INTRODUCTION
Longfellow wrote:—
“All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
“We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
* * * * *
“We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
“The spirit world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapors dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.”
I found myself reciting these lines whenever my eyes rested upon the old house of Fruitlands. From my terrace on the hill I looked down upon it with mixed feelings of pity, awe, and affection. It seemed like a Presence, a ghost of the Past, that compelled the eyes to gaze at it persistently. In the warm joyousness of the spring sunshine, or when the cold mists of autumn crept across the valley, it conveyed to me the same sense of desolation, of mystery, of disillusionment. Its broken windows looked like hollow eyes sunken in an ashen and expressionless face. Within its walls life and death had come and gone;—laughter and the sound of weeping had echoed through the quaint, low-ceilinged rooms. It had been the sheltering home of British yeomen. Its heavy chestnut beams bore record of the virgin forests of the Colonies. The thrill of patriotism had vibrated there when the sword of the Revolution swept the land, and the sound of drum and fife, leading the hurrying feet of eager volunteers to Concord and Lexington, must have reached the quiet hillside and stirred the hearts of those listening in the doorway. Those were the brave and vital days of its youth. In seed-time and harvest it had smiled upon the valley, its shingles warm and ruddy with ochre-red. At Yule-tide the log had been chosen with fitting ceremony and placed within the broad and spacious chimney. The old and the young had feasted and made merry to the sound of the crackling fire-music. Who can tell what memories of happiness and romance the old house contains?
Then came a period of quiet years, when the meadows and pastures grew rich and fertile, the upturned soil yielded abundant harvests, and the branches of the apple trees hung heavy with fruit. But it was when the old house had begun to settle and look decrepid, and its floors had become shaky and uneven, that its door opened wide to its supreme experience. Then Fruitlands was exalted into the New Eden. The two names came to it simultaneously. It was to pulsate with lofty ideals and altruistic aspirations. For one perfect summer and mellow autumn its running brook, its shady grove, its fertile meadows and sloping pasture, its western view, so beautiful at sundown, of Wachusett and Monadnoc, and the chain of purple hills, were to be the inspiration of a group of individuals then known as the transcendental philosophers, and through them Fruitlands became famous. Within its walls great questions were discussed, great hopes for the betterment and enlightenment of mankind were generated. Alcott, Charles Lane, Wright, Bower, Emerson, Hawthorne, Channing, Thoreau, and many others went in and out of its doors; and last, but not least, the child, Louisa May Alcott, who later became our well-loved New England authoress, and Joseph Palmer, a Crusader in spirit as well as in actions, who suffered for his principle of wearing a beard at a time when it was looked upon as a badge of scorn and contempt, and which won for him the name of “the Old Jew.” When the beautiful dream was over; when the New Eden proved to be only an empty mockery of the vision it had once inspired; when the great experience had ended in failure, then the old house sagged pitifully as if its heart had broken: the winter storms and summer rains of the succeeding years washed all color from its face: it became gray and haggard. Joseph Palmer and his wife lingered on in old age, and then passed out into the Beyond. Their children and grandchildren clung to the place for a space of years, but its history was over. It was left desolate and abandoned.
So as I looked down on it from my terrace on the hill, pitying its infinite loneliness, the thought came to me that I must save it. If for a time it had borne the semblance of a New Eden, then that time must be honored, and not forgotten. I longed to see it smiling again upon the valley in its glowing coat of ochre-red. The fine old chimneys must be put back in their places from which they had been ruthlessly torn down to make room for stoves. The hollow eyes must gleam again with window-panes; the sound of voices must ring once more through the empty rooms. In the future it must be cherished for its quaintly interesting history. If that history was full of pathos, if the great experiment enacted beneath its roof proved a failure, the failure was only in the means of expression and not in the ideal which inspired it. Humanity must ever reach out towards a New Eden. Succeeding generations smile at the crude attempts, and forthwith make their own blunders, but each attempt, however seemingly unsuccessful, must of necessity contain a germ of spiritual beauty which will bear fruit. Let no one cross the threshold of the old house with a mocking heart. Looking back from our present coigne of vantage, we, too, cannot but smile at the childlike simplicity and credulity, and the lack of forethought of those unpractical enthusiasts. But let it be the smile of tenderness and not of derision. In this material age we cannot afford to lose any details of so unique and picturesque a memory as that of A. Bronson Alcott and the “Con-Sociate Family” at Fruitlands.
BRONSON ALCOTT’S
FRUITLANDS
I
A NEW EDEN
The following account of the Fruitlands Community is largely a compilation of writings regarding it by eye-witnesses and those in close touch with its members. This is the surest way of forming a just estimate of the experiment and the characters involved.
Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, in his book entitled “Bronson Alcott,” describes in a few short sentences the circumstances which led up to the formation of the Community, and this is what he says:—
“James Pierrepont Greaves was an Englishman born in 1777, who at the age of forty went to reside in Switzerland with Pestalozzi, for four years, and there adopted, a few years before young Alcott did, the chief ideas of Pestalozzi, as to the training of children. Returning to England in 1825, he gradually formed a circle of mystics and reformers, in London and its vicinity, who were, like himself, interested in the early instruction and training of children. Hearing from Harriet Martineau, upon her return from America in 1837, of Mr. Alcott’s Temple School at Boston, and thinking more favorably of it than Miss Martineau did, Mr. Greaves opened a correspondence with the American Pestalozzi, and received from him some of his books,—Miss Peabody’s ‘Records of a School,’ and Mr. Alcott’s ‘Conversations on the Gospels.’ From these books, and from his correspondence, Mr. Greaves and his friends, William Oldham, Mrs. Chichester, Charles Lane, Heraud, and others, formed so high an estimate of Bronson Alcott’s talents and character, that they named for him the English school they were about establishing near London, and called it ‘Alcott House.’ They also urged Mr. Alcott to visit them in England and to take part in their schemes and labors. He was well inclined to do this; and in 1842 he set sail for London, where, late in May, he received a hearty welcome from his correspondents and their circle, with the exception of Mr. Greaves, who had died earlier in the same year.”
Mr. Emerson furnished the money for Mr. Alcott’s trip to England. The following letter was written by Bronson Alcott to his cousin Dr. William Alcott:—
Alcott House,
Ham Common, Surrey,
June 30, 1842.
... I am now at Alcott House, which is ten miles from London; where I find the principles of human culture, which have so long interested me, carried into practical operation by wise and devoted friends of education. The school was opened five years ago and has been thus far quite successful. It consists of thirty or more children, and some of them not more than three years of age,—all fed and lodged at the House. The strictest temperance is observed in diet and regimen. Plain bread with vegetables and fruits is their food, and water their only drink. They bathe always before their morning lesson, and have exercises in the play-grounds, which are ample, besides cultivating the gardens of the institution. They seem very happy and not less in the school-room than elsewhere.
Mr. Wright has more genius for teaching than any person I have before seen—his method and temper are admirable, and all parties, from assistants, of which there are several, to the youngest child delight in his presence and influence. He impersonates and realizes my own idea of an education, and is the first person whom I have met that has entered into this divine art of inspiring the human clay, and moulding it into the stature and image of divinity. I am already knit to him by more than human ties, and must take him with me to America, as a coadjutor in our high vocation, or else remain with him here. But I hope to effect the first.
The Healthian is edited here by Mr. Wright and Mr. Lane, and they contribute to almost every reform journal in the kingdom. They are not ignorant of our labors in the United States, almost every work of any value I find in the library at Alcott House,—your own works, those of Mr. Graham (a vegetarian), besides foreign authors not to be found with us. I shall bring with me many books, both ancient and modern, on my return to America.
It was during his sojourn in England in 1842 that the idea of creating “a New Eden,” as he loved to call it, took firm root in Alcott’s mind. A more quaintly unique character than his cannot be found in all the annals of our literary history. His unquenchable aspirations after the ideal life caught the imagination of men and women ready to break away from the narrowing tendency of the Orthodox faith of the time. He was both loved and derided. A transcendentalist pure and simple; unpractical; a dreamer and visionary in every sense of the word; yet his mind emitted flashes of genius so unerring and decisive as to elicit the spontaneous admiration of Ralph Waldo Emerson and impel him to write in his journal the following tributes:—
A. BRONSON ALCOTT AT THE AGE OF 53
From the portrait by Mrs. Hildreth.
ABIGAIL MAY, MRS. A. BRONSON ALCOTT
From a daguerreotype.
“The comfort of Alcott’s mind is, the connection in which he sees whatever he sees. He is never dazzled by a spot of colour, or a gleam of light, to value the thing by itself; but forever and ever is prepossessed by the individual one behind it and all. I do not know where to find in men or books a mind so valuable to faith in others.
“For every opinion or sentence of Alcott a reason may be sought and found, not in his will or fancy, but in the necessity of Nature itself, which has daguerred that fatal impression on his susceptible soul. He is as good as a lens or a mirror, a beautiful susceptibility, every impression on which is not to be reasoned against, or derided, but to be accounted for, and until accounted for, registered as an indisputable addition to our catalogue of natural facts. There are defects in the lens, and errors of retraction and position, etc., to be allowed for, and it needs one acquainted with the lens by frequent use, to make these allowances; but ‘tis the best instrument I have met with.”[[1]]
[1]. Emerson’s Journal, 1856.
“Once more for Alcott it is to be said that he is sincerely and necessarily engaged to his task and not wilfully or ostentatiously or pecuniarily. Mr. Johnson at Manchester said of him, ‘He is universally competent. Whatever question is asked, he is prepared for.’
“I shall go far and see many, before I find such an extraordinary insight as Alcott’s. In his fine talk last evening, he ran up and down the scale of powers with much ease and precision as a squirrel the wires of his cage, and is never dazzled by his means, or by any particular, and a fine heroic action or a poetic passage would make no impression on him, because he expects heroism and poetry in all. Ideal Purity, the poet, the artist, the man must have. I have never seen any person who so fortifies the believer, so confutes the skeptic. And the almost uniform rejection of this man by men of parts, Carlyle and Browning inclusive, and by women of piety, might make one despair of society. If he came with a cannonade of acclaim from all nations, as the first wit on the planet, these masters would sustain the reputation; or if they could find him in a book a thousand years old, with a legend of miracles appended, there would be churches of disciples; but now they wish to know if his coat is out at the elbows, or whether somebody did not hear from somebody, that he has got a new hat etc. He has faults, no doubt, but I may safely know more about them than he does; and some that are most severely imputed to him are only the omissions of a preoccupied mind.”[[2]]
“Last night in the conversation Alcott appeared to great advantage, and I saw again, as often before, his singular superiority. As pure intellect I have never seen his equal. The people with whom he talks do not ever understand him. They interrupt him with clamorous dissent, or what they think verbal endorsement of what they fancy he may have been saying, or with ‘Do you know Mr. Alcott I think thus and so,’—some whim or sentimentalism, and do not know that they have interrupted his large and progressive statement; do not know that all they have in their baby brains is incoherent and spotty; that all he sees and says is like astronomy, lying there real and vast, every part and fact in eternal connection with the whole, and that they ought to sit in silent gratitude, eager only to hear more, to hear the whole, and not interrupt him with their prattle. It is because his sight is so clear, commanding the whole ground, and he perfectly gifted to state adequately what he sees, that he does not lose his temper when glib interlocutors bore him with their dead texts and phrases.—Power is not pettish, but want of power is.”[[2]]
[2]. Emerson’s Journal, 1856.
