continued during his stay in Concord. He sang on occasion, and he often
played a flute. The young singer he mentions was Belinda Randall, a sister
of John Randall, who published a volume of poems. She was a daughter of
Dr. Randall, of Winter Street, Boston, who had a summer place in Stowe.
From there she often visited in Concord, perhaps attended school there,
and was an intimate friend of Elizabeth Hoar, the betrothed of Edward
Emerson, and the sister of Judge Hoar and Senator Hoar, who, when she
visited Mrs. Hawthorne, was described as coming "with spirit voice and
tread." Belinda Randall has recently died, and left half a million dollars
to Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the
Cambridge Prospect Union. Her sister Elizabeth married Colonel Alfred
Cumming, of Georgia, afterwards Governor of Utah. Dr. Randall did not
approve of the marriage, and would not have the wedding take place in his
house. They were married at the house of Judge Hoar, the father of
Elizabeth. She was an excellent musician, but Belinda was the musical
genius of the family.
Another person mentioned by Curtis was Almira Barlow, who was at Brook
Farm during the time he was there. She had been a Miss Penniman of
Brookline, and had the reputation of being a famous beauty. She married
David Hatch Barlow, a graduate of Harvard in 1824, and of the Theological
School in 1829. Their marriage took place in Brookline about 1830, and
they were regarded as the handsomest couple that had been seen in the
town. He had a parish in Lynn, and was afterwards settled in Brooklyn; but
his habits became irregular, he remained but a short time in any place,
and he separated from his wife in 1838. There was much gossip about her,
owing to her beauty and her fondness for the society of men.
With Mrs. Barlow at Brook Farm and Concord was her son Francis Channing,
born in 1834, who graduated at Harvard in 1855, was a lawyer in New York,
rose to the rank of Major-General during the Rebellion, and was afterwards
prominent in his profession. He married as his second wife Miss Ellen
Shaw, the sister of Colonel Robert G. Shaw and of Mrs. George William
Curtis.
Curtis mentions hearing Emerson's address on the anniversary of
emancipation in the West Indies, which was delivered in Concord, August 1,
1844. There had existed in Concord for a number of years a Woman's
Antislavery Society, of which Mrs. Emerson was a member. Of this society,
Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks was the president, and its most active worker.
She invited Emerson to speak on this occasion. He felt that he was excused
from political action by virtue of his having been a clergyman, and
because of his life as a man of letters. Mrs. Brooks thought otherwise,
and she gave him good and urgent reasons why he ought to speak, and to
speak then. At last she prevailed, partly because she gave him no rest
until he had complied with her request, and partly because his conscience
went with her arguments. His attitude hitherto had been such as in part
justified the statement made by Carlyle to Theodore Parker in 1843, that
the negroes were fit only for slavery, and that Emerson agreed with him.
V
The second abiding place of Curtis and his brother in Concord was the farm
of Edmund Hosmer, which was one-half mile east of Emerson's house, about
that distance from Walden Pond, and nearly the same from Hawthorne's
Wayside of later years, which faced it, and from which it could be seen.
Hosmer was a native of Concord, gave his earlier years to his trade as a
tanner, and then spent the remainder of his life as a Concord farmer. He
was Emerson's authority on agriculture and gardening more than any one;
though in later years Samuel Staples (usually known and spoken of as
"Sam") superseded him because he was a nearer neighbor. In 1843, when
Emerson wrote to George Ripley declining to join the Brook Farm community,
he referred to the opinions of Edmund Hosmer, "a very intelligent farmer
and a very upright man in my neighborhood." He gave in full his neighbor's
reasons for want of faith in the community idea, that co-operation in
farming was not successful, that the word of gentlemen-farmers could not
be trusted, that the equal payment of ten cents an hour to every laborer
was unjust, and that good work could not be secured if the worker was not
directly benefited.
In his notes on the agriculture of Massachusetts, published in _The Dial_,
Emerson described his neighbor in these words: "In an afternoon in April,
after a long walk, I traversed an orchard where boys were grafting
apple-trees, and found the farmer in his cornfield. He was holding the
plough, and his son driving the oxen. This man always impresses me with
respect, he is so manly, so sweet-tempered, so faithful, so disdainful of
all appearances--excellent and reverable in his old weather-worn cap and
blue frock bedaubed with the soil of the field; so honest, withal, that he
always needs to be watched lest he should cheat himself. I still remember
with some shame that in some dealing we had together a long time ago, I
found that he had been looking to my interest, and nobody had looked to
his part. As I drew near this brave laborer in the midst of his own acres,
I could not help feeling for him the highest respect. Here is the Caesar,
the Alexander of the soil, conquering and to conquer, after how many and
many a hard-fought summer's day and winter's day; not like Napoleon, hero
of sixty battles only, but of six thousand, and out of every one he has
come victor; and here he stands, with Atlantic strength and cheer,
invincible still. These slight and useless city limbs of ours will come to
shame before this strong soldier, for his having done his own work and
ours too. What good this man has or has had, he has earned. No rich father
or father-in-law left him any inheritance of land or money. He borrowed
the money with which he bought his farm, and has bred up a large family,
given them a good education, and improved his land in every way year by
year, and this without prejudice to himself the landlord, for here he is,
a man every inch of him, and reminds us of the hero of the Robin Hood
ballad:
'Much, the miller's son,
There was no inch of his body
But it was worth a groom.'
