Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs

by John Thomas Codman

A few individuals making a common family on a farm near a city, would seem to be too unimportant a matter to excite much comment now, even though the people who did it were superior in attainments, of high purpose, and above criticism in their moral and social standing; but at this date of our country's history, all thoughtful people in New England seemed to be gaping at them with curiosity and wonder, and comments were unlimited. As they were neither dogmatists, nor active fanatics who brandished anathemas of terror and destruction at those who followed not in their ways, but simply and unostentatiously attended to their own business, and seemed to care very little for what anyone said derogatory to their proceedings, the conditions appeared so unique, that interest in their doings increased day by day.

Mr. Ripley wrote of it a few months after its commencement: "We are now in full operation as a family of workers, teachers and students. We feel the deepest convictions that, for us, our mode of life is the true one, and no attraction would tempt any one of us to exchange it for that we have quitted lately." And it would be an impertinence now to penetrate into its private circles and bring its members and doings to the gaze of an investigating and curious public, were it not that its doings and its members have become, from their relation to social science, a part of public history.

The pressure of life was off at Brook Farm, for the nonce. What anyone did that was out of the common, might cause smiles and laughter but no frowns or scoldings. Each felt and believed in the demonstration of his or her own individuality, and, as a first consequence, there was something that was often mistaken, by strangers, for rudeness and want of order. Some forgot that it was especially work they came for, and were anxious to have their theories discussed. Independence in dress was universal. The Mrs. Grandys were all away, and if the young ladies thought it was prettier to exhibit the grace of flowing tresses than to bind them up in "pugs" behind their heads, who should, who could, object?

Prim Margaret Fuller, who was a visitor—and never a member of the community as has often been stated—professed herself disturbed, at first, by the easy and perhaps indifferent manner in which they listened to her long conversations, as they sat on the floor or on crickets; but on a later visit, she expressed herself as better pleased. Doubtless some of the individual angularities had been rubbed off, by this time, by the pleasant but close contact of the Community life—and some of hers as well.

CHAPTER II.

THE SECOND DEVELOPMENT.

Two years of the experimental and "idyllic" life, ran rapidly away, and the Community had gained something of position and name in the outward world. Personal contact had modified the extreme views of many of the founders. Changes had taken place in the Individuals composing it; some had departed. Six of the original stockholders remained. The number had increased to about seventy, including some thirty who were pupils. The financial success had not been all that was desired. Everything else was getting more settled. The social life was charming. Improvements in material matters, in comforts, in discipline and in grace of manners were visible. But what was to be developed next among all the things desirable? Was it to push the school still further in progress, to attach mechanical industries to the organization, to work up the farm life into more prominence, or what?

It could not be expected that this large number of persons, whose early surroundings and ideas had been so varied, could at once agree as to what next steps were necessary to take, or to what definite end the Community should be shaped. There was need, certainly, of some central purpose strong enough for all to unite upon to inspire permanence.

Neither Mr. Ripley nor any of his co-workers had heard of Charles Fourier—the French exponent of industrial association—or his doctrines, unless in a most casual way, and certainly they had not studied them when they started the Community. They were independent workers in a field of social science; but when they became acquainted with his ideas, especially his ideas of industry made attractive by organized labor, and its relation to the higher standard of work and liberal belief they had adopted and maintained thus far, their enthusiasm was awakened for them and they resolved to graft some of his formulas on their institution. The little Community, with its bright, cheerful school and its happy members, was not paying its way. There were philosophers enough in it. There were plenty of sweet, charming characters and amateur workmen in it, but the hard-fisted toilers and the brave financiers were absent.

Still, it was not entirely absence of financial success that led the responsible men of the Community to make the change in the organization that they did, but truly because the grand and reasonable ideas of the distinguished Frenchman bore such internal evidences of harmony with human nature and with God's providence and laws that they carried conviction to the great and sympathetic minds of Brook Farm. Fourier argued that there was a sublime destiny for mankind on this earth, that the Creator was infinitely good, that all the instincts of our nature, when not subverted by bad conditions, pointed towards that destiny, and that humanity was on its way upward—that the past progress argued what the future might be.