Scribe

And it's.

Love you.

Yeah.

Gildan.

Skype.

Cool.

Excellent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Cool.

Good evening. How are you?

It's certainly a pleasure to be talking to you in this method. I am more used to talking to people face to face or in all honesty, I would rather not talk to anybody at all. So I suppose this is the best way to do it.

Well, my Uncle Charles has a graphite mine in New Hampshire, and he was a pencil maker by trade. About 1823, my father took over the pencil making business from my Uncle Charles and was doing fairly well. He was fairly successful as a pencil maker in Concord. But there were two other pencil makers in Concord as well. We are a very small village. There are only about 2,000 of us. And so having three pencil makers in a small village such as Concord, there was enough competition to go around, I suppose. Our pencils honestly were no different than anybody else's. But about 1844, the year before I moved to Walden Pond, I was reading a Scottish encyclopedia on how the Germans and French make their pencils. They have the best in the world, from what I understand, and discovered that their plumbago, as it's called, was mixed with a Bavarian clay. We had been mixing ours with various substances. We had been using wax and glue, and our pencils tended to be very, very greasy and very brittle. The Germans did not have that problem. And I discovered that if we mixed our plumbago with the varying clay, it was a much harder, darker writing substance to work with.

Well, there have been rumors around Concord, and some Concordians will tell you that the first lead pencil was created in Concord, Massachusetts. In America, was created in Concord, Massachusetts. So pencils have always been one of many trades in our village. But again, the American pencils tended to be inferior to anything that was coming out of Europe. And I remember specifically being in school and having our schoolmasters say that we should not use American pencils, that we should use pencils from Germany or France, which of course, were very expensive just for the fact that they were not greasy or brittle like the American pencils tended to be. And so they were not a very good product. And in that sense, I think that Europe was doing much better than the American pencil makers were.

Well, we decided to start grinding our own plumbago rather than having it done for us away from the shop. Now, first, I should tell you that the shop that we've made pencils in for many years is a very small operation. It has always been my father, myself, if I have to. But once you make one pencil, why do it again? And my sisters. And occasionally we would hire one or two Irish boys to help in the production. So it has always been very small. But we decided to grind our own plumbago. And what I did was I created a grinding mill, I guess is the best way to put it. A tall cylinder, about 7ft tall. And you would grind it almost like you would. Almost like you would churn butter in some ways. You would turn a handle and that would grind the millstones inside. And that's how the plumbago would get ground up. Now, there was a small air shaft at the bottom. At the very top was almost like a shelf, I guess is the best way to put it. The lighter, finer plumbago would drift up to the shelf up above. The heavier pieces would then fall to the bottom, and we could then regrind them until they would float to the top and land on the shelf up above.

Well, I would have to tell you that by 1850, we were really not making as many pencils as we had done previously. Because of my improvements, we had Done very well, and we had been poor most of my life. But once I helped improve the pencils, they became very successful, not only in Boston, but here, as far away as some of the western states, like Indiana and Illinois. By 1850, rather than make pencils as much as we used to, we started to sell the plumbago to various printing companies in Boston. And after 1850, that is how father and my family made most of our money.

You make pencils once a time. You have the cedar cylinder. You split it, you cut a groove in the cylinder. What we would do is we would put in at first a paste of the plumbago and clay. But I discovered that if we baked them into the cylinders, you could just insert them into the crevice, glue on the top of the pencil, and there you are. Depending on the hardness of the pencil, meaning the ratio of clay to plumbago, you would have different hardnesses of pencils. But what we would then do is we would number the pencils one through four based on the hardness of the pencil. From what I understand, my family was the first American pencil makers to do that.

well. And we also make pencils with red and blue graphite as well. We sell those for accounting firms in Boston and elsewhere.

I should tell you that we've won awards. Father has won several gold medals because of our superior pencil, which, of course, he's very proud of. A few Years ago, in 1847, we. We won a diploma from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic association. And in 1849, we won the silver medal for the best pencil at the Salem Charitable Mechanics Association. So because of my efforts and because of the pencil that we make, Father has been recognized as being a superior pencil maker by various charitable organizations.

Well, when I'm. When I'm out in the fields, I use my journals, the journals that I purchase. I'm sad to say that I'm getting to the point where you cannot find a journal with blank pages in it anymore. Anytime I go into Concord in order to purchase a new journal, all I can find are books used for accountants, so the pages are marked for debits and credit and whatnot. But the journals that I purchase in Concord, sometimes in Boston, tend to be a better quality paper than any of the cheaper papers, or certainly not as bad as newsprint or anything like that. But when I'm in the field, I make notes and minutes in pencil. And then in the evening, I will then transcribe my notes into my working journal in pen and ink.

