The Journals of Bronson Alcott

AUTHOR: Alcott, Amos Bronson

Editor’s note: In August 1844, Alcott lost the journals for 1843-1844; the journals for the “remainder of 1844 and for 1845 are also missing” (138). These gaps are filled in, in part, by his wife Abigail (Abba) Alcott’s journals, as well as Alcott’s own contributions to The Dial.

KEYWORDS: food, diet, animals, women’s rights, Suffrage, slavery, Abolition,  mesmerism, education, land usage, environmentalism

 

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):

The summary below identifies those moments in his journals that are most relevant to Alcott's ethical veganism.

His journals are key to understanding the ethical veganism that Alcott attempted to practice in the community of Fruitlands, and which informed much of his life experience. The journals present Alcott's own accounts of such social justice issues as Abolition, Suffrage, the avoidance of meat and alcohol (Temperance), as well as occasional references to animal welfare. In his committment to opposing all forms of enslaved labor, he states explicitly his interest in avoiding any “foreign” or “slave-made” articles among the family's clothing or food. Bringing his Abolitionist stance into relation with his refusal of animal exploitation, he describes his experience as a supporter of fugitive slaves: Alcott’s house in Concord, like many of his neighbors’, was a stop on the Underground Railroad and he links the pursuit of escaped slaves to the hunting of animals. In the entry of 2 February 1847 he writes: “The hunters are astir these sunny days, and from this my espial I hear every now and then the bolt dealt sure from the fowler’s gun. Man is harried by his propensities. … I cannot step upon my hill-top or plunge into the pine woods behind my house without encountering this huntsman. … One cannot escape these Nimrods everywhere. ... And now, as if to domesticate this wolf in my fancy, there arrives from the Maryland plantations a fugitive to sit at my table and fireside, whom yet another Nimrod will seize and hurry swiftly into bondage or death if he can” (188). Throughout the journals, Alcott expresses joy in being in the countryside and depression in the city. When he is unable to work, because his conscience forbids it, he can at least be useful to his family by planting and tending the gardens around Brook House. In the second volume (1855-1882), the Alcotts find increasing fame (especially Louisa), wealth, and stability. With stability comes the chance to settle in one place, leading Alcott to write frequently about his garden: what he is planting and how the garden develops.

Volume 1

1842, July 20: Alcott discusses the “Pythagorean diet” and other topics with “Fox, Harwood, Dr. Elliotson, Mr. Lalor, and others” (164).

1842, October 29: Abba Alcott describes life leading up to and arriving at Fruitlands. She is troubled by the dietary restrictions that Alcott and Charles Lane have introduced since their return from England, and finds that she can barely eat: “My diet, too, is obviously not enough diversified, having been almost exclusively coarse bread and water – the apples we have had not being mellow and my teeth very bad, my disrelish of cooking so great that I would not consume that which cost me so much misery to prepare” (148).

1843, January 22: Abba Alcott discusses a meal they shared with Edmund Hosmer: they “... then partook of a simple dinner which Mr. Alcott had neatly prepared in the morning: an oatmeal pudding, apples, bread, and nuts. The children then retired to the school room and played school while the gentlemen discussed the overthrow of state government and the errors of all human government” (151)

1844, 1 January: Bronson Alcott “dissolved all connections with Fruitlands” (156).

1846, January (undated): On the magnetic energies that unite plants, humans, and non-human animals: “Forests are magnets, conveying electricity from the Heavens to the Earth. Plants are alike conductors of magnetism, and the nerves of all animals. The hair on the human head is an electric pile, and in lesser measure the skin itself. The like of all animals. The magnetic current circulates through the pores, and rushes from the atoms of all bodies. Nature is charged with the quickening fluid, and from the chaos of matter creation springs at the incoming of the organic Light” (172).

1844, May 11: On refusing products made of animal exploitation and enslaved labor: “Replenished our stores from the grocery in the village. Maple sugar, flour, cheese, &c. We endeavor to use no articles of foreign or slave production in our diet. In apparel we cannot as yet dispense well with cotton and leather, the first a product of slaves and the last an invasion of the rights of animals” (180).

1844, July 4: On “self-emancipation” from animal cruelty: “I cast my silent vote for the emancipation of the human soul, amidst the plants I love. The aroma of the buckwheat, eloquently humming with the winged freemen of the hives, disturbed now and then by the gunner’s crack aiming death to the joyous songsters of the air and groves. They ventured not, these monstrous boys, into my coppice of protecting boughs, nor into my peaceful glebes. Ah me! War rages near me, and the fields of this my Concord are beleaguered round with armed ruffians. Happy for myself if I am as yet a freeman, and a soul at peace ... It is at any rate a delightful fancy to cherish the dream of self-emancipation, and on this anniversary of political independence to feel an inward conviction of freedom which no civil chains have yet bound. Alone in my benefice, why should I not rejoice in that freeness that cheapens all conventions, and makes me, in thought if not in deed, independent of the States and times, an honest and upright man in the midst of my age?” (183).

