WILDWOOD FLOWERS
“We’ve been in search of wildwood flowers
In Hopedale glens and shady bowers,
And gathered each a fair bouquet
To celebrate this festal day.
CHORUS
“And why should we not love the flowers
That grow about this Dale of ours?
Sweet tokens they will ever prove
Of our dear Father’s precious love.”
In 1854, Ballou was dreaming of a confederacy to affiliate the many communities then in existence and had drafted a constitution for the “Practical Christian Republic.” By 1856, Hopedale had passed into the hands of the Drapers.
There is no doubt that the failure was the direct result of amateur Christian financing, but other causes were also at work. Ballou did not call upon the law in his dealings with other men and, although he was warned that his principles of non-resistance would make him the victim of every rowdy and thief in Massachusetts, he never lost more than a few chickens and a sack of potatoes. But, from the time Draper turned his energy to private affairs, the countless irritations and the conflicting personal interests which he had to adjust overcame Ballou. The sweetness of Christianity was corrupted by lust and the light of Communism was dimmed by greed. In the early days, when a northeaster would imprison the colonists in the large hall, Brother Gifford would examine heads in accordance with the principles of phrenology, and try to put a member to sleep by animal magnetism. The Community would agree that children should not take lights to their room unless attended by one of their elders. Ballou would discuss the great spiritual revelations of Andrew Jackson Davis in which he firmly believed. Or the communists would drive out to hear the Hutchinsons, “the tribe of Jesse,” sing “We Pitch Our Tents on the Old Camp Ground.” But “as the tinsel of novelty wore off and the hard actualities of our uncomfortable domestic situation began to overtax our nerves, we lost a portion of our spiritual enthusiasm, firmness, and patience. Our religious natures no less than our physical suffered for want of needed solitude and repose, as they did for lack of wholesome nurture and stimulus to holy aspiration and endeavor. Social, secular, and financial matters engrossed so much of our attention and energy that our higher faculties were partially starved. . . . As a consequence, every temptation that assailed us was less resistible than would otherwise have been the case.”
Most grievous of all was the damnation of the flesh. With an eye on Oneida and other experimenters in sexual relations, Hopedale “resolved that with our views of Christian Chastity, we contemplate as utterly abhorrent the various ‘Free Love’ theories and practices insidiously propagated among susceptible minds under pretext of higher religious perfection, moral exaltation, social refinement, individual sovereignty, physiological research, and philosophical progress; and we feel bound to bear our uncompromising testimony against all persons, communities, books, and publications which inculcate such specious and subtle licentiousness.”
The unhappy story of what actually happened is best told in Ballou’s flat, but earnest style:
“But notwithstanding our vigilance, and in utter contravention of our solemn declaration concerning chastity and of our well-known adherence to the principle of monogamic marriage, there arose in our midst during the year 1853, a case of marital infidelity and illicit intercourse that caused great unpleasantness, perplexity, and scandal, and that required, at length, Community intervention.
“The story is simply this: One of our male members, the head of a family, became enamored of a woman, also a member, who had for some time resided in his household, and proportionally estranged from his faithful and worthy wife. Suspicions of something wrong arose among outsiders, causing considerable talk of a scurrilous nature, though nothing was absolutely known or could be proved to that effect. At length the unhappiness of the wife was revealed, and the cause of it, upon investigation, made public. The matter then very properly received attention from the Council, who summoned the delinquents before them for examination and discipline. Upon being questioned and confronted with proof of misconduct, they acknowledged culpability, professed regret, and penitence, and promised amendment. But these professions proved insincere, or at least, transient, and the parties were again called to account. They then did not deny or attempt to conceal their criminality, but rather justified it on the ground that it was consonant with the principles of the new philosophy touching personal liberty, sexual relations, and the conjugal bond, which they had embraced—in a word, they openly and unhesitatingly avowed themselves to be Free Lovers, from conviction and in practice also. Having taken that position they could not do otherwise than withdraw from the Community membership and leave the locality where both their theory and their action were held in almost universal derision and abhorrence.”
The delinquents, it may be noted, joined “a settlement of Kindred Individual Sovereigns” in the free-love Community on Long Island called Modern Times. A little righteous indignation Ballou could summon up; there were bound to be unregenerate ones in every Community. But worse was to befall him. A “ministering brother” named Lamson, from whom nothing but the best had been expected, turned all-too-human and well-nigh broke Ballou’s heart. Brother Lamson’s proposals were reasonable enough. In the fundamental law of Hopedale a common nursery for babies had been guaranteed, but it had not yet come into existence. Lamson only suggested that, in these circumstances, the Community ought to pay nursing mothers at least as much per hour as was paid to any other person doing useful work. The only excessive suggestion he made was that they be paid for sixteen hours a day which would give them exactly twice as much as any other member in the Community earned. “Some of us,” Ballou writes, “were hardly in a mood to accept such an interpretation of the principle of justice”; and they were all the less so inclined when they remembered that, by a coincidence, brother Lamson’s wife was at the moment nursing a child. The sacredness of motherhood obviously inspired Lamson for, after the nursing mothers were allowed the usual fifty cents a day, Lamson suggested that, whenever a minister from the Community drove out, it should be his obligation to take a mother with him. As Ballou was the most active of the ministers, this suggestion of “neglect of duty and violation of solemn pledges of fraternal interest” hurt him deeply and he protested that his cares and labors and anxieties were taxing his strength to the utmost limit.
Nor was brother Lamson alone in the sudden uprushing of human instincts. Some new buildings had been erected, much more comfortable than the old, and the Community naturally wished to know who was to occupy them. From the outside, the criticism had often come that the shiftless and the unworthy would claim every advantage if there was no system of merit and reward; and it was said then, as it is now, that generosity to the lazy and incompetent would only make them more exacting. Ballou had brushed aside these criticisms “as an imputation on the better impulses of human nature and upon the Christian spirit of brotherhood in the human soul.” He was therefore surprised and shocked to find that a considerable number of Hopedale communists declared that the principles and constitutional pledges of the group bound them to give the new houses, with all their advantages, to the poorest and least efficient, and that the talented and responsible members should be the last to enjoy prosperity. Certain familiar precepts were quoted, among them: “He that is chief among you let him be the servant of all”; “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
What distressed Ballou was not so much the outcropping of hostility as the significant circumstance that Lamson and the others who were so earnest in behalf of the undeserving, were precisely the people who would move into the new houses if their argument succeeded. And Ballou was “disappointed and made heartsick at the thought that the hostile critics of the Christian Community were justified.” In the end, a dozen disaffected Communists seceded. Lamson himself joined the Shakers, and sent back letters (which Ballou honorably published in his newspaper) praising the true Christianity of that denomination
and insinuating that Hopedale was neither practical nor Christian. It is, however, not without a grain of satisfaction that Ballou notes that Lamson eventually “withdrew from these eminent practical Christians” and, after returning to ordinary society, which he had condemned for its unchristian character, was heard of no more.
From the Practical Christian, which Ballou published for many years, we get a cross section of the character of Hopedale and interesting side lights on that wave of reform which characterized the period. The motto of the weekly was broad enough: “Absolute Truth, Essential Righteousness, Individual Responsibility, Social Reorganization, Human Progress, Ultimate Perfection.” And all subscriptions payable in advance “unless by indulgence of publisher.” The Saturday Courant, of Clinton, Massachusetts, had published an attack on Hopedale from which one can gather the opinion of communal establishments held by outsiders. The Hopedalers were accused of having “peculiar and perhaps eccentric tastes” and offended against the common opinion because they were not engaged in the business of accumulation of property. They were “a company of people tired of the distractions of fashion, ambition, and business,” and were now “comforting each other with a little model of an earthly paradise . . . dawdling away life in a religion of sentiment and esthetic culture.” Ballou’s retort gives an excellent account of the nature of Hopedale and its differences from other communities:
Now the Hopedale people have never been distinguished for peculiar or eccentric tastes. They have never been governed by tastes, nor by mere sentimentality. They never had an associate that would be considered literary or esthetic, in the elegant sense of those terms. They are a plain, practical people, and, so far as regards taste, education and manners, are very much like the middle class of New Englanders generally. Not one of them ever graduated from any University or College. Not one of them ever belonged to any coterie of fine-spun sentimentalists, or moved in any genteel sphere of life, or figured among the world’s fashionables. Whether this be to their credit or discredit, so it is. Wherein they differ from other people of their general grade in society, they do so in a plain way, from conscientious obedience to acknowledged divine principles; and in respect to these, it were better for them to be more unlike other people than they actually are. They are far enough from being ‘perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect.’
“It seems to be taken for granted by our Clinton friend that we are Communists, or a kind of Shakers. This is altogether a misapprehension. The Shakers are very exemplary and worthy people. We will not compare Hopedale with their orderly and admirable societies, because we are not like them in any important feature of our social organization. We do not reject marriage nor dissolve the natural family, nor receive any of their distinguishing theological, theocratical, or ecclesiastical fundamentals. Communists, properly so called, deny the natural right of man to individual property, or at least contend that in a true order of society all property must be public and common. There are several classes of them, differing widely from each other, yet all agreeing in this distinctive matter of common property. But the people of Hopedale belong to no class of Communists. They hold the right of individual property to be inherent, essential and inviolable. In all the four kinds of Communities proposed in their social system: viz., Parochial, Rural, Joint Stock, and Common Stock Communities, the absolute natural right of individual property is held sacred. . . . This is not Communism.”
The Practical Christian published news of all other American experiments in Communism, encouraging the Icarians and noting that a thousand people had abandoned the oligarchy of Brigham Young. It attacked the morals and theology of the Oneida Community. But it was violent only on one subject—tobacco. “A word from a spirited lady,” objected to tobacco juice being squirted on her dress when she took a journey in the cars. And “three young men formed a smoking club and they all died within two years.” Unprovoked by any specific news item we have an editorial exclamation:
“What! puff the cigar in the cars, these beautiful railroad cars! Smoke and chew, and chew and smoke, and spit this dirt all about? What avail laws, rules and regulations, unless enforced? Can’t help it!, indeed! Ladies and gentlemen are annoyed, painfully annoyed! Even that tobacco smoke at the head of the cars passes directly through the whole train, diffusing a stench intolerable.” And on another occasion a poem:
LITTLE ROBERT REED
“I’ll never use tobacco; no,
It is a filthy weed;
I’ll never put it in my mouth,
Said little Robert Reed.
“Why, there was idle Jesse Jones,
As dirty as a pig—
He smoked when only ten years old,
And thought it made him big.
“He spent his time and money, too,
And made his mother sad;
She feared a worthless man would come,
Of such a worthless lad.
“O, no! I’ll never smoke nor chew,
’Tis very wrong indeed:
It hurts the health, it makes bad breath,
Said little Robert Reed,”
The paper supported Catherine Beecher’s propaganda for simple food, and the movement for dress reform, and whatever else was liberal and Christianizing. Its tone was always earnest, but there was no energy behind it. Except for his acceptance of fake spiritualists and a somewhat too open hospitality to reform movements, there was nothing silly, and there was certainly nothing vicious, in the communism of Adin Ballou. He was not lacking in moral courage, for when one of his great objectives—the abolition of slavery— became entangled with one of his great abhorrences—the war system—he sacrificed most of his friends and his authority by holding out against the war. His communism, nevertheless, was that of a weak saint. His disappointment was that of a man who did not know and did not learn much about human nature. Toward the end of his life, he began a correspondence with Count Leo Tolstoi, who called him the greatest of American writers but, in Tolstoi, too, he was somewhat disappointed. He ended his life writing genealogies of his family and autobiographical works, with a great deal of indulgence for his enemies, without more than a slight trace of the sanctimonious, and totally lacking in power.
† Extreme publicity concerning Harrison during his campaign shocked delicate souls and his enemies compared him to Bolivar “corrupted and ruined by ambition.” † On canal boats, bed-linen was promiscuous. Pittsburgh was becoming an oil center. † The rocking chair was in. † A bath at the Saratoga hotel cost half a dollar and dinner in Boston was at three o’clock with a few glasses of wine and conversation until six. Snobs dined at six. † Children in public schools sang, “I love my native land the best” and, in South Boston, formed “an association for the suppression of profanity.” The fare from Boston to New York, six hours by rail and over night by steamer, was seven dollars. † “To swartwout” meant to abscond with public money, after the name of the Collector of Customs at New York. † Joseph Buonaparte was toasted in Philadelphia as “once a king, still a sovereign and always a philosopher.”
† The centenary of the fire companies at Philadelphia was celebrated in 1839 by a parade of engines one mile long. † Eight thousand persons in the same city visited Mr. Dunn’s Chinese Museum in a week. † Sully’s portrait of Queen Victoria became notorious because the painter insisted on exhibiting it and charging admission after he had been paid a thousand dollars for the picture. † Rembrandt Peale had painted an equestrian portrait of General Washington; Mr. Trumbull was also making historical paintings. † At Laurel Hill Cemetery there was placed a group of Sir Walter Scott, Old Mortality and his pony. † A mob burned down a public hall in Philadelphia because it was used for abolition meetings and the fire companies made no effort to save the building. † Big Gothic type was used in advertisements and, in the Public Ledger, Madame Dusar announced that “she will be happy to solve all questions relating to dreams, marriages, journeys, losses, gains, and all other lawful business, sickness, death, etc., etc.” Mrs. Louisa
Kraft of Chrystie Street and Mrs. Theresa George Medier of Orchard Street, New York, were visited by plain clothes men who had their fortunes told for fifty cents. † “Baltimore was called the monumental city because it possessed two public monuments” and, in Washington, the Capitol was “painted white to resemble marble.” † America Vespucci came here to solicit from Congress a grant of land in return for the name which her ancestor gave to this country. The Senate rejected her plea. † Mr. Charles Matthews published a book entitled How Do You Like Our Country? and Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania established state lotteries and forbade the sale of lottery tickets from other states.
XIV. A Saint.
WHEN the time came for Major Anderson to raise the Stars and Stripes again over Fort Sumter, in April, 1865, one of those who, with him, were guests of the Secretary of War on board the Arago was William Lloyd Garrison. The symbolism of the event was perfect, for the man who first met the onset of secession, and the man who above all others had preached Abolition, were united in the ceremony which marked the triumph of freedom and of Union. As they were escorted through the principal streets of Charleston, negroes extemporized a triumph, singing “John Brown’s Body lies amould’ring in his grave.” No doubt the military man and the editor of The Liberator congratulated each other and, in the general sense of a happy outcome, the difference in status between them was not emphasized. It was, however, significant. For Anderson represented the North, the victorious armies, the faithful defenders of the Union; for him, it was an act of pious restitution to run up the flag his own hand had hauled down four years earlier. Garrison represented the lunatic fringe, the despicable “infidels” and “anarchists” of five years before, the enemies of society. To him, a grateful country, which had cursed his talent and virtually set a price on his head, was now making atonement, promising him, by that gesture, a deserved immortality among American fighters for liberty.
The Stammering Century Page 30