A VISIT TO JOHN BURROUGHS

By SADAKICHI HARTMANN

Author of the first History of American Art, and also of a History of Japanese Art. His poems, short stories, and essays appear in many magazines.

John Burroughs was a delightful essayist and a delightful man. Although he preferred to live the most simple of lives and to spend his time in meditation on the beauties of natural scenery, and the wonders of animal life, he attracted to himself the companionship of some of the greatest in the land, and the love of all people. To visit him would, indeed, have been a delight.

A Visit to John Burroughs is not a dull narrative of the events of a visit, nor is it the report of an interview with the nature-lover. It is an article that admits one into the charm of Burroughs' spirit. We are with the man in his simple, book-filled home; we learn his love for pasture and mountain-side, for birds and for gardening; and we gain some of that spirit of contentment and peace that made him, in his gray old age, appear like a prophet in the midst of an over-hurrying generation.

In some places time passes without making any change. The little village on the Hudson where John Burroughs made his home half a century ago has shown no ambition of expansion. There is no building activity, and the number of inhabitants has scarcely increased. The little church stands drowsily on the hill, and the same old homesteads grace the road. More freight-trains may rattle by, and more automobiles pass on the main road, but the physiognomy of the town has remained unchanged. It is as if time had stood still. The mist shuts out the rest of the world, river and hills disappear, the stems of the grape-vines look like a host of goblins, and the wet trees make darker silhouettes than usual.

I knocked at a door and entered, and there sat John Burroughs stretched at full length in a Morris chair before some glowing beech-sticks in the open fireplace. There was not much conversation. What is most interesting in an author's life he expresses in his books, and so we indulged only in an exchange of phrases about his health, of the flight of time, and a few favored authors. The questioning of the interviewer can produce only forced results, and in particular when the interviewed person has reached an age when taciturnity becomes natural, and one prefers to gaze at the dying embers and listen to the drip of the rain outside. That his interest in literature did not lag was shown by a set of Fabre,[30] whom he pronounced the most wonderful exponent in his special line.

A quaint interior was this quiet little room. Conspicuous were the portraits of Whitman,[31] Carlyle,[32] Tolstoy,[33] Roosevelt,[34] and Father Brown of the Holy Order of the Cross, men who in one way or another must have meant something to his life. On the mantelpiece stood another portrait of Whitman and a reproduction of “Mona Lisa.”[35] There were windows on every side, and the rest of the walls consisted of shelves filled with nature books. One shelf displayed the more scientific works, and one was devoted entirely to his own writings. It was the same room in which several years ago, on a summer day in the vagrom days of youth, I had read for the first time “Wake Robin,”[36] that classic of out-of-door literature, and “The Flight of the Eagle,” an appreciation of Walt Whitman.

John Burroughs was fifty then, and had just settled down seriously to his literary pursuits. He had risen brilliantly from youthful penury to be the owner of a large estate. His latest achievement was “Signs and Seasons”; “Riverby,” a number of essays of out-of-door observations around his stone house by the Hudson, was in the making.

There is a wonderful fascination in these books. They reveal a man who has lived widely and intimately, who has made nature his real home. All day long he is mingled with the heart of things; every walk along the river, into the woods, or up the hills is an adventure. He exploits the teachings of experience rather than of books. His essays are always fused with actions of the open. One feels exhilaration in making the acquaintance of a man with an unnarrowed soul who has burst free from the shackles of intellectual authority, who joyfully and buoyantly interprets the beauties about him, shunning no such pleasures as jumping a fence, wading a brook, or climbing a tree or mountain-side.

American literature has always abounded with nature speculation and research. Bryant[37] was a true poet of nature; he loved woods, mountain, and river, and his “To the Yellow Wood Violet,” and “The Blue Gentian” are gems of pictorial nature-writing. Whittier[38] transfigured the beauty of New England life in one poem “Snowbound,” and in his “Autumn Walk” leisurely strolled to the portals of immortality. Whitman stalked about on the open road like a pantheist.[39]

Yet none had the faculties of discovery and interpretation like John Burroughs, the intimate knowledge, the warm vision, to which a wood-pile can become a matter of contemplation, and a back yard or a garden patch become as interesting as any scenery in the world. None of them could have lectured on apple-trees or gray squirrels with such intimacy as Burroughs. Burroughs has never any sympathy with the “pathetic fallacy of endowing inanimate objects with human attributes,” nor would he indorse Machin's propaganda idea of the antagonism of animals against their human masters.

A trout leaping in a mountain stream, the lively whistle of a bird high in the upper air, a bird's nest in an old fence post—these are some of the topics nearest his heart. No nature-writer has ever shown such diversity of interest. Even Rip Van Winkle did not know the mountains as well as does this camper and tramper for a lifetime on the same familiar grounds; over and over again he makes the round from Riverby to Slabsides, to Roxbury in the western Catskills, and back again to the rustic studio near the river. He knows every pasture, mountain-side, and valley of his chosen land. He even named some of the hills. One of them, much frequented by bees, he named “Mount Hymettus,”[40] because there “from out the garden hives, the humming cyclone of humming bees” liked to congregate.

But is his minute observation of weed seeds in the open field or insect eggs on tree-trunks not disastrous to literary expression? Can this style of writing soar above straightforward nature-writing of men like Wilson,[41] Muir,[42] White,[43] and Chapman?[44] Burroughs is capable of making a long-winded analysis of the downward perch of the head of the nut-hatch, but he is no Audubon.[45] As a literary man he is an essayist who etches little vignettes, one after the other, with rare precision. How fine is his sentence about the unmusical song of the blackbirds! “The air is filled with crackling, splintering, spurting, semi-musical sounds which are like salt and pepper to the ear.” Here the poetic temperament finds an utterance far beyond the broad knowledge of nature.

