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LITERARY SHRINES
FIFTH EDITION
* * * * * *
_BY DR. WOLFE_
Uniform with this volume
A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE
AMONG THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS
_Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the homes and resorts of
English writers from the time of Chaucer to the present, and of the
scenes commemorated in their works_
262 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25
A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES
Two volumes in a box, $2.50
* * * * * *
[Illustration: THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD]
LITERARY SHRINES
The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors
by
THEODORE F. WOLFE
M.D. PH.D.
Author of A Literary Pilgrimage etc.
J. B. Lippincott Company
Philadelphia. MDCCCXCV
Copyright, 1895,
By
Theodore F. Wolfe.
Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
TO
MY WIFE,
MY SYMPATHETIC AND APPRECIATIVE
COMPANION IN PILGRIMAGES
TO MANY
LITERARY SHRINES
IN THE NEW WORLD AND THE OLD,
THIS VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE
For some years it has been the delightful privilege of the writer of the
present volume to ramble and sojourn in the scenes amid which his
best-beloved authors erst lived and wrote. He has made repeated
pilgrimages to most of the shrines herein described, and has been, at
one time or another, favored by intercourse and correspondence with many
of the authors adverted to or with their surviving friends and
neighbors. In the ensuing pages he has endeavored to portray these
shrines in pen-pictures which, it is hoped, may be interesting to those
who are unable to visit them and helpful and companionable for those who
can and will. If certain prominent American authors receive little more
than mention in these pages, it is mainly because so few objects and
places associated with their lives and writings can now be indisputably
identified: in some instances the writer has expended more time upon
fruitless quests for shrines which proved to be non-existent or of
doubtful genuineness than upon others which are themes for the chapters
of this booklet.
T. F. W.
CONTENTS
THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE
PAGE
I. A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES.
_Abodes of Thoreau--The Alcotts--Channing--Sanborn--Hudson--Hoar--
Wheildon--Bartlett--The Historic Common--Cemetery--Church_ 17
II. THE OLD MANSE.
_Abode of Dr. Ripley--The Emersons--Hawthorne--Learned Mrs.
