Life of Father Hecker Part 4

TO MRS. HECKER.--"Brook Farm, May 16, 1843.--DEAR MOTHER: You will not take it unkind, my not writing to you before? I am sure you will not, for you know what I am. Daily I feel more and more indebted to you for my life, especially when I feel happy and good. How can I repay you? As you, no doubt, would wish me to-by becoming better and living as you have desired and prayed that I should, which I trust, by Divine a.s.sistance, I may.

"Mother, I cannot express the depth of grat.i.tude I feel toward you for the tender care and loving discipline with which you brought me up to manhood. Without it, oh! what might I not have been? The good that I have, under G.o.d, I am conscious that I am greatly indebted to thee for; at times I feel that it is thou acting in me, and that there is nothing that can ever separate us. A bond which is as eternal as our immortality, our life, binds us together and cannot be broken.

"Mother, that I should be away from home at present no doubt makes you sorrowful often, and you wish me back. Let me tell you how it is with me. The life which surrounds me in New York oppresses me, contracts my feelings, and abridges my liberty. Business, as it is now pursued, is a burden upon my spiritual life, and all its influence hurtful to the growth of a better life. This I have felt for a long time, and feel it now more intensely than before. And the society I had there was not such as benefited me. My life was not increased by theirs, and I was gradually ceasing to be. I was lonely, friendless, and without object in this world, while at the same time I was conscious of a greater degree of activity of mind in another direction. These causes still remain. . . .

". . . I feel fully conscious of the importance of making any change in my life at my present age--giving up those advantages which so many desire; as well as the necessity of being considerate, prudent, and slow to decide. I am aware that my future state here, and hence hereafter, will greatly depend upon the steps I now take, and therefore I would do nothing unadvised or hastily. I would not sacrifice eternal for worldly life. At present I wish to live a true life, desiring nothing external, seeing that things external cannot procure those things for and in which I live. I do not renounce things, but feel no inclination for them. All is indifferent to me--poverty or riches, life or death. I am loosed. But do not on this account think I am sorrowful; nay, for I have nothing to sorrow for.

Is there no bright hope at a distance which cheers me onward and beckons me to speed? I dare not say. Sometimes I feel so--it is the unutterable. Yet I remain contented to be without spring or autumn, youth or age. One tie has been loosened after another; the dreams of my youth have pa.s.sed away silently, and the visions of the future I then beheld have vanished. I feel awakened as from a dream, and like a shadow has my past gone by. With the verse at the bottom of the picture you gave me, I can say:

"'Oh! days that once I used to prize, Are ye forever gone?

The veil is taken from my eyes, And now I stand alone.'

"But I would not recall those by-gone days, nor do I stand alone. No!

Out from this life will spring a higher world, of which the past was but a weak, faint shadow."

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CHAPTER V

AT BROOK FARM

THE famous though short-lived community at West Roxbury, Ma.s.sachusetts, where Isaac Hecker made his first trial of the common life, was started in the spring of 1841 by George Ripley and his wife, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. Dwight, George P. Bradford, Sarah Sterns, a niece of George Ripley's, Marianne Ripley, his sister, and four or five others whose names we do not know. In September of the same year they were joined by Charles A. Dana, now of the New York _Sun._ Hawthorne's residence at the Farm, commemorated in the _Blithedale Romance,_ had terminated before Mr. Dana's began. The Curtis brothers, Burrill and George William, were there when Isaac Hecker came. Emerson was an occasional visitor; so was Margaret Fuller. Bronson Alcott, then cogitating his own ephemeral experiment at Fruitlands, sometimes descended on the gay community and was doubtless "Orphic" at his leisure. The a.s.sociation was the outcome of many discussions which had taken place at Mr. Ripley's house in Boston during the winter of 1840-41. Among the prominent Bostonians who took part in these informal talks were Theodore Parker, Adin Ballou, Samuel Robbins, John S. Dwight, Warren Burton, and Orestes Brownson. Each of these men, and, if we do not mistake, George Ripley also, presided at the time over some religious body.

