me a card to the Society Library, the largest in the city; and I have
found much good browsing in those fields. I have found "Amadis de Gaul"
among the rest, and the complete works of Carew, Suckling, Drayton,
Drummond, etc. It has led me to wish some more intimate knowledge of
English history, to which I must turn. How imperceptibly and surely spread
out these meadows where the rare flowers bloom! There is no end to these
threads which place themselves in our hand, and which lead every man of
the world his different way. So we sail on through the blue spaces,
separate as stars.
And you, they tell me, have joined the association. I supposed you were
making some move, and thought this might be it. I am glad that you do so
so heartily, and more glad that I can say so. After all, the defiance
offered us by the varied positions of our friends is what life needs. Each
dissimilar act of my friend, while it does not sever him from me, throws
me more sternly upon myself. Can we not make our friendship so fine that
it shall be only a sympathy of thought, and let the expression differ, and
court it to differ? This ray of the sunlight falls upon summer woods, that
sinks into the wintry sea, yet are they brothers. The severe loneliness
that has sun and moon in its bosom invites us as the vigorous health of
the soul. The beautiful isolation of the rose in its own fragrance is
self-sufficient.
Charles wrote Burrill a manly letter during the week. The Arcadian beauty
of the place is lost to me, and would have been lost, had there been no
change. Seen from this city life, you cannot think how fair it seems. So
calm a congregation of devoted men and true women performing their
perpetual service to the Idea of their lives, and clothed always in white
garments. Though you change your ritual, I feel your hope is unchanged;
and though it seems to me less beautiful than the one you leave, it is
otherwise to you. There was a mild grace about our former life that no
system attains. The unity in variety bound us very closely together. I
doubt if we shall be again among you, as I had hoped. I cannot, in
thought, lose my hold upon the place without pain not to be spoken of. On
the whole, I cannot say, even to you, just what I would about it. It will
leak out from the pores of my hands before we have done with each other.
I hear no music here now, except Timm and Rakemann. Charlotte Dana is
here; I have heard her only once. The opera is a wretched affair.
By-the-by, I gave W.H. Channing an article for _The Present_, very short,
upon music and Ole Bull. If he publishes it, it will not be new to you,
though I do not remember if I have talked with you about all at which it
hints. I await orders and manuscripts about the French stories; though you
are very busy, all of you, just now, perhaps too much so for that
business. The rest stands adjourned. Give my love to friends. Yrs ever,
G.W.C.
Will you say to C. Dana that I would like to come for a short visit--at
least, before going elsewhere; and that as soon as possible, say in a
week. Can I come? If not, ask him to say when. Yours,
J. Burrill Curtis.
_Feb'y 27._
X
NEW YORK, _March 3, 1844._
Your letter was very grateful to me. I had supposed the silence would be
broken by some music burst of devotion, and that all friends would be
dearer to you the more imperative the call upon your strength to battle
for the Ideal. It half reproved me for the meagre sheet the same day
brought to your hand. And yet could we see how all the forces of heaven
and earth unite to shape the particle that floats idly by us, we should
never see meagreness more.
I do not think (and what a heresy!) that your life has found more than an
object, not yet a centre. The new order will systematize your course; but
I do not see that it aids your journey. Is it not the deeper insight you
constantly gain into music which explains the social economy you adopt,
and not the economy the music? One fine symphony or song leads all reforms
captive, as the grand old paintings in St. Peter's completely ignore all
sects. Association will only interpret music so far as it is a pure art,
as poetry and sculpture and painting explain each other. But necessarily
Brook Farm, association and all, do not regard it artistically, but
charitably. It regenerates the world with them because it does tangible
good, not because it refines. We must view all pursuits as arts before we
can accomplish.
With respect to association as a means of reform, I have seen no reason to
change my view. Though, like the monastic, a life of devotion, to severe
criticism it offers a selfish and an unheroic aspect. When your letter
first spoke of your personal interest in the movement, I had written you a
long statement of my thought, which I did not send, and then partly spun
into an article for _The Present_, which I did not entirely finish. It was
only a strong statement of Individualism, which would not be new to you,
perhaps, and the essential reason of which could not be readily treated.
