Episode 09: Quiet Lives of Desperation

In this episode, Caitlin and Francesgrace got a little lost in the woods and in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

LINK TO SHOW NOTES

Season 1. Episode 9. Quiet Lives of Desperation.

Caitlin: Hello, and welcome to Grave Escapes, the podcast helps those who've died tell their stories once again.

INTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Hey Frances.

Frances: Hey.

Caitlin: I want to ask you a question before we get started tonight.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: You feel that you are leading a life of quiet desperation?

Frances: Um…Maybe?

Caitlin: I think we all are to some extent, right?

Frances: I feel like that's true.

Caitlin: But so being in New England, the weather's getting warmer. It's possibly almost too warm, but this means that we have gone on a lot of cemetery adventures, right?

Frances: Oh yeah. It's been great.

Caitlin: I want to just set the scene for you all. We went to go visit today's topics recently. I got there a little bit before Frances, because I had gone up early to try to get to a specific monument that was closed—more about that in a moment—and Frances pulls up in her car, gets out in a full length skirt with multiple layers, solid black. I’m just like, I should start a timer for how long before she says it's way too hot, but you got through like 45 minutes before you were like, no, this is horrible.

Frances: That is so yes, a hundred percent true. That skirt has something like 27 yards of fabric to it.

Caitlin: It was awesome. You pulled it off, but I was just like, I'm sitting there with like leggings and I'm warm.

Frances: Oh, I was super jealous.

Caitlin: But, so that brings us to our topic tonight. So we are setting tonight's episode. I want to say, based on geography.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Would you say that's fair?

Frances: Yeah, absolutely.

Caitlin: So we spent most of our time recently at Author's Ridge, which is in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is in Concord, Massachusetts, not Sleepy Hollow, New York. Please make sure you understand that.

Frances: Which is a place that I would love to move.

Caitlin: Yeah, let's do it. So in Author's Ridge, there are authors. I know that that's duh, but these are all people who knew each other lived together and lived really close to each other in Concord, Massachusetts in the 1800s.

Frances: So buried authors Ridge, you have Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hey.

Caitlin: You have Louisa May Alcott.

Frances: Yeah!

Caitlin: You have Henry David Thoreau.

Frances: *gagging noises*

Caitlin: And you have Ralph Waldo Emerson. And so with that, we decided to actually cover tonight Emerson and Thoreau because…

Frances: They were buds.

Caitlin: They were buds.

Frances: Sometimes.

Caitlin: Maybe. So, you've taken on the task of talking about Emerson.

Frances: I did.

Caitlin: Which is more power to you. And I have taken on the role of talking about Thoreau.

Frances: Kudos to you.

Caitlin: I've also been trying to read Walden to prepare for this podcast. And I will just absolutely tell you all that I am halfway through and I am struggling. Do you have tips, please send them because right now it's audiobook and video game. And most of the time I find myself going, what the fuck Henry? Really?

Frances: My tip is don’t.

Caitlin: No, I have to do it. I need the pretentiousness of saying, well, I read Walden.

Frances: We're New Englanders.

Caitlin: So, yeah. So with that, I actually want to…I want to change things up a bit if you're cool with it.

Frances: Sure.

Caitlin: So I think we should actually go based on who died first, because I think this is going to surprise you.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: So Frances, what year did Emerson die?

Frances: 1882.

Caitlin: Okay. Thoreau died…in 1862.

Frances: Whaaaat?

Caitlin: Yeah. So we've got some stuff to talk about there, but would you like to start us off with Mr. Waldo Emerson?

Frances: I would love to start us off with Mr. Waldo Emerson.

Caitlin: So wait, oh my God. I didn't realize this. And he's about to roll over in his grave, but I'm fine with it. Fuck him. Um…did we find Waldo?

Frances: We found Waldo.

Caitlin: All right. I got that out of my system.

Frances: We only found Waldo after he already graduated from college. I will circle back.

Caitlin: All right. So I actually don't know much about Emerson other than the fact, I think he's a prick, but I'm excited to see if that's true or not.

Frances: I've come to the conclusion that they both are.

Caitlin: Yeah, I'm good with that, but let's hear it. Tell me all about Mr. Emerson.

Frances: All right. So there's a couple of ways that I could have done this and I did it a third way. So I could have given you a chronological biography, I could have you done like a thought biography and how he developed his theories, but I kind of did a combo plate. Let's start with three facts that I didn't know before I started my research. Okay?

