Ohio History Journal

676       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

tiers of imperishable renown, such as our Millikans, Eliots, Bur-

banks, Fords, Shapleys, and Grenfells have given the world.

Professor Hulbert was generously applauded at the

conclusion of his address.

Dr. Thompson then introduced the second speaker

of the afternoon, Dr. G. Clyde Fisher, Curator of Visual

Instruction in the American Museum of Natural His-

tory, New York City. Dr. Fisher is a native Ohioan,

whose scholarly attainments and enviable record are a

source of pride to nature lovers within and beyond the

limits of his native and adopted states. His lecture was

instructive and entertaining.    It was illustrated by a

large number of colored lantern slides. The delighted

audience felt that they, through their speaker, were

 

"WITH JOHN BURROUGHS IN HIS FAVORITE

HAUNTS."

This subject Dr. Fisher introduced briefly as fol-

lows:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the Ohio State Archaeological

and Historical Society:

It is a privilege and an honor to be welcomed back to my

home State, and to speak before this Society this afternoon.

I do not intend to try to talk about the literature that John

Burroughs produced; except casually. It was my privilege to

know John Burroughs a great many years. In fact, I began

correspondence with him when I was a boy on a farm in western

Ohio more than twenty-five years ago. I later knew him per-

sonally, and had the privilege of visiting him, during his last

years, in his various haunts.

It will be my plan to bring before you, if I can, John Bur-

roughs the man, John Burroughs the very human man. To know

John Burroughs was to love him. I have been told by his pub-

lishers, who also publish the works of other eminent naturalists,

that many more copies of Burroughs' books have been sold than

of the others. I do not wish to make comparisons, and I do not

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Forty-Second Annual Meeting             677

 

mean to say that John Burroughs knew more about animals, birds

and nature than the others. John Burroughs was not an encyclo-

pedia, a walking dictionary of facts. John Burroughs was, first,

a man and, second, a naturalist. Mr. Burroughs said that man

can have but one interest in nature--to see himself interpreted

there. I think he might have extended that statement to literature

and art, as well as nature. He is the great interpretative naturalist

for us.

His friends urged him to write his autobiography, and he said

"my books are my autobiography," and I think that is true. Mr.

Burroughs was better able to put himself into his books than

most of our men of letters. He wrote with a simplicity of style

that makes us forget the style. We read John Burroughs; his

essays read so smoothly that we do not realize how much hard

work has gone into the making of his books. One critic said,

"John Burroughs writes with a style that we all feel we can go

home and imitate, but we can't." I consider myself fortunate

in the opportunity to know John Burroughs. His first book was

written when Abraham Lincoln was President. He continued

writing until 1921, the year of his death.

I have played with a camera all my life -- if any of my

friends from western Ohio are here they will know that. When

I got my camera I felt that if I could make one picture of John

Burroughs I would be satisfied. I made one, but I was not satis-

fied. I have made something like two hundred pictures of John

Burroughs. I am not going to show all of them to you, but I

want to show some of them to you -- some made on my first

visits with him, some on my last visits and some on intermediate

visits. Since we have so many pictures to show, I will begin

with John Burroughs on his eighty-third birthday, the last birth-

day he lived to celebrate.

From Dr. Fisher's "Reminiscences of John Bur-

roughs" we quote the following:

The first visit was on a bright November day in 1915, an ideal

day for such a pilgrimage. Mrs. Fisher and I were to be the

guests of Dr. Clara Barrus, Mr. Burroughs' physician and friend,

while we visited our hero. Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs were then

living in the stone house, at Riverby, but were taking their meals

with Dr. Barrus, who lived in "The Nest" on adjoining grounds.

This cottage, which Dr. Barrus, on making her home there, had

rechristened "The Nest," had been built for Mr. Burroughs' son,

Julian. It is one of the most attractive little houses I have ever

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seen. There is no varnish or paint or veneer anywhere. The

naked beams and ceilings of chestnut, the wainscoting of curly

birch and other woods that had grown on the surrounding hills,

the panels of white birch with the bark intact -- all these reminded

one of what Mr. Burroughs had written in "Roof-Tree":

"The natural color and grain of the wood give a richness and

simplicity to an interior that no art can make up for. How the

eye loves the genuine thing; how it delights in the nude beauty

of the wood!"

*    *    *    *    *

Knowing that Mr. Burroughs did his writing in the fore-

noons, we proposed not to disturb him until lunch time. He had

said, "My mind works best, and my faith is strongest, when the

day is waxing and not waning." He was not a burner of mid-

night oil.

I had brought my camera hoping to get one picture of the

great poet-naturalist. Before noon I started out to secure a few

photographs about his home. First, I undertook to make one of

the Summer House on the banks of the Hudson, just a few steps

from the bark-covered Study between the stone house and the

River. In this Summer House, which commands a wonderful

view up and down the river, Mr. Burroughs used to sit by the

hour during the warmer months of the year, reading or thinking

out the essays he has given us. While focusing my camera on the

Summer House, I was discovered by Mr. Burroughs, who ap-

peared at the door of his Study, and after cordially greeting me,

said, "I thought you might like to have me in the picture." I was

so delighted that I could hardly operate my Graflex camera.

