Читать книгу Life of Father Hecker - Walter Elliott - Страница 24

It must be admitted that there is something delightful in the naïveté of this undertaking to be "sufficiently elevated to live independently of foreign aids," after first getting "the free use of a spot of land, … including, of course, a convenient plain house, and offices, wood-lot, garden, and orchard." Establishments which would tolerably approximate to this description, and to the really essential needs of its prospective founder, have long existed in every civilized community. There are certain restrictions placed upon their inmates, however, and Mr. Alcott's desire was to make sure of his basis of earthly supplies, while left entirely free to persuade himself that he had arrived at an elevation which made him independent of them. Still, though "a charlatan," it must not be forgotten that he was "an innocent" one. He was plainly born great in that way, and had no need to achieve greatness in it. As Father Hecker said of him long afterwards, "Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott's ideal if he had carried it out. But he never carried it out." Diogenes himself, it may be supposed, had his ideal included a family and an audience as well as a tub, might finally have come to hold that the finding of the latter was a mere detail, which could be entrusted indifferently to either of the two former or to both combined. Somebody once described Fruitlands as a place where Mr. Alcott looked benign and talked philosophy, while Mrs. Alcott and the children did the work. Still, to look benign is a good deal for a man to do persistently in an adverse world, indifferent for the most part to the charms of "divine philosophy," and Mr. Alcott persevered in that exercise until his latest day. "He was unquestionably one of those who like to sit upon a platform," wrote, at the time of his death, one who knew Alcott well, "and he may have liked to feel that his venerable aspect had the effect of a benediction." But with this mild criticism, censure of him is well-nigh exhausted. There was nothing of the Patriarch of Bleeding Heart Yard about him except that "venerable aspect," for which nature was responsible, and not he.

Fruitlands was the caricature of Brook Farm. Just as the fanatic is the caricature of the true reformer, so was Alcott the caricature of Ripley. This is not meant as disparaging either Alcott's sincerity or his intelligence, but to affirm that he lacked judgment, that he miscalculated means and ends, that he jumped from theory to practice without a moment's interval, preferred to be guided by instinct rather than by processes of reasoning, and deemed this to be the philosopher's way.

In the memoranda of private conversations with Father Hecker we find several references to Mr. Alcott. The first bears date February 4, 1882, and occurs in a conversation ranging over the whole of his experience between his first and second departures from home. We give it as it stands:

"Fruitlands was very different from Brook Farm—far more ascetic."

"You didn't like it?"

"Yes; but they did not begin to satisfy me. I said to them:

'If you had the Eternal here, all right. I would be with you.'"

"Had they no notion of the hereafter?"

"No; nothing definite. Their idea was human perfection. They set out to demonstrate what man can do in the way of the supremacy of the spiritual over the animal. 'All right,' I said, 'I agree with you fully. I admire your asceticism; it is nothing new to me; I have practised it a long time myself. If you can get the Everlasting out of my mind, I'm yours. But I know' (here Father Hecker thumped the table at his bedside) 'that I am going to live for ever.'"

"What did Alcott say when you left?"

"He went to Lane and said, 'Well, Hecker has flunked out. He hadn't the courage to persevere. He's a coward.' But Lane said, 'No; you're mistaken. Hecker's right. He wanted more than we had to give him.'"

Mr. Alcott's death in 1888 was the occasion of the reminiscences which follow:

"March 5, 1888.—Bronson Alcott dead! I saw him coming from Rochester on the cars. I had been a Catholic missionary for I don't know how many years. We sat together. 'Father Hecker,' said he, 'why can't you make a Catholic of me?' 'Too much rust here,' said I, clapping him on the knee. He got very angry because I said that was the obstacle. I never saw him angry at any other time. He was too proud.

"But he was a great natural man. He was faithful to pure, natural conscience. His virtues came from that. He never had any virtue beyond what a good pagan has. He never aimed at anything more, nor claimed to. He maintained that to be all.

"I don't believe he ever prayed. Whom could he pray to? Was not

Bronson Alcott the greatest of all?"

"Did he believe in God?"

"Not the God that we know. He believed in the Bronson Alcott God. He was his own God."