“Yesterday Alcott left me after three days spent here. I had laid down a man and had waked up a bruise, by reason of a bad cold, and was lumpish, tardy and cold. Yet I could see plainly that I conversed with the most extraordinary man and the highest genius of the time. He is a man. He is erect; he sees, let whoever be overthrown or parasitic or blind. Life he would have and enact, and not nestle into any cast-off shell or form of the old time, and now proposes to preach to the people, or to take his staff and walk through the country, conversing with the school-teachers, and holding conversations in the villages. And so he ought to go, publishing through the land his gospel like them of old time.”[[3]]
[3]. Emerson’s Journal, 1857.
It was not unnatural that these gifts, fully acknowledged by so eminent a man as Emerson, should have won to him the respect and devotion of these Englishmen, who were living in the same atmosphere of thought in which Bronson Alcott lived and moved and had his being. And so after much discussion and many plans, illumined by great hopes and a deep enthusiasm, Charles Lane and Mr. Alcott collected a valuable library of books mostly on mysticism and all occult subjects for the future Eden, and with William Lane, who was Charles Lane’s son, Wright, and Samuel Bowers, sailed for America, their immediate destination being the home in Concord where Mrs. Alcott and her daughters, then very young, were waiting to receive them.
Concord named the strangers “the English Mystics” and received them cordially into the inner circle of literary men which formed the group now spoken of as the “Concord Philosophers.” Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Ellery Channing, and others became their friends, and listened to their plans for forming universal brotherhood. Emerson’s description of Charles Lane was this:—
“A man of fine intellectual nature, inspired and hallowed by a profound faith. This is no man of letters, but a man of ideas. Deep opens below deep in his thought, and for the solution of each new problem, he recurs, with new success to the highest truth, to that which is most generous, most simple, and most powerful; to that which cannot be comprehended, or overseen, or exhausted. His words come to us like the voices of home out of a far country.”
In the mean time the trunks containing the books chosen in England with so much care were opened, and lists were made of their contents. It was either Emerson or Thoreau who inserted a notice of them in “The Dial,” the famous periodical to which the literary men and women of this noted circle contributed. It ran thus: “Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane have recently brought from England a small, but valuable library, amounting to about 1000 volumes, containing undoubtedly a richer collection of mystical writers than any other library in this country. To the select library of the late J. P. Greaves, ‘held by Mr. Lane in trust for universal ends,’ they have added many works of a like character, by purchase or received as gifts. In their Catalogue ... they say, ‘The titles of these books are now submitted, in the expectation that this Library is the commencement of an Institution for the nurture of men in universal freedom of action, thought, and being. We print this list, not only because our respect is engaged to views so liberal, but because the arrival of this cabinet of mystic and theosophic lore is a remarkable fact in our literary history.’”
Mr. Sanborn, referring to this library in his “Bronson Alcott,” says: “It was this collection which, in the summer of 1843, occupied a hundred feet of shelving in the old red farmhouse at Fruitlands.”
THE SMALL ENTRY WHERE THE VALUABLE BOOKS WERE KEPT
The problem of where to establish the New Eden became the great and vital question of the moment. Many suggestions were offered from many quarters, but the great impediment to a definite decision was the lack of funds. Mr. Alcott had no money to spare to put into a farm such as they required, and the group of friends were interested, but not wholly convinced of the feasibility of the scheme, and hung back when it came to a question of investment. This very doubt fanned the flame of desire in Mr. Alcott and Charles Lane to prove to the world the value of their cherished dream. So it came about that Charles Lane took the burden of paying for a farm on his own shoulders, and he wrote the following letter to Mr. Alcott’s brother, Junius Alcott, on March 7, 1843:—
“I hope the little cash I have collected from my London toils will suffice to redeem a small spot on the planet, that we may rightly use for the right owner. I would very much prefer a small example of true life to a large society in false and selfish harmony. Please put your best worldly thoughts to the subject and favor me with your view as to how and where we could best lay out $1800 or $2000 in land, with orchard, wood, and house. Some of the land must be now fit for the spade, as we desire to give all animals their freedom. We feel it desirable to keep within the range of Mind and Letters; or rather to keep refinement within our range, that we may be the means of improving or reproving it, without being injured by it.”
Before this Mr. Alcott had written a letter to Isaac T. Hecker, later known as Father Hecker, head of the Paulist Brotherhood, and in it he described the idea they had in mind. At that time Father Hecker was at Brook Farm, but was restless and dissatisfied with the life there, craving a more ascetic existence; and knowing this, Alcott felt confident of his sympathy and stated the salient points of the scheme to him:—
Our purposes, as far as we know them at present, are briefly these:—
First, to obtain the free use of a spot of land adequate by our own labor to our support; including, of course, a convenient plain house, and offices, wood-lot, garden, and orchard.
Secondly, to live independently of foreign aids by being sufficiently elevated to procure all articles for subsistence in the productions of the spot, under a regimen of healthful labor and recreation; with benignity toward all creatures, human and inferior; with beauty and refinement in all economics; and the purest charity throughout our demeanor.
Should this kind of life attract parties toward us—individuals of like aims and issues—that state of being itself determines the law of association; and the particular mode may be spoken of more definitely as individual cases may arise; but in no case, could inferior ends compromise the principles laid down.
Doubtless such a household, with our library, our services and manner of life, may attract young men and women, possibly also families with children, desirous of access to the channels and fountains of wisdom and purity; and we are not without hope that Providence will use us progressively for beneficial effects in the great work of human regeneration, and the restoration of the highest life on earth.
With the humane wish that yourself and little ones may be led to confide in providential Love,
I am, dear friend,
Very truly yours,
A. Bronson Alcott.
February 15, 1843.
Finally a decision was arrived at, and in a letter to Mr. Oldham, Charles Lane narrates how it came about. It was written from Concord, May 31, 1843:—
My dear Friend:—
... Mr. Alcott and I walked up the river to a place called the Cliffs, where is a young orchard of 16 acres and woodland below. He came home with his head full of poetic schemes for a cottage, etc., on this spot. I, however, came home first and found that a man had been sent by the young man who walked with me to Southborough, having a farm to sell at Harvard, 14 miles off. He proposed to take me directly to see it, but I was fatigued, so Samuel Larned, the visitor who came up with Mr. Wright, went in the waiting vehicle. The next morning being very fine Mr. Alcott and I walked there, not knowing his name, but we ascertained it to be Wyman; we saw his place, consisting of 90 acres, 14 of them wood, a few apple and other fruit trees, plenty of nuts and berries, much of the land very good; the prospect from the highest part very sublime. The house and barn very poor, but the water excellent and plentiful. The capabilities are manifold, but the actualities humble. For the whole he asked 2700 dollars, which being beyond my means, we had much talk when he offered to sell the land for 1800 dollars and to lend us the buildings gratis for a year. I should observe it is extremely retired, there being no road to it. On these terms we have closed. He gives us the few crops he has just planted and grass to a considerable amount will soon be cut. I have slept a night or two there. William and two friends (Larned and Abram Everett, called the “Plain Man” in the Vermont Telegraph) and a hired man remain there, and the family are to start early to-morrow morning, so now for plenty of work of all sorts. Ninety acres; much of it first rate; some worth 100 dollars per acre, the whole 20 dollars per acre; would that some of the English honest half-starved were on it! This, I think you will admit, looks like an attempt at something which will entitle transcendentalism to some respect for its practicality.... We have very much to do, but the occasions are opportune. I think Mr. Emerson is not so well pleased with our departure as he would be with our company, but as he did nothing to keep us we must go. It appeared to me that for the hopefulness of many, it was needful we should make a movement of some kind this year, even though we fail; and Providence seems really to have worked for us....
I thank you very much for the £10; the note arrived very opportunely to enable Mr. A. to quit Concord, to do which all his debts must be paid, and I need not tell you on whom that falls. Our transactions at present leave me about 500 dollars in debt, but every one says we have made a good bargain in the purchase of the land. I seriously hope we are forming the basis for something really progressive, call it family or community, or what you will....
We have now plenty of work to do and how we get on I shall faithfully report, though the pen will not do much at present....
Believe me, dear friend,
Yours steadfastly in the spirit,
Charles Lane.
Mr. Sanborn, who above all others has an intimate knowledge of what the situation was, having in later years learned much concerning it from Emerson and Alcott and others of that time, makes this comment in his “Bronson Alcott”:—
“After looking at several places in Concord and elsewhere, Lane decided to buy the Wyman farm at Harvard, two miles from the village of that name, but less than a mile from Still River, another village in the same township. Alcott would have chosen the Cliffs in Concord, a favorite resort of Thoreau and the Emerson family, and Emerson would have preferred to retain his friend in his own town; but Lane had rather avoided Emerson, as not ascetic enough for his abstemious habits, and seems to have been not unwilling to withdraw Alcott from what he regarded as an unfavorable influence.”
But when it was all settled, Alcott and his English Mystics entered into their plan with a touching enthusiasm. Before them lay vistas of glowing possibilities. They dreamed dreams and saw visions of a “Peace on Earth, Good Will towards Men” such as had never before been realized. There was much to be done and they were eager to begin,—the days were none too long in which to collect the necessary things before moving to Harvard. So Charles Lane persuaded Samuel Bowers to write to Oldham a description of the farm, he himself being too busy to do so. And Bowers writes as follows:—
“Charles Lane wished me to sketch to you the material picture of Fruitlands and the adjoining scene, but I am unqualified to do justice to the subject. The property is very compact and may be a very beautiful domain. It is part a hill sloping down to more valley. Several springs gush out from the side of the hill and the water is very good—better I think than is common in Massachusetts. The soil varies much, but the average quality is, I considerately judge, twice, if not thrice as good as that of Tytherley.[[4]] There is about 14 acres of woodland all in the vale and adjoining is the Nashua River, on the other side of which, where the receding lands gently rise, stands a Shaker village (Shirley), its extended orchards, corn and grass lands. There is in view a long and high range of hills, one of which, and that the highest, is famous for having been the resort of an Indian sachem. The hill is called Wachusett. Altogether the scene reminded me strongly of the Vale of Evesham, in Worcestershire, where seen when one approaches it from Oxford.”
[4]. The location of Owen’s Harmony Hall in England.
It is quite evident that Oldham had written a letter to Charles Lane warning him against assuming too great responsibility in this venture. The question as to whether many enthusiasts would join the Community was a very crucial one, since it was on this expectation that they based their plans of running the farm free of debt. In answering the letter he asks Oldham to forward certain money due to him. And in his explanation says:—
“I do not see any one to act the money part but myself.” (This refers to the land for the Fruitlands experiment.) “Mr. Alcott cannot part with me. I deem him too sincere and valuable to quit him, and besides there is nothing in the country so well as we can show if we be faithful; but rents, debts, and mortgage would destroy us. As to the recruits you speak of, are they good for anything? Are they worth the small passage money you name? Truly if they are some of them you have at Alcott House, I think we should not be much aided by their presence.
“Understand, we are not going to open a hospital. We are more Pythagorean than Christs, we wish to begin with the sound rather than to heal the sick. There is grand work here to be done and I must not trifle with it.”
