Produced by Eric Eldred, Beth Trapaga
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
EARLY LETTERS OF GEORGE WM. CURTIS
TO
JOHN S. DWIGHT:
Brook Farm and Concord
Edited by
George Willis Cooke
CONTENTS
EARLY LIFE AT BROOK FARM AND CONCORD
EARLY LETTERS TO JOHN S. DWIGHT
LETTERS OF LATER DATE
EARLY LIFE AT BROOK FARM AND CONCORD
George William Curtis was born in Providence, February 24, 1824. From the
age of six to eleven he was in the school of C.W. Greene at Jamaica
Plain, and then, until he was fifteen, attended school in Providence. His
brother Burrill, two years older, was his inseparable companion, and they
were strongly attached to each other. About 1835 Curtis came under the
influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was heard by him in Providence, and
who commanded his boyish admiration. Burrill Curtis has said of this
interest of himself and his brother that it proved to be the cardinal
event of their youth; and what this experience was he has described.
"I still recall," he says, "the impressions produced by Emerson's delivery
of his address on 'The Over-Soul' in Mr. Hartshorn's school-room in
Providence. He seemed to speak as an inhabitant of heaven, and with the
inspiration and authority of a prophet. Although a large part of the
matter of that discourse, when reduced to its lowest terms, does not
greatly differ from the commonplaces of piety and religion, yet its form
and its tone were so fresh and vivid that they made the matter also seem
to be uttered for the first time, and to be a direct outcome from the
inmost source of the highest truth. We heard Emerson lecture frequently,
and made his personal acquaintance. My enthusiastic admiration of him and
his writings soon mounted to a high and intense hero-worship, which, when
it subsided, seems to have left me ever since incapable of attaching
myself as a follower to any other man. How far George shared such
feelings, if at all, I cannot precisely say; but he so far shared my
enthusiastic admiration as to be led a willing captive to Emerson's
attractions, and to the incidental attractions of the movement of which he
was the head; and Emerson always continued to command from us both the
sincerest reverence and homage."
Burrill went so far as to discontinue the use of money and animal food;
both the brothers discarded the conventional costumes in matters of dress,
and their interest was enlisted in the reforms of the day. The family
removed to New York in 1839, George studied at home with tutors, and was
an attendant at the church of Dr. Orville Dewey.
I
The warm and active interest of the brothers in the Transcendental
movement, in all its phases, led them to propose to their father that
he permit them to attend the school connected with the Brook Farm
Association. Permission having been granted, they became boarders there
in the spring or summer of 1842. At no time were they members of the
association, and they paid for their board and tuition as they would
have done at any seminary or college.
At this time the Brook Farm Association had two sources of income--the
farm of about two hundred acres, and the school which was carried on in
connection therewith. In fact, the school was more largely profitable than
the farm, and was for a time well patronized by those who were in general
sympathy with the leaders of the association. George Ripley was the
teacher in philosophy and mathematics, George P. Bradford in literature,
John S. Dwight in Latin and music, Charles A. Dana in Greek and German,
and John S. Brown in theoretical and practical agriculture. A six years'
course was arranged in preparation for college, and three years were given
to acquiring a knowledge of farming. The pupils were required to work one
hour each day, the idea being that this was conducive to sound
intellectual training.
It would seem, however, that Curtis gave only a part of his time to
study, as is indicated in a letter written to his father in June, 1843,
and published in the admirable biography by Mr. Edward Gary. "My life
is summery enough here," he writes. "We breakfast at six, and from
seven to twelve I am at work. After dinner, these fair days permit no
homage but to their beauty, and I am fain to woo their smiles in the
shades and sunlights of the woods. A festal life for one before whom
the great stretches which must be sailed; yet this summer air teaches
sea life-navigation, and I listen to the flowing streams, and to the
cool rush of the winds among the trees, with an increase of that hope
which is the only pole-star of life."
At Brook Farm, Curtis studied Greek, German, music, and agriculture. The
teaching was of the best, as good as could have been had in any college
of the country at that time, and was thorough and efficient. Much more of
freedom was allowed the students than was usual elsewhere, both as to
conditions of study and recitation, and as to the relations of the pupils
to the instructors. The young people in the school were treated as
friends and companions by their teachers; but this familiarity did not
breed contempt for the instructors or indifference to the work of the
school. On the other hand, it secured an unusual degree of enthusiasm
both for the teachers and for the subjects pursued. The work of the
school went on with somewhat less of system than is thought desirable in
most places of instruction; but in this instance the results justified
the methods pursued. The teachers were such as could command success by
their personal qualities and by their enthusiastic devotion to their
work.
