Produced by David Garcia, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: Concord Elms, on Main Street.]
SKETCHES FROM CONCORD AND APPLEDORE
CONCORD THIRTY YEARS AGO; NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE; LOUISA M. ALCOTT;
RALPH WALDO EMERSON; MATTHEW ARNOLD; DAVID A. WASSON; WENDELL PHILLIPS;
APPLEDORE AND ITS VISITORS; JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
BY FRANK PRESTON STEARNS
TO A JACQUEMINOT ROSE.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE
CONCORD THIRTY-ODD YEARS AGO
HAWTHORNE
LOUISA M. ALCOTT
EMERSON HIMSELF
MATTHEW ARNOLD'S LECTURE
DAVID A. WASSON
WENDELL PHILLIPS
APPLEDORE AND THE LAIGHTONS
WHITTIER
ILLUSTRATIONS.
CONCORD ELMS, ON MAIN STREET
THE CONCORD RIVER, NEAR BATTLE GROUND
HAWTHORNE, AFTER AN ENGRAVING FROM THE PAINTING BY C. G. THOMPSON
THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY
LOUISA ALCOTT, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1868
THE ALCOTT HOUSE
KING'S BUST OF EMERSON, MODELLED IN 1854
AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD
DAVID A. WASSON IN 1878, FROM A PORTRAIT BY HIS SON GEORGE
WENDELL PHILLIPS AS HE APPEARED BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA
TWILIGHT AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS
CELIA THAXTER, PHOTOGRAPHED BY MISS ANNIE RICHARDS IN 1890
WHITTIER'S HOUSE AT AMESBURY
JOHN G. WHITTIER IN HIS SEVENTY-SECOND YEAR, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMPSON
THE MERRIMAC RIVER, NEAR AMESBURY, BY MOONLIGHT
PREFACE.
A volume of reminiscences is commonly the last book that an author
publishes, if indeed he does not leave the task to his literary
administrator. There are not wanting, however, instances to the
contrary; and in the present case my object is more especially to
attract public attention to the lives and works of two distinguished
men, one of whom has hitherto been little appreciated, and the other,
as it seems to me, greatly misunderstood. My position in regard to
David A. Wasson has already been challenged, but I have faith that it
will endure the test of time. If these pages shall also succeed in
restoring to Wendell Phillips a portion of the fame which he lost
by the wayward course of his declining years, they will not have
been written in vain. The other characters that I have brought upon
this stage are such as both the writer and the public have long taken
an interest in. To the few living personages who have been introduced,
I would apologize, and excuse myself on the ground that the picture
would be imperfect without them.
SKETCHES FROM CONCORD AND APPLEDORE
CONCORD THIRTY YEARS AGO.
To one looking westward from Boston State House there appears a line of
rugged, precipitous hills extending across the country from southwest to
northeast. Having ascended these heights, we perceive beyond them an
irregular line of pale blue mountains, of which Wachusett is the most
southerly peak, and which is in fact a portion of the White Mountain
range extending through New Hampshire and into the northern part of
Maine. The watershed between these two forms the valley of the Concord
and Merrimac Rivers, which is the first military line of defence in New
England west of the sea-coast. It is for this reason that the first
struggle for American independence took place on the banks of the
Concord River, and not elsewhere; a fact that might have been predicted,
though not of course with certainty, when Boston was first settled.
One would like to know how this rural community with martial destiny
before it happened to obtain the name of Concord. Did the Rev. Peter
Bulkley, descendant of the Plantagenets, who first organized society in
that valley, did he come there for peace and repose after a religious
controversy in Boston? No doubt the sloping hillsides and broad sunny
plain with the sluggish river winding through it looked very restful to
him, after the rugged country through which he had passed; but we fear
that he found discord and contention already before him, as many have
who came there since for a like purpose. Was there a strange fatality in
the name, so that Patrick Henry might say with added force, "Gentlemen
may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace"? Is it true that peace and
war are reciprocal like night and day,--one a rest and preparation for
the other, and at the same time its natural consequence? Certain it is
that no individual life is interesting or valuable in which there has
not been a severe struggle; and periods of warfare have often proved to
be powerful stimulants for human energy and intellect. In one respect,
however, the Rev. Peter Bulkley was fully justified, for Concord has
become more famous in the arts of peace than if a Marengo or Gravelotte
had been fought there. It has a place in the history of literature, and
its name is pleasant either to speak or think of.
The town is beautifully situated and seems to sleep in the hollow of the
hills. It is now a suburb of Boston, with artistic bridges, water from
Sandy Pond, a bronze statue of the minute man, and a good deal of
suburban elegance; but thirty years ago it was one of the neat,
unpretending, yet so respectable looking, New England villages, such as
are still to be met with in the central part of Massachusetts. The
country roads wound into the town and wound out of it; the river crept
lazily by with only a slight swirl or eddy on its surface; and the wild
flowers on its banks bloomed and faded without attracting more attention
than in the days of the Indians. Early in the morning ten or a dozen
well-dressed gentlemen might be seen hastening to the railway station;
then after the children had gone to school there was a nearly unbroken
silence until they came out again. Occasionally a farmer in his hay-cart
or other rude vehicle would jingle through the village, or a woman with
a shawl and sun-bonnet would call at one of the stores, make some small
purchase, and return as she came.
