FRIENDSHIPS AND BELIEFS
RARE friendships existed among the great minds of that period, when
Transcendentalism in America was first talked and lived, a close bond of
sympathy uniting Bronson Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, Ellery Channing,
Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody. Such association made its
impress upon the Alcott daughters. Anna's diary is filled with
references to visits with the Emersons. Louisa's deal less with the
family and more with the intellectual life of the great philosopher,
whom she made her idol. Through life he was her stanch and
understanding friend.
"The Apostles of the Newness" was the scoffing term applied to these
literary giants of New England by those who lacked the mental and
spiritual insight to recognize greatness in others.
This attitude of ridicule was largely responsible for the continued
attacks upon the _Dial_, a quarterly issued by the Transcendentalists,
edited from 1840 to 1844 by Emerson, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, and
Thoreau. Between its modest covers were many of the intellectual
masterpieces of the time: its rare volumes are still treasure-houses of
literature which to-day command any price. Mr. Alcott selected its title
and was to a large extent responsible for its policy. His Orphic
Sayings in the _Dial_, now looked upon as classics, were the butt of the
press at the time, and the derision of Boston society.
In these Orphic Sayings, he gave this remarkable definition of Reform:
"Reforms are the noblest of facts. Extant in time, they work for
eternity: dwelling with men, they are with God."
Conversation among these friends was neither trivial nor useless, and in
the Alcott circle, which included Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker,
William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Elizabeth Peabody, Mrs.
Cheney, and other of the early Transcendentalists, later on augmented by
James Russell Lowell and Nathaniel Hawthorne, a series of drawing-room
symposiums was established, with Alcott, whom Emerson called "serious
and superior," as a leader. Much of the substance of these conversations
is found in the Alcott journals, and in the unpublished manuscripts of
the poet-philosopher.
In Concord, the Alcotts once more enjoyed the literary companionship
they craved. Emerson was a near neighbor. Thoreau had his cabin at
Walden, where he had established "a community of one." To and from
Boston came others of the Transcendental group, and Concord became the
center of thought for New England.
Thinking, however, was not the only occupation of Bronson Alcott.
Dreamer he was, but he delighted in toil and ever upheld the dignity of
labor, not ashamed nor afraid to work for hire as a laborer in his
neighbor's field, while nightly conducting drawing-room conversations
with a company of peers and students.
When Thoreau built his cabin, Alcott helped him. They cut the trees from
Emerson's grove. While Emerson was abroad, they built a summer-house for
him on his grounds. It stood for many years, a picturesque temple of
friendship. William Henry Channing mentions a morning spent there,
reading Margaret Fuller's Italian letters. May Alcott has made drawings
of it, which were published in a volume of "Concord Sketches" that also
contained her drawing of Hawthorne's house.
Mr. Alcott practically rebuilt Orchard House for his own family. Mrs.
Child, a friend of Mrs. Alcott, thus describes this home, which is now
preserved as a memorial to Louisa M. Alcott and is visited by thousands
every year:
When they bought the place the house was so very old that it
was thrown into the bargain, with the supposition that it was
fit for nothing but firewood. But Mr. Alcott had an
architectural taste, more intelligible than his Orphic Sayings.
He let every old rafter and beam stay in its place, changed old
ovens and ash holes into Saxon arched alcoves, and added a
washerwoman's old shanty to the rear. The result is a house
full of queer nooks and corners, with all manner of juttings in
and out. It seems as if the spirit of some old architect had
dropped it down in Concord.
Thoreau, master builder himself, has paid to Bronson Alcott this
tribute:
One of the last of the philosophers, Connecticut gave him to
the world. He peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he
declares, his brains. These he peddles still, bearing for
fruit, only his brain, like the nut its kernel. His words and
attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men
are aquainted with, and he will be the last man to be
disappointed when the ages revolve. He has no venture in the
present. But though comparatively disregarded now, when his
day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and
rulers will come to him for advice.
Emerson, who saw the boy mind beneath the philosopher's dignity, said
tenderly of Bronson Alcott: "He is certainly the youngest man of his age
we have seen. When I looked at his gray hairs, his conversation sounded
pathetic; but I looked again and they reminded me of the gray dawn."