Ripley--Its Famed Study and Apartments--Grounds--Guests--Ghosts--
A Transcendental Social Court_ 28
III. A STORIED RIVER AND BATTLE-FIELD.
_Where Zenobia Drowned--Where Embattled Farmers Fought--Thoreau's
Hemlocks--Haunts of Hawthorne--Channing--Thoreau--Emerson, etc._ 39
IV. THE HOME OF EMERSON.
_An Intellectual Capitol and Pharos--Its Grounds, Library, and
Literary Workshop--Famous Rooms and Visitants--Relics and
Reminiscences of the Concord Sage_ 45
V. THE ORCHARD HOUSE AND ITS NEIGHBORS.
_Ellery Channing--Margaret Fuller--The Alcotts--Professor
Harris--Summer School of Philosophy--Where Little Women was
written and Robert Hagburn lived--Where Cyril Norton was slain_ 52
VI. HAWTHORNE'S WAYSIDE HOME.
_Sometime Abode of Alcott--Hawthorne--Lathrop--Margaret Sidney--
Storied Apartments--Hawthorne's Study--His Mount of Vision--Where
Septimius Felton and Rose Garfield dwelt_ 58
VII. THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.
_A Transcendental Font--Emerson's Garden--Thoreau's
Cove--Cairn--Beanfield--Resort of Emerson--Hawthorne--Channing--
Hosmer--Alcott, etc._ 68
VIII. THE HILL-TOP HEARSED WITH PINES.
_Last Resting-Place of the Illustrious Concord Company--Their
Graves beneath the Piny Boughs_ 75
IN AND OUT OF LITERARY BOSTON
IN BOSTON
_A Golden Age of Letters--Literary Associations--Isms--Clubs--Where
Hester Prynne and Silas Lapham lived--The Corner Book-store--Home
of Fields--Sargent--Hilliard--Aldrich--Deland--Parkman--Holmes--
Howells--Moulton--Hale--Howe--Jane Austin, etc._ 83
OUT OF BOSTON
I. CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN.
_Holmes's Church-yard--Bridge--Smithy, Chapel, and River of
Longfellow's Verse--Abodes of Lettered Culture--Holmes--
Higginson--Agassiz--Norton--Clough--Howells--Fuller--
Longfellow--Lowell--Longfellow's City of the Dead and its
Precious Graves_ 103
II. BELMONT: THE WAYSIDE INN: HOME OF WHITTIER.
_Lowell's Beaver Brook--Abode of Trowbridge--Red Horse Tavern--
Parsons and the Company of Longfellow's Friends--Birthplace of
Whittier--Scenes of his Poems--Dwelling and Grave of the
Countess--Powow Hill--Whittier's Amesbury Home--His Church and
Tomb_ 117
III. SALEM: WHITTIER'S OAK-KNOLL AND BEYOND.
_Cemetery of Hawthorne's Ancestors--Birthplace of Hawthorne and his
Wife--Where Fame was won--House of the Seven Gables--
Custom-House--Where Scarlet Letter was written--Main Street
and Witch Hill--Sights from a Steeple--Later Home of Whittier--
Norman's Woe--Lucy Larcom--Parton, etc.--Rivermouth--Thaxter_ 128
IV. WEBSTER'S MARSHFIELD: BROOK FARM, ETC.
_Scenes of the Old Oaken Bucket--Webster's Home and Grave--Where
Emerson won his Wife--Home of Miss Peabody--Parkman--Miss
Guiney--Aldrich's Ponkapog--Farm of Ripley's Community--Relics
and Reminiscences_ 141
IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE
I. THE GRAYLOCK AND HOOSAC REGION.
_North Adams and about--Hawthorne's Acquaintances and Excursions--
Actors and Incidents of Ethan Brand--Kiln of Bertram the
Lime-Burner--Natural Bridge--Graylock--Thoreau--Hoosac
Mountain--Deerfield Arch--Williamstown--Bryant_ 155
II. LENOX AND MIDDLE BERKSHIRE.
_Beloved of the Litterateurs--La Maison Rouge--Where The House of
the Seven Gables was written--Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Scenes--
The Bowl--Beecher's Laurel Lake--Kemble--Bryant's Monument
Mountain--Stockbridge--Catherine Sedgwick--Melville's Piazza
and Chimney--Holmes--Longfellow--Pittsfield_ 176
A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET
_Walk and Talk with Socrates in Camden--The Bard's Appearance and
Surroundings--Recollections of his Life and Work--Hospital
Service--Praise for his Critics--His Literary Habit, Purpose,
Equipment, and Style--His Religious Bent--Readings_ 201
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Wayside, Concord _Frontispiece._
The Thoreau-Alcott House,--Present Appearance 21
The Grave of Emerson 78
Where Longfellow lived 108
THE CONCORD PILGRIMAGE
I. A Village of Literary Shrines
II. The Old Manse
III. Storied River and Battle-field
IV. The Home of Emerson
V. Alcott's Orchard House, etc.
VI. Hawthorne's Wayside Home
VII. The Walden of Thoreau
VIII. The Hill-top Hearsed with Pines
I
A VILLAGE OF LITERARY SHRINES
_Abodes of Thoreau--The Alcotts--Channing--Sanborn--Hudson--Hoar--
Wheildon--Bartlett--The Historic Common--Cemetery--Church._
If to trace the footsteps of genius and to linger and muse in the
sometime haunts of the authors we read and love, serve to bring us
nearer their personality, to place us _en rapport_ with their
aspirations, and thus to incite our own spiritual development and
broaden and exalt our moral nature, then the Concord pilgrimage should
be one of the most fruitful and beneficent of human experiences.
Familiarity with the physical stand-point of our authors, with the
scenes amid which they lived and wrote, and with the objects which
suggested the imagery of their poems, the settings of their tales, and
which gave tone and color to their work, will not only bring us into
closer sympathy with the writers, but will help us to a better
understanding of the writings.
A plain, straggling village, set in a low country amid a landscape
devoid of any striking beauty or grandeur, Concord yet attracts more
pilgrims than any other place of equal size upon the continent, not
because it holds an historic battle-field, but because it has been the
dwelling-place of some of the brightest and best in American letters,
who have here written their books and warred against creeds, forms, and
intellectual servitude. It is another Stratford, another Mecca, to which
come reverent pilgrims from the Old World and the New to worship at its
shrines and to wander through the scenes hallowed by the memories of its
illustrious _litterateurs_, seers, and evangels. To the literary prowler
it is all sacred ground,--its streets, its environing hills, forests,
lakes, and streams have alike been blessed by the loving presence of
genius, have alike been the theatres and the inspirations of noble
literary achievement.
Our way lies by historic Lexington, and thence, through a pleasant
country and by the road so fateful to the British soldiery, we approach
Concord. It is a placid, almost somnolent village of villas, abounding
with delightful lawns and gardens, with great elms shading its
old-fashioned thoroughfares and drooping their pliant boughs above its
comfortable homes.
