Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

I carry it around the house with me, just for the satisfaction of holding it.  Another little green book.  This photo makes it look a little brighter than it does in real life, but still.  When I saw an image of this copy I knew it was the version I want to read (Visitors' Edition, The Riverside Press, Houghton Mifflin, 1922).  That gorgeous cover!  Elements of it were borrowed by the unnamed designer from the title page of the first edition of Walden (Thoreau's sister Sophia Thoreau was the artist in that case).  I can almost make out some initials, in the clump of grass in the lower right corner, but I may be imagining them (H? A?).  Tempting to think that the designer might be hidden there.

But before I attempt Walden, a reasonable question could be:  How's it going with the Journal?  Dull as ditchwater?  That depends on how someone feels about ditches, I think.  Most pass them by.  Thoreau, however, loved them and found them a rich source of study, full of frogs and toads, plants aquatic and otherwise, lined by trees, home to ducks and muskrats and fish.  He speaks for pages and pages (and pages and pages and...) about the beauty of ditches, as well as streams, ponds, swamps, fields, and woods.  And weather; the Journal as a whole is a song of praise to weather.

Honestly, I love his writing, and find myself in sympathy with him much more often than not.  The close observation he engages in is similar to the kinds of looking I do as a painter.  Who sits and stares at, and communes with, a few trees for hours (and sometimes years) on end?  Uhh, I do (raises hand).  Who wonders about the life energy emanating from a field?  That's me.  Add to that my love of reading diaries, and this year's winter reading project is a resounding success.  I'm halfway in, and already I don't want the Journal to end.  Volume Five found me reading about varieties of fall asters, under a quilt, with Hodge wrapped up in one of my old sweaters (cashmere, nothing but the best for this cat, who just turned fifteen), wedged up against my leg:  

Notice that roughly cut deckle edge?  It means that the previous owner of this set wielded a paper knife with gusto.  Since the paper itself is thin and fairly fragile, after I read a while my lap contains a miniature snow flurry, or scatter of seeds, as if the books are emitting more than just thoughts.  They are weather themselves, and planting, and the harvest, all in one.  I'm so careful, as I go, but still find bits of the book about my person, whenever I get up.

Speaking of this particular set - sad to say it was originally part of a much larger set.  I wish the set wasn't broken, but am still grateful to have the eleven volumes I do have, to read.  In my convoluted internet wanderings in pursuit of other odd volumes, I came across an excellent article about collecting Thoreau on the ABAA website.  The author states that the green cloth sets with the paper spine labels, such as I have, included a handwritten page of random Thoreau manuscript, inside Volume One.  Not Volume One of the Journal, but Volume One of the twenty-volume set of Writings, from 1906, of which the Journal comprised the last fourteen volumes.  So the rest of my set, out there somewhere... SIGH.  I can't think about it for long.  Poor old books!  Let's move on!

Volume Six gets really good, as Thoreau writes several times about editing his own work.  What he's editing is Walden.  Little does he know that his book will long outlive him.  His first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Munroe 1849), sold around two hundred copies.  He bought the remainders back from the publisher, and I have yet to see even a hint that Thoreau thinks he will ever be well-known as an author.  Of course Walden will go on to become one of the greatest-loved works of American literature.  The first time he mentions it by name is in this day's entry, at its very end, and when I read it, my skin prickled (p.176):

"March 28.  P.M.  - To White Pond.

     Coldest day for a month or more, - severe as almost any in the winter.  Saw this afternoon either a snipe or a woodcock; it appeared rather small for the last.  Pond opening on the northeast.  A flock of hyemalis drifting from a wood over a field incessantly for four or five minutes, - thousands of them, notwithstanding the cold.  The fox-colored sparrow sings sweetly also.  Saw a small slate-colored hawk, with wings transversely mottled beneath, - probably the sharp-shinned hawk.

     Got first proof of 'Walden.'"

(!!!)  Thrilling news, from 1854.  I'm going to finish Volume Six, then pause, read Walden, and perhaps another book I currently have on approach, of which more later.  I decided that I need some definite small things to look forward to, so I went on a minor book-buying spree last week and this weekend, and now have incoming packages, of all kinds:  poetry books, some literature, more Thoreau-related works, and other subjects besides.  I don't need much right now, just some sense of the future as a place it might be possible to inhabit, and the hint of a promise of bright days, whenever the current ones, with their fears and menace, fade.  I wish this coming week was already in the past; I dread what might happen, even as I hope for the best, as I always do.  Here in the welcome quiet of the Maine winter, I'll continue to do my work, lose myself in books, and find myself there too.  Take care, until next time.