I should explain that these leaders of the Community had agreed to address me, and to introduce me to their cohorts, as “Miss Sigourney.” Mr. Dana had suggested some such appellation to further insulate from the world my presence here.
“Miss Fuller has told you of our principles and purposes, I believe,” the woman, Rebecca Lovejoy, said.
“In the main,” I answered. Through the intermediacy of Miss Fuller, it was agreed that I was to be given refuge in return for my contributions in the garden and kitchen as chores came to hand.
“And that no more nor less will be expected of you, Miss Sigourney, than we expect of ourselves,” said the man who had introduced himself as Hiram Miles. Even as he sat before me I could see that he was as tall as he was thin, and his eyes were, for lack of a better word, angelic.
Then the second man, Lucius Brown, spoke: “Yet perhaps we should recapitulate the essentials to be certain of that mutual understanding so necessary to harmonious relations.”
“As you wish,” I said. “I am not averse to any increase in our mutual understanding, Mr. Brown.”
“Very well, Miss Sigourney,” he continued. “We have all, those of us here committed to our project, invested our worldly wealth—each according to his ability—to liberate this estate from mere human ownership. Here we seek to initiate a Family in harmony with the purer, more primitive instincts of mankind. Our Community will cultivate this land of some hundred acres with sobriety and devotion, and thereby provide a model of human freedom.” He paused for a moment, as if to consider the effect of his rant, and ran a thin finger along the ridge of his bony nose. “Neither shall we neglect to cultivate the inner life of our members. On the contrary, Mrs… . or … Miss Sigourney, our program embraces all disciplines and habits conducive to the purification of each.”
“That pleases me, sir,” I said when he finished. Mr. Dana had purchased a small store of supplies for me to begin painting again, and I had hoped, following my discussions of the Newspirit Community with Miss Fuller, to devote two or three hours every day to prosecute my “discipline and habit,” to use their phrase, of making pictures. “Honest labor on the land,” I added, “tunes body and soul to the Author of Nature.”
Mr. Brown smiled briefly. I continued: “And as a painter, I also believe that to amuse the imagination in this life is wisdom.”
No one spoke immediately, but I felt as though something in the air between us finally settled. Mr. Brown leaned back in his chair and began to chew pea pods out of a basket set before him on the table.
All three were dressed as I now was. Here was no cotton, silk, or wool, as Miss Fuller had forewarned me, because these were taken to be the products of human and animal bondage. Instead, long tunics over loose trousers of brown linen adorned the men and Miss Lovejoy alike, though her tunic seemed to be of greater length, as did my own.
“Yes,” Miss Lovejoy said finally, “cultivating the inner life is best done by casting off the vanities of a depraved world and, as you say, by honest labor and innocent cultivation of the powers of the mind.” She did not smile, but she seemed pleased with herself.
“We therefore see our duty,” she persisted, “in terminating much that mankind does. The false stimulations of tea, coffee, or wine. The consumption of animal flesh. The subjugation of animals and property to our base wants, to greed and trade. The mere orthodoxies of this or that religion. The distracting sound and fury of politics. From how many of these things—if we but look a little more deeply—should we abstain?”
“Indeed, Miss Lovejoy,” I said.
A smile brushed her lips. “All our efforts,” she continued, “are bent to living independently of foreign aids, by procuring all articles for subsistence by production on the spot, under an elevated regimen of healthful labor and recreation, with benignity toward all creatures.” She was a plain, brown woman in whom, however, a bright coal of zeal smouldered.
Our interview soon drew to a close. That evening and the next morning at breakfast I learned something of the rigors of diet consequent to these principles. Water, unleavened bread, porridge, vegetables, and fruit were to be our constant fare. No teapot sullied our kitchen, no blood of steer or lamb our gridiron. Nor did cheese, sugar, or milk profane our palates. But I had become used to reduced intake under Mr. Dudley’s constrictions. And after certain initial discomforts of digestion, I soon adapted to much of the diet they espoused.