Elizabeth Hoar has said, "Concord is Thoreau's monument, adorned with
inscriptions by his hand;" of the circle of brilliant souls who have
given the town its world-wide fame, he alone was native here; he has
left his imprint upon the place, and we meet some reminder of him at
every turn. By the historic village Common is the quondam home of his
grandfather, where his father was reared, and where the "New England
Essene" himself lived some time with the unmarried aunt who made the
ample homespun suit he wore at Walden. The house of his maternal
grandmother, where Henry David Thoreau was born, stood a little way out
on a by-road to Lexington, and a daughter of this home--Thoreau's
winsome aunt Louisa Dunbar--was ineffectually wooed by the famous Daniel
Webster. At the age of eight months the infant Thoreau was removed to
the village, in which nearly the whole of his life was passed. Believing
that Concord, with its sylvan environment, was a microcosm "by the study
of which the whole world could be comprehended," this wildest of
civilized men seldom strayed beyond its familiar precincts. Alcott
declared that Thoreau thought he dwelt in the centre of the universe,
and seriously contemplated annexing the rest of the planet to Concord.
On the south side of the elm-shaded Main street of the village we find a
pleasant and comfortable, old-fashioned wooden dwelling,--the home
which, in his later years, the philosopher, poet, and mystic shared with
his mother and sisters. About it are great trees which Thoreau planted;
a stairway and some of the partition walls of the house are said to have
been erected by him. In the second story of an extension at the back of
the main edifice, some of the family worked at their father's trade of
pencil-making. In the large room at the right of the entrance, afterward
the sitting-room of the Alcotts, some of Thoreau's later writing was
done, and here, one May morning of 1862, he breathed out a life all too
brief and doubtless abbreviated by the storms and drenchings endured in
his pantheistic pursuits. In this house Thoreau's "spiritual brother,"
John Brown of Osawatomie, was a welcome guest, and more than one
wretched fugitive from slavery found shelter and protection. From
his village home Thoreau made, with the poet Ellery Channing, the
journey described in his "Yankee in Canada," and several shorter
"Excursions,"--shared with Edward Hoar, Channing, and others,--which he
has detailed in the delightful manner which gives him a distinct
position in American literature.
[Illustration: THE THOREAU-ALCOTT HOUSE]
After the removal of Sophia, the last of Thoreau's family, his friend
Frank B. Sanborn occupied the Thoreau house for some years, and then
it became the home of the Alcott family. Here Mrs. Alcott, the "Marmee"
of "Little Women," died; here Bronson Alcott was stricken with the fatal
paralysis; here commenced the malady which contributed to the death of
his illustrious daughter Louisa; here lived "Meg," the mother of the
"Little Men" and widow of "John Brooke" of the Alcott books; and here
now lives her son, while his brother, "Demi-John," dwells just around
the corner in the next street. In the room at the left of the hall,
fitted up for her study and workshop, Louisa Alcott wrote some of the
tales which the world will not forget. An added apartment at the right
of the sitting-room was long the sick-room of the Orphic philosopher and
the scene of Louisa's tender care. Here the writer saw them both for the
last time: Alcott helpless upon his couch, his bright intelligence
dulled by a veil of darkness; the daughter at his bedside, sedulous of
his comfort, devoted, hopeful, helpful to the end. A cherished memento
of that interview is a photograph of the Thoreau-Alcott mansion, made by
one of the "Little Men," and presented to the writer, with her latest
book, by "Jo" herself. The front fence has since been removed, and the
illustration shows the present view.
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 _fiancee_ 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.
The comparatively few of the transcendental company who prayed within a
pew came to this temple, but here all were brought at last for funeral
rites: here lay Thoreau among his thronging townsmen while Emerson and
Bronson Alcott made their touching eulogies and Ellery Channing read a
dirge in a voice almost hushed with emotion; here James Freeman Clarke,
who had married Hawthorne twenty-two years before, preached his funeral
sermon above the lifeless body which bore upon its breast the unfinished
"Dolliver Romance;" before the pulpit here lay the coffined
Emerson,--"his eyes forever closed, his voice forever still,"--while a
vast concourse looked upon him for the last time, and his neighbor Judge
Hoar pronounced one of the most impressive panegyrics that ever fell
from human lips, and the devoted Alcott read a sonnet.
II
THE OLD MANSE
_Abode of Dr. Ripley--The Emersons--Hawthorne--Learned Mrs. Ripley--Its
Famed Study and Apartments--Grounds--Guests--Ghosts--A Transcendental
Social Court._
Northward from the village Common, a delightful stroll along a shaded
highway, less secluded now than when Hawthorne "daily trudged" upon it
to the post-office or trundled the carriage of "baby Una," brings us to
the famous "Old Manse" about which he culled his "Mosses."
