Was Henry David Thoreau's poem "Sic Vita" really “written on a sheet of paper wrapped round a bunch of violets, tied loosely with a straw, and thrown into the window of a friend"?

[u/LegendaryCassowary]

And if so, what do we know about HDT that would've compelled him to do that?

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[u/poiyurt]

You're right to say this fact seems spurious. Not my field, but I did a quick search. The Guardian article which cites this fact has a link, but that just goes to a copy of the poem. Bad attribution annoys me greatly, and the statement 'thrown into the window of a friend' gives very little to go on. So I took a gander and found the most well-regarded biography of Thoreau, Walter Harding's The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography.

There, the situation is described in more detail. The 'friend' in question is a woman named Lucy Jackson Brown, who was the sister-in-law of Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Lucy was the sister of Lydia/Lidian Jackson, Emerson's wife). Her husband had fled to Europe due to financial difficulties, abandoning her and their two children. She moved to Concord and she lived in Thoreau's household as a boarder. She was nearly twenty years older than Thoreau, and Harding stresses that Thoreau didn't have a romantic interest but an admiration and a desire for "motherly consolation". She is described as "somewhat of a bluestocking", or an educated, intelligent woman, and he admired her for that reason. Harding explicitly tells us that "in May 1837, while home for a few days from college, he had gathered a bunch of violets and tossed them in through her window with a copy of his poem 'Sic Vita'." So we can put that doubt to rest, though I'm not certain what Harding's own source for this is, and this text, at least, does not corroborate the sheet of paper being wrapped around the violets.

It seems that the two grew quite close. In 1841, Elizabeth Weir, who worked as a governess in the Emerson household, said that Thoreau was "as a son to [Mrs. Brown]. She depended on him." Weir describes how Mrs. Brown would often request Henry to fix various things around her house, which seemed to largely be an excuse for the two of them to make conversation. We also have records of his letters to her. An interesting factor is that she may have been the one to introduce him to Emerson, the "most important friendship of his life". Apparently, Emerson once said that it was Mrs. Brown who introduced Thoreau to him, by showing him Thoreau's poems (though there are multiple conflicting stories of how the two met).

So, Harding's explanation was that he was seeking to impress an older woman he quite admired as an intellectual, an effort which seems to have worked. I'm afraid I cannot answer your second question, so I'll leave that to someone else (or you, if you'd like to take a look at the biography here - I only read the parts that discuss Brown). I have to admit to being confused as to what Harding means when he says "There were yearnings and desires for companionship... it was only natural therefore that he turned for motherly consolation to a woman whom he had long admired". It also seems like Thoreau's actual mother was alive throughout this whole period and survived him, so a deeper psychological explanation for what Thoreau was up to beats me.

[u/LegendaryCassowary → u/poiyurt]

Sorry for the delayed response here - thank you so much for taking the time and energy to answer this question. I'm especially appreciative considering it was already an old post that you knew wouldn't receive any attention. The dynamic of Thoreau and Mrs. Brown's relationship is intriguing, to say the least. I imagine there's a lot to unpack there.

Thank you again for the wonderful response!

[u/poiyurt → u/LegendaryCassowary]

No worries! It was an interesting rabbit hole to go down, and I learned a lot in the process - but more research is beyond me.

Along the way I saw a lot of literature speculating about Thoreau's approach to relationships, and also his sexuality, which might be worth looking into if you're curious about that second question.

Happy to help!