Fishing

If he went to the water, Thoreau reports, he might join “some impatient companion who had been fishing since morning on the pond,” or, in “warm evenings,” sit alone in his boat, playing the flute, charming the perch hovering around him, or, in “private hours” which were “very memorable & valuable” to him, spend “the hours of midnight fishing . . . on the pond by moonlight – serenaded by owls and the barking of foxes.” In what becomes paragraph 4 of “The Ponds,” he tells us that “It was very queer–in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres–to feel this faint jerk which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to nature again. It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air – as well as downward into this element which was hardly more dense.”

In A, it is immediately following this last description that we get the first material that would ultimately, much revised, appear in “Higher Laws.” “The main inducement to fish was that it introduced me to the night and detained me there,” Thoreau writes, beginning a new paragraph. These are the last lines on the page, and they are canceled. At the top of the next page, we read,

Fishermen and hunters see nature at an advantage which the philosopher never enjoys. They go through the fields with freedom and abandonment – not formally, and see nature as it were without looking at her, in a deshabille, as members of her family –

Detail: Top of HM 924, 1:194
Manuscript page from Version A of the "Walden" manuscript with material found in "Higher Laws," paragraph 1, "The Village," paragraph 2, and "The Ponds," paragraph 28 in "Walden" as published (1854).
HM 924 Volume 1, p. 194

Thoreau cancels these lines, too, re-working them several pages later, following material that he would eventually apportion to “The Ponds” and “Baker Farm.” What is important to note, however, is that he enters the “Higher Laws” material through a contrast between fishermen and hunters on the one hand, and philosophers on the other; that this contrast immediately follows his parable of being brought back to earth from his wandering dreams, and re-linked to Nature, by the jerk of a fish on his line; and that this description of the fisher/hunter relationship to nature, with its emphasis on freedom and abandonment, is continuous with the rhetoric of bolting and escaping from environments of culture (the village) and cultivation (the bean-field) to spaces where he is free to ramble and commune with owls and foxes.

This continuity is lost when, beginning with the D draft, the “Higher Laws” material is separated from the material destined for “The Bean-Field” and “The Village.” Fishing and hunting will take on a somewhat different aspect once the “Higher Laws” material begins to shape up as its own chapter. Equally important, the continuity is difficult to discern in either Clapper’s dissertation or the fluid-text edition of Walden, where, as previously mentioned, material is displayed only where it landed in the published version.

Returning to A, we find, following the canceled sentences about “Fishermen and hunters,” material that would end up in paragraphs 5–8 of “The Ponds,” emphasizing, among other things, the purity and transparency of the water in Walden Pond. Leaves are missing between this material and what follows: material that would land in “Baker Farm” paragraphs 5, 6, and 8. Beginning at the bottom of one page, and continuing onto the next, Thoreau initially writes, before revising:

As I ran down the hill to the pond – with the rain-bow over my shoulder – and some slight tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air – from I know not what quarter, I said to myself – Why not live always a rude and frontier life – full of adventures and hard work – learn much – travel much – though it be only through these woods & fields! – There is no other country than this – here is the field and the man. – The daily boundaries of life are expanded & dispersed and I see in what field I stand. Roam far and wide – grasp at life and conquer it. Learn much and live. You are really free – stay till late in the night – be unwise and daring.

Detail: Bottom of HM 924, 1:197
Manuscript page from Version A of the "Walden" manuscript with material found in "Baker Farm," paragraphs 5 and 6, in "Walden" as published (1854).
HM 924 Volume 1, p. 197

Detail: Top of HM 924, 1:198. “Much rewritten” added by F. B. Sanborn.
Manuscript page from Version A of the "Walden" manuscript with material found in "Baker Farm," paragraph 8, in "Walden" as published (1854).
HM 924 Volume 1, p. 198

A further revised version of these lines forms part of “Baker Farm,” paragraph 6 in the published Walden, where, lacking those final three sentences in A—”Roam far and wide,” etc.—it is somewhat muted by comparison.

The published version of these words in “Baker Farm” also contains a variation of material that Thoreau interlines in A, as can be seen in the first of the two images just above: “My haste to catch pickerel wading in retired meadows in sloughs and bogholes, in forlorn & savage places seemed for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school & college,” Thoreau adds in ink, together with the word “But,” as a prelude to “As I ran down the hill . . .” The change, which rescues the activity of fishing from triviality by opposing formal education to the learning available in woods and fields, aligns with the comparison we saw earlier between what is visible to philosophers on one hand and fishermen and hunters on the other.

A little farther down on the page, Thoreau interlines, “My Genius said – grow wild according to thy nature, like these ferns and brakes which endeavor not to become English hay. Let the thunder rumble in thy own tongue – what if it brings ruins to farmers’ crops in season that is not its errand to thee.” A variant of these words, too, ends up in “Baker Farm,” paragraph 6.

Following another missing leaf, we are once again in material that would appear in “Higher Laws,” on a page Thoreau numbered 151. The material begins in the middle of a sentence belonging to paragraph 5. We’ll consider this sentence, which concerns fishing, in a moment. For now, it is enough to note that in A this material precedes material that would wind up in “Higher Laws,” paragraphs 1 and 3. Portions of what would become paragraphs 1 and 3 alternate with one another in this stretch of writing, only later to be re-sorted into the order we read in the published Walden. Again, this is not easy to discern in either Clapper’s dissertation or the fluid-text edition, where all paragraphs and paragraph segments appear in their published order.

Detail: Top of HM 924, 1:199. “(Much rewritten)” added by F. B. Sanborn.
Manuscript page from Version A of the "Walden" manuscript with material found in "Higher Laws," paragraphs 5, 1, 3, 1, and 3, in "Walden" as published (1854).
HM 924 Volume 1, p. 199

There is one more missing leaf in the sequence, after which we find material that would land in “Higher Laws,” paragraph 7. That is the full extent of “Higher Laws” material in A.

Detail: Top of HM 924, 1:201. Material from “Higher Laws” 7.
Manuscript page from Version A of the "Walden" manuscript with material found in "Higher Laws," paragraphs 7, in "Walden" as published (1854).
HM 924 Volume 1, p. 201

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