This matter of getting the right kind of persons to join the Community required a keen insight into human nature, and on this point Mr. Alcott was not very strong. His own sincerity and depth of purpose were so great that he looked for these same attributes in every one who approached him, and often failed to detect the superficial qualities that lurked underneath the surface enthusiasm of some of his followers. At this time Transcendentalism was rife through the land. Some called it “the Newness.” The expression “Apostles of the Newness” was heard on all sides. They could be recognized by their long hair, Byronic collars, flowing ties, and eccentric habits and manners. Nothing seemed too excessive to prove their emancipation from the shackles of conventionality. One day three young men of this kind turned up at Mr. Emerson’s at Concord and entered into an animated conversation with him on his front porch. With them freedom of thought and allegiance to “the Newness” took the strange form of preceding every remark, however trivial, with resounding oaths, which so startled the passers-by, and Mr. Emerson as well, that he hastily invited them to move round to the back of the house where the vibrations of their sulphurous ejaculations might roll harmlessly across the meadow instead of exploding in through the windows of the houses near by.
That Mr. Emerson was deeply interested in the experiment of creating the “New Eden” at Harvard is shown by the fact that a deed of the land was made out in his name as trustee for Charles Lane. He and Thoreau and the rest of the Concord circle viewed the departure with a mixture of interest, curiosity, and anxiety. On June 10, 1843, Emerson wrote to Thoreau:—
“From Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane at Harvard, we have yet heard nothing. They went away in good spirits, having sent Wood Abram and Larned and William Lane before them, with horse and plough, a few days in advance, to begin the spring work. Mr. Lane paid me a long visit, in which he was more than I had ever known him gentle and open; and it was impossible not to sympathize with and honor projects that so often seem without feet or hands.”
II
THE FOUNDING OF FRUITLANDS
The original members of the Community that started the unique experiment were Mr. Alcott, his wife, and four small daughters, the Englishman Charles Lane and his son William, H. C. Wright (for a short time) and Samuel Bower, Isaac T. Hecker, of New York, Christopher Greene and Samuel Larned, of Providence, Abraham Everett and Anna Page, Joseph Palmer, of Fitchburg, and Abram Wood. The transcendentalism of this last individual showed itself chiefly in insisting upon twisting his name hind side before and calling himself “Wood Abram.” As this he was always known at Fruitlands. These members did not all arrive at once, but came within a short time of each other. Wright had shown some dissatisfaction already in the extreme asceticism of the plan of life adopted by Mr. Alcott at Concord and he refused to be a regular member of the Fruitlands Community on this account. In writing to Oldham on the subject Charles Lane says: “I can see no other reason but the simplicity and order to which affairs were coming (in the cottage); no butter nor milk, nor cocoa, nor tea, nor coffee. Nothing but fruit, grain, and water was hard for the inside; then regular hours and places, cleaning up scraps, etc., was desperate hard for the outside.”
When finally the move from Concord to Harvard was made, Mr. Alcott took what furniture he could with him, such as beds, etc., and the rest was supplied by Joseph Palmer, who carted his over from his old Homestead at No Town outside of Fitchburg.
Shortly after the move, Charles Lane sat down and wrote to Thoreau a description of Fruitlands:
Fruitlands, June 7, 1843.
It is very remotely placed, without a road, surrounded by a beautiful green landscape of fields and woods, with the distance filled up with some of the loftiest mountains in the State. At present there is much hard manual labor, so much that, as you see, my usual handwriting is very greatly suspended. Our house accommodations are poor and scanty; but the greatest want is good female society. Far too much labor devolves on Mrs. Alcott. Besides the occupations of each succeeding day, we form in this ample theatre of hope, many forthcoming scenes. The nearer little copse is designed as the site of the cottages. Fountains can be made to descend from their granite sources on the hill-slope to every apartment if desired. Gardens are to displace the warm grazing glades on the South, and numerous human beings instead of cattle, shall here enjoy existence.
On the estate are about 14 acres of wood,—a very sylvan realization, which only wants a Thoreau’s mind to elevate it to classic beauty. The farther wood offers to the naturalist and the poet an exhaustless haunt; and a short cleaning up of the brook would connect our boat with the Nashua. Such are the designs which Mr. Alcott and I have just sketched, as resting from planting we walked around this reserve.
Though to me our mode of life is luxurious in the highest degree, yet generally it seems to be thought that the setting aside of all impure diet, dirty habits, idle thoughts, and selfish feelings is a source of self-denial scarcely to be encountered, or even thought of, in such an alluring world as this.
In the course of the next few weeks Lane wrote with much detail to Oldham:—
Fruitlands, Harvard, Mass.,
June 16, 1843.
My dear Friend:—
The morning being rainy I have taken advantage of the suspension of outdoor labours to sit down and have a little chat with you of and concerning our doings and progress. The day after I wrote you last all the household effects and all the household were mounted on wheels and trundled to this place; the old little cottage being left as clean as a new book by Mrs. Alcott’s great energy. The day was sharp and cold for the season, but the weather has since come out fine and warm, some days hot. We have all been busily engaged in manual operations in the field, house, wood yard, etc. Planting, ploughing, sowing, cleaning fruit trees, gardening, chopping, sawing, fitting up, etc., etc., have gone at a rapid rate, as the place was in a very slovenly condition. When tired we have taken a look round the estate to see what was growing, learn the shape of it, and its capabilities with more minuteness. It seems to be agreed on all hands, and we have opinions from many practical men, that we have not made a bad exchange, even in the commercial sense, of our cash for land. Only think, brother Oldham, ninety acres, every one of which may, in a short time, and without much outlay, be brought into a state fit for spade culture; and much of it very good land, obtained at the rate of 20 dollars or only four pounds per acre freehold. Recollect, too, this includes fuel and some building material, for there are 14 acres of wood, including many trees of edible nuts, and still only 30 miles from a metropolitan city of 110,000 inhabitants.[[5]] The land is most beautifully disposed in hill and valley, and the scenery is of a sublime and elevating character. Water abundant and excellent and the springs being on the hill, it may be conveyed anywhere about the place for irrigation, etc. As is common in this district, the principal part is meadow and pasture; but we shall go on ploughing up as much as possible, sowing crops of clover or buckwheat, and turning them in, so as to redeem the land without animal manures, which in practice I find to be as filthy as in idea. The use of them is disgusting in the extreme. At present, we have about 4 acres in Maize, 1½ in Rye, 1½ in Oats, 1 in Barley, 2 in Potatoes, nearly 1 in Beans, Peas, Melons, Squashes, etc.; there will be some Buckwheat, Turnips, etc., making in all about 11 acres arable. We have no Wheat this year. The grass promises well, and we may possibly cut 200 dollars’ worth; but by hired teams we are now turning up one piece of 8 or 9, and another of 5 acres, and mean to attack another 4 or 5 for our next year’s homestead or garden, should we obtain the means of building. The hillside of 12 or 14 acres pasture is also to be ploughed, directly, if we can; so that the work of reclamation will go rapidly forward. There is a large piece of peat land, as black as ink, which, mixed with sand, makes a most productive soil, valued at 200 to 300 dollars per acre; and there is sand on our lot within 100 yards. We have been much plagued, and a little cheated, with the cattle, but our stock is now reduced to one yoke of oxen.
[5]. Boston.
Besides Mr. Alcott, his Wife and Children, myself and William, who is very efficient and active, we have only a Mr. Larned and Abraham [Abram Everett]—who appears in the Vermont Telegraph as the “Plain Man.” Larned was many months at West Roxbury, is only about 20 years of age, his father was a merchant, and he has been a counting-house man and is what the world calls genteel. Abraham is about 42, a cooper by trade, but an excellent assistant here, very faithful to every work he undertakes, very serious, has had rather deep experience, having been imprisoned in a mad house by his relations because he had a little property, but still he is not a spiritual being, at least not consciously and wishfully so.
I have exchanged more letters with Samuel Bower and he promises to come here to-morrow. If his real state bears out his writings, I think he may be added to the family, otherwise he thinks of looking at Roxbury for the purpose of finding a home there....
Mr. Alcott is as persevering in practice as last year we found him to be in idea. To do better and better, to be better and better, is the constant theme. His hand is everywhere like his mind. He has held the plough with great efficiency, sometimes for the whole day, and by the straightness of his furrow may be said to be giving lessons to the professed ploughmen, who work in a slovenly manner. We have called in the aid of a carpenter who has made simple shelves for our books, and for the first time our library stands upright as it should do. It occupies about 100 feet of shelves.
June 28, 1843.
On the 19th I received your very kind and newsful letter of the first instant enclosed in Mrs. Chichester’s. Mr. Bower, having kept his promise, was here, and I read much of it at breakfast, having also another visitor from Brook Farm, Mr. Hecker [Isaac T. Hecker]. All were much interested in the facts reported, and Saml. Bower heard your remembrances fresh from your pen. You affect him more than any other person. In your next, you will perhaps devote a slip to him and I will forward it. He, Larned and Hecker visited the Shakers and were much attracted by them. Larned who, on common report, used to oppose them, talks of joining them, so pleasant is their society; at least at first....
If I were not at this moment surrounded by so much that is beautiful in the present, hopeful in the future and ennobling in the act, your affectionate invitation to Ham would seriously touch me. But by God’s blessing something shall be done here which shall reach you there. If we can aid the people in any way to let self be conquered, we shall do something. Lust abounds and love is deserted. Lust of money, of food, of sexuality, of books, of music, of art,—while Love demands the powers devoted to these false ends. I thank you for your hint respecting worldliness. I believe I am getting on safe ground if I am not already landed. From, or in England you say, I should expect nothing, and I am now in the same predicament here. Every farthing I had is now either put in or involved in this affair, and more, for I have put my hand to two rather large bills; silly enough, you will say. In a few weeks I expect to be literally pennyless, and even unable for want of stage hire to travel to Boston if you send me ever so many orders, of which you discover I have been so neglectful. No; I think I am now out of the money world. Let my privation be ever so great, I will never make any property claim on this effort. It is an offering to the Eternal Spirit, and I consider that I have no more right than any other person; and I have arranged the title deeds, as well as I could, to meet that end. I could only consent to return to England on condition of being held free, like a child, from all money entanglements. As no person or association can guarantee this for me, I think it would be better to remain here where the simple wants can be so easily met, and where there is much opportunity for doing good, and more hope as the outward conditions are so beautifully free. Would that you were here for a month; we have now the most delightful steady weather you can conceive; we are all dressed in our linen tunics, Abraham is ploughing, Larned bringing some turf from the house, Alcott doing a thousand things, Bower and I have well dug a sandy spot for carrots, the children and Lady are busy in their respective ways, and some hirelings are assisting.... Now that something, though little, is doing, you will find my expressions more peaceful. Con-fi-dence in Love I hope will ne’er be wanting in your affectionate friend,
Charles Lane.
THE STUDY
A bust of Socrates stands on the fine old Dutch highboy that Joseph Palmer brought from No Town.
Fruitlands, Harvard, Mass.,
July 30, 1843.
Dear Friend:—
... A few days after I wrote you Samuel Bower joined us and has steadily and zealously entered into all the works and speculations we have in hand and mind. Mr. Hecker, a very spiritual-minded young man, also has been with us. He is partner with his brothers at New York in a very extensive baking and corn mill business. He has resided several months at W. Roxbury, but is by no means satisfied with their schoolboy dilettante spiritualism. He will, I believe, go to New York to clear up if possible with his family as to the relations on which they are in future to stand to each other. They appear to be so loving and united a family with such strong human attachments that, although he has done much towards breaking away, I fear that in the desire to bring his brothers further into the inner world, he will himself be detained.
