with early dawn, begin the day with cold bathing, succeeded by a music
lesson, and then a chaste repast. Each one finds occupation until the
meridian meal, when usually some interesting and deep-searching
conversation gives rest to the body and development to the mind.
Occupation, according to the season and the weather, engages us out of
doors or within, until the evening meal,—when we again assemble in
social communion, prolonged generally until sunset, when we resort to
sweet repose for the next day’s activity.
In these steps of reform we do not rely as much on scientific reasoning
of physiological skill, as on the Spirit’s dictates. The pure soul, by
the law of its own nature, adopts a pure diet and cleanly customs; nor
needs detailed instruction for daily conduct. On a revision of our
proceedings it would seem, that if we were in the right course in our
particular instance, the greater part of man’s duty consists in leaving
alone much that he is in the habit of doing. It is a fasting from the
present activity, rather than an increased indulgence in it, which, with
patient watchfulness tends to newness of life. “Shall I sip tea or
coffee?” the inquiry may be. No; abstain from all ardent, as from
alcoholic drinks. “Shall I consume pork, beef, or mutton?” Not if you
value health or life. “Shall I stimulate with milk?” No. “Shall I warm
my bathing water?” Not if cheerfulness is valuable. “Shall I clothe in
many garments?” Not if purity is aimed at. “Shall I prolong my dark
hours, consuming animal oil and losing bright daylight in the morning?”
Not if a clear mind is an object. “Shall I teach my children the dogmas
inflicted on myself, under the pretence that I am transmitting truth?”
Nay, if you love them intrude not these between them and the Spirit of
all Truth. “Shall I subjugate cattle?” “Shall I trade?” “Shall I claim
property in any created thing?” “Shall I interest myself in politics?”
To how many of these questions could we ask them deeply enough, could
they be heard as having relation to our eternal welfare, would the
response be “Abstain”? Be not so active to do, as sincere to be. Being
in preference to doing, is the great aim and this comes to us rather by
a resigned willingness than a wilful activity;—which is indeed a check
to all divine growth. Outward abstinence is a sign of inward fulness;
and the only source of true progress is inward. We may occupy ourselves
actively in human improvements;—but these unless inwardly well-impelled,
never attain to, but rather hinder, divine progress in man. During the
utterance of this narrative it has undergone a change in its personal
expression which might offend the hypercritical; but we feel assured
that you will kindly accept it as unartful offering of both your friends
in ceaseless aspiration.
CHARLES LANE,
A. BRONSON ALCOTT.
HARVARD, MASS.,
August, 1843.
IV
THE MAN WITH THE BEARD
No satisfactory record of Fruitlands could be written without giving an
account of Joseph Palmer, the man with the beard. He filled an important
place in the life of the Community, and is one of those picturesque
characters which must always stand out vividly in the history of
Fruitlands. He came of fine, sturdy English stock which emigrated to
this country in 1730. His grandfather taught school in Newton,
Massachusetts, for twenty years. His father fought in the Revolution,
and he himself was a soldier in the War of 1812. He was an eccentric
character, but steadfast and upright, and immovable when it came to his
principles. Wearing a beard became a fixed idea with him, and neither
the law of the land nor the admonitions of the church could make him
falter in his determination to claim freedom of action in this respect.
He suffered ridicule, insolence, and persecution to a degree that was
amazing, and which revealed the fact that in spite of a seemingly
greater enlightenment on the part of the public, the same tendency,
which drove the people to persecute so-called witches, and Shakers, and
harmless persons with a little different viewpoint from their own, was
still alive, and ready to flame forth as fiercely as ever.
On one occasion, before the Fruitlands days, he went into a church in
Fitchburg where the holy Communion was being celebrated. He knelt with
the rest only to be given the shock of humiliation at being ignored and
passed over by the officiating clergyman. Cut to the quick at such
injustice, and with the blood surging to his face, he arose and strode
up to the Communion table where the Sacraments were, and lifting the cup
to his lips drank from it, and turning to the shocked and abashed
clergyman and his congregation shouted in a loud voice and with flashing
eyes: “I love my Jesus as well, and better, than any of you do!”
