And fired the shot heard round the world.”
In this city, Emerson resided until the day of his death, which occurred in Concord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.
HOME OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD, MASS.
It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the advanced thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits who were dissatisfied with the selfishness and shallowness of existing society, and, who had been led by him to dream of an ideal condition in which all should live as one family. Out of this grew the famous “Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea of Emerson’s, however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of founding such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson regarded this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus Christ; and, to put into practical operation this idea, a farm of about two hundred acres was bought at Roxbury, Mass., and a stock company was formed under the title of “The Brook Farm Institution of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined in the enterprise. The principle of the organization was coöperative, the members sharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of romancers, Chas. A. Dana, of the New York Tribune, Geo. W. Curtis, of Harper’s Monthly, Henry D. Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and writer of strange shadowy sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of her age, were prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said that Emerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and frequent visitor, as were other prominent scholars of the same school. The project was a failure. After five years of experience, some of the houses were destroyed by fire, the enterprise given up, and the membership scattered.
But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing together some of the best intellects in America, engaging them for five years in a common course of study, and stimulating a commerce of ideas. The breaking up of the community was better, perhaps, than its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered abroad the advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into every profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper, “The Dial,” (which was the organ of the society) its literature was transferred into a number of widely circulated national mediums.
Thus, it will be seen how Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” gathered around him and dominated, by his charming personality, his powerful mind, and his wholesome influence, some of the brightest minds that have figured in American literature; and how, through them, as well as his own writings, he has done so much, not only to lay the foundation of a new literature, but to mould and shape leading minds for generations to come. The Brook Farm idea was the uppermost thought in Edward Bellamy’s famous novel, “Looking Backward,” which created such a sensation in the reading world a few years since. The progressive thought of Emerson was father to the so-called “New Theology,” or “Higher Criticism,” of modern scholars and theologians. It is, perhaps, for the influence which Emerson has exerted, rather than his own works, that the literature of America is mostly indebted to him. It was through his efforts that the village of Concord has been made more famous in American letters than the city of New York.
The charm of Emerson’s personality has already been referred to,—and it is not strange that it should have been so great. His manhood, no less than his genius was worthy of admiration and of reverence. His life corresponded with his brave, cheerful and steadfast teachings. He “practiced what he preached.” His manners were so gentle, his nature so transparent, and his life so singularly pure and happy, that he was called, while he lived, “the good and great Emerson;” and, since his death, the memory of his life and manly example are among the cherished possessions of our literature.
The reverence of his literary associates was little less than worship. Amos Bronson Alcott,—father of the authoress, Louisa M. Alcott,—one of the Brook Farm members, though himself a profound scholar and several years Emerson’s senior, declared that it would have been his great misfortune to have lived without knowing Emerson, whom he styled, “The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ stops, delivers the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing them; then,—as his mood and matter invite it—dying like
Music of mild lutes