The two years spent at Brook Farm formed an important episode in the life
of George William Curtis. It is evident that he did not surrender himself
to the associationist idea, even when he was a boarder at Brook Farm and a
member of its school. He loved the men and women who were at the head of
the community; he found the life attractive and genial, the atmosphere was
conducive to his intellectual and spiritual development; but he did not
surrender himself to the idea that the world can be reformed in that
manner. In a degree he was a curious looker-on; and in a still larger way
he was a sympathetic, but not convinced, friend and well-wisher. If not a
member, he retained throughout life his interest in this experiment, and
remembered with delight the years he spent there. He more than once spoke
in enthusiastic terms of Brook Farm, and gave its theories and its
practice a sympathetic interpretation. In one of his "Easy Chair" essays
of 1869 he described the best side of its life:
"There is always a certain amount of oddity latent in society which rushes
to such an enterprise as a natural vent; and in youth itself there is a
similar latent and boundless protest against the friction and apparent
unreason of the existing order. At the time of the Brook Farm enterprise
this was everywhere observable. The freedom of the antislavery reform and
its discussions had developed the 'come-outers,' who bore testimony in all
times and places against church and state. Mr. Emerson mentions an apostle
of the gospel of love and no money who preached zealously but never
gathered a large church of believers. Then there were the protestants
against the sin of flesh-eating, refining into curious metaphysics upon
milk, eggs, and oysters. To purloin milk from the udder was to injure the
maternal affections of the cow; to eat eggs was Feejee cannibalism and the
destruction of the tender germ of life, to swallow an oyster was to mask
murder. A still selecter circle denounced the chains that shackled the
tongue and the false delicacy that clothed the body. Profanity, they said,
is not the use of forcible and picturesque words; it is the abuse of such
to express base passions and emotions. So indecency cannot be affirmed of
the model of all grace, the human body....
"These were harmless freaks and individual fantasies. But the time was
like the time of witchcraft. The air magnified and multiplied every
appearance, and exceptions and idiosyncrasies and ludicrous follies were
regarded as the rule, and as the logical masquerade of this foul fiend
Transcendentalism, which was evidently unappeasable, and was about to
devour manners, morals, religion, and common-sense. If Father Lamson or
Abby Folsom were borne by main force from an antislavery meeting, and the
non-resistants pleaded that these protestants had as good right to speak
as anybody, and that what was called their senseless babble was probably
inspired wisdom, if people were only heavenly minded enough to understand
it, it was but another sign of the impending anarchy. And what was to be
said--for you could not call them old dotards--when the younger
protestants of the time came walking through the sober streets of Boston
and seated themselves in concert-halls and lecture-rooms with hair parted
in the middle and falling upon their shoulders, and clad in garments such
as no known human being ever wore before--garments which seemed to be a
compromise between the blouse of the Paris workman and the peignoir of a
possible sister? For tailoring underwent the same revision to which the
whole philosophy of life was subjected, and one ardent youth, asserting
that the human form itself suggested the proper shape of its garments,
caused trowsers to be constructed that closely fitted the leg, and bore
his testimony to the truth in coarse crash breeches.
"These were the ludicrous aspects of the intellectual and moral
fermentation or agitation that was called Transcendentalism. And these
were foolishly accepted by many as its chief and only signs. It was
supposed that the folly was complete at Brook Farm, and it was
indescribably ludicrous to observe reverend Doctors and other Dons coming
out to gaze upon the extraordinary spectacle, and going about as dainty
ladies hold their skirts and daintily step from stone to stone in a muddy
street, lest they be soiled. The Dons seemed to doubt whether the mere
contact had not smirched them. But droll in itself, it was a thousandfold
droller when Theodore Parker came through the woods and described it.
With his head set low upon his gladiatorial shoulders, and his nasal
voice in subtle and exquisite mimicry reproducing what was truly
laughable, yet all with infinite _bonhomie_ and with a genuine
superiority to small malice, he was as humorous as he was learned, and as
excellent a mime as he was noble and fervent and humane a preacher. On
Sundays a party always went from the Farm to Mr. Parker's little country
church. He was there exactly what he was afterwards when he preached to
thousands of eager people in the Boston Musichall; the same plain,
simple, rustic, racy man. His congregation were his personal friends.
