AT BROOK FARM
THE famous though short-lived community at West Roxbury,
Massachusetts, where Isaac Hecker made his first trial of the common
life, was started in the spring of 1841 by George Ripley and his
wife, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. Dwight, George P. Bradford, Sarah
Sterns, a niece of George Ripley's, Marianne Ripley, his sister, and
four or five others whose names we do not know. In September of the
same year they were joined by Charles A. Dana, now of the New York
_Sun._ Hawthorne's residence at the Farm, commemorated in the
_Blithedale Romance,_ had terminated before Mr. Dana's began. The
Curtis brothers, Burrill and George William, were there when Isaac
Hecker came. Emerson was an occasional visitor; so was Margaret
Fuller. Bronson Alcott, then cogitating his own ephemeral
experiment at Fruitlands, sometimes descended on the gay community
and was doubtless "Orphic" at his leisure. The association was the
outcome of many discussions which had taken place at Mr. Ripley's
house in Boston during the winter of 1840-41. Among the prominent
Bostonians who took part in these informal talks were Theodore
Parker, Adin Ballou, Samuel Robbins, John S. Dwight, Warren Burton,
and Orestes Brownson. Each of these men, and, if we do not mistake,
George Ripley also, presided at the time over some religious body.
Mr. Ballou, who was a Universalist minister of much local renown,
was, perhaps, the only exception to the prevailing Unitarian
complexion of the assembly.
The object of their discussions seems to have been, in a general way,
the necessity for some social reform which should go to the root of
the commercial spirit and the contempt for certain kinds of labor so
widely prevalent; and, in a special way, the feasibility of
establishing at once, on however small a scale, a co-operative
experiment in family life, having for its ulterior aim the
reorganization of society on a less selfish basis. They probably
considered that, a beginning once made by people of their stamp, the
influence of their example would work as a quickening leaven. They
hoped to be the mustard-seed which, planted in a congenial soil,
would grow into a tree in whose branches all the birds of the air
might dwell. It was the initial misfortune of the Brook-Farmers to
establish themselves on a picturesque but gravelly and uncongenial
soil, whose poverty went very far toward compassing the collapse of
their undertaking.
Not all of the ministers whose names have just been mentioned were of
one mind, either as to the special evils to be counteracted or the
remedies which might be tentatively applied. Three different
associations took their rise from among this handful of earnest
seekers after better social methods. Mr. Ballou, who headed one of
these, believed that unity and cohesion could be most surely obtained
by a frank avowal of beliefs, aims, and practices, to which all
present and future associates would be expected to conform. Mrs.
Kirby, whose interesting volume* we have already quoted, says that
the platform of this party bound them to abolitionism, anti-orthodoxy,
women's rights, total abstinence, and opposition to war. They
established themselves at Hopedale, Massachusetts, where, so far as
our knowledge goes, some vestige of them may still remain, though the
analogies and probabilities are all against such a survival. A second
band of "come-outers," as people used to be called in that day and
region, when they abandoned the common road for reasons not obviously
compulsory, went to Northampton in the same State, and from there
into corporate obscurity.
[* _Years of Experience._ New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1887.]
Mr. Ripley's scheme was more elastic, and if the money basis of the
association had been more solid, there seems no reason on the face of
things why this community at Brook Farm might not have enjoyed a much
longer lease of life. It seems to have left a most pleasant memory in
the minds of all who were ever members of it. In matters of belief
and of opinion no hard-and-fast lines were drawn at any point. In
matters of conduct, the morality of self-respecting New-Englanders
who were at a farther remove from Puritanic creeds than from
Puritanic discipline, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of
social decorum. Of the earliest additions to the co-operative
household, a sprinkling were already Catholic; others, including the
wife and the niece of the founder, afterwards became so. Some
attended orthodox Protestant churches; the majority were probably
Unitarians. Discussion on all subjects appears to have been free,
frank, and good-tempered.