What we call union seems to me only a name for a phase of individual
action. I live only for myself; and in proportion to my own growth, so I
benefit others. As Fourier seems to me to have postponed his life, in
finding out how to live, so I often felt it was with Mr. Ripley. Besides,
I feel that our evils are entirely individual, not social. What is society
but the shadow of the single men behind it. That there is a slave on my
plantation or a servant in my kitchen is no evil; but that the slave and
servant should be unwilling to be so, that is the difficulty. The weary
and the worn do not ask of me an asylum, but aid. The need of the most
oppressed man is strength to endure, not means of escape. The slave
toiling in the Southern heats is a nobler aspect of thought than the freed
black upon the shore of England. That is just now the point which pains me
in association, its lack of heroism. Reform is purification, forming anew,
not forming again. Love, like genius, uses the means that are, and the
opportunities of to-day. If paints are wanting, it draws charcoal heads
with Michael Angelo. These crooked features of society we cannot rend and
twist into a Roman outline and grace; but they may be animated with a soul
that will utterly shame our carved and painted faces. A noble man purges
these present relations, and does not ask beautiful houses and landscapes
and appliances to make life beautiful. In Wall Street he gives another
significance to trade; in the City Hall he justifies its erection; in the
churches he interprets to themselves the weekly assembly of citizens. He
uses the pen with which, just now, the coal-man scrawled his bill, and
turns off an epic with the fife that in the band so sadly pierced our
ears. He moves our trudging lives to the beauties of golden measures. He
laughs heartily at our absorbing charities and meetings, upon which we
waste our health and grow thin. He answers our distressing plea for the
rights of the oppressed, and the "all-men-born-to-be-free-and-equal" with
a smiling strength, which assures us therein lies the wealth and the
equality which we are trying to manufacture out of such materials as
association, organization of society, copartnership, no wages, and the
like. While this may be done, why should we retire from the field behind
the walls which you offer? Let us die battling or victorious. And this,
true for me and you, is true to the uttermost. The love which alone can
make your Phalanx beautiful, also renders it unnecessary. You may insure
food and lodgings to the starving beggar, I do not see that strength is
afforded to the man. Moreover, a stern divine justice ordains that each
man stand where he stands, and do his utmost. Retreat, if you will, behind
this prospect of comfortable living, but you do so at a sacrifice of
strength. Your food must be eternal, for your life is so. I do not feel
that the weary man outworn by toil needs a fine house and books and
culture and free air; he needs to feel that his position, also, is as good
as these. When he has, by a full recognition of that, earned the right to
come to you, then his faith is deeper than the walls of association, and
the desolate cellar is a cheerful room for his shining lore. Men do not
want opportunities, they do not want to start fair, they do not want to
reach the same goal; they want only perfect submission. The gospel now to
be preached is not, "Away with me to the land where the fields are fair
and the waters flow," but, "Here in your penury, while the rich go idly by
and scoff, and the chariot wheels choke you with dust, make here your
golden age."
"Who cannot on his own bed sweetly sleep,
Can on another's hardly rest."
So sings the saintly George Herbert, no new thought in these days of ours.
The effect of a residence at the Farm, I imagine, was not greater
willingness to serve in the kitchen, and so particularly assert that labor
was divine; but discontent that there was such a place as a kitchen. And,
however aimless life there seemed to be, it was an aimlessness of the
general, not of the individual life. Its beauty faded suddenly if I
remembered that it was a society for special ends, though those ends were
very noble. In the midst of busy trades and bustling commerce, it was a
congregation of calm scholars and poets, cherishing the ideal and the true
in each other's hearts, dedicate to a healthy and vigorous life. As an
association it needed a stricter system to insure success; and since it
had not the means to justify its mild life, it necessarily grew to this.