Mr. Ballou, who was a Universalist minister of much local renown, was, perhaps, the only exception to the prevailing Unitarian complexion of the a.s.sembly.

The object of their discussions seems to have been, in a general way, the necessity for some social reform which should go to the root of the commercial spirit and the contempt for certain kinds of labor so widely prevalent; and, in a special way, the feasibility of establis.h.i.+ng at once, on however small a scale, a co-operative experiment in family life, having for its ulterior aim the reorganization of society on a less selfish basis. They probably considered that, a beginning once made by people of their stamp, the influence of their example would work as a quickening leaven. They hoped to be the mustard-seed which, planted in a congenial soil, would grow into a tree in whose branches all the birds of the air might dwell. It was the initial misfortune of the Brook-Farmers to establish themselves on a picturesque but gravelly and uncongenial soil, whose poverty went very far toward compa.s.sing the collapse of their undertaking.

Not all of the ministers whose names have just been mentioned were of one mind, either as to the special evils to be counteracted or the remedies which might be tentatively applied. Three different a.s.sociations took their rise from among this handful of earnest seekers after better social methods. Mr. Ballou, who headed one of these, believed that unity and cohesion could be most surely obtained by a frank avowal of beliefs, aims, and practices, to which all present and future a.s.sociates would be expected to conform. Mrs.

Kirby, whose interesting volume* we have already quoted, says that the platform of this party bound them to abolitionism, anti-orthodoxy, women's rights, total abstinence, and opposition to war. They established themselves at Hopedale, Ma.s.sachusetts, where, so far as our knowledge goes, some vestige of them may still remain, though the a.n.a.logies and probabilities are all against such a survival. A second band of "come-outers," as people used to be called in that day and region, when they abandoned the common road for reasons not obviously compulsory, went to Northampton in the same State, and from there into corporate obscurity.

[* _Years of Experience._ New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1887.]

Mr. Ripley's scheme was more elastic, and if the money basis of the a.s.sociation had been more solid, there seems no reason on the face of things why this community at Brook Farm might not have enjoyed a much longer lease of life. It seems to have left a most pleasant memory in the minds of all who were ever members of it. In matters of belief and of opinion no hard-and-fast lines were drawn at any point. In matters of conduct, the morality of self-respecting New-Englanders who were at a farther remove from Puritanic creeds than from Puritanic discipline, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of social decorum. Of the earliest additions to the co-operative household, a sprinkling were already Catholic; others, including the wife and the niece of the founder, afterwards became so. Some attended orthodox Protestant churches; the majority were probably Unitarians. Discussion on all subjects appears to have been free, frank, and good-tempered.

There was no attempt made at any communism except that of intellectual and social gifts and privileges. There was a common table, and Mrs. Kirby has given us some attractive glimpses of the good feeling, and kindly gayety, and practical observance of the precept to "bear one another's burdens" which came into play around it. For many months, as no one could endure to have his equal serve him, and all were equals, there was a constant getting up and down at table so that each might help himself. Afterwards, when decline had already set in, so far as the material basis of the undertaking was concerned, and those who had its success most at heart had begun to study Fourier for fruitful suggestions, the first practical hint from that quarter resulted in Mr. Dana's organizing "a group of servitors." These, writes Mrs. Kirby,* comprised "four of the most elegant youths at the community--the son of a Louisiana planter, a young Spanish hidalgo, a rudimentary Free-soiler from Hingham, and, if I remember rightly, Edward Barlow (the brother of Francis). These, with one accord, elected as chief their handsome and beloved teacher.

It is hardly necessary to observe 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, but I confess I never could get accustomed to the new regulation."

[* _Years of Experience,_ pp. 178, 179.]