They loved him and admired him and were proud of him; and his geniality
and tender sympathy, his ample knowledge of things as well as of books,
drew to him all ages and sexes and conditions.
"The society at Brook Farm was composed of every kind of person. There
were the ripest scholars, men and women of the most aesthetic culture and
accomplishment, young farmers, seamstresses, mechanics, preachers--the
industrious, the lazy, the conceited, the sentimental. But they were
associated in such a spirit and under such conditions that, with some
extravagance, the best of everybody appeared, and there was a kind of high
_esprit de corps_--at least, in the earlier or golden age of the colony.
There was plenty of steady, essential, hard work, for the founding of an
earthly paradise upon a rough New England farm is no pastime. But with the
best intention, and much practical knowledge and industry and devotion,
there was in the nature of the case an inevitable lack of method, and the
economical failure was almost a foregone conclusion. But there was never
such witty potato-patches and such sparkling cornfields before or since.
The weeds were scratched out of the ground to the music of Tennyson or
Browning, and the nooning was an hour as gay and bright as any brilliant
midnight at Ambrose's. But in the midst of all was one figure, the
practical farmer, an honest neighbor who was not drawn to the enterprise
by any spiritual attraction, but was hired at good wages to superintend
the work, and who always seemed to be regarding the whole affair with the
most good-natured wonder as a prodigious masquerade....
"But beneath all the glancing colors, the lights and shadows of its
surface, it was a simple, honest, practical effort for wiser forms of life
than those in which we find ourselves. The criticism of science, the sneer
of literature, the complaint of experience is that man is a miserably
half-developed being, the proof of which is the condition of human society,
in which the few enjoy and the many toil. But the enjoyment cloys and
disappoints, and the very want of labor poisons the enjoyment. Man is made,
body and soul. The health of each requires reasonable exercise. If every
man did his share of the muscular work of the world, no other man would be
overwhelmed by it. The man who does not work imposes the necessity of
harder toil upon him who does. Thereby the first steals from the last the
opportunity of mental culture--and at last we reach a world of pariahs and
patricians, with all the inconceivable sorrow and suffering that surround
us. Bound fast by the brazen age, we can see that the way back to the age
of gold lies through justice, which will substitute co-operation for
competition.
"That some such generous and noble thought inspired this effort at
practical Christianity is most probable. The Brook Farmers did not
interpret the words,'the poor ye have always with ye,' to mean,'ye must
always keep some of you poor.' They found the practical Christian in him
who said to his neighbor, 'Friend, come up higher.' But, apart from any
precise and defined intention, it was certainly a very alluring
prospect--that of life in a pleasant country, taking exercise in useful
toil, and surrounded with the most interesting and accomplished people.
Compared with other efforts upon which time and money and industry are
lavished, measured by Colorado and Nevada speculations, by California
gold-washing, by oil-boring, and by the stock exchange, Brook Farm was
certainly a very reasonable and practical enterprise, worthy of the hope
and aid of generous men and women. The friendships that were formed there
were enduring. The devotion to noble endeavor, the sympathy with all that
is most useful to men, the kind patience and constant charity that were
fostered there, have been no more lost than grain dropped upon the field.
It is to the Transcendentalism that seemed to so many good souls both
wicked and absurd that some of the best influences of American life
to-day are due. The spirit that was concentrated at Brook Farm is
diffused, but it is not lost. As an organized effort, after many downward
changes, it failed; but those who remember the Hive, the Eyrie, the
Cottage; when Margaret Fuller came and talked, radiant with bright humor;
when Emerson and Parker and Hedge joined the circle for a night or a day;
when those who may not be publicly named brought beauty and wit and
social sympathy to the feast; when the practical possibilities of life
seemed fairer, and life and character were touched ineffaceably with good
influence, cherish a pleasant vision which no fate can harm, and remember
with ceaseless gratitude the blithe days of Brook Farm."
Curtis returned to the same subject in 1874, in discussing Frothingham's
biography of George Ripley. Some of the errors into which writers about
Brook Farm had fallen he undertook to correct, to point out the real
character of the association, and its effort at the improvement of
society.
"The Easy Chair describes Brook Farm as an Arcadia, for such in effect was
the intention, and such is the retrospect to those who recall the hope
from which it sprang.... The curious visitors who came to see poetry in
practice saw with dismay hard work on every side, plain houses and simple
fare, and a routine with little aesthetic aspect. Individual whims in
dress and conduct, however, were exceptional in the golden age or early
days at Brook Farm, and those are wholly in error who suppose it to have
been a grotesque colony of idealogues. It was originally a company of
highly educated and refined persons, who felt that the immense disparity
of condition and opportunity in the world was a practical injustice, full
of peril for society, and that the vital and fundamental principle of
Christianity was universally rejected by Christendom as impracticable.
