THOREAU’S SEXUALITY

Walter Harding, PhD State University College, Geneseo, New York

Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 21(3) 1991 © 1991 by The Haworth
Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT. Although Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) has
often been described as lacking in sexual drive or at
most a rather reluctant heterosexual, a close study of
his life and writings indicates the presence of a
pronounced vein of homoeroticism-although there seems
to be no concrete evidence of any homosexual activity
on his part. Cognizance of that homoeroticism helps one
to understand many elements of his fife and writings and
suggests that his intense love of nature may have
resulted from sublimation of that homoeroticism.
As Perry Miller pointed out some years ago, scholars
over the years have come to some astoundingly different
conclusions as to Henry David Thoreau’s sexuality.
Early biographers tend to see him as asexual — that is,
lacking in sexual drive. By the turn of the century they
looked upon him as somewhat heterosexual. Miller
thought of him as androgynous.1 In recent years, some
have begun to speak of him as homosexual. Yet,
astonishingly, with all these varied opinions, very
little effort has been expended in examining the facts.
I believe it is time to consider the facts.
At first glance there is seemingly plenty of evidence that
Thoreau was sexually cold. A number of his friends testify$ to
that effect. Ellery Channing, his closest friend and biographer,
said, “Henry made no account of love at all.”2 Horace Hosmer, a
pupil and lifelong friend, recalled that Thoreau “did not appear
to have the ‘love-idea’ in him; is,, he did not appear to feel
the sex-attraction.” George Bartlett, another Concord
contemporary, said Thoreau’s “interest in the sex opposite to
his own, was almost nil.”3 Bronson Alcott, one of his close
friends, said Thoreau “seemed to have no temptations. All those
strong wants which do battle with other men’s nature, he knew
not.”4 And Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his eulogy delivered at
Thoreau’s funeral, said, “He chose wisely, no doubt, for himself
to be a bachelor of thought and Nature .. .He had no temptations
to fight against, -no appetites, no passion^.”^ Even Thoreau
himself spoke often of his own coldness, saying, “I do not melt;
there is no thaw in me’78 or “There is a ...crust over my
heart.”5
The thought of marriage distressed Thoreau. Kicking a skunk
cabbage, he told David Wasson, “There, marriage is like that,”’*
He said, “If common sense had been consulted, how many marriages
would never have taken pIace.”6 He complained in his Jaurnnl,
“The marriage which the mass of men comprehend is but little

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better than the marriage of beasts” (J V369). He commented that

“It would be cruel to laugh at [those who] have actuaIIy allied
themselves to one whom they thought their wife and found out
their mistake too late to mend it” (J XII:384). And in one of
his commonplace books, he copied out, “Take your wife’s opinion
and act in opposition to it.”7
When his friend H.G.O.Blake married, Thoreau sent him as a
wedding present admonitory essays on “Love” and “Chastity and
Sensuality,” telling Blake, “There can be nothing sensual in
marriage,” though adding a note saying he was sending the essays
‘”with diffidence and shame, not knowing how far 1speak to the
condition of men generally, or how far I betray my peculiar
deccs.”’
The scxual act he apparently thought of only with abhorrence and
disgust. He complained, “We are begotten and our life has its
source from what a trivial and sensual Pleasure.”’ He even found
it difficult to imagine “what the essential difference between
man and woman is that they should be thus attracted fo one
another.”16 Nor could he accept any jesting on the subject of
sexual relations. He complained of indecent graffiti he saw on
the walls of outhouses and even chastised Nature for crcating
the “obscenity” of the phallic fungus (J IX:117). When #he more
earthy Ellery Channing tried to share off-color jokes with him,
Thoreau was always repelled (J III:33S, 406-7; IV:185). He
chastized children in his school for using indecent language,”
and thought little boys shoilld be whipped for “impurity” (J
II:341), despite his weli-known objections to the use of
corporal punishment. He even went so far as to renounce sex
completely, extolling the virtues of absolute chastity, speaking
of it, ironically, as “the flowering of man”’hnd the “perpetual
acquaintance with the All” (J IX:246).
Thoreau’s usual reaction to women was one of embarrassment or
annoyance. Emerson tells us Thoreau blushed at the presence of
the maids whenever he walked through the Emerson kitchen.I9
Thoreau himself said, “I confess that I am lacking a sense,
perchance, in this respect, and I derive no pleasure from
talking with a young woman half an hour simply because she has
regular features. The society of young women is the most
unprofitable that I have ever tried” (J III:116). He added, “It
requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a
conversation with a lady” (J If1:168). He suspected his friends
of attempting to foster his interest in marriageable young
ladies and condemned them for it (J III:116). We thought women
“lacked brains” (J III:258) and “scruples” (3 II:116), were
“presumptuous” (PJ I:247), “Fccbfc” fJ XII:356), “trifling” (J
XIII:52), and “an army of non-producers7’ (J XtI:342); thcir
clothes were “too showy and gaudy” (J IV:92), and the perfumes
they used as bad as a “‘muskrat’s odor” (J V:82).*O
In all of Thoreau’s voluminous writings I have found otlly one
example where he thought a woman physically attractive -when he
met a housewife in the Berkshires in 1844 and described her as
“a frank and hospitable woman, who stood before me in a
dishabille, busily and unconcernedly combing her long black hair
whib she talked, giving her head the necessary toss with each
sweep of the comb, with lively, sparkling eyes, and full of
interest.”’ Much more typical whcn he bothers to mention womcn