This antique mansion was first tenanted by Ralph Waldo Emerson's
grandsire, and next by Dr. Ezra Ripley, who married the previous
occupant's widow and became guardian of her children,--born under its
roof,--of whom Emerson's father was one. When his father died Emerson
found a secondary home here with Dr. Ripley. The Manse was again the
abode of Emerson and his mother in 1834-35, when he here wrote his first
volume. In 1842, the year following the demise of the good Dr. Ripley,
the Manse was profaned by its first lay occupant, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
He brought here his bride, lovely Sophia Peabody (who, with the gifted
Elizabeth and Mrs. Horace Mann, formed a famous triune sisterhood), and
for four years lived here the ideal life of which his "Note-Books" and
"Mosses" give us such delicious glimpses. Hawthorne's landlord, Samuel
Ripley, was related to the George Ripley with whom Hawthorne had
recently been associated at Brook Farm. He was uncle of Emerson, and
preached his ordination sermon; was himself reared in the old Manse, and
succeeded Hawthorne as resident there. His widow, born Sarah Bradford,
and celebrated as "the most learned woman ever seen in New England," the
close friend of Emerson and of the brilliant Concord company, survived
here until 1876. She made a valuable collection of lichens, and
sometimes trained young men for Harvard University. Conway records that
a _savant_ called here one day and found her hearing at once the lesson
of one student in Sophocles and that of another in Differential
Calculus, while rocking her grandchild's cradle with one foot and
shelling peas for dinner. The place is now owned by her daughters, who
reside in Cambridge, and is rented in summer.
It is little changed since the time Emerson's ancestor hurried thence to
the gathering of his parishioners by his church-door before the Concord
battle,--still less changed since the halcyon days when the great wizard
of romance dwelt--the "most unknown of authors"--within its shades. It
is still the unpretentious Eden, "the El Dorado for dreamers," which so
completely won the heart of the sensitive Hawthorne.
The picturesque old mansion stands amid greensward and foliage, its
ample grounds divided from the highway by a low wall. The gate-way is
flanked by tall posts of rough-hewn stone, whence a grass-grown avenue,
bordered by a colonnade of overarching trees, leads to the house. Within
the scattered sunshine and shade of the avenue, a row of stone slabs
sunken in the turf like gravestones paves the path paced by Ripley,
Emerson, and Hawthorne as they pondered and planned their compositions.
Of the trees aligned upon either side, some, gray-lichened and broken,
are survivors of Hawthorne's time; others are set to replace fallen
patriarchs and keep the stately lines complete. At the right of the
broad _allee_ and extending away to the battle-ground is the field,
waving now with lush grass, where Hawthorne and Thoreau found the flint
arrow-heads and other relics of an aboriginal village. Upon the space
which skirts the other side of the avenue, Hawthorne had the garden
which engaged so much of his time and thought, and where he produced
for us abundant crops of something better than his vegetables. Here his
Brook-Farm experience was useful. Passing neighbors would often see the
darkly-clad figure of the recluse hoeing in this "patch," or, as often,
standing motionless, gazing upon the ground so fixedly and so
long--sometimes for hours together--that they thought him daft. Of the
delights of summer mornings spent here with his peas, potatoes, and
squashes, he gives us many glimpses in his record of that happy time;
but the "Note-Books" show us, alas! that this simple pleasure was not
without alloy, for, although his "garden flourished like Eden," there
are hints of "weeds," next "more weeds," then a "ferocious banditti of
weeds" with which "the other Adam" could never have contended. But a
greater woe came with the foes who menaced his artistic squashes,--"the
unconscionable squash-bugs," "those infernal squash-bugs," against which
he must "carry on continual war." For the moments that we contemplate
the scene of his entomic warfare, the greater battle-field, a few rods
away, seems hardly more impressive. Few of the trees which in
Hawthorne's time stood nearest the house remain; the producers of the
peaches and "thumping pears" have gone the way of all trees. So has Dr.
Ripley's famous willow--celebrated in Emerson's and Channing's exquisite
verse and in Hawthorne's matchless prose--which veiled the western face
of the mansion and through which Hawthorne's study-windows peeped out
upon orchard, river, and mead. In the orchard that has borne such
luscious fruit of fancy, some of the contorted and moss-grown trees,
whose branches--"like withered hands and arms"--hold out the sweet
blossoms on this June day, are the same that Hawthorne pictures among
his "Mosses," and beneath which he lay in summer reverie. Few vines now
clamber upon the house-walls, lilacs still grow beneath the old
study-window, and a tall mass of their foliage screens a corner of the
venerable edifice, which time has toned into perfect harmony with its
picturesque environment. It is a great, square, wooden structure of two
stories, with added attic rooms beneath an overwhelming gambrel roof,
which is the conspicuous feature of the edifice and contributes to its
antique form. The heavy roof settles down close upon the small,
multipaned windows. From above the door little convex glasses, like a
row of eyes, look out upon the visitor as he applies for admission.