The first fact Emerson was an extensive diarist, just like ridiculously extensive. He kept journals from sophomore year of college, right through to almost the end of his life. Thousands of pages of journals, tens of thousands of pages. Extensive. So fact, number one. Fact number two, Emerson was queer, which we know because of fact number 1.

Caitlin: Oh! What?

Frances: And fact number three, Emerson was obsessed with the idea of ideas. Obsessed with thought imagination, mythology, creation, writing, literally anything that like the human brain creates, he was obsessed with it.

Caitlin: So I'm not hating him at this moment. I'm actually kind of into this.

Frances: Yeah, not terrible…I think I should probably have realized that last one, given that he is a founding transcendentalist, but somehow I did not get that. All right. So we'll start at the beginning a little bit.

He was born Ralph Waldo Emerson. He's the second of five surviving sons May 25th, 1803. So Thomas Jefferson is president. He could read before his third birthday. So tiny genius boy. And he was super goofy, growing up. Told terrible jokes, played pranks, you know, goofy middle child. His family was poor, even though his dad was a minister and also edited religious texts on the side, they were still not particularly wealthy, and then his father died when he was eight. So wave goodbye to the main breadwinner. His mother started taking in boarders after that. And a couple of his aunts moved in.

Caitlin: Do you mean borders as in like borders or borders is in like whorehouse?

Frances: Borders as in like she was a landlord.

Caitlin: Okay. I was excited for the other one, but that's okay.

Frances: I mean, so she was living in the house with her five sons and two like one sister and one sister-in-law.

Caitlin: Yeah. That's not really a great place to party. I get it.

Frances: No. She took in like actual lodgers. He was tutored by his aunts in particular, his father's sister, Mary Moody Emerson. Who's buried really close to him at Sleepy Hollow. By Emerson's own description, Mary was a genius. And he actually took her collected unpublished writings, essays letters, what have you, and he condensed them into four hand copied volumes that he kept with him for his entire life and would re read and reread regularly.

Caitlin: Hmm.

Frances: So he's very impressed with his father's sister at nine years old, he actually gets into the Boston Latin School, which is still there. It's the oldest school in the United States. It was founded in 1635. It's extremely difficult to get into. So he goes there from 9 until 14 when he gets into Harvard, not quite as young as Cotton Mather. And that actually wasn't an unusual age to go to Harvard. It was a little bit early, but not huge, at the time.

Let's talk about Harvard. It was here that he starts to write. He would keep essays. He'd keep a commonplace book where he'd keep quotes and stuff, all sorts of things. Three journals going at once. It was also here that he first encounters, modern philosophy and modern critical works on history and religion.

It's the religious piece that sort of complicated his devotion. So at this point he wants to be a minister, but he's starting to question…ministry as an office. It's also here where admission falls in love with two different people.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: A woman whose name we don't know. And a man named Martin Gay.

Caitlin: Oh, that's an unfortunate last name.

Frances: Yes. Yes it is. He actually writes that he prays that both will become part of him forever. Doesn't happen. I don't know about the woman, but Martin eventually just fades away, but something that might be surprising to listeners, he's completely unembarrassed about his feelings for gay. He didn't feel the need to put writing about their relationship in cipher.

The only thing he actually coded was his discussion of the passionate glances that they exchanged. He wrote in Latin, which was apparently a common thing for Harvard boys to do so that the younger boys wouldn't be able to read it if they stumbled across the journals, only the upper upper years. So it was like a PG 13 rating instead of G in his journal.

So yeah, midway through Harvard, he catches feelings, not for a person. But for the working of the human mind.

Caitlin: Okay. I feel really bad. I just just say. I've always had bad feelings towards Emerson and Thoreau because of college.

Frances: Fair.

Caitlin: I kind of get it now. I'm also seeing some of myself and Emerson right now and I'm feeling kind of scared.

Frances: I'm okay with Emerson as a person, but his writing…

Caitlin: As a concept?

Frances: Awful to slog through.

Caitlin: Okay. I mean, but transcendentalists.

Frances: Yeah. Oh, all of them.

Caitlin: Okay. So he's in love with the minds?

Frances: And also the natural world. So he has these two obsessions, which will carry him through the rest of his life: Thoughts, ideas, imagination, folklore, anything that comes from the mind predominantly, and then nature. It's also right as he's graduating…the end of his Harvard tenure that he decides he's going to drop Ralph as a name and start going by Waldo.

Caitlin: So I feel like I actually have to interject here, like kind of what we did with Dow and Jones. So Emerson goes to Harvard, Thoreau goes to Harvard.