Towards evening the children would come out of school, and fill the
streets with noise and excitement for a time; the gentlemen would return
from Boston looking quite as much fatigued as if they had been working
all day in a cornfield. The houses on Main Street were mostly so white
as to be hardly distinguishable from the snow in winter, though many of
them belonged, architecturally at least, to the last century, and had
brass knockers on the doors. Yet there was a certain harmony among them;
and it seemed as if the place must always have been as it was at that
time.
There is, however, a compensation in the dullness of country life, which
may be expressed in the word nature. The real architecture of Concord
was not in private or public edifices, but in its magnificent elms,
whose branches spanned the streets like the arches of a Gothic
cathedral. The largest of them stands in front of the town hall, and its
trunk measures just sixteen feet in circumference; though Doctor Holmes
has failed to enumerate it in his list of the great trees of the State.
Another on the road to Lexington is remarkable for its straight stem and
perfect wineglass form. In autumn the scarlet maples set between the
elms are no bad substitute for stained-glass windows.
There were no fine pictures in the town, but every turn of the river
disclosed a landscape equal to a Claude or a Kenset. It is rare good
fortune to live by a river of clear, pure water which serves equally
well for boating and swimming or skating. There are very few such
rivers. In the larger ones the current is usually too strong to make a
long rowing expedition pleasant entertainment, and tide rivers are
always inconvenient. In small rivers shoals and sand-bars commonly
abound. River skating, also, is a science by itself, and requires, like
Alpine climbing, well-seasoned knowledge and experience. It is a very
different matter from whirling around in a city rink with half an inch
of snow on the ice. The young men of Concord used to skate to Lowell, on
favorable occasions, and back again, nearly thirty miles in all, and
thought nothing of it. Concord River with its grassy banks, picturesque
bridges and continual change of hill and meadow scenery is one of the
prettiest that can be found anywhere.
Then such walks and drives as there were in the town! From Concord
Common roads branch off in all directions like the spokes of a wheel.
The oldest road, by which the British troops made their entry and exit,
runs northeasterly to the Hawthorne house and Lexington with a firm, dry
sidewalk for more than a mile; another goes northwesterly to the
battle-ground and Esterbrook farm, where there were magnificent chestnut
trees equal in size and shape to the Persian walnuts of Europe, as well
as huge granite boulders scattered about from some pre-historic glacier.
The Emerson farm lies between two interesting roads, one going straight
over the hills of Boston, and the other to Walden Lake and Thoreau's
hermitage, or where it was. Between them runs a lively, gurgling brook,
which used to be frequented by woodcock, and the Virginia rail, and
passes close by Mrs. Emerson's garden.
Two or three miles to the south there is another lakelet called
Fairhaven Bay, the south branch of the river flowing through it, quite
equal in its way to Walden, or to an Irish lake, for that matter. On the
outskirts of the village, there was many a quaint old weather-beaten
house with a well-sweep, perhaps, for accompaniment,--excellent subjects
for a sketchbook,--and Walden woods were always full of natural
side-shows and those charming effects of color and shadow which artists
delight in.
On the western side, there were the two mile square, the three mile
square, and five mile square, for those who liked an exact measure for
their constitutional exercise; and on the north the road went straight
to Sleepy Hollow, now one of the famous cemeteries of the world. Thence,
paths went through the fields and woods to the Lexington road on one
side and to the north bridge on the other; and these paths are memorable
from the fact that they were Hawthorne's favorite walk during the last
years of his life.
A curious accident happened somewhere about 1860 just beyond Sleepy
Hollow. A farmer returning to the next town felt the earth shaking under
his wagon, and looked behind him just in time to see a piece of the road
disappear into a pool of black water. The natives thought it had gone
down to China for they were all summer filling the place up, and the
expense was not less than that of a new district school-house.
The Indian name of the river was Muskataquid, and there was formerly an
Indian encampment on the site of the old Ripley manse and battleground.
A great quantity of arrow-heads of flint, jasper and quartz have been
found in the neighboring fields, and Emerson used sometimes to bring his
visitors to search for them. The Ripley family had a fine collection of
Indian relics, and it is almost pathetic to think of the pains and labor
the aborigines must have expended in manufacturing those household and
warlike implements,--the arrows especially being often so soon lost
again.
It is likely that they chose this situation for its sunny exposure, and
as a favorable landing for their canoes, rather than from a decided
feeling for landscape beauty. No doubt they had their battles and
invasions, and perhaps repulsed their enemies from the same ground where
the British line was afterwards formed.
