Brook Farm: Historic and Personal MemoirsCodman, John Thomas
History
Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs
Codman, John Thomas
Brook Farm Phalanx (West Roxbury, Boston, Mass.)
Many of the pupils became interested in the new life with which they
came in contact. It influenced them for good, and in after years they
were full of gratitude and praise for the help and moral tone it
imparted to them. An extract from a letter from Mr. Richard F. Fuller,
the father of Margaret Fuller, to Mr. Ripley at this time reads as
follows:--
"A lady asked me not long since where she should send her daughter to
school. I said at once, to the _Community_, for there she would learn
for the first time, perhaps, that all these matters of creed and morals
are not quite so well settled as to make thinking nowadays a piece of
supererogation, and would learn to distinguish between truth and the
'sense sublime,' and the dead dogmas of the past. This is the great
benefit I believe you confer upon the young."
The pupil who became most prominent was George William Curtis, who
always acknowledged the beneficial effect it had upon all his future
career.
New England and New York sent in their share of pupils until the
accommodations were crowded. The school flourished. It was not large,
but select. It was necessary to have more room, and a neighbor's
cottage was hired. Enthusiasts wished to build on the place. Plans of
procedure for the Association were indefinite. The central idea of
justice to all men and women was ever uppermost. Mrs. Olvord, a lady of
means, built a small gabled cottage of wood, which, owing to ill
health, she was able to occupy but a short time. At the highest point
of the domain, on a ledge of "pudding-stone," the Association erected a
small, square, wooden building which was named "the Eyrie," and at
another period a large double or twin house was built to be conjointly
occupied by two brothers from Plymouth, Mass., of the name of Morton;
it was called "the Pilgrim House." The original farmhouse was
christened "the Hive." The cultivation of the farm proceeded, and some
ornamentation in the shape of flower-beds was done around the houses.
It was soon found that much milk was needed at home, and the sale of it
was discontinued.
A few individuals making a common family on a farm near a city, would
seem to be too unimportant a matter to excite much comment now, even
though the people who did it were superior in attainments, of high
purpose, and above criticism in their moral and social standing; but at
this date of our country's history, all thoughtful people in New
England seemed to be gaping at them with curiosity and wonder, and
comments were unlimited. As they were neither dogmatists, nor active
fanatics who brandished anathemas of terror and destruction at those
who followed not in their ways, but simply and unostentatiously
attended to their own business, and seemed to care very little for what
anyone said derogatory to their proceedings, the conditions appeared so
unique, that interest in their doings increased day by day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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