A spacious central hall, rich in antique panelling and sombre with grave
tints, extends through the house. From its dusk and coolness we look out
upon the bright summer day through its open doors; through one we see
the "hill of the Emersons" beyond the highway, the other frames a
pleasing picture of orchard and sward with glimpses of the river shining
through its bordering shrubbery. The quaint apartments are darkly
wainscoted and low-ceiled, with massive beams crossing overhead. Some of
these rooms Hawthorne has shown us. The one at the left, which the
novelist believed to have been the sleeping-room of Dr. Ripley, was the
parlor of the Hawthornes, and--decked with a gladsome carpet, pictures,
and flowers daily gathered from the river-bank--Hawthorne averred it was
"one of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms in the whole world." To this
room then came the sage Emerson "with a sunbeam in his face;" the
"cast-iron man" Thoreau, "long-nosed, queer-mouthed, ugly as sin," but
with whom to talk "is like hearing the wind among the boughs of a forest
tree;" Ellery Channing, with his wife and her illustrious sister,
Margaret Fuller; the gifted George William Curtis, then tilling a farm
not far from the Manse, long before he lounged in an "Easy Chair;"
genial Bradford, relative of Ripley, and associate and firm friend of
Hawthorne; Horatio Bridge, of the "African Cruiser" and of the recent
Hawthorne "Recollections;" the critic George Hillard, at whose house
Hawthorne was married; "Prince" Lowell, the large-hearted; Franklin
Pierce, Hawthorne's life-long friend. Concerning the discussion of
things physical and metaphysical, to which these old walls then
listened, the host gives us little hint. Sometimes the guests were
"feasted on nectar and ambrosia" by the new Adam and Eve; sometimes they
"listened to the music of the spheres which, for private convenience, is
packed into a music-box,"--left here by Thoreau when he went to teach in
the family of Emerson's brother; once here before this wide fireplace
they sat late and told ghost stories,--doubtless suggested by the
clerical phantom whose sighs they used to hear in yonder dusky corner,
and whose rustling gown sometimes almost touched the company as he moved
about among them. In this room Dr. Ripley penned, besides his "History
of the Concord Fight" and "Treatise on Education," three thousand of his
protracted homilies,--a fact upon which Hawthorne found it "awful to
reflect,"--and here in our day the gifted George B. Bartlett wrote some
part of his Concord sketches, etc. Here, too, and in the larger room
opposite, the erudite and versatile Mrs. Samuel Ripley held her social
court and received the exalted Concord conclave, with other earnest
leaders of thought.
In the front chamber at the right Hawthorne's first child, the hapless
Una,--named from Spenser's "Faerie Queene,"--was born. Behind this is
the "ten-foot-square" apartment which was Hawthorne's study and
workshop. Two windows of small, prismatic-hued panes look into the
orchard, and upon one of these Hawthorne has inscribed,--
"Nath^{l}. Hawthorne.
This is his study, 1843."
Below this another hand has graven,--
"Inscribed by my husband at
Sunset Apr 3^{d} 1843
In the gold light S. A. H.
Man's accidents are God's purposes.
SOPHIA A. HAWTHORNE 1843."
From its north window, said to have been cracked by the explosions of
musketry in the conflict, we see the battle-field and a reach of the
placid river. This room had been the study of Emerson's grandfather;
from its window his wife watched the fight between his undrilled
parishioners and the British veterans. His daughter Mary--aunt of our
American Plato and herself a gifted writer--used to boast "she was in
arms at the battle," having been held up at this window to see the
soldiery in the highway. Years later Emerson himself came into
possession of this room, and here wrote his "Nature," antagonizing many
of the orthodox tenets. Perhaps it was well for the moral serenity of
his ancestor--to whom the transcendental movement would have seemed
arrant March-madness--that he could not foresee the composition of such
a volume here within the sanctity of his old study. The book was
published anonymously, and Sanborn says that when inquiry was made, "Who
is the author of 'Nature?'" a Concord wit replied, "God and Waldo
Emerson."
Next, the dreamy Hawthorne succeeded to the little study, and here, with
the sunlight glimmering through the willow boughs, he worked in solitude
upon his charming productions for three or four hours of each day. Here,
besides the copious entries in his journals, he prepared most of the
papers of his "Mosses," wrote many articles for the "Democratic Review"
and other magazines, edited "Old Dartmoor Prisoner" and Horatio Bridge's
"African Cruiser." It is note-worthy that the "Celestial Railroad," in
which Hawthorne records his condemnation of the spiritual renaissance by
substituting the "terrible giant Transcendentalist" (who feeds upon
pilgrims bound for the Celestial City) in place of the Pope and Pagan of
Bunyan's allegory, was written in the same room with Emerson's volume,
which inaugurated the great transcendental movement in the Western
World.