The watchword of the place was fraternity, not communism. People took up residence at Brook Farm on different terms. Some paid a stipulated board, and thus freed themselves from any obligatory share in either domestic or out-door labor. Others contributed smaller sums and worked out the balance. Some gave labor only, as was the case with Mrs. Kirby, then Georgiana Bruce, an English girl of strong character. She says she agreed to work eight hours a day for her board and instruction in any branches of study which she elected to pursue. As an ill.u.s.tration of the actual poverty to which the community were soon reduced, and, moreover, of the low money value they set on domestic labor, we give another characteristic pa.s.sage from her book. The price of full board, as we learn from a bill sent by Mr. Ripley to Isaac Hecker after the latter's final departure from the Farm, was five dollars and fifty cents a week:

"When a year had elapsed I found my purse empty and my wardrobe much the worse for wear. As I was known to be heartily interested in the new movement, my case was taken under consideration, and, with the understanding that I was to add two more hours to my working day, I was admitted as _bona-fide_ member of the a.s.sociation (which included only a dozen), and was allowed to draw on the treasury for my very moderate necessities. Forty dollars a year would cover these, writing-paper and postage included. The last item was no unimportant one, as each letter cost from ten to fifty cents, and money counted for more then than now.

"I should explain that for the whole of one winter there remained but two bonnets fit for city eyes among six of us. But the best of these was forced on whomever was going to town. As for best dresses, a twenty-five cent delaine was held to be gorgeous apparel. The gentlemen had found it desirable to adopt a tunic in place of the more expensive, old-world coat."*

[* _Years of Experience,_ p. 132.]

The income of the a.s.sociation was derived from various sources other than the prices paid for board. There was a school for young children, presided over by Mrs. Ripley, a.s.sisted by various pupil-teachers, who thus partially recompensed the community for their own support. Fruit, milk, and vegetables, when there were any to spare, were sent to the Boston markets. Now and then some benevolent philanthropist with means would make a donation. No one who entered was expected to contribute his whole income to the general purse, unless such income would not more than cover the actual expense incurred for him. When Isaac Hecker went to West Roxbury the establishment included seventy inmates, who were distributed in several buildings bearing such poetical names as the Hive, the Eyrie, the Nest, and so on. The number rose to ninety or a hundred before he left them, but the additions seem occasionally to have been in the nature of subtractions also, taking away more of the cultivation, refinement, and general good feeling which had been the distinguis.h.i.+ng character of the place, than they added by their money or their labor.

Isaac Hecker was never an actual member of that inner community of whose aspirations and convictions the Farm was intended as an embodiment. He entered at first as a partial boarder, paying four dollars a week, and undertaking also the bread-making, which until then had been very badly done, as he writes to his mother. It should be understood that whatever was received from any inmate, either in money or labor, was accepted not as a mere return for food and shelter, but as an equivalent for such instruction as could be imparted by any other member of the collective family. And there were many competent and brilliant men and women there, whose attainments not only qualified them amply for the tasks they then a.s.sumed, but have since made them prominent in American letters and journalism.

Mr. Ripley lectured on modern philosophy to all who desired an acquaintance with Spinoza, Kant, Cousin, and their compeers. George P. Bradford was a thorough cla.s.sical scholar. Charles A. Dana, then fresh from Harvard, was an enthusiast for German literature, and successful in imparting both knowledge and enthusiasm to his pupils.

There were cla.s.ses in almost everything that any one cared to study.

French and music, as we learn from one of Isaac's letters home, were what he set himself to at the first. The latter was taught by so accomplished a master as John S. Dwight, who conducted weekly singing-schools for both children and adults.

To what other studies Isaac may have applied himself we hardly know.

It will be noticed that Mr. George William Curtis, in the kindly reminiscences which he permits us to embody in this chapter, says that he does not remember him as "especially studious." The remark tallies with the impression we have gathered from the journal kept while he was there. His mind was introverted. Philosophical questions, then as always, interested him profoundly, but only in so far as they led to practical results. It might be truer to say that philosophy was at no time more than the handmaid of theology to him.

At this period he was in the thick of his struggle to attain certainty with regard to the nature and extent of the Christian revelation, and what he sought at Brook Farm was the leisure and quiet and opportunity for solitude which could not be his at home.

"Lead me into Thy holy Church, which I now am seeking," he writes as the final pet.i.tion of the prayer with which the first bulky volume of his diary opens. With the burden of that search upon him, it was not possible for such a nature as his to plunge with the unreserve which is the condition of success into any study which had no direct reference to it. We find him complaining at frequent intervals that he cannot give his studies the attention they demand. Nor were his labors as the community baker of long continuance. They left him too little time at his own disposal, and in a short time he became a full boarder, and occupied himself only as his inclinations directed.