Frances: Oh I know.

Caitlin: So when is Emerson?

Frances: So he starts at 14 and he's there for four years. So he's there till he's 18, which would be 1821ish. Yeah. They are 14 years apart.

Caitlin: Yeah. So, Emerson starts then. Thoreau starts 1833.

Frances: And he graduates 1837.

Caitlin: He does.

Frances: Stick a pin in his graduation. I will come back to that.

Caitlin: Okay. Looking forward to that.

Frances: Yeah, they're not contemporaries at all. I thought they were the same age going into this or close to it. I didn't realize there was such an age. Okay. So he graduates from Harvard and he starts teaching at his brothers school in Boston. His brother has a girl school out of their house.

Caitlin: Of course, he does. Like you do.

Frances: He hates it and he's also kind of bad at it. And so he's kind of bopping around and doing whatever for a while. And he starts to feel ill and there is a severe family history of tuberculosis. So he decides to go see. He travels down through Charleston, ultimately ends up in Florida, hangs out with Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew as one does, who he like has a very passionate friendship with, for a little while.

And then like peaces out eventually comes back north again after like a year or two. Ends up in New Hampshire. Couldn't didn't really find out why he ends up in New Hampshire, but he's in New Hampshire and he meets a woman named Ellen Louise Tucker and falls, madly in love with her.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Deeply passionately in love with this girl. She's 16. He's 24.

Caitlin: Oh…okay.

Frances: He waits. And they get married when she turns 18.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: So she's 18. He is 26. They're happily in love. They're planning a family. They're so excited to be married. Her mom and her sister both liked him. She is planning on being a poet, she's writing poetry, and then she gets TB. His mother actually moves in with them and, and helps to take care of her. She's dead by 20.

Caitlin: Oh fuck.

Frances: He is…devastated by this absolutely wrecked, uh, falls into a deep depression, starts questioning religion as a general concept, along with the fact that he'd already been questioning ministry as a thing that people can do. He’d…right before…just after they got married or just before they got married, he actually becomes a minister. He gets appointed to a ministry in Boston. He basically is like, this is the stupidest thing. Why am I doing this? He spends a year in Boston being a minister, walking every single day from Boston to Roxbury, to her grave to visit her.

Caitlin: Wow.

Frances: Over the course of this period, he becomes obsessed with the idea that she's not dead because he hasn't seen her body.

Caitlin: What?

Frances: Yup. He…I don't know if he was convinced that she wasn't inside the group. Or that she was maybe alive in the grave. I'm not really sure, but about a year and change after she passes, he opens the coffin.

Caitlin: What?

Frances: To make sure that she's dead.

Caitlin: What?

Frances: Yup. And he writes about it. It's a casual throwaway line in his journal. It literally…it said something like went to visit Ellen opened the coffin.

Caitlin: What?

Frances: Yup. Was that not like illegal probably, but he, I guess he shut it again and less. Because that's around the time he stopped visiting her daily and I guess seeing her…decaying corpse…let him come to terms with the fact that she was dead and he actually resigned from his ministry and goes to Europe.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Abruptly with like, no, everyone is kind of like, wait, why? What? Okay. So he goes to Europe, he's bopping around Europe trying to figure out…he wants to find a teacher because. The whole structure of his life is…is changed. It's different. He wanted to be a minister. He wanted to be Ellen's husband, who they were going to raise a family. None of that is now true. He is not a minister. His wife is dead. He has no children. He has nothing, except a small inheritance from her that allows him to travel without worrying about finances.

So he's looking for something in Europe. He bops around. He's in Germany, he's in Italy, he's in Paris where he once again becomes obsessed with the natural world while he's visiting a garden. And then he goes to England and he meets Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Who are growing old the’yre…they're in their later years and apparently realizes that this…the old guard of romanticism are. And so like the future of poetry is left to him and his peers.

Caitlin: Okaaay.

Frances: To usher in a new age of whatever, something,

Caitlin: Had he ever… like, I don't know, written poetry before?

Frances: Yeah. Sorta he dabbled in poetry. He was kind of obsessed with the idea that the poet was a prophet, like a speaker of truth with a capital T.

Caitlin: Mmhmm…

Frances: But like hadn't published any poetry and wasn't particularly known for like sending it to people as far as I know, but he also meets a guy named Thomas Carlyle who was a Scottish intellectual and became a close friend of his. Emerson writes in his journal that he has loved Carlyle since the moment they met.

