Part 2

"I did not at first recognize the operatic air, so admirably modified and retarded it was, and its former rapid words replaced by a sad and touching theme, which called for noble endurance in one borne down by suffering. The accompaniment consisted of simple chords and arpeggios, a very plain and sufficient background. Curtis, though not yet twenty--not nineteen, if I remember rightly--had a grave and mature appearance. He was full of poetic sensibility, and his pure, rich voice had that sympathetic quality that penetrates to the heart.... Curtis was not ever guilty of singing a comic song. It would indeed have been most inappropriate to our intensely earnest mood. Often his brother would join him in a duet with his agreeable tenor.

"Low praises and half-spoken thanks were murmured as the grave and gracious young friend, at the expiration of an hour, swung round on the piano-stool and attempted to make his exit."

In his "Cheerful Yesterdays," Colonel T.W. Higginson has described the same life as an onlooker. Although not a member of the community at Brook Farm, he was somewhat in sympathy with it--at least, with the people of whom it was composed. At the time he was living in Brookline and teaching the children of a cousin. "Into this summer life," he writes, "there occasionally came delegations of youths from Brook Farm. Among these were George and Burrill Curtis, and Larned, with Charles Dana--all presentable and agreeable, but the first three peculiarly costumed. It was then very common for young men in college and elsewhere to wear what were called blouses--a kind of hunter's frock, made at first of brown holland, belted at the waist, these being gradually developed into garments of gay-colored chintz, sometimes, it was said, an economical transformation of their sisters' skirts or petticoats. All the young men of this party but Dana wore these gay garments, and bore on their heads little round and visorless caps with tassels."

"I was but twice at Brook Farm," Higginson continues, "once driving over there to a fancy ball at 'the Community,' as it was usually called, where my cousin Barbara Channing was to appear in a pretty Creole dress made of madras handkerchiefs. She was enthusiastic about Brook Farm, where she went often, being a friend of Mrs. Ripley.... Again, I once went for her in summer and stayed for an hour, watching the various interesting figures, including George William Curtis, who was walking about in shirtsleeves, with his boots over his trousers, yet was escorting a young maiden with that elegant grace which never left him. It was a curious fact that he, who was afterwards so eminent, was then held wholly secondary in interest to his handsome brother Burrill, whose Raphaelesque face won all hearts, and who afterwards disappeared from view in England. But if I did not see much of Brook Farm on the spot, I met its members frequently at the series of exciting meetings for Social Reform in Boston."

Other reminiscences of Brook-Farmers tell of the Curtis brothers and their active part in the amusements of the place. They were leaders among the young people, and they had those gifts of social guidance which placed them at the head of whatever entertainment was being organized. Their grace of manner and beauty of face and figure also won consideration for them, so that they were accepted into every circle and found friends on every hand. It seems that Burrill was at this time regarded as the handsomer, but in time George gained the chief place in this regard. Their courtesy led them to help those whose labors were hard, to aid the women in the laundry at their tasks, and to assist them in hanging out the clothes on washing-days. In the evening the clothes-pins which had been thrust into a pocket found their way to the floor of the dancing-room.

One of the members of the community has written that the brothers "looked like young Greek gods. Burrill, the elder, with a typical Greek face and long hair falling to his shoulders in irregular curls," she says, "I remember as most unconscious of himself, interested in all about him, talking of the Greek philosophers as if he had just come from one of Socrates' walks, carrying the high philosophy into his daily life, helping the young people with hard arithmetic lessons, trimming the lamps daily at the Eyrie, where the two brothers came to live (my sister saw George assisting him one day, and occasionally, she says, he turned his face with a disgusted expression, trying to puff away the disagreeable odor), never losing control of himself, with the kindest manner to every person. He and George seemed very companionable and fond of each other.

"George, though only eighteen, seemed much older, like a man of twenty-five, possibly, with a peculiar elegance, if I may so express it; great and admirable attention, as I recollect, when listening to any one; courteous recognition of others' convictions and even prejudices; and never a personal animosity of any kind--a certain remoteness of manner, however, that I think prevented persons from becoming acquainted with him as easily as with Burrill."

