Eden's Outcasts

by John Matteson

  The couple’s financial prospects brightened two months after the wedding, when they received an anonymous gift of two thousand dollars, most likely from Abba’s father, Colonel Joseph May. To his credit, Bronson immediately used more than a third of the money to settle, with interest, the debt that he had long owed his family at Spindle Hill. Indeed, he traveled there with Abba to have the pleasure of pressing the money into his mother’s hand. Sadly, though, Alcott’s father was not there to meet his daughter-in-law. The previous year, Joseph Alcox had died at the age of fifty-seven.

  After the wedding, Alcott barely had time to resume his teaching in Boston before events started to lead him down a different road. During the same month that saw him married, he entered a contest. The United States Gazette of Philadelphia advertised a one-hundred-dollar prize for the best essay on education. Alcott responded with a twenty-seven-page opus, Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction. Observations represents the most comprehensive statement on the subject of teaching that he ever committed to writing. Moreover, it reveals Alcott’s state of mind near the time when his thinking about education was to be put to its most formidable test; only a month or so after their wedding, Abba became pregnant with the couple’s first child. After this child was born, Alcott’s roles as father and educator were never distinct. Thus, his Observations is as much a treatise on parenting as a theory of the classroom.

  Alcott began by positing that a child possessed a collection of faculties that developed at different rates over time. He identified them, in ascending order of complexity, as “the animal nature, the affections, the conscience [and] the intellect.” To accomplish its tasks, he argued, an education must address all these aspects of personality. “The whole being of the child,” he insisted, “asks for expansion and guidance.” Rather than being prematurely forced to concentrate only on the emergence of his intellect, the child should be encouraged to “associate pleasure with the action of all his faculties.” Children naturally seek enjoyment. However, lacking judgment and experience, they either fail to find enjoyment or discover it in the wrong activities. Therefore, a teacher must seek and supply the means to guide the pupil to true and lasting sources of enjoyment.2

  Since the first aspect of a child’s character to emerge was its animal nature, his physical needs should initially be treated as paramount. It was essential to allow him unrestrained movement and ample opportunity for play, an activity that Alcott called “the appointed dispensation of childhood.” Only when the exuberance of the body had been satisfied could the intellect be successfully addressed. The playroom, then, was the most effective preparation for the schoolroom. Always, Alcott declared, instruction should be invested “with an interest, a certainty, and a love, which future experience shall not diminish, nor maturer reason disapprove.”3

  Games and playtime were, of course, only the first steps. The instructor must also address the intellectual and moral constitution of the child, though never in a condescending or autocratic fashion. Rather, the chief avenue to the mind and soul of the child was through conversation, that is, through a system of Socratic dialogue that, while adjusted to the lesser intellect of the child, nevertheless treated the child as the moral peer of the instructor. “To train and elevate [the conscience] by frequent appeals to the unerring laws of reason, rectitude, and benevolence” was, for Alcott, “an all-important work.” Socrates, however, was not the sole model, for Alcott also revered the teaching practices of Christ, especially his parables. Abstract reasoning should give way to “interesting incidents, familiar descriptions, approaching as nearly as possible to the circumstances and relations of life.”4

  Indeed, Alcott believed that the ideal teacher should be a modern Christ, entering the classroom not only with a solemn sense of moral duty but a surpassing love for his young charges. Perfecting of a growing spirit required the near perfection of the instructor:

  [T]he teacher should unite an amiableness of temper, a simplicity of manner, and a devotion to his work, which shall associate with it his happiness and duty…. He should possess the power of reaching the infant understanding in the simplest and happiest forms…. Free from prejudices and particularities, he should impart instructions from the pure fountain of truth and love alone. Taking a benevolent view of the works of nature and the ways of Providence, his piety should diffuse itself through all his teachings.5

  Not surprisingly, given his own haphazard, unfinished education, Alcott insisted that the teacher’s formal training and store of academic knowledge were of relatively minor import. Alcott argued that the word “education” must be taken literally. It was a drawing out of what the child already possessed within, not a cramming in of facts and theories. As the child traveled the path to knowledge and spiritual unfoldment, the role of the teacher was neither to drive nor to lead the child; it was to accompany him.

  Bronson did not win the contest. However, as with his cousin William’s report on the Cheshire school, this document also opened a door. Alcott’s Observations was printed by a Boston publishing house and caught the eye of a Pennsylvanian Quaker named Reuben Haines, a railroad entrepreneur and financier with a fancy for educational topics. In October 1830, on a visit to Boston, Haines sought Alcott out and made him an offer. Alcott and his wife were to move from Boston to Germantown, Pennsylvania, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, where Haines would provide them with a house free of rent and arrange for Bronson and his friend William Russell to open a school based on the principles of Bronson’s Observations. Bronson responded to the proposal with enthusiasm. Abba could hardly have welcomed the news that she was to become a mother hundreds of miles away from the rest of the May family. Nevertheless, on December 14, 1830, now six months pregnant, Abba joined Bronson and the Russells on their difficult four-day journey over rutted roads and storm-tossed waters to Philadelphia.

