USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 3
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Mr. Ripley had already in mind the spot upon which to try his experiment, for, in the summer of 1840, he and his wife had boarded at a pleasant milk-farm in West Roxbury through which a little brook ran cheerfully down to the Charles River near by, and in which he found many of the possibilities he sought. They had left the place full of eagerness to return and carry out what had become their dearest wish: a movement " to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than exists; to combine the thinker and the worker as far as possible in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom by pro- viding all with labor adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more wholesome and simple life than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions."
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The means to this end were set forth as the cultivation of a garden, a farm, and the estab- lishment thereon of a school or college in which the most complete instruction should be given from the first rudiments to the highest culture. Thirty thousand dollars, it was decided, would supply land and buildings for ten families and allow a sufficient margin to cover the first year's expenses. This sum Ripley proposed to raise by forming a joint-stock company among those who were friendly to his enterprise, each subscriber to be guaranteed a fixed interest, and the subscriptions to be secured by the real estate.
The first step towards the execution of the project was the purchase (in the winter of 1840-1) of Brook Farm by Ripley himself, he taking the responsibility of its management and success. Never did a man more conscientiously discharge an obligation! Every debt was paid off by him even when he himself was obliged to work at a wretched wage for the money with which to do this. The business arrangements of the enterprise, from its hopeful beginning to its saddened end, are carefully traced by Lindsay Swift in one chapter of his charming volume, Brook Farm, its Members, Scholars and Vis- itors. Suffice it here, therefore, merely to say that, in the spring of 1841, one third of the necessary amount was actually paid in, and the
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nucleus of the community took possession of the farm-house which, with a large barn, was already on the estate.
In Ripley's mind, and in the minds of the more thoughtful of those who began the ex- periment with him, the idea of Brook Farm was not at all, as has been generally supposed, to secure an idyllic retreat for a favored few, but to express belief in the brotherhood of man and to proclaim through community life faith in the possibility of realizing this belief. George P. Bradford, who was of the original family, has (in his chapter of the Memorial History of Boston) expressed the plan thus: "The move- ment was one form of the strong and rising feeling of humanity and of the brotherhood of man, then so widely pervading the community. With it, too, came the desire and hope for better conditions of life in which the less fortunate classes might come to share in the privileges, comforts, and various advantages belonging to civilized society. The feeling which at this time manifested itself in an excited form in the anti-slavery agitation may indirectly have had some effect in suggesting or stimulating this movement. Mr. Ripley and others with him, while sympathizing with the objects of the Abolitionists, thought that as the evils of which slavery is so signal and conspicuous a form lay deep in the present constitution and arrange-
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ment of society, so their remedy could only be found in a modification or radical change of ordinary life.
" The feeling, then, which lay at the bottom of the Brook Farm enterprise, and from which it mainly sprang, was dissatisfaction with the existing conditions of society, - that under these some classes enjoy the advantages of high culture and the gratification of the intellect and taste, and if obliged to work in some way for subsistence they yet have leisure and oppor- tunity for refined recreation and for the enjoy- ment of comfortable or elegant modes of living, and are in some respects subject to more favor- able moral influences; while, under these also, other classes are doomed to wearisome or painful drudgery and incessant toil, without oppor- tunity for the enjoyment of intellect and taste, confined to dreary, squalid conditions of exist- ence, and more exposed to temptations at least to the more flagrant crimes. Then, again, there was the feeling that there is something wrong in the mode of industry as now constituted, namely, competitive industry; . . . in which one man's gain is another man's loss, and the necessities of which make it the interest of each to get away from others and to appropriate to himself as large a share as possible of this world's goods, - a condition of things seemingly so contrary to the spirit of Christian brother-
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hood. Consequently a mode of life was de- sired ... in which this evil condition of the relations of society might be corrected."
