Henry D. Thoreau 15

Henry D. Thoreau 15

"_January 31._ Bought a shay for £27 10_s._ The Lord grant

it may be a comfort and blessing to my family.

 

"_March, 1735._ Had a safe and comfortable journey to York.

 

"_April 24._ Shay overturned, with my wife and I in it, yet

neither of us much hurt. Blessed be our gracious Preserver!

Part of the shay, as it lay upon one side, went over my

wife, and yet she was scarcely anything hurt. How wonderful

the preservation!

 

"_May 5._ Went to the Beach with three of the children. The

Beast being frighted, when we were all out of the shay,

overturned and broke it. I desire (I hope I desire it) that

the Lord would teach me suitably to repent this Providence,

to make suitable remarks on it, and to be suitably affected

with it. Have I done well to get me a shay? Have I not

been proud or too fond of this convenience? Do I exercise

the faith in the divine care and protection which I ought

to do? Should I not be more in my study, and less fond of

diversion? Do I not withhold more than is meet from pious

and charitable uses?

 

"_May 15._ Shay brought home; mending cost 30 shillings.

Favored in this beyond expectation.

 

"_May 16._ My wife and I rode to Rumney Marsh. The Beast

frighted several times."

 

At last this divine comedy ends with the pathetic conclusive line,--

 

"_June 4._ Disposed of my shay to the Rev. Mr. White."

 

I will not pause to dwell on the laughable episodes and queer

characteristic features of the Transcendental Period, though such it

had in abundance. They often served to correct the soberer absurdity

with which our whole country was slipping unconsciously down the easy

incline of national ruin and dishonor,--from which only a bloody

civil war could at last save us. Thoreau saw this clearly, and his

political utterances, paradoxical as they seemed in the two decades

from 1840 to 1860, now read like the words of a prophet. But there are

some points in the American Renaissance which may here be touched on,

so much light do they throw on the times. It was a period of strange

faiths and singular apocalypses--that of Charles Fourier being one. In

February, 1843, Mr. Emerson, writing to Henry Thoreau from New York,

where he was then lecturing, said:--

 

"Mr. Brisbane has just given me a faithful hour and a half

of what he calls his principles, and he shames truer men

by his fidelity and zeal; and already begins to hear the

reverberations of his single voice from most of the States

of the Union. He thinks himself sure of W. H. Channing

here, as a good Fourierist. I laugh incredulous whilst

he recites (for it seems always as if he was repeating

paragraphs out of his master's book) descriptions of the

self-augmenting potency of the solar system, which is

destined to contain one hundred and thirty-two bodies,

I believe,--and his urgent inculcation of our _stellar

duties_. But it has its kernel of sound truth, and its

insanity is so wide of the New York insanities that it is

virtue and honor."

 

This was written a few months before Thoreau himself went to New York,

and it was while there that he received from his friends in Concord

and in Harvard, the wondrous account of Mr. Alcott's Paradise Regained

at Fruitlands; where in due time Thoreau made his visit and inspected

that Garden of Eden on the Coldspring Brook.

 

If Mr. Brisbane had his "stellar duties" and inculcated them in

others, the Brook Farmers of 1842-43 had their planetary mission

also; namely, to cultivate the face of the planet they inhabited,

and to do it with their own hands, as Adam and Noah did. Of the

Brook Farm enterprise much has been written, and much more will be;

but concerning the more individual dream of Thoreau's friends at

"Fruitlands," less is known; and I may quote a few pages concerning

it from Thoreau's correspondence. While Thoreau was at Staten Island

in 1843, Mr. Emerson wrote to him often, giving the news of Concord

as a Transcendental capital. In May of that year we have this

intelligence:--

 

"Ellery Channing is well settled in his house, and works

very steadily thus far, and our intercourse is very

agreeable to me. Young Ball (B. W.) has been to see me, and

is a prodigious reader and a youth of great promise,--born,

too, in the good town. Mr. Hawthorne is well, and Mr.

Alcott and Mr. Lane are revolving a purchase in Harvard of

ninety acres."

 

This was "Fruitlands," described in the "Dial" for 1843, and which

Charles Lane himself describes in a letter soon to be cited. In

June, 1843, Mr. Emerson again sends tidings from Concord, where the

Fitchburg railroad was then building:--

 

"The town is full of Irish, and the woods of engineers,

with theodolite and red flag, singing out their feet and

inches to each other from station to station. Near Mr.

Alcott's (the Hosmer cottage) the road is already begun.

From Mr. A. and Mr. Lane at Harvard we have yet heard

nothing. They went away in good spirits, having sent 'Wood

Abram' and Larned, and William Lane before them with horse

and plow, a few days in advance, to begin the spring work.