  When Alcott and Russell arrived in Germantown, they found the quiet farming community far below their expectations. Neither believed that the community was sufficiently forward-looking to appreciate their progressive approach to education. Therefore, instead of settling in Germantown, the Alcotts took rooms at a boardinghouse in Philadelphia. The two men kept Haines at bay for several weeks while they tried to locate patrons who might support them in establishing a school in Philadelphia. Finding no takers, they again agreed to Haines’s original offer, which the philanthropist had kindly held open for them. Alcott instructed children from the ages of three to nine, while Russell worked with the older pupils.

  Alcott’s delay in committing himself to Haines meant that the house he had been promised was not immediately ready for occupancy. Thus, it was in a Germantown boardinghouse operated by a Mrs. Stuckart that Bronson prepared to open his school and Abba made ready for motherhood. The ensuing winter was a time of great excitement for Bronson but a season of loneliness for Abba. As her pregnancy neared its end, she became anxious and depressed. On March 15, 1831, she began thirty-six hours of labor.

  The following evening, an hour before midnight, Abba delivered a daughter, whom the couple named Anna Bronson in honor of Bronson’s mother. The baby was strong and healthy. Abba felt as if the child had opened “all the fountains of [her] better nature.” The baby had “given love to life—and life to love.” Abba doubted whether anyone else could comprehend “the sacred, pure emotions” that had “filled and at times overwhelmed” her.6 Bronson was equally ecstatic. In his journal, he implicitly likened Anna’s birth to the coming of the Christ child. One can almost hear the jubilant notes of Handel’s Messiah in Alcott’s words:

  “Unto us a child is given.” Be it our ambition and delight, to train it up by the maxims of Him of whom the prophets of old spoke the same words. As agents of the Supreme Parent, may we guide it in the paths of truth, duty, and happiness.7

  Bronson saw in Anna both a God-given duty and an experimental opportunity. In his current thinking, environment was all-important in the moral formation of a child. Even in the carefully
constructed atmospheres of his primary schools, however, the children had always walked through the door as products of potentially contaminating influences. Never had Alcott had the chance to try out his educational theories on a pure subject, untainted by the petty prejudices of someone else’s parenting.

  In Anna, Bronson at last had the chance to supervise and observe the development of a child from its earliest moments, in an environment over which he could exert a high level of control. Alcott seized this opportunity with extraordinary zeal and ambition. Bronson was utterly confident of his innate genius. However, even though most of his childhood memories were fond, he bitterly regretted having been raised in an environment that had neither recognized nor fed his native brilliance. He resolved to give his child the spiritually indulgent upbringing he wished he had had. In this pursuit, Alcott accepted no half measures. He hoped to create an environment for his daughter that was not only better than what he had known but which, he believed, would come as close as possible to producing a perfect child.

  Seeking from the first not to reprise the remoteness of his own father, Alcott could hardly be persuaded to leave the room where Abba and the infant lay. He was making good his determination to be a man, in Abba’s words, “for domestic and parental excellence inferior to none.” His presence “shed tranquility on the scene.”8 However, he did not stop there. From the day after Anna’s birth, Alcott kept a separate journal regarding his daughter, titled “Observations on the Life of my First Child,” in which he aspired to record literally every event in her mental and spiritual growth. He proposed to continue this journal religiously until Anna was old enough to continue it herself, not merely through the end of childhood but as near as possible to her death. He desired nothing less than “the history of one human mind, commenced in infancy and faithfully narrated…through all the vicissitudes of life to its close.”9 He hoped to create a document that would outstrip in value all that the world’s philosophers had ever written about the human mind. The Alcott family nursery was to be more than a supreme locus of love and learning. It was also to be a laboratory for his children’s minds and souls. Alcott undertook such journals not only for Anna but also for his next two daughters, Louisa and Elizabeth. He exposed them to stimuli and wrote down their reactions. He made minute observations of their movements, their facial expressions, their squeals of pleasure and fits of anger. Altogether, his writings on the early childhoods of his three eldest daughters eventually reached an astounding twenty-five hundred pages.

  It is easy and, to some extent, justifiable to respond somewhat squeamishly to a man who would use his own children as the subjects of such an experiment. However, to read Alcott’s painstakingly compiled notebooks is to realize that his motives, as well as his methods, were scrupulously kind. He was seeking to determine the nature of happiness and how to produce it, and harshness had no place in this search. In one of his experiments with Anna, Bronson affected a series of faces in order to note the baby’s reactions. Curiosity prompted him to assume a deliberately frightening face. When Anna responded with panic, her father at once regretted his transgression. He wrote:

  This experiment must not be repeated. The influence of fear, even in its milder forms, upon the mind of infancy, must be unfavorable to its improvement and happiness. External objects should, as far as possible, excite only ideas of beauty, truth, and happiness.10

  Moreover, Alcott was indulgent in his responses to Anna’s inevitable assertions of frustration and anger. Indeed, he aspired to be a less controlling parent than the nature of his investigation would seem to suggest. When, at three months, Alcott noticed that Anna “indicated her opposition to whatever she thinks will diminish her happiness…uttering cries of uneasiness, dissatisfaction, etc.,” he emphatically rejected the idea, which he knew many of his contemporaries would urge, that such displays of passion should be immediately checked and overcome. He wanted to train his child for independence, not servile obedience. “Liberty,” Alcott maintained, “is a primary right of all created natures…. The child has his rights, as well as the adult…. The right of self-government, and the liberty to govern himself…are inherent principles of his nature.”11 Alcott’s philosophy of the nursery reflected his philosophy of the state; he wanted not only to aid in the formation of a happy, intelligent child but to produce a republican citizen.