What one wonders at, in regard to the Concord fight, is that the English
commander should have drawn off his men after the first volley and so
slight a loss. He had as good a position as his opponents, and after an
obstinate struggle might have succeeded in carrying the bridge, the
bayonets of his soldiers giving him a certain advantage. This would seem
to have been more prudent than to retreat so long a distance before a
confident enemy. It has been agreed that the position of the minute men
was the best they could have selected, for after repulsing the British
troops they were able to send a detachment across by Sleepy Hollow and
Hawthorne's path to attack them again in flank on the Lexington road.
This success was as fortunate for the colonies as in the summer of 1861
Bull Run was unlucky for our Southern friends.
The men who were drawn up to be shot at on Lexington Common were no
doubt as brave as their friends who contested the battle of the old
north bridge, but their position was not a favorable one to hold against
a superior force. It was an excellent position to retreat from, and
perhaps that is what their commander had in view. Evidently they should
have withdrawn to Concord, or have intrenched themselves on the nearest
hillside commanding the Boston and Concord road. Such was the difference
between these two fights.
[Illustration: The Concord river, near battleground.]
The life of Concord, at the time of which we write, was not its
celebrated people so much as Mr. Frank B. Sanborn's school for youth of
both sexes. There were not young people enough in the town to make a
dance or a picnic out of, and this school introduced an element from the
outside world which was both useful and improving. Most of his pupils
came from the vicinity of Boston, but there were many also from
Springfield, now and then one from the West Indies, and finally a
Sandwich Islander, a genuine Kanaka. They supported several
boarding-houses, the candy-store and the corner grocery, besides greatly
increasing the revenue of the post-office.
It was a cheerful sight to see these ruddy youths and blooming maidens
of a winter's day come trooping in to get the evening mail with their
skates in their hands. There was also a daily delegation of farmers'
boys from Acton, staunch, worthy fellows, and generally better behaved
than their more aristocratic companions.
Mr. Sanborn himself, (afterwards for more than twenty years the
efficient inspector of our state charities,) was the most genial and
good-humored of schoolmasters. He enjoyed teaching, and wished his
scholars to enjoy learning. He liked to see the bright young faces about
him, and it was their own fault if he was not liked by his pupils. He
was impartial, frank, and perfectly sincere; knew how to keep discipline
without being a martinet. He was especially a good instructor for young
ladies for he never showed them any sentimental tenderness.
It was not a very good training school, like the Boston Latin School, or
Phillips Academy at Exeter, and this is usually the case in a school
where there are pretty young women; but, as Emerson indeed said, much
could be learned with Mr. Sanborn which was not to be had at other
schools,--especially this, that the true aim of life should not be
riches or success or even scholarship, but moral and intellectual
development. Mr. Sanborn's ideal of his profession was a high one, and
but for his interest in the larger field of philanthropy he might have
succeeded in realizing it.
Mr. Sanborn's most troublesome boy had a scriptural name, which we will
call David,--afterwards quite a distinguished lawyer. There was no harm
in David, but an immense deal of mischief. In fact he was irrepressible.
"David, stand up on the floor," was part of the customary routine; and
when this was accompanied by the use of a large lexicon his situation
was a truly amusing one. If he succeeded in escaping this penalty of
transgression until the first recess he was considered fortunate. He
usually returned from the school sports too much exhausted for any
further exertion, but in half an hour was as lively again as ever. All
veneration for authority seemed to have been replaced in David by a
strong sense of the ridiculous. His seat was immediately under the eye
of the master, with his face to the wall, and a large map of ancient
Rome before him, but this did not prevent him from turning about on all
possible occasions and expressing his various states of mind in such
ludicrous pantomime as would set off the young girls and small boys like
a row of torpedoes. Whatever might be said or done in the school without
bringing condign punishment on his head David was sure to say or do; and
his criticism of passing events and comments during recitations were
quite as edifying as those of the instructor,--which is saying a good
deal. He had committed to memory one of the longest lists of exceptions
in the Latin grammar, and never missed an opportunity of repeating it as
rapidly as possible and with a comical look.
His one object of aversion was Mr. Sanborn's rattan, and what to do
about it he did not know; until coming to school one morning very early
with another youth of the same disposition, they cut it into sections
and smoked it. After this he was in great terror for several days lest
the theft should be discovered, but as the rattan was more for ornament
than exercise, its absence did not appear to have been noticed. Of
course these performances made quite a hero of him with the girls, and
he was rewarded with their smiles and favor at the school dances and
other social occasions.
