The Stammering Century

by Gilbert Seldes

  Contrasted with the sour figure of the modern Prohibitionist, the reformer of 1840 is a happy and generous person, trusting human nature in its “natural” state, eager to allow every liberty to mankind, and never happy himself so long as injustice and unkindness remained on earth. In that view, the radical comes to our mind in the same group-picture with the martyrs of liberty, the saints, and the prophets. We imagine the contempt an Alcott or a Greeley might have had for the tyrannical practice and mean devices of a censor of literature, or an Anti-Saloon Leaguer, or a Tennessee legislator of to-day, and it seems to us that a miasma of intolerance has spread over our own time, choking our finer sensibilities and stunting the growth of great spirits.

  For the sake of convenience, we may take the period 1800–1840 (roughly) as the one in which the revivalist worked on the radical-reforming temperament and created communities; and the period from 1840 to our own day as the one in which the radical-reformer turned into the prohibitory-reformer. Stated even in these terms, the marks of degeneracy become plain. It would be premature to stress the point. But it may be noted now that the degradation of radical doctrine is probably due in part to the vast failure of radical movements when they founded communities. At that point, they touched America with the sharpest edge: they challenged the system of production, of capitalism. Had they made any success for themselves there, they might have developed more happily, with the respect which America (and possibly Europe) pays to whatever establishes itself. But they failed, conclusively. Except for the Shakers and the Rappites of an earlier, religious day, only one community gave any indication of success. This was Oneida, and it, too, was based on a religion. Many years later, Zion City seemed successful, came close to bankruptcy, and was saved, but it was not a true community.

  The others, the communities founded on faith and hope perished without grandeur. Several records exist, most of them based on fragments of a manuscript written by a forgotten Scot whose practical mind seems to have been fascinated by all these impracticalities. On one side is a list of lovely names, names of abstract virtues, of philosophical ideals, of pious devotion; on the other side is the deadly record of bankruptcy and dispersal. One wishes they had been as intelligent as they were gallant, as beautiful as they were fanatic. But making all reservations, these communities still have a touch of human dignity, and it seems hard that they should have struggled and perished and left their name to be exploited as bait for bad furniture and limp leather books.

  In the period of the ’40’s, the most famous experiment was Brook Farm; the most numerous experiments were the Fourierite phalanxes. The stories of these colonies are so well known that I have preferred to choose two others: Ballou’s Hopedale, which in its meekness and dullness exhibits all the lesser vices of communities, and Alcott’s Fruitlands, where every idiosyncrasy flourished and all the absurd impracticality of the reformer when cultivating the land was exposed.

  [1] Fourier was magnificent. Not satisfied with creating a new type of communal life, he imagined a world-state, with its capital at Constantinople, and an entirely new cosmogony. He foresaw the time when the earth would bask in perpetual spring and when the salt waters of the sea would turn into an ocean of lemonade, with whales and dolphins acting as beasts of burden. His influence on American communities was great; Horace Greeley and Albert Brisbane were his chief disciples and dozens of phalansteries were founded. An accurate and entertaining account of the Fourierite enthusiasm is given in Miss Rourke’s Trumpets of Jubilee.

  †The West was being cultivated by the Bible, Mission, Tract, Sabbath School, Temperance, Education, and Seamen and River Men’s Societies. †In the novel Home, a family was described as spending Sunday morning in church and the afternoon in religious conversation on a sailboat. So much offense was taken at this frivolity that the edition was withdrawn and the sailboat deleted. When Italian opera was proposed in Boston, the name was considered daring, and “lectures on music with illustrations” were offered as a substitute. †The mayor of New York denied that he had violated the Sabbath by entertaining visiting nobility on a Sunday. †Baldwin built a locomotive which ran sixty-two miles an hour. †After 1830 fruit crops for the first time appeared in agricultural statistics. †The parade celebrating the election of Jackson was described by a visiting Frenchman as a grotesque version of the Kermesse. †The Appellate Court decided that a free black woman was not entitled to the privileges of the ladies’ cabin on a steamer in Massachusetts. †Official geologists were appointed by many states. †In 1837, “a wagon load of girls for the western market lately passed through Northampton, Massachusetts.” †“The Americans are always in a hurry,” says a visiting Frenchman. †Democratic Protestantism was favoring the exaltation of the lower classes, and Frenchmen and Englishmen alike found that all Yankees were cast in the same mold. †The gospel of salvation by manual training was being vigorously taught. †The beard was an object of mockery.

