HAWTHORNE AS A SOCIALIST: 1841-1842
Who can compute the amount of mischief that Fourier has done, and those
well-meaning but inexperienced dreamers who have followed after him? A
Fourth-of-July firecracker once consumed the half of a large city. The
boy who exploded it had no evil intentions; neither did Fourier and
other speculators in philanthropy contemplate what might be the effect
of their doctrines on minds actuated by the lowest and most inevitable
wants. Wendell Phillips, in the most brilliant of his orations, said:
“The track of God’s lightning is a straight line from justice to
iniquity,” and one might have said to Phillips, in his later years,
that there is in the affairs of men a straight line from infatuation to
destruction. In what degree Fourier was responsible for the effusion of
blood in Paris in the spring of 1871 it is not possible to determine;
but the relation of Rousseau to the first French revolution is not more
certain. _Fate_ is the spoken word which cannot be recalled, and who can
tell the good and evil consequences that lie hidden in it? The proper
cure for socialism, in educated minds, would be a study of the law.
There we discover what a wonderful mechanism is the present organization
of society, and how difficult it would be to reconstruct this, if it
once were overturned.
As society is constituted at present, the honest and industrious are
always more or less at the mercy of the vicious and indolent, and the
only protection against this lies in the right of individual ownership.
In a general community of goods, there might be some means of preventing
or punishing flagrant misdemeanors, but what protection could there be
against indolence? Those who were ready and willing to work would have
to bear all the burdens of society.
In order that an idea should take external or concrete form it has to
be married, as it were, to some desire or tendency in the individual.
Reverend George Ripley had become imbued with Fourierism through his
studies of French philosophy, but he had also been brought up on a farm,
and preferred the fresh air and vigorous exercise of that mode of
life to city preaching. He was endowed with a strong constitution and
possessed of an independent fortune, and his aristocratic wife, more
devoted than women of that class are usually, sympathized with his
plans, and was prepared to follow him to the ends of the earth. He not
only felt great enthusiasm for the project but was capable of inspiring
others with it. There were many socialistic experiments undertaken about
that time, but George Ripley’s was the only one that has acquired a
historical value. It is much to his credit that he gave the scheme a
thorough trial, and by carrying it out to a logical conclusion proved
its radical impracticability.
Such a failure is more valuable than the successes of a hundred men who
merely make their own fortunes and leave no legacy of experience that
can benefit the human race.
It must have been Elizabeth Peabody who persuaded Hawthorne to enlist in
the Brook Farm enterprise. She wrote a paper for the _Dial_ [Footnote:
_Dial_, ii. 361.] on the subject, explaining the object of the West
Roxbury community and holding forth the prospect of the “higher
life” which could be enjoyed there. Hawthorne was in himself the very
antipodes of socialism, and it was part of the irony of his life that he
should have embarked in such an experiment; but he invested a thousand
dollars in it, which he had saved from his Custom House salary, and was
one of the first on the ground. What he really hoped for from it--as we
learn by his letters to Miss Sophia Peabody--was a means of gaining his
daily bread, with leisure to accomplish a fair amount of writing, and
at the same time to enter into such society as might be congenial to his
future consort. It seemed reasonable to presume this, and yet the result
did not correspond to it. He went to West Roxbury on April 12, 1841,
and as it happened in a driving northeast snowstorm,--an unpropitious
beginning, of which he has given a graphic account in “The Blithedale
Romance.”
At first he liked his work at the Farm. The novelty of it proved
attractive to him. On May 3 he wrote a letter to his sister Louisa,
which reflects the practical nature of his new surroundings; and it
must be confessed that this is a refreshing change from the sublunary
considerations at his Boston boarding-house. He has already “learned to
plant potatoes, to milk cows, and to cut straw and hay for the
cattle, and does various other mighty works.” He has gained
strength wonderfully, and can do a day’s work without the slightest
inconvenience; wears a tremendous pair of cowhide boots. He goes to bed
at nine, and gets up at half-past four to sound the rising-horn,--much
too early for a socialistic paradise, where human nature is supposed
to find a pleasant as well as a salutary existence. George Ripley
would seem to be driving the wedge in by the larger end. Hawthorne is
delighted with the topographical aspect, and writes:
“This is one of the most beautiful places I ever saw in my life, and as
secluded as if it were a hundred miles from any city or village. There
are woods, in which we can ramble all day without meeting anybody or
scarcely seeing a house. Our house stands apart from the main road, so
that we are not troubled even with passengers looking at us. Once in
a while we have a transcendental visitor, such as Mr. Alcott; but
generally we pass whole days without seeing a single face save those of
the brethren. The whole fraternity eat together; and such a delectable
way of life has never been seen on earth since the days of the early
Christians.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 228.]