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at all is his description of one he saw on Cape Cod: “a Naltset

woman, of a hardness and coarseness such as no man ever possesses
or suggests. It was enough to see the vertebrae and sinews of
her neck, and her set jaws of iron, which would have bitten a
board-nail in two in their ordinary action.”22
We cannot ignore the fact that Thoreau once proposed marriage
to Ellen Sewail, but in doing so he seems to have taken for
granted in advance that she would turn him down.23 Virtually all
his biographers have looked upon their “romance” as “an
experiment in the philosophy of love,” as Canby says, with
little if any physical basis.*
One other incident should be mentioned. In 1847 Thoreau received
a proposal of marriage from Sophia Foord (or Ford), a governess
for the Emerson children. Thoreau immediately wrote Emerson,
then in Europe on a lecture tour:
I have had a tragic correspondence, for the most part all on one
side, with Miss Ford. She did realiy wish too-I hesitate to
write-marry me. That is the way they spell it. Of course I did
not write a deliberate answer. How could I deliberate upon it?
I sent back as distinct a no as I have learned to pronounce after
considerable practice, and f trust that this no has succeeded.
Indeed, I wish that it might burst, like hollow shot, after it
had struck and buried itself and made itself felt there. There
was no other way, I really had anticipated no such foe as this
in my career.2s
Since Miss Foord has been described as “a dark-skinned pudgy
featurcd woman” fifteen years older than Thoreau and apparently
going through some sort of emotional disturbance at the time,
it is not surprising that Thoreau turned her down, but the
violcnce of the irnagcs he loses in writing Emerson suggests
overkill.26
Typical of those young men who wish to avoid marriage, Thoreau
seemed to find only those women to be of interest who were
patently unavailable married women such as Lidian Emerson anci
her sister Lucy Jackson Brown, or the elderly, such as Mary
Mootly Emerson. He was careful to point out to Mrs. Emerson that,
“I think of you as some elder sister of nmine”’ and what he liked
about Mary Moody Emerson was her “masculine” appreciation of
poetry and philosophy (J IiI:114).
‘Thoreau was perfectly aware that his were not the usiral
reactions of a man to the opposite sex. He tells us:
My nature pauses here, I do not weti know why. (PJ 11:235))
I confess that I am lacking a sense, perchance, in this respect.
(J 111:116)
I am sure that the design of my maker when he has broiught me
nearest to woman was not the propagation but rathcr the
maturation of the species. (J II: 185)
He could think of women only in a mother or sister relatioilship,
adding, “I cannot imagine a woman no older than 1,”’Qnd
confessed, “My most intimate acquaintance with woman has been a
sister’s relation, or at most a Catholic’s virgin mother
relation,””
Although Thoreau found little attraction to the other sex, he
tiitl, nonetheless, feel a deep longing for love and
companionship, as exemplified by:

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I pine for want of a companion, (J IfI:390)

What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers. I walk
alone. My heart is full . . ..I knock on the earth for my friend.
I expect to meet him at every turn. (J VII:416-7)
Our life without love is like coke and ashes, -like the cocoanut
in which the milk is dried up. (PJ 1:390-1)
I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may
be conceived, double for variety,-single for harmony. (PJ I:
103)
There are those I love among men, who will know that I love them
though I tell them not. (J II:391)
It is not easy to find one brave enough to play the game of love
quite alone with you. (PJ 1:373)
It is enlightening to note that in none of these quotations does
Thorcau use the feminine gender. Where he is specificas to sex,
he uses the masculine pronoun. Thoreau often found himself
deeply emotionally attracted to members of his own sex. ft was
something deep within him and all-compelling, something he was
not at ease with, something he felt he must hide -not only from
others, but even at times at least from himself:
When some rare specimen of manhood presents itself, they are
some fresher wind that blows, some new fragrance that breathes.
They make the landscape and the sky for us. (PJ I:98)
My nature, it may [bef is secret. Others can confess and explain;
I cannot. It is not that I am too proud, but that is not what
is wanted. ...I am under an awful necessity to be what I am. (J
III:146)
Like cuttlefish, we conceal ourselves, we darken the atmosphere
in which we move; we are not transparent. I pine for one to whom
1 can speak my first fhoughts;thoughts which represent me truly,
which are no better and no worse than I . . . . Our sin and shame
prevent our expressing even the innocent thoughts we have. I
know of no one to whom I can be transparent instinctively. I
live the life of the cuttlefish; another appears, and the
element in which I move is tinged and I am concealed. (J IW315)
My acquaintances sometimes imply that I am too cold . . , . It
is not that I am too cold, but that our warmth and coldness are
not of the same nature; hence when I am absolutely warmest, I
may be coldest to you. . . . That I am cold means that I am of
another nature. (J III:146-7)
He found young men to be particularly attractive:
When a man is young and his constitution and body have not
acquired firmness, i.e., before he has arrived at middle age,
he is not an assured inhabitant of the earth, and his
compensation is that he is not quite earthy, therc is something
peculiarly tender and divine about him. ..,The young man is a
demigod. . . .He bathes in light. He is interesting as a stranger
from another sphere. (J XIII:35)
Like many intellectuals, he seems to have had a particular
preference for men from the laboring classes:
You can tell a nobleman’s head though he may be shovelling gravel
beneath it six rods off in the midst of a gang with a bandana
handkerchief tied about it.%