Among the recesses of the great attic of the Manse we may still see the
"Saints' Chamber," with its fireplace and single window; but it is
tenanted by sprouting clergymen no longer. The atmosphere of theological
twilight and mustiness--acquired from generations of clerical
inhabitants--which pervaded the place in Hawthorne's time has been
dissipated by the larger and happier home-life of Mrs. Samuel Ripley and
the blithe and brilliant company that gathered about her here. Dismayed
by these beneficent influences, the ghosts have indignantly deserted the
mansion: even the persistive clerical, who sighed in Hawthorne's parlor
and noisily turned his sermon-leaves in the upper hall, has not
disturbed the later occupants of the Manse.
One might muse and linger long about the old place which, as his
"Mosses" and journals show, Hawthorne made a part of his very life. Its
air of antiquity, its traditional associations, its seclusion, and all
its peaceful environment were pleasing to the shy and susceptible nature
of the subtle romancer, and accorded well with his introspective habit.
Besides, it was "the first home he ever had," and it was shared with his
"new Eve." No wonder is it that he could here declare, "I had rather be
on earth than in the seventh heaven, just now."
It is saddening to remember that, from this paradise, poverty drove him
forth.
III
A STORIED RIVER AND BATTLE-FIELD
_Where Zenobia Drowned--Where Embattled Farmers Fought--Thoreau's
Hemlocks--Haunts of Hawthorne--Channing--Thoreau--Emerson, etc._
Behind Hawthorne's "Old Manse"--its course so tortuous that Thoreau
suggested for Concord's escutcheon "a field verdant with the river
circling nine times round," so noiseless that he likened it to the
"moccasined tread" of an Indian, so sluggish that Hawthorne had dwelt
some weeks beside it before he determined which way its current
lies--flows the Concord, "river of peace." This placid stream is the
aboriginal "Musketaquid" of Emerson's poem,--sung of Thoreau, Channing,
and many another bard, beloved of Hawthorne and pictured in rapturous
phrase in his "Note-Books" and "Mosses from an Old Manse." It was the
delightful haunt of Hawthorne's leisure, the scene of the occurrence
which inspired the most thrilling and high-wrought chapter of his
romance.
A grassy path, shaded by orchard trees, leads from the west door of the
Manse to the river's margin at the place where Hawthorne kept his boat
under the willows. The boat had before been the property of Thoreau,
built by his hands and used by him on the famous voyage described in his
"Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers." Hawthorne named the craft
"Pond-Lily," because it brought so many cargoes of that beautiful flower
to decorate his home. In it, alone or accompanied by Thoreau or Ellery
Channing, he made the many delightful excursions he has described.
Embarking on the slumberous stream, we follow the course of Hawthorne's
boat to many a scene made familiar by that dreamful romancer and by the
poets and philosophers of Concord. First to the place, below the bridge
of the battle, where one dark night Hawthorne and Channing assisted in
recovering from the water the ghastly body of the girl-suicide, an
incident which made a profoundly horrible impression upon the sensitive
novelist, and which he employed as the thrilling termination of the tale
of Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance,"--portraying it with a tragic
power which has never been surpassed. Thence we paddle up the placid
stream, as it slumbers along its winding course between the meadows,
kisses the tangled grasses and wild flowers that fringe its margins,
bathes the roots and boughs of the elders and dwarf willows which
overhang its surface as if to gaze upon the reflections of their own
loveliness mirrored there. The reach of river--"from Nashawtuc to the
Cliff"--above the confluence of the two branches was most beloved and
frequented of Thoreau; here he sometimes brought Emerson, as on that
summer evening when the sage's diary records, "the river-god took the
form of my valiant Henry Thoreau and introduced me to the riches of his
shadowy, starlit, moonlit stream," etc.