A beard at that time was only worn by the Jews, and that was the real
reason for this persecution, and it caused him to be called “Old Jew
Palmer,” though there was not a drop of Jewish blood in his veins. He
carried on his farm at No Town very successfully and sold his beef at
the Fitchburg Market. No Town was a “gore” of unreclaimed land outside
of Fitchburg and Leominster in old Colonial days, a large tract of which
had been granted to Captain Noah Wiswell, his maternal grandfather, by
the General Court of the Province of Massachusetts for bravery in the
wars against the Indians. Joseph Palmer inherited it. It belonged to no
township, and therefore was not taxed. So when he married the widow
Tenney rumors circulated through Fitchburg that the marriage was not
legal because he did not publish the banns at the meeting-house
according to law, there being no meeting-house at No Town. But
investigation proved the marriage legal because he had published the
banns in his own handwriting on a large piece of paper which he had
tacked to the trunk of a fine old pine tree which grew near his house.
Joseph Palmer’s wife before her first marriage was Nancy Thompson. She
was a third cousin to Count Rumford, who was Benjamin Thompson, of
Woburn, in Colonial days, but who returned to England after the
evacuation of the British, and on account of services rendered to the
Government was knighted by George III, and afterward given the title of
Count Rumford by the reigning king of Bavaria, and was well known
throughout Europe as a scientist, philosopher, and savant.
* * * * *
A reporter of the _Boston Daily Globe_ in 1884 interviewed Joseph
Palmer’s son, Dr. Palmer, of Fitchburg, and herein are inserted extracts
from the interview:—
“The older inhabitants of Harvard, Sterling, Leominster, Fitchburg, and
other neighboring towns can remember ‘Old Jew Palmer,’ who fifty years
ago was persecuted, despised, jeered at, regarded almost as a fiend
incarnate; who was known far and wide as a human monster, and with whose
name mothers used to frighten their children when they were unruly.
“‘Old Jew Palmer,’ as he was universally called, was the most abused and
persecuted man these parts ever knew, and all because he insisted upon
wearing a beard. But many who in those days looked upon the subject of
this sketch as a social outcast have lived to see whiskers common and
fashionable.
“With a view of getting at the facts of the persecution of Mr. Palmer
but fifty years ago, his only son, Dr. Thomas Palmer, a well-known
dentist of Fitchburg, was interviewed, and the doctor talked earnestly
and vigorously about his father’s career, for he had seen the time when
his schoolmates shunned him and made his boyhood days miserable, railing
at him because his father wore a beard. But now the doctor looks back
upon those days proudly, as he realizes that his sire was right and that
the world has indorsed the ways and ideas of the old man, instead of the
old man bowing to the absurd whim of the world.”
[Illustration:
JOSEPH PALMER
]
[Illustration:
NANCY PALMER
]
Said Dr. Palmer:—
“Father left No Town early in the thirties and moved to Fitchburg into a
house where the City Hall now stands. He wore at that time a long beard,
and he and Silas Lamson, an old scythe-snath maker of Sterling, were the
only men known in this section of the country as wearing beards.
Everybody shaved clean in those days, and to wear whiskers in any form
was worse than a disgrace, it was a sin. Father was hooted at on the
street, talked about at the grocery, intimidated by his fellow-men and
labored with by the clergy to shave, but to no purpose. The stronger the
opposition, the firmer his determination. He was accosted once by Rev.
George Trask, the anti-tobacconist, who said indignantly: ‘Palmer, why
don’t you shave and not go round looking like the devil?’ He replied:
‘Mr. Trask, are you not mistaken in your comparison of personages? I
have never seen a picture of the ruler of the sulphurous regions with
much of a beard, but if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard not
unlike mine.’ That squelched Trask and he left.