In his "Memories of Brook Farm," Dr. John T. Codman mentions the occasional returns of Curtis to the Farm after he had left it, and says he heard him singing the "Erl King," "Kathleen Mavourneen," and "Good-night to Julia" "in his inimitable manner." Everything goes to indicate that he was a favorite, not only with the younger persons, but with those who were older. He had already developed a mature thoughtfulness, and gave indications of his power as a writer and speaker. His fondness for music, and his enthusiastic study of it under Dwight's leadership is an indication of that aesthetic appreciation which he kept through life, and which appeared in his mastership of prose style.

At first each one helped himself to the food placed on the table in the dining-room at the Hive, or those at the table helped each other. In this way more or less confusion was produced, and the results were unsatisfactory. Accordingly, Charles Dana organized a group, including Curtis and other young men of character and good breeding, to act as waiters. Dana took his place at the head of this group of voluntary servants, who performed their duties with grace and alacrity. "It is hardly necessary to observe," says Mrs. Kirby, "that the business was henceforth attended to with such courtly grace and such promptness that the new _regime_ was applauded by every one, although it did appear at first as if we were all engaged in acting a play. The group, with their admired chief, took dinner, which had been kept warm for them, afterwards, and were themselves waited upon with the utmost consideration."

II

While at Brook Farm, Curtis was on intimate terms with most of the persons there. He greatly admired Mr. and Mrs. Ripley, and he frequently wrote to Mrs. Ripley and made of her a sort of mother-confessor. He also highly appreciated the scholarly qualities of Charles Dana, and his capacity as a leader. In his letters he frequently mentions "the two Charleses," who were Charles Dana and Charles Newcomb. The latter has been described by Dr. Codman as "the mysterious and profound, with his long, dark, straight locks of hair, one of which was continually being brushed away from his forehead as it continually fell; with his gold-bowed eye-glass, his large nose and peculiar blue eyes, his spasmodic expressions of nervous horror, and his cachinnatious laugh." Newcomb was for many years a resident of Providence, afterwards finding a home in England and in Paris. He was early a member of Brook Farm--a solitary, self-involved person, preferring to associate with children rather than with older persons. He read much in the literature of the mystics, and was laughingly said to prefer paganism to Christianity. He had a feminine temperament, was full of sensibility, and of an indolent turn of mind. Emerson was attracted to him, and at one time had great expectations concerning his genius. His paper, published in _The Dial_, under the title of "The Two Dolons," was much admired by some of the Transcendentalists when it was printed there; and it is referred to by Hawthorne in his "Hall of Phantasy." In June, 1842, Emerson wrote to Margaret Fuller: "I wish you to know that I have 'Dolon' in black and white, and that I account Charles N. a true genius; his writing fills me with joy, so simple, so subtle, and so strong is it. There are sentences in 'Dolon' worth the printing of _The Dial_ that they may go forth." This paper was given him for publication at Emerson's urgent request, and it is not known that Newcomb has published anything else. In 1850 Emerson said he had come to doubt Newcomb's genius, having found that he did not care for an audience.

Another person of whom Curtis speaks is Isaac Hecker, who became a member of the Catholic Church, under the guidance of Orestes Brownson. He was born in New York City, was brought up under Methodist auspices, became a baker, developed a strong taste for philosophy, and went to Brook Farm at the age of twenty-two. He remained for a few months as a student, and then tried Alcott's Fruitlands for a fortnight. He was naturally of an ascetic turn of mind, loved mystic books and philosophy, and found in the Catholic Church his true religious home. He secured at Brook Farm a kind of culture which he much needed, and his abilities were seen by those around him. After his return to New York, Ripley, and Charles Lane, of Fruitlands, wrote him in a way which indicated their faith in him as a man of judgment and liberal aims. He spent some months in Concord, had George P. Bradford for his tutor, and he rented a room of Mrs. Thoreau, the mother of Henry D. Thoreau. There again he met the Curtis brothers; but soon after he went to Holland to prepare for the priesthood, and then entered upon his life-work. A curious phase in the life of this time was the effort of Hecker to convert Curtis to his own way of religious thinking, as Curtis relates in his letters. Even more singular was the attempt of Hecker to persuade Thoreau into the Catholic Church. Mr. Sanborn has read a letter in which he proposed to Thoreau to travel on foot with him in Europe. His real purpose seems to have been to get Thoreau away from Protestants, and among the influences of the Catholic churches and traditions, and thus to make a convert of him. In a letter printed in Father Elliott's biography of Father Hecker, Curtis gave an account of his acquaintance with the founder of the order of the Paulist Fathers.