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Even the tired laborers I meet on the road, I really meet as

traveling gods. (PJ I1:175)
Despite his usual anti-military attitudes, he was also attracted
to soldiers. Upon visiting the military establishment at Quebec
in 1850, he said, “One regiment goes bare-legged to increase the
attraction. If you wish to study the muscles of the leg about
the knee [which he obviously did], repair to Quebec” (J
11:401).And several years later, looking back upon his Quebec
visit, he reminisced about the young Englishman he had seen
there “whose clear, glowing English complexion I can still see’
(J III:338-9). Even the local Concord militia he thought made
“a handsome appearance” (J I:479).
He was intrigued by nude male bodies and liked to imagine an
athlete stripping for “what a display of muscle” (J XI:260). lie
loved to watch boys swimming naked, peering out of the woods at
them:
Boys are bathing at Hubbard’s Bend, playing with a boat (I at
the willows). The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance
is pleasing, the not often seen flesh-color. . . . What a
singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back
in his note-book, that men are forbidden to expose their bodies
under the severest penalties. (J IV:92)
He reveled in the “alabaster whiteness” of swimmers in Walden
Pond, thinking them “fit studies for a Michel Ange10.”The sight
of naked hired men in the river attracted him (J VII:14).
Although he rarely speaks of any of the fine arts, he does single
out the nude Apollo Belvidere statue as a favorite (J VI:56).
In his imagination he visualized priests exposing themselves (J
III:95).31
Often when he saw a physically attractive young man, he assumed
that he was also intellectually attractive:
A man may be young, athletic, active, beautiful. Then, too, his
thoughts will be like his person. .They will wander in a living
and beautiful world. (J XIIf:69)
Men can help one another indeed . . . by being gods to oneanother
[sic]-objects of adoration. (PJ II:246)
When he saw a man swimming in Fair Haven Bay, too far away to
be recognized, he imagined “he is a poet in his yet obscure but
golden youth” (J VI:417). Yet on another occasion he thought “a
man may be an object of interest to me” even though he could not
speak (J I:461). And sometimes his interests were anything but
intellectual as when he speaks in his earfy essay “The Service”
of “a fellow . . .[who] yields to me as the air to my body! I
leap and dance in his midst, and play with his beard tiff he
As one reads through Thoreau’s JournaE and even his more fortnal
works, he is struck, by the frequency with which Thoreau on his
walks and travels mentions seeing men who are attractive to him
-a young peddler on Cape Cod is described as “an unusually good
specimen of Young America” (J 1X:422-3);a man in a passing boat
as “a vision bound to [the] land of the blessed” (J IL423); a
fellow passenger on a stage coach as “a handsomc man about thirty
years old, of good height, but not apparently robust, of
gentlenlanly dress and faultless toilet”;” a woodchopper as
“more iclcal than in any picture I have seen” (J Ik254);another
woodchopper as “stout and handsome” (J XII:30); a neighbor as
“a representative of the divinity on earth” (J iI:207);another

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neighbor to whom he “bowed instinctively”;

a stone-mason, “a young man of our own age, ..,We could still
distinguish the strokes of his chisel for many swecps aftcr we
had left him”;16 or another fellow-passenger on a coach, “a
handsome man. .. . [with] a fair white complexion .. , [who]
might have passed for a divinity student.”’ The list could be
continued almost indefinitely.
In an early draft of Walden Thoreau wrote:
Sometimes there would come haif a dozen men to my house at
onceheaIthy and sturdy working men, descended from sound bodies
of men. ...I met them so often in the woods — that they began
to look upon me at least as one of their kin , , ..One a handsome
younger man a sailor-like-Greek-like man.. . .
There appeared in some of these men even at a distance, a genuine
magnanimity equal to Greek or Roman, of unexplored and
uncontaminated descent -The expression of their grimed &
sunburnt features made me think of Epaminondas of Socrates and
Cato.I8
But it is interesting to note that he cut this passage out before
he published Walden.
Many of Thoreau’s comments on young men are of greater length,
as for example, his report in A Week on attending the local
Concord cattle-show:
Every farmer lad too appears to scud before [the wind], — having
donned his best peajacket and pepper and salt waistcoat, his
unbent trousers, outstanding rigging of duck, or kersymere, or
corduroy, and his furry hat withal,-to country fairs and cattle-
shows. . . . Amos, Abner, Elnathan, Elbridge, -Iy “From steep
pine-bearing mountains to the plain.” I love these sons of earth
every mother’s son of them, with their great hearty hearts
rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle to spectacle, ..,
“Wise nature’s darlings .. . “ Such as had no love for nature .
..”at aH, Came lovers home from this great festival.” ,.,Their
fairest cattle and richest fruits . . . are all eclipsed by the
show of men. ...This is the true harvest of the year.’(‘
When Thoreau was locking through the canal at Crornwell’s Falls
on his Week journey, he noticed a “brawny New Hampshire man . .
.bareheaded . . .and in shirt and trousers only, a rude ApoHo
of a man, coming down from that ‘vast uplandish country’to the
main; . . . with flaxen hair and vigorous, weather-bleached
countenance.” They stopped and “parleyed awhile, and parted not
without a sincere interest in one another.”’ What makes
Thoreau’s comment particularly interesting is that his quoted
phrase, “vast uplandish country,” is taken from Christopher
Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander,” which in context reads:
Had Hippolytus Leander seen,
Enamored of his beauty had he been:
Iiis presence made the rudest peasant melt,
That in the vast uplandish county dwelt;
The barbarous Thracian soldier, mov’d with naught,
Was mov’d with him, and for his favour sought.
Some swore he was a maid in man’s attire,