"Innocence and justice have written their names on his brow. Toil has not
broken his spirit. His laugh rings with the sweetness and hilarity of a
child; yet he is a man of a strongly intellectual taste, of much reading,
and of an erect good sense and independent spirit which can neither brook
usurpation nor falsehood in any shape. I walked up and down the field as
he ploughed his furrow, and we talked as we walked. Our conversation
naturally turned on the season and its new labors." The conversation went
on, leading to a discussion of the agricultural survey of the State;
Hosmer's opinions of it are quoted as of much worth, and as sounder than
anything which the writer could himself say on the subject.
Mr. Sanborn is of the opinion that Edmund Hosmer was described as Hassan
in Emerson's fragments on the "Poet and the Poetic Gift," in the complete
edition of his poems:
"Said Saadi, 'When I stood before
Hassan the camel-driver's door,
I scorned the fame of Timour brave;
Timour, to Hassan, was a slave:
In every glance of Hassan's eye
I read great years of victory,
And I, who cower mean and small
In the frequent interval
When wisdom not with me resides,
Worship Toil's wisdom that abides.
I shunned his eyes, that faithful man's,
I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance.'"
Hosmer was also described by William Ellery Channing in his "New England":
"This man takes pleasure o'er the crackling fire,
His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak;
He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher
Than pensioned blows--he owned the tree he stroke,
And knows the value of the distant smoke,
When he returns at night, his labor done,
Matched is his action with the long day's sun."
Channing spoke of him again as the
"Spicy farming sage,
Twisted with heat and cold and cramped with age,
Who grunts at all the sunlight through the year,
And springs from bed each morning with a cheer.
Of all his neighbors he can something tell,
'Tis bad, whate'er, we know, and like it well!
The bluebird's song he hears the first in spring--
Shoots the last goose bound south on freezing wing."
Hosmer was also one of the farmer friends of Thoreau, who much enjoyed his
society and the vigor of his conversation. He is described in the
fourteenth chapter of "Walden" as among Thoreau's winter visitors at his
hut: "On a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the
cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from
far through the woods sought my house, to have a social 'crack'; one of
the few of his vocation who are 'men on their farms'; who donned a frock
instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of
church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked
of rude and simple things, when men sat about large fires in cold, bracing
weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our
teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for
those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty." In W.E.
Channing's book about Thoreau as the "Poet-Naturalist," there is a passage
from his journal in which Thoreau speaks of Hosmer as the last of the
farmers worthy of mention. "Human life may be transitory and full of
trouble," he says, "but the perennial mind whose survey extends from that
spring to this--from Columella to Hosmer--is superior to change. I will
identify myself with that which will not die with Columella and will not
die with Hosmer."
At Hosmer's house the two young men lived in a single room, and did their
own cooking and house-keeping. Mrs. Hosmer furnished them with milk, and
they ate crackers, cheese, and fruit largely. They were Grahamites, and
used no meat. They read much, and had with them a large number of books.
It was their custom here, as well as at Captain Barrett's, to spend much
time in the woods. They were enthusiastic students of botany, and came
home from their excursions in the woods with their arms loaded with
flowers, and often searched out the rarest which could be found in the
Walden and Lincoln woods.
It was while the Curtises were living at Hosmer's that they assisted
Thoreau in building his hut at Walden Pond. Thoreau says that in March,
1845, he borrowed an axe and went into the woods to build him a house. The
axe was procured of Emerson, and he says he returned it sharper than when
he received it. He was assisted in building the house, he says, by some of
his acquaintances, "rather to improve so good an occasion for
neighborliness than from any necessity." These acquaintances were Emerson,
Alcott, W.E. Charming, Burrill and George Curtis, Edmund Hosmer and his
sons John, Edmund, and Andrew. Thoreau said that he wished the help of the
young men because they had more strength than the older ones, and that no
man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than he. It was
Thoreau's custom while at Walden to dine on Sundays with Emerson, and to
stop at Hosmer's on his way back to the pond, often remaining to supper.