That first morning broke sunny after the storm, and we all devoted the day to labors in the fields, orchard, and vegetable garden. Miss Lovejoy and I, along with Mrs. Lucy Miles, spent our energies on planting and weeding the kitchen garden—already underway and conveniently laid out and fenced. This fence was the only safeguard against marauding deer, woodchucks, or raccoons; to say nothing of our chickens, whose freedom was not otherwise restrained, and who were never wrung and thrown into the pot, but kept in a sort of absolute liberty for their gift of eggs alone.
Most of the men, with the help of Hiram and Lucy’s children—a daughter and a son—worked in the fields planting maize, rye, oats, barley, potatoes, beans, peas, melons, and squash. Other fields had already been sown, I was given to understand, in clover and buckwheat to be turned in for the succeeding year’s planting so as “to redeem the land without the filth of animal manures.”
In those first days far beyond the strike of city clocks I did not feel settled enough to return to my paints and canvas. So the second afternoon, following a dinner of bread, early vegetables, and water, I set out to explore my environs, to see and understand a little better just where Destiny, as it were, had so firmly set me down.
The old farm was situated in the hilly country some two- or three-score miles west of the city, not nearly so high as the distant mountains in our view, but high enough for good drainage and fresh breezes. If it was far retired from the public road and inconvenient of access (which the Community counted one of its chief advantages), it was nonetheless a lovely, inspiring setting for their experiments. The approach was up a serpentine cart-path well off the road and bordered by elm and maple, among whose branches wild grapevines leapt from branch to branch and, in fruitage I imagined, festooned heavy clusters. Swallows and martins twittered round the old chimney of their hermitage and above the barn. And the low, old-fashioned doorways and ample porches were wreathed in honeysuckle.
I climbed the hill behind the house the better to survey my new home and found for the first time those delightful nooks of repose that would serve me well during the mild seasons of my stay at Newspirit. Where the flower would open her pretty face between rock-shelves, or the stream would spring in the woods or shimmer along still-emerald fields, or where velvet moss would spread a seat in the forest and the blooming clematis embrace the aged trunk, or the enripening grains sway in the breezes, there would I often repair to collect my thoughts, contemplate some new work, or, indeed, apply paint to canvas.
But on that day of my explorations, I met one of the most curious of our brethren. As I sat upon the margin of deep woods in a high field still in sunlight, looking over the tree tops of the old orchard where two members of the Community had labored all morning, I heard a footfall behind me. I turned to see emerging from the circumjacent wood and into the shimmering sunlight a man wearing the now-familiar tunic and trousers. But his clothes were of white linen and, together with his great whitening beard and hair, gave him a bridal—even spiritual—appearance, in spite of his powerful frame. I might have been forgiven if I thought that the Lord had come to ask of me this day my life.
But I soon recognized that he was a man of this world, rather than some other, and so stood and introduced myself as Miss Sigourney. He seemed nearly as stunned as I at suddenly discovering me in his path.
There was, moreover, something familiar about him, and only after he told me his name was I able to understand, after rummaging about in my memory, why. He was none other than Asa Perry, the very butcher Tom and I had seen so violently persecuted for his unsho
rn head. So here, I assumed, was the butcher turned vegetarian and idealist, perhaps now the brightest gem, to all appearances at any rate, among the Community. I now recalled Cousin Bede’s account of the man, whose oddity had put him in opposition to the ways of the world, as an “infamous crank” ever unwilling to bend to the small-minded opinions of townsfolk, as an abstemious promoter of nakedness as one path to health, and as an abolitionist to boot. But now his great mane of sandy hair and beard was, as I say, all enwhitening, and I wondered if the sufferance of prison or of further persecutions had been the cause.
As soon as I said that my brother and I had witnessed and been horrified by that violent assault two years ago, his eyes twinkled and his face regained complete composure. Indeed, he bade me sit down again and asked if he might sit as well where he now stood.
Despite having just met me, he proved to be a man without reticence, on this point at least, and seemed to trust me implicitly.