There was no attempt made at any communism except that of
intellectual and social gifts and privileges. There was a common
table, and Mrs. Kirby has given us some attractive glimpses of the
good feeling, and kindly gayety, and practical observance of the
precept to "bear one another's burdens" which came into play around
it. For many months, as no one could endure to have his equal serve
him, and all were equals, there was a constant getting up and down at
table so that each might help himself. Afterwards, when decline had
already set in, so far as the material basis of the undertaking was
concerned, and those who had its success most at heart had begun to
study Fourier for fruitful suggestions, the first practical hint from
that quarter resulted in Mr. Dana's organizing "a group of
servitors." These, writes Mrs. Kirby,* comprised "four of the most
elegant youths at the community--the son of a Louisiana planter, a
young Spanish hidalgo, a rudimentary Free-soiler from Hingham, and,
if I remember rightly, Edward Barlow (the brother of Francis). These,
with one accord, elected as chief their handsome and beloved teacher.
It is hardly necessary to observe that the business was henceforth
attended to with such courtly grace and such promptness that the new
_régime_ was applauded by every one, although it did appear at first
as if we were all engaged in acting a play. The group, with their
admired chief, took dinner, which had been kept warm for them,
afterwards, and were themselves waited upon with the utmost
consideration, but I confess I never could get accustomed to the new
regulation."
[* _Years of Experience,_ pp. 178, 179.]
The watchword of the place was fraternity, not communism. People took
up residence at Brook Farm on different terms. Some paid a stipulated
board, and thus freed themselves from any obligatory share in either
domestic or out-door labor. Others contributed smaller sums and
worked out the balance. Some gave labor only, as was the case with
Mrs. Kirby, then Georgiana Bruce, an English girl of strong
character. She says she agreed to work eight hours a day for her
board and instruction in any branches of study which she elected to
pursue. As an illustration of the actual poverty to which the
community were soon reduced, and, moreover, of the low money value
they set on domestic labor, we give another characteristic passage
from her book. The price of full board, as we learn from a bill sent
by Mr. Ripley to Isaac Hecker after the latter's final departure from
the Farm, was five dollars and fifty cents a week:
"When a year had elapsed I found my purse empty and my wardrobe much
the worse for wear. As I was known to be heartily interested in the
new movement, my case was taken under consideration, and, with the
understanding that I was to add two more hours to my working day, I
was admitted as _bona-fide_ member of the association (which included
only a dozen), and was allowed to draw on the treasury for my very
moderate necessities. Forty dollars a year would cover these,
writing-paper and postage included. The last item was no unimportant
one, as each letter cost from ten to fifty cents, and money counted
for more then than now.
"I should explain that for the whole of one winter there remained but
two bonnets fit for city eyes among six of us. But the best of these
was forced on whomever was going to town. As for best dresses, a
twenty-five cent delaine was held to be gorgeous apparel. The
gentlemen had found it desirable to adopt a tunic in place of the
more expensive, old-world coat."*
[* _Years of Experience,_ p. 132.]
The income of the association was derived from various sources other
than the prices paid for board. There was a school for young
children, presided over by Mrs. Ripley, assisted by various
pupil-teachers, who thus partially recompensed the community for
their own support. Fruit, milk, and vegetables, when there were any
to spare, were sent to the Boston markets. Now and then some
benevolent philanthropist with means would make a donation. No one
who entered was expected to contribute his whole income to the
general purse, unless such income would not more than cover the
actual expense incurred for him. When Isaac Hecker went to West
Roxbury the establishment included seventy inmates, who were
distributed in several buildings bearing such poetical names as the
Hive, the Eyrie, the Nest, and so on. The number rose to ninety or a
hundred before he left them, but the additions seem occasionally to
have been in the nature of subtractions also, taking away more of the
cultivation, refinement, and general good feeling which had been the
distinguishing character of the place, than they added by their money
or their labor.
Isaac Hecker was never an actual member of that inner community of
whose aspirations and convictions the Farm was intended as an
embodiment. He entered at first as a partial boarder, paying four
dollars a week, and undertaking also the bread-making, which until
then had been very badly done, as he writes to his mother. It should
be understood that whatever was received from any inmate, either in
money or labor, was accepted not as a mere return for food and
shelter, but as an equivalent for such instruction as could be
imparted by any other member of the collective family. And there were
many competent and brilliant men and women there, whose attainments
not only qualified them amply for the tasks they then assumed, but
have since made them prominent in American letters and journalism.
Mr. Ripley lectured on modern philosophy to all who desired an
acquaintance with Spinoza, Kant, Cousin, and their compeers. George
P. Bradford was a thorough classical scholar. Charles A. Dana, then
fresh from Harvard, was an enthusiast for German literature, and
successful in imparting both knowledge and enthusiasm to his pupils.