Even his friends, to say nothing of Louisa, occasionally poked fun at
him for chronicling so minutely all his thoughts. Ellery Channing called
his library, "Encyclopediea de Moi-meme, en cents volumes." Yet these
journals and records are now worth more than the fine library he
collected and in which he delighted.
Emerson has thus described the origin of the Fruitlands community:
On the invitation of James P. Greaves of London, the friend and
fellow-laborer of Pestalozzi in Switzerland, Mr. Alcott went to
England in 1842. Mr. Greaves died before his arrival, but Mr.
Alcott was received cordially by his friends, who had given his
name to their school, Alcott House, Ham, near London. He spent
several months in making acquaintance with various classes of
reformers. On his return to America, he brought with him two of
his English friends, Chas. Lane and H. C. Wright; and Mr. Lane
having bought a farm which he called Fruitlands, at Harvard,
Mass., they all went there to found a new community.
The Fruitlands experiment and its failure have been immortalized by
Louisa Alcott in her "Transcendental Wild Oats." The detail of it is
thus described by a friend of the Alcott family, who had the story from
Bronson Alcott himself:
The crop failures necessitated the community living on a barley
diet, as anything animal was not allowed, not even milk and
eggs. Now and then they gave a thought as to what they should
do for shoes when those they had were gone; for depriving the
cow of her skin was a crime not to be tolerated. The barley
crop was injured in harvesting, and before long want was
staring them in the face. The Alcotts remained at Fruitlands
till mid-winter in dire poverty, all the guests having taken
their departure as provisions vanished. Friends came to the
rescue, and, Mr. Alcott concluded with pathos in his voice, "We
put our little women on an ox-sled and made our way to Concord!
So faded one of the dreams of my youth. I have given you
the facts as they were; Louisa has given the comic side in
'Transcendental Wild Oats'; but Mrs. Alcott could give you the
tragic side."
Indeed, it was always Mrs. Alcott who could have given the tragic side,
skillfully as she kept her worries hidden. Her own family, indignant
because Bronson Alcott could not better provide the material needs for
his family, on more than one occasion besought the faithful wife to
leave him.
A letter from her brother, urging this step, drew forth from her a
defense of Bronson Alcott which the husband enters in his journal as
follows:
November
1840
Passages of a letter from my wife to one who misapprehends and
perverts my life and purposes.
"If I do not mistake the spirit as well as letter of your remark
you would have us believe that a righteous retribution has
overtaken us, (or my husband, and we are one,) and that the
world is justly punishing him for not having conciliated it, by
conforming to its wills and ways.--You say that my husband was
told ten years ago, that the world could not understand him. It
perhaps fell dead on his ears and ever will. There is no human
voice can convince him that the path he has chosen to tread,
thorny, bleak, solitary, as it is, is not the right one for him.
Just so did that man of Nazareth whom all the world profess to
admire and adore, but few to imitate; and these few are the
laughing-stock of the Christian Community. They are branded as
visionaries and fools. But this little band when alone and
disencumbered of idle observation, enjoy the recital of their
privations; they have been reviled, but they revile not again;
they know sorrow and are acquainted with grief; and yet there is
joy in that group of sinless men, such as angels might desire
to partake of. I am not writing poetry, but I have tried to
place before your mind, in as brief, but clear a manner as I am
able, our real condition, and Mr. Alcott's merit as a man, who,
though punished and neglected by a wicked world, has much to
console and encourage him in the confidence and cooperation of
some of the wisest and best men living. Ten such, were they
permitted in their several vocations to act as teachers,
preachers, and printers, would save our wicked city from the
ruin that awaits it. But they are turned, like the Nazarene,
into solitary places to lament the blindness and folly of
mankind, who are following the vain and fleeting shadow for the
real and abiding substance. But to return to Mr. Alcott, is he
to sell his soul, or what is the same thing, his principles, for
the bread that perisheth? No one will employ him in his way; he
cannot work in theirs, if he thereby involve his conscience. He
is so resolved in this matter that I believe he will starve and
freeze before he will sacrifice principle to comfort. In this, I
and my children are necessarily implicated: we make and mean to
make all the sacrifices we can to sustain him, but we have less
to sustain us in the spirit, and therefore, are more liable to
be overcome of the flesh. He has, for a long time gone without
everything which he could not produce by labor, from his own
place, that no one could in truth reproach him with wantonly
eating of the fruits of another's labor.