It would seem from the above-quoted state- ment that the ideals which inspired the move- ment were nothing more or less than those embodied in what we are today calling " Christian Socialism," one of whose disciples has put the thing thus succinctly: " If manual labor is a blessing, not a curse, I want my part of it; if it is a curse, not a blessing, I ought to take
my turn." 1 Of course, there were other and more superficial motives inciting to an interest in the enterprise and a desire to have a part in it. The prospect of a pleasant social life, with congenial society, somewhat free from distaste- ful conventions, moved some. Others were attracted by the idea of a life of mingled physical and intellectual labor as exhilarating and health- ful. And young women, especially, to whom in that day comparatively few interesting occupa- tions were open, hailed eagerly the opportunity thus afforded to earn a living amid congenial surroundings.
Hawthorne was one of the first to embrace community life at Brook Farm, and in what has come to be known as the epic of the place, The Blithedale Romance, he analyzes with characteristic acumen the psychology of his
1 Vida D. Scudder in A Listener In Babel.
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co-laborers for the common good, - " our little army of saints and martyrs," as he rather scathingly calls them. " They were mostly individuals who had gone through such an experience as to disgust them with ordinary pursuits, but who were not yet so old, nor had suffered so deeply, as to lose their faith in the better time to come. On comparing their minds, one with another, they often discovered that this idea of a Community had been growing up, in silent and unknown sympathy, for years. Thoughtful, strongly lined faces were among them; sombre brows, but eyes that did not require spectacles, unless prematurely dimmed by the student's lamplight, and hair that seldom showed a thread of silver. Age, wedded to the past, incrusted over with a stony layer of habits and retaining nothing fluid in its possibilities, would have been absurdly out of place in an enterprise like this. Youth, too, in its early dawn, was hardly more adapted to our purpose; . We had very young people with us it is true, - downy lads, rosy girls in their first teens and children of all heights above one's knee, - but these had chiefly been sent thither for education, which it was one of the objects and methods of our institution to supply. Then we had boarders, from town and elsewhere, who lived with us in a familiar way, sympathized more or less in our theories
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and sometimes shared in our labors. On the whole it was a society such as has seldom met together. ...
It was indeed. And nothing about it was more anomalous than the presence in it as a regular Community member of Nathaniel Haw- thorne, poet and romancer. His deciding motive in joining the enterprise does not appear; but it seems more than possible that he was himself among those in whom recent experience of the world had awakened " disgust," for he had just severed his relation with the Boston Custom House, and it was with the thousand dollars that he had saved from his government earnings that he purchased shares 18 and 19 of the Association stock. He arrived in the midst of one of those late spring snow- storms, " which, as Lindsay Swift says, 'never fail to impress a New Englander with their unseasonableness, though they are as invariable as the solstices.'"
To set out on such an untoward April day for an adventure in Arcady might well give any man pause. Hawthorne superbly voices the reflections such a situation would engender: " The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove oneself a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to
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be obeyed." There is a life philosophy for you, apropos of an April snowstorm! And the para- graph - in The Blithedale Romance - which immediately follows this one, and describes as only an artist in words could that long-ago snowstorm and the way in which its exhilara- tions and its buffets reacted upon the sensitized mind of our tyro in altruism, is a masterly piece of writing. Then comes this, - and it is the crux of the matter: "Whatever else I may repent of, however, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world's destiny, - yes! - and to do what in me lay for their accomplishment."
