Thoreau on the dance floor

Sometimes it pays to read the footnotes.

I was a bit disappointed with Edward Waldo Emerson’s Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend. The book, published in 1917, is barely fifty pages long (plus notes), and much of it consists of second-hand anecdotes and doubtful poetry, served up in a self-conscious 19th century belletristic style. I was hoping for more personal memories by the author, the son of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who knew Emerson as a boy. In particular, I hoped he would remember the time when he built a cave in the snow, which is described so well in Thoreau’s Journal.

But this passage, from footnote 27, helped make the book worthwhile.

Alcott and George William Curtis were both visiting Mr. Ricketson, and interesting discourse had gone on at the dinner, Thoreau talking very well. After dinner, Alcott and Curtis went with Mr. Ricketson to his “Shanty” for serious talk, but the others went into the parlor to consult some bird book. Mrs. Ricketson, playing at her piano, struck into “The Campbells are Coming.” Thoreau put down his book and began to dance—a sylvan dance, as of a faun among rocks and bushes in a sort of labyrinthine fashion, now leaping over obstacles, then advancing with stately strides, returning in curves, then coming back in leaps. Alcott, coming in, stood thunderstruck to see “Thoreau acting his feelings in motion” as he called it. Alcott did not have that kind of feelings.