  XII. An Apostle of the Newness.

  “THE most refined and most advanced soul we have had in New England” had been lecturing for several months in the Middle West; his subject was the New England mind as represented by Greeley, Garrison, Webster, Theodore Parker, Greenough, Margaret Fuller and, most illustrious of all, the man whose superlative opinion has been quoted, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The seven were included in six lectures, and the price for the series was three dollars. On a cold, black, February night, the lecturer returned to his home in Concord with exactly one dollar in his pocket. “He looked,” wrote Louisa Alcott, his daughter, “as cold and thin as an icicle, but as serene as God.” It was Bronson Alcott’s habit to face his own failures with serenity. On the one occasion when he turned his face to the wall, it was Nature, whom he trusted, and human nature, which he did not understand, that had failed: he himself had been true.

  He had been true, in fact, to the most absurd collection of fads and principles that ever occupied the mind of one man. Nothing radical was alien to Bronson Alcott and there was no departure from the accepted ways which he did not take. In the disastrous experiment at Fruitlands, he and the two families which, with a few followers, made up the community, created a complete world of ineffective radicalism. All the types were there, all the idiosyncrasies, a sufficiency of chaotic genius, a touch of selfishness, a trace of madness and more than a trace of heroic patience. In all, there were at Fruitlands about a dozen adults and four or five children on a farm, between the towns of Harvard and Still River, twenty miles away from Concord. Of the children, four little girls were Alcott’s, and they and their mother became familiar to millions of American children when Louisa Alcott put them into her books. With Mrs. Alcott, who destroyed herself with the work of bringing some equilibrium into an unbalanced household, correcting the errors of her erratic husband, and gathering in the crops which the men left to rot in the fields, there was but one woman at Fruitlands and she was of no great help. All the vagaries, the foolish and pathetic ideas, came from the men. One of them seemed possessed by a hatred of cattle, for the farm was never polluted by a cow’s foot and neither flesh, nor milk, nor any product of milk, entered into the diet of Fruitlands. Another allowed weeds to grow in the vegetable patch because they had as much right to be there as corn or cucumbers. Another would eat no vegetable which pushed downward into the ground, instead of aspiring nobly into the sun. Another, whose name was Abram Wood, indicated his independence of common forms by insisting on being called Wood Abram. Another chose to go as nearly naked as possible. Alcott himself did not allow the land to be manured—“a base and corrupting mode of forcing nature”—and tried to render palatable the bread he himself made of unbolted flour by shaping the loaves into animals and other attractive forms.

  His chief collaborator was the Englishman, Charles Lane, who owned the property upon which Fruitlands stood—that is, he had paid for it, but Emerson held it as trustee, since the ownership of property was outlawed in the community and Fruitlands was always referred to as “liberated from human owner
ship.” On an unproductive farm, in an uncomfortable house, with a diet of vegetables and water, Charles Lane wrote, “To me our mode of life is luxurious in the highest degree.” He had come from England only a short time before, following the admired Alcott, with the purpose of founding a New Eden. He had first gone to visit Brook Farm and that comparatively simple and uncomfortable community had inspired in him a feeling almost of nausea. When he saw Brook Farm, “where there are eighty or ninety persons playing away their youth and day time in a miserably joyless frivolous manner,” he felt that he must remove Alcott as far as possible from its softening influence and from that of Emerson, its absent inspiration, in particular. The sight of “no less than sixteen cows besides four oxen, a herd of swine, and a horse or two” displeased him intensely. Brook Farm was a community of taste and he did not care for it. He wrote back to friends in England asking them to urge youthful men and women to come to Fruitland, saying, “There is now a certain opportunity for planting a love colony the influence of which may be felt for many generations and more than felt; it may be the beginning of a state of things which shall far transcend itself.” What the austere Lane and the mystic Alcott meant by a love colony must remain forever obscure; the colony they did found was hardly a home for the voluptuary.