After the failure of his experiment at Fruitlands, it was into Hosmer's
house that Alcott found himself welcomed; and he was given much of help
and encouragement by the farmer and his wife.
VI
At this time several of the Brook Farmers were living in Concord, and
among them were Bradford, Pratt, and Mrs. Barlow; and later on Marianne
Ripley, the sister of George Ripley, found a home there, and kept a school
for small children. On the third return of the Curtises to Concord, in the
summer of 1846, they found a home in the house of Minott Pratt, who was
living at the foot of Punkatassett Hill, on the top of which was the house
of Captain Barrett. In the same neighborhood lived William Ellery
Channing, the poet, whose wife was a sister of Margaret Fuller. They are
frequently mentioned in Hawthorne's and his wife's letters from the Old
Manse. Pratt's cottage was in a quiet, delightful location; and in the
family George Curtis found himself quite at home.
Curtis made a very pleasant impression in Concord, for he was social in
his ways, paid much deference to others, and always exemplified a fine
etiquette. The brothers are remembered by one person who then knew them as
having no mannerisms, and as being perfect gentlemen. His article on
Emerson, in the "Homes of American Authors," gave much offence in the
town, and by Mrs. Alcott, as well as others, was warmly resented. He was
exact enough as to facts, but he drew from them wrong inferences. He
afterwards said that there was nothing romantic in his paper, and that
every incident mentioned was an actual occurrence. He had letters from
Emerson and Hawthorne before he wrote his papers on those two authors, to
enable him to verify certain details.
The relations of Curtis and Hawthorne were cordial if not intimate. In a
letter to Hawthorne, written from Europe, Curtis said: "Does Mrs.
Hawthorne yet remember that she sent me a golden key to the studio of
Crawford, in Rome? I shall never forget that, nor any smallest token of
her frequent courtesy in the Concord days." In another letter to Hawthorne
he speaks of Concord as "our old home, which is very placid and beautiful
in my memory." In his paper on Hawthorne, in the "Homes of American
Authors," Curtis gave an interesting account of his acquaintance with that
reticent genius during these Concord days:
"There glimmer in my memory a few hazy days, of a tranquil and
half-pensive character, which I am conscious were passed in and around the
house, and their pensiveness I know to be only that touch of twilight
which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the few chance
visitors there were city friends occasionally, figures quite unknown to
the village, who came preceded by the steam shriek of the locomotive, were
dropped at the gate-posts, and were seen no more. The owner was as much a
vague name to me as any one.
"During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up with
some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter,
and a great wood fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There were
various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened attentively
to all the fine things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware of
a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn, his head
slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his bright eyes clearly
burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this
person, who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have
looked had he been a poet--a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to
the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching the dead,
white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him, the
conversation flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his
silence was to be respected. It was the same at table. In vain the silent
man imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at
his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me that nothing
was lost. So supreme was his silence that it presently engrossed me to the
exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but this
silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the
philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this
gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently rose and
went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face like
day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.'
"Thus he remained in my memory, a shadow, a phantom, until more than a year
afterwards. Then I came to live in Concord. Every day I passed his house,
but when the villagers, thinking that perhaps I had some clew to the
mystery, said, 'Do you know this Mr. Hawthorne?' I said, 'No,' and trusted
to time.
"Time justified my confidence, and one day I too went down the avenue and
disappeared in the house. I mounted those mysterious stairs to that
apocryphal study. I saw 'the cheerful coat of paint, and golden-tinted
paper-hangings, lighting up the small apartment; while the shadow of a
willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the
cheery western sunshine.' I looked from the little northern window whence
the old pastor watched the battle, and in the small dining-room beneath
it, upon the first floor, there were
'Dainty chicken, snow-white bread,'
and the golden juices of Italian vineyards, which still feast insatiable
memory.
"Our author occupied the Old Manse for three years. During that time he was
not seen, probably, by more than a dozen of the villagers. His walks could
easily avoid the town, and upon the river he was always sure of solitude.
It was his favorite habit to bathe every evening in the river, after
nightfall, and in that part of it over which the old bridge stood, at
which the battle was fought. Sometimes, but rarely, his boat accompanied
another up the stream, and I recall the silence and preternatural vigor
with which, on one occasion, he wielded his paddle to counteract the bad
rowing of a friend who conscientiously considered it his duty to do
something and not let Hawthorne work alone, but who, with every stroke,
neutralized all Hawthorne's efforts. I suppose he would have struggled
until he fell senseless, rather than ask his friend to desist. His
principle seemed to be, if a man cannot understand without talking to him,
it is useless to talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man
understands or not. His own sympathy was so broad and sure that, although
nothing had been said for hours, his companion knew that nothing had
escaped his eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or
society failed to thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most
social. Everything seemed to have been said. It was a Barmecide feast of
discourse from which a greater satisfaction resulted than from an actual
banquet.
