Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs — John Shaqi
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.)
The number of notable persons who visited the farm at this period was
large. I was too young to appreciate the positions they held, in
literature, the church or the nation, but append a list of names,
selected almost at random, mostly of distinguished persons who were
occasional visitors. Horace Greeley, Parke Godwin, Henry James, Freeman
Hunt, Charles Kraitsir, Henry Giles, S. P. Andrews, all of New York;
Rev. O. A. Brownson, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Rev. Henry A. Miles,
Rev. Edward E. Hale, Rev. Samuel Osgood, Rev. Frederick T. Gray, Rev.
A. B. Green, Rev. C. A. Greenleaf, Hon. John G. Palfrey, Hon. E.
Rockwood Hoar, Hon. George H. Calvert, of Newport, R. I.; Hon. Charles
Sumner, Judge Ellis Gray Loring, Judge Wells, Dr. W. F. Channing, R. H.
Dana, A. Bronson Alcott, George B. Emerson, Samuel G. Ward,--Marcus
Spring and Edmund Tweedy, of New York; James A. Kay, of Philadelphia.
W. W. Story, C. P. Cranch, E. Hicks, Joseph and Thomas Carew, John
Sartain, John A. Ordway and Benjamin Champney, were among the many
artists who came; the major portion of all the above named persons were
from New England.
It will not do to forget young and curly-headed John A. Andrew, who
became the war governor of Massachusetts, or Robert Owen, the English
communist, well known for his social experiments at New Harmony, Ind.,
who, at this time, was a ruddy-faced, almost white-haired person, with
a large nose, and carrying well his seventy years on a vigorous frame.
George R. Russell, Francis G. Shaw and Theodore Parker, with their
wives and members of their families, were very friendly visitors.
There were numerous ladies, also, who came. I remember Miss A. P.
Peabody, Pauline Wright, Mary Gove and sweet Lydia Maria Child, of New
York.
The old record book that lay in the reception room at the Hive would
reveal a list of four thousand names, registered in one year, to select
from, but alas! it is lost forever.
A. Bronson Alcott came one day and brought his friend Lane, who was
anxious to visit the "Community," but Lane was opposed to eating
anything that was killed or had died, so he ate neither fish nor flesh.
Neither would he wear wool, because it was an animal product, for he
did not like animal products. Neither would he wear cotton nor use
sugar nor rice, because they were the products of slave labor. And
finally, he walked from Boston in a linen suit, because he would avoid
using a horse, for his argument was that the value of time spent in
providing food, lodging and care of animals, was not returned to the
owners for the outlay. Lane came from England, and was not a "Yankee
crank," as some might possibly think.
Miss Louisa M. Alcott wrote of him in connection with her father and
herself, in an article entitled "A Journey to Fruitlands." Judging from
my remembrance of all the characters, the picture is faithfully drawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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