There were classes in almost everything that any one cared to study.
French and music, as we learn from one of Isaac's letters home, were
what he set himself to at the first. The latter was taught by so
accomplished a master as John S. Dwight, who conducted weekly
singing-schools for both children and adults.
To what other studies Isaac may have applied himself we hardly know.
It will be noticed that Mr. George William Curtis, in the kindly
reminiscences which he permits us to embody in this chapter, says
that he does not remember him as "especially studious." The remark
tallies with the impression we have gathered from the journal kept
while he was there. His mind was introverted. Philosophical
questions, then as always, interested him profoundly, but only in so
far as they led to practical results. It might be truer to say that
philosophy was at no time more than the handmaid of theology to him.
At this period he was in the thick of his struggle to attain
certainty with regard to the nature and extent of the Christian
revelation, and what he sought at Brook Farm was the leisure and
quiet and opportunity for solitude which could not be his at home.
"Lead me into Thy holy Church, which I now am seeking," he writes as
the final petition of the prayer with which the first bulky volume of
his diary opens. With the burden of that search upon him, it was not
possible for such a nature as his to plunge with the unreserve which
is the condition of success into any study which had no direct
reference to it. We find him complaining at frequent intervals that
he cannot give his studies the attention they demand. Nor were his
labors as the community baker of long continuance. They left him too
little time at his own disposal, and in a short time he became a full
boarder, and occupied himself only as his inclinations directed.
It may occur to some of our readers to wonder why a man like
Brownson, who was then fast nearing the certainty he afterwards
attained, should have sent a youth like Isaac Hecker to Brook Farm.
It must be remembered that Brownson's road to the Church was not so
direct as that of his young disciple, nor so entirely free in all its
stages from self-crippling considerations. As we shall presently see,
by an abstract of one of his sermons, preached in the spring of 1843,
which was made by Isaac Hecker at the time, Brownson thought it
possible to hold all Catholic truth and yet defer entering the Church
until she should so far abate her claims as to form a friendly
alliance with orthodox Protestantism on terms not too distasteful to
the latter. He was not yet willing to depart alone, and hoped by
waiting to take others with him, and he was neither ready to renounce
wholly his private views, nor to counsel such a step to young Hecker.
He was in harmony, moreover, with the tolerant and liberal tendency
which influenced the leading spirits at Brook Farm. Although he never
became one of the community, he had sent his son Orestes there as a
pupil, and was a frequent visitor himself. Their aims, as expressed
in a passage which we subjoin from _The Dial_ of January, 1842, were
assuredly such as would approve themselves to persons who fully
accepted what they believed to be the social teaching of our Lord,
but who had not attained to any true conception of the Divine
authority which clothes that teaching:
"Whoever is satisfied with society as it is; whose sense of justice
is not wounded by its common action, institutions, spirit of
commerce, has no business with this community; neither has any one
who is willing to have other men (needing more time for intellectual
cultivation than himself) give their best hours and strength to
bodily labor to secure himself immunity therefrom. . . . Everything
can be said of it, in a degree, which Christ said of His kingdom, and
therefore it is believed that in some measure it does embody His
idea. For its Gate of Entrance is strait and narrow. It is,
literally, a pearl _hidden in a field._ Those only who are willing to
lose their life for its sake shall find it. . . . Those who have not
the faith that the principles of Christ's kingdom are applicable to
this world, will smile at it as a visionary attempt."
Brook Farm has an interest for Catholics because, in the order of
guileless nature, it was the preamble of that common life which Isaac
Hecker afterwards enjoyed in its supernatural realization in the
Church. It was a protest against that selfishness of the individual
which is highly accentuated in a large class of New-Englanders, and
prodigiously developed in the economical conditions of modern
society. Against these Isaac had revolted in New York; at Brook Farm
he hoped to find their remedy. And in fact the gentle reformers, as
we may call these West Roxbury adventurers into the unexplored
regions of the common life, were worthy of their task though not
equal to it. There is no doubt that in small numbers and with a
partial surrender of individual prerogatives, well-meaning men and
women may taste many of the good things and be able to bear some of
the hardships of the common life. But to compass in permanent form
its aspirations in this direction, as in many others, nature is
incompetent. The terrible if wonderful success of Sparta is what can
be attained, and tells at what cost. The economy of the bee-hive,
which kills or drives away its superfluous members, and the polity of
Sparta, which put the cripples and the aged to death, are essential
to permanent success in the venture of communism in the natural
order. "Sweetness and light" are enjoyed by the few only at the
sacrifice of the unwholesome and burdensome members of the hive.