"You say he was Emerson's master: what do you mean by that?"

"He taught Emerson. He began life as a pedler. The Yankee pedler was

Emerson's master. Whatever principles Emerson had, Alcott gave him.

And Emerson was a good pupil; he was faithful to his master to the

end.

"When did I know him first? Hard to remember. He was the head of Fruitlands, as Ripley was of Brook Farm. They were entirely different men. Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott's ideal if he had carried it out. But he never carried it out. Ripley's ideal would have been Epictetus. Ripley would have taken with him the good things of this life; Alcott would have rejected them all."

"How did he receive you at Fruitlands?"

"Very kindly, but from mixed and selfish motives. I suspected he wanted me because he thought I would bring money to the community. Lane was entirely unselfish.

"Alcott was a man of no great intellectual gifts or acquirements. His knowledge came chiefly from experience and instinct. He had an insinuating and persuasive way with him—he must have been an ideal pedler."

"What if he had been a Catholic, and thoroughly sanctified?"

"He could have been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the cranks look up to them."

Beside these later reminiscences we shall now place the contemporary record of his impressions made by Isaac Hecker while at Fruitlands. Our first extract, however, was written at Brook Farm, a few days before going thither:

"July 7, 1843.—I go to Mr. Alcott's next Tuesday, if nothing happens. I have had three pairs of coarse pants and a coat made for me. It is my intention to commence work as soon as I get there. I will gradually simplify my dress without making any sudden difference, although it would be easier to make a radical and thorough change at once than piece by piece. But this will be a lesson in patient perseverance to me. All our difficulties should be looked at in such a light as to improve and elevate our minds.

"I can hardly prevent myself from saying how much I shall miss the company of those whom I love and associate with here. But I must go. I am called with a stronger voice. This is a different trial from any I have ever had. I have had that of leaving kindred, but now I have that of leaving those whom I love from affinity. If I wished to live a life the most gratifying to me, and in agreeable company, I certainly would remain here. Here are refining amusements, cultivated persons—and one whom I have not spoken of, one who is too much to me to speak of, one who would leave all for me. Alas! him I must leave to go."

In this final sentence, as it now stands in the diary and as we have transcribed it, occurs one of those efforts of which we have spoken, to obliterate the traces of this early attachment. "Him" was originally written "her," but the r has been lengthened to an m, and the e dotted, both with a care which overshot their mark by an almost imperceptible hair's-breadth. If the nature of this attachment were not so evident from other sources, we should have left such passages unquoted; fearing lest they might be misunderstood. As it is, the light they cast seems to us to throw up into fuller proportions the kind and extent of the renunciations to which Isaac Hecker was called before he had arrived at any clear view of the end to which they tended.

"Fruitlands, July 12.—Last evening I arrived here. After tea I went out in the fields and raked hay for an hour in company with the persons here. We returned and had a conversation on Clothing. Some very fine things were said by Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane. In most of their thoughts I coincide; they are the same which of late have much occupied my mind. Alcott said that to Emerson the world was a lecture-room, to Brownson a rostrum.

"This morning after breakfast a conversation was held on Friendship and its laws and conditions. Mr. Alcott placed Innocence first; Larned, Thoughtfulness; I, Seriousness; Lane, Fidelity.

"July 13.—This morning after breakfast there was held a conversation on The Highest Aim. Mr. Alcott said it was Integrity; I, Harmonic being; Lane, Progressive being; Larned, Annihilation of self; Bower, Repulsion of the evil in us. Then there was a confession of the obstacles which prevent us from attaining the highest aim. Mine was the doubt whether the light is light; not the want of will to follow, or the sight to see."

"July 17.—I cannot understand what it is that leads me, or what I am after. Being is incomprehensible.

"What shall I be led to? Is there a being whom I may marry and who would be the means of opening my eyes? Sometimes I think so—but it appears impossible. Why should others tell me that it is so, and will be so, in an unconscious way, as Larned did on Sunday last, and as others have before him? Will I be led home? It strikes me these people here, Alcott and Lane, will be a great deal to me. I do not know but they may be what I am looking for, or the answer to that in me which is asking.