Thoreau's house at Walden

In his affection for summerhouse architecture, which ought to be as open, breezy, and natural as possible - "a comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors" (29) - Thoreau again complements a contemporary dialogue, that of the healthfulness of the primitive hut and the rustic. Following Jean Jacques Rousseau, Chambers had celebrated the original state of humankind, when

The first men, living in a warm climate, wanted no habitations: every grove afforded shade from the rays of the sun, and shelter from the dews of the night; rain fell but seldom, nor was it ever sufficiently cold, to render closer dwellings than groves, either desirable or necessary, even in the hours of repose: they fed upon the spontaneous productions of the soil, and lived without care, as without labor.(67)

Voicing a similar sentiment, Thoreau praises "the very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages" when he was "still but a sojourner in nature" and "stood under a tree for shelter" (37). For many contemporaries, this blissful picture constituted an ideal, and the imposition of architecture could only connote the loss of primeval vigor and freedom. Only the rustic remained as a truly healthy mode. As an inveterate outdoorsman, Thoreau might have agreed with the opinions of the writer Charles F. Hoffman (1806-1884), who in an 1843 book of travels recounted an exchange with his Adirondack guide, John Cheney:

"Well!" said Cheney, after he had cooked the trout to a turn. . . . "Now, isn't this better than taking your dinner shut up in a close room?"

"Certainly, John," said I. "A man ought never to go into a house, except he is ill, and wishes to use it for a hospital."

[Cheney replies,] "Twice I have given up hunting, and taken to a farm: but I always get sick after living long in housen. I don't sleep well in them. . . . A man wants nothing but a tree above him to keep off the dew, and make him feel kind of home-like, and then he can enjoy a r[e]al sleep."(68)

Related to the healthy summerhouse were the hunting box, fishing hut [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 17 OMITTED], and hermitage. All were popular in the era of the Picturesque and each the subject of literature - for example, Edward Gyfford's Designs for Small Picturesque Cottages and Hunting Boxes (London, 1807). Such rustic structures facilitated the pursuit of country pleasures, which Willis enumerated as "driving, fishing, shooting, strolling, and reading."(69) As a parallel to the Walden house, the hermitage is especially significant, as Thoreau was a self-described hermit (in the manner of a philosopher, not merely a recluse; 223-25), and Alcott wrote of a visit to his friend "at his hermitage on Walden."(70) There was great interest in the hermitage as a place of genteel retirement; Downing illustrated a "Hermit's Seat" and erected a "Hermitage" in his own garden [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 18 OMITTED], "a pretty, rural structure, neatly constructed of rough bark and logs."(71) Such hermitage retreats, like the summerhouses they resembled, frequently stood near water, as illustrated in an 1802 Dutch treatise on ornamental landscapes, one heavily influenced by English villa books [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 19 OMITTED]. G. J. Parkyns in 1793 had detailed the design of a garden "Hermitage. This rustic building is situated on a gentle acclivity in the bosom of a grove; trees overshadowing it on all sides" and with a brook in the foreground.(72)