Featured White Papers
- Aug. 28th: Delivering Online Presentations That Result in Higher Sales (Citrix Online)
- How fax services address cost, capacity and infrastructure issues (Esker)
- Tools & Strategies for Expense Management (American Express)
Content provided in partnership with
Thoreau's house at Walden
Art Bulletin, The, June, 1999 by W. Barksdale Maynard
Concerning the arrangements of a country house, James Randall (ca. 1778-1820), in a villa book of 1806, wrote that "the principal rooms should look towards the south-east, and the situation should not be on the top of a hill, nor yet in a valley: the midway, or rather higher, on a declivity" is best, with "the prospect" crucial to "the situation of a house." Brown would similarly recommend that a country dwelling stand "on a knoll, sheltered by rising ground on the north and east, with a gentle declivity towards the south-east." "A knoll on the side of a hill . . . is preferable to the summit." Perfect was "gently rising ground, where there is an open country in front, facing the south-east."(29) In these particulars, too, Thoreau's remarks on his situation seem intended to display his comprehension of accepted principles, highlighting the fact that, within the boundaries of the nearly fourteen acres owned by Emerson, he had located his house in precisely the way prescribed by the villa books. As early as 1841, he wrote, "I will build my lodge on the southern slope of some hill,"(30) and in Walden he affirms, "My house was on the side of a hill" (113) in a "sunny and sheltered . . . position" (253). Suiting the ideal - and at the same time adapting itself to the somewhat awkward orientation of Emerson's lot - it stood partway up a moderate rise, was protected to the north and east, and faced southeast, toward a sunny exposure and the view of the lake [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 5, 9 OMITTED].(31)
It may have been deference to principles in the villa books that prompted Thoreau to admit, confessionally, the inadequacies of his prospect (86-87) and to exaggerate the nearness of his house to the lake, which he gives in Walden as one hundred feet away, not the actual two hundred - seemingly an unaccountable error for Thoreau, a professional surveyor, to make.(32) Brown wrote that the perfect site "enjoys, at a moderate distance in the rear of the house, a good soil for the garden," and it happened that Thoreau hoed his bean field at such a location; nearby was "the pine wood behind my house" (141), in the place villa books recommended for a sheltering forest.(33) He stresses that the "tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth" that provided the "timber" for construction came from "the woods . . . nearest to where I intended to build my house" (40). This is localism of the sort Pocock would have approved, having advised in 1807 that "the timber requisite for building Cottages almost any estate of moderate magnitude will furnish at small expence."(34) Naturally, some of the similarities between Thoreau's situation at Walden and the villa books are coincidental, but his own written accounts seem to emphasize those similarities deliberately, as if to signal his awareness of accepted principles concerning the fitness of a country house to its location. He is eager to show, as William Howarth has written, that "his house is no intrusion at Walden but a place adapted to its site and function."(35)