It may occur to some of our readers to wonder why a man like Brownson, who was then fast nearing the certainty he afterwards attained, should have sent a youth like Isaac Hecker to Brook Farm.

It must be remembered that Brownson's road to the Church was not so direct as that of his young disciple, nor so entirely free in all its stages from self-crippling considerations. As we shall presently see, by an abstract of one of his sermons, preached in the spring of 1843, which was made by Isaac Hecker at the time, Brownson thought it possible to hold all Catholic truth and yet defer entering the Church until she should so far abate her claims as to form a friendly alliance with orthodox Protestantism on terms not too distasteful to the latter. He was not yet willing to depart alone, and hoped by waiting to take others with him, and he was neither ready to renounce wholly his private views, nor to counsel such a step to young Hecker.

He was in harmony, moreover, with the tolerant and liberal tendency which influenced the leading spirits at Brook Farm. Although he never became one of the community, he had sent his son Orestes there as a pupil, and was a frequent visitor himself. Their aims, as expressed in a pa.s.sage which we subjoin from _The Dial_ of January, 1842, were a.s.suredly such as would approve themselves to persons who fully accepted what they believed to be the social teaching of our Lord, but who had not attained to any true conception of the Divine authority which clothes that teaching:

"Whoever is satisfied with society as it is; whose sense of justice is not wounded by its common action, inst.i.tutions, spirit of commerce, has no business with this community; neither has any one who is willing to have other men (needing more time for intellectual cultivation than himself) give their best hours and strength to bodily labor to secure himself immunity therefrom. . . . Everything can be said of it, in a degree, which Christ said of His kingdom, and therefore it is believed that in some measure it does embody His idea. For its Gate of Entrance is strait and narrow. It is, literally, a pearl _hidden in a field._ Those only who are willing to lose their life for its sake shall find it. . . . Those who have not the faith that the principles of Christ's kingdom are applicable to this world, will smile at it as a visionary attempt."

Brook Farm has an interest for Catholics because, in the order of guileless nature, it was the preamble of that common life which Isaac Hecker afterwards enjoyed in its supernatural realization in the Church. It was a protest against that selfishness of the individual which is highly accentuated in a large cla.s.s of New-Englanders, and prodigiously developed in the economical conditions of modern society. Against these Isaac had revolted in New York; at Brook Farm he hoped to find their remedy. And in fact the gentle reformers, as we may call these West Roxbury adventurers into the unexplored regions of the common life, were worthy of their task though not equal to it. There is no doubt that in small numbers and with a partial surrender of individual prerogatives, well-meaning men and women may taste many of the good things and be able to bear some of the hards.h.i.+ps of the common life. But to compa.s.s in permanent form its aspirations in this direction, as in many others, nature is incompetent. The terrible if wonderful success of Sparta is what can be attained, and tells at what cost. The economy of the bee-hive, which kills or drives away its superfluous members, and the polity of Sparta, which put the cripples and the aged to death, are essential to permanent success in the venture of communism in the natural order. "Sweetness and light" are enjoyed by the few only at the sacrifice of the unwholesome and burdensome members of the hive.

Brook Farm, however, was not conceived in any spirit of cruelty or of contempt of the weaker members of humanity; the very contrary was the case. Sin and feebleness were capable, thought its founders, of elimination by the force of natural virtue. The men and women who gathered there in its first years were n.o.ble of their kind; and their kind, now much less frequently met with, was the finest product of natural manhood. Of the channels of information which reach us from Brook Farm, and we believe we have had access to them all, none contains the slightest evidence of sensuality, the least trace of the selfishness of the world, or even any sign of the extravagances of spiritual pride. There is, on the other hand, a full acknowledgment of the ordinary failings of unpretentious good people. Nor do we mean to say that they were purely in the natural order--who can be said to be that? They were the descendants of the baptized Puritans whose religious fervor had been for generations at white heat. They had, indeed, cut the root, but the sap of Christian principle still lingered in the trunk and branches and brought forth fruit which was supernatural, though destined never to ripen.