As an artistic contrast to this picture we remember three beautiful
girls who boarded with the wife of the village blacksmith, in one of the
whitest and most neatly kept houses in the town. They were not merely
pretty young women, but each possessed a style of beauty peculiarly her
own. One was a bright, rosy blonde, with sparkling eyes and a lively,
spirited manner; another more quiet and composed, with an ivory-white
complexion, and large, dreamy, tender-looking eyes; and the third was a
light brunette with an oval face and regular features, reserved and
dignified. Slightly idealized, with these fine qualities, they might
have served for a picture of the Three Graces. They had the advantage of
pretty manners, and being fast friends and of a single mind, made a
strong impression wherever they went. Though the eldest was not more
than seventeen, the Bigelow girls, as they were called from the
blacksmith's family name, took the lead in Concord social life for the
time being, and gave a tone to it. Their influence helped to make the
boys more manly and the other girls more respectful.
Such a trio could not long escape the notice of the Harvard students, a
number of whom made their acquaintance through graduates of the school;
and one of them, inspired with admiration, composed a song which was
quite popular at the time, beginning thus:
"There was an old lady in Concord did dwell,
Who had but three boarders, and each one a belle;
Grace, Jennie and Maggie, more priceless than pearls;
Then here's to the health of the Bigelow girls."
Truly the days of their youth were the days of their glory; but it is
not so for everyone. In fact many of us never obtain any glory. And who
is that plainly dressed girl with the meekly determined look who goes
back and forth so quietly and regularly? If you speak to her she will
smile, but her voice is not often heard. It is Miss Evans' Mary Garth,
or the prototype of Louisa Alcott's "Old Fashioned Girl." She is the
best scholar in school, and already has important plans in her mind for
the future.
Mr. Alcott would sometimes come in on a Wednesday afternoon, listen to
the declamations and afterwards give his young friends a conversation on
the faculties of the human mind. He was an agreeable speaker, and knew
how to hold the attention of his youthful audience. On one of these
occasions while he was discoursing on the higher mental faculties which
are not possessed by the lower animals, a small boy suddenly called out
from his corner, "Dogs have a conscience; I've seen it." The whole
school roared at this, and it nearly disconcerted Mr. Alcott; but he
quickly recovered himself, and explained that the apprehension of
punishment often supplies the place of a conscience in dogs, as well as
in boys and men; and a highly interesting discussion ensued on this
subject. Such a method of instruction was highly refreshing after the
dry routine in Latin and mathematics.
There was a yearly nutting excursion in October to Esterbrook farm where
there were tall chestnut trees, flying squirrels and plenty of wood for
a bonfire. May-day was usually celebrated at Conantum,--a pine-clad hill
on the south side of Fairhaven Bay, opposite the cliffs. As soon as
winter came committees were chosen to provide dancing or theatricals for
every Friday evening; but the climax of pleasure was a half-holiday for
a skating carnival on Walden Pond,--where Thoreau was sure to be
present, and also a Miss Caroline Moore, daughter of the deputy sheriff,
and afterwards widely known in Europe and America as the skatorial
queen.
"Three cheers for the Giver of this glorious afternoon," and then the
caps would go up in the air, and the rocks and hills echo the hoarse
shouts of the boys. I can hear now the jingling of the skates, the
crackling of the snow and the merry laughter as we came from under the
pine trees of Walden into the keen starlight, with the great comet
streaming in front of us.
On the first of May, 1859, Emerson wrote in a letter to Carlyle: "My boy
divides his time between Cicero and cricket,--and will go to college
next year. Sam Ward and I tickled each other the other day, in looking
over a very good company of young people, by finding in the newcomers a
marked improvement on their parents."
There are those who still remember seeing the two distinguished men on
the Concord playground, and wondering what they thought of it. Mr. Ward
came to place his boy under Mr. Sanborn's care; and a remarkable boy he
proved to be,--equally generous, fearless and high-minded. Twenty years
later, that same boy, looking out of his New York office window, saw his
former guide and preceptor striding through Wall Street. He rushed down
the stairs, and out upon the sidewalk, but the friend of his youth had
disappeared and was nowhere to be found.
With two or three exceptions, Mr. Sanborn's young men held him in high
regard, and when, in 1860, the United States marshals tried to carry him
off by force to testify at Washington in regard to the Harper's Ferry
invasion, they all rushed to his rescue, and foremost among them a
Baltimore boy, who had been cursing his teacher as an infernal
abolitionist for the previous six months.
Mr. Sanborn is much better known for his connection with the Harper's
Ferry invasion than for his Concord school, or later service on the
board of State Charities. He was secretary of the Kansas Aid Committee
in Boston during 1856, and in this way became acquainted with John
Brown, who visited the school, and the two were afterwards intimate
friends.
None of Brown's New England supporters approved of his invasion of
Virginia, and Mr. Sanborn especially argued the matter with him and
endeavored to dissuade him from it. He thus became acquainted, however,
with Brown's plans, and was the only person outside of Brown's immediate
followers who knew of the proposed attack on Harper's Ferry. When the
attempt failed and John Brown was a prisoner in Charlestown jail, Mr.