Every person, they held, is entitled to mental and moral culture, but it
is impossible that he should enjoy his rights as long as all the hard
physical work of the world is done by a part only of its inhabitants. Were
that work limited to what is absolutely necessary, and shared by all, all
would find an equal opportunity for higher cultivation and development,
and the evil of an unnatural and cruelly artificial system of society
would disappear. It was a thought and a hope as old as humanity, and as
generous as old. No common mind would have cherished such a purpose, no
mean nature have attempted to make the dream real. The practical effort
failed in its immediate object, but, in the high purposes it confirmed and
strengthened, it had remote and happy effects which are much more than
personal.
"It is an error to suppose that many of the more famous
'Transcendentalists' were of the Brook Farm company. Mr. Emerson, for
instance, was never there except as a visitor. Margaret Fuller was often a
visitor, and passed many days together as a guest, but she was never,
except in sympathy, one of the Brook Farmers. Theodore Parker was a
neighbor, and had friendly relations with many of the fraternity, but he
seldom came to the farm. Meanwhile the enterprise was considered an
unspeakable folly, or worse, by the conservative circle of Boston. In
Boston, where a very large part of the 'leaders' of society in every way
were Unitarians, Unitarian conservatism was peremptory and austere. The
entire circle of which Mr. Ticknor was the centre or representative, the
world of Everett and Prescott and their friends, regarded Transcendentalism
and Brook Farm, its fruit, with good-humored wonder as with Prescott, or
with severe reprobation as with Mr. Ticknor. The general feeling in regard
to Mr. Emerson, who was accounted the head of the school, is well expressed
by John Quincy Adams in 1840. The old gentleman, whose glory is that he was
a moral and political gladiator and controversialist, deplores the doom of
the Christian Church to be always racked with differences and debates, and
after speaking of 'other wanderings of mind' that 'let the wolf into the
fold,' proceeds to say: 'A young man named Ralph Waldo Emerson, a son of my
once-loved friend William Emerson, and a classmate of my lamented son
George, after failing in the every-day avocations of a Unitarian preacher
and school-master, starts a new doctrine of Transcendentalism, declares all
the old revelations superannuated and worn out, and announces the approach
of new revelations.' Mr. Adams was just on the eve of his antislavery
career, but he continues: 'Garrison and the non-resistant Abolitionists,
Brownson and the Marat Democrats, phrenology and animal magnetism, all come
in, furnished each with some plausible rascality as an ingredient for the
bubbling caldron of religion and politics.' C.P. Cranch, the poet and
painter, was a relative of Mr. Adams, and then a clergyman; and the
astonished ex-President says: 'Pearse Cranch, _ex ephebis_, preached here
last week, and gave out quite a stream of Transcendentalism most
unexpectedly.'
"This was the general view of Transcendentalism and its teachers and
disciples held by the social, political, and religious establishment. The
separation and specialty of the 'movement' soon passed. The leaders and
followers were absorbed in the great world of America; but that world has
been deeply affected and moulded by this seemingly slight and transitory
impulse. How much of the wise and universal liberalizing of all views and
methods is due to it! How much of the moral training that revealed itself
in the war was part of its influence! The transcendental or spiritual
philosophy has been strenuously questioned and assailed. But the life and
character it fostered are its sufficient vindication."
The school at Brook Farm brought together there a large number of bright
young people, and they formed one of the chief characteristics of the
place. The result was that the life was one of much amusement and healthy
pleasure, as George P. Bradford has said:
"We were floated away by the tide of young life around us. There was
always a large number of young people in our company, as scholars,
boarders, etc., and this led to a considerable mingling of amusement in
our life; and, moreover, some of our company had a special taste and skill
in arranging and directing this element. So we had very varied amusements
suited to the different seasons--tableaux, charades, dancing, masquerades,
and rural fetes out-of-doors, and in winter, skating, coasting, etc."
In her "Years of Experience," Mrs. Georgiana Bruce Kirby, who was at Brook
Farm for very nearly the same period as Curtis, has not only given an
interesting account of the social life there, but she has especially
described the entertainments mentioned by Mr. Bradford. Two of these
occasions, when Curtis was a leading participant, she mentions with
something of detail.