However, I made a picture of "John o' Birds" examining a wren-

box on the big sugar maple by the Summer House, one of him

standing in the door of the Study, looking out over the Hudson,

and one of him sitting by the fireplace in the Study. So, my wish

was more than fulfilled on that first visit.

*    *    *    *    *

At luncheon, in deference to my training, Mr. Burroughs told

us about some of the botanical rarities he had found in the

vicinity -- the showy Lady's-Slipper. Climbing Fumitory or

Mountain Fringe, and others, the finding of which he so vividly

describes in the volume of outdoor essays entitled, Riverby.

Since his first discovery of Mountain Fringe, it has become a

common plant around Slabsides. Last November, on the anni-

versary of our first visit, we found it blooming in profusion

around that cabin.

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After luncheon, Mr. Burroughs conducted us up to Slab-

sides -- which is located about a mile and three-quarters in a

westerly direction from Riverby. After leaving the main high-

way, we followed a somewhat winding woods road which led

through a beautiful stretch of hemlock forest. As we walked

along, Mr. Burroughs would occasionally pluck a gorgeous oak

leaf from a young tree and, holding it between his eye and the

sun, would comment on its beauty. I never realized, until then,

how much more beautiful an autumn leaf is by transmitted light

than by reflected light.

On the way, we flushed a ruffed grouse, or partridge, from

the road in front of us, and it whirred away through the woods.

We were all delighted with this glimpse of wild life. As Mr.

Burroughs watched its flight he said, "I hope it will escape the

gunners this fall." Subsequent visits to Slabsides have shown

that there are ruffed grouse still to be found about this cabin.

Late in May, two or three years after this first visit, I surprised

a mother ruffed grouse and her family of downy young, on this

very road. It is to be hoped that the woods about Slabsides will

be made a permanent sanctuary, so that the birds, which meant

so much to Mr. Burroughs and about which he has written so

charmingly, may be found there always.

*    *    *    *    *

For the best description of Slabsides that has been written,

read two chapters in Our Friend, John Burroughs, by Clara Bar-

rus -- one entitled "The Retreat of a Poet-Naturalist" and the

other "A Winter Day at Slabsides."  These suggest the atmos-

phere of the place and give much of the man who tarried there.

Mr. Burroughs built Slabsides in 1895, to get away from an-

noyances of civilization. At Slabsides, on this first visit, I asked

Mr. Burroughs about a number of distinguished visitors he had

had there. Dr. Chapman, of the American Museum, had gone

to see him when he was clearing the ground for the rustic cabin,

and was one of his earlier visitors after the cabin was built.

These pilgrimages were written up in the first number of the first

volume of Bird-Lore and in a chapter in Camps and Cruises of an

Ornithologist. Whenever I went to see Mr. Burroughs, he al-

ways asked about Dr. Chapman.

His friend, Walt Whitman, visited him where Slabsides was

subsequently built, and wrote a vivid description of Black Creek

and the surrounding region, which was later printed in Specimen

Days. Black Creek, whose falls are within hearing of Slabsides,

is a wild place, where Mr. Burroughs used to go every May for

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warblers. More than once, in May, since my first visit, I have

tramped along this creek, (in "Whitman Land"), looking for

warblers and finding them, too. All wild life about this mountain

cabin is unusually interesting, because it has been immortalized

in the essays of the great naturalist.

*    *    *    *    *

Upon bidding farewell to his guests at the railroad station

at West Park that evening, Mr. Burroughs said, "Whenever you

want to come to Slabsides, the key is yours." In response to this

generous invitation, we have camped in this mountain cabin, for

two or three days at a time, about twice a year since that first

visit. We have been there in May when the warblers were

abundant, and we have been there the last week in November,

with the thermometer down to twenty at night, when, instead of

Warblers around the cabin, we had the Winter Wren, the Junco,

and the Chickadee.

First things make lasting impressions, and so it is with my

first visit with John Burroughs, but the visits that have meant

the most to me, have been subsequent ones. Perhaps the most

inspiring have been those at Woodchuck Lodge, on the home

farm near Roxbury, in the western Catskills, where, for many

years, it has been his custom to spend his summers. The farm,

on which he was born, is situated "in the lap of Old Clump,"

which has since been rechristened "Burroughs Mountain."

Woodchuck Lodge is only about a half mile distant from his

birthplace. It gets its name from the abundance of woodchucks

in the vicinity.

*    *    *    *    *

At the hay barn, at Woodchuck Lodge, one day, Mr. Bur-

roughs was discussing Thoreau, speaking very highly of the es-

says, "Walking" and "Wild Apples," both of which are included

in Excursions. Then he referred to certain peculiarities, and to

a number of surprising inaccuracies to be found in the writings

of this author. "But," he said finally, "I would rather be the

author of Thoreau's Walden than of all the books I have ever

written."