From Louisa Hawthorne’s reply, it may be surmised that his family did
not altogether approve of the Brook Farm venture, perhaps because it
withdrew him from his own home at a time when they had looked with
fond expectation for his return; and here we have a glimpse into the
beautiful soul of this younger sister, otherwise so little known to us.
Elizabeth is skeptical of its ultimate success, but Louisa is fearful
that he may work too hard and wants him to take good care of himself.
She is delighted with the miniature of him, which they have lately
received: “It has one advantage over the original,--I can make it go
with me where I choose!”
Louisa wrote another warm and beautiful letter on June 11, recalling the
days when they used to go fishing together on Lake Sebago, and adds:
“Elizabeth Cleveland says she saw Mr. George Bradford in Lowell last
winter, and he told her he was going to be associated with you; but they
say his mind misgave him terribly when the time came for him to go to
Roxbury, and whether to make such a desperate step or not he could not
tell.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 232.]
George P. Bradford was the masculine complement to Elizabeth
Peabody--flitting across the paths of Emerson and Hawthorne throughout
their lives. His name appears continually in the biographies of that
time, but future generations would never know the sort of man he was,
but for Louisa’s amiable commentary. He appeared at Brook Farm a
few days later, and became one of George Ripley’s strongest and most
faithful adherents. He is the historian of the West Roxbury community,
and late in life the editor of the _Century_ asked him to write a
special account of it for that periodical. Bradford did so, and received
one hundred dollars in return for his manuscript; but it never was
published, presumably because it was too original for the editor’s
purpose.
Is it possible that Hawthorne put on a good face for this letter to
his sister, in order to keep up appearances; or was it like the common
experience of music and drawing teachers that the first lessons are the
best performed; or did he really have some disagreement with Ripley,
like that which he represents in “The Blithedale Romance”? The last is
the more probable, although we do not hear of it otherwise. Spring
is the least agreeable season for farming, with its muddy soil, its
dressing the ground, its weeds to be kept down and its insects to
be kept off. After the first week of June, the work becomes much
pleasanter; and the harvesting is delightful,--stacking the grain,
picking the fruit,--with the cheery wood fires, so restful to mind and
body. Yet we find on August 12 that Hawthorne had become thoroughly
disenchanted with his Arcadian life, although he admits that the labors
of the farm were not so pressing as they had been. Ten days later,
he refers to having spent the better part of a night with one of his
co-workers, “who was quite out of his wits” and left the community next
day. He then continues in his diary: [Footnote: American Notebook, ii.
15.]
“It is extremely doubtful whether Mr. Ripley will succeed in locating
his community on the farm. He can bring Mr. E---- to no terms, and the
more they talk about the matter, the further they appear to be from a
settlement. We must form other plans for ourselves; for I can see few
or no signs that Providence purposes to give us a home here. I am weary,
weary, thrice weary, of waiting so many ages. Whatever may be my gifts,
I have not hitherto shown a single one that may avail to gather gold.”
Here are already three disaffected personages, desirous of escaping from
an earthly paradise. Mr. Ripley has by no means an easy row to hoe.
Yet he keeps on ploughing steadily through his difficulties, as he
did through the soil of his meadows. In September we find Hawthorne at
Salem, and on the third he writes: [Footnote: American Notebook, ii.
16.]