The deeper portion of the river near the Manse was Hawthorne's habitual
resort for bathing and fishing, but his longer solitary voyages and his
"wild, free days" with Ellery Channing were upon the beautiful and
sheltered North Branch,--the Assabeth of the "Mosses,"--which flows into
the Concord a half-mile above the Manse. Into this branch we turn our
boat, and through sunshine and shade we follow the winsome course of the
lingering stream, finding new and delightful seclusion at every turn. A
railway now lies along one lofty bank, but its unsightliness is
concealed by long lines of willows planted by the loving hands of poet
and artist,--Bartlett and French,--and the infrequent trains little
disturb the seclusion of the place. Giant trees, standing with "their
feet fixed in the flood," bend their bright foliage above the
softly-flowing stream and fleck its surface with shadows; pond-lilies
are still up-borne by its dreaming waters, and cardinal flowers bedeck
its banks; its barer reaches are ribbons of reflected sky. The spot on
the margin locally known as "The Hemlocks," and noted by Hawthorne as
being only less sacred in his memory than the household hearth, remains
itself undisturbed. Here a clump of great evergreens projects from the
base of the lofty bank above and across the stream, and forms on the
shore a shaded bower, carpeted by the brown needles which have fallen
through many a year. This was a favorite haunt of Hawthorne and Channing
in blissful days; here they prepared their sylvan noontide feasts; here
they lounged and dreamed; here their "talk gushed up like the babble of
a fountain." As we recline in their accustomed resting-place beside the
sighing stream, and look up at the azure heaven through the boughs where
erstwhile often curled the smoke of their fire, we vainly try to imagine
something of what would be the converse, merry or profound, of such
starry spirits amid such an inspiring scene, and we more than ever
regret that neither the gentle poet nor the subtle romancer has chosen
to share that converse with his readers.
Long and lovingly we loiter in this consecrated spot, and then slowly
float back to Hawthorne's landing-place by his orchard wall.
A few rods distant, at the corner of his field, is the site of the "rude
bridge that arched the flood," and the first battle-ground of the
American Revolution. On the farther side a colossal minute-man in
bronze, modelled by the Concord sculptor French, surmounts a granite
pedestal inscribed with Emerson's immortal epic, and marks the spot
where stood the irregular array of the "embattled farmers" when they
here "fired the shot heard round the world." The statue replaces a bush
which sprang from the soil fertilized by the blood of Davis, and which
Emerson imaged as the "burning bush where God spake for his people."
The position of the British regulars on the hither shore is indicated by
the "votive stone" of Emerson's poem,--a slender obelisk of
granite,--and near it, close under the wall of the Manse enclosure, is
the rude memorial that marks the grave of the British soldiers who were
slain on this spot. The current tradition that a lad who, after the
battle, came, axe in hand, from the Manse wood-pile, found one of the
soldiers yet alive and dispatched him with the axe, was first related to
Hawthorne by James Russell Lowell, as they stood together above this
grave. The effect of this story upon the feelings of the susceptible
Hawthorne is told on a page of "The Old Manse," and--a score of years
later and in different shape--is related in the romance of "Septimius
Felton."
IV
THE HOME OF EMERSON
_An Intellectual Capitol and Pharos--Its Grounds, Library, and Literary
Workshop--Famous Rooms and Visitants--Relics and Reminiscences of the
Concord Sage._
Following the direction of the British retreat from the historic Common,
we come, beyond the village, to the modest mansion which was for half a
century the abode of the princely man who was not only "the Sage of
Concord," but, in the esteem of some contemporaries, "was Concord
itself."
Emerson declares, "great men never live in a crowd,"--"a scholar must
embrace solitude as a bride, must have his glees and glooms alone." Of
himself he says, "I am a poet and must therefore live in the country; a
sunset, a forest, a river view are more to me than many friends, and
must divide my day with my books;" and this was the consideration which
finally determined his withdrawal from the storm and fret of the city to
his chosen home here by Walden woods and among the scenes of his
childhood. It was his retirement to this semi-seclusion which called
forth his much-quoted poem, "Good-by, proud world! I'm going home." To
him here came the afflatus he had before lacked, here his faculties
were inspirited, and here his literary productiveness commenced.
Behind a row of dense-leaved horse-chestnuts ranged along the highway,
the quondam home of Emerson nestles among clustering evergreens which
were planted by Bronson Alcott and Henry D. Thoreau for their friend. A
copse of pines sighs in the summer wind close by; an orchard planted and
pruned by Emerson's hands, and a garden tended by Thoreau, extend from
the house to a brook flowing through the grounds and later joining the
Concord by the famous old Manse; beyond the brook lies the way to
Walden. At the left of the house is a narrow open reach of greensward on
the farther verge of which erst stood the unique rustic bower--with a
wind-harp of untrimmed branches above it--which was fashioned by the
loving hands of Alcott. The mansion is a substantial, square,
clapboarded structure of two stories, with hip-roofs; a square window
projects at one side; a wing is joined at the back; covered porches
protect the entrances; light paint covers the plain walls which gleam
through the bowering foliage, and the whole aspect of the place is
delightfully attractive and home-like. Its pleasant and unpretentious
apartments more than realize the comfortable suggestion of the
exterior. Adjoining the hall on the right is the plain, rectangular room
which was the philosopher's library and workshop. The cheerful fireplace
and the simple furnishings of the room are little changed since he here
laid down his pen for the last time; the heavy table held his
manuscript, his books are ranged upon the shelves, the busts and
portraits he cherished adorn the walls, his accustomed chair is upon the
spot where he sat to write.