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For in his looks was all that men desire,

A pleasant smiling cheek, a speaking eye,
A brow for love to banquet royally;
And such as knew he was a man would say,
“Leander, thou are made for amorous play.”42
In other words, even a man indifferent to love would fall in
love with him.
On his first trip to the Maine Woods, Thoreau chose a young
lumberman, Tom Fowler, to be one of his guides. Thoreau was
obviously attracted to him, and in an unpublished manuscript
described him as “a young and ingenuous waterman . . .[with] the
noble frankness of a forest child. “4Vn his Journal, Thoreau
praised Fowler as one who “had had much intercourse with rude
nature” (PJ II:346) and went on to quote from Thomas Heywood’s
“The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels”:
I for my part (Think others what they please) accept that heart,
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase, And that it takes
not from my paills or praise, If any one to me so bluntly come,
I hold that he loves me best that calls me Tom. (PJ 11549)
Although Thoreau quotes the lines quite otut of context (as he
oftcn does), the quotation does indicate Thoreau’s emotional
involvement with Fowler.
Perhaps the most notable example of Thoreau being attracted to
a young man is that of Alek Therien, the now well-known “French-
Canadian woodchopper” of Wuliien. Therien, exactly Thoreau’s
age, came down to Concord from Quebec to live with relatives and
earn his living in various menial occupations. Concord Yankees
in general tended to look down on French-Canadians as much
beneath themselves. Therien was apparently a fairly boorish man
with little education and no great intellect, but he was so
handsome that he was spoken of about town as “a prince in
disguise.”” Thoreau was enough enthralled with him that he
devoted more space to him in Walden than he did any other person,
more even than to Emerson, Alcott, and Channing combined,
describing him as “a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man.”45 In
describing Therien he incorporated into his text obviously to
enhance it, words that he had originally used to describe his
Maine lumberman, Tom Fowler!” What is more, as he tells us in
Walden,’ Thoreau in reading to Therien from Homer’s Iliad, chose
specifically the well-known passage on Achilles7 affection for
Patroclus. Therien never married and in later years went
steadily downhill, ending as a drunkard. Once, as Emerson tells
when Therien appeared intoxicated at Thoreau’s door, Thoreau,
savagely disappointed in his former idol, told Therien that the
best he could do for himself was to cut his own throat. Oniy an
intense emotional involvement could have led Thoreau to make as
cold-hearted and atypical a remark as that.
And then there is Thoreau’s interest in Edmund Scwall, the
eleven-year-old brother@ of Ellen, who was later a pupil in
Thoreau’s boarding school. Young Sewall had come to Concord to
visit his grandmother, Mrs. Joseph Ward, who was the star
boarder in the Thoreau household, on Junc 17, 1839. Five days
later Thoreau wrotc in liis Journal:
I have within the last few days come into contact, with a pure,

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uncompromising spirit, that is somewhere wandering in tile

atmosphere, birt settles not positively anywherc. Some persons
carry about them the air and conviction of virtue, though they
themselves are unconscious of it, and are even backward to
appreciate it in others. Such it is impossible not to love; still
Is their loveliness, as it were, independent of them, so that
you seem not to lose it when they are absent, for when they are
near it is like an invisible presence which attends you. (PJ
I:74)
Two days later Thoreau wrotc his well-known poem “Sympathy”
about Edmund, saying in part:
Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy, Whose features all were cast
in Virtue’s mould, As one she had designed for Beauty’s toy, But
after manned him for her own stronghold . ...
So I was taken unawares by this, I quite forgot my homage to
confess; Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is, I might
have loved him, had I ioved him less. (PJ I:76)
It is obvious, 1 believe, from a reading of both the poem and
the journal entry that Thoreau’s relationship with Edrnund was
a highly rarified and intellectual one, with little if any of
the physical about it. As Thoreau said on another occasion, “In
all cases we esteem rather the suggested ideal than the actual
man” (J II:232). Thoreau gave a copy of the poem to Edmund who
showed it to his parents. They apparently seeing nothing wrong
with it not only asked Thoreau to write another poem for Edmund’s
younger brother, but later enrolled Edmund as a boarding pupil
in Thoreau’s school. There were others however who were
disturbed by the tenor of the poem. Both Emerson and Frank
Sanborn, Thoreau’s friend and biographer, insisted that Thoreau
had written the poem about Ellen despite irrefutable evidence
that Thoreau had written the poem before he ever met Ellen. In
October of 1840, Thoreau wrote another series of interesting
entries in his Jourttal:
October 17, 1840. In the presence of my friend I am ashamed of
my fingers and toes. I have no feature so fair its my love for
him. There is more than maiden modesty between us ,...We should
sooner blot out the sun than disturb friendship ....
October 19, 1840. My friend dwells in the distant horizon as
rich as an eastern city there. There he sails all lonely under
the edge of the sky, but thoughts go out silently from me and
belay him . . . . He seems to move in a burnished atmosphere,
while I peer in upon him from surrounding spaces of Cimmerian
darkness, His house is incandescent to my eye, while I have no
house, but only a neighborhood to his .. . .
October 20, 1840. My friend is the apology for my I ife. In him
are the spaces which my orbit traverses. (PJ 1:190-2)
Note that all the pronouns are masculine. No one has as yet
succeeded in identifying the subject of these entries, but it
should be noted that he also says in his entry for the 18th “I
cannot make a disclosure-you should see my secret” (PJ I:191).
It should also be noted that immediately after writing these
entries, Thoreau wrote his letter to Ellen Sewall proposing
marriage, Could it be that suddenly realizing he was getting
involved in a relationship that would have been condemned by his
contemporaries, he leaped violently in the opposite direction
to prove to both society and himself that he was ‘%ormal”?