Mr. Alcott and I returned last evening from a short visit to Boston to purchase a few articles, and while there we went out one evening to Roxbury[[6]] where there are 80 or 90 persons playing away their youth and daytime in a miserably joyous, frivolous manner. There are not above four or five who could be selected as really and truly progressing beings. Most of the adults are there to pass “a good time”; the children are taught languages, etc.; the animals (in consequence I believe solely of Mr. George Ripley’s tendency) occupy a prominent position, there being no less than 16 cows, besides 4 oxen, a herd of swine, a horse or two, etc. The milk is sold in Boston, and they buy butter to the extent of 500 dollars a year. We had a pleasant summer evening conversation with many of them, but it is only in a few individuals that anything deeper than ordinary is to be found. The Northampton Community is one of industry, the one at Hopedale aims at practical theology, this of Roxbury is one of taste; yet it is the best which exists here, and perhaps we shall have to say it is the best which can exist. At all events we can go no further than to keep open fields, and as far as we have it open house to all comers. We know very well that if they come not in the right name and nature they will not long remain. Our dietetic system is a test quite sufficient for many. As far as acres of fine land are concerned, you may offer their free use to any free souls who will come here and work them, and any aid we can afford shall be freely given. The aid of sympathetic companionship is not small, and that at least we can render. To bridge the Atlantic is a trifle if the heart is really set on the attainment of better conditions. Here are they freely presented, at a day’s walk from the shore, without a long and expensive journey to the West. Please to advertise these facts to all youthful men and women; for such are much wanted here. There is now a certain opportunity for planting a love colony, the influence of which may be felt for many generations, and more than felt; it may be the beginning for a state of things which shall far transcend itself. They to whom our work seems not good enough may come and set out a better.
[6]. Brook Farm.
I should mention to you that passing his door Mr. Theodore Parker came to the Community in the evening and again in the morning. He is a very popular man at present and has a congregation at Roxbury, but being unwell by reason of close study, he will sail to Europe on the 1st September. He will remain in Germany for three or four months, and afterwards as long in England. No doubt you will see him and render him all the service you can.... At present we are not sought by many persons, but the value in our enterprise depends not upon numbers so much as upon the spirit from which we can live outwardly and in all relations true to the intuitions which are gifted to us. We must not forget how great have been the works done by individuals, and in the absence of what are usually called facilities. Our obstacles are, I suppose, chiefly within, and as these are subdued we shall triumph in externalities. I could send you a description of works and crops, our mowing, hoeing, reaping, ploughing in tall crops of clover and grass for next year’s manure, and various other operations, but although they have some degree of relation to the grand principle to which they are obedient, they are worth little in the exoteric sense alone. Perhaps the external revelations of success ought always to be kept secret, for every improvement discovered is only turned to a money making account and to the further degradation of man, as we see in the march of science to this very moment. If we knew how to double the crops of the earth, it is scarcely to be hoped that any good would come by revealing the mode. On the contrary, the bounties of God are already made the means by which man debases himself more and more. We will therefore say little concerning the sources of external wealth until man is himself secured to the End which rightly uses these means....
Mr. Charles Stearns Wheeler, the eminent Greek student, who went from here to Germany last summer, died at Leipsic[[7]] in June, age 26. He was one of Mr. Emerson’s great hopes.
[7]. This should be Rome.
Samuel Bower continues with us, but he is not so happy in body or mind as he ought to be: a letter from you in the universal spirit would cheer him up. He confesses to the possession of a little Nomadic blood in his veins. He thinks Mr. Alcott is arbitrary or despotic, as some others do, but I shall endeavour (and, I think, not in vain) to urge him to the noblest conduct of which our position is capable. He must not complain nor walk off, but cheerfully amend whatever is amiss. I suppose your letter has failed at the post somewhere, but I have inquired fully on this side. With assurances of continued affection to yourself and all friends on the divine ground,
I remain, dear Oldham,
Truly yours,
Charles Lane.
III
BROOK FARM AND FRUITLANDS
There is so much confusion in the minds of many regarding the difference of aim existing in the Community at Brook Farm and that of Fruitlands that it seems well to insert here a well-authenticated account of Brook Farm and also an extract from a letter written by John Sullivan Dwight who was a member.
Brook Farm was a Community established in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1841. “The head of the Community was George Ripley, formerly a Unitarian clergyman in Boston, who had been in 1836 one of the Founders of the Transcendental Club with Emerson, Hedge, Alcott, and others. Associated with Ripley in the Brook Farm enterprise were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles A. Dana, John S. Dwight, and other well-known men. They bought a farm comprising some 200 acres. Its object was the establishment of an ‘agricultural, literary, and scientific school or college.’
“Several trades beside agriculture were carried on and a number of children were received as pupils, instruction being furnished in ancient and modern languages, history, mathematics, moral philosophy, music, drawing, etc. It was designed to substitute coöperative for selfish competition, and to dignify bodily labor by uniting it with the intellectual and spiritual life. The Community was at first organized as a joint-stock company, each subscriber being guaranteed 5 per cent per annum on his shares. In 1847 the experiment, having proved a failure financially, was given up.
“Life at Brook Farm, especially during the first years of enthusiasm, had idyllic and romantic aspects. In its palmiest state the Community, including school children and boarders, numbered about 150 souls. Kitchen and table were in common; very little help was hired, but philosophers, clergymen, and poets worked at the humblest tasks, milking cows, pitching manure, cleaning stables, etc., while cultivated women cooked, washed, ironed, and waited on table. All work, manual or intellectual, was credited to members at a uniform rate of ten cents an hour.”
John Sullivan Dwight wrote of Brook Farm:—
“I remember the night of my first arrival at Brook Farm. It had been going all summer. I arrived in November. At that time it was a sort of pastoral life, rather romantic, although so much hard labor was involved in it. They were all at tea in the old building, which was called the Hive. In a long room at a long table they were making tea, and I sat down with them. When tea was over they were all very merry, full of life; and all turned to and washed the dishes, cups and saucers. All joined in,—the Curtis brothers, Dana and all. It was very enchanting, quite a lark, as we say. Much of the industry went on in that way, because it combined the freest sociability with the useful arts.”
Robert Carter, a co-editor with James Russell Lowell of a magazine called The Pioneer in 1843, wrote an article called “The Newness” in after years, describing Fruitlands and Brook Farm. Of the latter he says:—
“It was a delightful gathering of men and women of superior cultivation, who led a charming life for a few years, laboring in its fields and philandering in its pleasant woods. It was little too much of a picnic for serious profit, and the young men and maidens were rather unduly addicted to moonlight wanderings in the pine grove, though it is creditable to the sound moral training of New England that little or no harm came of these wanderings—at least, not to the maidens. Brook Farm, however, was not the only Community which was founded by the disciples of the ‘Newness.’ There was one established in 1843 on a farm called Fruitlands, in the town of Harvard, about forty miles from Boston. This was of much more ultra and grotesque character than Brook Farm. Here were gathered the men and women who based their hopes of reforming the world and of making all things new on dress and on diet. They revived the Pythagorean, the Essenian, and the Monkish notions of Asceticism with some variations and improvements peculiarly American. The head of the institution was Bronson Alcott, a very remarkable man, whose singularities of character, conduct, and opinion would alone afford sufficient topics for a long lecture. His friend Emerson defined him to be a philosopher devoted to the science of education, and declared that he had singular gifts for awakening contemplation and aspiration in simple and in cultivated persons.... His writings, though quaint and thoughtful, are clumsy compared with his conversation, which has been pronounced by the best judges to have been unrivalled in grace and clearness. Mr. Alcott was one of the most foremost leaders of the ‘Newness.’ He swung round the circle of schemes very rapidly, and after going through a great variety of phases he maintained, at the time of the foundation of ‘Fruitlands,’ that the evils of life were not so much social or political as personal, and that a personal reform only could eradicate them; that self-denial was the road to eternal life, and that property was an evil, and animal food of all kinds an abomination. No animal substance, neither flesh, fish, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk, was allowed to be used at ‘Fruitlands.’ They were all denounced as pollution, and as tending to corrupt the body, and through that the soul. Tea and coffee, molasses and rice, were also proscribed,—the last two as foreign luxuries,—and only water was used as a beverage.
“Mr. Alcott would not allow the land to be manured, which he regarded as a base and corrupting and unjust mode of forcing nature. He made also a distinction between vegetables which aspired or grew into the air, as wheat, apples, and other fruits, and the base products which grew downwards into the earth, such as potatoes,[[8]] beets, radishes, and the like. These latter he would not allow to be used. The bread of the Community he himself made of unbolted flour, and sought to render it palatable by forming the loaves into the shapes of animals and other pleasant images. He was very strict, rather despotic in his rule of the Community, and some of the members have told me they were nearly starved to death there; nay, absolutely would have perished with hunger if they had not furtively gone among the surrounding farmers and begged for food.
[8]. This was a mistake on Mr. Carter’s part, as they ate potatoes freely.
“One of the Fruitlanders took it into his head that clothes were an impediment to spiritual growth, and that the light of day was equally pernicious. He accordingly secluded himself in his room in a state of nature during the day, and only went out at night for exercise, with a single white cotton garment reaching from his neck to his knees.
“Samuel Larned lived one whole year on crackers, and the next year exclusively on apples. He went to Brook Farm after the collapse of the Fruitlands Community, and when that also failed he went South, married a lady who owned a number of slaves, and settled there as a Unitarian minister.”
In this same article Mr. Carter asserts that Fourierism brought Brook Farm into disrepute at the end, and that a large wooden phalanstery, in which members had invested all their means, took fire and burned to the ground just as it was completed. Upon this catastrophe the association scattered in 1847. Nathaniel Hawthorne lost all his savings in the enterprise. While he was at Brook Farm he looked after the pigsties.
In contrast to this is the full account of the object and aim of Fruitlands.
The following letter on The Consociate Family Life was written to A. Brooke of Oakland, Ohio, and published in the Herald of Freedom, September 8, 1843:—
Dear Sir: Having perused your several letters in the Herald of Freedom, and finding, moreover, a general invitation to correspondence from “persons who feel prepared to coöperate in the work of reform upon principles” akin to those you have set forth, I take this public means of communicating with one, who seems to be really desirous of aiding entire human regeneration.
After many years passed in admiration of a better order in human society, with a constant expectation that some beginning would shortly be made, and a continued reliance that some party would make it, the idea has gradually gained possession of my mind, that it is not right thus to linger for the leadings of other men, but that each should at once proceed to live out the proposed life to the utmost possible extent. Assured that the most potent hindrances to goodness abide in the Soul itself; next in the body; thirdly in the house and family; and in the fourth degree only in our neighbors, or in society at large; I have daily found less and less reason to complain of public institutions, or of the dilatoriness of reformers of genetic minds.
Animated by pure reform principles, or rather by pure creative spirit, I have not hesitated to withdraw as far and as fast as hopeful prudence dictated from the practices and principles of the Old World, and acting upon the conviction that whatever others might do, or leave undone, however others might fail in the realization of their ideal good, I, at least, should advance, I have accordingly arrived in that region where I perceive you theoretically, and I hope, actually dwell. I agree with you that it would be well to cross the ocean of Life from the narrow island of selfishness to the broad continent of universal Love at one dash; but the winds are not always propitious, and steam is only a recent invention. I cannot yet boast of a year’s emancipation from old England. One free step leads to another; and the third must necessarily precede the fourth, as the second was before the third.