"At long intervals in what most would call our drudgery," she says, "there
came a day devoted to amusement. Once we had a masquerade picnic in the
woods, where we were thrown into convulsions of laughter at the sight of
George W. Curtis dressed as Fanny Ellsler, in a low-necked, short-sleeved,
book-muslin dress and a tiny ruffled apron, making courtesies and
pirouetting down the path. It was much out of character that I, a St.
Francis squaw, in striped shirt, gold beads, and moccasins, should be
guilty of such wild hilarity. Ora's movements were free and graceful in
white Turkish trousers, a rich Oriental head-dress, and Charles Dana's
best tunic, which reached just below her knee. She was the observed of all
observers.
"In the midwinter we had a fancy-dress ball in the parlors of the Pilgrim
House, when the Shaws and Russells, generous friends of the association,
came attired as priests and dervishes. The beautiful Anna Shaw was superb
as a portly Turk in quilted robe, turban, mustache, and cimeter, and bore
herself with grave dignity.
"George W. Curtis, as Hamlet, led the quadrille with Carrie Shaw as a Greek
girl. His sad and solemn 'reverence' contrasted charmingly with her sunny
ease. He acted the Dane to the life, his bearing, the melancholy light in
his eyes, his black-plumed head-cover, and his rapier glittering under his
short black cloak, which fell apart in the dance, were all perfect. It was
a picture long to be remembered, and as long as I could watch these two I
had no desire to take part in the dance myself."
Another phase of Curtis's life at Brook Farm she also mentions, and it
gives a new insight into his character. The occasion described was a
social Sunday evening spent in the parlor of the Eyrie:
"At supper it was whispered that George W. Curtis would sing at the Eyrie,
upon which several young men volunteered to assist with the dishes. My
services were also cordially accepted.... And now we ascended the winding,
moonlit path to the Eyrie, where Curtis was already singing. We went up
the steps of the building cautiously, lest a note of the melody which
floated through the open French windows should be lost to us. Entering the
large parlor, we found not only the chairs and sofas occupied, but the
floor well covered with seated listeners.
"I did not at first recognize the operatic air, so admirably modified and
retarded it was, and its former rapid words replaced by a sad and touching
theme, which called for noble endurance in one borne down by suffering.
The accompaniment consisted of simple chords and arpeggios, a very plain
and sufficient background. Curtis, though not yet twenty--not nineteen, if
I remember rightly--had a grave and mature appearance. He was full of
poetic sensibility, and his pure, rich voice had that sympathetic quality
that penetrates to the heart.... Curtis was not ever guilty of singing a
comic song. It would indeed have been most inappropriate to our intensely
earnest mood. Often his brother would join him in a duet with his
agreeable tenor.
"Low praises and half-spoken thanks were murmured as the grave and gracious
young friend, at the expiration of an hour, swung round on the piano-stool
and attempted to make his exit."
In his "Cheerful Yesterdays," Colonel T.W. Higginson has described the
same life as an onlooker. Although not a member of the community at Brook
Farm, he was somewhat in sympathy with it--at least, with the people of
whom it was composed. At the time he was living in Brookline and teaching
the children of a cousin. "Into this summer life," he writes, "there
occasionally came delegations of youths from Brook Farm. Among these were
George and Burrill Curtis, and Larned, with Charles Dana--all presentable
and agreeable, but the first three peculiarly costumed. It was then very
common for young men in college and elsewhere to wear what were called
blouses--a kind of hunter's frock, made at first of brown holland, belted
at the waist, these being gradually developed into garments of gay-colored
chintz, sometimes, it was said, an economical transformation of their
sisters' skirts or petticoats. All the young men of this party but Dana
wore these gay garments, and bore on their heads little round and
visorless caps with tassels."
"I was but twice at Brook Farm," Higginson continues, "once driving over
there to a fancy ball at 'the Community,' as it was usually called, where
my cousin Barbara Channing was to appear in a pretty Creole dress made of
madras handkerchiefs. She was enthusiastic about Brook Farm, where she
went often, being a friend of Mrs. Ripley.... Again, I once went for her
in summer and stayed for an hour, watching the various interesting
figures, including George William Curtis, who was walking about in
shirtsleeves, with his boots over his trousers, yet was escorting a young
maiden with that elegant grace which never left him. It was a curious fact
that he, who was afterwards so eminent, was then held wholly secondary in
interest to his handsome brother Burrill, whose Raphaelesque face won all
hearts, and who afterwards disappeared from view in England. But if I did
not see much of Brook Farm on the spot, I met its members frequently at
the series of exciting meetings for Social Reform in Boston."