“I heard, to my chagrin,” I said, “that you, Mr. Perry, were the one charged with disorder, fined, and sent to prison for refusal to pay.”
“That is so, I’m afraid,” he said. “I was guilty of nothing, you see.”
“For how long?”
“Oh, somewhat close to a year it was.” He smiled at me pleasantly, as if remembering worthy moments from his imprisonment.
“My goodness, sir!” I recalled the injustice of my own loss of liberty and shuddered (imperceptibly, I hoped). “Did you suffer much?”
“There were times. My jailers and inmates also tried to shave me, but grew tired finally of fighting me for the privilege. And I was denied water and food on occasions; also I enjoyed a stint of solitary confinement in Worcester jail. But I managed to sneak out letters about my and other prisoners’ mistreatments to the Worcester Spy, and then the ill-treatment abated. Once even the High Sheriff came to my aid.” He heaved a sigh. “But the threats and calumny within jail were never much different from without.”
“The ways of this world reign in every high and low corner of our lives.”
“Indeed, Miss Sigourney, indeed. As one finds out sooner or later.”
He then related an experience in Boston once on his way to a meeting of Phillips and Garrison and other abolitionists. He was confronted on Washington Street by a growing crowd that hooted and jeered and began to grow so nasty that the police had to come to his rescue.
“For your abolitionist’s views?”
“Oh no,” he said, smiling again, almost in a kind of satisfaction at the memory. “Just for the same old beard, it was. They had no way of knowing where I was going, or my views. But you’d have thought I was Will Garrison himself!” He laughed. “And just such a one as I sport!” He stopped, as if considering with satisfaction the gregarious stupidity of our race.
“Once a man asked me: ‘Truly now, why do you insist on wearing it, Perry?’ And my response was what it has always been: ‘If anyone can tell me why many men scrape their faces from neck to nose from fifty-two to three-hundred and sixty-five times a year, I will be happy to tell him truly why I choose not to.’”
We both laughed, and I felt as if I had made my first friend at Newspirit.
“Well, they cheated me in jail too,” he continued, “because I had to pay for all my food, drink, and coal, and was constantly defrauded of an honest return for the amount paid. So once my time was up, I insisted that since they had put me in there they would have to put me out, until I had the sheriff and jailers begging me to go.” He laughed again. “Finally, they carried me out in my chair and set me on the sidewalk smack in the beautiful sunlight of midday! I must say, it was most glorious sunshine and the most exhilarating breath of freedom I have ever felt, Miss Sigourney.”
On many a day thereafter I found my new friend in mutual freedom to be one of the most practical and experienced among us in tilling the land. How often these others looked to him for a solution to some problem or other, for some ballast to the airy boats of their idealism!
DURING THE FIRST TWO WEEKS at Newspirit I found myself readily falling into the regimen of physical labor in the forenoon, a period of quiet or rest after dinner, followed by diverse chores or selfcultivations of one’s choosing in the waning afternoon, and then supper and whatever light evening duties presented themselves about the lands, barn, or farmhouse. These evening duties might be interrupted by readings or conversation, and by lessons, for the children, under the tutelage of ever-patient Mrs. Miles.
In hot weather the men bathed morning and evening in the brook. For the women and children Mr. Miles rigged a sort of private ring of rough clotheshorses covered in sheets. We women bathed before supper, standing by turns in a shallow tub. The children had the help of Mr. Miles, who would climb makeshift steps and pour water from a large pitcher through a sieve over their heads.
But I found myself, inexplicably, unable to begin painting again. Then one afternoon Mr. Perry took me by the hand into the fields behind the house and said: “You’re the painter, Miss Sigourney! Paint this field and those glorious flowers in the sun, if you would for me, please. And look at the surrounding vista—the very essence and atmosphere of freedom.” His request broke the spell of my doubts and difficulties, and I started painting immediately.
As a girl, I had started with flowers and landscapes, mostly idealized, in watercolors. And I began again painting with waters. Thanks to Mr. Dana I had adequate papers, good, springy hair-pencils, and a fine variety of cake colors available to me.