Caitlin: So he is like really bisexual and I love it.

Frances: And also Carlyle's wife, Jane.

Caitlin: Oh! Okay.

Frances: So whether he was in love with them is anyone's guess, but that was a thing. And he looked at Carlyle as, as a peer, a friend, but also kind of a mentor because this guy was already a public intellectual, had done speaking tours, had published, et cetera, whereas Emerson had yet to do any of those. He meets Carlyle. He spends some time, apparently… they spent 24 hours together. Like they met and then spent 24 hours together continuously.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: So that's sort of the height of his trip. He finally comes back to the United States and starts sort of being the person we recognize as Emerson, right? He starts giving lectures, public lectures, speaking at events. He starts writing. The first thing that he published was a track called Nature, which I attempted to slug my way through. And it made me want to stab myself in the eye.

Caitlin: Great.

Frances: It was horrendously difficult and read more like a w a school assignment than like an actual thing someone had written. Did not enjoy. So he comes out, he publishes this a treatise on the natural world and why we should all like, pay attention to nature instead of reading books or something. Unclear. But he has a little bit of money. He doesn't have any ties. His wife's family is now all dead. Her mother and her sister have both passed away by this point. And his family is financially afloat, so he doesn't have any like obligations. So he begins public speaking. He also meets a collection of other intellectuals, including George Ripley. And did they start something called the Transcendental Club.

Caitlin: And everything goes down hill.

Frances: It is all downhill from there. Oh, well it's all…they accept. A t least the club accepts women within like the first year after a feminist founding, which is kind of cool. And you remember that pin? We stuck in a Henry David Thoreau's graduation from college.

Caitlin: Yeah?

Frances: I’m pulling that pin right now. Around this time, in 1837, Emerson gives a speech at Harvard known as The American Scholar. I had to read it. And this graduation was Thoreau's graduation.

Caitlin: Oh my God.

Frances: He was Thoreau's graduation. Speaker Emerson is 34. Thoreau is 20.

Caitlin: So I will throw in this.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Thoreau actually begins to keep his first journal in 1837.

Frances: And you want to know why that is? Emerson apparently asked him once. Do you keep a journal?

Caitlin: Yeah, no, he actually, the first journal entry of the row is October 22nd, 1837. What are you doing now? He asked, do you keep a journal? So I make my first entry today.

Frances: Yup. By all accounts that I've encountered…that I've come across a thorough is a little bit in love with Emerson and a lot in love with that versus. Yikes.

Caitlin: Fair enough.

Frances: Sometime in that year, I'm not sure when…so in this period, during this period, Emerson also meets and marries his second wife Lidian who is very frustrated with the marriage. She is a devout Christian, progressive, but devout and her husband's lack of religious belief is very worrying to her. I felt like they would have maybe talked about that before. Uh, you'd think, but like what I've skis. So she is, she's very unhappy in the marriage and I guess he is not emotionally available to her in a way.

Caitlin: No shit.

Frances: That she’s upset by. So she's a bit unhappy and then Thoreau moves in.

Caitlin: So yeah, let's talk about that.

Frances: Yup.

Caitlin: 1841 Thoreau moves into the Emerson household. And is there until 1844.

Frances: Yup.

Caitlin: I don't even know what to explain his job. He was the children's tutor, but he also like helped Emerson with editorial shit. He was a repairman. He was a gardener.

Frances: He was Lidian’s BFF.

Caitlin: Yeah. So cool.

Frances: Yah.

Caitlin: I will tell you all that… we'll leave it there, but you can actually see like where the overlap starts to happen. Cause I can talk more about what Thoreau does during this time in just a minute, but so the 1844 Emerson's moving out or, Thoreau is moving out what what's what's next?

Frances: So Emerson through this period… So the Transcendentalists founded the Dial. Journal thing in 1840 and Emerson took over as editor in 1842. So that was probably some of the thing that that Thoreau is helping with editing the journal. He's also giving lectures. He’s like going around the country, giving lectures and addresses. He's pissing off Harvard by basically being an atheist. The divinity school invited him to speak and he was like: The Bible is stupid. Miracles don't happen. God is dead.

Caitlin: But basically what that comes from those him digging up his dead wife's corpse?

Frances: Yeah, kind of, yes, exactly…He didn't say God was dead. He was a, deist not an atheist, but yeah, he pissed off Harvard and Harvard was like, yeah, never come back for 35.

Caitlin: Oh, cool.

