Bad-weather clothes.

November 6.

I had on my "bad-weather clothes” at Quebec like Olaf Trygvesson, the Northman, when he went to Thing in England.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 6, 1851

"Bad-weather clothes” See April 22, 1856 ("It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms."); February 15, 1857 (“Never under take to ascend a mountain or thread a wilderness where there is any danger of being lost, without taking thick clothing, partly india-rubber, if not a tent or material for one; the best map to be had and a compass.”)

On September 25,1850, Thoreau and Ellery Channing started on a week's tour in Canada, styling themselves the “Knights of the Umbrella and the Bundle:” .

As we were going out, we met the Yankees coming in, in a body, headed by a red-coated officer called the commandant, and escorted by many citizens, both English and French Canadian. I therefore immediately fell into the procession, and went round the citadel again with more intelligent guides, carrying, as before, all my effects with me. Seeing that nobody walked with the red-coated commandant, I attached myself to him, and though I was not what is called well-dressed, he did not know whether to repel me or not, for I talked like one who was not aware of any deficiency in that respect. Probably there was not one among all the Yankees who went to Canada this time, who was not more splendidly dressed than I was. It would have been a poor story if I had not enjoyed some distinction. I had on my "bad-weather clothes," like Olaf Trygesson the Northman, when he went to the Thing in England, where, by the way, he won his bride..

Yankee in Canada (1866) 

Chumley & Pepys On Books

Olaf Trygvesson, the Northman, when he went to Thing in England:

And forasmuch as she would choose herself a husband was this Thing convened. Thereto likewise came Alwin decked out in his best raiment, and many others were there apparelled also in their best. Now Olaf too was come thither, & he was clad in his bad -weather raiment, wearing a cloak exceeding rough; and he stood with his followers somewhat aloof from the others. Gyda walked hither & thither among the men , gazing a each one favoured in her eyes; but when she was come to where Olaf held his ground looked she searchingly up into his face and asked of what manner of man was he . Then did he make answer that he was Oli, and said: ' I am not of the country born nor bred . ' Saith Gyda : Wilt thou have me? Even upon that then will I choose thee. ' ' I will not say nay to it , ' quoth he , and asked her name and lineage. “ I am ' said she  'a King's daughter of Ireland, but I was wedded into this country, to an earl who held dominion here. Since the time that he died have I ruled the land; divers men have wooed me, but none that I would wed  & my name is Gyda.'-- Youthful was she and fair, and Olaf and she communed over this matter even until they became of one accord  and thereafter was Olaf bethrothed to Gyda.

THE SAGA OF OLAF TRYGGVASON

The clothes of an honest man.

December 8. 

Staples says he came to Concord some twenty-four years ago a poor boy with a dollar and three cents in his pocket, and he spent the three cents for drink at Bigelow’s tavern, and now he ’s worth “twenty hundred dollars clear.” 

He remembers many who inherited wealth whom he can buy out to-day. 

I told him that he had done better than I in a pecuniary respect, for I had only earned my living.

 “Well,” said he, “that ’s all I’ve done, and I don’t know as I’ve got much better clothes than you.” 

I was particularly poorly clad then, in the woods; my hat, pants, boots, rubbers, and gloves would not have brought four pence, and I told the Irishman that it wasn’t  everybody could afford to have a fringe round his legs, as I had, my corduroys not preserving a selvage.

Staples said there was one thing he liked. 

“What is that?” 

“An honest man.” 

If he lent a man money, and when it became due he came and asked for more time because he could not pay, he excused him, but if, after it had become due, he went to the man, and he then made the same excuse, he lost all confidence in him.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 8, 1857

My corduroys not preserving a selvage. See May 8, 1857 ("Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. . . .[B]eside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say.")

Staples. See April 18, 1860 ("As I go by the site of Staples' new barn on the Kettle place, I see that they have just dug a well and are bricking it up.")

The full moon rises.

May 8, 2017

May 8.

A third fine day. 

The sugar maple at Barrett's is now in full bloom. 

I finish the arbor to-night. This has been the third of these remarkably warm and beautiful. I have worked all the while in my shirt-sleeves. 

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. Some boys have bathed in the river. 

Walk to first stone bridge at sunset. Salix alba, possibly the 6th. 

It is a glorious evening. 

I scent the expanding willow leaves (for there are very few blossoms yet) fifteen rods off. Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. It is perfectly warm and still, and the green grass reminds me of June. The air is full of the fragrance of willow leaves. The high water stretches smooth around. 