Other reminiscences of Brook-Farmers tell of the Curtis brothers and their
active part in the amusements of the place. They were leaders among the
young people, and they had those gifts of social guidance which placed
them at the head of whatever entertainment was being organized. Their
grace of manner and beauty of face and figure also won consideration for
them, so that they were accepted into every circle and found friends on
every hand. It seems that Burrill was at this time regarded as the
handsomer, but in time George gained the chief place in this regard. Their
courtesy led them to help those whose labors were hard, to aid the women
in the laundry at their tasks, and to assist them in hanging out the
clothes on washing-days. In the evening the clothes-pins which had been
thrust into a pocket found their way to the floor of the dancing-room.
One of the members of the community has written that the brothers "looked
like young Greek gods. Burrill, the elder, with a typical Greek face and
long hair falling to his shoulders in irregular curls," she says, "I
remember as most unconscious of himself, interested in all about him,
talking of the Greek philosophers as if he had just come from one of
Socrates' walks, carrying the high philosophy into his daily life, helping
the young people with hard arithmetic lessons, trimming the lamps daily at
the Eyrie, where the two brothers came to live (my sister saw George
assisting him one day, and occasionally, she says, he turned his face with
a disgusted expression, trying to puff away the disagreeable odor), never
losing control of himself, with the kindest manner to every person. He and
George seemed very companionable and fond of each other.
"George, though only eighteen, seemed much older, like a man of
twenty-five, possibly, with a peculiar elegance, if I may so express it;
great and admirable attention, as I recollect, when listening to any one;
courteous recognition of others' convictions and even prejudices; and
never a personal animosity of any kind--a certain remoteness of manner,
however, that I think prevented persons from becoming acquainted with him
as easily as with Burrill."
In his "Memories of Brook Farm," Dr. John T. Codman mentions the
occasional returns of Curtis to the Farm after he had left it, and says
he heard him singing the "Erl King," "Kathleen Mavourneen," and "Good-night
to Julia" "in his inimitable manner." Everything goes to indicate that
he was a favorite, not only with the younger persons, but with those who
were older. He had already developed a mature thoughtfulness, and gave
indications of his power as a writer and speaker. His fondness for music,
and his enthusiastic study of it under Dwight's leadership is an
indication of that aesthetic appreciation which he kept through life,
and which appeared in his mastership of prose style.
At first each one helped himself to the food placed on the table in the
dining-room at the Hive, or those at the table helped each other. In this
way more or less confusion was produced, and the results were
unsatisfactory. Accordingly, Charles Dana organized a group, including
Curtis and other young men of character and good breeding, to act as
waiters. Dana took his place at the head of this group of voluntary
servants, who performed their duties with grace and alacrity. "It is
hardly necessary to observe," says Mrs. Kirby, "that the business was
henceforth attended to with such courtly grace and such promptness that
the new _regime_ 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."
II
While at Brook Farm, Curtis was on intimate terms with most of the persons
there. He greatly admired Mr. and Mrs. Ripley, and he frequently wrote to
Mrs. Ripley and made of her a sort of mother-confessor. He also highly
appreciated the scholarly qualities of Charles Dana, and his capacity as a
leader. In his letters he frequently mentions "the two Charleses," who
were Charles Dana and Charles Newcomb. The latter has been described by
Dr. Codman as "the mysterious and profound, with his long, dark, straight
locks of hair, one of which was continually being brushed away from his
forehead as it continually fell; with his gold-bowed eye-glass, his large
nose and peculiar blue eyes, his spasmodic expressions of nervous horror,
and his cachinnatious laugh." Newcomb was for many years a resident of
Providence, afterwards finding a home in England and in Paris. He was
early a member of Brook Farm--a solitary, self-involved person, preferring
to associate with children rather than with older persons. He read much in
the literature of the mystics, and was laughingly said to prefer paganism
to Christianity. He had a feminine temperament, was full of sensibility,
and of an indolent turn of mind. Emerson was attracted to him, and at one
time had great expectations concerning his genius. His paper, published in
_The Dial_, under the title of "The Two Dolons," was much admired by some
of the Transcendentalists when it was printed there; and it is referred to
by Hawthorne in his "Hall of Phantasy." In June, 1842, Emerson wrote to
Margaret Fuller: "I wish you to know that I have 'Dolon' in black and
white, and that I account Charles N. a true genius; his writing fills me
with joy, so simple, so subtle, and so strong is it. There are sentences
in 'Dolon' worth the printing of _The Dial_ that they may go forth." This
paper was given him for publication at Emerson's urgent request, and it is
not known that Newcomb has published anything else. In 1850 Emerson said
he had come to doubt Newcomb's genius, having found that he did not care
for an audience.