Frances: So, yeah, he's basically at this point, he's becoming connected to every writer who exists in America. He's the reason Leaves of Grass became a success. Walt Whitman.

Caitlin: Yes!

Frances: He wrote slash edited a biography that was maybe a memoir, but mostly made up of Margaret Fuller. Okay. At this period, he's also an outspoken abolitionist. I was mostly interested in his formation as like an intellectual rather than the rest of his life. But basically he spends a basically rest of his life, traveling around the country and sometimes Europe giving lectures, writing and talking to people. So Ima skip a little bit.

Caitlin: So his credential…correct me if I'm wrong, but his credentials where basically I am a man who enjoys nature.

Frances: Kind of.

Caitlin: Cool.

Frances: He's basically…his whole intellectual spiel is pretty much just to understand…to be an authentic writer, we have to experience things firsthand. So like go hang out with nature because nature is the most important thing, but then like you can do whatever, but as long as you're experiencing it firsthand, it's okay.

Caitlin: Then when do you write?

Frances: I don't know.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: And also like he was an avid reader, so I'm not really sure the whole like books are inauthentic unless they're written from firsthand experience thing.

Caitlin: He's also very affluent. Right?

Frances: He made himself affluent. He was poor growing up.

Caitlin: But like he did that through talking?

Frances: No. Well, he did it through marrying Ellen,

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Who is…So because everybody else in the family died too,

Caitlin: Oh. Money.

Frances: I guess he inherited it. It was like $1,200 a year.

Caitlin: Oh geez.

Frances: Which was the money he was making as a pastor before he quit, paying out from the inheritance. So he was like…well, he didn't have to do anything pretty much and was fine.

Caitlin: All right.

Frances: So he just hung out in the woods and talked about things. Yeah. He's annoying. When you're done with yours, I'll circle back to how he died.

Caitlin: Okay. You ready to jump in on Thoreau?

Frances: Let's talk about Thoreau.

Caitlin: So I will tell you all, there is a fascinating piece about how to pronounce the rose name on his Wikipedia page.

Frances: Haha. I was looking at that.

Caitlin: Please just go enjoy it. When you get a chance, I will be pronouncing it thorough enjoy. So I also do want to quote Ellery Channing, because this is one of the first times I felt like I could actually find documentation of someone being described physically.

Frances: Oh, nice.

Caitlin: So this is Thoreau as an adult: His face, once seen, could not be forgotten. The features were quite, quite marked, the nose, very Aqualine or very Roman, like one of the. Of Caesar more like a beak, large overhanging brows, blah, blah, blah. The forehead was unusually broad, very prominent lips. I'm ad-libbing living a bit, they were pursed with meaning and thought when silent and giving out…would open with the most varied and unusual instructive sayings.

Frances: That's doesn't sound attractive.

Caitlin: Yeah. So anyway, the row, so Thoreau. Throeau was born in 1817. He is born in Concord, Massachusetts. I'm just going to give you all a very brief backstory about his youth. Oastensibly, his family has made their money making pencils.

Frances: Haha…What?

Caitlin: Yeah. I didn't expect that. I'm not really sure how to, how to say that. They've been cited as being a modest new England family.

Frances: Of pencil makers.

Caitlin: Yeah. They’re pencil makers, his, his family. It seems to always have been people who were getting into protests and were activists. And he was also not actually born Henry David.

Frances: Oh no.

Caitlin: He was born David Henry through.

Frances: Whaaat?

Caitlin: He was named after his uncle David Thoreau, who had just died…After he fell…He actually went by David Henry throughout college. So while he's at Harvard, but then like, as he graduates, he does start going by Henry D.

Frances: Oh, you mean like Emerson changed his name upon graduation?

Caitlin: Yeah. You noticed that too? He had three siblings. He had Helen and John Jr. who were the older two siblings and his younger sister was Sophia. I gotta go through this cause this is important. Uh, Helen, the oldest sister dies at age 37 of tuberculosis. His brother, John dies in 1842 at the age of 26. He gets tetanus after cutting himself shaving.

Frances: Oh God!

Caitlin: I'm going to go ahead and make this worse for everyone. He dies in Henry's arms.

Frances: Oh…no.

Caitlin: Yeah, and his younger sister does outlive everyone, but does die at 56 of tuberculous.

Frances: Like three of Emerson's brothers died of tuberculosis as well.

Caitlin: Everyone's dying of tuberculosis.

Frances: Yes.