Brook Farm, however, was not conceived in any spirit of cruelty or of
contempt of the weaker members of humanity; the very contrary was the
case. Sin and feebleness were capable, thought its founders, of
elimination by the force of natural virtue. The men and women who
gathered there in its first years were noble of their kind; and their
kind, now much less frequently met with, was the finest product of
natural manhood. Of the channels of information which reach us from
Brook Farm, and we believe we have had access to them all, none
contains the slightest evidence of sensuality, the least trace of the
selfishness of the world, or even any sign of the extravagances of
spiritual pride. There is, on the other hand, a full acknowledgment
of the ordinary failings of unpretentious good people. Nor do we mean
to say that they were purely in the natural order--who can be said to
be that? They were the descendants of the baptized Puritans whose
religious fervor had been for generations at white heat. They had,
indeed, cut the root, but the sap of Christian principle still
lingered in the trunk and branches and brought forth fruit which was
supernatural, though destined never to ripen.
Christ was the model of the Brook-Farmers, as He had become that of
Isaac Hecker. They did not know Him as well as they knew His
doctrine. They knew better what He said than why He said it, and that
defect obscured His meaning and mystified their understandings. That
all men were brethren was the result of their study of humanity under
what they conceived to be His leadership; that all labor is
honorable, and entitled to equal remuneration, was their solution of
the social problem. While any man was superfluously rich, they
maintained, no man should be miserably poor. They were reaching after
what the best spirits of the human race were then and now longing
for, and they succeeded as well as any can who employ only the
selvage of the Christian garment to protect themselves against the
rigors of nature. Saint-Simon was a far less worthy man than George
Ripley, but he failed no more signally. Frederic Ozanam, whose
ambition was limited in its scope by his appreciation of both nature
and the supernatural, succeeded in establishing a measure of true
fraternity between rich and poor throughout the Catholic world.
There can be no manner of doubt that although Father Hecker in after
life could good-naturedly smile at the singularities of Brook Farm,
what he saw and was taught there had a strong and permanent effect on
his character. It is little to say that the influence was refining to
him, for he was refined by nature. But he gained what was to him a
constant corrective of any tendency to man-hatred in all its degrees,
not needed by himself to be sure, but always needed in his dealing
with others. It gave to a naturally trustful disposition the vim and
vigor of an apostolate for a cheerful view of human nature. It was a
characteristic trait of his to expect good results from reliance on
human virtue, and his whole success as a persuades of men was largely
to be explained by the subtle flattery of this trustful attitude
towards them. At Brook Farm the mind of Isaac Hecker was eagerly
looking for instruction. It failed to get even a little clear light
on the more perplexing problems of life, but it got something
better--the object-lesson of good men and women struggling nobly and
unselfishly for laudable ends. Brook Farm was an attempt to remove
obstructions from the pathway of human progress, taking that word in
the natural sense.
Even afterwards, when he had known human destiny in its perfect
supernatural and natural forms, and when the means to compass it were
in his possession and plainly competent for success, his memory
reproduced the scenes and persons of Brook Farm in an atmosphere of
affection and admiration, though not unmingled with amusement. He
used not infrequently to quote words heard there, and cite examples
of things done there, as lessons of wisdom not only for the
philosopher but also for the ascetic. He was there equipped with the
necessary external guarantee of his inner consciousness that man is
good, because made so by his Creator--inclined indeed to evil, but
yet a good being, even so inclined. Nothing is more necessary for one
who is to be a teacher among a population whose Catholicity is of
blood and family tradition as well as of grace, than to know that
there is virtue, true and high in its own order, outside the visible
pale of the Church. Especially is this necessary if Catholics in any
age or country are to be fitted for a missionary vocation. That this
is the vocation of the Church of his day was Isaac Hecker's
passionate conviction. He was able to communicate this to Catholics
of the old stock as well as to influence non-Catholics in favor of
the Church; perhaps even more so. More than anything else, indeed,
Brook Farm taught him the defect of human nature on its highest
plane; but it taught him also the worthiness of the men and women of
America of the apostle's toil and blood. The gentle natures whom he
there knew and learned to love, their spirit of self-sacrifice for
the common good, their minds at once innocent and cultivated, their
devotion to their high ideal, the absence of meanness, coarseness,
vulgarity, the sinking of private ambitions, the patience with the
defects of others, their desire to establish the communism of at
least intellectual gifts--all this and much more of the kind fixed
his views and affections in a mould which eminently fitted him as a
vessel of election for apostolic uses.