“Well, public sentiment against the man and beard grew stronger, and
personal violence was threatened. One day, as father was coming out of
the old Fitchburg Hotel, where he had been to carry some provision, he
then being in the butchering business, he was seized by four men, whose
names I have not in mind now, who were armed with shears, lather, and
razor, their intention being to shave him, as the sentiment of the
populace was that that beard must come off at the hands of the wearer,
possibly at the hands of some one, anyway. Why, there are men living
to-day, old associates of his, who still cling to that old idea and will
not wear a beard. These four men laid violent hands upon him and threw
him heavily on the stone steps, badly hurting his back. The assaulted
party was very muscular, and struggled to free himself, but to no
purpose, until he drew from his vest pocket an old, loose-jointed
jack-knife, with which he struck out left and right and stabbed two of
them in the legs, when the assailants precipitately departed without
cutting a hair. He was afterwards arrested for committing an unprovoked
assault, and ordered by Justice Brigham to pay a fine, which he refused
to do, as he claimed to be acting for the maintenance of a principle. He
was thrown into jail, where he remained over a year. He was lodged with
the debtors. One day Jailer Bellows came in with several men to shave
him. He threw himself on his back in his bunk, and when they approached,
he struck out with his feet, and after he had kicked over a few of them
they let him and his beard alone. He wrote letters to the Worcester
_Spy_, complaining of the treatment the prisoners received, which I used
to carry to the office for him, receiving them when I carried him his
meals, for we hired a tenement next to the jail. For this the jailer put
him in a sort of dungeon down below, and one day when I went to the
jail, he heard my step and called out: ‘Thomas, tie a stone to a string
and swing it by the window so that I can catch it’; which I did, and
pulled up a letter for High Sheriff Williams, in which he complained of
his treatment. The sheriff ordered him back to his old quarters. Why,
old Dr. Williams of Leominster told father once that he ought to be
prosecuted and imprisoned for wearing a beard. In after years, when
whiskers became fashionable, father met a minister who had upbraided him
years before for wearing them, and as this same minister had rather a
luxuriant growth, he went up to the man of God and stroking his
whiskers, said to him, ‘Knoweth that thy redeemer liveth?’ He claimed to
be the redeemer of the beard.
“Father was a reformer; was early in the field as an anti-slavery man
and as a total abstinence advocate. He was well acquainted with
Phillips, Garrison, and other prominent Abolitionists. I remember going
with him once to an anti-slavery convention in Boston. As we walked up
Washington Street, the people would stop, then run ahead, wait for us to
come up, and finally the crowd around us was so great that the police
had to come to the rescue. Why was it? Oh, it was the same old beard. It
was so unusual to see a man wearing one, and especially such a one as he
sported. Why, he was looked upon as a monstrosity. When asked once why
he wore it, he said he would tell if any one could tell him why some men
would, from fifty-two to three hundred and sixty-five times a year,
scrape their face from their nose to their neck. He never would furnish
liquor for men in the hay-field, and for this reason had hard work to
gather crops; but they would have rotted before he would have backed
down and sacrificed his principle. He was the first man in this section
to give up that old custom. He was interested in all reformatory ideas,
and was associated with A. Bronson Alcott in forming that Community in
Harvard at Fruitlands which had for its object a more quiet and
unostentatious way of living than the world offered. He went to Harvard
in 1843. The Community did not flourish, and father bought the farm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, as trustee, at that time held the deed of
‘Fruitlands.’ I remember that when father refused to furnish liquor for
the hay-makers he had to hire boys. One mother refused to let her lad
work for him, saying that ‘He was too mean to allow the boys a little
liquor’!
“Such was the interesting account given by the venerable doctor of a
condition of affairs existing in this community but a comparatively few
years ago; but the average person of to-day would not believe, without a
full explanation of the sentiment prevailing at that time, that within
so recent a period a man would not only be insulted and persecuted, but
actually mobbed, as was the victim of this foolish and intolerant
community.”
* * * * *
While in prison Palmer kept a diary, in which, under date of July 21,
1830, occurs this account of the sort of persecution he had from the two
fellow-prisoners who occupied the same cell with him. One of them
asserted that if the other prisoner would attack him and cut his beard
off, he would look on all the time and then swear that it had never
happened, and that anyway he could get enough money collected anywhere
on the street to pay the damages for the act. The jailer coming to the
door at this moment overheard the remark and with a resounding oath
agreed with him, and added, “And pretty quick, too!” Then he began to
curse and swear at Palmer, and vowed that they would get his beard off
soon, and even suggested that the other prisoners should cut it off of
him in his sleep. One of these prisoners was named Dike. The jailer
continued to pour volley after volley of oaths at the unfortunate man,
and finally spat on him repeatedly. This happened when Palmer’s cell was
being whitewashed and the three inmates were temporarily removed to
another cell. When they were taken back to their customary quarters,
Dike found that the jailer had taken his razor away, which turned his
wrath in a new direction, and Palmer writes that as a result “Before
bedtime, he was as good as a man ought to be to another, and talked very
freely with me on the Power and Goodness of God and on the Holy
Scriptures.”