Caitlin: Let’s…All right. So I also want to just give an example of this person that we're working. I can't verify this. This is something that someone put on the thorough Wiki page, and I just hope it's true.

Frances: Heh-heh.

Caitlin: So that's why I'm sharing it. I'm going to keep trying to find a source for it. Um, but the only, only thing cited is a book from 1945 that I have not been able to get my hands on. It is rumored that you had to pay to get your diploma from Harvard. There was a fee. It was a $5.

Frances: That's a lot.

Caitlin: Yeah. And he was like, no. And then he also declined to continue, with a master's degree, because he was like, they have no merit, so you can see where we're going here.

Frances: I don’t want to continue on a master's degree. I want to go hang out with my bro Emerson.

Caitlin: I'm going to go keep a journal and live in the woods and live deliberately and some shit.

Frances: With my boyfriend.

Caitlin: Thoreau does actually propose to a woman.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: She turns him down. Basically her father was like, no.

Frances: Kudos to her.

Caitlin: Yeah. When he graduates, he decides to come back to Concord and he becomes a faculty member in the public. He quits like three weeks later, but it's for a decent reason. They administered corporal punishment there.

Frances: Ooh.

Caitlin: And he was like, no. So he and his brother, John, open up the Concord Academy, which is like a progressive concept…a progressive school. Think like field trips and time in nature.

Frances: Of course.

Caitlin: They opened this in 1838. Remember he graduated in 1837. It is an 1842 where John dies from tetanus in Henry’s arms.

Frances: Awww.

Caitlin: The school closes at this point.

Frances: Aww.

Caitlin: At this point as well though, he is still hanging with Emerson and you'll also see that he has moved in with Emerson. At this point, he moved in with Emerson 1841. The school closes in 1842.

Frances: Ah.

Caitlin: He's tutoring, he's helping Emerson. It seems like the brother just kind of is taking over the school. So at this point he starts to hanging out with a lot of authors and philosophers, specifically hanging out with Emerson, Fuller and Alcott. I do want to say he's hanging out, not with Louis in may. He's hanging out with Bronson.

Frances: That's her dad, right?

Caitlin: Her dad who is a writer and a transcendentalist in his own right.

Frances: Can I throw in a fun facts that I learned about throw here?

Caitlin: Sure.

Frances: Apparently he used to walk and talk like Emerson as much as he could, to the point where other people thought it was hilarious.

Caitlin: Love that.

Frances: That he was imitating Emerson so much.

Caitlin: Love that. Thoreau is at Emerson’s. It's 1841 to 1844. He does peace out 1843 to go to Staten Island to another Emerson's home. He tutors them for a bit hangs out in New York, and then he comes back to Concord because he decides to work in his pencil…his family's pencil factory. He actually completely changes the process of making pencils.

Frances: Okay. Did he make it better?

Caitlin: Yeah. He made it better and they actually like co coincidentally had a graphite source too. And so they did this. he didn't invent it. It's like more like he rediscovered it.

Frances: Oh, okay.

Caitlin: If that makes sense?

Frances: Still cool.

Caitlin: He is like reinvented the fucking pencil. It's 1844 and it’s…he just starts to get bored and depressed.

Frances: As one does now.

Caitlin: Before we go into the Walden area, which is why everyone's probably still listening to me talk about these guys. I do want to just say a fun fact for everyone. April 1844, Thoreau and his friend, Edward Hoar set a fire on accident. It consumes 300 acres of Walden woods.

Frances: HAHA. Sorry, that shouldn't be funny, but it kind of is.

Caitlin: Let’s let that sink in and let's talk about Walden.

Frances: Wait a sec. Say the guy's name again? The friend?

Caitlin: Edward Hoar, H-O-A-R.

Frances: So Emerson had a student named Elizabeth Hoar. I wonder if they're related.

Caitlin: She just said, don't talk about my brother. Oh my God. He's lit the fire…Anyway. So in 1845, Ellery Channing tells Thoreau basically, Hey, there's no hope for you. Just go out and build a hut. That's me translating it.

Frances: HAHAHA. That’s great.

Caitlin: The actual quote is go out upon that and build yourself a hut. And there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no other alternative, no hope for you.

Frances: That's the best quote I've heard recently.

Caitlin: So July 4th, 1845. He decides to do this two year experiment, where he's going to move into a house that he builds in Walden Woods. On the shores of Walden pond. Guess who owns the land?

Frances: Emerson.

Caitlin: Emerson. So I will say, as I've been reading Walden, it is very interesting to see how he has done this. I will also tell you the book is like a year of his experience, but he was actually at Walden Pond for two years, two months, two days.