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There are further evidences of Thoreau’s homoerotic

incfinations. Take for example his reading interests. He was an
inveterate reader, reading almost constantly and widely in many
fields. There was, of course, in his day comparatively tittle
homoerotic literature available, but he succeeded in uncovering
a surprising amount of it and responded to it with some
intensity.
Among the Greek classic writcrs, the bisexual hedonist Anacrcon
appealed enough to Thoreau that he translated selections for the
Dial and later included these selections in his Week.”%t least
three
of the poetns he translated (“On a Silver Cup,” “To a Dove,” and
“To a Swallow”) were homoerotic in nature and originally ad
(tressed to the tjeautiful yotung man Bathylus whom Anacreon
loveds’and one in which Anacrcon had depicted his loved one as a
filly, Thorear1 rewrote changing the filly to a colt.s2
Thoreau also translated Pindar, another classical writer noted
for his homosexual themes.’I Thoreau was also struck by the many
accounts of male friendships scattered through the classics and
cites many of them in his own writings: Damon and Pythias (J
X:127); l’ityrus and Meliboeus (from Virgil’s
Eclogues);sXallias and Autolykos (from Xenophon’s “The
Banquet”) (PJ I:129); Achilles and Patroclus (PJ II:172); and
Orestes and Pylades (PJ 1:103). Speaking of such pairs, Thoreau
added, “But why should not we put to shame those old reserved
worthies by a community of such?” (PJ
I: 103).He also quoted frequently from the Persian homosexual
poet Sadi.5s One of Thoreau’s favorite authors was Christopher
Marlowe, whom, as we have already seen, he cited frequently. Of
Marlowe’s works his especial favorite was “Hero and bander,”
which he singled out as having read “with great pleasure” (PJ
I:457) and “without being wearied” (PJ II:115). That he was
specifically aware of the homoerotic content of the poem is
indicated in the passages he quoted to describe the young lads
at the cattle show and the “rude Apollo” he met on the Merrirnack
River. Note also the passage he quoted from William Drurnrnond
when he saw the boys at the cattle show and the passage from
Thomas Heywood he quoted about Tom Fowler.
Thoreau read widely about the American Indian and found there a
number of passages of homoerotic interest. Notable among these
was Alexander Henry’s Travels and Adventures in Canada from
which Thoreau quoted extensive passages on the warmth of the
friendship between Henry and the Indian chieftain Wawatam in
both his Jolrntnl (PJ 11: 101-2)and in his Week.s” his
unpublished Indian notebooks, now in the Pierpont Morgan
Library, Thoreau quoted a passage from the Jesrrit Relations
about a tribe of Indians who “are very ardent for women & yet
more for boys.” Note also his reference in Cape CodS7to the naked
men kissing and pawing each other. It is interesting that when
Thoreau was choosing an Indian guide in the Maine Woods, he
turned one down because he was “too dark-colored, as if with
African blood” (J IX:486) anrl chose instead Joe Polis, whom he
said had “perfect Indian fcatures and complexion.”
A recently discovered portrait of Polis confirms his
handsotneness.”

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When Thoreau met Walt Whitinan and read his Leaves of C’JI -NSS
in the then notorious second edition with all its homoerotic
imagery, he wrote his friend Blake in great excitement, “That
Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote to you, is !he most interesting
fact to me at present. I have just read his 2nd edition . . . .
and it has done mc more good than any reading for a long time.””
Emerson tells us that Thoreau carried his copy of Leaves of Grnss
around Concord “like a red flag-defiantly, challenging the
plentiful opposition there’76’ and he sent a copy of it to his
English friend Thomas Cholmondeley as an outstanding American
book. One of the few other nineteenth-century volumes of poetry
which he owned was Tennyson’s In Memoriam, again a voltlme known
for its homoerotic undertone^.^? Thoreau’s favorite ballad,
which hc often sang for his friends, was “Tom Dowling,” which
speaks of Tom’s form as of “the manliest beauty” and describes
him as “the darling of our crew.” But particularly interesting
is the fact that Thoreat] searched out and read S.G. Squier’s
The Setpent Symbol, a detailed and explicit study of phallic
worship among the Indians of Central America.’
Thoreau thought one’s dreams always worthy of analysis, saying,
“The nearest approach to discovering what we are is in dreams”
(PJ I:304-5). Joan Burbick has pointed out that Thoreau’s dreams
are filled with “figures of heroic maleness.” When he looked at
the clouds in the sky, he noticed, as in a Rorschach test:
Dark, heavy clouds . . .exhibiting the forms of animals and men.
. . .Why do we detect these forms so readily? -whales or giants
reclining, busts of heroes, Michael-Angelic, Therc is the
gallery of statuary, the picture gallery of man. (J 11:258, see
also V1:345)
In answer to Thoreau’s question about detecting the forms, it
is axiomatic that we see what we know and love best. In his
observation of nature, Thoreau was often reminded of the
attractiveness of young men:
Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest
for her contest with hcr great antagonist Winter. In the bare
trees and twigs what a display of muscle. (jXf:26O)
The beech . . , is an interesting tree to me, with its neat,
close, tight-looking bark, like the dress which athletes wear.
(J V:173)
The weeds are dressed in their frost jackets, naked down to their
close-fitting downy or flannel shirts. Like athletes they
challenge the winter. (J XII:394-5)
Yellow leaves remind Thoreau of “the complexion of young men”
(J XI:218). Roses in “their promise of perfect and dazzling
beauty” remind him of “most youths” (J IV:142). He seems
preoccupied with young men’s unshaven cheeks:
The year has the down of youth on its cheek. (J V:146-7)
Grasses [arc] as delicate as the down on a young man’s cheek.
(J IX:l59)
The sorrefl ...has become the tanned and inbrowned cheek of
manhood. (J V:241)
Many Thoreau scholars have noted his preoccupation with sexual,
particularly phallic images. His excitement over finding a
phallic fungus is well-known. He took nearly two full pages to