That very week I had dampened and polished the surface of my paper with a wet sponge, and dried and fixed the paper to my drawing board with an application of light red and cobalt-and-lake for sky, and a mix of sepia and gamboge (with a hint of brown pink) for the meadows. As I sat on the hill above the hermitage trying to wash the precise mix of lakes and ochres from my cakes to replicate the lights of a tuft of flowers, I recalled Mr. Spooner’s admonition that the colors of Creation are adequate to every emotion and effect, and are therefore of deep and abiding interest in themselves.
Adjusting my tints and washes, I remembered him once asking us, “Is there a landscape or portrait painter alive who dares to paint what he sees?” When no one answered immediately, he continued: “And how many have the power to see things as they are? They emulate one another. And fear they would starve if they were to judge for themselves against the authority of the old masters.” He paused to empty his third glass of wine.
I was not traveled enough to judge properly of the masters in the original. Yet I took his principle.
“Of course the capacity to see color is no common thing,” he went on. “Oh, some bold young painter may try his hand, but how can we expect a tyro to produce a revolution, or to diminish youthful zeal through wisdom?”
Julian finally ventured a response. “Perhaps we painters should come out, then, and say, ‘that landscape or portrait is what it is because we must lie to you, ladies and gentlemen, because you can not withstand truth.’”
“Indeed, Julian, why not?”
“Well, because of the consequences of truth, sir, and of the difficulty of the trial. If the paleness of Guido appears unearthly to the herd, nay even to so many painters, it is, I’d maintain, more like nature than most of what is called masterly coloring.” He spoke with energy now. “Do we, do I, really believe in Titian? His coloring? Though artists consider it perfection, is it not far too rich, too warm, even for his country? Let’s not forget the unfortunate example of Mr. West, who spent his month in Rome measuring the color of Titian, graduating hues on white paper. Did not West die in the end a mere, an overheated, colorist?”
“And why must a painter portray dignified men and beautiful women on canvas rigged for a masquerade?” Gibbon said. “Because he is not willing to starve!”
“Or a woman starve!” I said, looking at Mr. Spooner.
“Or a woman,” Gibbon agreed. “Even so,” he continued, “if I may be allowed to overstate the case a mere fraction: is it any wonder that
we have landscape painters of extraordinary merit whose pictures are not so much like the truth as are the banal daubings of the stage?” Julian and Mr. Spooner laughed. “They are beautiful. They are works of art. But they are not like what we see about us; and if they were they would not sell. Walk into any exhibition at the Athenaeum. Do you see anybody stop to look at a Ruysdael, where you will always see scores gathered before a Doughty or a Fisher? Yet the Ruysdael is the more true, is it not, Father? So again, are the artists wholly to blame?”
“Not at first,” Mr. Spooner agreed. “But once the artist matures, once he has sold his hundredfold of acceptable daubings, is he not then accountable to his gifts and his vision? Or at least let us ask after his accountability if he would attempt the originality and truth of greatness.”
NOW, NEARLY A MONTH into my stay here, observing the fields about the site of Newspirit, I began to feel more deeply my own responsibility for risking truth. And as I painted, as honestly as I could and at the request of dear Mr. Perry, I felt myself rising out of the dullness and funk of my captivity.
And then there came a greater joy still. Shortly after that time I looked up over the garden fence one summery morning upon hearing the approach of a horse. And there I saw none other than my dear brother Tom astride a galloping young mare.
TEN
Precious reunion
I ran to meet Tom. He leapt off the horse. We embraced and danced each other around like silly children. We even wept. Finally, he held me at arm’s length to catch his breath and look at me.
“Allegra! Dear Allegra! When I heard you were alive I could not bring myself to believe it. But Mr. Dana finally convinced me of the truth.”
I could not speak, other than to repeat his name, for my surprise at that moment was greater than his. He of course had found me out ahead of time and had spent hours anticipating our precious reunion.
The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton Page 11