As reformers, you are now certainly more active, and may promise
yourselves heaven's reward for that. That impossibility of severance from
the world, of which you speak, I liked, though I did not like that there
should be such a protest against the world by those who were somewhat
subject to it. This was not my first feeling. When I went, it seemed as if
all hope had died from the race, as if the return to simplicity and beauty
lay through the woods and fields, and was to be a march of men whose very
habits and personal appearance should wear a sign of the coming grace. The
longer I stayed, the more surely that thought vanished. I had
unconsciously been devoted to the circumstance, while I had earnestly
denied its value. Gradually I perceived that only as a man grew deeper and
broader could he wear the coat and submit to the etiquette and obey the
laws which society demands. Now I feel that no new order is demanded, but
that the universe is plastic to the pious hand.
Besides, it seems to me that reform becomes atheistic the moment it is
organized. For it aims, really, at that which conservatism represents. The
merit of the reformer is his sincerity, not his busy effort to emancipate
the slaves or to raise the drunkards. And the deeper his sincerity the
more deeply grounded seems to him the order he holds to be so corrupt. God
always weighs down the Devil. Therefore the church is not a collection of
puzzling priests and deceived people, but the representative, now as much
as ever, of the religious sentiment. A pious man needs no new church or
ritual. The Catholic is not too formal nor the Quaker too plain. If he
complains of these, and build another temple and construct a new service,
it is not the satisfaction which piety would have. Luther's protest was
that of the intellect against the supremacy of sentiment. So was
Unitarianism, and now we do not seek in the Boston churches for the
profound pietists. Does not our present experience show that as fast as we
are emancipated from morality and the dominance of the intellect, we
revert to the older rituals, if we need any. And if we have no need, the
piety can so fully inform them, that we seek no other. The transcendental
is a spiritual movement. It is the effort to regain the lost equilibrium
between the intellect and the soul, between morals and piety. Therefore,
put of its ranks come Catholics and Calvinists and mystics, and those who
continue the reform movement commenced by Luther; and, proceeding at
intervals down the stream of history, are the Rationalists. There is
indeed a latent movement, badly represented by these reforms, and that is
the constant perception of the supremacy of the Individual. But the
stronger the feet become the more delicate may be the movements. The more
strictly individual I am, the more certainly I am bound to all others. I
can reach other men only through myself. So far as you have need of
association you are injured by it.
You will gather what I think from such hints as these. I recognize the
worth of the movement, as I do of all sincere action. Other reasons must
bind me peculiarly to the particular me at Brook Farm. "Think not of any
severance of our loves," though we should not meet immediately. Burrill
will see if there is any such place as we wish about you. I have not much
hope of his success. The scent of the roses will not depart, though the
many are scattered. I hardly hope to say directly how very beautiful it
lies in my memory. What a heart-fresco it has become! All the dignity, the
strength, the devotion will be preserved by you; that graceful
"aimlessness" comes no more. And yet that was necessary. Long before I
knew of the changes I perceived that the growth of the place would
overshadow the spots where the sunlight had lain so softly and long. We
must still regret the waywardness of the child, though the man is active
and victorious; and the delicate odor of the blossom is unrivalled by the
juicy taste of the fruit. The one implies necessity; the other a
self-obedient impulse. You see I do not forget it was a child; but the
philosopher has no better playfellow.
I wish this was me instead of my letter, for a warm grasp of the hand
might say more than all these words. Yr friend,
G.W.C.
XI
NEW YORK, _March 27, 1844._
At last I imagine our summer destiny is fixed. This morning Burrill
received a reply from Emerson informing us of a promising place near
Concord. The farmer's name being Captain Nathaniel Barrett, of pleasant
family and situation, and a farm on which more farm work than usual is
done. Altogether the prospect is very alluring and satisfactory; and I
have little doubt of our acceptance of the situation. We shall not then be
very far removed from you; and at some AEsthetical tea or Transcendental
club or Poet's assembly meet you, perhaps, and other Brook Farmers. At all
events, we shall breathe pretty much the same atmosphere as before, and
understand more fully the complete pivacy of the country life.
