Early Letters of George William Curtis | Page 5

are much
more than personal.
"It is an error to suppose that many of the more famous
'Transcendentalists' were of the Brook Farm company. Mr. Emerson,
for instance, was never there except as a visitor. Margaret Fuller was
often a visitor, and passed many days together as a guest, but she was
never, except in sympathy, one of the Brook Farmers. Theodore Parker
was a neighbor, and had friendly relations with many of the fraternity,
but he seldom came to the farm. Meanwhile the enterprise was
considered an unspeakable folly, or worse, by the conservative circle of
Boston. In Boston, where a very large part of the 'leaders' of society in
every way were Unitarians, Unitarian conservatism was peremptory
and austere. The entire circle of which Mr. Ticknor was the centre or
representative, the world of Everett and Prescott and their friends,
regarded Transcendentalism and Brook Farm, its fruit, with
good-humored wonder as with Prescott, or with severe reprobation as
with Mr. Ticknor. The general feeling in regard to Mr. Emerson, who
was accounted the head of the school, is well expressed by John Quincy

Adams in 1840. The old gentleman, whose glory is that he was a moral
and political gladiator and controversialist, deplores the doom of the
Christian Church to be always racked with differences and debates, and
after speaking of 'other wanderings of mind' that 'let the wolf into the
fold,' proceeds to say: 'A young man named Ralph Waldo Emerson, a
son of my once-loved friend William Emerson, and a classmate of my
lamented son George, after failing in the every-day avocations of a
Unitarian preacher and school-master, starts a new doctrine of
Transcendentalism, declares all the old revelations superannuated and
worn out, and announces the approach of new revelations.' Mr. Adams
was just on the eve of his antislavery career, but he continues: 'Garrison
and the non-resistant Abolitionists, Brownson and the Marat Democrats,
phrenology and animal magnetism, all come in, furnished each with
some plausible rascality as an ingredient for the bubbling caldron of
religion and politics.' C.P. Cranch, the poet and painter, was a relative
of Mr. Adams, and then a clergyman; and the astonished ex-President
says: 'Pearse Cranch, ex ephebis, preached here last week, and gave out
quite a stream of Transcendentalism most unexpectedly.'
"This was the general view of Transcendentalism and its teachers and
disciples held by the social, political, and religious establishment. The
separation and specialty of the 'movement' soon passed. The leaders
and followers were absorbed in the great world of America; but that
world has been deeply affected and moulded by this seemingly slight
and transitory impulse. How much of the wise and universal
liberalizing of all views and methods is due to it! How much of the
moral training that revealed itself in the war was part of its influence!
The transcendental or spiritual philosophy has been strenuously
questioned and assailed. But the life and character it fostered are its
sufficient vindication."
The school at Brook Farm brought together there a large number of
bright young people, and they formed one of the chief characteristics of
the place. The result was that the life was one of much amusement and
healthy pleasure, as George P. Bradford has said:
"We were floated away by the tide of young life around us. There was
always a large number of young people in our company, as scholars,
boarders, etc., and this led to a considerable mingling of amusement in
our life; and, moreover, some of our company had a special taste and

skill in arranging and directing this element. So we had very varied
amusements suited to the different seasons--tableaux, charades, dancing,
masquerades, and rural fetes out-of-doors, and in winter, skating,
coasting, etc."
In her "Years of Experience," Mrs. Georgiana Bruce Kirby, who was at
Brook Farm for very nearly the same period as Curtis, has not only
given an interesting account of the social life there, but she has
especially described the entertainments mentioned by Mr. Bradford.
Two of these occasions, when Curtis was a leading participant, she
mentions with something of detail.
"At long intervals in what most would call our drudgery," she says,
"there came a day devoted to amusement. Once we had a masquerade
picnic in the woods, where we were thrown into convulsions of
laughter at the sight of George W. Curtis dressed as Fanny Ellsler, in a
low-necked, short-sleeved, book-muslin dress and a tiny ruffled apron,
making courtesies and pirouetting down the path. It was much out of
character that I, a St. Francis squaw, in striped shirt, gold beads, and
moccasins, should be guilty of such wild hilarity. Ora's movements
were free and graceful in white Turkish trousers, a rich Oriental
head-dress, and Charles Dana's best tunic, which reached just below her
knee. She was the