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describe it in his Journal (J IX:215-7) and his drawing of it

was so realistic that his 1906 editors deteted it. His choice
of images is sometimes astounding to say the least. He says he
loves “to see a man with a tap-root” (J IV:16). He dreams of
swallowing a snake and wonders, mixing his images somewhat, “How
many ova have 1 swallowed?” (J lI:393). He says, “The growing
man penetrates yet deeper by his roots into the womb of things”
(J II:203). He notes, “If there were but one erect and solid
standing tree in the woods, all creatures would go to rub against
it.” And, in what Richard 1,ebeaux has pointed outm as one of
his most iufelicitous expressions, in speaking of seeing some
potato plants, he comments, “It does one good to see their bails
dangling.7’b7
Thoreau was prone throughout his life to adulate strong
masculine figures. Sir Walter Raleigh was one of his earlier
heroes, as evidenced by his essay on Raleigh.a His yotithful
essay on “The Service”
is a glorification of hero worship. Emerson, in his eulogy for
Thoreau, emphasized the impact of three “heroes” -John Brown,
Joe Polis (the Indian), and Walt Whitman-on Thoreatl’s later
yearsS7’
Thoreau often meditated on what he called “friendship,” alrhough
it is often difficult to know whether he is thinking about
friendship or love.” In his so-called essay on friendship
embetideti in the “Wednesday” chapter of his Week,’l he used the
wort1 love or its derivatives fifty-one times and the essay is
pervaded with words such as intercourse, passionare, embrace,
erection, mate, andpenetrate that have sexual connotations. And,
in the same vein, is it only a coincidence that in speaking of
men he so frequrently uses the words erect or erection, as, fur
example:
[Speaking of the “intercourse of men”] I suddenly erect myself
in my thoughts, or find myself erected in finite degrees above
the possibility of ordinary endeavors. (J IX:480-1)
I almost shrink from the arduousness of meeting man erectly day
by day. (PJ 1:230)7’
And is it only a slip of the pen when, as many scholars have
noted, he almost invariably misspells buoyant as boyanf?’
Upon examining this evidence about Thnreau’s sexuality, what
conclusions can we reasonably come to? I believe the following:
1. He was not without a sexual drive.” 2. Thorcau’s heterosexual
drive was very low’, indeed almost non-existent. His few actions
and comments in that direction sccm
more to have been inspired by a desire to conform to what was
expected of a male in his society than by a scxual urge,
3. Both his actions and his words, consciously and/or
subconsciously, indicate a specific sexual interest in members
of his own sex. Was Thoreau homosexually active? To the best of
my knowledge no concrete cvidencc of any such activity has ever
come to light. It is perfectly possible, of course, for him to
have had a few homosexual incidents without our finding any
evidence of it, but I think it highly unlikely for him to have
engaged in such activity with any frequency without at least
some whisper of it leaking out, particularly in a town as smatt
and tightly knit as Concord was in Thorcau’s day.76It is to be

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noted that Thoreau’s Concord contemporaries seemed to emphasize