Here is an entry on Wednesday, September 22, 1830:—
“I called out to some one in the hall. Wildes, the jailer, opened the
door in the entry next to my door and said: ‘What do you want?’ I was
just going to ask him for a little water to use until I could get some
tea from Wilson, and he let a pail full come in at the door, with great
force. It didn’t wet me much, as I see it was coming, and having seen
them throw cider and water in the prisoners’ faces before. It caused me
to start so quickly that there did but little go into my face, and on my
clothes, but it went more than half the length of the room. I split
three crackers and put them to soak where there was considerable water
standing on the floor, as I could see no chance of getting any more
soon. I got a quart jug filled with water out of the other room to wet
some bread which was all the water or drink of any kind that I had since
last Thursday morning when I used the last of my tea, and I had tried
ever since last Sunday morning to get some and could not. I thought I
must suffer very much soon if there wasn’t some attention, and being
satisfied that there were some in Prison who were suffering greatly, I
thought it time to give a signal of distress to the Public, which I
immediately did by the cry of murder in the Gaol, which I continued at
the window that somebody might come up while the door was open that
would grant some assistance for the pay. About seven o’clock just as I
was going to take my crackers off the floor, Bellows and Wildes came
into the room and several others. I stepped to the table and took the
lines I had written to send to Mr. Wilson, and asked them if I could get
any one of them to go for me if I would pay them for it. Bellows said,
‘Yes, I’ll take care of you!’ Bellows and Wildes then seized me by the
collar, shook and jarred me with great fury through the entries, and
dragged me down the stairs. I tried to speak to the people who stood by
to take the paper I had in my hand to carry to Mr. Wilson. Bellows then
took me by the hair and shook me furiously as I suppose to prevent my
speaking to them. I then cried Murder. He then let me go, and I told
them that I wanted to get some person to take the paper I had in my hand
and go about 100 rods of an errand, and I would pay them well for it,
for I hadn’t had anything to drink since last week, nor I couldn’t get
any. They put me into the South Middle room below and gave me a pail of
water. I told Wildes and C. B. that I wanted they should let me have my
things, for I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning. They took
the other three prisoners out of the room and shut the blinds.”
* * * * *
Palmer was kept in solitary confinement from September 22 to December
25.
* * * * *
December 30, 1830.
“In the afternoon Calvin Willard, Ashel Bellows, Wildes, and Lawyer
Goodwin, with four or five other gentlemen, came in. Willard said, ‘How
do you do, Palmer?’ I said, pretty tolerable well for me except I have
got a bad cold. One of the men, which I took to be Esqre. Weed said to
me: ‘Why don’t you go out? What do you stay here for? Why don’t you pay
up the demand and go out?’ I said I have no way to pay it. Goodwin said:
‘A man from Fitchburg told me to-day that he has from ten to fifteen
hundred dollars property.’ Willard said: ‘I always took him to be a man
of property.’ One of the men said: ‘I think there ought to be some
measures taken to secure the board if he stops here.’ I said: I board
myself and have hard work to get it in here for the money. One said:
‘How much was your fine?’ I said, Ten dollars, I believe it was.”
* * * * *
Saturday, January 1, 1831.
“Since the first of December I haven’t bought me anything from Bellows,
and they haven’t brought me anything but eight Bushels and one hod of
coal, and they used two Bushels of that when they whitewashed the room,
except what I took to make one fire. Thomas brought me my water. I was
out of my room three and a half days to have it whitewashed, and I have
now a half Bushel of coal which brings it to seven and a half Bushels I
have burnt the past month while I was in the room.”
* * * * *
April 11, 1831.
“Food for the day:—
“Breakfast: 5 ounces of brown bread
“Dinner: 5¼ ounces of brown bread
3½ ounces of beef meat
3½ ounces of potato
3¾ ounces of soup.”