I hear the sound of Barrett's sawmill with singular distinctness. The ring of toads, the note of the yellowbird, the rich warble of the red-wing, the thrasher on the hillside, the robin's evening song, the woodpecker tapping some dead tree across the water; and I see countless little fuzzy gnats in the air, and dust over the road, between me and the departed sun. 

Perhaps the evenings of the 6th and 7th were as pleasant. But such an evening makes a crisis in the year. I must make haste home and go out on the water. 

I paddle to the Wheeler meadow east of hill after sundown. From amid the alders, etc., I hear the mew of the catbird and the yorrick of Wilson's thrush. One bullfrog's faint er-er-roonk from a distance. (Perhaps the Amphibia, better than any creatures, celebrate the changes of temperature.) One dump note. 

It grows dark around. The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. 

It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). I get within a few feet of them as they sit along the edge of the river and meadow, but cannot see them. Their croak is very fine or rapid, and has a soft, purring sound at a little distance. I see them paddling in the water like toads. 

Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. They are of that peculiar clay-color, reflecting the light from portions of their surface. They have this advantage, that, beside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say. Most of my friends are disturbed by my wearing them. I can get four or five pairs for what one ordinary pair would cost in Boston, and each of the former will last two or three times as long under the same circumstances. The tailor said that the stuff was not made in this country; that it was worn by the Irish at home, and now they would not look at it, but others would not wear it, durable and cheap as it is, because it is worn by the Irish. 

Moreover, I like the color on other accounts. Anything but black clothes. I was pleased the other day to see a son of Concord return after an absence of eight years, not in a shining suit of black, with polished boots and a beaver or silk hat, as if on a furlough from human duties generally, — a mere clothes-horse, — but clad in an honest clay-colored suit and a snug every-day cap. It showed unusual manhood. Most returning sons come home dressed for the occasion. 

The birds and beasts are not afraid of me now. A mink came within twenty feet of me the other day as soon as my companion had left me, and if I had had my gray sack on as well as my corduroys, it would perhaps have come quite up to me. 

Even farmers' boys, returning to their native town, though not unfamiliar with homely and dirty clothes, make their appearance on this new stage in a go-to-meeting suit.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 8, 1857

A third fine day. See May 6, 1857 ("A beautiful and warm day."); May 7, 1857 ("A second fine day."); May 9, 1857; ("Another fine day.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

Summer has suddenly come upon us, and the birds all together. See May 6, 1852  ("Hear the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer."); May 7, 1852 ("One or more little warblers in the woods this morning are new to the season, . . .The first wave of summer from the south") ; May 7, 1852 ("The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once,"); May 10, 1858 ("It is remarkable how many new birds have come all at once to-day."); May 12, 1856 ("How suddenly the birds arrive after the storm, — even yesterday before it was fairly over, —as if they had foreseen its end!") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Summer and The Birds of May

It is a glorious evening . . . I must make haste home and go out on the water. See August 31, 1852 ("This is the most glorious part of this day,. . . and the most suggestive.. . . Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.”)

Already hear the cheerful, sprightly note of the yellowbird amid them. See May 8, 1854 (“Hear a yellowbird in the direction of the willows. Its note coarsely represented by che-che-che-char-char- char."); May 8 1859 ("Summer yellowbird.”) and note to May 11, 1856 ("At a distance I hear the first yellow-bird . . . All these willows blossom.”).

The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light. It is an evening for the soft-snoring, purring frogs (which I suspect to be Rana palustris). See April 11, 1854 ("Hear a slight snoring of frogs on the bared meadows. Is it not the R. palustris? This the first moon to walk by.”); May 3, 1852 ("The moon is full. The air is filled with a certain luminous, liquid, white light. You can see the moonlight, as it were, reflected from the atmosphere."); . May 6, 1858 ("In the mornings now, I hear no R. palustris and no hylodes, but a few toads still, but now, at night, all ring together, the toads ringing through the day, the hylodes beginning in earnest toward night and the palustris at evening. I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of [frogs]"); May 9, 1853 ("That slumbrous snoring croak far less ringing and musical than the toad' s (which is occasionally heard) now comes up from the meadows edge."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, May Moonlight and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The  Pickerel frog  (Rana palustris)

Such an evening makes a crisis in the year.  Compare July 18, 1854 (“The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season.”); August 20, 1854 (“When the red-eye ceases generally, then I think is a crisis, — the woodland quire is dissolved.”)

May 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  May 8

Suddenly summer 

has come upon us, and the 

birds all together.

It grows dark around.

The full moon rises, and I

paddle by its light. 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The full moon rises

                                     A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

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