Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

You asked me to say something about the article in the Disciple. For myself, I freely confess that I think it a useful thing and correct. The vigor of my orthodoxy, which is commonly pretty susceptible, was not offended. Now, if you have any objections which you can accurately and definitely state, no doubt there is something in it which had escaped my notice. If your dislike is only a misty, uncertain feeling about something, you know not what, it were well to get fairly rid of it by the best means.

The same year he writes to his mother:

I am no partisan of any sect, but I must rejoice in seeing any progress towards the conviction that Christianity is indeed "glad tidings of great joy," and that in its original purity it was a very different thing from the system that is popularly preached, and which is still received as reasonable and scriptural by men and women, who in other respects are sensible and correct in their judgments. When shall we learn that without the spirit of Christ we are none of us His? I trust I am not becoming a partisan or a bigot. I have suffered enough, and too much, in sustaining those characters, in earlier, more inexperienced, and more ignorant years; but I have no prospects of earthly happiness more inviting than that of preaching the truth, with the humble hope of impressing it on the mind with greater force, purity, and effect than I could do with any other than my present conviction.

In 1840 the ministry was abandoned forever, for more secular pursuits. After 1849 his activities were wholly literary; he had no connection with theology, and none who did not know his past suspected that he had once been a clergyman.

The same cast of thought, not "pale" in his case, suffused his action at Brook Farm and made a Utopia quiet, calm, dignified, pervaded by the radiance of mind, the gentle enthusiasm of the intellect. The heat came in the main from other sources. He was receptive rather than original, inflammable rather than fiery, brilliant rather than warm. The heat was supplied by those near him, by those he trusted, and by those he loved. Not that he was deficient in concern for society; far from it; but his interest was more philosophical than philanthropic. The subject of an association that should combine intellectual and mechanical labor and should diminish the distance between the tiller of the ground and the educator was agitated among the thinkers he was intimate with. Dr. Channing had such a project at heart. Mrs. Ripley burned with humane anticipations. Plans for social regeneration were in the air. It was impossible for one who lived in the midst of ardent spirits, or was sensitive to fine impressions, or was cultivated in an ideal wisdom that was not of this world, to escape the contagion of this kind of optimism; Emerson was saved by his belief in individual growth; Parker by his steady common-sense; others were protected by their conservatism of temperament or of association, by their want of courage, or their want of faith; but men and women of ideal propensities, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, W. H. Channing, J. S. Dwight, joined the community, which promised a new era for Humanity. Mr. Ripley would probably have left the ministry at any rate, for it had become distasteful to him, but it is not likely that he would have undertaken the management of Brook Farm unless he had been assured of its success; for he was a New England youth by birth and by disposition, prudent, careful, thrifty; his very enthusiasm was of the New England type, the product of theological ideas, a creation of the gospels, a desire to introduce the "Kingdom of Heaven," a continuance of the prophetic calling. New England is as noted for its fanaticism as it is for its theology. Its fanaticism is the offspring of its theology, and in proportion as its theology disappears its fanaticism decreases. In Mr. Ripley's case the theology had reached very near to its last attenuation and the fanaticism had tapered off into a gentle enthusiasm. He undertook to establish a kingdom of heaven on earth because he had given up the expectation of a kingdom of heaven in the skies; and he undertook to establish a kingdom of heaven on earth by rational, economic means, not by religious interventions. He was subject to that peculiar kind of excitement that comes to a few people in connection with the keen exercise of their intellectual powers, when they have laid hold of what seems to them a principle—an excitement that is easily mistaken for moral earnestness even by one who is under its influence, which, indeed, lies so close to moral earnestness as to feel quickly the effect of moral earnestness in others, notwithstanding the checks applied by practical wisdom. Mr. Ripley had struck on a theory of society, which at that time was passing from the phase of feeling into the phase of philosophy. The theory was in the air; the most susceptible spirits were full of it; all noble impulses were in its favor, it belonged to the order of thought he had attained; it was native to the aspirations that inflamed the men and women with whom he was most intimate; their feelings awoke his intellect, and he was carried away by a stream whereof he appeared to himself to be a tributary and whereof he appeared to others as the main current, on account of his impetuosity, and the vigor with which he proceeded to put the idea into practice. In his own mind he was realizing the dream of the New Testament, but, in fact, he was testing a principle of which the New Testament was quite unconscious, the modern principle of the equal destinies of all men. He had abandoned the New Testament ground of allegiance to Jehovah, and had adopted the human ground of fidelity to social law. He was still under the spell of religious emotions, but they had become merged in the abstractions of rationalism and merely lent an added glow to his ideas, so that he could readily imagine that he was actuated by spiritual convictions when, in fact, he was doing duty as a disciple of socialist philosophers. His own interest in Brook Farm was in the main speculative, though through his personal sympathies he was moved toward an enterprise that had moral ends in view.

Once embarked in it, he gave his whole mind to its accomplishment,—all his industry, all his organizing talent, all his high sense of duty. He worked day and night; he wrote letters; he answered inquiries; he mastered the science of agriculture; he did the labor of a practical farmer; he maintained the supervision of the strange family that gathered about him. Very remarkable was his success in keeping the intellectual side uppermost, in keeping clear of the temptations to give way to instinctive leanings. His associations were with books and study and bright people. He brought the most brilliant men and women of the day to the place. He awakened the interest of the general community. He diffused an atmosphere of cheerful hope around the experiment. It is easy to make sport of Brook Farm; to laugh at the odd folks who came there; to ridicule their motives and actions; to repeat stories of extravagant conduct; to tell of the eccentric behavior of men and maidens who were right-minded but impulsive; to follow spontaneousness to its results; to trace the course of unrestricted liberty. But it is not fair to remember these things as peculiarities of Brook Farm, as incidents of its conception, or as incidents that were agreeable to Mr. Ripley. He exerted the whole weight of his character against them. He watched and guarded. We do not hear of him in connection with the scandals, the laxities, or the frolics. His efforts were directed to the supremacy of ideas over instinct, the idea of a regenerated society, something very different from joyousness, or merriment, or the fun of having a good time. He, too, was gay; he felt the delight of freedom; but his gayety was born of happy confidence in the principle at stake, his delight was connected with the advent of a new method of intercourse among men. I remember hearing him once deliver a speech in Boston. In it he spoke of the "foolishness of preaching," and avowed his willingness to be a pioneer in the task of breaking out a new future for humanity, a ditcher and delver in the work of constructing the new building of God. He had the coming time continually in view. Others might enjoy themselves, others might grow tired of waiting, but he held smiling on his way, determined to carry out the idea to the end. There was something grand in the steady intellectual force with which he did his best to carry through a principle that commanded more and more the assent of his reason. When the demonstration of Charles Fourier was laid before him, no argument was required to persuade him to adopt it. He took it up with all his energy; his enthusiasm rose to a higher pitch than ever; the rationale of the movement was revealed to him, and apparently he saw for the first time the full significance of the scheme he had been conducting. The impelling power of an intellectual conviction was never more splendidly illustrated. Nobody discerned so clearly as he did the financial hopelessness of the experiment. Nobody felt the burden of responsibility as he felt it. Yet he did not flinch for a moment, and his patient assumption of the indebtedness at last had the stamp of real heroism upon it. His renewal of the most painful traditions of "Grub Street" until the liabilities of Brook Farm were cleared off is one of the noble histories, a history that cannot be told in detail because of the modesty which has left no record of toil undergone or duty done. The old simile of the sun struggling with clouds, and gradually clearing itself as the day wears on, best illustrates my view of this man's accomplishment. There were the clouds of orthodoxy which were burned away at Cambridge. Then came the clouds of Unitarian divinity, which were dispelled by the transcendental philosophy. These were succeeded by the dark vapors of the ministry, and these by the sentimental philanthropy of New England rationalism. At length his intellect broke through these obscurations and showed what it truly was.

On the failure of Brook Farm and the final dismissal of all plans for creating society anew, Mr. Ripley's faculties emerged in their full strength. The New England element was withdrawn. There was no longer thought for theology or reform, but solely for knowledge and literature. In Boston he had taken on himself every opprobrious epithet. In his final letter to his congregation he avows his interest in temperance, anti-slavery, peace, the projects for breaking down social distinctions; simply, it would seem, because his philosophy, falling in with popular sentiment, pointed that way; for he was never publicly identified with any of these causes, or ranked by reformers in the order of innovators. Indeed, one of the old Abolitionists told me that she had never associated him with the anti-slavery people, though her family went to his church. In New York there was no pretence of this kind. The devotion to literature absorbed his attention. His democratic concern for the workingmen continued, but in a theoretical manner, if we may judge from the fact that he took no part in domestic or foreign demonstrations, that he made no speech, attended no meeting, consorted with no social reformers, did not even keep up his intimacy with the original leaders of socialism in this country. When the sadness of his first wife's death was over, and the drudgery of toil was ended, he was happier than he had ever been. No time was wasted; no talent was misused. Mental labor was incessant, but in performing it there was pure delight. It is usual to think of his early life as his best, and there were some who regarded him as an extinct volcano; but I am of the opinion that his latter years were his most characteristic, and that he was most entirely himself when his intellectual nature came to its full play. In proportion as the "olden thoughts, the spirit's pall," fell off, he became peaceful and sweet; his view backward and forward became clear, his purpose steady, his will serene. The past was distasteful to him and he seldom alluded to it; but as one puts his childhood and his age together, a steady development is seen to run through both. His could not be a cloudless day, but he went on from glory to glory. His age more than justified the promise of his youth. In his latter years he befriended aspiring young men; he made literature a power in America; he threw a dignity around toil; he associated knowledge with happiness, and rendered light and love harmonious. His favorite author was Goethe, the apostle of culture. His familiarity with Sainte-Beuve, the master of literary criticism, was so great, that on occasion of that writer's decease, he sat down and wrote an account of him without recourse to books. Though without knowledge of art, destitute of taste for music, and deficient in æsthetic appreciation, his sympathy was so large and true that these deficiencies were not felt. The intellectual sunshine was shed over the entire nature, and the book was so universal that it seemed to embrace everything.

This is the property of pure mind, rarely seen in such perfection of lucidity. Such a mind is at once conservative and radical; conservative as treasuring the past, radical as anticipating improvement in the future. There is nothing like fanaticism, but a bright look in every direction, a place for all sorts of accomplishments, hospitality to each new invention, a radiant acceptance of all temperaments. The mind cannot be superstitious, for it cannot believe that divine powers are identified with material objects or occasional accidents; it cannot be ever sanguine as those are who indulge in abstract visions of good, for it knows that progress is very slow and gradual, and that the welfare of mankind is advanced by the process of civilization, by cultivation, acquirement, refinement, the gains of wealth, elegance, and delicacy of taste. It judges by rational standards, not by sentimental feelings, accepting imperfection as the inevitable condition of human affairs and bounded characters. It is not exposed to the convulsions that accompany even the most exalted moods, but calmly labors and quietly hopes for the future.

I do not say that George Ripley was such a mind, merely that his tendency was in that direction. He was limited by traditions; he had too many prejudices. The axioms of the transcendental philosophy clung to him. The shreds of religion hung about him. He could not divest himself of the ancient clerical memories and ways, nor wholly throw off the mantle of personal sympathy he had so long worn. He was not completely secular.

That he was a perfect man is less evident still. His sunny quality was due in some degree to a happy temperament, and was subject to the eclipses that darken the blandest natures, and render sombre the most hilarious spirits. He lacked the steadfast courage of conviction, was somewhat over-prudent and timid, afraid of pain, of popular disapproval, of criticism and opposition. This may have been due in part to his frequent disappointments and the carefulness they forced upon him, to the distrust in his own judgment which he had occasion to learn, and the necessity of confining his action to the point immediately before him. But I am inclined to think that this apprehensiveness was constitutional. If it is suggested by way of objection that the bold experiment of Brook Farm, made in the face of obloquy and derision, indicated moral courage of a high stamp, I would remind the critic of the warm approbation of his friends, and the confident expectation of success on the part of those he was intimate with. His wife not merely gave him her countenance but stimulated his zeal, and surrounded him every day with an atmosphere of faith. He had the applause of Dr. Channing, and the support of his brilliant nephew. Men like Hawthorne, Ellis Gray Loring, George Stearns, not to mention others, urged him on. His own well-beloved sister was one of his ardent coadjutors. He had hopes of Emerson. In short, so far from being alone, he stood in an influential company, and instead of his being altogether unpopular was encompassed by the good-will of those he prized most. It would have required courage to resist such influences. Besides, he was inflated by a momentary enthusiasm which carried him along in spite of himself and would not allow his judgment to work. A sudden storm struck him, lifted unusual waves, caused unexampled spurts of foam, made the ordinarily quiet water boisterous and dangerous, and threw long lines of breakers on the coast, so that what was a still lake became of a sudden a tempestuous sea. One must not hastily imagine that the water had become an ocean, or that it was really an Atlantic formerly supposed to be a pool.