  The meeting of Lane and Alcott was the result of that part of Alcott’s life which time has made most honorable to him. He was one of the earliest of modern schoolmasters putting into practice, in 1826, theories of child education which still inspire modern experiments although they made Alcott a target for abuse and contempt in his own time. He began by abolishing the backbreaking form-benches customary at that time, and gave each child a chair and a desk. He improved blackboards. He brought works of art into the schoolroom and touched off the imagination of his pupils by allegory and fiction. He was a pioneer in the use of gymnastic exercises in public schools. These innovations aroused only criticism. When he went further and established a school discipline based on free courtesy and understanding and left his school for a whole day to the self-government of the pupils, he began to be considered a menace. Given his character, it could only be a matter of time before he offended everyone. The occasion for all his work to be attacked was when he published a series of Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Against the advice of Miss Peabody (whose sister later married Nathaniel Hawthorne), he left in the book a few passages relating to birth and was promptly accused of being obscene and blasphemous. His whole method of teaching was now called into question. The Boston Daily Advertiser complained that “on the most important questions this teacher, while he endeavors to extract from his pupils every thought which may come uppermost in their minds, takes care studiously to conceal his own opinions” except where he gives principles of questionable soundness. To this accusation, which the modern pedagogue would consider the highest praise, was added the damning indictment that Alcott believed childhood to be a type of divinity. The Courier, at the same time, so abusively demanded a trial for blasphemy that Emerson was moved to protest. But Emerson could not deny Alcott’s literal belief that children come trailing clouds of glory and it is, in modern eyes, infinitely to Alcott’s credit that he did everything in his power to keep the shadow of the prison house from falling across his pupils. He really believed that “infant education when adapted to the human being is founded on the great principle, that every infant is already in possession of the faculties and apparatus required for his instruction, and that, by a law of his constitution, he uses these to a great extent himself; that the office of instruction is chiefly to facilitate this process, and to accompany the child in his progress, rather than to drive or even to lead him.” In a time when people believed seriously in infant damnation, Alcott could not be popular and, although the temper of the community was shown when wells near by were polluted and school houses attacked because of the presence of negro students, Alcott deliberately invited a young negress into his school. The school broke up.

  Harriet Martineau, the distinguished English visitor, had bent her receptive ear trumpet to catch words of praise for Alcott’s Temple School. On her return to England, although she, herself, was not enthusiastic, she gave such an account of Alcott’s methods that a group of mystic Englishmen, who were then interested in Pestalozzi, began a correspondence with Alcott and eventually founded, in England, a school on his principles and bearing his name. In 1842, Alcott sailed for England on their invitation and, having conceived the idea of a New Eden, brought back Charles Lane and a few others to assist in laying its foundation. This was the beginning of Fruitlands.

  Many years later, Louisa Alcott wrote a lightly romantic account of Fruitlands under the title of Transcendental Wild Oats. She was not particularly generous to Charles Lane, but she was fairly accurate, and the opening picture of the departure for the earthly paradise is typical:

  “On the first day of June, 1842, a large wagon, drawn by a small horse and containing a motley load, went lumbering over certain New England hills, with the pleasing accompaniments of wind, rain, and hail. A serene man with a serene child upon his knee was driving, or rather being driven, for the small horse had it all his own way. A brown boy with a William Penn style of countenance sat beside him, firmly embracing a bust of Socrates. Behind them was an energetic-looking woman, with a benevolent brow, satirical mouth, and eyes brimful of hope and courage. A baby reposed upon her lap, a mirror leaned against her knee, and a basket of provisions danced about at her feet, as she struggled with a large, unruly umbrella. Two blue-eyed little girls, with hands full of childish treasures, sat under one old shawl, chatting happily together.

  “In front of this lively party stalked a tall, sharp-featured man, in a long blue cloak; and a fourth small girl trudged along beside him through the mud as if she rather enjoyed it.

