University of Virginia Library

Thoreau Rejects an Emerson Text
by
Wendell Glick

All printings of the material Thoreau wrote for delivery at the Concord services for John Brown held December 2, 1859, the day Brown was hanged in Virginia, include Thoreau's translation of the eulogy to Agricola by Tacitus.[1] The printings which follow that of the Riverside (1883) allege also that Thoreau read the passage from Tacitus at the services, in English, in his own translation. In that edition, the second printing, Horace Scudder bracketed into the text, following Thoreau's statement of the appropriateness to the occasion of Raleigh's "The Soul's Errand," the following (p. 251): "[Mr. Thoreau then read these verses, as well as a number of poetical passages selected by another citizen of Concord, and closed with the following translation from Tacitus made by himself.]."

But Scudder was in error. Thoreau had translated the Tacitus selection, to be sure, but he had not read his own translation at the services for John Brown. Nor did the source from which Scudder had printed his text of "After the Death of John Brown," as he named the selection, so state. Redpath in Echoes of Harper's Ferry (p. 444) has no bracketed statement between the texts of "The Soul's Errand," which was printed from the manuscript Thoreau had used at the services, and the selection from Tacitus, titled simply, "Tacitus.*"[2] In deleting the text of "The Soul's Errand" from the Riverside Edition, Scudder found it necessary to provide a transitional statement, which he concocted by amalgamating a previous sentence in Redpath (p. 442) which introduced poems read by Thoreau from Collins, Schiller, Tennyson and others with his own supposition that if Thoreau had done a translation of the eulogy to Agricola, and if he had read a translation of the eulogy at the Concord services, he must have read his own translation. It is difficult to imagine a more plausible supposition. But it was nonetheless wrong. In the Pierpont Morgan Library, under the number MA 884, is preserved all of the holograph matter used at the Brown services, as it was sent to James Redpath for its initial publication in Echoes of Harper's Ferry. Thoreau's personal observations on Brown, and the transcriptions of many poems, are in Thoreau's hand. But not the

translation from Tacitus. It is written on alternate lines of a blue wove paper, quite unlike the white wove which Thoreau used for his transcriptions, and in the script of Emerson. And it is placed in the MS at the point where James Redpath printed what he labelled as Thoreau's own translation. A comparison of the first sentences of the Emerson version and that printed by Redpath reveals that the two versions differ sharply in tone and content. Emerson's version begins rather flatly: "You, Agricola, we may now congratulate." Thoreau's reads: "You, Agricola, are fortunate, not only because your life was glorious, but because your death was timely."[3] Why, the question arises, did Redpath, in printing the MS record of the event, depart from the Morgan text at this point? Franklin B. Sanborn, self-appointed editor of Thoreau and steward of Thoreau's reputation, supplies the answer.

Though Thoreau's notations in MA 884 in ink and pencil, supplying the links between the different speakers and readers at the services, make it clear that Thoreau was the program director who supervised the John Brown commemoration, it was Sanborn who sent the record to Redpath and who shepherded the matter into print. With MA 884 is preserved a typescript of Sanborn's letter of transmittal for the final (presumably the second) consignment of papers from the meeting to go to Redpath. The letter (dated December 9, 1859) begins: "I send you the rest of the Papers read at the meeting here a week ago. When you get proofs of them, please let me correct them, and let them go in this order:" and Sanborn then lists eight items in the order in which they were subsequently printed by Redpath. One of the reasons, presumably, why Sanborn sent the material to Redpath in two or more consignments emerges in the second paragraph of the letter. Sanborn observes: "The passage from Tacitus read by Thoreau was so badly translated in Emerson's copy, that Thoreau has made a new one, to take its place." But the statement is significant for other reasons as well. Untrustworthy as Sanborn often is, it is enough to whet the curiosity of the scholar fascinated by the vicissitudes of the relationship between Emerson and his independent-minded junior neighbor. Did Thoreau, as director of the John Brown event, have the temerity to reject the older man's rendering of the Tacitus selection, which he had commissioned Emerson to do? Did he substitute his own translation with or without Emerson's consent in the printed record?

Sanborn, of course, does not explicitly state that the translation tendered by Emerson for Thoreau to read was Emerson's own; he says only that the passage "was so badly translated in Emerson's copy, that Thoreau has made a new one, to take its place." And of course the translation's being in Emerson's hand does not prove, ipso facto, that Emerson did not copy it

from some English version he had on his shelves. But the internal evidence from Emerson's holograph draft argues that Emerson not only wrote out the passage from Tacitus, but that he translated it also. Though the first three pages of the draft are fair copy, containing only one cancellation, the matter of the fourth page apparently gave Emerson considerable trouble. Six lines of the original version on p. 4 are heavily stricken in ink, and a new translation interlined; the sheet fairly obviously reflects Emerson's struggle to refine his text. Presumably he was not happy with his draft; indubitably Thoreau was not. With or without Emerson's concurrence, Thoreau struck Emerson's version from the record, substituting his own. The explanation as to why he did not read his own version of the Tacitus selection at the Brown services is that he had not yet prepared it. Perhaps it was in reading orally Emerson's translation that Thoreau discovered it lacked the vitality he felt the occasion demanded.

Printer's copy for Thoreau's version has disappeared. It apparently was not returned by Redpath to Sanborn, along with the remainder of the papers, which Sanborn kept in his possession until deciding to sell them to the dealer C. E. Goodspeed in 1909. They were bought almost at once by the Morgan Library from Goodspeed as Goodspeed's letter of 27 January, 1909, preserved with the MS, testifies. But Thoreau's translation of Tacitus was not with them. The best conjecture is that Thoreau sent the manuscript of the translation directly to Redpath, rather than routing it through Sanborn, and that this accounts for Sanborn's never having had possession of the draft.

The two translations follow in parallel columns, courtesy of the Morgan Library. The version at the left is that of Emerson read by Thoreau at the commemoration, which lacked, one can surmise that Thoreau believed, the sublimity which attached to the character of John Brown. The version at the right is Thoreau's translation as printed by Redpath in Echoes of Harper's Ferry, bearing the mark of Thoreau's conviction that Brown was among the most heroic men of the age.

Notes