Henry David Thoreau

Destination: Concord, Massachusetts

Site: Henry David Thoreau’s Home

“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?“

So wrote American writer Henry David Thoreau one and a half centuries ago. Sounds like a bumper sticker from the present day environmentalists, doesn’t it?  Good old Thoreau continues to prove himself way out in front of the curve.

Thoreau, whose Walden Pond also provided us documentation of an early version of staycation (shudder!) wrote, if not travel books, certainly books that invite exploration of a place.

Our Great American Road Trip visited Massachusetts two weeks ago, so when I got this letter in the mail from the Thoreau Farm Trust, I just had to share it with you.

The non-profit organization has rescued the American pioneering environmental writer’s birthplace from destruction.  In keeping with the man’s “green” principles, the house has been restored with sustainability as well as historic values. A neat trick, since the house was built in 1730.

Thoreau House

I  like the idea that instead of being just one more historic house in a state packed with them (Emerson, Alcott, Whittier, Emily Dickinson, Longfellow, etc.), the Trust is creating a place for people to learn about Thoreau’s environmental ideas and learn what they can do to make a “tolerable planet.”

If you would like to keep tabs on the project, learn more details, or support their work, go to the Thoreau Farm Trust web site.

To read more about some of the writers of Thoreau’s day and place, see this article by R. Todd Felton, and his second about New England writers,  and this one about Emily Dickinson.

Did you know that Thoreau’s house was being opened to the public? Will it be on your list of places to go?  Have you read Thoreau? Love him or not?

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Destination: Boston

Book: Walking Boston by Robert Todd Felton

A GUEST POST BY Robert Todd Felton

Bivalve Molluscs, French Royalty, and the Streets of Boston

One of the best parts of walking around Boston is that you are always bumping up against some surprising scrap of American history.  Around one corner is the house where Paul Revere lived, or Ralph Waldo Emerson grazed cattle,…or the King of France taught French.

One of my favorite discoveries while writing the travel book Walking Boston was that the man who would become the last King of France in 1830, lived above a dry goods store near the waterfront and taught French to the young women of Boston.

Oyster House, Boston

At 41 Union Street, mere steps away from Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market with their New England bustle, is a somewhat innocuous, brown, two-story building.  Inside is the Union Oyster House, one of Boston’s landmark restaurants and the oldest restaurant in continuous use in the United States.

It boasts the requisite long history and famous anecdotes of Boston’s trademark establishments (the statesman and politician Daniel Webster used to down six plates of oysters accompanied by six whiskeys here).  However, long before it became a restaurant, it was Capen’s Silk and Dry Goods Store and the room on the second floor was rented to an itinerant French tutor named Louis-Phillippe.

Louis-Phillippe had fled France in 1793 when he was forced into exile by political changes brought about by The French Reign of Terror.  For years, he roamed around Europe avoiding French political entanglements but apparently not romantic ones.  According to some sources, he left one illegitimate son in Milan and one in Finland.  After living in Philadelphia and traveling throughout the eastern United States, Louis-Phillippe settled in Boston in 1796.

The King Instructs Young Ladies In French

According to Union Oyster House co-owner Mary Ann Milano-Picardi (better known as “Ma”), Louis-Phillippe lived on the second floor of the building and made his living by tutoring the young ladies of Boston in French for about a year before moving on again.  Louis-Phillippe finally ascended the throne as the King of the French in 1830 and ruled until 1848. Although he was the last “King” to rule France, Napoleon III called himself an “emperor” and was therefore the last monarch.

To find Louis-Phillippe’s room inside the Union Oyster House, go through the front door and head upstairs to the “The Louis-Phillippe Room.” According to “Ma,” it used to be known as the Pine Room, but so many people came in asking where Louis-Phillippe lived that they finally had to change the name.  While you are up there, take a look for booth 18.  President John F. Kennedy used to hide up there and eat in relative privacy.  If all the tables are taken, sneak back downstairs to belly up to one of the best places in Boston to get fresh oysters.  The huge wooden semicircular oyster bar serves a focal point for the room, and allows the shuckers to trade banter and quips with each other and the customers.

Interior, Oyster House, Boston

Mary Ann and her brother Joe are only the third owners of the restaurant and are dedicated to keeping its history alive.  For example, Ma gathered all the historical information to have the building granted National Historic Landmark status in 2003 and provided the images for this article.
In fact, when I asked her if there was anything new about the Union Oyster House to highlight in the article, she replied, “oh no, we keep things pretty much the same.”  In fact, Louis-Phillippe himself might just recognize his old digs.

Robert Todd Felton

You can find these stories and more in Robert Todd Felton’s Walking Boston.  His newest secret traveling tip is a little-known website called Academic Ambassadors , where academics and non-profit professionals can find great deals at wonderful hotels. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone.