  “The wind whistled over the bleak hills; the rain fell in a despondent drizzle, and twilight began to fall. But the calm man gazed as tranquilly into the fog as if he beheld a radiant bow of promise spanning the gray sky. The cheery woman tried to cover everyone but herself with the big umbrella. The brown boy pillowed his head on the bald pate of Socrates and slumbered peacefully. The little girls sang lullabies to their dolls in soft, maternal murmurs. The sharp-nosed pedestrian marched steadily on, with the blue cloak streaming out behind him like a banner; and the lively infant splashed through the puddles with a ducklike satisfaction pleasant to behold.

  “Thus these modern pilgrims journeyed hopefully out of the old world, to found a new one in the wilderness.”

  The editors of the Dial had already received a statement of principles from Lane and Alcott and various other periodicals published similar documents. From these we gather that Fruitlands was not a social or political or spiritual experiment, so much as a personal one. While other communities held that the evils of life are due to political and social organization, Alcott turned inward and declared that only a personal reform can eradicate these evils. He and Lane inclined to approve of the asceticism of the Shakers and, “as to property, we discover not its just disposal either in individual or social tenures, but in its entire absorption into the New Spirit, which ever gives and never grasps.”

  The new apostles objected to trade and wages, but their passion seems to have been to rid the world of cattle.

  “Our ultimate aim is to furnish an instance of self-sustaining cultivation without the subjugation of either men or cattle, or the use of foul animal manures; we have at the outset to encounter struggles and oppositions somewhat formidable. Until the land is restored to its pristine fertility by the annual return of its own green crops, as sweet and animating manures, the human hand and simple implement cannot wholly supersede the employment of machinery and cattle. So long as cattle are used in agriculture, it is very evident that man will remain a slave, whether he be proprietor or hireling. The driving of cattle beyond their natural and pleasurable exertion; the waiting upon them as cook and chamber-maid three parts of the year; the excessive labor of mow
ing, curing, and housing hay, and of collecting other fodder, and the large extra quantity of land needful to keep up this system, form a continuation of unfavorable circumstances which must depress the human affections so long as it continues, and overlay them by the injurious and extravagant development of the animal and bestial natures in man. It is calculated that if no animal food were consumed, one-fourth of the land now used would suffice for human sustenance. And the extensive tracts of country now appropriated to grazing, mowing, and other modes of animal provision, could be cultivated by and for intelligent and affectionate human neighbors. The sty and the stable too often secure more of the farmer’s regard than he bestows on the garden and the children. No hope is there for humanity while Woman is withdrawn from the tender assiduities which adorn her and her household, to the servitudes of the dairy and the flesh pots. If the beasts were wholly absent from man’s neighborhood, the human population might be at least four times as dense as it now is without raising the price of land. This would give to the country all the advantages of concentration without the vices which always spring up in the dense city.

  “Debauchery of both the earthly soil and the human body is the result of this cattle keeping. The land is scourged for crops to feed the animals, whose ordures are used under the erroneous supposition of restoring lost fertility; disease is thus infused into the human body; stimulants and medicines are resorted to for relief, which end in a precipitation of the original evil to a more disastrous depth. These misfortunes which affect not only the body, but by reaction rise to the sphere of the soul, would be avoided, or at least in part, by the disuse of animal food. Our diet is therefore strictly the pure and bloodless kind. No animal substances, neither flesh, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk, pollute our table or corrupt our bodies, neither tea, coffee, molasses, nor rice, tempts us beyond the bounds of indigenous productions. Our sole beverage is pure fountain water. The native grains, fruits, herbs, and roots, dressed with the utmost cleanliness and regard to their purpose of edifying a healthful body, furnish the pleasantest refections and in the greatest variety requisite to the supply of the various organs. The field, the orchard, the garden, in their bounteous products of wheat, rye, barley, maize, oats, buckwheat, apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, currants, berries, potatoes, peas, beans, beets, carrots, melons, and other vines, yield an ample store for human nutrition, without dependence on foreign climes, or the degeneration of shipping and trade. The almost inexhaustible variety of the several stages and sorts of vegetable growth, and the several modes of preparation, are a full answer to the question which is often put by those who have never ventured into the region of a pure and chaste diet: ‘If you give up flesh meat, upon what then can you live?’