Ch. 4 - Brook Farm and Concord
1039 Words
The history of the little industrial and intellectual association
which formed itself at this time in one of the suburbs of Boston has
not, to my knowledge, been written; though it is assuredly a curious
and interesting chapter in the domestic annals of New England. It
would of course be easy to overrate the importance of this ingenious
attempt of a few speculative persons to improve the outlook of
mankind. The experiment came and went very rapidly and quietly,
leaving very few traces behind it. It became simply a charming
personal reminiscence for the small number of amiable enthusiasts who
had had a hand in it. There were degrees of enthusiasm, and I suppose
there were degrees of amiability; but a certain generous brightness of
hope and freshness of conviction pervaded the whole undertaking and
rendered it, morally speaking, important to an extent of which any
heed that the world in general ever gave to it is an insufficient
measure. Of course it would be a great mistake to represent the
episode of Brook Farm as directly related to the manners and morals of
the New England world in general--and in especial to those of the
prosperous, opulent, comfortable part of it. The thing was the
experiment of a coterie--it was unusual, unfashionable, unsuccessful.
It was, as would then have been said, an amusement of the
Transcendentalists--a harmless effusion of Radicalism. The
Transcendentalists were not, after all, very numerous; and the
Radicals were by no means of the vivid tinge of those of our own day.
I have said that the Brook Farm community left no traces behind it
that the world in general can appreciate; I should rather say that the
only trace is a short novel, of which the principal merits reside in
its qualities of difference from the affair itself. _The Blithedale
Romance_ is the main result of Brook Farm; but _The Blithedale
Romance_ was very properly never recognised by the Brook Farmers as an
accurate portrait of their little colony.
Nevertheless, in a society as to which the more frequent complaint is
that it is monotonous, that it lacks variety of incident and of type,
the episode, our own business with which is simply that it was the
cause of Hawthorne's writing an admirable tale, might be welcomed as a
picturesque variation. At the same time, if we do not exaggerate its
proportions, it may seem to contain a fund of illustration as to that
phase of human life with which our author's own history mingled
itself. The most graceful account of the origin of Brook Farm is
probably to be found in these words of one of the biographers of
Margaret Fuller: "In Boston and its vicinity, several friends, for
whose character Margaret felt the highest-honour, were earnestly
considering the possibility of making such industrial, social, and
educational arrangements as would simplify economies, combine leisure
for study with healthful and honest toil, avert unjust collisions of
caste, equalise refinements, awaken generous affections, diffuse
courtesy, and sweeten and sanctify life as a whole." The reader will
perceive that this was a liberal scheme, and that if the experiment
failed, the greater was the pity. The writer goes on to say that a
gentleman, who afterwards distinguished himself in literature (he had
begun by being a clergyman), "convinced by his experience in a
faithful ministry that the need was urgent for a thorough application
of the professed principles of Fraternity to actual relations, was
about staking his all of fortune, reputation, and influence, in an
attempt to organize a joint-stock company at Brook Farm." As Margaret
Fuller passes for having suggested to Hawthorne the figure of Zenobia
in _The Blithedale Romance_, and as she is probably, with one
exception, the person connected with the affair who, after Hawthorne,
offered most of what is called a personality to the world, I may
venture to quote a few more passages from her Memoirs--a curious, in
some points of view almost a grotesque, and yet, on the whole, as I
have said, an extremely interesting book. It was a strange history and
a strange destiny, that of this brilliant, restless, and unhappy
woman--this ardent New Englander, this impassioned Yankee, who
occupied so large a place in the thoughts, the lives, the affections,
of an intelligent and appreciative society, and yet left behind her
nothing but the memory of a memory. Her function, her reputation, were
singular, and not altogether reassuring: she was a talker, she was
_the_ talker, she was the genius of talk. She had a magnificent,
though by no means an unmitigated, egotism; and in some of her
utterances it is difficult to say whether pride or humility
prevails--as for instance when she writes that she feels "that there
is plenty of room in the Universe for my faults, and as if I could not
spend time in thinking of them when so many things interest me more."
She has left the same sort of reputation as a great actress. Some of
her writing has extreme beauty, almost all of it has a real interest,
but her value, her activity, her sway (I am not sure that one can say
her charm), were personal and practical. She went to Europe, expanded
to new desires and interests, and, very poor herself, married an
impoverished Italian nobleman. Then, with her husband and child, she
embarked to return to her own country, and was lost at sea in a
terrible storm, within sight of its coasts. Her tragical death
combined with many of the elements of her life to convert her memory
into a sort of legend, so that the people who had known her well, grew
at last to be envied by later comers. Hawthorne does not appear to
have been intimate with her; on the contrary, I find such an entry as
this in the American Note-Books in 1841: "I was invited to dine at Mr.
Bancroft's yesterday, with Miss Margaret Fuller; but Providence had
given me some business to do; for which I was very thankful!" It is
true that, later, the lady is the subject of one or two allusions of a
gentler cast. One of them indeed is so pretty as to be worth
quoting:--
- Writer