"When a formal attempt was made to desert this style of conversation, the
result was ludicrous. Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a call. They
were shown into the little parlor upon the avenue, and Hawthorne presently
entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his chair like a Roman senator.
'To them,' Hawthorne, like a Dacian King. The call went on, but in a most
melancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or occasionally
propounded a question which Thoreau answered accurately, and there the
thread broke short off. Emerson delivered sentences that only needed the
setting of an essay to charm the world; but the whole visit was a vague
ghost of the Monday Evening Club at Mr. Emerson's--it was a great failure.
Had they all been lying idly on the river brink or strolling in Thoreau's
blackberry pastures, the result would have been utterly different. But
imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild man in his way,
with a necessity of talking inherent in the nature of the occasion, there
was only a waste of treasure. This was the only 'call' in which I ever
knew Hawthorne to be involved.
"In Mr. Emerson's house I said it seemed always morning. But Hawthorne's
black-ash trees and scraggy apple boughs shaded
'A land in which it seemed always afternoon.'
"I do not doubt that the lotus grew along the grassy marge of the Concord
behind his house, and that it was served, subtly concealed, to all his
guests. The house, its inmates, and its life lay dream-like upon the edge
of the little village. You fancy that they all came together and belonged
together, and were glad that at length some idol of your imagination, some
poet whose spell had held you, and would hold you forever, was housed as
such a poet should be.
"During the lapse of the three years since the bridal tour of twenty miles
ended at the 'two tall gate-posts of roughhewn stone,' a little wicker
wagon had appeared at intervals upon the avenue, and a placid babe, whose
eyes the soft Concord day had touched with the blue of its beauty, lay
looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which sighed lofty lullabies
over her sleep. The tranquillity of the golden-haired Una was the living
and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old Manse. Perhaps, that
being attained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our author was not surprised
or displeased when the hints came, 'growing more and more distinct, that
the owner of the old house was pining for his native air.' One afternoon I
entered the study and learned from its occupant that the last story he
should ever write there was written."
In the midnight chapter of his "Blithedale Romance," Hawthorne described
an incident which actually took place in Concord. A young girl drowned
herself, and her body was found as there set forth. Hawthorne wrote a full
account of the drowning in his journal, which is printed by Julian
Hawthorne in his biography of "Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife." No
mention is made of Curtis, who took part in the search, and who gave his
own account of the affair in his paper on Hawthorne. When Thoreau went to
New York, in 1843, he put his boat into the keeping of Curtis, and he and
Channing made their excursions on the river in it. In it they searched for
Mary Hunt, who lived near Channing. Curtis's account of this affair
deserves to be placed by the side of Hawthorne's:
"Martha was the daughter of a plain Concord farmer, a girl of delicate and
shy temperament, who excelled so much in study that she was sent to a fine
academy in a neighboring town, and won all the honors of the course. She
met at the school and in the society of the place a refinement and
cultivation, a social gayety and grace, which were entirely unknown in the
hard life she had led at home, and which by their very novelty, as well as
because they harmonized with her own nature and dreams, were doubly
beautiful and fascinating. She enjoyed this life to the full, while her
timidity kept her only a spectator; and she ornamented it with a fresher
grace, suggestive of the woods and fields, when she ventured to engage in
the airy game. It was a sphere for her capacities and talents. She shone
in it, and the consciousness of a true position and genial appreciation
gave her the full use of all her powers. She admired and was admired. She
was surrounded by gratifications of taste, by the stimulants and rewards
of ambition. The world was happy, and she was worthy to live in it. But at
times a cloud suddenly dashed athwart the sun--a shadow stole, dark and
chill, to the very edge of the charmed circle in which she stood. She knew
well what it was, and what it foretold, but she would not pause nor heed.
The sun shone again, the future smiled; youth, beauty, and all hopes and
thoughts bathed the moment in lambent light.
"But school-days ended at last, and with the receding town in which they
had been passed, the bright days of life disappeared, and forever. It was
probable that the girl's fancy had been fed, perhaps indiscreetly
pampered, by her experience there. But it was no fairy-land. It was an
academy town in New England, and the fact that it was so alluring is a
fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to
which she now returned. What could she do? In the dreary round of petty
details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no
companions or any sympathy--for the family of a hard-working New-England
farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor the
cowboys Corydons--with no opportunity of retirement and cultivation, for
reading and studying--which is always voted 'stuff' under such
circumstances--the light suddenly quenches out of life, what was she to
do?