Another person of whom Curtis speaks is Isaac Hecker, who became a member
of the Catholic Church, under the guidance of Orestes Brownson. He was
born in New York City, was brought up under Methodist auspices, became a
baker, developed a strong taste for philosophy, and went to Brook Farm at
the age of twenty-two. He remained for a few months as a student, and then
tried Alcott's Fruitlands for a fortnight. He was naturally of an ascetic
turn of mind, loved mystic books and philosophy, and found in the Catholic
Church his true religious home. He secured at Brook Farm a kind of culture
which he much needed, and his abilities were seen by those around him.
After his return to New York, Ripley, and Charles Lane, of Fruitlands,
wrote him in a way which indicated their faith in him as a man of judgment
and liberal aims. He spent some months in Concord, had George P. Bradford
for his tutor, and he rented a room of Mrs. Thoreau, the mother of Henry
D. Thoreau. There again he met the Curtis brothers; but soon after he went
to Holland to prepare for the priesthood, and then entered upon his
life-work. A curious phase in the life of this time was the effort of
Hecker to convert Curtis to his own way of religious thinking, as Curtis
relates in his letters. Even more singular was the attempt of Hecker to
persuade Thoreau into the Catholic Church. Mr. Sanborn has read a letter
in which he proposed to Thoreau to travel on foot with him in Europe. His
real purpose seems to have been to get Thoreau away from Protestants, and
among the influences of the Catholic churches and traditions, and thus to
make a convert of him. In a letter printed in Father Elliott's biography
of Father Hecker, Curtis gave an account of his acquaintance with the
founder of the order of the Paulist Fathers.
"WEST NEW BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, _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 influence 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 aesthetic 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 afterwards 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 to 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 towards 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 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."
One of the teachers at Brook Farm was George P. Bradford, who left there
at about the same time Curtis did, and was then a tutor in Concord. When
the account of philosophy in Boston was left uncompleted by Ripley,
Bradford finished it for the "Memorial History of Boston." While living in
the Old Manse in Concord, Hawthorne wrote to Margaret Fuller: "I have
thought of receiving a personal friend, and a man of delicacy, into my
household, and have taken a step towards that object. But in doing so I
was influenced far less by what Mr. Bradford is than by what he is not;
or, rather, his negative qualities seem to take away his personality, and
leave his excellent characteristics to be fully and fearlessly enjoyed. I
doubt whether he be not precisely the rarest man in the world." Mrs.
Hawthorne wrote of Bradford, that "his beautiful character makes him
perennial in interest." After the death of Bradford, Curtis wrote of him
in one of the most appreciative of the biographical papers which the "Easy
Chair" gave to the public:
"Whoever had the happiness of knowing the late George P. Bradford, upon
reading that he was the son of a stout sea-captain of Duxbury, must have
recalled Charles Lamb's description of one of his comrades at the old
South Sea House--'like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter.' A
more gentle, truthful, generous, constant, high-minded, accomplished man,
or, as Emerson, his friend of many years, said of Charles Sumner, 'a
whiter soul,' could not be known. However wide and various and delightful
your acquaintance may have been, if you knew George Bradford, you knew a
man unlike all others. His individuality was entirely unobtrusive, but it
was absolute.
"The candor of his nature refused the least deceit, and rejected every
degree of indirectness without consciousness or effort. His admirable
mind, the natural loftiness of his aim, his instinctive sympathy with
every noble impulse and humane endeavor, his fine intellectual
cultivation, all made him the friend of the best men and women of his time
and neighborhood, and none among them but acknowledged the singular charm
of a companion who asserted his convictions by his character, and with
whom controversy was impossible. Mr. Bradford had the temperament, the
tastes, and the acquirements of a scholar; a fondness for nature, and a
knowledge which made him her interpreter; yet still more obvious were the
social sympathy and tenderness of feeling that brought him into intimate
personal relations which time could not touch.
