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Visiting the community five or six weeks after its inception, Mr. Emerson wrote: "The sun and the evening sky do not look calmer than Alcott and his family at Fruitlands. They seem to have arrived at the fact, to have got rid of the show, and so to be serene. They look well in July; we will see them in December."
They have been the means of giving me much light on myself, but I feel I would live and progress more in a different atmosphere." On the 25th of July Isaac finally departed from Fruitlands, and after remaining for a few days at Brook Farm, he returned to his home in New York.
Eleven chapters, making one-third of the volume, are devoted to showing this, and include the author's own itinerarium from his first consciousness of the supreme question of the soul until its final answer in the Catholic Church, embracing short accounts of the Brook Farm and Fruitlands communities, and mention of other such abortive attempts at solution.
This prospective Eden at present consisted of an old red farm-house, a dilapidated barn, many acres of meadow-land, and a grove. Ten ancient apple-trees were all the "chaste supply" which the place offered as yet; but, in the firm belief that plenteous orchards were soon to be evoked from their inner consciousness, these sanguine founders had christened their domain Fruitlands.
After the failure of his experiment at Fruitlands, it was into Hosmer's house that Alcott found himself welcomed; and he was given much of help and encouragement by the farmer and his wife. At this time several of the Brook Farmers were living in Concord, and among them were Bradford, Pratt, and Mrs.
Charles Lane, both of whom returned within a year or two to their own country, wiser and perhaps sadder men. Lane, at all events, who was a simple and candid soul for whom Isaac Hecker conceived a long-enduring friendship, sunk all his private means irrevocably in the futile attempt to establish Fruitlands on a solid basis.
"Fruitlands, July 12. Last evening I arrived here. After tea I went out in the fields and raked hay for an hour in company with the persons here. We returned and had a conversation on Clothing. Some very fine things were said by Mr. Alcott and Mr. Lane. In most of their thoughts I coincide; they are the same which of late have much occupied my mind.
Have you seen the last Dial? The Present is good, but surely not good enough. I hope to write a more universal letter in response to your next, for which I wait." Poor Lane, failing to find any equally confiding and generous friend to shoulder with him the personal debts of the founder of Fruitlands, was compelled at last to let the farm "lapse into individuality" and to see "the idea suspended."
Abel Lamb simply revelled in the Newness, firmly believing that his dream was to be beautifully realized and in time not only little Fruitlands, but the whole earth, be turned into a Happy Valley. He worked with every muscle of his body, for he was in deadly earnest.
There was nothing of the Patriarch of Bleeding Heart Yard about him except that "venerable aspect," for which nature was responsible, and not he. Fruitlands was the caricature of Brook Farm. Just as the fanatic is the caricature of the true reformer, so was Alcott the caricature of Ripley.
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