to W,’ and that they postpone the payment even of that? Will it not do for you to call on your return through Boston and demand it for him?”143 Emerson did his best, writing Thoreau, “I am sorry to say that when I called on Bradbury & Soden nearly a month ago, their partner in their absence informed me that they could not pay you at present any part of their debt on account of the Boston Miscellany. . . . I shall not fail to refresh their memory at intervals.”144 Thoreau soon told Emerson not to “think of Bradbury & Soden any more. . . . I see that they have given up their shop here.”145
While Emerson was still in New York, Thoreau wrote to him about his “long kindness” and his own unexpressed gratitude that he had been Emerson’s “pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free as under the sky.”146 Realizing his position and the obligations he owed to their friendship, as well as perhaps feeling the weight of such obligations, it was now time to move on, though not without asking Emerson’s assistance. Thoreau wrote in early March that he had been “meditating some other method of paying debts than by lectures and writing which will only do to talk about. If anything of that ‘other’ sort should come to your ears in N.Y. will you remember it for me?”147
Emerson suggested to his brother that Thoreau might make an excellent tutor for his three children—the youngest, Charles, still an infant; three-year-old Haven; but principally seven-year-old Willie. William Emerson agreed. It would give Thoreau not only a paid position for which he was well qualified but also access to the New York publishers and editors. On returning to Concord Emerson discussed the idea with Thoreau. He explained that it was more Willie himself than his grammar and geography that would be subject to Thoreau’s influence; he should take the boy to the woods as well as into the city. For that he would get lodging and board, firewood when needed, and one hundred dollars per annum. Thoreau had found a position he wished to sustain, “to be the friend and educator of a boy, and one not yet subdued by schoolmasters.”148
Perhaps he might be able to perform some clerical work in William Emerson’s office, or for someone Emerson knew, to supplement his income until he could obtain some literary work in the city. Such was Thoreau’s hope. For all concerned, this was an auspicious and welcome opportunity. Elizabeth Hoar sent him an inkstand as a token; Prudence Ward gave him a small microscope.
Emerson wrote his brother a brief caveat based on his own experiences. Thoreau “is a bold and a profound thinker,” he wrote, “though he may easily chance to pester you with some accidental crotchets and perhaps a village exaggeration of the value of facts.”149 Emerson had confessed as much to Hawthorne, who wrote in his journal around this time, “Mr. Emerson appears to have suffered some inconveniency from his experience of Mr. Thoreau as an inmate.”150 But Emerson concluded his warning with the promise that “if you should content each other,” Willie would soon come “to value him for his real power to serve and instruct him. I shall eagerly look, though not yet for some time, for tidings how you speed in this new relation.”151
Thoreau visited Hawthorne before leaving, going out on the river with him in the Musketaquid, the boat Thoreau had sold him in the fall. Hawthorne was glad on Thoreau’s account, as he is “physically out of health, and, morally and intellectually, seems not to have found exactly the guiding clue; and in all these respects, he may be benefitted by his removal.” It was on everyone’s mind but only Hawthorne expressed it on paper: “Also, it is one step towards a circumstantial position in the world.” But on his own account, the introverted and sometimes reclusive Hawthorne would have preferred that Thoreau stay, “he being one of the few persons, I think, with whom to hold intercourse is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest-tree.”152
Elizabeth Hoar told Emerson that “I love Henry, but do not like him.”153 As he struggled with his own relationship with Henry, this may have seemed like a motto to their own friendship. “Young men, like Henry Thoreau, owe us a new world, and they have not acquitted the debt,” Emerson wrote in his journal. “For the most part, such die young, and so dodge the fulfilment.”154 Perhaps in New York Thoreau would not be able to dodge what Emerson thought he owed the world.
Emerson was confident about this new episode in his young friend’s life, writing to his brother, “And now goes our brave youth into the new house, the new connexion, the new City. I am sure no truer and no purer person lives in wide New York.”155 Henry was missed. Waldo wrote him, “You will not doubt that you are well remembered here, by young, older, and old people and your letter to your mother was borrowed and read with great interest, pending the arrival of direct accounts and of later experiences especially in the city.”156
Away from home Henry realized not just what he owed to Waldo, but also to Lidian. “I believe a good many conversations with you were left in an unfinished state, and now indeed I don’t know where to take them up,” he wrote her.
I think of you as some elder sister of mine, whom I could not have avoided,—a sort of lunar influence,—only of such age as the moon, whose time is measured by her light. You must know that you represent to me woman. . . . I thank you for your influence for two years. I was fortunate to be subjected to it, and am now to remember it. It is the noblest gift we can make; what signify all others that can be bestowed? You have helped to keep my life “on loft,” as Chaucer says of Griselda, and in a better sense. You always seemed to look down at me as from some elevation—some of your high humilities—and I was the better for having to look up. I felt taxed not to disappoint your expectation; for could there be any accident so sad as to be respected for something better than we are? It was a pleasure even to go away from you, as it is not to meet some, as it apprised me of my high relations; and such a departure is a sort of further introduction and meeting. Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.157
Thoreau reminded Lidian to not think
fate is so dark there, for even here I can see a faint reflected light over Concord. . . .
I have hardly begun to live on Staten Island yet; but, like the man who, when forbidden to tread on English ground, carried Scottish ground in his boots, I carry Concord ground in my boots and in my hat,—and am I not made of Concord dust? I cannot realize that it is the roar of the sea I hear now, and not the wind in Walden woods. I find more of Concord, after all, in the prospect of the sea, beyond Sandy Hook, than in the fields and woods.158
Sometimes his homesickness manifested itself physically. “I have