Burrill brought pleasant accounts of your appearance at Brook Farm. The
summer shall not pass without my looking in upon you, though only for an
hour. That time will suffice to show me the unaltered beauty of aspect,
though days would be scarce to express all that they suggested.
Emerson writes that there is a piano and music at the farm mentioned. I
have no faith in pianos under such circumstances; but it shows a taste, a
hope, a capability, possibly it is equal to all spiritual significances
except music! which want in a piano may be termed a deficiency.
I have become acquainted with a fine amateur, a niece of Dr. Channing's,
name Gibbs. She is yet young, not more than 17, but plays with great grace
and beauty. She played me one of Mendelssohn's songs, translated by Liszt,
a beautiful piece, one of F.R.'s, and spoke more sensibly of music than
any girl I have met. By-the-way, yesterday I bought the January number of
the _Democratic Review_ to read Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler's review of
Tennyson, when, to my great surprise, I found your "Haydn." O'Sullivan I
have met a great deal, but made no acquaintance. The Tennyson review is
very fine. I think she understands him well. Perhaps she is too masculine
a woman to judge correctly his delicacy; but she does the whole thing
well.
Cranch has just painted a scene from the "Lady of Shalott," the scene--
"In among the bearded barley,
The reaping late and early," etc.--
represents two reapers standing with sickles among the grain, and turning
intently towards the four "gray walls and four gray towers which overlook
a space of flowers" in an island covered with foliage to the water, and
lying in the midst of the stream. The criticism upon the picture is
obvious; if Cranch is as painter what Tennyson is as poet, it is good--if
not, it is bad. What do you think? When a man illustrates a poem he is
pledged by the poem, hence the absurdity of Martyn's drawings from the
"Paradise Lost," and the various pictures of Belshazzar's feast. Only the
Madonnas of the greatest painters are satisfactory. But I shall not
abandon myself to the tracking of these mysteries of art.
I have been reading Goethe's "Tasso." Now I am at the "Sorrows of
Werther." I am wonderfully impressed with his dramatic power. The
"Egmont," "Iphigenia," and "Tasso" are grander than anything I know in
modern literature, than anything else of his which I have read. The serene
simplicity of the "Iphigenia" is like a keen blast of ocean air. It stands
like a Grecian temple, but in the moonlight. Is not that because, as Fanny
Kemble says, and so many have thought, he was a Heathen? He did not enter
into the state called the Christian. He served gods, not a God; and had it
been otherwise this tragedy had been full-bathed in sunlight. And yet I
hardly dare to say anything decidedly of such a man. I shall condemn
myself a little while hence if I do.
Let me hear from you before I leave New York, which will be in two or
three weeks. I shall not leave all my good friends, and all the fine music
here, without a pang. But if we stop for pangs! Will you send me the
number of the "Mondschein," and the "Tempest" sonata?
Yr friend,
G.W. CURTIS.
XII
N.Y., _Monday morning, April 8th, 1844._
The last few days have been like glimpses of Brook Farm, seeing so
constantly Mr. Ripley, and Charles, and Liszt, and Isaac, and Georgiana,
and Margaret Fuller. The last three days of the past week were occupied by
the sessions of the Convention, about which there was no enthusiasm, but
an air of quiet resolution which always precedes success. To be sure, the
success, to me, is the constant hope in humanity that inspires them, the
sure, glowing prophecies of paradise and heaven, being individual not
general prophecies, and announcing the advent in their own hearts and
lives of the feet beautiful of old upon the mountains. In comparison with
this what was done, and what was doing, lost much of its greatness. Leave
to Albert Brisbane, and _id omne genus_, these practical etchings and
phalansteries; but let us serve the gods without bell or candle. Have
these men, with all their faith and love, not yet full confidence in love?
Is that not strong enough to sway all institutions that are, and cause to
overflow with life? does that ask houses and lands to express its power?
does it not ride supreme over the abounding selfishness of the world, and
so raise men from their sorrow and degradation, or so inspire them that
their hovels are good enough for them?