He was sent for by friends in Hingham to talk with them; which
he did two evenings; his expenses were paid and $23. put into
his hands as a slight compensation for the benefit they felt he
had conferred upon them by his conversations. I should like to
copy the note accompanying it, but you never care to see how his
fellow fanatics rave on these holy themes, life, duty, destiny
of man. Thus he occasionally finds a market for his thoughts and
experiences, which, though inadequate to our support, is richly
prized as the honest gains of an innocent and righteous labor.
You spoke of his "poetical wardrobe" whether in satire or in a
worthier spirit, I cannot tell. However spiritual he may have
become, there is still enough of the carnal to feel the chills
of winter, and the chiller blasts of satire. His tatters are the
rags of righteousness and keep him warmer than they would anyone
whose spirit was less cheered and warmed by the fires of eternal
love and truth.
An appreciative account of Mr. Alcott's famous school in the Masonic
Temple, Boston, is found in the "Record of a School," edited by
Elizabeth Peabody, published in 1835, republished in 1874. The
"Conversations with Children on the Gospels," edited by Mr. Alcott in
two volumes, appearing in 1836-1837, caused such a commotion in Boston
as to result in the downfall of the Temple School. Reading these
conversations to-day, one is impressed with the modern quality of their
thought. They were forerunners of that higher criticism, which with the
Bible student now supplants the old blind acceptance without reflection
of even obscure Biblical passages.
On philosophy and religion Mr. Alcott and Miss Peabody delighted to talk
and write. Their discussion of the existence of evil is startlingly
modern.
"I do not think that evil should be clothed in form by the imagination,"
writes Miss Peabody to Mr. Alcott; "I think every effort should be made
to strip it of all individuality, all shaping and all coloring. And
the reason is, that Evil has in truth no substantial existence, that
it acquires all the existence it has from want of faith and soul
cultivation, and that this is sufficient reason why all cultivation
should be directed to give positiveness, coloring, shaping, to all
kinds of good--Good only being eternal truth."
In reply, the philosopher thus comments in his diary: "Evil has no
positive existence, I agree with Miss Peabody, but it has usurped a
positive place and being in the popular imagination, and by the
imagination must it be made to flee away into its negative life. How
shall this be done? By shadowing forth in vivid colors the absolute
beauty and phenomena of good, by assuming evil not as positive, but as
negative."
"I shall always love you for loving Alcott," writes Emerson to his
schoolmate and lifelong friend, the Reverend W. H. Furness. "He is a
great man, the god with the herdsman of Admetus. His conversation is
sublime; yet when I see how he is underestimated by cultivated people,
I fancy none but I have heard him talk."
In the midst of slander and petty persecutions, Alcott writes in his
diary for April, 1837:
I have been striving to apprehend the real in the seeming, to
strip ideas of their adventitious phrases and behold them in
their order and powers. I have sought to penetrate the showy
terrestrial to find the heavenly things. I have tried to
translate into ideas the language and images of spirit, and
thus to read God in his works. The outward I have seen as the
visage and type of the inward. Ever doth this same nature
double its design and stand forth--now before the inner, now
before the outer sense of man, at once substance and form,
image and idea, so that God shall never slip wholly from the
consciousness of the soul.
Emerson, weary of seeing his friend misunderstood, urges him to give up
teaching and become an author, picturing as his golden view for Alcott
that one day he will leave the impracticable world to wag its own way,
sit apart, and write his oracles for its behoof.
"Write! let them hear or let them forbear," he thunders. "The written
word abides until, slowly and unexpectedly, and in widely sundered
places, it has created its own church."