"WEST NEW BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, _February 28, 1890._

Dear Sir,--I fear that my recollections of Father Hecker will be of little service to you, for they are very scant. But the impression of the young man whom I knew at Brook Farm is still vivid. It must have been in the year 1843 that he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston. He was a youth of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in _The Dial_.

Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him in New York. He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember with what satisfaction he said to me, 'I am sure of my livelihood, because I can make good bread.' His powers in this way were most satisfactorily tested at the Farm, or, as it was generally called, 'the Community,' although it was in no other sense a community than an association of friendly workers in common. He was drawn to Brook Farm by the belief that its life would be at least agreeable to his convictions and tastes, and offer him the society of those who might answer some of his questions, even if they could not satisfy his longings.

By what influence his mind was first affected by the moral movement known in New England as Transcendentalism, I do not know. Probably he may have heard Mr. Emerson lecture in New York, or he may have read Brownson's 'Charles Elwood,' which dealt with the questions that engaged his mind and conscience. But among the many interesting figures at Brook Farm I recall none more sincerely absorbed than Isaac Hecker in serious questions. The merely aesthetic aspects of its life, its gayety and social pleasures, he regarded good-naturedly, with the air of a spectator who tolerated rather than needed or enjoyed them. There was nothing ascetic or severe in him, but I have often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have afterwards described as a consciousness that he must be about his Father's business.

I do not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had classes in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find answers to his questions. He went to hear Theodore Parker preach in the Unitarian Church in the neighboring village of West Roxbury. He went to Boston, about ten miles distant, to talk with Brownson, and to Concord to see Emerson. He entered into the working life at the Farm, but always, as it seemed to me, with the same reserve and attitude of observation. He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest.

The impression that I gathered from my intercourse with him, which was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing towards the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected Hecker's views, although he did not then enter the Catholic Church.

He was a general favorite at Brook Farm, always equable and playful, wholly simple and frank in manner. He talked readily and easily, but not controversially. His smile was singularly attractive and sympathetic, and the earnestness of which I have spoken gave him an unconscious personal dignity. His temperament was sanguine. The whole air of the youth was that of goodness. I do not think that the impression made by him forecast his career, or, in any degree, the leadership which he afterwards held in his Church. But everybody who knew him at that time must recall his charming amiability.

I think that he did not remain at Brook Farm for a whole year, and when later he went to Belgium to study theology at the seminary of Mons he wrote me many letters, which, I am sorry to say, have disappeared. I remember that he labored with friendly zeal to draw me to his Church, and at his request I read some writing of St. Alphonse of Liguori. Gradually our correspondence declined when I was in Europe, and was never resumed; nor do I remember seeing him again more than once, many years ago. There was still in the clerical figure, which was very strange to me, the old sweetness of smile and address; there was some talk of the idyllic days, some warm words of hearty good-will, but our interests were very different, and, parting, we went our separate ways. For a generation we lived in the same city, yet we never met. But I do not lose the bright recollection of Ernest the Seeker, nor forget the frank, ardent, generous, manly youth, Isaac Hecker.

Very truly yours,

George William Curtis."

One of the teachers at Brook Farm was George P. Bradford, who left there at about the same time Curtis did, and was then a tutor in Concord. When the account of philosophy in Boston was left uncompleted by Ripley, Bradford finished it for the "Memorial History of Boston." While living in the Old Manse in Concord, Hawthorne wrote to Margaret Fuller: "I have thought of receiving a personal friend, and a man of delicacy, into my household, and have taken a step towards that object. But in doing so I was influenced far less by what Mr. Bradford is than by what he is not; or, rather, his negative qualities seem to take away his personality, and leave his excellent characteristics to be fully and fearlessly enjoyed. I doubt whether he be not precisely the rarest man in the world." Mrs. Hawthorne wrote of Bradford, that "his beautiful character makes him perennial in interest." After the death of Bradford, Curtis wrote of him in one of the most appreciative of the biographical papers which the "Easy Chair" gave to the public:

"Whoever had the happiness of knowing the late George P. Bradford, upon reading that he was the son of a stout sea-captain of Duxbury, must have recalled Charles Lamb's description of one of his comrades at the old South Sea House--'like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter.' A more gentle, truthful, generous, constant, high-minded, accomplished man, or, as Emerson, his friend of many years, said of Charles Sumner, 'a whiter soul,' could not be known. However wide and various and delightful your acquaintance may have been, if you knew George Bradford, you knew a man unlike all others. His individuality was entirely unobtrusive, but it was absolute.