Hawthorne's immediate duty, at Brook Farm, was "to play chambermaid to a cow." At any rate that is the way he put the thing after he had tired of it. At first the scenery delighted him and he evinced considerable enthusiasm over his tasks. In a letter to his sister Louisa he wrote, "This is one of the most beautiful places I ever saw in my life, and as secluded as if it were a hundred miles from any city or village." Presently he writes, " I have milked a cow!" One of his first bucolic experiences was with the famous " transcendental heifer " which was named (very likely by Hawthorne) " Margaret Fuller " because the beast proved rather strong minded and had finally to be
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sent to Coventry by the more docile kind, always to be counted on as more or less con- servative. Hawthorne later refers to this animal as having "a very intelligent face " and " a reflective cast of character." They all got a good deal of fun at Brook Farm, over the qualities imputed to their four-footed friends. Dr. Codman tells of a fine imported bull who, because he did not seem to be doing his share of work in their very industrious community, was harnessed up with a ring through his nose and made to draw a tip cart. His name was " Prince Albert." Then there was " Cyclops," too, a large raw-boned gray mare so christened because she had only one eye. 1397916
Ripley loved working with the animals, but Hawthorne never did, and by the middle of the August which followed the April of his arrival we find him writing, " In a little more than a fortnight I shall be free from my bondage - free to enjoy Nature - free to think and feel. . . Oh, labor is the curse of the world and nobody can meddle with it without be- coming proportionably brutified! " Yet he stuck it out for a whole year and referred always to his stay at Brook Farm as the romantic period of his life. When he came to write his epic of the place he closed the story with this beautiful passage: " Often in these years that are darkening around me, I remember our
!
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beautiful scheme of a noble and unselfish life, and how fair in that first summer appeared the prospect that it might endure for generations and be perfected, as the ages rolled by, into a system of a people and a world. Were my former associates now there - were there only three or four of those true-hearted men now laboring in the sun - I sometimes fancy that I would direct my world-weary footsteps thitherward, and entreat them to receive me for old friend- ship's sake."
The reproach hurled today at nearly all socialistic enterprises - that they stand for " free love " - early came to be used as a boom- erang to throw at Brook Farm. Mrs. Butterfield tells me that her father and mother were looked upon as most rashly endangering the souls of their young children when they took them, the second year of the experiment, to " that regular free love institution." Now, of course, this charge was grossly untrue. But it soon began to militate very powerfully, none the less, against the success of the school which, at the start, was to have been a chief source of income. In the fall term of 1842 the school's teaching staff was composed of the following instructors: George Ripley, Intellectual and Natural Phi- losophy and Mathematics; George P. Bradford, Belles Lettres; John S. Dwight, Latin and Music; Charles A. Dana, Greek and German;
1
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John S. Brown, Theoretical and Practical Agriculture; Sophia W. Ripley, History and Modern Languages; Marianne Ripley, Pri- mary School; Abigail Morton, Infant School; Georgiana Bruce, Infant School; Hannah B. Ripley, Drawing. The infant school was for children under six years of age; the primary school for children under ten; the preparatory school for pupils over ten years of age intending to pursue the higher branches of study in the institution. A young man could fit for college in six years at Brook Farm or he could take a three years' course in theoretical and practical agriculture. In any case he was expected to spend from one to two hours daily in manual labor. Now with such teachers, such a well- planned course and a healthy country back- ground upon which to live a free and happifying life, it would seem as if the school ought greatly to have succeeded. For a while, indeed, it did flourish like the proverbial green bay tree; Harvard College sent to its stimulating care young men who needed to study hard for a while in a community less exciting than Cam- bridge, - and their presence added not a little, as the presence of college boys always does, to the color and variety of the life.
Charles A. Dana was one of the Harvard youths who found his way to the farm in the the middle of his college career, but he came as
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a " professor " and not as a pupil. Born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1819, he had passed his boyhood in Buffalo, and there fitted himself for Harvard College, which he entered in 1839. In the middle of his course his sight became seriously impaired from reading " Oliver Twist " by candle light. When at three in the morning he finished the badly printed volume he found that he could scarcely see. Study, therefore, had to be abandoned for the time, and he was very glad to accept the invitation of the Harvard men already at Brook Farm to go there as instructor in Greek and German. He did his work as a teacher well, contributed articles to the Harbinger, - when that organ of the Brook Farmers came to be established, - and was throughout his five years of connection with the movement loyal and interested.