Sanborn found himself, as an accessory before the act, in a most trying
situation. If carried to Virginia either as a witness or as "particeps
criminis" his chance for life would be a slight one. The question was,
would General Banks, who was then governor of Massachusetts, refuse to
surrender him. John A. Andrew did not consider it safe to rely on him;
and Mr. Sanborn accordingly disappeared for the winter, his school being
carried on meanwhile by an assistant and some public spirited Concord
ladies, one of whom was a sister of Hon. E. R. Hoar.
In the spring Mr. Sanborn reappeared, and was almost immediately
summoned by a United States marshal to give an account of himself before
the senate committee in Washington. This he declined to do, believing
that the townspeople would forcibly resist any attempts to carry him
off.
The marshal, however, set a trap for him that missed little of being
successful. He came to Concord at midnight, and secreted himself in an
old barn which was close to the school-house, and belonged to one Mr.
Holbrook, a custom-house officer. There he remained all the next day,
keeping watch of Mr. Sanborn's movements through the cracks in the
boards. A little after nine in the evening he was joined by four
assistants in a carriage. They then proceeded to Mr. Sanborn's house,
seized him at the door, and in spite of his great size and strength,
would certainly have carried him off had it not been for the courage and
energy of his sister Sarah. She screamed "murder," and seizing the
carriage-whip, made such good use of it that the horses were with
difficulty prevented from running away.
Her cries waked up the blacksmith in the next house, and he quickly came
to the rescue. The "Bigelow girls" ran through the village like wild
cats ringing door-bells and calling on the people. In less than twenty
minutes nearly every man in town, Emerson included, was on the spot. The
crowd showed a determined spirit, and the marshals were probably glad
enough when Judge Hoar appeared with a writ of "habeas corpus," and took
the prisoner out of their hands in a legal manner. The case was tried in
Boston next day, and Mr. Sanborn was adjudged to have the right of it. A
lively celebration followed in the Concord town hall that evening, and
Miss Sarah Sanborn was presented with an elegant revolver; but the old
borough had not been so stirred up since '75.
The place was not without some small entertainments. Every autumn there
was an annual cattle-show at which the same bulls, horses and poultry
were brought for exhibition, and one might suppose also the same fruit
and vegetables; for they differed little in appearance from one year to
another. A live bittern in a cage of laths was an unusual curiosity.
Ventriloquists and every kind of a juggler, as well as native Indians
and the wild men of Borneo, came to perform in the town hall.
Then there was the Concord Lyceum. People in those days believed in
obtaining nourishment for the mind as well as the body. Pretty dry
nourishment it often proved to be; but it served to bring them together
for an hour or two, and take them out of themselves and their dull
routine. Wiser remarks and more fresh information were sometimes heard
upon the stairway than in the lecture-hall.
Yet Emerson was always good, and every man and woman who came to hear
him probably felt better for it, even if they were unable to comprehend
what he said to them. In the mind's eyes one can see now his spare
figure standing at the desk between two large kerosene lamps, bending
forward slightly to catch the familiar sentence with his eye, and then
calmly surveying his audience as if to see where he could deliver it
most effectively.
Henry Ward Beecher drew the largest house, and produced great enthusiasm
by comparing the United States to an elephant,--though at that time
there can hardly be said to have been any United States; but the fine
oratory of Wendell Phillips made the strongest impression, rather too
rhetorical to be permanent--but it was intense while it lasted. A young
lady who was obliged to take laughing-gas a few days after his lecture
on Toussaint L'Ouverture repeated passages from it with appropriate
gestures, in the dentist's chair, and finally concluded, not with the
name of the negro statesman, but of the Concord high-school teacher.
Phillips was an especial favorite with the older ladies of the town, who
organized a local anti-slavery society in his honor, and held a meeting
of it whenever he came there.
But neither Phillips nor Beecher could equal a lecture by the Unitarian
clergyman on the naval policy of England, which was based on valuable
facts and might well be compared to a few grains of wheat in the midst
of infinite chaff.
Judge Hoar did not lecture before the lyceum, which seemed strange, for
he was not only a man of vigorous intellect, but had, as Lowell said,
"More wit and gumption and shrewd Yankee sense
Than there are mosses on an old stone-fence,"
and he could have made any subject interesting in which he was
interested himself.
The Hoar family for some time past had been almost kings in Concord, as
frequently happens where there is an uncommonly strong man, either a
lawyer or a manufacturer, in a town of two or three thousand
inhabitants. They were a hardy New England race, lawyers by an inherited
tendency, and had now made their mark in public affairs for three
generations. They can count among their immediate relatives more
senators and representatives to Congress than any other American family.
It was said in 1775 that while Samuel Adams represented the force and
virtue of New England life, John Adams was the best product of its
cultivated side; and it would seem as if old Samuel Hoar, the founder of
his line, were a mean between the two. Fortunate is such a father if he
has a son who inherits his talents and virtues as well as his property;
and fortunate is the son whose father knows from his own experience what
is best to do for him.