While I do not sympathize with that statement, it must be

admitted that Burroughs could hardly have paid a higher compli-

ment to Thoreau. For myself, I would rather be the author of

Burroughs' Wake-Robin than all I have ever read of Thoreau's

Works.

Nearby is the Deacon Woods, where Mr. Burroughs, wher

a boy, saw his first warbler -- a Black-throated Blue -- originally

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G. Clyde Fisher, Ph. D., Curator in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, was born in Sidney, Ohio, about forty-nine years ago; was graduated from Miami University in 1905; spent five years in teaching botany and zoology in high school and college; in 1913 was granted the degree of Ph. D. by Johns Hopkins University. For eleven years he has been a member of the Scientific Staff of the American Museum of Natural History. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Kappa Alpha, Explorers' Club, American Ornithologists' Union, Linnaean Society of New York, Wilson Ornithological Club and a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. His long and eminent service in the American Museum of Natural History is a high testimonial to his scholarship and ability. He is an entertaining speaker and his services on the lecture platform are in frequent demand. (681)

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described in Wake-Robin, in the chapter, "The Invitation." On

my first visit to Woodchuck Lodge, as we walked past this

woods on our way down to the birthplace, Mr. Burroughs re-

told this story to me. He said, "My brothers were with me, and

they saw the bird; however, they did not remember it -- but it

'stuck in my craw'." I often think how much the sight of that

beautiful little warbler may have influenced him to become a

naturalist; how much it may have added to his natural bent; how

much this and the early fishing trips to Montgomery Hollow, with

his grandfather, may have had to do in preparing him for the in-

fluence that the Audubon books had upon him, when he discov-

ered them many years later in the library of the West Point Mili-

tary Academy. It happens that Mr. Burroughs was the first per-

son to find an occupied nest of the Black-throated Blue Warbler,

which had been his first warbler. This reminds us of other con-

tributions to ornithology made by Mr. Burroughs, such as the

finding of the first nest of the Mourning Warbler and the first

description of the flight-song of the Ovenbird. However, his

actual discoveries in natural history are not his most important

work. It is his literary interpretation of the common things about

us -- in short, his books, that are his great legacy to mankind.

 

*    *    *    *    *

In "The Heart of the Southern Catskills," in Riverby, Mr.

Burroughs describes his favorite valley in that Range. Twice I

nad had a wonderful tramp in this, the Woodland Valley, along

the brook where our naturalist friend had camped and tramped

and fished for trout. Once I climbed Wittenberg and slept on

its summit with his grandson, John Burroughs, 2d. In like man-

ner years before, the elder had climbed it and slept on the top

with a companion. On these tramps I had seen the Painted Wake-

Robin (Trillium undulatum) growing in great abundance, and I

naturally suspected that this was the flower that had suggested

the title for his first book. So, one morning in the kitchen at

Woodchuck Lodge, while Mr. Burroughs was frying the bacon

and making pancakes for breakfast, I asked him whether it was

the Painted Wake-Robin for which his first book was named.

"No," he replied, "it was not, but it was the large-flowered White

Wake-Robin (Trillium grandiflorum).

"I had several possible titles, and I took them to Walt Whit-

man. He looked them over, and when he came to 'Wake-Robin,'

he asked, 'What's that?' I told him it was the name of a wild

flower. He then said, 'That's your title' -- and this helped me

to decide upon the name 'Wake-Robin'.

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Forty-Second Annual Meeting             683

"After the book was published, in speaking to me about it,

Emerson said, 'Capital title! Capital title!'"

 

My last visit with John Burroughs was during the week-end

of November 6-8, 1920, the first of these three days being the

anniversary of my first visit. We camped in Slabsides, and on

the second day, (November 7), Mr. Burroughs ate his midday

meal and spent several hours with us. He cooked one of his

favorite brigand steaks for luncheon -- the last he ever cooked at

Slabsides. While preparing the steak, we talked about his latest

book, Accepting the Universe, which had appeared a little while

before. He told me of a number of letters he had received con-

cerning it, and that two or three preachers had thanked him

warmly for writing such a book.

On the afternoon of that day, I made what proved to be the

last photographs of him at Slabsides. In fact, he visited Slab-

sides only once after this late. We found the Herb-Robert in

bloom near by, as we found it on my first visit. We also found

the Climbing Fumitory, or Mountain Fringe, and the Witch-hazel

in bloom.

When he left Slabsides toward evening, we walked with him

to the bend of the road in the hemlocks, and there bade him

good-bye. Little did we think that this would be the last time

we would see him alive. While we shall not be able to talk with

him again, or to shake his hand, or to look into his honest gray-

blue eyes, he still lives in our hearts. The spirit of John Bur-

roughs will live on.

The presentation of the Yale Educational Motion

Picture -- "Old Vincennes" -- portraying the Conquest

of the Northwest Territory, by George Rogers Clark,

was not a success. Announcement was made that it

would be presented, on the day following, in the Uni-

versity Hall on the Campus of the Ohio State Univer-

sity. At the time announced, a large and appreciative

audience saw the picture.

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