“But really I should judge it to be twenty years since I left Brook
Farm; and I take this to be one proof that my life there was unnatural
and unsuitable, and therefore an unreal one. It already looks like a
dream behind me. The real Me was never an associate of the community:
there has been a spectral appearance there, sounding the horn at
daybreak, and milking the cows, and hoeing potatoes, and raking hay,
toiling in the sun, and doing me the honor to assume my name. But this
spectre was not myself.”
This idea of himself as a spectre seems to have accompanied him much in
the way that the daemon did Socrates, and to have served in a similar
manner as a warning to him. He left Brook Farm almost exactly as he
describes himself doing, in “The Blithedale Romance,” and he returned
again on the twenty-second, but the brilliant woodland carnival which he
describes, both in his “Note-book” and in “The Blithedale Romance,” did
not take place there until September 28. It was a masquerade in which
Margaret Fuller and Emerson appeared as invited guests, and held a
meeting of the Transcendental club “_sub tegmine fagi_.” As Hawthorne
remarks, “Much conversation followed,”--in which he evidently found
little to interest him. Margaret Fuller also made a present of a heifer
to the live-stock of the Farm, of whose unruly gambols Hawthorne seems
to have taken more particular notice. He would seem in fact to have
attributed the same characteristics to the animal and its owner.
Having more time at his own disposal, he now attempted to write another
volume of history for Peter Parley’s library, but, although this was
rather a childish affair, he found himself unequal to it. “I have not,”
he said, “the sense of perfect seclusion here, which has always been
essential to my power of producing anything. It is true, nobody intrudes
into my room; but still I cannot be quiet. Nothing here is settled; and
my mind will not be abstracted.” During the whole of October he went
on long woodland walks, sometimes alone and at others with a single
companion. He tried, like Emerson, courting Nature in her solitudes, and
made the acquaintance of her denizens as if he were the original Adam
taking an account of his animal kingdom. He picks up a terrapin, the
_Emys picta_, which attempts to hide itself from him in a stone wall,
and carries it considerately to a pond of water; but there is not much
to be found in the woods, and one can travel a whole day in the forest
primeval without coming across anything better than a few squirrels and
small birds. In fact, two young sportsmen once rode on horseback with
their guns from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean without meeting
any larger game than prairie-chickens.
It was all in vain. Hawthorne’s nature was not like Emerson’s, and what
stimulated the latter mentally made comparatively little impression on
the former. Hawthorne found, then as always, that in order to practice
his art, he must devote himself to it, wholly and completely, leaving
side issues to go astern. In order to create an ideal world of his own,
he was obliged to separate himself from all existing conditions, as
Beethoven did when composing his symphonies. Composition for Hawthorne
meant a severe mental strain. Those sentences, pellucid as a mountain
spring, were not clarified without an effort. The faculty on which
Hawthorne depended for this, as every artist does, was his imagination,
and imagination is as easily disturbed as the electric needle. There is
no fine art without sensitiveness. We see it in the portrait of Leonardo
da Vinci, a man who could bend horseshoes in his hands; and Bismarck,
who was also an artist in his way, confessed to the same mental
disturbance from noise and general conversation, which Hawthorne felt
at Brook Farm. It was the mental sensitiveness of Carlyle and Bismarck
which caused their insomnia, and much other suffering besides.
George Ripley published an essay in the _Dial_, in which he heralded
Fourier as the great man who was destined to regenerate society; but
Fourier has passed away, and society continues in its old course. What
he left out of his calculations, or perhaps did not understand, was the
principle of population. If food and raiment were as common as air and
water, mankind would double its numbers every twelve or fifteen years,
and the tendency to do so produces a pressure on poor human nature,
which is almost like the scourge of a whip, driving it into all kinds
of ways and means in order to obtain sufficient sustenance. Most notable
among the methods thus employed is, and always has been, the division
of labor, and it will be readily seen that a community like Brook Farm,
where skilled labor, properly speaking, was unknown, and all men
were all things by turns, could never sustain so large a population
relatively as a community where a strict division of industries existed.