A. Bronson Alcott’s visit to England last year opened to me some of the superior conditions for a pure life which this country offers compared to the land of my nativity and that of your ancestors. My love for purity and goodness was sufficiently strong it seems to loosen me from a position as regards pecuniary income, affectionate friends, and mental liberty, which millions there and thousands here might envy. It has happened however that of the many persons with whom Mr. Alcott hoped to act in conjunction and concert, not one is yet fully liberated by Providence to that end. So that instead of forming items in a large enterprise, we are left to be the principal actors in promoting an idea less in extent, but greater in intent, than any yet presented to our observation.
CHARLES LANE
Our removal to this estate in humble confidence has drawn to us several practical coadjutors, and opened many inquiries by letter for a statement of our principles and modes of life. We cannot perhaps turn our replies to better account, than to transcribe some portions of them for your information, and we trust, for your sincere satisfaction.
You must be aware, however, that written words cannot do much towards the elucidation of principles comprehending all human relationships, and claiming an origin profound as man’s inmost consciousness of the ever present Living Spirit. A dwelling together, a concert in soul, and a consorting in body, is a position needful to entire understanding, which we hope at no distant day to attain with yourself and many other sincere friends. We have not yet drawn out any preordained plan of daily operations, as we are impressed with the conviction that by a faithful reliance on the Spirit which actuates us, we are sure of attaining to clear revelations of daily practical duties as they are to be daily done by us. When the Spirit of Love and Wisdom abounds, literal forms are needless, irksome or hinderative; where the Spirit is lacking, no preconceived rules can compensate.
To us it appears not so much that improved circumstances are to meliorate mankind, as that improved men will originate the superior condition for themselves and others. Upon the Human Will, and not upon circumstances, as some philosophers assert, rests the function, power and duty, of generating a better social state. The human beings in whom the Eternal Spirit has ascended from low animal delights or mere human affections, to a state of spiritual chastity and intuition, are in themselves a divine atmosphere, they are superior circumstances and are constant in endeavoring to create, as well as to modify, all other conditions, so that these also shall more and more conduce to the like consciousness in others.
Hence our perseverance in efforts to attain simplicity in diet, plain garments, pure bathing, unsullied dwellings, open conduct, gentle behavior, kindly sympathies, serene minds. These, and several other particulars needful to the true end of man’s residence on earth, may be designated the Family Life. Our Happiness, though not the direct object in human energy, may be accepted as the conformation of rectitude, and this is not otherwise attainable than in the Holy Family. The Family in its highest, divinest sense is therefore our true position, our sacred earthly destiny. It comprehends every divine, every human relation consistent with universal good, and all others it rejects, as it disdains all animal sensualities.
The evils of life are not so much social, or political, as personal, and a personal reform only can eradicate them.
Let the Family, furthermore, be viewed as the home of pure social affections, the school of expanding intelligence, the sphere of unbought art, the scene of joyous employment, and we feel in that single sentiment, a fulness of action, of life, of being, which no scientific social contrivance can ensure, nor selfish accident supply.
Family is not dependent upon numbers, nor upon skill, nor riches, but upon union in and with that spirit which alone can bless any enterprise whatever.
On this topic of Family association, it will not involve an entire agreement with the Shakers to say they are at least entitled to deeper consideration than they yet appear to have secured. There are many important acts in their career worthy of observation. It is perhaps most striking that the only really successful extensive Community of interest, spiritual and secular, in modern times was established by A Woman. Again, we witness in this people the bringing together of the two sexes in a new relation, or rather with a new idea of the old relation. This has led to results more harmonic than anyone seriously believes attainable for the human race, either in isolation or association, so long as divided, conflicting family arrangements are permitted. The great secular success of the Shakers; their order, cleanliness, intelligence and serenity are so eminent, that it is worthy of enquiry how far these are attributable to an adherence to their peculiar doctrine.
As to Property, we discover not its just disposal either in individual or social tenures, but in its entire absorption into the New Spirit, which ever gives and never grasps.
While we write, negotiations are entertained for our removal to a place of less inconvenience, by friends who have long waited for some proof of a determination to act up to the idea they have cherished. Many, no doubt, are yet unprepared “to give up all and follow him” (the Spirit) who can importantly aid in the New Advent, and conscientiously accomplish the legal processes needful under the present circumstances. We do not recognize the purchase of land; but its redemption from the debasing state of proprium, or property, to divine uses, we clearly understand when those whom the world esteems as owners are found yielding their individual rights to the Supreme Owner. Looking at the subject practically in relation to a climate in which a costly shelter is necessary, and where a family with many children has to be provided for, the possibility of at once stepping boldly out of the toils into which the errors of our predecessors have cast us, is not so evident as it is desirable.
Trade we hope entirely to avoid at an early day. As a nursery for many evil propensities it is almost universally felt to be a most undesirable course. Such needful articles as we cannot yet raise by our own hand labor from the soil, thus redeemed from human ownership, we shall endeavor to obtain by friendly exchanges, and, as nearly as possible, without the intervention of money.
Of all the traffic in which civilized society is involved, that of human labor is perhaps the most detrimental. From the state of serfdom to the receipt of wages may be a step in human progress; but it is certainly full time for taking a new step out of the hiring system.
Our outward exertions are in the first instance directed to the soil, and as our ultimate aim is to furnish an instance of self-sustaining cultivation without the subjugation of either men or cattle, or the use of foul animal manures, we have at the outset to encounter struggles and oppositions somewhat formidable. Until the land is restored to its pristine fertility by the annual return of its own green crops, as sweet and animating manures, the human hand and simple implement cannot wholly supersede the employment of machinery and cattle. So long as cattle are used in agriculture, it is very evident that man will remain a slave, whether he be proprietor or hireling. The driving of cattle beyond their natural and pleasurable exertion; the waiting upon them as cook and chambermaid three parts of the year; the excessive labor of mowing, curing, and housing hay, and of collecting other fodder, and the large extra quantity of land needful to keep up this system, form a continuation of unfavorable circumstances which must depress the human affections so long as it continues, and overlay them by the injurious and extravagant development of the animal and bestial natures in man. It is calculated that if no animal food were consumed, one-fourth of the land now used would suffice for human sustenance. And the extensive tracts of country now appropriated to grazing, mowing, and other modes of animal provision, could be cultivated by and for intelligent and affectionate human neighbors. The sty and the stable too often secure more of the farmer’s regard than he bestows on the garden and the children. No hope is there for humanity while Woman is withdrawn from the tender assiduities which adorn her and her household, to the servitudes of the dairy and the flesh pots. If the beasts were wholly absent from man’s neighborhood, the human population might be at least four times as dense as it now is without raising the price of land. This would give to the country all the advantages of concentration without the vices which always spring up in the dense city.
THE SMALL DINING-ROOM
Around this table the philosophers discussed their deepest problems.
Debauchery of both the earthly soil and the human body is the result of this cattle keeping. The land is scourged for crops to feed the animals, whose ordures are used under the erroneous supposition of restoring lost fertility; disease is thus infused into the human body; stimulants and medicines are resorted to for relief, which end in a precipitation of the original evil to a more disastrous depth. These misfortunes which affect not only the body, but by reaction rise to the sphere of the soul, would be avoided, or at least in part, by the disuse of animal food. Our diet is therefore strictly the pure and bloodless kind. No animal substances, neither flesh, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk, pollute our table or corrupt our bodies, neither tea, coffee, molasses, nor rice, tempts us beyond the bounds of indigenous productions. Our sole beverage is pure fountain water. The native grains, fruits, herbs, and roots, dressed with the utmost cleanliness and regard to their purpose of edifying a healthful body, furnish the pleasantest refections and in the greatest variety requisite to the supply of the various organs. The field, the orchard, the garden, in their bounteous products of wheat, rye, barley, maize, oats, buckwheat, apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, currants, berries, potatoes, peas, beans, beets, carrots, melons, and other vines, yield an ample store for human nutrition, without dependence on foreign climes, or the degeneration of shipping and trade. The almost inexhaustible variety of the several stages and sorts of vegetable growth, and the several modes of preparation, are a full answer to the question which is often put by those who have never ventured into the region of a pure and chaste diet: “If you give up flesh meat, upon what then can you live?”
Our other domestic habits are in harmony with those of diet. We rise with early dawn, begin the day with cold bathing, succeeded by a music lesson, and then a chaste repast. Each one finds occupation until the meridian meal, when usually some interesting and deep-searching conversation gives rest to the body and development to the mind. Occupation, according to the season and the weather, engages us out of doors or within, until the evening meal,—when we again assemble in social communion, prolonged generally until sunset, when we resort to sweet repose for the next day’s activity.
In these steps of reform we do not rely as much on scientific reasoning of physiological skill, as on the Spirit’s dictates. The pure soul, by the law of its own nature, adopts a pure diet and cleanly customs; nor needs detailed instruction for daily conduct. On a revision of our proceedings it would seem, that if we were in the right course in our particular instance, the greater part of man’s duty consists in leaving alone much that he is in the habit of doing. It is a fasting from the present activity, rather than an increased indulgence in it, which, with patient watchfulness tends to newness of life. “Shall I sip tea or coffee?” the inquiry may be. No; abstain from all ardent, as from alcoholic drinks. “Shall I consume pork, beef, or mutton?” Not if you value health or life. “Shall I stimulate with milk?” No. “Shall I warm my bathing water?” Not if cheerfulness is valuable. “Shall I clothe in many garments?” Not if purity is aimed at. “Shall I prolong my dark hours, consuming animal oil and losing bright daylight in the morning?” Not if a clear mind is an object. “Shall I teach my children the dogmas inflicted on myself, under the pretence that I am transmitting truth?” Nay, if you love them intrude not these between them and the Spirit of all Truth. “Shall I subjugate cattle?” “Shall I trade?” “Shall I claim property in any created thing?” “Shall I interest myself in politics?” To how many of these questions could we ask them deeply enough, could they be heard as having relation to our eternal welfare, would the response be “Abstain”? Be not so active to do, as sincere to be. Being in preference to doing, is the great aim and this comes to us rather by a resigned willingness than a wilful activity;—which is indeed a check to all divine growth. Outward abstinence is a sign of inward fulness; and the only source of true progress is inward. We may occupy ourselves actively in human improvements;—but these unless inwardly well-impelled, never attain to, but rather hinder, divine progress in man. During the utterance of this narrative it has undergone a change in its personal expression which might offend the hypercritical; but we feel assured that you will kindly accept it as unartful offering of both your friends in ceaseless aspiration.
Charles Lane,
A. Bronson Alcott.
Harvard, Mass.,
August, 1843.
IV
THE MAN WITH THE BEARD
No satisfactory record of Fruitlands could be written without giving an account of Joseph Palmer, the man with the beard. He filled an important place in the life of the Community, and is one of those picturesque characters which must always stand out vividly in the history of Fruitlands. He came of fine, sturdy English stock which emigrated to this country in 1730. His grandfather taught school in Newton, Massachusetts, for twenty years. His father fought in the Revolution, and he himself was a soldier in the War of 1812. He was an eccentric character, but steadfast and upright, and immovable when it came to his principles. Wearing a beard became a fixed idea with him, and neither the law of the land nor the admonitions of the church could make him falter in his determination to claim freedom of action in this respect. He suffered ridicule, insolence, and persecution to a degree that was amazing, and which revealed the fact that in spite of a seemingly greater enlightenment on the part of the public, the same tendency, which drove the people to persecute so-called witches, and Shakers, and harmless persons with a little different viewpoint from their own, was still alive, and ready to flame forth as fiercely as ever.