I consider myself a naturalist. I am a very keen observer of the natural world. And I go for my daily walks. I walk at least four hours every afternoon. I am always surrounded by nature. Walking for me is my holy time. And I hold trees in particular in very high esteem. Friends and neighbors and others ask me, well, because you hold trees, because they have such a special place in your. In your cosmology, how is it that you can use wood for your pencils, but we really do not have anything else that you can make pencils of? It is like being in Concord or Boston or elsewhere. You have to cut down trees for firewood or we would freeze. So there seems to be a bit of a contradiction in the fact that I love trees, yet I use them for burning. And we certainly use the cedar for making our pencils. The fact of the matter is there is nothing else that we can use currently that is any better than the cedar that we use. So I try to make my peace with that. I do my surveying as well. And a lot of the times when I survey a piece of land, it is so that trees can be cut down in order for the land to be improved, so called. And so I have learned to come to terms with that, that some of the occupations that I am involved in, and certainly some of the ways that I live my life are involved in the cutting down of trees. You may know already that by the time I was living at walden Pond in 1845, only 10% of Concord had trees. The Rest was wide open farmland. So there are very few trees in Concord to begin with, since I have been around. So we do our best to conserve what we can. I think that each town should set aside a tract of land so that the trees would not be cut down for firewood or for building or for what have you. When I was living on Mr. Emerson's land at Walden Pond, I cut down some of his trees for building and for firewood. But I've also replaced those trees. I replanted about 400 pine trees on his land. So I see nothing wrong with cutting down the trees as long as they are replaced.

I use. I use my. I use my pen knife, of course.

Well, I suppose it is like someone asking me how many pages do I write in a day.

Some days are better than others.

But if the muse is upon me and I am writing at a fairly good clip, I would resharpen my pencil every 10 or 15 minutes, I would think. I like to have a good point on it. But I will also use a pencil. I will get every ounce of use out of the pencil that I have, and I will use it down to almost the very nub before I will move on to another pencil. Being a writer and having a father as a pencil maker, I am well kept in pencils, as you can imagine.

Oh, well, I always have in my bag that I always have with me. I always have at least a dozen of my father's pencils ready to be used. And also there are perhaps one or two that are already sharpened. So I'm always well armed when I go out into the woods and fields of Concord to write at a moment's notice.

I am used to sitting in a room and talking to myself. I'm just not used to anybody listening to me.

Well, thank you so much. Well, thank you so much.

I Suppose if I have a friend here come talk with you, he would be able to give you that information.

Great. Well, hello, my name is Richard Smith. Thanks for having me, guys.

My pleasure. So, and before you go any further, I can answer that last question that Mr. Thoreau could not answer. I do have a face. I do have a Facebook page called Meet Henry David Thoreau and I also have a Twitter page called Walden. Is it Walden Hermit or. I think it's Walden Hermit is my Twitter page.

Yeah, a lot of times. I was really lucky. I've been a historian in Concord, Massachusetts now for 16 years. In fact, I've been portraying Thoreau for 16 years. I worked at the Concord Museum for about eight years and they do have Thoreau pencils. I was able to handle those. I worked for the Thoreau Society. They have some of Thorough's pencils. In fact, a year ago, maybe two years ago, the Thoreau Society had an online auction and there was an actual real thorough pencil that went up for auction. Well, you know, I thought, I'll bid 100 bucks. Sure, why not? And I think it went for almost. I think it went for almost two grand.

Something like that. Some really insane amount for a pencil, which we were told was guaranteed, quote unquote, to be a real thorough pencil. I guess the provenance is pretty good for it. But yeah, I've had a chance to look at and handle a bunch of Thorough pencils over the last few years. Awesome.

you know. So his dad made pencils from about 1823 up to about 1850. There were different imprints on the pencils. Some of the pencils, there are no imprint at all. Some of the pencils say John Thoreau and Sons. Another imprint says Jay Thoreau and Son. But there seems to have been no rhyme or reason as to whether or not they imprinted their pencils or not. You know, it really was, I call it, from what I understand, it just seems like it was a real mom and pop operation in so many ways.

Yeah, you know, I have some reproduction pencils that I always use that I always have with me as props when I have Walden Pond. It's a replica, right? Yeah. Now, is that one of the ones that says Jay Thoreau and son's on it? Jay Thoreau and Son on it? Yeah. So I always have them with me. And, you know, that's one of the things that I find really interesting. And not a lot of people are really aware that his dad was a pencil maker. I think it's going a little bit too far to say that if Thoreau himself was a pencil maker, he would just help when he had to, but his dad was the pencil maker. And so I find it really interesting that here's this guy who's a writer and his dad made pencils. And I think people are generally surprised when, you know, we don't think about that stuff nowadays. But in the mid 19th century, being a pencil maker was a really important trait. Nowadays we take pencils for granted because they're churned out by the millions. But back then, I mean, each individually handcrafted, and so, you know, and so we kind of don't think about that. So when I bring that up, or if people see my pencil sitting on the desk at the pond or whatever, a lot of visitors, a lot of tourists and school kids ask me about the pencils all the time.