The Judge was always an interesting figure in the Concord streets, and
also a pleasant person to meet, for there was never the least pretention
about him. He usually had the air of a man with an object before him,
and yet it was sufficiently evident that he did not intend to claim more
than his rightful share. He walked the ground with a tenacious step, but
with no unseemly haste. There was a keen, frosty sparkle in his eye, and
a certain severity of manner which, however, covered a great deal of
kindness. He liked successful men such as were his own equal in ability,
but he was quite as likely to take an interest in those who were
unfortunate. A brother of Dr. Holmes, a constant invalid and great
sufferer, who required much consideration, was a more frequent visitor
at his house than Lowell or Agassiz. His face bore a striking
resemblance to Raphael's portrait of the war-like Pope Julius Second,
the last of the great popes. He admired Emerson, and was frequently seen
in his company; but Alcott and Thoreau he seemed to have little respect
for. Mr. Alcott once said, "I suppose Judge Hoar looks on me as the most
useless person on the continent; but I can at least appreciate
_him_."
He was the youngest judge that had ever been appointed to the supreme
bench of Massachusetts, member of Congress, president of the Harvard
Alumni, etc.; but his real distinction now is that as a member of
General Grant's cabinet he was the first American in public life to take
a determined stand in regard to civil-service reform.
For thirty years he had seen the government patronage turned into an
enormous engine of political corruption, and endure it longer he could
not. He went to Washington, much to his own inconvenience, mainly to
strike a blow at this monster. Did he realize the magnitude of the work
before him--one which thousands of patriotic men have since attempted
and signally failed to accomplish? It was like taking the meat away from
a tiger, or trying to lift the Mitgard serpent. Judge Hoar found himself
quite alone in the president's cabinet, and with the exception of
Sumner, Garfield, and a few others, senators and representatives united
against him in a massive phalanx. Even the friendship of General Grant
was unable to protect him from the fury of his opponents. He returned,
not unwillingly, to his native heath and the practice of a better
profession than Washington politics.
In his report to Congress on the battle of Bull Run, General Winfield
Scott gave the opinion that it was lost through the lack of capable
officers for the volunteer regiments; and it is generally true that men
who like to play soldier in time of peace are not the best material to
make real soldiers out of. This would not apply however to Captain
George L. Prescott of Concord, who commanded the embattled farmers in
that engagement. He was leading an advance on the enemy's centre--"a
magnificent sight to look at," his colonel said--when the right wing of
the army was outflanked by General Kirby Smith, and the Union forces
obliged to retreat. The colonel also appears to have done his duty
there, and being severely wounded at this juncture could hear nothing in
the feverish condition he was in for the next few days but Prescott
saying, "Steady, men, steady!" to the soldiers. Previous to 1861 he was
station master at Concord, and also carried on a business in lumber,
cement, and other building materials, which he could easily do, for
trains in those days were not so very numerous. He was the first person
that attracted the attention of visitors to the town; for he had a
commanding figure and a frank, manly countenance, only too fearless and
kindly,--a very handsome man. The Hoar family were evidently Yankees,
and so were Emerson, Alcott, and Sanborn, but Captain Prescott was an
American without seeming to belong to any particular part of the
country. His cordial frankness and independence of manner reminded one
of a Virginian.
The refined side of his nature is indicated by an anecdote of his first
few days in camp on the Potomac. A cadet freshly graduated from West
Point was directed by General McDowell to drill the different companies
of the regiment in succession, and having but slight respect for
volunteer soldiers, he gave an emphasis to his orders by the plentiful
use of profane language. When he came to the Concord company, Captain
Prescott, who was standing at one side, walked across to him and said,
"I must request you, Sir, to give your orders in the plain terms of the
military code, for my men do not like profanity. If you do otherwise, I
shall order them to march off the ground; and they will obey me and not
you." This brought the cadet to terms very quickly.
In the spring of 1862 he recruited another company for the Massachusetts
Thirty-second; soon rose to the rank of colonel; and after escaping the
peril of a dozen hard-fought battles, he was finally killed, with nearly
half his command, in Grant's advance upon Richmond. Perhaps no other man
would have been so greatly missed in his native town.
Thoreau used to walk through Concord with the long step of an Indian,
looking straight before him, but at the same time observing everything.
Occasionally he would stop, make an incision in the bark of a tree with
his knife, or pick up a stone and examine it. It was not often that he
was met with in anybody's house, or seen in company with other men.
His profession was that of a surveyor; and it is easy to imagine how,
with his poetic temperament, while laying out roads and measuring
wood-lots, he came to be what he was. Many people thought his peculiar
ways were an affectation, but I believe that he was one of the plainest
and simplest of men; as plain and single-minded as President Lincoln
himself. It was his theory of the way men should live. He was a Diogenes
without being a cynic.