1847, Editor’s note explains that, this year, Alcott spent every Sunday evening at Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond. A fugitive slave lived with them for a week and ate dinner with them at the table.

1847, Feb. (undated): Separation from the bondage of the State: “The subject of cotton, coffee, wool, wine, ice, iron, tobacco, spice, women, beeves [sic], and slaves finds it not easy to dispense with his creditor, the State” (190).

1847, March (undated): “Thoreau’s a walking Muse, winged at the anklets and rhyming her steps. The ruddiest and nimblest genus that has trodden our woods, he comes amidst mists and exhalations, his locks dripping with moisture, in the sonorous rains of an ever-lyric day. His genius insinuates itself at every pore of us, and eliminates us into the old elements again. A wood-nymph, he abides on the earth and is a sylvan soul” (193-94).

1847, March (undated): Alcott is banned from work as a teacher due to his political views: “The Secretary of Education deemed it unsafe to introduce me to the teachers, and on pressing my desire to give them the benefit of my experience as an educator, I was informed that my political opinions were esteemed hostile to the existence of the State, and that I could not aid the cause of popular culture. . .” (195).

1847, October 18: Alcott's vegetarian diet: “I seldom reach home from my work at Emerson’s till quite dark; and, after a supper of cream, honey, and wheaten cakes, with apples and peaches, find myself pursuing my charming occupation to bed…” (197).

1850, Editor’s note mentions that the Alcotts became close to destitute this year; Alcott continued to “converse” with the surrounding populace, with little financial gain, while his wife and daughters all took on work of some kind (largely teaching).

1850, February 17: Alcott is visited by Mr Bowers, an “inmate once of our family at Fruitlands”; he reflects on their mission and that of other would-be community members with “their vague longings for a terrestrial Eden, their pictures of an ideal society…” (226).

Volume 2

1856, Editor’s note: In May, the Alcotts' third daughter Elizabeth contracted scarlet fever; Alcott is hopeful for her recovery because she “had never tasted animal food” (278).

1856, April 10: “Garrison made the Convention, / Greeley made the Newspaper, / Emerson made the Lecture, / and / Alcott is making the Conversation” (281).

1856, May 20: “Plant peas, corn, cucumbers, and melons in my little garden plot. Human life is a very simple matter. Breath, bread, health, a hearthstone, a fountain, fruits, a few garden seeds and room to plant them in, a wife and children, a friend or two of either sex, conversation, neighbours, and a task life-long given from within – these are contentment and a great estate” (282-83).

1856, July 10: “Every plant one tends he falls in love with, and gets the glad response for all his attentions and pains” (283).

1856, November 23: Dress reform: “There is no danger of confusing sexes or spheres. … The Bloomer is an experiment at a convenient costume; and, when, presently, good taste superadds comeliness, and some graceful woman the ornament of her person, the sex will adopt it and thank the genius to whom they owe their freedom from the present fetters” (292).

1856, December 28: Walt Whitman attended a party (at Sam Longfellow’s) “in his Bloomers” (294).

1857, February 6: “Fruitlands was an adventure, reckless perhaps, for planting a Paradise in good faith here in honest Yankee mould, and of realizing the pastoral age in more than pristine simplicity and tenderness in the lives of devoted men and women, smitten with something of the old heroism for holiness and humanity” (296-97).

1860, January 24, Evening: In a discussion on nature and civilization, Alcott asks “if civilization is not the ascendency of sentiment over brute force, the sway of ideas over animalism, of mind over matter. The more animated the brain, the higher is the man or creature in the scale of intelligence. The barbarian has no society … Thoreau defends the Indian from the doctrine of being lost or exterminated, and thinks he holds a place between civilized man and nature, and must hold it. I say that he goes along with the woods and the beasts, who retreat before and are superseded by man and the planting of orchards and gardens. The savage succumbs to the superiority of the white man. No civilized man as yet, nor refined nations, for all are brute largely still. Man’s victory over nature and himself is to overcome the brute beast in him” (325).

1861, June 7: “I take it as one of the best pieces of good fortune that I was born in the country and brought up in the arts of husbandry under the eye of a skilful farmer, who gave me early to my hands and the uses of tools … I came as naturally to the spade, the plow, the scythe, and sickle as to book and pen” (339, 340).

1862, January 4: “Gardens and orchards distinguish man properly from the forester and hunter, who are such by ascendancy of the savage and animal life. The country, indeed, as discriminated from the wilderness, is purely of man’s creation. His improvements are the country; the savage has none. ... Gardening, properly considered, is the blending of man’s genius with natural substance” (344).

1863, November 10: Discussion of the merits of cider which, when consumed in moderation, “is wholesome for the winter months. In spring comes the hop and pine beer, and I take cocoa with my meals – never coffee or tea. Fruit, apples, chiefly, are a favorite dessert, and taken before as after a meal” (360).

1864, September 22: The Agricultural Show: “‘Tis the tendency of the time, every department of thought as of practice suffering for lack of faith in persons and ideas – an all-pervading atheism now paying the costliest penalties that a people can pay for the infidelity to both. We have been growing cattle and cotton instead of men and mind, and are now defrauded of all” (366).

