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IV "The Alcotts" If the dictagraph had been perfected in Bronson Alcott's time, he might now be a great writer. As it is, he goes down as Concord's greatest talker. "Great expecter," says Thoreau; "great feller," says Sam Staples, "for talkin' big ... but his daughters is the gals though always DOIN' somethin'." Old Man Alcott, however, was usually "doin' somethin'" within.
I remember an engraving of Murillo's Virgin, with the moon under her feet, hanging on the wall, and some excellent copies of Turner's water-color studies. The Alcotts were a hospitable family, not easily disturbed by callers, and ready to share what they had with others. The house had a style of its own.
But she was not thinking of the unhappy stranger who lay, probably dying, under the Alcotts' roof. She was suffering from a fresh personal stab. For, clearly, Geoffrey French had not told all there was to be known; there was some further mystery. And even the Alcotts knew more than she. Affection and pride were both wounded anew. But with the morning came consolation.
Over the ridge to the north lies the Sleepy Hollow cemetery where the poet rests, with the gravestones of Hawthorne and the Alcotts, Thoreau and William James close by. But although Concord is the Emerson shrine, he was born in Boston, in 1803.
But, though carried beyond the Ripleys, the Alcotts, the Lanes, the Emersons, and beyond the theories they in some sort stand for and represent, he had learned them and their lesson, and never lost his aptitude for returning to their company with a Catholic message. His farewell to that class did not involve loss of affectionate interest, for in mind he continually reverted to them.
Just beyond is "Orchard House," into which the Alcotts moved in October, 1858. A philosopher may not be a good neighbor, and Alcott lived just a little too near Hawthorne. "It was never so well understood at 'The Wayside' that its owner had retiring habits as when Alcott was reported to be approaching along Larch Path, which stretched in feathery bowers between our house and his.
The Alcotts the year before had lived next door to my aunt, Louisa, a child of twelve, and her sisters the "Little Women" whom the world now knows so well. Close to the Battle Ground stood the two tall gate-posts behind which lay the "Old Manse" whose "Mosses" Hawthorne was just then preserving for immortality.
Into Buntingford's strained consciousness there fell a drop of balm as he sat beside him, listening to the quiet breathing, and comforted by the mere peace of the slight form. He looked up at Cynthia and thanked her; and Cynthia's heart sang for joy. The Alcotts' unexpected guest lingered another forty-eight hours under their roof, making a hopeless fight for life.
It was soon conveyed to the Alcotts that the Welwyns shared their knowledge, and a conversation followed, almost in whispers under a group of lilacs that flung round them the scents of the unspoilt summer. Alice Alcott, to get a breath of air, had left her patient in the charge of their old housemaid, for a quarter of an hour, but must go back at once and would sit up all night.
We followed the winding road to the hill where Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and Emerson lie buried within a half-dozen paces of one another. Thoreau came first in May, 1862. Emerson delivered the funeral address. Mrs. Hawthorne writes in her diary, "Mr. Thoreau died this morning. The funeral services were in the church. Mr. Emerson spoke. Mr. Alcott read from Mr. Thoreau's writings.
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