James Russell Lowell (as he himself tells us) was sent to Concord to
rusticate while he was at college, and conceived at that time an
aversion for Thoreau which never left him. In his celebrated "Fable for
Critics" he satirized him as an imitator of Emerson, and so plainly that
there was no mistaking the portrait. This could not have troubled
Thoreau much for he was a perfect stoic, and cared little for the
opinions of others so long as he satisfied his own conscience. Emerson,
however, felt it keenly, for it was equally a reflection on his friend
and his own sagacity. In his last volume of poems Lowell also speaks of
Emerson in a way which indicates rather a diminished respect for him.
It is true that Thoreau imitated Emerson's manner of speech a good
deal--and it was often difficult to avoid doing this while in Emerson's
company--but Lowell also in his younger days affected a grave and
reserved demeanor which he afterwards became tired of and threw entirely
aside. About the time of which we speak Emerson complained that he saw
too little of Thoreau, and was afraid that he avoided him. The man was
sufficiently original. He did not pretend to be a poet, and his prose
writing is not at all like Emerson. In point of style it is purer and
more classic than either Emerson's or Lowell's; and these two lines of
his,
"In the good then who can trust.
Only the wise are just,"
certainly deserve to be set up somewhere in letters of gold.
He had a strong dislike of matrimony. Once while walking across a field
with David A. Wasson he kicked a skunk-cabbage with his boot and said,
"There, marriage is like that." Lowell was without doubt right about him
in this respect. Thoreau's notions of life, like the socialistic
theories of Henry George, would if generally adopted put an end to
civilization. He wanted like the French theorists of the last century to
separate himself from the history of his race; a most dangerous attempt.
It is like cutting a tree from its roots. Wasson had many a hard
argument with him on this point, and tried to show him that customs are
the good logic of the human race: but it was too late. However, logic is
one thing and character another.
The best eulogy of Thoreau is to be found in Emerson's poetry. He is
evidently the subject of the beautiful little poem called "Forbearance."
The opening lines,
"Thou who hast named the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk;
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse;--"
This describes the hermit of blue Walden exactly. A large portion of
"Woodnotes" is devoted to an account of his pilgrimage in the forests
of Maine; and the ode to "Friendship" must have been inspired either
by him or Carlyle.
"I fancied he was fled--
And after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there."
He delivered a lecture one winter before the Concord lyceum on wild
apple-trees. The subject made his audience laugh, but their laughter
was of short duration. The man who had lived there so long unknown was
at last revealed before them, It was the best lecture of the season,
and at its close there was long continued applause.
HAWTHORNE.
The literary celebrities of Concord, with the exception of Thoreau, were
not indigenous. Emerson may have gone there from an hereditary tendency,
but more likely because his cousins the Ripleys dwelt there. Hawthorne
came there by way of the Brook Farm experiment. How, with his reserved
and solitary mode of life, he should have embarked in such a gregarious
enterprise is not very clear; but the election of General Harrison had
deprived him of a small government office--it seems as if Webster might
have interfered in his behalf--his writings brought him very little, and
perhaps he hardly knew what to do with himself.
All accounts agree that he joined the West Roxbury association of his
own free-will, and without solicitation of any kind. He not only threw
himself into this hazardous scheme with an energy that astounded his
friends but he embarked in it all the money he had in the world, which
was nearly a thousand dollars. He has left no explanation from which we
might infer what his hopes or his motives were.
Since three wise men went to sea in a bowl, or the army of German
children set out for the Holy Land in the twelfth century, there was
never a more hare-brained or chimerical undertaking. I once knew of a
boy who after much reading of Robinson Crusoe, started for the woods at
five o'clock of a summer afternoon, with the full intention of spending
the night there alone. He took with him a light fowling-piece, and some
crackers in his jacket pocket. He gathered some berries and shot some
small birds, and cooked them after the Indian fashion. When it grew
dark, however, he became frightened and climbed into a tree; but he
could not sleep there, and finally returned home about one o'clock in
the morning to find his family in great agitation.
This was not very unlike the Brook Farm enterprise, which was inspired
by the writings of Fourier, a seductive French socialist and one of the
most unreasonable of men. He considered, like Diogenes, that since all
men could not be rich and comfortable, it was better that they should
all be needy and miserable. It was one of the sentimental out-growths of
the French Revolution, for which Napoleonism is always the proper
remedy. One of his peculiar notions was that every man should black his
own boots.
George Ripley and his friends do not seem to have made any definite
calculation of what might be the result of their experiment. They
expected, by working six hours a day and limiting themselves to the
simplest and most frugal living, to have six left for literary pursuits
and the enjoyment of profound conversation. Any practical farmer would
have told them that this could not be done and make both ends meet at
the close of the year. Any political economist would have told them that
a community which disregards the advantage of division of labor, could
not compete with one which recognizes that advantage. The principles of
Fourier, if generally adopted, would produce general starvation and soon
reduce the population of Europe to one fourth of its present numbers.
London, which depends for its size on its commercial and political
importance, would become almost as desolate as ancient Thebes.