On one occasion, before the Fruitlands days, he went into a church in Fitchburg where the holy Communion was being celebrated. He knelt with the rest only to be given the shock of humiliation at being ignored and passed over by the officiating clergyman. Cut to the quick at such injustice, and with the blood surging to his face, he arose and strode up to the Communion table where the Sacraments were, and lifting the cup to his lips drank from it, and turning to the shocked and abashed clergyman and his congregation shouted in a loud voice and with flashing eyes: “I love my Jesus as well, and better, than any of you do!”
A beard at that time was only worn by the Jews, and that was the real reason for this persecution, and it caused him to be called “Old Jew Palmer,” though there was not a drop of Jewish blood in his veins. He carried on his farm at No Town very successfully and sold his beef at the Fitchburg Market. No Town was a “gore” of unreclaimed land outside of Fitchburg and Leominster in old Colonial days, a large tract of which had been granted to Captain Noah Wiswell, his maternal grandfather, by the General Court of the Province of Massachusetts for bravery in the wars against the Indians. Joseph Palmer inherited it. It belonged to no township, and therefore was not taxed. So when he married the widow Tenney rumors circulated through Fitchburg that the marriage was not legal because he did not publish the banns at the meeting-house according to law, there being no meeting-house at No Town. But investigation proved the marriage legal because he had published the banns in his own handwriting on a large piece of paper which he had tacked to the trunk of a fine old pine tree which grew near his house.
Joseph Palmer’s wife before her first marriage was Nancy Thompson. She was a third cousin to Count Rumford, who was Benjamin Thompson, of Woburn, in Colonial days, but who returned to England after the evacuation of the British, and on account of services rendered to the Government was knighted by George III, and afterward given the title of Count Rumford by the reigning king of Bavaria, and was well known throughout Europe as a scientist, philosopher, and savant.
A reporter of the Boston Daily Globe in 1884 interviewed Joseph Palmer’s son, Dr. Palmer, of Fitchburg, and herein are inserted extracts from the interview:—
“The older inhabitants of Harvard, Sterling, Leominster, Fitchburg, and other neighboring towns can remember ‘Old Jew Palmer,’ who fifty years ago was persecuted, despised, jeered at, regarded almost as a fiend incarnate; who was known far and wide as a human monster, and with whose name mothers used to frighten their children when they were unruly.
“‘Old Jew Palmer,’ as he was universally called, was the most abused and persecuted man these parts ever knew, and all because he insisted upon wearing a beard. But many who in those days looked upon the subject of this sketch as a social outcast have lived to see whiskers common and fashionable.
“With a view of getting at the facts of the persecution of Mr. Palmer but fifty years ago, his only son, Dr. Thomas Palmer, a well-known dentist of Fitchburg, was interviewed, and the doctor talked earnestly and vigorously about his father’s career, for he had seen the time when his schoolmates shunned him and made his boyhood days miserable, railing at him because his father wore a beard. But now the doctor looks back upon those days proudly, as he realizes that his sire was right and that the world has indorsed the ways and ideas of the old man, instead of the old man bowing to the absurd whim of the world.”
JOSEPH PALMER
NANCY PALMER
Said Dr. Palmer:—
“Father left No Town early in the thirties and moved to Fitchburg into a house where the City Hall now stands. He wore at that time a long beard, and he and Silas Lamson, an old scythe-snath maker of Sterling, were the only men known in this section of the country as wearing beards. Everybody shaved clean in those days, and to wear whiskers in any form was worse than a disgrace, it was a sin. Father was hooted at on the street, talked about at the grocery, intimidated by his fellow-men and labored with by the clergy to shave, but to no purpose. The stronger the opposition, the firmer his determination. He was accosted once by Rev. George Trask, the anti-tobacconist, who said indignantly: ‘Palmer, why don’t you shave and not go round looking like the devil?’ He replied: ‘Mr. Trask, are you not mistaken in your comparison of personages? I have never seen a picture of the ruler of the sulphurous regions with much of a beard, but if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard not unlike mine.’ That squelched Trask and he left.
“Well, public sentiment against the man and beard grew stronger, and personal violence was threatened. One day, as father was coming out of the old Fitchburg Hotel, where he had been to carry some provision, he then being in the butchering business, he was seized by four men, whose names I have not in mind now, who were armed with shears, lather, and razor, their intention being to shave him, as the sentiment of the populace was that that beard must come off at the hands of the wearer, possibly at the hands of some one, anyway. Why, there are men living to-day, old associates of his, who still cling to that old idea and will not wear a beard. These four men laid violent hands upon him and threw him heavily on the stone steps, badly hurting his back. The assaulted party was very muscular, and struggled to free himself, but to no purpose, until he drew from his vest pocket an old, loose-jointed jack-knife, with which he struck out left and right and stabbed two of them in the legs, when the assailants precipitately departed without cutting a hair. He was afterwards arrested for committing an unprovoked assault, and ordered by Justice Brigham to pay a fine, which he refused to do, as he claimed to be acting for the maintenance of a principle. He was thrown into jail, where he remained over a year. He was lodged with the debtors. One day Jailer Bellows came in with several men to shave him. He threw himself on his back in his bunk, and when they approached, he struck out with his feet, and after he had kicked over a few of them they let him and his beard alone. He wrote letters to the Worcester Spy, complaining of the treatment the prisoners received, which I used to carry to the office for him, receiving them when I carried him his meals, for we hired a tenement next to the jail. For this the jailer put him in a sort of dungeon down below, and one day when I went to the jail, he heard my step and called out: ‘Thomas, tie a stone to a string and swing it by the window so that I can catch it’; which I did, and pulled up a letter for High Sheriff Williams, in which he complained of his treatment. The sheriff ordered him back to his old quarters. Why, old Dr. Williams of Leominster told father once that he ought to be prosecuted and imprisoned for wearing a beard. In after years, when whiskers became fashionable, father met a minister who had upbraided him years before for wearing them, and as this same minister had rather a luxuriant growth, he went up to the man of God and stroking his whiskers, said to him, ‘Knoweth that thy redeemer liveth?’ He claimed to be the redeemer of the beard.
“Father was a reformer; was early in the field as an anti-slavery man and as a total abstinence advocate. He was well acquainted with Phillips, Garrison, and other prominent Abolitionists. I remember going with him once to an anti-slavery convention in Boston. As we walked up Washington Street, the people would stop, then run ahead, wait for us to come up, and finally the crowd around us was so great that the police had to come to the rescue. Why was it? Oh, it was the same old beard. It was so unusual to see a man wearing one, and especially such a one as he sported. Why, he was looked upon as a monstrosity. When asked once why he wore it, he said he would tell if any one could tell him why some men would, from fifty-two to three hundred and sixty-five times a year, scrape their face from their nose to their neck. He never would furnish liquor for men in the hay-field, and for this reason had hard work to gather crops; but they would have rotted before he would have backed down and sacrificed his principle. He was the first man in this section to give up that old custom. He was interested in all reformatory ideas, and was associated with A. Bronson Alcott in forming that Community in Harvard at Fruitlands which had for its object a more quiet and unostentatious way of living than the world offered. He went to Harvard in 1843. The Community did not flourish, and father bought the farm. Ralph Waldo Emerson, as trustee, at that time held the deed of ‘Fruitlands.’ I remember that when father refused to furnish liquor for the hay-makers he had to hire boys. One mother refused to let her lad work for him, saying that ‘He was too mean to allow the boys a little liquor’!
“Such was the interesting account given by the venerable doctor of a condition of affairs existing in this community but a comparatively few years ago; but the average person of to-day would not believe, without a full explanation of the sentiment prevailing at that time, that within so recent a period a man would not only be insulted and persecuted, but actually mobbed, as was the victim of this foolish and intolerant community.”
While in prison Palmer kept a diary, in which, under date of July 21, 1830, occurs this account of the sort of persecution he had from the two fellow-prisoners who occupied the same cell with him. One of them asserted that if the other prisoner would attack him and cut his beard off, he would look on all the time and then swear that it had never happened, and that anyway he could get enough money collected anywhere on the street to pay the damages for the act. The jailer coming to the door at this moment overheard the remark and with a resounding oath agreed with him, and added, “And pretty quick, too!” Then he began to curse and swear at Palmer, and vowed that they would get his beard off soon, and even suggested that the other prisoners should cut it off of him in his sleep. One of these prisoners was named Dike. The jailer continued to pour volley after volley of oaths at the unfortunate man, and finally spat on him repeatedly. This happened when Palmer’s cell was being whitewashed and the three inmates were temporarily removed to another cell. When they were taken back to their customary quarters, Dike found that the jailer had taken his razor away, which turned his wrath in a new direction, and Palmer writes that as a result “Before bedtime, he was as good as a man ought to be to another, and talked very freely with me on the Power and Goodness of God and on the Holy Scriptures.”
Here is an entry on Wednesday, September 22, 1830:—
“I called out to some one in the hall. Wildes, the jailer, opened the door in the entry next to my door and said: ‘What do you want?’ I was just going to ask him for a little water to use until I could get some tea from Wilson, and he let a pail full come in at the door, with great force. It didn’t wet me much, as I see it was coming, and having seen them throw cider and water in the prisoners’ faces before. It caused me to start so quickly that there did but little go into my face, and on my clothes, but it went more than half the length of the room. I split three crackers and put them to soak where there was considerable water standing on the floor, as I could see no chance of getting any more soon. I got a quart jug filled with water out of the other room to wet some bread which was all the water or drink of any kind that I had since last Thursday morning when I used the last of my tea, and I had tried ever since last Sunday morning to get some and could not. I thought I must suffer very much soon if there wasn’t some attention, and being satisfied that there were some in Prison who were suffering greatly, I thought it time to give a signal of distress to the Public, which I immediately did by the cry of murder in the Gaol, which I continued at the window that somebody might come up while the door was open that would grant some assistance for the pay. About seven o’clock just as I was going to take my crackers off the floor, Bellows and Wildes came into the room and several others. I stepped to the table and took the lines I had written to send to Mr. Wilson, and asked them if I could get any one of them to go for me if I would pay them for it. Bellows said, ‘Yes, I’ll take care of you!’ Bellows and Wildes then seized me by the collar, shook and jarred me with great fury through the entries, and dragged me down the stairs. I tried to speak to the people who stood by to take the paper I had in my hand to carry to Mr. Wilson. Bellows then took me by the hair and shook me furiously as I suppose to prevent my speaking to them. I then cried Murder. He then let me go, and I told them that I wanted to get some person to take the paper I had in my hand and go about 100 rods of an errand, and I would pay them well for it, for I hadn’t had anything to drink since last week, nor I couldn’t get any. They put me into the South Middle room below and gave me a pail of water. I told Wildes and C. B. that I wanted they should let me have my things, for I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning. They took the other three prisoners out of the room and shut the blinds.”
Palmer was kept in solitary confinement from September 22 to December 25.
December 30, 1830.
“In the afternoon Calvin Willard, Ashel Bellows, Wildes, and Lawyer Goodwin, with four or five other gentlemen, came in. Willard said, ‘How do you do, Palmer?’ I said, pretty tolerable well for me except I have got a bad cold. One of the men, which I took to be Esqre. Weed said to me: ‘Why don’t you go out? What do you stay here for? Why don’t you pay up the demand and go out?’ I said I have no way to pay it. Goodwin said: ‘A man from Fitchburg told me to-day that he has from ten to fifteen hundred dollars property.’ Willard said: ‘I always took him to be a man of property.’ One of the men said: ‘I think there ought to be some measures taken to secure the board if he stops here.’ I said: I board myself and have hard work to get it in here for the money. One said: ‘How much was your fine?’ I said, Ten dollars, I believe it was.”