  Anna Alcott enjoyed a pleasant, if highly scrutinized, babyhood. When she was almost two months old, the family moved into the house that Haines had promised them, a “little paradise,” as Abba called it. There was a charming walkway lined with fruit trees, pines, and cedars. The furniture was new and of good quality. Busts of Newton and Locke, as well as flower vases, adorned the mantelpiece.12 To make his experiment in child development as controlled as possible, Bronson took steps to minimize outside intrusions into the nursery. The family’s serving girl was entrusted with maintaining the house, but the Alcotts reserved Anna’s care for themselves. Bronson conducted his school at home, so that work would not call him away from wife and daughter. The Alcotts tried to insulate Anna not only against frightening faces, but also from sudden movements, loud voices, and “incessant prattle.” They took pains to speak to her with “cheerful countenance…soft tones and deep interest.”13 Abba nursed her daughter frequently and on demand. She also confessed, “I am a great one to do what she indicates to have done.” The idea was to anticipate Anna’s wants and to address them quickly, in order to spare her from potentially damaging emotions. Reluctant to resort to discipline except when absolutely necessary, Bronson submitted to letting Anna pull his hair.14 When Anna did raise a howl of protest over some imposition or other, Bronson reacted with a certain amount of approval: at least Anna was not fearful and passive like other children he had observed!15

  It was not that the Alcotts wanted to impose no restrictions on Anna’s behavior, nor did they set out to spoil her. Their reluctance to introduce unpleasantness into Anna’s world stemmed from their hypothesis that choices, even for an infant, should not be coerced, but should arise from an inner moral spirit. Alcott believed that the triumph of the child’s higher nature must be voluntary and achieved through affection and reason, not fear of punishment. He desired a perfection of the will, not its subjugation. He was, therefore, thrown somewhat off balance when, around the age of six months, Anna began to behave in ways that seemed inconsistent with her supposed heavenly origins. She objected violently to having her mother even momentarily out of her sight. In general, she started displaying such imperious behavior that Bronson feared her will was surrendering to “passion,” a word that, in this context, he equated with the worst aspects of animal nature.16

  Thus troubled, Bronson resorted to discipline, only in accord with his theories. When Anna pulled his hair, he gently pulled hers. When she acted in an unloving manner, he withheld his own affection. By repaying her in kind, he meant for her to learn to do unto others as she would be done to. On the whole, this approach seemed to work better than unremitting indulgence. When Anna was twenty months old, Bronson boasted of her affectionate and intelligent nature. He felt that his daughter was manifesting her mother’s heart and her father’s mind—a combination he evidently considered optimal. Bronson also took pride in Anna’s physical vigor, which he expected to serve her well as she confronted the trials of life.

  One such trial was soon to arise. In October 1831, Reuben Haines unexpectedly died. The loss was catastrophic. Not only had Haines paid the rent for the Alcotts’ home, but he had also underwritten the tuition of many of Bronson’s pupils. Without these subsidies, the school’s enrollment immediately declined. With determined effort, Alcott kept the school open for most of the following year, but the school was doomed. Abba called the philanthropist’s death a “paralyzing blow” that “has prostrated all our hopes here.”17

  About the time they celebrated Anna’s first birthday, the Alcotts learned that Abba was pregnant again. As he anticipated Anna’s new sibling, Bronson was very much under th
e influence of his fellow pedagogue William Russell, who argued that children were beings of celestial origin and destination. Begotten by the stars, they were destined to return to them and to do so, one hoped, in a better, worthier condition than the one in which they had come. The role of the teacher was not only to prepare children for life in this world, which they entered as spiritual strangers, but to ready them for the celestial world, which was their eternal home. The prospect of welcoming another visitor from the heavens excited Bronson greatly.

  It is fair to say that birth seemed more wonderful to Bronson than it did to Abba. As the due date neared, Abba again became depressed. This time, her feelings of dejection were so unusually severe that she never forgot them. Almost a decade later, struggling to manage the fitful temper of this second daughter, Abba wrote that her own dark frame of mind prior to delivery “accounts to me for many of her peculiarities and moods of mind, rather uncommon for a child of her age.”18 Bronson acknowledged that Abba had suffered a good deal during the summer months. Nevertheless, she seems to have done well at concealing the dimensions of her despondency from her husband. Bronson indeed believed that Abba had been “unusually cheerful amid the cares and anxieties of life, and of her situation.”19