Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs

by John Thomas Codman

The walks ended where walks do that have no definite plan—anywhere in the woods, sitting on the boulders or the pine leaves, or in some shady nook where a topic would be found for discussion, or a pleasant book would be read. When the supper horn sounded, you found the absent ones together again, with bright, rosy faces and good appetites; and only a few of the younger folks would be late, who had strayed farther or walked slower, to enjoy the companionship of those of the same age; to listen to their sweet voices, and to linger, as only young folks love to linger.

The summer came on with joy and beauty. I recall the long waves of nodding grass, that swayed in the June wind and were chasing each other, fugue-like on the broad meadows. How beautiful it was, tipped with its various hues of green, yellow, red and purple, bending and rising as each breath of wind passed over it! The crops looked well, and the table was supplied with varieties of garden produce.

If you approached the farm in the middle of the forenoon, you wondered where all the people were, but at the sound of the first horn, half an hour before dinner, "from bush and briar and greensward shade" they would begin to start out like Robin Hood's men, and when the second horn was sounding, the daily, the tri-daily procession was fairly on the move, approaching the Hive from all sides. It was a very pretty and novel sight.

The men had been in the field planting, hoeing or weeding—the farmer's triad of duties in the vegetable field—and as they worked side by side, the questions of the day were discussed with freedom and with partisanship, but with good nature. The one who had a bias for art brought forward his art hobbies; the dress reformer aired his and the vegetarian argued his cause. Personal questions often came to the front—as how Smith probably voted in the Association meeting in the case of the admission of some mooted person; he was so sly you could not find out! And they quizzed one another, and they laughed and rivalled one another in speed of work, which they did faithfully and interestedly. It was a good school of human nature, and sooner or later each one was sized up with a deal of exactness. With the sounding of the horn the hoes were left in the field or put on the shoulder for the march to the barn, where, in its little room, the toilet for meals was made.

When I think under what disadvantages these toilers worked for five years, I wonder at their patience and firmness. What would our city families say to all going out from their apartments, male and female, young and old, and walking from an eighth to a quarter of a mile—often making their own path through the deep snow of our severe New England winters—three times each day, for the simple meals we had there to eat? What would they say to living in crowded rooms, without private parlors, and the public one at the Hive not much better than an office in a back country hotel, and the other disadvantages heretofore named and many more, simply for the principle of the thing?

Of course there was enthusiasm, and that sweetens many dull dishes; but for those used to home comforts, to be sandwiched in with comparative strangers—squeezed down, as it were, into a press—oftentimes having the family separated into various and disunited parts of the mansion or into different houses, was decidedly uncomfortable to bear.

These disadvantages could not but make the Association quite early decide that the one thing above all others needed was a new building with suites of rooms, where families could have the comforts and privacy of homes, which with a large kitchen, bakery, dining rooms, parlors, etc., would make a "unitary dwelling"; approximating to an apartment house of more modern days in many of its details, and improving on it as regards unitary cooking, dining and social conveniences.

The autumn fled rapidly away, and things had to be hurried up and put into shape for the winter. The gardener had no greenhouse, and was growling for fear the early frost might take a fancy to his plants. So the Association built him a temporary one in the "sand bank" by the side of the farm road, and the plan was to bend their energies towards getting the new dwelling started as early as possible in the spring, and to build a permanent greenhouse near it.

I do not know what passed in the General Direction during the winter. They were undoubtedly busy in endeavoring to obtain money for constructing the new building, preparing plans for its interior arrangement, and personally lecturing in various places, to aid in awakening the public to the new ideas, hoping also that some benefit might accrue to their organization, as well as to the cause, from their efforts.

The winter was mild, and it passed rapidly. There were coasting parties of young and old, but it was not often that the snow was favorable. There were literary societies, and we admired "the General" when he recited the part of the lean and hungry Cassius. He didn't stammer then, and he received the additional title of "Shakespeare's hero." These things, with reading, dancing and singing classes, an occasional "social" at the Hive, with private gatherings and chats around the kitchen fire by "Hiveites" (i.e., those living at the Hive), found us with spring at hand before we could realize it.