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of the private residence. Well, the last house that the Thoreaus lived in on Main street, it's a private residence, but you can still see a little bit of the addition attached to that house that was part of their pencil shop. There's another building over, I think, on Walden street. And supposedly the little shed that's attached to that house was also one of the sheds that the Thoreaus used for their pencil making or one of the pencil making shops over in Estabrook Woods. There's an area of cedar trees that some of the trees were used for the pencil making. So there is. There is a small. A little niche for people who are coming to Concord, if they're coming to Concord just to see pencils. Or to learn about Thoreau's pencils. There's enough sites to keep people happy. And of course, at the Concord Museum, they've got the pencils on display.

well, you know, I've had people come to Concord for stranger things than thorough pencils. If someone were to tell me that they were Concord just to see the pencils, it probably wouldn't surprise me because it's really iconic with him. If you're into Thoreau, everybody knows that he was involved with pencil making. So it's one of those things. It's almost like. Like George Washington's false teeth, in a way. You know, they're kind of mythological, kind of historic, kind of iconic. So thorough pencils. Yeah. If somebody tells me they're coming to Concord just for those, I'd be like, yeah, cool. Come see them.

Oh, gosh.

I tweeted her privately and said. And I said, you know, if you want to come to Concord, I'd love to show you around. I think that in a lot of ways, she kind of misunderstood Henry and doesn't seem to like him very much. So I thought that maybe she should come to Concord and I would show her around, maybe kind of explain what his life was all about. You know, I thought that the piece, in all honesty, and I don't mean this in a bad way, I had never heard of her before this piece was published, but from what I understand, she's fairly well known as a columnist for the New Yorker and also as a writer. I don't think the piece was badly written. I think she just kind of misunderstood. I think she really misunderstood him. So, yeah, so I tweeted her privately and said, if you want to come to Concord, I'd love to show you around. She tweeted me back almost immediately and said, next time she was in Massachusetts, she'll take me up on it.

So we'll see who knows the stuff that she wrote. And I guess the people who are tuning in will be able to go to the page the article and read it. But the stuff that she wrote, in all honesty, really isn't anything that I haven't heard for the last 20 years. You know, stuff about, you know, he, you know, he was a hypocrite because he wasn't a hermit. And, you know, that's why I call my, like my Twitter page and other stuff. I call it, you know, Walden Hermit, or Conquered Hermit, because in Walden, he calls himself a hermit, but it's very tongue in cheek. So that's why I. That's why I do it. That's why my Twitter page is Walden Hermit. But, you know, a lot of these people act like it's some big revelation that he wasn't a hermit and that he would go into town for meals and for groceries and visit his family and stuff like that. But what took me by surprise weren't her accusations, but she just seemed really angry. Like somehow Henry had, I don't know, maybe she had a bad experience or something at Concord, I don't know. But, you know, but, you know, she. I'm sure she knows that she's angered a lot of people. I don't find myself getting angry about it. You know, some Thoroughbians that I know were just absolutely incensed. And I guess it's because I deal with, you know, the 1200 Thoroughbians in the country who are, you know, they're suddenly up in arms about Henry being assaulted or however many there are. But, you know, I think that because I've heard these things from tourists for 20 years, nothing she said took me by surprise, so I didn't find myself getting particularly angry about it.

But I got to give her credit, though, you know, that that's a really clever title.

It's a really clever title. And, you know, and yeah, I mean, there have been so many rebuttals. And in fact, this past Sunday in the Boston Globe, the naturalist Richard Premack wrote a rebuttal to her. And there have been various other websites with rebuttals. And then there have also been other websites saying, well, yeah, she's right. You know, he was this loser, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, it's just one of these things, I guess, then, you know, it's one of these things. Thoreau, he's probably really misunderstood because people can read Walden on so many levels. And I just don't necessarily know if a lot of the levels they're reading it on are really the right way. You know, you can read it as biography. You. You can read it as satire. You can read it as something being preachy. You can read it as something tongue in cheek. You know, there's many levels. So I don't know, maybe she was in a bad mood one day when she read it, and, you know, maybe her cable went out or something and so she had to read Walden and she was all irritated about it or something. I don't know. So I found myself getting as angry as other people. As a historian, my job is to inform. So if she wants to come to Concord, I would love to inform her about what Henry was all about.

See, that's cool. And, you know, I've had people at Walden I've met, I think probably a dozen kids over the years whose name is Walden.

You know, I always wanted to have a kid and name him Elvis. Elvis. Walden would be a great name. The poor kid.

Yeah. But, well, I'm usually at Walden Pond. I work for the Thoreau Society at the bookstore at Walden Pond called the Shop at Walden Pond. I'm also, like I said, online. Meet Henry David Thoreau on Facebook, and I always put all of my upcoming public programs on there. So if people want to come to Concord and check me out or just come to Concord in general, just go to my. Go to the Thoreau Society webpage or go to my Meet Henry David Thoreau Facebook page and you can usually find me. But no, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, you guys. Both Henry and I really appreciate it.

If I could just count the times