Frances: That's a lot of twos.

Caitlin: Yeah, he does. A year later he does get arrested.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: So this is where the whole, like protesting thing comes. He has not been paying his poll taxes because he opposes slavery and the Mexican-American War and he gets put in jail because they, they finally catch him.

Frances: Yeah. Emerson did not like that at all. He was not on board with the whole don't pay taxes thing.

Caitlin: Yeah. I honestly just don't think Thoreau had money.

Frances: I think this might've been where they started to fall out because Emerson was very much like this is poorly done of you.

Caitlin: Yeah. So someone pays it. He doesn't know who.

Frances: It's probably Emerson.

Caitlin: Maybe. And then, he does go on to give a lecture about tax resistance. Bronson Alcott actually does comment on this. It's in his journals.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: He basically does do some traveling. At this point. He goes to the white mountains in New Hampshire. He goes up to Maine and he writes essays and kind of like short form a non-fiction about his experiences. But then in 1854, Walden or Life in the Woods is published.

Frances: Okay.

Caitlin: People still love this book. I'm working on it. There's some great quotes in it, but like he went off on a tangent about why he didn't have to be like a philanthropist. I'm like, dude, you won't pay your taxes. You won't give money to people. It’s…Go eat to stick.

Frances: He also used to go have dinner at Emerson's house when he's like, oooh, I'm living off the land. It's like, no, dude, you're living off your bro (/boyfriend).

Caitlin: Yeah, no, it was a very cushy living off the land.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: The original glamping.

Frances: Yes! Yes. Perfect.

Caitlin: He does travel and he makes a lecture. He goes up to Canada, develops a lecture called a Yankee in Canada. Fast forward, fast forward. He keeps traveling, but it's all like kind of local. It's more like very close to New England type of thing.

Frances: Cool.

Caitlin: He began to pray as John Brown and actually started extensively saying that he was a martyr. He gets loud in ways that maybe he shouldn't or honestly, I think the cause was there. I mean, obviously none of us want slavery. We all should have been on the side of the abolitionists, but he seems like very combative. If that makes sense.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: All right. So Thoreau. Thoreau. Thoreau. There are rumors that he also had queer leanings and there are also some who think he may have been asexual.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: There are also a lot of inklings that it's very possible that he was gay. So he’s…his politics are pretty big, but he is an activist. He is very much like:  fuck slavery, flux, fuck taxes. All of this is dumb. Let's get back to the death. He dies a lot earlier than Emerson.

Frances: I did not know that.

Caitlin: Do you want to guess why.

Frances: Tuberculosis?

Caitlin: Tuberculosis.

Frances: Uuhhhh!

Caitlin: So he had actually had it for some time.

Frances: That sucks.

Caitlin: Which I mean, he didn't die immediately, so that's good, right?

Frances: I guess.

Caitlin: So he is living in a house in Concord. It's 255 Main Street and he had actually contracted tuberculosis in 1835. Um, I'm pretty sure I read something that said Thoreau and Emerson met for the first time in 1835.

Frances: I wonder if he caught it from Emerson.

Caitlin: I actually think Emerson gave it to everyone.

Frances: Emerson potentially had TB. When he was young, he had this event where he was on a boat and there was a hor—like he had diarrhea for six months and was super sick, got on a boat, went through the worst storm ever that made all of the…everybody on the boat seasick. And then suddenly didn't have TB anymore and was fine for the rest of his life.

Caitlin: All right. Now I'm pretty sure he gave everyone tuberculosis.

Frances: Right

Caitlin: But so he dies basically…It's not like it's fast. It's not like he never deals with TB after he gets it. He does have issues with it, including one time where he gets sick, because he decided late at night to go out and count the rings on tree stops while it was raining.

Frances: Haha. Of course he did.

Caitlin: So his health declines, he has some period of remission, but then he is bedridden and he realizes that it's terminal at this point. So he begins to continues to edit Walden. At this point, he has also published Civil Disobedience, which is his idea of why you shouldn't pay taxes, why slavery is terrible and why you basically can't trust the man.

Frances: Ah.

Caitlin: His last words. Oh, now comes good sailing.

Frances: I like that.

Caitlin: He then said moose

Frances:*laughter*

Caitlin: And Indian and died.

Frances:*Cackles*

Caitlin: And do you know who wrote the eulogy that spoke and spoke at the funeral?

Frances: Oh, please tell me it was Emerson.