Another famous editor who passed valuable for- mative years at Brook Farm was George William Curtis, who, with his brother Burrill, went out there as a boarder in 1842. Miss Amelia Russell, who has written charmingly of the home-life at Brook Farm, calls the Curtis brothers " Greek gods," - so handsome were they. Tra- dition recalls that they had an especial fondness for picnics and that he, whom we now associate chiefly with an Easy Chair, danced, at a certain Brook Farm junket, in a short green skirt modelled on that worn by Fanny Ellsler!
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A seeker after country beauty might well choose Brook Farm today as an ideal place in which to take refuge from a jarring world. It still has a slender little brook gurgling through its undulating meadows and there is a happy air of peace resting upon its woods and hill-tops. The accompanying picture is a photograph of a painting done in 1845 by Josiah Wolcott, then a resident at the community. It belonged to Mrs. Butterfield and is interesting as an authen- tic contemporary reproduction of the actual " set " of this inspiriting drama of brotherhood. At the extreme right is shown the Hive, the farm house which stood not far from the road when the life of the little community began and which was immediately utilized. Here was the heart of the community: Mr. Ripley's library; the first day nursery ever known in America, - a room where mothers could leave their children in care of the Nursery Group while they did their daily work; "Attica," a large upper room where the unmarried men slept; and the low- studded dining-room with its old-fashioned fireplace of brick and its pine tables set off with white linen and white table-ware and having white painted benches on either side.
At the highest point of land which the farm contained (and the second building from the right in the picture) was built, in 1842, the Eyrie, a square wooden structure of smooth
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matched boards painted, after the imitative fashion of the day, the color of gray sandstone. The house was reached by a long flight of steps from the farm road and the view from it was a delight. Into this house the Ripleys moved as soon as it was finished. The "Margaret Fuller Cottage," of the community buildings, remains today. It was the next house erected after the Eyrie. The remaining building, at the extreme left of the picture, was called Pilgrim House, and was built by Ichabod Morton for the use of his family. It is interesting to us as having been the editorial office of the Harbinger.
And now let us see what manner of daily life was led in this community by those who had there withdrawn from the world to help in the world's reformation. Emerson always rather poked fun at Brook Farm, though he admitted that it was a pleasant place where lasting friendships were formed and the "art of letter writing was stimulated." He implies that there was a shirking of labor on the part of some, and perhaps that is true. Human nature is pretty apt to be human nature even at Brook Farm. "The country members," he says, " were naturally surprised to observe that one man ploughed all day and one looked out of the window all day - and perhaps drew his picture, and both received at night the same wages."
a f
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The work of the household as well as of the farm was organized by groups, and Mrs. Butter- field is as sure today as she was then that necessary labor can be greatly lightened as well as sweetened by working in this manner. "Let us suppose it is Tuesday," she says. " The rising horn sounded at five o'clock in summer. I often used to get up and go around from house to house with a peculiar whistle as a signal to some members of the singing group to sing under John S. Dwight's windows from 6 to 7. We sang Mozart's and Haydn's masses, and it was glorious to hear that sacred music in the still, beautiful morning air. I never can forget it. I think it was one of the holiest and most inspiring things in my life.
" Then came breakfast in the Hive and after breakfast our work. I greatly enjoyed ironing, and on Tuesday I would work all the morning with that group. Dinner was at twelve o'clock and in the afternoon there were German and French classes to which any one who wanted to study could go. The cobbler would stop in his mending of shoes to go to the Shakespeare class, making up time afterward. As a rule the women did the housework, and the men that connected with the farm, but the men helped in the housework too when that seemed advis- able. The baker was a man - Father Hecker, founder of the Paulist order, he came to be
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afterward, - another man was assistant in the laundry and one of the young fellows carried water for the dormitories.
"I shall never forget the impression made upon my youthful mind, the day our family arrived at the farm, by seeing one of the culti- vated gentlemen from Concord hanging out the morning's washing. Yet that was not inap- propriate work in rough weather for a man. Our women seldom participated in outdoor work, though I remember that, on one or more occasions when help in that direction was im- peratively needed, half a dozen of our young women did very active work in the hay field. In several of the groups, notably the waiting groups, the young men and women were about equally divided. Charles A. Dana was at one time head waiter. After washing for three hours every Monday morning Mrs. Ripley would have her classes at the school in the afternoon. Ah! but she was a rare and lovely soul."