Emerson's afternoons were usually spent abroad, but his mornings were
habitually passed among his books in this small corner-room--"the study
under the pines"--recording, in "a pellucid style which his genius made
classic," the truths which had come to him as he mused by shadowy lake
or songful stream, in deep wood glade or wayside path. Most of all his
pen produced, of divinest poetry, of gravest philosophy, of grandest
thought, was minted into words and inscribed in this simple apartment.
The adjoining parlor--a spacious, pleasant, home-like room, furnished
forth with many mementos of illustrious friends and guests--is scarcely
less interesting than the library. This house was the intellectual
capitol of the village; to it freely came the Concord circle of shining
ones,--Thoreau, Channing, Sanborn, the Alcotts, the Hoars,--less
frequently, Hawthorne. For a long time Mrs. Samuel Ripley habitually
passed her Sabbath evenings here. The Delphic Margaret Fuller, who was
as truly the "blood of transcendentalism" as Emerson "was its brain,"
was here for months an honored guest. For long periods Thoreau, whose
fame owes much to Emerson's generosity, was here an inmate and intimate.
In Emerson's parlor were held the more formal _seances_ of the Concord
galaxy; here met the short-lived "Monday Evening Club," which George
William Curtis whimsically describes as a "congress of oracles," who ate
russet-apples and discoursed celestially while Hawthorne looked on from
his corner,--"a statue of night and silence;" here were held many of
Bronson Alcott's famous "conversations," as well as those of that
disciple of Platonism, Dr. Jones.
Emerson belonged not to Concord only, but to the whole world,--"his
thought was the thought of Christendom." To these plain rooms as to an
intellectual court came, from his own and other lands, hundreds famed in
art, literature, and politics. Here came Curtis and Bartol to sit at the
feet of the sage; Charles Sumner and Moncure Conway to bear hence--as
one of them has said--"memories like those Bunyan's pilgrim must have
cherished of the Interpreter." Here "came Theodore Parker from the fight
for free thought," and Wendell Phillips and John Brown from the conflict
for free men; here came Howells, bearing the line from Hawthorne, "I
find this young man worthy;" here came Whittier, Agassiz, Hedge,
Longfellow, Bradford, Lowell, Colonel Higginson, Elizabeth Peabody,
Julia Ward Howe, as to a fount of wisdom and purity. In this
unpretentious parlor have gathered such guests as Stanley, Walt Whitman,
Bret Harte, Henry James, Louis Kossuth, Arthur Clough, Lord Amberley,
Jones Very, Fredrika Bremer, Harriet Martineau, and many others who,
like these, would have felt repaid for their journey over leagues of
land and sea by a hand-clasp and an hour's communion with the intellect
that has been the beacon of thousands in mental darkness and storm. With
these came another class of pilgrims, the great army of impracticables,
"men with long hair, long beards, long collars,--many with long ears,
each in full chase after the millennium," and each intent upon securing
the endorsement of Emerson for his own pet scheme. The wonder is that
the little library saw any work accomplished, so many came to it and
claimed the time of the master; for to every one--scholar, tradesman,
and "crank"--were accorded his never-failing courtesy and kindly
interest. Any one might be the bearer of a divine message, so he
listened to all,--the most uncouth and _outre_ visitant might be the
coming man for whom his faith waited, therefore all were admitted.
Here all were "assayed, not analyzed." Emerson's habitual quest for only
the divinest traits and his quickened perception of the best in men
enabled him to recognize excellencies which were yet unseen by others.
While Hawthorne, the shy hermit at the Manse, was unheeded by the world
and thought crazed by his neighbors, Emerson knew and proclaimed his
transcendent genius. He first recognized the inspiration of Ellery
Channing, and made for his exquisite verse exalted claims which have
been fully justified, and which the world may yet allow. While to others
Henry Thoreau was yet only an eccentric egotist, Emerson knew him as a
poet and philosopher, and made him the "forest seer, the heart of all
the scene," in his lyrical masterpiece "Wood-Notes." He promptly hailed
Walt Whitman as a true poet while many of us were yet wondering if it
were not charitable to think him insane.
Emerson's cordiality won for him the honor which prophets rarely enjoy
in their own country; the objects and places once associated with him
here are still esteemed sacred by his old neighbors. We find among them
at this day many who can know nothing of his books, but who, for memory
of his simple kindness, go far from their furrow or swath to show us
spots he loved and frequented in woodland or meadow, on swelling
hill-side or by winding river.