Mr. Lane paid me a long visit, in which he was more than I

had ever known him gentle and open; and it was impossible

not to sympathize with and honor projects that so often

seem without feet or hands. They have near a hundred acres

of land which they do not want, and no house, which they

want first of all. But they account this an advantage,

as it gives them the occasion they so much desire,--of

building after their own idea. In the event of their

attracting to their company a carpenter or two, which is

not impossible, it would be a great pleasure to see their

building,--which could hardly fail to be new and beautiful.

They have fifteen acres of woodland, with good timber."

 

Then, passing in a moment from "Fruitlands" to Concord woods,

Thoreau's friend writes:--

 

"Ellery Channing is excellent company, and we walk in all

directions. He remembers you with great faith and hope,

thinks you ought not to see Concord again these ten years;

that you ought to grind up fifty Concords in your mill;

and much other opinion and counsel he holds in store on

this topic. Hawthorne walked with me yesterday afternoon,

and not until after our return did I read his 'Celestial

Railroad,' which has a serene strength we cannot afford

not to praise, in this low life. I have letters from Miss

Fuller at Niagara. She found it sadly cold and rainy at the

Falls."

 

Not so with Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane in the first flush of their hopes

at Fruitlands. On the 9th of June,--the date of the letter just quoted

being June 7,--Mr. Lane writes to Thoreau:--

 

"DEAR FRIEND,--The receipt of two acceptable numbers of

the 'Pathfinder' reminds me that I am not altogether

forgotten by one who, if not in the busy world, is at

least much nearer to it externally than I am. Busy indeed

we all are, since our removal here; but so recluse is our

position, that with the world at large we have scarcely

any connection. You may possibly have heard that, after

all our efforts during the spring had failed to place us

in connection with the earth, and Mr. Alcott's journey

to Oriskany and Vermont had turned out a blank,--one

afternoon in the latter part of May, Providence sent to us

the legal owner of a slice of the planet in this township

(Harvard), with whom we have been enabled to conclude for

the concession of his rights. It is very remotely placed,

nearly three miles beyond the village, without a road,

surrounded by a beautiful green landscape of fields and

woods, with the distance filled up by some of the loftiest

mountains in the State. The views are, indeed, most poetic

and inspiring. You have no doubt seen the neighborhood;

but from these very fields, where you may at once be at

home and out, there is enough to love and revel in for

sympathetic souls like yours. On the estate are about

fourteen acres of wood, part of it extremely pleasant as

a retreat, a very sylvan realization, which only wants a

Thoreau's mind to elevate it to classic beauty.

 

"I have some imagination that you are not so happy and so

well housed in your present position as you would be here

amongst us; although at present there is much hard manual

labor,--so much that, as you perceive, my usual handwriting

is very greatly suspended. We have only two associates in

addition to our own families; our house accommodations are

poor and scanty; but the greatest want is of good female

aid. Far too much labor devolves on Mrs. Alcott. If you

should light on any such assistance, it would be charitable

to give it a direction this way. We may, perhaps, be rather

particular about the quality; but the conditions will

pretty well determine the acceptability of the parties

without a direct adjudication on our part. For though to me

our mode of life is luxurious in the highest degree, yet

generally it seems to be thought that the setting aside of

all impure diet, dirty habits, idle thoughts, and selfish

feelings, is a course of self-denial, scarcely to be

encountered or even thought of in such an alluring world as

this in which we dwell.

 

"Besides the busy occupations of each succeeding day, we

form, in this ample theatre of hope, many forthcoming

scenes. The nearer little copse is designed as the site of

the cottages. Fountains can be made to descend from their

granite sources on the hill-slope to every apartment if

required. Gardens are to displace the warm grazing glades

on the south, and numerous human beings, instead of cattle,

shall here enjoy existence. The farther wood offers to the

naturalist and the poet an exhaustless haunt; and a short

cleaning of the brook would connect our boat with the

Nashua. Such are the designs which Mr. Alcott and I have

just sketched, as, resting from planting, we walked round

this reserve.

 

"In your intercourse with the dwellers in the great city,

have you alighted on Mr. Edward Palmer, who studies with

Dr. Beach, the Herbalist? He will, I think, from his

previous nature-love, and his affirmations to Mr. Alcott,

be animated on learning of this actual wooing and winning

of Nature's regards. We should be most happy to see him

with us. Having become so far actual, from the real, we

might fairly enter into the typical, if he could help us in

any way to types of the true metal. We have not passed away

from home, to see or hear of the world's doings, but the

report has reached us of Mr. W. H. Channing's fellowship

with the Phalansterians, and of his eloquent speeches in

their behalf. Their progress will be much aided by his

accession. To both these worthy men be pleased to suggest

our humanest sentiments. While they stand amongst men, it

is well to find them acting out the truest possible at the moment.