“He far out-stayed his sentence because he had to pay for all his food,
drink, and coal for heating, and he considered they cheated him, so he
refused to go. The sheriff and jailers, tired of having him there,
begged him to leave. Even his mother, Margaret Palmer, wrote to him ‘Not
to be so set.’ But nothing could move him. He said they had put him in
there, and they would have to take him out, as he would not walk out.
They finally carried him out in his chair and placed it on the
sidewalk.”
* * * * *
Shortly after leaving the jail at Worcester Palmer heard of the proposed
Community of Fruitlands, and being much interested in all reforms, he
offered to run the farm without pay and went there at the very start. He
took some fine old furniture with him from No Town to help furnish the
house, and whenever anything was needed in the way of farm implements,
etc., he would drive over to No Town and bring it back with him. When
the Community of Fruitlands failed, he bought the place and carried on a
strange sort of Community of his own for upwards of twenty years.
Emerson visited him afterwards, and a motley collection of reformers,
wayfarers, and a host of tramps found a welcome by his fireside.
Any one driving by the old North Leominster graveyard will see a stone
monument adorned with the head of a man with a flowing beard. On it is
written:—
JOSEPH PALMER
died
October 30, 1875
Aged 84 years, 5 months
Underneath the carved head is written:—
Persecuted for
Wearing the Beard
V
SUMMER SUNSHINE
It was now July and all the days were full of healthful occupations—the
weather was perfect. The philosophers had planted three mulberry trees
next the front door, and they had set out apple trees and pear trees
below the house on the slope of the hill. They put the mulberry trees so
near the house that when they grew, the roots almost unsettled the
foundations, and the fruit trees were planted in just the wrong place to
permit of luxuriant growth; but they never knew it, and at the time they
pictured to themselves the full-grown trees with branches overladen with
the luscious ripening fruit. And now they all had gotten their linen
suits designed by Mr. Lane:—loose trousers, tunic-ed coats and
broad-brimmed linen hats like Southern planters. The Alcott girls, Anna,
Beth, Louisa, and three-year-old baby May were in linen bloomers, and so
were Mrs. Alcott (protesting!) and poor Miss Page, who was summarily
dismissed from Fruitlands for having eaten fish.
[Illustration:
THE REFECTORY, ALSO USED AS A KITCHEN
]
Many visitors came and went. Parker Pillsbury often came, his mind full
of the anti-slavery question. The Concord circle of friends looked in
upon them off and on, and Channing spoke afterwards of conversations
held in a small dining-room next to the front door, and, as Mr. Sanborn
says in his account of it, “The library of rare books from London stood
proudly on its hundred feet of new shelves in the small front entry of
the old house, proclaiming the atmosphere of ‘Mind and Letters.’”
Emerson came and afterwards wrote in his “Journal” on July 8, 1843:—
“The sun and the evening sky do not look calmer than Alcott and his
family at Fruitlands. They seemed to have arrived at the fact—to have
got rid of the show, and so to be serene. Their manners and behavior in
the house and the field were those of superior men—of men at rest. What
had they to conceal? What had they to exhibit? And it seemed so high an
attainment that I thought—as often before, so now more, because they had
a fit home, or the picture was fitly framed—that these men ought to be
maintained in their place by the country for its culture.
“Young men and young maidens, old men and women, should visit them and
be inspired. I think there is as much merit in beautiful manners as in
hard work. I will not prejudge them successful. They look well in July;
we will see them in December. I know they are better for themselves than
as partners. One can easily see that they have yet to settle several
things. Their saying that things are clear, and they sane, does not make
them so. If they will in very deed be lovers, and not selfish; if they
will serve the town of Harvard, and make their neighbors feel them as
benefactors wherever they touch them,—they are as safe as the sun.”
Mr. Sanborn, referring to the remark, “We will see them in December,”
says: “This passage indicates that Emerson with his fatal gift of
perception had long since seen the incongruity between Alcott and Lane.
At this time all was still fair weather at the Fruitlands Eden, although
the burden of too much labor, of which Lane had written to Thoreau in
June, had been falling more and more heavily on Mrs. Alcott and her
daughters, Anna, then twelve, and Louisa, not quite eleven. As they did
so much of the domestic drudgery, Mrs. Alcott doubtless thought it no
more than right that her English guests, both there and at Concord,
during the seven months that Lane and his son were in their household,
should pay their share of the family expenses.”
* * * * *