But all difference of thought vanished before the profound, sincere
eloquence of these men. Last night, at W.H. Channing's church, the room
was full, and the risen Lord Jesus might have smiled upon a worthy
worship. From all sections were gathered in that small room men led by the
same high thought, and in the light of that thought joining hearts and
hands, unknown to each other, never to be seen again, and in the early
dawn setting forth with hard hands and stout hearts to hew down the trees
which shall be wrought into the stately dwellings for those who come after
in the day. So knelt the devoted Pilgrims upon the sands of Holland, and
embarked upon that doubtful sea. They fought and perished; their homes
were pierced with the Indian's bullet and flames of fire; the solitude of
stern forests scared not their hearts, and we follow now and live in
peace. It was something to have felt and seen such heroism.
The meetings of the convention were made interesting by some speeches of
W.H. Channing. His fervor kindles the sympathy of all who listen. I do
not think he is a man of great intellect; his views of society are not
always correct. He speaks very often as an infidel-in-the-capability-
of-men might speak. He is fanatical, as all who perceive by the heart and
not the head are, as deeply pious men are apt to be. But I never heard so
eloquent a man, one who commanded attention and sympathy, not by his words
or thoughts, but the religion that lay far below them. It is a warm,
fragrant, southern wind at which the heart leaps, not the pure, cold,
ocean air which braces the frame. Between him and some whom I have heard
is the same difference as between Goethe and Novalis. The one a June
meadow, with flower-scents and cloud-shadows and the soft, sultry music of
humming-bees and singing-birds, with clear skies bending over; a deep sea
the other, whereon sail stately ships, wafted by health-bearing breezes,
in whose waters the sick gain strength, in whose soundless depths the
coral and the precious stones repose forever, which supplies the clouds
whose shadow makes the meadow beautiful.
Indeed, how glorious is the range and variety of character among which we
move. Though the stars differ in glory they all make the sky fair, and do
not clash in their revolutions. That dissimilarity is the secret of
friendship, which educates to stand alone. Indeed--to make a most
heretical conclusion--the race exists to teach me to live without it. My
friend, God has no need of creatures, but he is not less nearly bound to
them.
I send you the final number of _The Present_. You will see my article, "a
poor thing, but mine own." To you it will be nothing new. It seems to me I
have used some of the same sentences in speaking to you.
_The Dial_ stops. Is it not like the going out of a star? Its place was so
unique in our literature! All who wrote and sang for it were clothed in
white garments; and the work itself so calm and collected, though
springing from the same undismayed hope which fathers all our best
reforms. But the intellectual worth of the time will be told in other
ways, though _The Dial_ no longer reports the progress of the day.
On Friday we leave for Boston. I do not know precisely if we shall go
immediately to Concord, for we are performing at the same time a duty of
affection in accompanying to Mount Auburn the body of an uncle. We may
possibly be detained in Boston until the following Monday, in which case I
shall not fail to come out and see you.
So endeth my New York correspondence.
Yours truly and ever,
G.W. CURTIS.
MUSIC AND OLE BULL
We know little of the art of music; though our concerts are crowded, and
the names of the composers familiar. But our reverence to the Masters in
art is like the reverence for the Bible, not a hearty one. A late musical
reviewer well says, that the admiration of the Parisians for Beethoven is
a conceit. That calculation answers for our meridian. Slight Italian
scholars are eloquent in their admiration of Dante, but the depths and
majesty of his poem are explored by few. The dullest may recognize the
beauty of feature, but the soul which inspires quite eludes them. During
the performance of a symphony the audience smile and shake when the airs
float out of the orchestra, not observing that they are the
breathing-places, the relaxation of the composer. Every one who can play
can compose tunes, but to the lover of the art they yield no greater
pleasure than the rhymes of a poem. Often the grandest passages are most
melodious, as in poems the greatest thought suggests the happiest
expression. Tune and song occupy a distinct portion of the realm of music.
They are _attaches_ to the royal court. Perhaps the finest music is allied
to verse, but if it be a true marriage, the music comprehends the whole.
No artist would hear the words of one of Handel's or Haydn's choral
hosannas. The words are the translation, but the scholar will not accept
that.