The unreality of evil, as taught and believed by Alcott nearly a century
ago, laughed and scoffed at then, was twenty-five years later
practically the foundation of a belief which gained its first foothold
in New England, and, with headquarters in Boston, has spread, until
to-day its followers and churches circle the civilized globe--a new-old
religion, based on the literal acceptance of the teachings of Christ.
What to-day is called metaphysical teaching was in the Alcott period
scoffed at as Transcendentalism.
Mr. Alcott's strict adherence to a vegetarian diet was also the topic of
ridicule from public and press, although the Alcott children seemed to
thrive on it, and certainly, as four-year-old Louisa once remarked, "Did
pitty well for a wegetable diet."
Louisa, in her journal, gives this sample of the vegetarian wafers they
had at Fruitlands:
Vegetable | Pluck your | Without flesh
diet and | body from |
sweet repose | the orchard; | diet there
Animal food | do not snatch | could be no
and nightmare. | it from the | blood-shedding
| shamble. | war.
Appollo eats no | Snuff is no less snuff
flesh and has no | though accepted
beard; his voice is | from a gold box.
melody itself. |
Bronson Alcott constantly sought self-improvement, and the shortcomings
of his early education were more than offset by his untiring study.
Realizing at one time his lack of a vocabulary, he comments in his
journal, that to rectify this he has just bought two books, "A
Symposium of Melancholy," and "Hunter on the Blood."
In their memoirs of Bronson Alcott, F. B. Sanborn and W. T. Harris
have thus summed up his character: "He was the most filial son, the
most faithful lover, the most attached friend, the most generous
philanthropist of his time. And when he died, he left fewer enemies
than any man of equal age can have provoked or encountered in so long
a career."
In his study of childhood, Mr. Alcott sought first to reach the mind,
recognizing that as "the God within us." He encouraged individuality in
his children, trying in their earliest years to make them think for
themselves. All through his teaching runs the boy's friendship with God,
and his sense of oneness with his Maker was a part of the divine
heritage he passed on to his daughters.
He records in his diary a conversation with Anna, who was four, and
Louisa, who was two, after reading to them the story of Jesus, which he
made so vital that, given their choice, they asked for it in preference
to a fairy tale. Anna remarked that Jesus did not really die. "They
killed his body, but not his soul." Her father asked: "What is the soul,
Anna?" The little four-year-old replied: "It's this inside of me that
makes me feel and think and love." "And," said the father, "what became
of Jesus' soul?" Anna replied: "It went back to God." Whereat little
two-year-old Louisa asked: "Why, isn't Dod inside of me?"
A note in the father's diary at the birth of Elizabeth records "Anna's
first interview with her sister" (Elizabeth a few hours old), and a day
later comes this record: "Anna and Louisa interview their sister."
Louisa, two years old, wishes to have the baby sister put in her arms,
when four-year-old Anna says warningly: "Treat her very carefully,
Louisa, she comes from God." What a beautiful thought to give a child of
the divine mystery of birth!
Instead of asserting what he intended to make of his children, Alcott
encouraged the child to make itself, beginning when it was a small
baby, treating it as an individual, giving it opportunity to use its
mentality, instilling principles of right and wrong by suggestion.
Alcott never commanded. "You don't wish to do that," was his way, not
exacting blind obedience, but expressing his conviction that the child
wished to do right.
To him, God was love. He had no fear of God, for perfect love had cast
out fear. This same spirit was manifested in all his children. To them
the change called Death was not to be dreaded; it was a stepping forward
and upward.
This thought that death is not the end, but the beginning, is expressed
in one of Louisa's most beautiful poems:
THOREAU'S FLUTE
We sighing said, "Our Pan is dead;
His pipe hangs mute beside the river.
Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
And Music's airy voice is fled.
Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
The bluebird chants a requiem;
The willow-blossom waits for him;--
The Genius of the wood is lost."
Then from the flute, untouched by hands,
There came a low, harmonious breath;
"For such as he there is no death--
His life the eternal life commands;
Above man's aims his nature rose,
The wisdom of a just content
Made one small spot a continent
And tuned to poetry life's prose.
"Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild,
Swallow and aster, lake and pine,
To him grew human or divine,--
Fit mates for this large-hearted child.
