We were away last weekend and I was bereft of any energy to write though there was a grocery list of things to discuss with you. Here it is, a quiet evening at the end of a steady-on week, that felt like a ride in a speed boat on open water…just as spring arrives in New England.
Books, music, art, and Massachusetts…care to join me on this ramble? Light years ago, a dear friend and frenemy gave me the most charming book about American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheevers.
This book arrived with a sweet note and I took my next wee step into American history-light. I loved it and set it aside, telling everyone about it but never felt heard in those busy years. It went on the shelf but my friend and frenemy, now gone, and I spoke of it each time we connected….”remember that marvelous book you sent me…”
Published in 2006, it was an introduction into a world of which I knew nothing. It allowed me to step right along to the 1830’s and 40’s…
American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work by Susan Cheevers
It is about remarkable men and women, concentrated in placid, tony, lovely, little Concord, Massachusetts, that Henry James referred to the town as the “biggest little place in America.” No kidding… Among the host of luminaries who floated in and out of Concord’s “American Bloomsbury” the venerable intellect and prodigious Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his perpetual second in both love and career, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott — dreamy girl and ambitious spinster, half in love with the both of them; Nathaniel Hawthorne — dilettante, and cad-and Melville, perpetually pitting a man with the nature of his father against that of a big white whale, (writing his heart out on a book about which the English will say, “Ah, yes, the great American novel with that withering, pastel shade of condescension in tone and expression…(I’d never admit it to them, but I can’t blame them.); and Margaret Fuller — glamorous editor and foreign correspondent.
What is that story about Hawthorne and Melville? When Hawthorne’s father died he borrowed money from Emerson vis a vis his long-suffering wife and went to bed for 11 years. When Melville’s father died, he went to work on Moby Dick. Make of that what you will.
Perhaps inevitably, given the smallness of the place and the idiosyncrasies of its residents, the members of the prestigious circle became both intellectually and romantically entangled. More plainly spoken, they were on top of each other: Thoreau serenaded an infatuated Louisa on his flute and then vyed with Hawthorne for Fuller’s attention. Emerson wrote her fiery feminist love letters while she resided only steps away from his wife in their guest room, whilst, might I add, living off said wife’s fortune and supporting the rest of the berry gatherers. Herman Melville was, according to some, ultimately driven mad by his consuming and unrequited affection for Hawthorne, (so much for Moby Dick or…) This is getting pretty spicy for overdressed, intellectual, white folks.
17 years later, on April 13, 2024, I entered Concord for the first time. Dave and I could not resist (Going off to Massachusetts complimenti dearest Dani on this dear musical with your lyrics and Jason’s music) after watching Doris Kearns Goodwin interviewed about her new Memoir, An Unfinished Love Story. We drove past the 6,000 sq foot home she shared with her late husband, Richard Goodwin, speech writer of Presidents and successful author and political thinker. She spoke lovingly of her home with books in every room, much of them given to the Concord Public Library, our next stop.
We entered a treasure trove of volumes. Concord is, once again, layered with history in this, small hurricane of a place that has inspired such rich language.
The librarians are in love with their place of work. It is the American Mecca of words. One such woman, after walking us through the new Doris Kearns Goodwin Room, directed us to the basement where the historical documents are kept. Upon request, the research librarian, a youngish woman from Alaska with degrees in all things library and museum from the University of Oklahoma, brought out two hand-written chapters of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. There, before us, were the chapters from Part Two of Little Women (“Our Foreign Correspondent” and “Heartache”), written on blue paper with fading brown ink. I was reading the words of Jo’s gentle rejection of Laurie. Her editor made her take out the line about how Laurie had grabbed Jo and kissed her passionately as this book was intended for girls and no girl of 12or 13 is thinking about kissing, of course.
If you click on Heartache, it will all come back to you as you remember it from your first reading, the powerful heart wrenching love and sadness between them.
One of the most touching papers that I saw was Louisa’s poem about Henry David Thoreau, written in her own hand, entitled “Thoreau’s Flute.” It is reckoned that he was the proto-type for Laurie. She took his death, at the age of 44, very hard. And she wasn’t completely able to express herself about her relationship with him until she became a nurse at the Union Hospital in Georgetown during the Civil War. Next to her lovely poem was Thoreau’s Walking about the encroachment of private ownership, a beautiful and wistful foretelling of what was to come, as relevant today as then, but Louisa is the focal point because there are few of us who have not read, and quoted Little Women more often than we care to remember. It was published in 1868. Middlemarch by George Eliot was published in 1870. For perspective, Triple Great Granny, the subject of a previous blog, moved to Los Angeles to tirelessly move the political and social mountain toward suffrage in 1875. These bigger than life women were contemporaries. Did Triple G read two of the most important novels of all time? I have to wonder.
We reverentially drove past the home of Louisa May Alcott, viewed the famous Walden Pond, considered Transcendentalism, the American Bloomsburys, in all their mid-19th century glory, considered their contribution, their frailty, the human condition. We discussed America at this moment, how time is spent in sacred places, a reverie, a meditation, of sorts.
Before we left, we had to tour Wellesley College and see the sublime Davis Art Museum. Here you will see our personal favorites of this sublime art nugget in the heart of one of the Sever Sisters, paintings and ceramics that leave me breathless, each one its own story, its own book to be savored in posts to come.
The dew drops on this spring daffodil of a journey was a second evening with Heather Cox Richards, who spoke of hope, among other things at The First Christian Church, (1818) in Belfast, Maine, on Thursday evening.
My take away from her talk was this. It took ten years for Congress to ratify the 13th Amendment, initiated in 1855 and passed by Congress on January 31, 1865. 100,000 enslaved men, women and children were freed because of the power of the vote. The point is this. Though race continued to be a topic in this country and will continue to be a topic, the final words of Abraham Lincoln continue to ring true…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The Gettysburg Address-1863
It is an election year. We live in possibilities in a Democracy. We, of a certain age, can sway one more election. In a week, filled with passionate recollection and reveals, hope is glimmering but not assured. So, dear reader, do not hesitate to walk it, read it, shout it and live it, live your truth, because this rare 250 year old experiment hangs in the balance.
I hear the incandescent music of Charles Ives as I write. Till next time…
I love your thoughts and insights. I look forward to reading "American Bloomsbury".