Rare! indeed. Too much emphasis can scarcely be laid, in writing about Brook Farm, upon the exquisite quality of this woman who upheld the hands and sustained the courage of the founder of the enterprise. Granddaughter of Chief Justice Dana, our first minister to Russia, she had been a teacher, - when Ripley came to love her, - in a boarding and day
CHARLES A. DANA. After a daguerreotype. Page 38.
DR. ORESTES A. BROWNSON AS HE LOOKED WHEN AT BROOK FARM. Page 47.
FATHER HECKER IN HIS PRIME.
GEORGE RIPLEY.
From a rare photograph in the pos- session of the Paulist Fathers, Page 44.
New York.
Page 47.
ABBOTT IX
SOUTH SIDE OF TEMPLE PLACE ABOUT 1865.
BOSTON FROM THE STATE HOUSE, ABOUT 1858.
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school for young ladies held in Fay House, Cambridge. In that house she was married to Ripley (August 22, 1827) by the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Their alliance was " founded not upon any romantic or sudden passion, but upon great respect for her intel- lectual power, moral worth, deep and true Christian piety and peculiar refinement and dignity of character," wrote the young husband to a friend. Ripley came of farmer stock - his boyhood home was in the beautiful Connecticut valley, - but he was a lover of books, a graduate of Harvard College, and he had chosen the ministry for his profession.
It seemed indeed as if the life the pair would lead must be that of a quiet Boston parson and his wife, for he was soon called over the church at the corner of Pearl and Purchase Streets, and he stayed there preaching Unitarianism as he saw it for fourteen years. But, during those years there came to him a vision of that great truth which is now bursting afresh upon the minds of earnest-minded ministers, - that, under existing social conditions it is well-nigh impossible to harmonize Christian doctrine and Christian life. He tried to preach the social gospel, but his people were not responsive. Finally, therefore (in October, 1840), he wrote them from Northampton a manly letter in which he set forth with absolute open-minded-
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ness the reasons for the faith which was in him, and his reluctant conviction that he and they could not longer work together. This letter was accepted as definitive by his congregation, and on March 28, 1841, they listened respect- fully but with resignation, to their minister's farewell sermon.
The compact description of Ripley given by his biographer, Rev. O. B. Frothingham, warms one's heart to the man. " He was no unbeliever, no sceptic, no innovator in matters of opinion or observance, but a quiet student, a scholar, a man of books, a calm, bright-minded, whole- souled thinker, believing, hopeful, sunny, but absorbed in philosophical pursuits. Well does the writer of these lines recall the vision of a slender figure wearing in summer the flowing silk robe, in winter the dark blue cloak of the profession, walking with measured step from his residence in Rowe Street towards the meet- ing house in Purchase Street. The face was shaven clean, the brown hair curled in close crisp ringlets, the face was pale as if in thought; the gold-rimmed spectacles concealed black eyes; the head was alternately bent and raised. No one could have guessed that the man had in him the fund of humor in which his friends delighted, or the heroism in social reform which, a few years later, amazed the community." To Emerson Ripley wrote that his idea of
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personal happiness would be to rent a place upon which he could live independently - " and one day drive his own cart to market and sell greens." As a matter of fact he possessed neither the taste nor the temperament of a magnetic leader of men.
Mrs. Ripley was quite different. She sup- plied what he lacked in this way. She was ardent, impulsive, deeply sympathetic. Her power of enthusing those who came in contact with her was extraordinary and " impossible seemed a word unknown to her." She was a tall and graceful woman with fair coloring. When it is said of her that, by reason of being chief of the wash-room group, she made the laundry " a place of almost seductive cheerful- ness," one has perhaps given the strongest proof needed of her magnetism and buoyancy.
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