Caitlin: Emerson.

Frances: I love that.

Caitlin: So Emerson does his eulogy. Thoreau is buried. I do want to talk about his graves in a second, but how did Emerson die?

Frances: Okay, so fast forward, literally 20 years.

Caitlin: Okay. Wow. Okay.

Frances: Emerson…

Caitlin: Is it tuberculosis?

Frances: Not tuberculosis.

Caitlin: Of course.

Frances: He's the one who gave it to everybody. He wasn't going to die of it.

Caitlin: Really think he was a carrier.

Frances: I'm not kidding. I swear to God, you are correct. Wouldn't be surprised. So, in the late 1870s, he has to stop lecturing because he's having such severe memory problems that he forgets his own name.

Caitlin: Oh.

Frances: So, yeah, he was lecturing and traveling right up until 1878/79, where upon he had to stop visiting, stop traveling, stop lecturing, and stop appearing in public at all, because his memory problems were so severe and by 1882, he doesn't know who he is and he catches pneumonia and dies on April 21st. He's not young though. He is not young.

Caitlin: He was like seventies or eighties.

Frances: It's like…I think he's 79.

Caitlin: Yeah. That's a great. That's that's a well lived life.

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: We do. I do want to say so we saw both of their graves in author's Ridge at Sleepy Hollow, right?

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: So Thoreau has the tiniest grave imaginable. No, I'm just saying like it's very small, but he actually wasn't buried there initially.

Frances: Oh?

Caitlin: Yeah. He was buried in the Dunbar family plot. I'm not totally sure where that was, trying to figure that out, but then his remains and his family were moved to Sleepy Hollow.

Frances: Oh, okay.

Caitlin: I really…There is a giant monument in the middle of the family plot for all of the Thoreaus and then each of them have a tiny marker where they are buried. So I say it's a very small stone, but it is in comparison to the monolith.

Frances: Yeah, Emerson stone on the other hand is a giant rock. And I mean that literally it is un-hewn. It's literally someone took a giant ragged Boulder and plopped it in the middle of the cemetery and like screwed a plaque into it.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: It’s the weirdest, most ridiculous looking thing, right.

Caitlin: It's like: go bigger, go home.

Frances: A hundred percent.

Caitlin: He committed and he did this.

Frances: Oh yeah.

Caitlin: I'm sure that…I’m actually really positive that both of them would be happy with how they were buried.

Frances: That's fair. Yeah. Emerson would be like, yeah, yeah. I'm the only rock in this place. Everybody else has got gravestones.

Caitlin: Thoreau would be like, how dare you not put me at Walden pond?

Frances: How dare you even put up a stone? I wanna be a tree.

Caitlin: Yeah, I do want to say in his lifetime, Thoreau was criticized constantly for his work. It was very polarizing. You loved him or you hated him. And I would like for you all to go out and kind of make the decision to read his work on your own. I am currently reading Walden/Civil Disobedience. It's both of his main works put into one. I'm about halfway through, like I said, but I want it to end tonight's podcast reading his most famous quote, which is how we started this podcast. You good with that, Frances?

Frances: Sounds good to me.

Caitlin: A-hem.

Frances: Haha.

Caitlin: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city, you go into the desperate country and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and Muskrats. A stereotyped, but unconscious, disparate, concealed, even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them for this comes after work, but it is a characteristic of wisdom, not to do desperate things.”

Frances: Nice.

Caitlin: And I will leave you all with one fun fact, if you were trying to go to visit Walden pond in the summer on a nice day, they do close the pond, ladies and gentlemen. And if you've driven an hour to see it, you're shit out of luck. But I'm pretty sure if Thoreau would have laughed so that’s what matters.

Frances: And we'll see you guys in the cemetery.

OUTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Grave Escapes is hosted, written and produced by Caitlin Howle and Francesgrace Ferland and is produced and edited by Jesse D. Crichton. The music is melancholy after sound by Kai Engel. Follow us on social media to see images of today's graves and more about us. Our social handle is Grave Escapes. For a transcript, show notes, and land acknowledgement, visit us online at www.graveescapes.com We'll see you in the cemetery.

Frances: We’d like to acknowledge that we recorded this podcast on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Narragansett peoples. Here in the Northeast and all across the country, native peoples are still here and thriving. For more information about indigenous history, we’ve added a link in the show notes to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States as a place to begin. For ways to support native leaders and communities, we’ve added links to both the North American Indian Center of Boston and Native Land Conservancy.