such words as “pure” and “virtuous” in speaking of him,
something they most certainly never would have done if they had
the least suspicion that he was actively homo
What then was the outlet for all Thoreau’s sexual energy? The
answer is, I believe, to be found in Freud’s theories of
sublimation, when he tells us:
When we find that in the picture presented by a person’s
character a single instinct has developed an excessive strength
. . .we make the . . .assumption that it found reinforcement
from what were originaliy sexual instinctuaf forces, so that
later it could take the place of a part of the subject’s sexual
life. ...The research becomes to some extent compulsive and a
substitute for sexual activity; bttt owing to the complete
difference in the underlying psychicaf processes ...the quality
of neurosis is absent ...and the instinct can operate freely in
the service of intcl!ectual interest.’
The dominating interest of Thoreau’s life was Nature. Virtually
every day of his adult life he devoted a minimum of four to five
hours (and often much more) to the study of nature. in his short
lifctirne-he lived only to the age of forty-four -he produced
more than three million words of polished, professional,
publishable prose, the larger portion of it devoted to his love
of and studies of nature, Readers are often struck by how much
of it is couchcd in erotic tcrrns:
How rarely a man’s love for nature becomes a ruling principle
with him, like a youth’s affection for a maiden, but more
enduring! All nature is my bride. (J IX:337)
I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty gal.ment
of leaves. (J IX:146)
Nature . ..lies at length, exposing her flanks to the sun. I
feel as if I could ...stroke and kiss the very sward, it is so
fair. (J XII:97)
I am like a bee searching the iiveiong day for the sweets of
nature. Do I not impregnate and intermix the flowers? (.III:470)
As Victor Fricsen has well pointed orrt,” over and over again
in reporting on nature, Thoreau begins his sentences with the
words “1 love . . . “Thoreau’s love life was centered on nature.
I-Ie himself said, “To sigh under the cold cold moon for a love
unrequited, is to put a slight upon nature; the natural remedy
would be to fall in Iovc with the moon and the night, and find
our love requited” (PJ I:223). The thwarting of his desires
backfired into his genius.
This then is the relevancy of Thoreau’s sexuality: Had he not
redirected those energies, it is very possible he might never
havc become the literary master he did. It explains quite
conclusively why he never married -and as has often been pointed
out, a Thoreau married would have been a very different Thoreau.
It helps to explain why he went to Walden to live alone at just
that point in his life when most men are marrying and settling
down to raising a family. It may help to explain some of that
sense of guilt which haunts so many of his pages.@” It
undoubtedly explains the astounding frequency of comments on
handsome young males in his pagcs and conversely the paucity of
comments on young ladies.8’ I would also suggest that possibly
some of Thoreau’s lifelong radicalism, the completely different

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angle of vision with which he viewed the world around him, his
perennial habit of questioning all things may have derived from
his realization that he was different from others. Thoreau’s
sexuality was of cotirse by no means his only driving force,
but, as with a11 of us, it was an important factor in making him
the man hc was.
NOTES
1. Perry Miller. Consciousness in Concord. (Boston, 1958), p.
82. 2. Ibid., p. 96. 3. William Ellery Charming. Poems of SLcry-
five Years. (Philadelphia, 1902), p. xxxviii.
4. George Hendrick, ed. Renrenibmncesof Concord and the
Tlhoreatrs.(Urlbana: University of fllinois Press, 19771, p.
131, 5. Hector Waylen. “A Visit to Watden Pond.” Natural Food,
July 1895, 38-9. 6. Raymond Gozzi, ed. T/toreau’s
Pscholugy.(Lanham: University Press of America, 1983), p. 154.
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Conaplete Works: Cenlenary Edition.
(Boston, 1903), X, 454. 8. Henry D. Thoreau. Jounral. (Boston,
1906). V1,87. {Hereinafter identified in the text as J.) 9.
lbid., 111, 313. 10. Frank P. Stearns. Sketches from Concord and
Appledore. (New York, 1895), p. 26. 11. Henry D. Thoreau. Ear&
Essnys. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 269.
12. Ms., Library of Congress. 13. Thoreau. Early Essays, p. 274.
14. Henry D. Thoreau. Correspondetrce. (New York, 19581, p. 288.
15. Henry D. Thoreau. Jormtnl. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981-), 11, 324. (Hereinafter identified in the text as
PJ.) 16. Thoreau. Early Essays, p. 258. 17. Walter Harding. Tile
Days of Henry Thorenu. (New York, 1965), p. 80. 18. Henry D.
Worcau. Walden. (Princeton: Princeton Universiiy Press, 1971),
pp. 219-20. 19. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Jounral.9 and
Miscelianeorrr Notebooks. (Cambridge: Harvard Uriiversity
Press, 1960), VIII, 400. 20. Strangely, however, Thoreau was
seemingly fascinated by women’s eardrops and I do not know what
to make of it. See PJ, 1,304; J, 11, 18;J, XII, 354. 21. Henry
D. Thoreau. A Week on [lie Concord arid Mewimack Rivers.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 182. 22.
tierlry D. Thoreau. Cape Cod. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988), pp. 36-7.
23. Harding, p. 102. 24. Henry S. Canby. Thoreau. (Bosbn, 1939),
pp. 121-2. For a more detailed discussion of Thoreau’s
relationship with women, see Gozzi, pp. 152-4. 25. Thoreau.
Corresputtdence, pp. 190-1. 26. liarding, p. 227. 27. Thorcau.
Correspondence, p. 103. 28. Henry D. Thoreau. First nnd Lost
Jolrmeys. (Boston, 1905), 1, 108. 29. Canby, p. 162; PJ, I, 5.
30. J. Lyndon Shanley. The Mrrkbngof Widden. (Chicago, 1957),
p. 174. 31. Thorcau. Wnlderi, p. 177. 32. Thoreau was
astonishingly relaxed about nudity for his lime and place and
often waded completely naked for miles along rhe Assabet River.
33. Ilenry D. Thoreau. Refonn Papers. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1973), p. 8. 34. Henry D. Thoreau. The Maine
Woods. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 161.
35. Henry D. Thoreau. Collected Poems. (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
Press, 1965), p. 102. 36. Thoreau. Week, p. 234. 37. Thoreau.
Maine Woods, p. 151. 38. Shanley, pp. 173-4. The references to
Greece in this and many other passages undoubtedly reflect in
part at least the Hellenic cult of body worship so popular among
the Romanticisls in both England and America of Thoreau’s time.
Epaminondas, a Theban general, was notorious for his
homosexuality. 39. That Thoreau had particular young men in mind