Saturday, January 1, 1831.
“Since the first of December I haven’t bought me anything from Bellows, and they haven’t brought me anything but eight Bushels and one hod of coal, and they used two Bushels of that when they whitewashed the room, except what I took to make one fire. Thomas brought me my water. I was out of my room three and a half days to have it whitewashed, and I have now a half Bushel of coal which brings it to seven and a half Bushels I have burnt the past month while I was in the room.”
April 11, 1831.
“Food for the day:—
| “Breakfast: | 5 ounces of brown bread |
| “Dinner: | 5¼ ounces of brown bread |
| 3½ ounces of beef meat | |
| 3½ ounces of potato | |
| 3¾ ounces of soup.” |
“He far out-stayed his sentence because he had to pay for all his food, drink, and coal for heating, and he considered they cheated him, so he refused to go. The sheriff and jailers, tired of having him there, begged him to leave. Even his mother, Margaret Palmer, wrote to him ‘Not to be so set.’ But nothing could move him. He said they had put him in there, and they would have to take him out, as he would not walk out. They finally carried him out in his chair and placed it on the sidewalk.”
Shortly after leaving the jail at Worcester Palmer heard of the proposed Community of Fruitlands, and being much interested in all reforms, he offered to run the farm without pay and went there at the very start. He took some fine old furniture with him from No Town to help furnish the house, and whenever anything was needed in the way of farm implements, etc., he would drive over to No Town and bring it back with him. When the Community of Fruitlands failed, he bought the place and carried on a strange sort of Community of his own for upwards of twenty years. Emerson visited him afterwards, and a motley collection of reformers, wayfarers, and a host of tramps found a welcome by his fireside.
Any one driving by the old North Leominster graveyard will see a stone monument adorned with the head of a man with a flowing beard. On it is written:—
JOSEPH PALMER
died
October 30, 1875
Aged 84 years, 5 months
Underneath the carved head is written:—
Persecuted for
Wearing the Beard
V
SUMMER SUNSHINE
It was now July and all the days were full of healthful occupations—the weather was perfect. The philosophers had planted three mulberry trees next the front door, and they had set out apple trees and pear trees below the house on the slope of the hill. They put the mulberry trees so near the house that when they grew, the roots almost unsettled the foundations, and the fruit trees were planted in just the wrong place to permit of luxuriant growth; but they never knew it, and at the time they pictured to themselves the full-grown trees with branches overladen with the luscious ripening fruit. And now they all had gotten their linen suits designed by Mr. Lane:—loose trousers, tunic-ed coats and broad-brimmed linen hats like Southern planters. The Alcott girls, Anna, Beth, Louisa, and three-year-old baby May were in linen bloomers, and so were Mrs. Alcott (protesting!) and poor Miss Page, who was summarily dismissed from Fruitlands for having eaten fish.
THE REFECTORY, ALSO USED AS A KITCHEN
Many visitors came and went. Parker Pillsbury often came, his mind full of the anti-slavery question. The Concord circle of friends looked in upon them off and on, and Channing spoke afterwards of conversations held in a small dining-room next to the front door, and, as Mr. Sanborn says in his account of it, “The library of rare books from London stood proudly on its hundred feet of new shelves in the small front entry of the old house, proclaiming the atmosphere of ‘Mind and Letters.’”
Emerson came and afterwards wrote in his “Journal” on July 8, 1843:—
“The sun and the evening sky do not look calmer than Alcott and his family at Fruitlands. They seemed to have arrived at the fact—to have got rid of the show, and so to be serene. Their manners and behavior in the house and the field were those of superior men—of men at rest. What had they to conceal? What had they to exhibit? And it seemed so high an attainment that I thought—as often before, so now more, because they had a fit home, or the picture was fitly framed—that these men ought to be maintained in their place by the country for its culture.
“Young men and young maidens, old men and women, should visit them and be inspired. I think there is as much merit in beautiful manners as in hard work. I will not prejudge them successful. They look well in July; we will see them in December. I know they are better for themselves than as partners. One can easily see that they have yet to settle several things. Their saying that things are clear, and they sane, does not make them so. If they will in very deed be lovers, and not selfish; if they will serve the town of Harvard, and make their neighbors feel them as benefactors wherever they touch them,—they are as safe as the sun.”
Mr. Sanborn, referring to the remark, “We will see them in December,” says: “This passage indicates that Emerson with his fatal gift of perception had long since seen the incongruity between Alcott and Lane. At this time all was still fair weather at the Fruitlands Eden, although the burden of too much labor, of which Lane had written to Thoreau in June, had been falling more and more heavily on Mrs. Alcott and her daughters, Anna, then twelve, and Louisa, not quite eleven. As they did so much of the domestic drudgery, Mrs. Alcott doubtless thought it no more than right that her English guests, both there and at Concord, during the seven months that Lane and his son were in their household, should pay their share of the family expenses.”
The house at times was very overcrowded and the children had their beds up in the garret. But Anna begged hard for a tiny room adjoining Mrs. Alcott’s, and great was the joy she took in it. Of course it all was very primitive. The men bathed in the brook in the early morning and the shower-baths that Anna speaks of in her diary were accomplished thus:—rough clothes-horses covered with sheets were put in a circle and the bathers stood hidden within, while Mr. Alcott, mounted on some wooden steps, poured water from a pitcher through a sieve on their head. (This was told the author by an old lady who when very young went to visit the children.)
Hired laborers and beasts of burden were against the principles of the Community, but in order to make headway against the advancing season they seemed to be a necessity. This concession, however, troubled the philosophers, and it was decided to carry out the original plan and rely wholly on the spade instead of the plough, even at a cost of valuable time. The results were rather disastrous: Charles Lane’s hands became sore and painful, and lame backs seriously interfered with progress. Sobered by this new experience, the philosophers met in conclave, and as a result Joseph Palmer, who always came to the rescue in trying situations, went to No Town and brought back his plough and yoke of oxen, as he called it—it really was an ox and a cow which he had trained to work together. Besides the outdoor work much writing was done indoors. Charles Lane and Bower wrote prolifically to different papers. The Herald of Freedom, the Vermont Telegraph and the New York Tribune of that summer are full of their writings.
Mr. Alcott’s Diary furnishes clear evidence of his purposes and hopes:—
“I would abstain from the fruits of oppression and blood, and am seeking means of entire independence. This, were I not holden by penury unjustly, would be possible. One miracle we have wrought nevertheless, and shall soon work all of them: Our wine is water, flesh, bread—drugs, fruits; and we defy meekly the satyrs all, and Æsculapians. The Soul’s banquet is an art divine.... This Beast named Man has yet most costly tastes, and must first be transformed into a very Man, regenerate in appetite and desire, before the earth shall be restored to fruitfulness, and redeemed from the curse of his cupidity. Then shall the toils of the farm become eloquent and invigorating leisures; Man shall grow his orchards and plant his gardens—an husbandman truly, sowing and reaping in hope, and a partaker in his hope. Labor will be attractive; life will not be worn in anxious and indurating toils; it will be a scene of mixed leisure, recreation, labor, culture. The soil, grateful then for man’s generous usage, debauched no more by foul ordures, nor worn by cupidities, shall recover its primeval virginity, bearing on its bosom the standing bounties which a sober and liberal Providence ministers to his heed—sweet and invigorating growths, for the health and comfort of the grower.”
Mr. Sanborn, commenting on this, remarks:—
“It was in the spirit of the passages just quoted from Alcott’s diary ... and not from the ordinary Fourieristic notions about attractions and destinies and coöperative housekeeping that Alcott undertook his experiment at ‘Fruitlands.’”
Alcott’s theory of human life was thus set down in his Diary:—
“I have been (as is ever the habit of my mind) striving to apprehend the real in the seeming, to strip ideas of their adventitious phrases, and behold them in their order and powers. I have sought to penetrate the showy terrestrial to find the heavenly things; I have tried to translate into ideas the language and images of spirit, and thus to read God in his works. The outward I have seen as the visible type of the inward. Ever doth this same nature double its divine form, and stand forth—now before the inner, now before the outer sense of man—at once substance and form, image and idea, so that God shall never slip wholly from consciousness of the Soul. Faith apprehends his agency, even in the meanest and most seemingly trivial act, whenever organ or matter undergo change of function or mode of form,—Spirit being all in all. Amidst all tumults and discomfitures, all errors and evils, Faith discerns the subtle bond that marries opposite natures, clinging to that which holds all in harmonious union. It unites opposites; it demolishes opposing forces. It melts all solid and obstinate matters. It makes fluid the material universe. It hopes even in despair, believes in the midst of doubts, apprehends stability and order even in confusion and anarchy, and, while all without is perturbed and wasting, it possesses itself in quietude and repose within. It abides in the unswerving, is mighty in the omnipotent, and enduring in the eternal. The soul quickened by its agency, though borne on the waves of the mutable and beset by the winds of error and the storms of evil, shall ride securely under this directing hand to the real and the true. In the midst of change, it shall remain unchanged. For to such a faith is the divine order of God made known. All visible things are but manifestations of this order. Nature, with all its change, is but the activity of this power. It flows around and obeys the invisible self-anchored spirit. Mutability to such a vision, is as the eddy that spirit maketh around its own self-circling agency, revealing alike in the smallest ripple and the mightiest surges the power that stirreth at the centre.”
VI
FATHER HECKER’S DESCRIPTION OF FRUITLANDS
[Isaac Thomas Hecker was born in New York in 1819. Two years after his experience at Brook Farm and Fruitlands he entered the Roman Catholic church, and in 1849 he was ordained a priest. Later he founded the Paulist Fathers. He died in 1888. The following extracts are taken from a contemporary record of his impressions while in the socialistic community.]
“Fruitlands,” so called because fruit was to be the principal staple of daily food, and to be cultivated on the farm, was a spot well chosen; it was retired, breathing quiet and tranquillity. No neighboring dwelling obstructed the view of Nature, and it lay some distance even from a bypath road, in a delightful solitude. The house, somewhat dilapidated, was on the slope of a slowly ascending hill; stretched before it was a small valley under cultivation, with fields of corn, potatoes, and meadow. In the distance loomed up on high “Cheshire’s haughty hill,” Monadnoc. Such was the spot chosen by men inspired to live a holier life, to bring Eden once more upon earth. These men were impressed with the religiousness of their enterprise. When the first load of hay was driven into the barn and the first fork was about to be plunged into it, one of the family took off his hat and said, “I take off my hat, not that I reverence the barn more than other places, but because this is the first fruit of our labor.” Then a few moments were given to silence, that holy thought might be awakened.
July 7, 1843. Brook Farm.
I go to Mr. Alcott’s next Tuesday, if nothing happens. I have had three pairs of coarse pants and a coat made for me. It is my intention to commence work as soon as I get there. I will gradually simplify my dress without making any sudden difference, although it would be easier to make a radical and thorough change at once than piece by piece. But this will be a lesson in patient perseverance to me. All our difficulties should be looked at in such a light as to improve and elevate our minds.