1868, October 17: Notes the publication and high praise of Little Women: “I think I am not deceived in believing that I have lived true to my ideals and had their exceeding great rewards” (392).

1869, April 25: Fruitlands:  “. . . I can hardly conceive of anything more conducive to my spiritual advantage than the experience of those years at Fruitlands and return to Concord. I think I may say that my defeats have proved victories. I did not plant the Paradise geographically as I fancied I might, but entered spiritually into a fairer Eden than I sought to people with human kind” (395).

1869, May 5: Human relation to land: “The only rightful ownership that man has in the landscape is born of his Genius, and partakes of his own essence as thus mingled with the substance of the soil and the structure which he erects upon it” (396).

1869, May 8: “I am looking for the Genius of the home and household, the orchard and garden, of childhood and youth, the simple, innocent, the charming humanities, to complement the wild, untamed, impersonal, and thus perfect nature in character” (397).

1869, October 3: “I imagine these were, as they still are, God’s best and onlys - all others [fruits] are vanities. Berries are only grapes of the woods. Pears are Adam’s apple tickled by man’s art; and peaches are Eve’s. … Pears are plainly gentlemen, and peaches ladies; men and women, less elegantly” (400).

1869, November 21: Temperance: “Attend a temperance meeting and speak by invitation. The advocates of temperance, here as elsewhere, appear to be dealing with the subject superficially, and I fear I am a poor advocate for the measures which they propose in their popular meeting” (403)

1870, July 31: “. . . The other day a poor infuriated dog ran just before me across the side walk and threw himself madly into a cellar to be slain by a howling crowd that followed him. Were the fountains flowing within reach of the thirsty creatures, such scenes would seldom occur. Mad dogs are innocent of tasting stronger liquors than the fountains afford when both are within their reach. And mad dogs and mad-mankind accuse our civilization” (416).

1870, July 31: Land usage: “I pass, too, as I ride into the city and return, squares of newly built tenant houses erected on lands which the high tides can hardly fail to overflow and every rain inundate - near a slaughter house moreover, rendering them unfit for human dwelling at any season. The capitalist doubtless pleads his legal right to use his money or lands in any manner he please, … Cities, like Cain, may not hope to shield their crime by legislation, excusing themselves from being their ‘brother’s keeper’ thereby, nor hold any guiltless who disregard, for gain, the health, comfort, or virtue of a single citizen” (416).

1872, August 30: Comments on Louisa’s text on Fruitlands: “Louisa hands me a chapter of her new story, to be entitled ‘The Cost of an Idea,’ to read. It is her account of Fruitlands, in which herself, then a child, and her sisters, had their parts. It surprises one by the boldness and truthfulness of the strokes, and if other parts of her tale are told in this romantic and sprightly way, her success in this, as in former efforts of the pen, is assured” (427).

1873, December 25: Fruitlands, represented in "Transcendental Wild Oats":“Very few modern readers will readily place themselves in the ideal position to apprehend the high moral which animated and gave body to this social adventure. I did not find the ready response even at the Radical Club which the experience of some present led me to expect. From the extreme Individualists I could not, of course, count upon their acceptance of results so fatal to their notions of self-sovereignty. We shall hardly have any like experiment attempted within my time by any enthusiastic extremist, and it needs some time to pass to set this endeavor in its true light” (442).

1877, July 8: Trees described as “far more ancient, and coëval” in their senses compared to him: “They give nobility to the mansion, and, by reflection, to the residents. … And how instinctively friendships cling and bind themselves about like trees, as if the noblest forms of nature and of mind had a like eternal ancestry and immortal fellowship” (478).

1878, May 28: Attends the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association and a meeting on Temperance, where he speaks to the benefits of a vegetarian diet: “I am at the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association sitting in Horticultural Hall, and favored with an opportunity to speak a word of encouragement to women” (487). “Evening: At the Massachusetts Temperance Meeting, in Tremont Temple. I wish success may follow every effort to suppress the vice of intemperance, whether by moral or political measures. Especially do I regard as most potent and practicable the recommendation of a more chaste and salutary diet, chiefly composed of fruits and esculents, with a reasonable allowage of articles furnished by the dairy, and the common beverages” (488).

1878, November 28, Thanksgiving Day: Refusal to eat meat: “As a descendent of Puritans, I trust I am thankful for this pious parentage, and do not greatly dishonor their memories if I partake sparingly of the feast of fat things in which my neighbors indulge more bountifully” (492).

1881, December 9: Refusal of the medicinal use of meat:  “The doctors recommend flesh for my little maid [Alcott’s granddaughter]; and I dissent, robust and plump as she is, sprightly and graceful in every gesture. They would demonize the little saint, and dim all her beauty, for the sake of adding superfluous muscle and what they call ‘healthful animal life.’ I wish I may never cease contesting this assault upon her serenity and sweetness of soul” (529).

 

Last updated on January 10th, 2024

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