There was lately an essay published in one of our magazines entitled,
"Why Socialism appeals to Artists," and the reason alleged was that
artists, being more sensitive and delicately organized than most people,
were less capable of enduring the hard struggle with the world which all
are obliged to sustain who make their own way in it. This is no doubt
the true explanation of the Brook Farm enterprise, and it carries with
it its own contradiction. The more realistic sort of literature might
survive in the communistic order, but sculpture and painting, which
depend upon the undivided surplus of production which we call wealth,
would inevitably perish. Even literature would disappear at length, then
science, or at least all advancement of science, precedent in law would
be disregarded, and the dark ages come again. The present organization
of society is the accumulated wisdom of mankind for thousands of years.
Like the language we speak, it was rather an intellectual growth than
the invention of an individual or any number of individuals. Those who
have done the most for it have added but little to the whole. It may be
subverted by revolution for a time, but will always reassert itself
again. It may be amended or modified by reason, but cannot be replaced,
either by the ingenuity of one man or that of a whole generation.
The logic of custom is the most cogent of all reasoning, for it is
inherited in our veins from our ancestors. The man who tries to escape
from it is like a plant being pulled up by the roots. It is exactly this
which writers like Fourier and Henry George leave out of their
reckoning. They see that in individual cases custom is often blind,
cruel, and oppressive, and being kind-hearted and sympathetic they hate
it; but they might as well hate the earth itself because there are
deserts and swamps and malarious places on its surface. It is, no doubt,
the special business of man to remodel the earth as much as possible; to
drain its swamps, and level its forests; but in spite of that its rivers
and mountains will always remain the same, and separate ourselves from
it we cannot.
The greater number of the Brook Farm community were transcendentalists,
and we have no desire to depreciate the work which the transcendentalists
accomplished. They were the needful men and women of their time; the
importers of fresh thought and a more elevated mental activity. The most
critical and conservative of American reviews has said of them:
"They put aside worldly ambition and desire as truly as ever did
medieval monk or oriental ascetic, and thus gave what was essential in
their surroundings, a practical proof of their sincerity. The result was
almost startling. Their Yankee audience first ridiculed them as
dreamers; but when they found that what the transcendentalists actually
recommended to them was dreaming, their ridicule changed to wonder, and
finally to a sort of awe-struck admiration, something like that we
imagine a Roman to have felt on learning that a Christian was capable of
giving up his fish-ponds and nightingales' tongues, and his afternoons
at the amphitheatre, for the sake of what he called 'Truth' proclaimed
by an obscure few."
This is not saying too much, but if anything too little. Since the time
of the early Christians there was never a more pure-minded and
loyal-hearted congregation than that which was gathered at Brook Farm.
They were really the best society of the day. George Ripley himself, one
of the finest scholars and most agreeable writers of that time,
afterwards found his right place as literary editor of the New York
Tribune, where for twenty-five years he disseminated the knowledge of
the best thought and literature broadcast over the land. When we
consider the immense circulation of that periodical and the quality of
its readers, we can hardly overestimate the value of his work. Many have
become famous for less.
There were poets, painters, musicians in the community; especially John
S. Dwight, who as the life-long editor of the "Journal of Music," also
deserves a place on the roll of our public educators. George William
Curtis was one of the youngest members of the community, but always one
of the most brilliant. Sometimes of a rainy day there was very good
cheer and entertainment in the "Hive" as they called their most
commodious building, but generally the men were too drowsy and fatigued
after their work was done for much intellectual activity.
It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the New England
transcendentalists and the German school of philosophy, from which they
are supposed to have derived their inspiration. A German critic has said
of them that they were not so much philosophers as poetical rhapsodists,
and this is about the truth of it. Their business was not so much
thinking, as to celebrate thinking. There was also in the composition of
their creed a strong element of French naturalism, which is not easily
reconciled with the teachings of the German transcendentalists. Kant,
Fichte, and Schelling were true metaphysicians, and would never have
encouraged their pupils to establish a socialistic community in the
suburbs of Leipsic, nor would they have approved of Emerson's lines:
"Who liveth with the stalwart pine
Foundeth an heroic line;
Who liveth in the palace hall
Waneth fast and spendeth all;--"
for they would have said, "There are the Hohenzollerns; and the
experience of mankind is also worth something." It was this empirical
French quality in New England transcendentalism which gave it a certain
popularity, but at the same time prevented it from striking its roots
deeply into the national soil. The law of nature has its value, but
where it conflicts with the historical method it is invariably defeated.
Emerson was the elected chief of the transcendental movement on account
of his influence with the public, but its true leader and representative
character was Margaret Fuller.
This remarkable woman, whose life was adventure from the cradle, who
lived in everybody's house except her own, who went everywhere and did
everything on nothing a year, who made enemies by the dozen and friends
by the score, still remains one of the most distinguished persons of
that period. With some faults of character, she still possessed those
strong qualities which are required for the conduct of a great
enterprise. She had that personal magnetism which comes from courage,
confidence, and clear perceptions. She inspired great enthusiasm in
others for whatever she was interested in herself.