I can hardly prevent myself from saying how much I shall miss the company of those I love and associate with here. But I must go. I am called with a stronger voice. This is a different trial from any I have ever had. I have never had that of leaving kindred, but now I have that of leaving those whom I love from affinity. If I wished to live a life the most gratifying to me, and in agreeable company, I certainly would remain here. Here are refining amusements, cultivated persons—and one whom I have not spoken of, one who is too much to me to speak of, one who would leave all for me. Alas! him I must leave to go.
ISAAC T. HECKER
“[In this final sentence, as it now stands in the diary and as we have transcribed it, occurs one of those efforts of which we have spoken to obliterate the traces of this early attachment. ‘Him’ was originally written ‘her,’ but the r has been lengthened to an m, and the e dotted, both with care which overshot their mark, by an almost imperceptible hair’s breadth. If the nature of this attachment were not so evident from other sources, we should have left such passages unquoted; fearing lest they might be misunderstood. As it is, the light they cast seems to us to throw up into fuller proportions the kind and extent of the renunciations to which Isaac Hecker was called before he had arrived at any clear view of the end to which they tended.]”[[9]]
[9]. Walter Elliott’s Life of Father Hecker.
Fruitlands, July 12.
Last evening I arrived here. After tea I went out in the fields and raked hay for an hour in company with the persons here. We returned and had a conversation on clothing. Some very fine things were said by Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane. In most of their thoughts I coincide; they are the same which of late have much occupied my mind. Alcott said that “to Emerson the world was a lecture room, to Brownson a rostrum.”
This morning after breakfast a conversation was held on Friendship and its laws and conditions. Mr. Alcott places Innocence first; Larned, Thoughtfulness; I, Seriousness; Lane, Fidelity.
July 13.
This morning after breakfast there was held a conversation on the Highest Aim. Mr. Alcott said it was Integrity; I, Harmonic being; Lane, Progressive being; Larned, Annihilation of self; Bower, Repulsion of the evil in us. Then there was a confession of the obstacles which prevent us from attaining the highest aim. Mine was the doubt whether the light is light; not want of will to follow, or light to see.
July 17.
I cannot understand what it is that leads me, or what I am after. Being is incomprehensible. What shall I be led to? Is there a being whom I may marry and who would be the means of opening my eyes? Sometimes I think so, but it appears impossible. Why should others tell me that it is so, and will be so, in an unconscious way, as Larned did on Sunday last, and as others have done before him? Will I be led home? It strikes me these people here, Alcott and Lane, will be a great deal to me. I do not know but they may be what I am looking for, or the answer to that in me which is asking.
Can I say it? I believe it should be said. Here I cannot end. They are too near me; they do not awaken in me that sense of their high superiority which would keep me here to be bettered, to be elevated. They have much, very much. I desire Mr. Alcott’s strength of self-denial, and the unselfishness of Mr. Lane in money matters. In both these they are far my superior. I would be meek, humble, and sit at their feet that I might be as they are. They do not understand me, but if I am what my consciousness, my heart, lead me to feel,—if I am not deceived,—why, then I can wait. Yes, patiently wait. Is not this the first time since I have been here that I have recovered myself? Do I not feel that I have something to receive here, to add to, to increase my highest life, which I have never felt anywhere else?
Is this sufficient to keep me here? If I can prophesy, I must say no. I feel that it will not fill my capacity. Oh God! strengthen my resolution. Let me not waver, and continue my life. But I am sinful. Oh forgive my sins! what shall I do, O Lord! that they may be blotted out? Lord could I only blot them out from my memory, nothing would be too great or too much.
July 18.
I have thought of my family this afternoon, and the happiness and love with which I might return to them. To leave them, to give up the idea of living with them again.—Can I entertain that idea? Still, I cannot conceive how I can engage in business, share the practices, and indulge myself with the food and garmenture of our home and city. To return home, were it possible for me, would most probably not only stop my progress, but put me back. It is useless for me to speculate upon my future. Put dependence on the spirit which leads me, be faithful to it, work and leave results to God. If the question should be asked me, whether I would give up my kindred and business and follow out this spirit life, or return and enjoy them both, I could not hesitate a moment, for they would not compare—there would be no room for choice. What I do I must do, for it is not I that do it; it is the spirit. What that spirit may be is a question I cannot answer. What it leads me to do will be the only evidence of its character. I feel as impersonal as a stranger to it. I ask who are you? Where are you going to take me? Why me? Why not some one else? Alas! I cry, who am I and what does this mean? And I am lost in wonder.
Saturday, July 21.
Yesterday, after supper, a conversation took place between Mr. Alcott, Mr. Lane, and myself; the subject was my position with regard to my family, my duty, and my position here. Mr. Alcott asked for my first impressions as regards the hinderances that I have noted since coming here. I told him candidly they were:
First, his want of frankness; 2d, his disposition to separateness rather than win co-operation with the aims in his own mind; 3d, his family who prevent his immediate plans of reformation; 4th, the fact that his place has very little fruit on it, when it was and is their desire that fruit should be the principal part of their diet; 5th, my fear that they have too decided tendency toward literature and writing for the prosperity and success of their enterprise.
[From this on, the diary is full of questionings and unrest. Should he return to his family and live as an ordinary man, or should he listen to the urge of the spirit within and seek further for the light? These and other questions pursued him night and day. Finally he came to a conclusion.]
July 23.
I will go home, be true to the spirit with the help of God, and wait for further light and strength.... I feel that I cannot live at this place as I would. This is not the place for my soul.... My life is not theirs. They have been the means of giving me much light on myself, but I feel I would live and progress more in a different atmosphere.
[It is interesting to note that after his return home he continued the diet which was used at Fruitlands. The account of his life states: “One of the first noteworthy things revealed by the diary, which from this time on was kept with less regularity than before,—is that Isaac not only maintained his abstemious habits after his return, but increased their vigor.”]
August 30.
If the past nine months or more are any evidence, I find that I can live on very simple diet—grains, fruit, and nuts. I have just commenced to eat the latter; I drink pure water. So far I have had wheat ground and made into unleavened bread, but as soon as we get in a new lot, I shall try it in the grain.
Hecker had evidently at this time a practical conviction of the truth of a principle which, in after years, he repeated in the form of a maxim of the Transcendentalists: “A gross feeder will never be a central thinker.” It is a truth of the spiritual no less than of the intellectual order. A little later we come upon the following profession of a vegetarian faith:—
“Reasons for not eating animal food.
“It does not feed the spirit.
“It stimulates the propensities.
“It is taking animal life when the other kingdoms offer sufficient and better increment. Slaughter strengthens the lower instincts. It is the chief cause of the slavery of the kitchen.
“It generates in the body the diseases animals are subject to, and encourages in man their bestiality.
“Its odor is offensive and its appearance unæsthetic.”
Mr. Alcott’s death in 1888 was the occasion of reminiscences from Father Hecker, from which a few extracts are taken:—
“When did I first know him? Hard to remember. He was the head of Fruitlands, as Ripley was of Brook Farm. They were entirely different men. Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott’s ideal if he had carried it out. Ripley’s ideal would have been Epictetus. Ripley would have taken with him the good things of this life. Alcott would have rejected them all.”
“How did he receive you at Fruitlands?”
“Very kindly, but from mixed and selfish motives. I suspect he wanted me because he thought I would bring money to the Community. Lane was entirely unselfish.”
“Alcott was a man of great intellectual gifts or acquirements. His knowledge came chiefly from experience and instinct. He had an insinuating and persuasive way with him.”
“What if he had been a Catholic, and thoroughly sanctified?”
“He could have been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks.”
Here also are two interesting passages from the “Life of Father Hecker,” and a few memoranda of private conversations:—
“Somebody once described ‘Fruitlands’ as a place where Mr. Alcott looked benign and talked philosophy, while Mrs. Alcott and the children did the work. Still to look benign is a good deal for a man to do persistently in an adverse world, indifferent for the most part to the charms of ‘divine philosophy,’ and Mr. Alcott persevered in that exercise until his latest day.”
“He was unquestionably one of those who like to sit upon a platform,” wrote at the time of his death, one who knew Alcott well, “and he may have liked to feel that his venerable aspect had the effect of a benediction.” “But with this mild criticism, censure of him is well-nigh exhausted.”
“Fruitlands was very different from Brook Farm—far more ascetic.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“Yes; but they did not begin to satisfy me. I said to them: If you had the Eternal here, all right, I would be with you.”
“Had they no notion of hereafter?”
“No, nothing definite. Their idea was human perfection. They set out to demonstrate what man can do in the way of the supremacy of the spiritual over the animal; All right, I said, I agree with you fully. I admire your asceticism; it is nothing new to me; I have practiced it a long time myself. If you can get the Everlasting out of my mind, I’m yours. But I know that I am going to live forever.”
“What did Mr. Alcott say when you left?”
“He went to Lane and said, ‘Well, Hecker has flunked out. He hadn’t the courage to persevere. He’s a coward.’ But Lane said, ‘No; you’re mistaken. Hecker is right. He wanted more than we had to give him.’”
VII
ANNA ALCOTT’S DIARY AT FRUITLANDS
1843.
This morning I rose pretty early. After breakfast I read and wrote stories. In the afternoon I wrote some letters, And the following ode to Louisa:—
Louisa dear
With love sincere
Accept this little gift from me.
It is with pleasure
I send this treasure
And with it send much love to thee.
Sister dear
Never fear.
God will help you if you try.
Do not despair,
But always care
To be good and love to try.
June 6, 1843.
Having been busy helping arrange things for moving last Thursday, we left Concordia later for Harvard. I walked part of the way, the distance being 14 miles from Concord to Harvard. I felt sad at the thought of leaving Concord and all my little friends, the birth-place of Abba where I had spent many happy hours; but Father and Mother and my dear sisters were going with me, and that would make me happy anywhere, I think. We arrived at our new home late in the afternoon. Our first load of furniture had come before us. We found Christy, Wood Abraham, and William all here. Mother was well pleased with the house. There is no beauty in the house itself, but to look out on three sides, you can see mountains, hills, woods, and in some places the Still River may be seen through the trees. At some distance are the Shaker Villages. On the whole, I like the house very well. After eating our supper we fixed our beds and went early to bed. Having no time to put up the bedsteads, we slept on the floor which made my back lame. Friday and Saturday in working and arranging the house in order. To-day in the morning I cleared the table and washed the dishes, being washing day. I washed with Mother and got dinner. In the afternoon I sewed and read. I did not do much this evening, for I went to bed when I had finished the dishes. The men have been planting to-day corn, and cutting wood and fixing round about the house out of doors.
Wednesday, 11.
I began my school to-day. We commenced by singing, “When the day with rosy light.” It seemed so pleasant to sing with my sisters. After singing I wrote my journal and the girls wrote in their books. They then studied arithmetic lesson. I then gave them a recess, after which they spelt, read and Louisa recited geography. At eleven the school was dismissed. In the afternoon I sewed for my dolly and took care of Abba, then all went to walk in the woods. It was quiet and beautiful there and I felt a calmness in myself. The sun was shining and the birds were singing in the branches of the high trees. It was so beautiful it seemed as if God was near me. I made some oak leaf wreaths, one for father and one for mother, and stuck flowers in them. They looked very pretty indeed. Then we returned from our walk and prepared for supper. In the evening I sang with Christy, William, mother, and sisters.
Thursday, 8.
To-day I gave the children lessons this morning. In the afternoon I wrote. Christy is going to teach me arithmetic and composition, and the subject upon which I am to write is our plan of life. The part I wrote on to-day was flesh-eating. I will write it in here.
ABBA MAY ALCOTT
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
ANNA BRONSON ALCOTT