If a nation like France, for instance, where the population is nearly
stationary, were to adopt Fourier’s plan of social organization, it
would prove a more severe restriction on human life than the wars
of Napoleon. This is the reason why the attempt to plant a colony of
Englishmen in Tennessee failed so badly. There was a kind of division of
labor among them, but it was purely a local and a foreign division and
not adapted to the region about them. Ripley’s method of allowing work
to be counted by the hour instead of by the day or half-day, was of
itself sufficient to prevent the enterprise from being a financial
success. Farming everywhere except on the Western prairies requires the
closest thrift and economy, and all hands have to work hard.
Neither could such an experiment prove a success from a moral point of
view. Emerson said of it: “The women did not object so much to a common
table as they did to a common nursery.” In truth one might expect that a
common nursery would finally result in a free fight. The tendency of all
such institutions would be to destroy the sanctity of family life; and
it would also include a tendency to the deterioration of manliness. One
of the professed objects of the Brook Farm association was, to escape
from the evils of the great world,--from the trickery of trade,
the pedantry of colleges, the flunkyism of office, and the arrogant
pretensions of wealth. Every honest man must feel a sympathy with this;
there are times when we all feel that the struggle of life is an unequal
conflict, from which it would be a permanent blessing to escape; yet
he who turns his back upon it, is like a soldier who runs away from the
battle-field. It is the conflict with evil in the great world, and in
ourselves, that constitutes virtue and develops character. It is _good_
to learn the trickery of knaves and to expose it, to contend against
pedantry and set a better example, to administer offices with a modest
impartiality, and to treat the gilded fool with a dignified contempt.
But if the wings of the archangel are torn and soiled in his conflict
with sin, does it not add to the honor of the victory? The man who left
his wife and children, because he found that he could not live with them
without occasionally losing his temper, committed a grievous wrong; and
it is equally true that hypocrisy, the meanest of vices, may sometimes
become a virtue.
George P. Bradford, and a few others, enjoyed the life at Brook Farm,
and would have liked to remain there longer. John S. Dwight, the
translator of Goethe’s and Schiller’s ballads, [Footnote: One of the
most musical translations in any language.] said in his old age that if
he were a young man, he would be only too glad to return there; and it
is undeniable that such a place is suited to a certain class of persons,
both men and women. It cannot be repeated too often, however, that the
true object of life is not happiness, but development. It is our special
business on this planet, to improve the human race as our progenitors
improved it, and developed it out of we know not what. By doing this, we
also improve ourselves and happiness comes to us incidentally; but if
we pursue happiness directly, we soon become pleasure-seekers, and,
like Faust, join company with Mephistopheles. Happiness comes to a
philosopher, perhaps while he is picking berries; to a judge, watching
the approach of a thunder-storm; to a merchant, teaching his boy to
skate. It came to Napoleon listening to a prayer-bell, and to Hawthorne
playing games with his children. [Footnote: Perhaps also in his
kindliness to the terrapin.] Happiness flies when we seek it, and steals
upon us unawares.
George P. Bradford’s account of Brook Farm in the “Memorial History of
Boston” [Footnote: Vol. iv. 330.] is not so satisfactory as it might
have been if he had given more specific details in regard to its
management. The general supposition has been that there was an annual
deficit in the accounts of the association, which could only be met
by Mr. Ripley himself, who ultimately lost the larger portion of his
investment. It is difficult to imagine how such an experiment could end
otherwise, and the final conflagration of the principal building, or
“The Hive,” as it was called, served as a fitting consummation of the
whole enterprise,--a truly dramatic climax. George Ripley went to
New York to become literary editor of the _Tribune_, and was as
distinguished there for the excellence of his reviews, and the elegance
of his turnout in Central Park as he had been for the use of the spade
and pitchfork at West Roxbury.
Mr. Bradford returned to the instruction of young ladies in French and
Latin; and John S. Dwight became one of the civilizing forces of his
time, by editing the Boston _Journal of Music_. None of them were the
worse for their agrarian experiment.
