CONCORD, Mass. The cool breeze blowing off Walden Pond this spring is an ill wind for the reputation of Henry David Thoreau, the “Sage of Concord” who is revered by back-to-nature types who imitate his example by turning their backs on the world of business for lives of quiet contemplation, not desperation.
But historians say a newly-discovered journal casts Thoreau in an entirely different light; that of a fierce competitor who realized early on that he needed to seize the so-called “first mover” advantage to become the Microsoft of mystical communing with nature.
“Pick up milk, bread, six-pack of light beer.”
“Thoreau was a visionary, but he was also a fierce competitor,” say Nigel Flossam, a professor of history at nearby Brandeis University. “He realized there was only room for one pseudo-mystical anti-business crank in the nineteenth century, and he set out to eliminate other contenders in a manner that was as ruthless as a railroad robber baron.”
When Josiah Allen set up a competing cud-chewing shop in the woods around Hardy Pond in neighboring Waltham, Mass., Thoreau went for the jugular, lowering prices on his pithy aphorisms and holding “End of Summer Blowout Sales” on diatribes against modern life. “We will not be undersold!” reads one tagline Thoreau tried out before settling on “Nobody hates progress more than we do!” The strategy was a success as a first wave of co-eds from nearby Wellesley College made a pilgrimage to Thoreau’s campsite to buy postcards, low-cal fresh-water taffy and marked-down apparel that read “My soul went to Walden Pond and all I got was this lousy” t-shirt or sweatshirt.
“He speaketh of harmony and of the evils of possessions, but then he undercutteth me and putteth full-page ads in the paper,” wrote Allen, who was subsequently declared insolvent, his stock-in-trade sold at auction.
“Nobody beats my half-baked mysticism, or my everyday low prices!”
Over in Acton, Mass. on Nagog Pond, wannabe-mystic Jedediah Sampson persuaded Thoreau to franchise his holier-than-thou business model at a second outlet for an initial investment of $10,000 plus annual franchise fees and a share of revenue above a threshold “break point,” a formula borrowed from the grog ‘n ale shop industry. “He did not cometh through on the national advertising budget the way he promised,” said Sampson in a letter to the Middlesex County Common Victuallers Board. “He chargeth me exorbitant prices for wenches’ waitress uniforms, as well.”
Thoreau operated from a position of strength, however, as he was supported by his family during the stay in the woods that resulted in the self-published Walden; or, Life in the Woods, which was an immediate hit, more popular than the first novel produced by a steam-powered automaton named “James Patterson” on most best-seller lists. “I care not what other sensitive souls may say about me,’ Thoreau wrote in his journal. “The universe is infinite, and they can blow it out their freaking shorts.”
The WalMart of rustic living!