Christ was the model of the Brook-Farmers, as He had become that of Isaac Hecker. They did not know Him as well as they knew His doctrine. They knew better what He said than why He said it, and that defect obscured His meaning and mystified their understandings. That all men were brethren was the result of their study of humanity under what they conceived to be His leaders.h.i.+p; that all labor is honorable, and ent.i.tled to equal remuneration, was their solution of the social problem. While any man was superfluously rich, they maintained, no man should be miserably poor. They were reaching after what the best spirits of the human race were then and now longing for, and they succeeded as well as any can who employ only the selvage of the Christian garment to protect themselves against the rigors of nature. Saint-Simon was a far less worthy man than George Ripley, but he failed no more signally. Frederic Ozanam, whose ambition was limited in its scope by his appreciation of both nature and the supernatural, succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a measure of true fraternity between rich and poor throughout the Catholic world.

There can be no manner of doubt that although Father Hecker in after life could good-naturedly smile at the singularities of Brook Farm, what he saw and was taught there had a strong and permanent effect on his character. It is little to say that the influence was refining to him, for he was refined by nature. But he gained what was to him a constant corrective of any tendency to man-hatred in all its degrees, not needed by himself to be sure, but always needed in his dealing with others. It gave to a naturally trustful disposition the vim and vigor of an apostolate for a cheerful view of human nature. It was a characteristic trait of his to expect good results from reliance on human virtue, and his whole success as a persuades of men was largely to be explained by the subtle flattery of this trustful att.i.tude towards them. At Brook Farm the mind of Isaac Hecker was eagerly looking for instruction. It failed to get even a little clear light on the more perplexing problems of life, but it got something better--the object-lesson of good men and women struggling n.o.bly and unselfishly for laudable ends. Brook Farm was an attempt to remove obstructions from the pathway of human progress, taking that word in the natural sense.

Even afterwards, when he had known human destiny in its perfect supernatural and natural forms, and when the means to compa.s.s it were in his possession and plainly competent for success, his memory reproduced the scenes and persons of Brook Farm in an atmosphere of affection and admiration, though not unmingled with amus.e.m.e.nt. He used not infrequently to quote words heard there, and cite examples of things done there, as lessons of wisdom not only for the philosopher but also for the ascetic. He was there equipped with the necessary external guarantee of his inner consciousness that man is good, because made so by his Creator--inclined indeed to evil, but yet a good being, even so inclined. Nothing is more necessary for one who is to be a teacher among a population whose Catholicity is of blood and family tradition as well as of grace, than to know that there is virtue, true and high in its own order, outside the visible pale of the Church. Especially is this necessary if Catholics in any age or country are to be fitted for a missionary vocation. That this is the vocation of the Church of his day was Isaac Hecker's pa.s.sionate conviction. He was able to communicate this to Catholics of the old stock as well as to influence non-Catholics in favor of the Church; perhaps even more so. More than anything else, indeed, Brook Farm taught him the defect of human nature on its highest plane; but it taught him also the worthiness of the men and women of America of the apostle's toil and blood. The gentle natures whom he there knew and learned to love, their spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good, their minds at once innocent and cultivated, their devotion to their high ideal, the absence of meanness, coa.r.s.eness, vulgarity, the sinking of private ambitions, the patience with the defects of others, their desire to establish the communism of at least intellectual gifts--all this and much more of the kind fixed his views and affections in a mould which eminently fitted him as a vessel of election for apostolic uses.

Before pa.s.sing to the study of Isaac Hecker's own interior during the period of his residence at Brook Farm, it is our pleasant privilege to communicate to our readers the subjoined charming reminiscence of his personality at the time, from one who was his a.s.sociate there:

"West New Brighton, S.I., 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 t.i.tle of a story of mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociation 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 influences 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 afterward described as a consciousness that he must be about his Father's business.

"I do not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had cla.s.ses 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 into 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 att.i.tude 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 toward 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 the life and 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."

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