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is indicated by the fact that all these names, even the most
unusual, occur in Concord records of the time. 40. Thoreau.
Week, pp. 336-7. Of the lines of verse that Thoreau quotes here,
the first and last are from Christopher Marlowe’s “Hero and
Leander” (Lines 1 16 and 96), and the second from William
Drurnmond’s “A Pastoral Elcgy on the Death of Sir William
Alexander” (Lines 97-8). 41. Ibid., pp. 200-1. 42. Lines 77-88.
43. Leonard Neufeldt. “The Making of Alek Therien.” Cottcord
Snutiferrr, XI1 (1977) #2, 12-4. 44. Thoreau. Waiden, p. 148.
45. Ibid., p. 144. 46. Neofcldt, pp. 12-14. 47, P. 144. 48.
Jour.nals, XV, 239. 49. As for Thoreau’s interest in boys,
George Frisbie Hoar, who grew up in Concord with Thoreau, said,
“I knew Thoreau very intimately. ... Fie was very fond of small
boys” (Atrtobiogrnphy of Seveny Years. New York. 1903, I, 70).
And George W. Cooke, who also knew Ihe Concord scene well, said,
‘”Thorcau loved the society of boys” (“The Two Thoreaus,”
Indepe!t(letit, I3eXI.VII I. cember 10, 1896, 1672).
50. Pp. 225-31. 51. Richard Bridgman. Dark Thoreau. (L.incoin:
University of Nebraska Press, 1982), p. 54. 52, Ibid,,p. 6.
53. Ilenry D. Thoreau. Trattslations. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986)-pp. 111-33. 54. llenry D. Thoreau.
Ejccursions. (Boston, 19061, p. 311. 55. Walden, p. 79; Week,
69, 79, 304, 388. While none of these particular refcrences is
hontosexual, they do reflect Thoreau’s wide acquaintance with
Sadi. 56. Pp. 274-5. 57. P. 12. 58. Maine Woods, p. 157. 59.
Robert F. Sayrc. “Chartes Bird King’s Joseph Porus and Thoreau’s
Maine Woods Guide,” Tlrorenrc Jormnl Qmrierly, XlII (July,
1981), 10. 60. Correspondence, p. 444. Whitrnan, in his turn,
when he received a copy ofA Week from Thoreau, lore out the
section on Anacreon to place in a special file (Lawrence Buell.
“Whitman and Thoreau.” Caiamus, VIII (Aug. 1973), 25). 61.
Horace Traubel. With Wall Whitman in Camden. (New York, 13141,
111, 305. 62. Walter Warding. Tltoreau’s Librnry.
(Charlottesville, I957), p. 91. 63. Robert Sattelmeyer. Tltoreau
‘s Reading. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p.
272. 64. Joan Burbick. The An of Days. {Middletown: Wesleyan
University, unpublished dissertation, 1975). 65. Week, p. 217.
66. Richard Lebeaux. Thoreau’s Seasons. (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1984), p. 205. 67. Correspondence, p. 331.
68. Early Essays, pp. 178-218. 69. Refonn Papers, pp. 3-18. 70.
Tthoreau’s sister Sophia insisted that Emerson delete this
passage from the printed version of the eulogy because she did
not wish her brother to be associated with the notorious
Whitrnan (Harding, Days, p. 376). 71. Ellery Channing said,
“Now, Henry made no account of love at all, apparently. He had
notions about friendship” (p. xxxviii). 72. Pp. 259-89. 73. See
also: PJ 1, 174,204, 209, 230, 314,419; 11, 88, 121. 74. See,
for exaniplc: PJ I, 145, 165, 206, 213, 221, 305, 330, 454. 75.
That he was sexually potent is testified to by Thoreau himself.
In the privacy of his journal he makes numerous references to
“spilling my seeds” or similar wordings. Whether these
references arc to masturbatory incidents or nocturnal emissions
is never quite clear, but in either case it is clear that he
could and did achieve orgasm. See J 11, 472; 111, 80-2, 121; and
VI,483, among others. 76. Therc was a hornoscxual scandal in
Concord involving a number of Thoreau’s conltemporaries which
resulted in some of the participants being driven from town. So
ever1 despite Victorian reticence sucll activities were not left
unleported. I arn indebted lo the late Mrs. Herbert IIosmer and

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the late MI-s. Leslie Anderson, both long-time residenls of

Concord, for details of this affair.
77. Walter Harding. Thorenu as Seen by IJis L’otrtemnporaries.
(Ncw York: Dover, 1990), pp. 9, 16, 30,41. 78. Sigmund Freud.
L,eonardo do Vitlci arrd n Memory of His C/nlliklitoosi. (New
York, 1964), pp. 27-30. 79. Victor Friesen. 1We Spirit of Iite
Huckleberry. (Edmonton: Universily of Alberta Press, 1984), p.
12. 80. Gozzi, pp. 155-6. 81. Lonnie WiHis. Folklore in
dhePublished Writings of Ifetrry David 7110reau. (Boulder:
University of Colorado, unipublished dissertation, 1966)
reports finding eighty-one distinct references to boys in
Thoreau’s Journnl and only one to a girl.

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