And there is his fine appreciation of Walt Whitman, his grasp of literary values despite working in a comparatively smaller field of activity. John Burroughs has a good deal of Whitman about him, whom he called “the one mountain in our literary landscape.” The man of Riverby is not large of stature, but has the same nonchalance of deportment, the flowing beard, and the ruddy face, a few shades darker than that of the good gray poet; for Whitman was, after all, a city man, while Burroughs always lived his life out of doors.

We talked about the looks of Whitman, whom he had known in Washington in the sixties.

“Yes, he had a decided vitality, although he was already gray and bent at that time. Yes, he would talk if one could draw him out.”

“I believe he talked only for Traubel,”[46] I dryly remarked, at which Burroughs was greatly amused.

Emerson[47] was the god of Burroughs's youth, but Whitman undoubtedly exercised the more lasting influence. This, however, never touched Burroughs's own peculiar nature-fresh-and-homespun style. It lingered only as a vague inspiration in the under rhythm of his work. Whitman had the macrocosmic vision,[48] while Burroughs is an adherent of microcosm. Few can combine both qualities.

Burroughs is an amateur farmer and gardener. He prunes his cherrytrees, cures hay, and thinks of new methods of mowing grain. He experimented with grape-vines, a rather futile occupation at this period of social evolution. He has been a great cherry-picker all his life, and I remember with keen pleasure how delicious those wild raspberries tasted that I shared with him one summer day. He has a celery farm at Roxbury, his birthplace, and when I was last at Slabsides, his bungalow in the hills near West Park, I saw nothing but beets for cattle. I was astonished at this peculiar, indeed, prosaic pastime. And still more so that he had chosen for residence a site in a hollow of the mountain-side, while only a few steps above one can enjoy a most gorgeous view of the surrounding country. Did he make the selection because the place is more sheltered? No, I believe he chose the place intuitively, because it expresses his particular point of view of life. The keen breeze and the wide view serve only for occasional inspiration; but the undergrowth vegetation, the crust of soil, the hum of insects, the little flowers—these are the true stimulants of his eloquent simplicity of style.

Burroughs professed to have a great admiration for Turguenieff's[49] “Diary of a Sportsman.” These exquisite prose poems represent nature at its best, but they are purely poetic, pictorial, with a big cosmic swing to them. This is out of the reach of Burroughs, and he never attempted it. His poems contain, as he says himself, more science and observation than poetry. A few beautiful lines everybody can learn to write, and unless they are fragments of a torso of the most intricate and beautiful construction, they will drop like the slanting rain into the dark wastes of oblivion.

His lessons of nature, accepted as text-books in the public schools, have a true message to convey. They represent the socialization of science. He loves the birds and learned their ways; he could run his course aright, as he has placed his goal rightly. He stirred the earth about the roots of his knowledge deeply, and thereby entered a new field of thought. He became interested in final causes, design in nature.

The transcendentalist[50] of the Emersonian period at last came to his own. There is something of the bigness of Thoreau[51] in his recent writings, Thoreau who in his “Concord and Merrimac River” had a mystical vision, a grip on religious thought, and who, like a craftsman in cloisonné, hammered his philosophic speculations upon the frugal shapes of his observations. In “Ways of Nature” and “Leaf and Tendril” Burroughs has reached out as far as it is possible for a nature writer without becoming a philosopher. He now no longer contemplates the outward appearance of things, but their organic structure, the geological formation of the earth's crust, and the evolution of life. And some ledge of rock will now give him the prophetic gaze into the past and into the future.

And so John Burroughs at eighty-five, still chopping the wood for his own fireside, writing, lecturing, giving advice about phases of farm-work, strolling over the ground, still interested in literature, can serenely fold his hands and wait.

Indeed, this white-bearded man, in his bark-covered study amidst veiled heights and blurred river scenes, furnishes a wonderful intimate picture which will linger in American literature and in the minds of all who yearn for a more intimate knowledge of nature, unaffectedly told, like the song of the robin of his first love, “a harbinger of spring thoughts carrying with it the fragrance of the first flowers and the improving verdure of the fields.”

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

How does the first paragraph indicate the key-note of the article?

What do Burroughs' pictures and books show concerning his character?

What sort of life did Burroughs lead?

What is meant by “exploiting the teaching of experience rather than of books”?

How did Burroughs find happiness?

What is said concerning Burroughs' faculties of discovery and interpretation?

What diversity of interests did Burroughs show?

What is said concerning Burroughs' work as an essayist?

Why was Burroughs fond of Walt Whitman?

How did Burroughs gain literary style?

What is meant by the “socialization of science”?

What makes Burroughs such a charming person?

Into what sections may the article be divided?

What does the article reveal concerning its author?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. A Visit with My Teacher 11. Our Unusual Caller

2. A Call on an Interesting Person 12. A Talk with a Tramp

3. In the Office of the Principal 13. The Beggar's Life

4. Visiting My Relatives 14. My Cousin

5. A Visit to Another School than My Own 15. A Talk with an Expert

6. A Talk with a Fireman 16. My Friend, the Carpenter

7. A Talk with a Policeman 17. Interviewing a Peddler

8. An Interview with a Stranger 18. Talking with a Missionary

9. The Man in the Office 19. In the Printer's Office

10. The Busy Clerk 20. The Railroad Conductor

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Write about an actual visit or interview. In all your work pay most attention to presenting the spirit of the person whom you talk with. The events of your visit, and the remarks that are made, are of less importance than the things that reveal spirit,—the surroundings, the costume, the habits, the work done and the various things that show character. The essay is in no sense to be the story of a visit; it is to give an intimate picture of the person in whom you are interested. Your object is to show character.

FOOTNOTES: