Literary Shrines: The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors

by Theodore F. Wolfe

In Thoreau's time, a modest dwelling, with a low roof sloping to the rear,—now removed to the other side of the street,—stood directly opposite his home, and was for some time the abode of his friend and earliest biographer, the sweet poet William Ellery Channing. Thoreau thought Channing one of the few who understood "the art of taking walks," and the two were almost constant companions in saunterings through the countryside, or in idyllic excursions upon the river in the boat which Thoreau kept moored to a riverside willow at the foot of Channing's garden. The beneficent influence of their comradeship is apparent in the work of both these recluse writers, and many of the most charming of Channing's stanzas are either inspired by or are poetic portrayals of the scenes he saw with Thoreau,—the "Rudolpho" and the "Idolon" of his verse. Thoreau's last earthly "Excursion" was with this friend to Monadnoc, where they encamped some days in 1860. To this home of Channing came, in 1855, Sanborn, who was welcomed to Concord by all the literary galaxy, and quickly became a familiar associate of each particular star. To go swimming together seems to have been, among these earnest and exalted thinkers, the highest evidence of mutual esteem, and so favored was Sanborn that he is able to record, "I have swum with Alcott in Thoreau's Cove, with Thoreau in the Assabet, with Channing in every water of Concord."

In this home Sanborn entertained John Brown on the eve of his Virginia venture; here escaping slaves found refuge; here fugitives from the Harper's Ferry fight were concealed; here Sanborn was arrested for supposed complicity in Brown's abortive schemes, and was forcibly rescued by his indignant neighbors. This modest dwelling gave place to the later residence of Frederic Hudson, the historian of journalism, who here produced many of his contributions to literature. Professor Folsom, of "Translations of the Four Gospels," and the popular authoress Mrs. Austin have also lived in this neighborhood.

For some years Sanborn had a famous select school on a street back of Thoreau's house, not far from the recent hermit-home of his friend Channing, at whose request Hawthorne sent some of his children to this school, in which Emerson's daughter—the present Mrs. Forbes—was a beloved pupil, and where, also, the daughters of John Brown were for some time placed.

A few rods westward from his former dwelling we find Sanborn in a tasteful modern villa,—spending life's early autumn among his books. He abounds with memories of his friends of the by-gone time, and his reminiscences and biographies of some of them have largely employed his pen in his pleasant study here.

Some time ago the sweet singer Channing suffered in his hermitage a severe illness, which prompted his appreciative friend Sanborn to take him into his own home; so we find two surviving witnesses or participants in the moral, intellectual, and political renaissance dwelling under the same roof. In the kindly atmosphere of this home, the shy poet—who in his age is more recluse than ever, and scarce known to his neighbors—so far regained physical vigor that he has resumed his frequent visits to the Boston library, long time a favorite haunt of his. The world refused to listen to this exquisite singer, and now "his songs have ceased." He has been celebrated by Emerson in the "Dial," by Thoreau in his "Week," by Hawthorne in "Mosses" and "Note-Books," by the generous and sympathetic Sanborn in many ways and places; but even such poems as "Earth-Spirit," "Poet's Hope," and "Reverence" found few readers,—the dainty little volumes fewer purchasers.

Below the Thoreau-Alcott house on the village street was a prior home of Thoreau, from which he made, with his brother, the voyage described in his "Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," and from which, in superb disdain of "civilization" and social conventionalities, he went to the two years' hermitage of "Walden."

Nearly opposite the earlier residence of the stoic is the home of the Hoars, where lived Thoreau's comrade Edward Hoar, and Edward's sister,—styled "Elizabeth the Wise" by Emerson, of whom she was the especial friend and favorite, having been the fiancée of his brother Charles, who died in early manhood. The adjacent spacious mansion was long the home of Wheildon, the historian, essayist, and pamphleteer. Nearer the village Common lived John A. Stone, dramatist of "The Ancient Briton" and of the "Metamora" in which Forrest won his first fame. In this part of the village the eminent correspondent "Warrington," author of "Manual of Parliamentary Law," was born and reared; and in Lowell Street, not far away, lives the gifted George B. Bartlett, of the "Carnival of Authors,"—poet, scenic artist, and local historian.

In the public library we find copies of the printed works of the many Concord authors, and portraits or busts of most of the writers. Among the treasures of the institution are priceless manuscripts of Curtis, Motley, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and others.

Among the thickly-strewn graves on the hill-side above the Common repose the ashes of Emerson's ancestors; about them lie the fore-fathers of the settlement,—some of them asleep here for two centuries, reckless alike of the resistance to British oppression and of the later struggle for freedom of thought which their townsmen have waged. A tree on the Common is pointed out as that beneath which Emerson made an address at the dedication of the soldiers' monument, and Bartlett records the tradition that the grandfather of the Concord sage stood on the same spot a hundred years before to harangue the "embattled farmers" on the morning of the Concord fight.

Near by is the ancient church where Emerson's ancestors preached, and within whose framework the Provincial Congress met. Of the religious services here Emerson was always a supporter, often an attendant; here he sometimes preached in early manhood; here his children were christened by the elder Channing,—"the first minister he had known who was as good as they;" here Emerson's daughter is a devout worshipper.