"The candor of his nature refused the least deceit, and rejected every degree of indirectness without consciousness or effort. His admirable mind, the natural loftiness of his aim, his instinctive sympathy with every noble impulse and humane endeavor, his fine intellectual cultivation, all made him the friend of the best men and women of his time and neighborhood, and none among them but acknowledged the singular charm of a companion who asserted his convictions by his character, and with whom controversy was impossible. Mr. Bradford had the temperament, the tastes, and the acquirements of a scholar; a fondness for nature, and a knowledge which made him her interpreter; yet still more obvious were the social sympathy and tenderness of feeling that brought him into intimate personal relations which time could not touch.

"Something in his appearance and manner, a half-shrinking and smiling diffidence, an unworn and childlike ardor and unconsciousness, a freshness of feeling and frankness of address, invested his personality with what we call quaintness. He was always active, even to apparent restlessness, not from nervous excitement, but from fulness of life and sympathy. You might think of a humming-bird darting from flower to flower, of a honey-bee happy in a garden. He graduated at Harvard, meaning to be a clergyman, but the publicity, the magisterial posture, the incessant constraint of the liberty which he valued more than all else, with the lack of oratorical gifts and of the self-asserting disposition, soon closed that career to him; afterwards he was one of the most cheerful and charming figures at Brook Farm in its pleasantest day. All his life he was a teacher, mainly of private classes, and generally of women, now in Plymouth, now in Cambridge, now elsewhere, but, wherever he was, always beloved and welcomed, and bewailed when he departed.

"Mr. Bradford was unmarried, and there was a sentiment of solitude in his life, but it was scarcely more, so affectionate and devoted were his relations to his kindred and his friends. His elder sister, Mrs. Samuel B. Ripley, was one of the most admirably accomplished women in New England, living for some years in the Old Manse in Concord in which Hawthorne had lived. Mr. Ripley was the son of the clergyman who married the widow of his fellow-clergyman who saw from the Manse the battle at Concord Bridge. Mr. Bradford was very fond of the old town, and Mr. Emerson had no friend who was a more welcome or frequent guest than George Bradford, who came to look after the vegetable garden and to trim the trees, and in long walks to Walden Pond or Fairhaven Hill to discuss with his host philosophy and poetry and life. The small gains of a teacher were enough for the simple wants of the scholarly gentleman, and after middle life he went often to Europe, and few Americans have ever gone more admirably equipped. He travelled sometimes with a tried comrade, sometimes alone, and a life already full was enriched and enchanted still more by the happy journeys.

"Indeed, the recollection of George Bradford is that of a long life as serene and happy as it was blameless and delightful to others. It was a life of affection and many interests and friendly devotion; but it was not that of a recluse scholar like Edward Fitzgerald, with the pensive consciousness of something desired but undone. George Bradford was in full sympathy with the best spirit of his time. He had all the distinctive American interest in public affairs. His conscience was as sensitive to public wrongs and perilous tendencies as to private and personal conduct. He voted with strong convictions, and wondered sometimes that the course so plain to him was not equally plain to others.

"It was a life of nothing of what we call achievement, and yet a life beneficent to every other life that it touched, like a summer wind laden with a thousand invisible seeds that, dropping everywhere, spring up into flowers and fruit. It is a name which to most readers of these words is wholly unknown, and which will not be written, like that of so many of the friends of him who bore it, in our literature and upon the memory of his countrymen. But to those who knew him well, and who therefore loved him, it recalls the most essential human worth and purest charm of character, the truest manhood, the most affectionate fidelity. To those who hear of him now, and perhaps never again, these words may suggest that the personal influences which most ennoble and sweeten life may escape fame, but live immortal in the best part of other lives."