Even if the West Roxbury _commune_ had proved a success for two or three
generations, it would not have sufficed for a test of Fourier’s theory
for it would have been a republic within a republic, protected by the
laws and government of the United States, without being subjected to the
inconvenience of its own political machinery. The only fair trial
for such a system would be to introduce it in some tract of country
especially set apart and made independent for the purpose; but the
chances are ten to one that a community organized in this manner would
soon be driven into the same process of formation that other colonies
have passed through under similar conditions. The true socialism is the
present organization of society, and although it might be improved in
detail, to revolutionize it would be dangerous. Yet the interest that
has been aroused at various times by discussions of the Brook Farm
project, shows how strong the undercurrent is setting against the
present order of things; and this is my chief excuse for making such a
long digression on the subject.
During these last months of his bachelorhood, Hawthorne appears to us
somewhat in the light of a hibernating bear; for we hear nothing of
him at that season at all. Between the last of October, 1841, and July,
1842, there are a large number of odd fancies, themes for romances,
and the like, published from his diary, but no entries of a personal
character. We hear incidentally that he was at Brook Farm during a
portion of the spring, which is not surprising in view of the fact that
Doctor Nathaniel Peabody had removed from Salem to Boston in the mean
time. One conclusion Hawthorne had evidently arrived at during the
winter months, and it was that his engagement to Miss Sophia Peabody
ought to be terminated in the way all such affairs should be; viz.,
by matrimony. Their prospects in life were not brilliant, but it was
difficult to foresee any advantage in waiting longer, and there were
decided disadvantages in doing so. It was accordingly agreed that they
should be married at, or near, the summer solstice, the most suitable
of all times for weddings--or engagements. On June 20, he wrote to his
_fiancée_ from Salem, reminding her that within ten days they were to
become man and wife, and added this significant reflection: “Nothing
can part us now; for God himself hath ordained that we shall be one. So
nothing remains but to reconcile yourself to your destiny. Year by year
we shall grow closer to each other; and a thousand years hence, we shall
be only in the honeymoon of our marriage.”
Yet we find him writing again the tenderest and most graceful of
love-letters on June 30. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 241.] The wedding
has evidently been postponed; but two days later he is in Boston, and
finds a pleasant recreation watching the boys sail their toy boats on
the Frog Pond. The ceremony finally was performed on July 9, and it was
only the day previous that Hawthorne wrote the following letter, which
is dated from 54 Pinckney Street:
“MY DEAR SIR:
“Though personally a stranger to you, I am about to request of you the
greatest favor which I can receive from any man. I am to be married
to Miss Sophia Peabody to-morrow, and it is our mutual desire that you
should perform the ceremony. Unless it should be decidedly a rainy
day, a carriage will call for you at half-past eleven o’clock in the
forenoon.
“Very respectfully yours,
“NATH. HAWTHORNE.
“REV. JAMES F. CLARKE,
“Chestnut St.”
George S. Hillard lived on Pinckney Street, and Hawthorne may have
been visiting him at the moment. The Peabodys attended service at Mr.
Clarke’s church in Indiana Place, where Hawthorne may also have
gone with them. He could not have made a more judicious choice; but,
singularly enough, although Mr. Clarke became Elizabeth Peabody’s
life-long friend, and even went to Concord to lecture, he and Hawthorne
never met again after this occasion.
The ceremony was performed at the house of Sophia Peabody’s father,
No. 13 West Street, a building of which not one stone now rests upon
another. It was a quiet family wedding (such as oftenest leads to future
happiness), and most deeply impressive to those concerned in it. What
must it have been to Hawthorne, who had known so much loneliness, and
had waited so long for the comfort and sympathy which only a devoted
wife can give?
Time has drawn a veil over Hawthorne’s honeymoon, but exactly four weeks
after the wedding, we find him and his wife installed in the house at
Concord, owned by the descendants of Reverend Dr. Ripley. It will be
remembered that Hawthorne had invested his only thousand dollars in the
West Roxbury Utopia, whence it was no longer possible to recover it. He
had, however, an unsubstantial Utopian sort of claim for it, against
the Association, which he placed in the hands of George S. Hillard, and
subsequent negotiation would seem to have resulted in giving Hawthorne
a lease of the Ripley house, or “Old Manse,” in return for it. It was
already classic ground, for Emerson had occupied the house for a time
and had written his first book there; and thither Hawthorne went to
locate himself, determined to try once more if he could earn his living
by his pen.
[Illustration: THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY]