Part 5 (2/2)
The church was Channing's first love, but he found it bound with creeds, and not broad enough to cover all humanity, as his great bounding heart did. After music and an inspiring address under the trees, and the arches of Nature's temple, looking heavenward, he said, ”Let us all join hands and make a circle, the symbol of universal unity, and of the _at-one-ment_ of all men and women, and here form the Church of Humanity that shall cover the men and women of every nation and every clime.”
Who shall say that it was not so?--that then and there was not formed one of the impulses of life, one of the branches of the spiritual church that shall live forever! Their daily toil, the thousand and one annoyances they had to submit to from uncomfortable surroundings and private discords--for no one need think that all the persons and those connected with them who came to Brook Farm were equally inspired and interested--and the risk of personal losses, were part of their pledge and baptism of earnestness.
Mr. Albert Brisbane, of New York, was equally tall with Mr. Channing, but of a type of features that was ordinarily less pleasing; wearing a full beard closely trimmed, intellectual in forehead and face, with a voice one could hardly call musical; a rapid, earnest talker; the travelled son of a wealthy man, who had spent some years abroad and in France, where he became acquainted personally with Fourier and with his doctrines of a.s.sociation, which had deeply impressed him. On his return to America he advocated them in the New York _Tribune_, and by the publication of two or more volumes, by active interest in a society, and by various writings for papers and magazines.
I do not know whether Mr. Brisbane owned stock in the Brook Farm a.s.sociation or not. Certainly he never gained any dividend by his labor there, but was an interested observer who boarded at the farm at intervals, sometimes pa.s.sing a few days only, and finally residing some months, occupied in the study and translation of Fourier's works.
He was an enthusiast, but his over enthusiastic moods influenced the Brook Farmers, it seemed to me, often-times unwisely. He saw the full-blown phalanstery coming like a comet and expected every moment.
We shortly would be in a blaze of glory! He loved to talk of the good things to be--of social problems worked out by science and by harmonic modes; to flatter himself that without great self-sacrifice, devotion and untiring industry, the world was to be regenerated. It seemed to his mind, that it could be done all at once by organization and enthusiasm, and it was only necessary to create enough of them to carry everything before them as in a bayonet charge.
He labored hard with the society to change its name to Phalanx, and to push the movement as far as possible into the formulas and organization described by Fourier, which did not advance it a single step in material or spiritual progress, and acted, as in the case of the const.i.tution, as a dead weight, owing to the burdensomeness of its details, which called for too much labor to keep the accounts of so complex an organization.
Having described a few of the many persons who were members of the a.s.sociation, I must speak of three noted persons who are very often accredited as belonging to the West Roxbury Community; they are Miss Margaret Fuller (afterwards Countess D'Ossoli), Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker. They were all personal friends of Mr. and Mrs. Ripley, and belonged to the Transcendental Club. In the first period of the experiment the two former made lengthy visits at the farm, but during the Industrial Period only one of them, Mr. Parker, that I remember visited the place. I must except a single visit from Miss Fuller, whom I recall as plain-looking, and plainly to old-fas.h.i.+onedly dressed, with a crane-like neck and a long gold chain around it, which reached to her waist. She talked quite easily and freely, and the impression of the blue-stocking was left perhaps unfortunately on my mind.
Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson--for he had been an ordained minister--wrote for the _Dial_, furnished it with queer poems, wrote articles on the wrongs of labor, and agreed fully with Mr. Ripley on so many points that he has been mistaken many times for a Brook Farmer.
Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, Mr. Emerson's home, contained a marked radical centre, and some of the Concord people were affiliated by kins.h.i.+p and by sympathy with the Brook Farm people from first to last during the entire experiment. Mr. Ripley invited Mr. Emerson to join it, but he declined in a letter which may be found in Mr. Frothingham's ”Life of George Ripley,” Appendix, page 315. I make the following extract:--
”My Dear Sir: It is quite time that I made an answer to your proposition that I should venture into your new community. The design appears to me n.o.ble and generous, proceeding as I plainly see, from nothing covert or selfish or ambitious, but from a manly heart and mind. So it makes all men its friends and debtors. It becomes a matter to entertain it in a friendly spirit, and examine what it has for us.
”I have decided not to join it, yet very slowly, and I may almost say with penitence. I am greatly relieved by learning that your coadjutors are now so many that you will no longer attach that importance to the defection of individuals which you hinted, in your letter to me, I or others might possess--the painful power, I mean, of preventing the execution of the plan.”
Rev. Theodore Parker, the noted liberal Unitarian preacher, of whose close personal relations with Mr. Ripley much might be said, lived two miles away, at West Roxbury, where he preached in the village church, and his afternoon walk every few days was over to the Farm and back for exercise, and to meet and converse with Mr. Ripley at the Eyry. At the close of their chat you would see them coming down the hill together towards the barn, where Mr. Ripley's duties as milkman took him at that time of day, when they would part--Mr. Parker for his long walk home.
One afternoon they were seen as usual coming down the hill. Theodore Parker had not then become famous, but preached in a little square, wooden church, to his small country congregation, and once on a time, being on a visit to a friend at a distance (we will call the friend's name Smith, for convenience sake), Mr. Smith asked Mr. Parker how Mr.
Ripley was getting along with his ”Community.” ”Oh,” said the faithless Parker, ”Mr. Ripley reminds me, in that connection, of a new and splendid locomotive dragging along a train of mud-cars.”
Soon after Mr. Ripley heard what Mr. Parker had said of him, and resolved to pay him in his own coin. So he held him that day in pleasant, lively conversation until he reached the farmyard by the barn at the Hive, and the unsprung joke was running all around the pleasant lines of his face and twinkling in the corners of his brilliant eyes.
Towards the close of the conversation, as Mr. Parker was about to leave, Mr. Ripley casually said that he had met Mr. Smith, and he had spoken of Mr. Parker and his church.
”Indeed,” said Mr. Parker, ”and what did he say of me?”
”Well, if you must know,” Mr. Ripley replied, ”he said that you and your little country church over there in West Roxbury, with its few dozen of farmers, reminded him of a new and splendid locomotive dragging along a train of mud-cars.”
It would have been worth a month of an ordinary lifetime to be there when Mr. Ripley exploded his joke, to hear his merry peal of laughter, whilst his sides shook again, and his reverend friend stood confounded.
But such little jokes did nothing towards rupturing the sincere confidence and friends.h.i.+p of these two brave men, and soon after this Mr. Parker was writing pleasant notes to the ”Archon,” as Mr. Ripley was often called. By good fortune, I am the possessor of one of them, and as it shows the playful side of a great man, the side often withheld from the public, I give it here. It is charming. It is without date and reads:--
”Archonite Ill.u.s.trissimo: I have just received a letter from the Secretary of the Navy, who informs me that he has jurisdiction over the _waters_ of the U. S. A., and accordingly over _Brook_ Farm. He therefore requests me to investigate your proceedings and report to the department. He thinks of appointing yourself to the command of the fleet destined against Texas, and wishes me to _Sound_ you on that point. (How would Little John do for California?)
”I am to come over tomorrow P. M. and make investigations, so have the chips picked up, and the pigs shut up in the library. Now hold yourself in readiness to receive _Blanco_ White, who thinks you were one of the greatest men who had appeared since Balaam the son of Beor. Pray reward him for the honor he has done you.
”Yours, T.”
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