"Something in his appearance and manner, a half-shrinking and smiling
diffidence, an unworn and childlike ardor and unconsciousness, a freshness
of feeling and frankness of address, invested his personality with what we
call quaintness. He was always active, even to apparent restlessness, not
from nervous excitement, but from fulness of life and sympathy. You might
think of a humming-bird darting from flower to flower, of a honey-bee
happy in a garden. He graduated at Harvard, meaning to be a clergyman, but
the publicity, the magisterial posture, the incessant constraint of the
liberty which he valued more than all else, with the lack of oratorical
gifts and of the self-asserting disposition, soon closed that career to
him; afterwards he was one of the most cheerful and charming figures at
Brook Farm in its pleasantest day. All his life he was a teacher, mainly
of private classes, and generally of women, now in Plymouth, now in
Cambridge, now elsewhere, but, wherever he was, always beloved and
welcomed, and bewailed when he departed.
"Mr. Bradford was unmarried, and there was a sentiment of solitude in his
life, but it was scarcely more, so affectionate and devoted were his
relations to his kindred and his friends. His elder sister, Mrs. Samuel B.
Ripley, was one of the most admirably accomplished women in New England,
living for some years in the Old Manse in Concord in which Hawthorne had
lived. Mr. Ripley was the son of the clergyman who married the widow of
his fellow-clergyman who saw from the Manse the battle at Concord Bridge.
Mr. Bradford was very fond of the old town, and Mr. Emerson had no friend
who was a more welcome or frequent guest than George Bradford, who came to
look after the vegetable garden and to trim the trees, and in long walks
to Walden Pond or Fairhaven Hill to discuss with his host philosophy and
poetry and life. The small gains of a teacher were enough for the simple
wants of the scholarly gentleman, and after middle life he went often to
Europe, and few Americans have ever gone more admirably equipped. He
travelled sometimes with a tried comrade, sometimes alone, and a life
already full was enriched and enchanted still more by the happy journeys.
"Indeed, the recollection of George Bradford is that of a long life as
serene and happy as it was blameless and delightful to others. It was a
life of affection and many interests and friendly devotion; but it was not
that of a recluse scholar like Edward Fitzgerald, with the pensive
consciousness of something desired but undone. George Bradford was in full
sympathy with the best spirit of his time. He had all the distinctive
American interest in public affairs. His conscience was as sensitive to
public wrongs and perilous tendencies as to private and personal conduct.
He voted with strong convictions, and wondered sometimes that the course
so plain to him was not equally plain to others.
"It was a life of nothing of what we call achievement, and yet a life
beneficent to every other life that it touched, like a summer wind laden
with a thousand invisible seeds that, dropping everywhere, spring up into
flowers and fruit. It is a name which to most readers of these words is
wholly unknown, and which will not be written, like that of so many of the
friends of him who bore it, in our literature and upon the memory of his
countrymen. But to those who knew him well, and who therefore loved him,
it recalls the most essential human worth and purest charm of character,
the truest manhood, the most affectionate fidelity. To those who hear of
him now, and perhaps never again, these words may suggest that the
personal influences which most ennoble and sweeten life may escape fame,
but live immortal in the best part of other lives."
Another member of Brook Farm in its earlier period was Minott Pratt, who
had been a printer, and the foreman in the office of the _Christian
Register_, the Unitarian paper published in Boston. Dr. Codman says of him
that he was "a finely formed, large, graceful-featured, modest man. His
voice was low, soft, and calm. His presence inspired confidence and
respect. Whatever he touched was well done. He was faithful and dignified,
and the serenity of his nature welled up in genial smiles. In farm-work he
was Mr. Ripley's right hand. They agreed in practical matters, and Ripley
deferred to his judgment. His wife was an earnest, strong, faithful
worker. They entered into the scheme with fervor." Another Brook Farmer
said of him: "No one can ever forget the entire freedom from fret and fume
and worry he evinced, while he never neglected a duty or failed to
accomplish his full share of work. No one can fail to recall how peaceful
and free from criticism his life was, with what rare fidelity he estimated
his fellows, and how little apparent thought or recognition of self there
was in all his actions. Indeed, the loveliness of his spirit shone through
the bodily vesture, and his smile itself was a blessing which one might
seek to win, and be proud to have gained by one's exertions. His presence,
in all the various spheres of active life and industry, had a wonderful
educational power upon both old and young; and to the influence of several
individuals of similar beauty of character I attribute the harmony and
beauty, in considerable degree, of our Brook Farm life."