Before passing to the study of Isaac Hecker's own interior during the
period of his residence at Brook Farm, it is our pleasant privilege
to communicate to our readers the subjoined charming reminiscence of
his personality at the time, from one who was his associate there:
"West New Brighton, S.I., February 28, 1890.--DEAR SIR: I fear that
my recollections of Father Hecker will be of little service to you,
for they are very scant. But the impression of the young man whom I
knew at Brook Farm is still vivid. It must have been in the year 1843
that he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston. He was a youth
of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat
seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his
gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of
singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager
inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him
that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of
mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in the
_Dial._
"Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had
apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the
intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him
in New York. He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember
with what satisfaction he said to me, 'I am sure of my livelihood
because I can make good bread.' His powers in this way were most
satisfactorily tested at the Farm, or, as it was generally called,
'the Community,' although it was in no other sense a community than
an association of friendly workers in common. He was drawn to Brook
Farm by the belief that its life would be at least agreeable to his
convictions and tastes, and offer him the society of those who might
answer some of his questions, even if they could not satisfy his
longings.
"By what influences his mind was first affected by the moral movement
known in New England as transcendentalism, I do not know. Probably he
may have heard Mr. Emerson lecture in New York, or he may have read
Brownson's _Charles Elwood,_ which dealt with the questions that
engaged his mind and conscience. But among the many interesting
figures at Brook Farm I recall none more sincerely absorbed than
Isaac Hecker in serious questions. The merely æsthetic aspects of its
life, its gayety and social pleasures, he regarded good-naturedly,
with the air of a spectator who tolerated rather than needed or
enjoyed them. There was nothing ascetic or severe in him, but I have
often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have
afterward described as a consciousness that he must be about his
Father's business.
"I do not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had classes
in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac
used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find
answers to his questions. He went to hear Theodore Parker preach in
the Unitarian Church in the neighboring village of West Roxbury. He
went into Boston, about ten miles distant, to talk with Brownson, and
to Concord to see Emerson. He entered into the working life at the
Farm, but always, as it seemed to me, with the same reserve and
attitude of observation. He was the dove floating in the air, not yet
finding the spot on which his foot might rest.
"The impression that I gathered from my intercourse with him, which
was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles
of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought,
Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this
was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the
definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the
word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason.
Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a
candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as
it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson,
after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was
drawing toward the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated
the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have
always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected
Hecker's views, although he did not then enter the Catholic Church.
"He was a general favorite at Brook Farm, always equable and playful,
wholly simple and frank in manner. He talked readily and easily, but
not controversially. His smile was singularly attractive and
sympathetic, and the earnestness of which I have spoken gave him an
unconscious personal dignity. His temperament was sanguine. The whole
air of the youth was that of goodness. I do not think that the
impression made by him forecast his career, or, in any degree, the
leadership which he afterwards held in his Church. But everybody who
knew him at that time must recall his charming amiability.
"I think that he did not remain at Brook Farm for a whole year, and
when later he went to Belgium to study theology at the seminary of
Mons he wrote me many letters, which I am sorry to say have
disappeared. I remember that he labored with friendly zeal to draw me
to his Church, and at his request I read the life and some writing of
St. Alphonse of Liguori. Gradually our correspondence declined when I
was in Europe, and was never resumed; nor do I remember seeing him
again more than once, many years ago. There was still in the clerical
figure, which was very strange to me, the old sweetness of smile and
address; there was some talk of the idyllic days, some warm words of
hearty good will, but our interests were very different, and,
parting, we went our separate ways. For a generation we lived in the
same city, yet we never met. But I do not lose the bright
recollection of Ernest the Seeker, nor forget the frank, ardent,
generous, manly youth, Isaac Hecker.
"Very truly yours,
"GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS."
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