My heartfelt thanks to Todd Felton for sharing with us this little-known story from his research for Walking Boston. The news that a French King not only lived in Boston, but supported himself by teaching French, made me utter Sacre Bleu! Now I simply MUST get back to Boston to try out the Oyster Bar and “visit” the King. Did YOU know??? What other secrets have you discovered in your travels? Do share!!

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

We have a winner.

Karen Gonyea has won a copy of Walking Boston by R. Todd Felton. I have sent a notification to Karen.

Thanks every one of you who submitted a total of 95 entries to the contest.

I know that many of the people who wrote are real fans of Boston, so I hope that you will buy a copy of Todd’s book about Boston, and perhaps his other books as well.  It has been an honor to have this distinguished guest here at the Traveler’s Library.  Thanks so much to Todd for contributing this copy of Walking Boston for visitors to A Traveler’s Library.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

The Old Manse

Perhaps the best way to understand Transcendentalism is to start where they did, in the study of an old minister’s house by a slow moving river in a town just nineteen  miles outside of Boston. It was there, in 1836, a young man named Ralph Waldo Emerson, living in his grandfather’s house, wrote the book that became the foundation Transcendentalism, Nature.

In it, Emerson is clear about the benefits of leaving both the actual rooms in which we live and our set ways of thinking, and striding out into nature:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — a mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

It was in this passage from Nature that Transcendentalism first came alive for me, and I structured A Journey into the Transcendentalists’ New England around what I view as Transcendentalism’s central quest: to forge an original relationship with the universe or, as Emerson puts it, to behold “God and nature face to face.”

So, the question is how did this group of writers, philosophers, poets, activists and dreamers conduct their quests? Where did they go for that “face to face” interaction? How does one forge one’s own unique relationship with the universe?

Forging One’s Own Unique Relationship With the Universe

Obviously, they went to Concord. They went to visit and converse with Emerson. They came to walk the paths around the town and draw inspiration from nature. In Boston, Elizabeth Peabody’s bookstore on West Street was another place they went to forge that relationship with the universe. They spent time here bouncing ideas off each other and searching for a better way before wandering up Tremont Street to School Street and the Old Corner Bookstore and the Parker House hotel.

Nathaniel Hawthorne went to Brook Farm and joined their utopian community in an unsuccessful effort to find his unique relationship. Bronson Alcott packed his family up and created Fruitlands utopian community just west of Concord in Harvard, Massachusetts…if only until winter came.

Emily Dickinson declined to travel much beyond her own home for God and the universe but found them among her garden plants and in the view from her second story room.

Perhaps the most well known method of forging an original relationship with the universe was the move to Walden Pond and attempt to “front only the essential facts of life” as Thoreau did from 1845 to 1847. His experiment in living the Transcendentalist quest, along with the record of it we know as Walden, has had perhaps the greatest impact of any of the Transcendentalist writings.

A Lake in the Woods

Perhaps there is no more telling example of the Transcendentalist legacy than the two square miles of Massachusetts surrounding and including Walden Pond. The lake itself and its shoreline are now part of a state reservation, with the Thoreau Institute tucked up among the woods south of the lake. Beyond that, the land is a patchwork of protected land, open fields and development. However, that is not to say that all is idyllic and tranquil. Route 2, Massachusetts’ main east/west thoroughfare north of the turnpike runs its four lanes of traffic less than a quarter mile from the site of Thoreau’s cabin. The exceedingly popular public beach at Walden Pond can see nearly a million visitors a year, only a fraction of whom are there because of Thoreau.

In sum, Walden Pond is an amalgamation of homage to Thoreau and his legacy; a beloved and much used natural place for swimming, fishing, and hiking; and a cautionary tale of shortsighted regional and urban planning. The same can be said for much of New England in general.

Transcendentalism Today

Transcendentalism has perhaps fared much better than the landscape which inspired it. While its heady ideas and radical philosophies seemed less thrilling as the industrial age got fully under way and many of its leading lights faded and died, Transcendentalism’s inherent optimism, recognition of our interconnectedness, and deeply-held appreciation of the natural world holds as true today as they did when Emerson first put pen to paper.

In fact (in a rough segue), one can still go to hear about Transcendentalism. I will be speaking at the All Souls Church in Manhattan this coming Thursday, February 26 about the Transcendentalists and my book, A Journey into the Transcendentalists’ New England. For more information about the event at All Souls Church and some of my other events, you can go to my Red Room page. I hope you will join me. If you can’t make it, please feel free to leave a comment here on my blog, Open Page – Open Road.

Thanks,

R. Todd

All the images seen here belong to R. Todd Felton.

NOTE: DO NOT FORGET. LEAVE A COMMENT HERE OR ON TOMORROW’S POST BY R. T. FELTON, AND YOU COULD WIN A COPY OF HIS “WALKING BOSTON.”

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.