Such homage Nature ne'er forgets,
And yearly on the coverlid
'Neath which her darling lieth hid
Will write his name in violets.
"To him no vain regrets belong,
Whose soul, that finer instrument,
Gave to the world no poor lament,
But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.
O lonely friend! he still will be
A potent presence, though unseen;--
Steadfast, sagacious and serene;
Seek not for him--he is with thee."
A visit to Sleepy Hollow suggests life, not death. Giant trees stretch
their branches over marble and granite monuments, as if in benediction.
"There is no death, for God is life," they seem to say. For them there
is no death. Emerson lives to-day, the great philosopher; so do Thoreau,
Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and others of that mighty company. And who
shall say that Louisa Alcott is dead? She lives in the hearts of
thousands, and will go on living through the love they bear her.
Bronson Alcott was a true disciple of Jesus Christ. He lived the example
set by his Master not alone in words and thoughts, but in deeds. He
lived through and beyond misunderstanding, ridicule, poverty, to see his
teachings respected, his name honored, to see the first glimmer of the
new light which was beginning to break over the world, the sunrise at
his own sunset.
This thought is embodied in the last poem Louisa Alcott ever wrote:
To my Father.
On his Eighty-Sixth Birthday.
Dear Pilgrim, waiting patiently,
The long, long journey nearly done,
Beside the sacred stream that flows
Clear shining in the western sun;
Look backward on the varied road
Your steadfast feet have trod,
From youth to age, through weal and woe,
Climbing forever nearer God.
Mountain and valley lie behind;
The slough is crossed, the wicket passed;
Doubt and despair, sorrow and sin,
Giant and fiend, conquered at last.
Neglect is changed to honor now,
The heavy cross may be laid down;
The white head wins and wears at length
The prophet's, not the martyr's crown.
Greatheart and Faithful gone before,
Brave Christiana, Mercy sweet,
Are shining ones who stand and wait
The weary wanderer to greet.
Patience and Love his handmaids are,
And till time brings release,
Christian may rest in that bright room
Whose windows open to the east.
The staff set by, the sandals off,
Still pondering the precious scroll,
Serene and strong he waits the call
That frees and wings a happy soul.
Then beautiful as when it lured,
The boy's aspiring eyes,
Before the pilgrim's longing sight,
Shall the Celestial City rise.
CHRONOLOGY
It has been particularly the aim of the editors to lift these Little
Women Letters out of the biographical and into the narrative class. For
this reason dates have not been used with any degree of liberality, and
chronological facts have been minimized.
However, as this is a story of the Alcott family, and seekers for
definite data will not be lacking, a chronological summary is herewith
furnished:
Amos Bronson Alcott 1799-1888
married
Abby May 1800-1877
Their Children
Anna Bronson 1831-1893
Louisa May 1832-1888
Elizabeth 1835-1858
Abby May 1840-1879
Anna Bronson married John Bridge Pratt, 1860.
Their Children
Frederick Alcott 1863-1910
John Sewall 1865
Abby May married Ernst Nieriker, March, 1878.
Children
Louisa May 1879
Frederick Alcott Pratt
married
Jessica Cate
February, 1888
Their Children
Bronson Alcott 1889
Elizabeth Sewall 1891
Louisa May 1900
Frederick Woolsey 1902
Elizabeth Sewall married Alfred Redfield
June, 1913
[*]John Sewall Pratt
married
Eunie May Hunting
January, 1909
[*] John Sewall Pratt adopted in 1888 by Louisa May Alcott and
name changed to John Sewall Pratt Alcott.
Children
Elverton Hunting
Louisa May Nieriker 1878
married
Ernst Rasim
Children
Ernestine
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _underscores_.
Small caps have been replaced with ALL CAP text.
Spelling errors, grammatical errors, and typographical errors within
letters were not corrected, in order to preserve the flavor of the
historical record of those letters. After all, some of these letters
were written by girls as young as five.
Some of the illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match the
page number in the List of Illustrations.
On page 58, "reestablished" was replaced with "reestablished".
On page 173, has a quotation mark at the beginning of "If I do not
mistake" but no closing quotation mark, and it is less than clear where
the closing quotation mark should be.