The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872 (1888)

AUTHOR: Emerson, Ralph Waldo

PUBLICATION: 1883. Vol. 1. Boston: Ticknor, 1888.
https://archive.org/details/correspondenceof01carluoft Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872.

A few of Emerson's letters to Thomas Carlyle discuss A. Bronson Alcott, the question of (educational) reform, and George Ripley's planning of the reform community at Brook Farm.

KEYWORDS: food, land usage, environmentalism, labor rights, reform

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

A. Bronson Alcott is mentioned in six letters, all by Emerson:

“A man named Bronson Alcott is great, and one of the jewels we have to show you” (122; letter of 31 March 1837);

“A man named Bronson Alcott is a majestic soul, with whom conversation is possible. He is capable of truth, and gives me the same glad astonishment that he should exist which the world does” (223; letter of 15 March 1839);

“A Bronson Alcott, who is a great man if he cannot write well, has come to Concord with his wife and three children and taken a cottage and an acre of ground to get his living by the help of God and his own spade. I see that some of the Education people in England have a school called ‘Alcott House’ after my friend. At home here he is despised and rejected of men as much as was ever Pestalozzi. But the creature thinks and talks, and I am glad and proud of my neighbor” (311-312; letter of 21 April 1840);

“The man Alcott bides his time” (269; letter of 8 August  1839);

“Alcott will probably go to London in about a month, and him I shall surely send to you, hoping to atone by his great nature for many smaller ones that have craved to see you” (391; letter of 28 February 1842);

“I write now to tell you of a piece of life. I wish you to know that there is shortly coming to you a man by the name of Bronson Alcott. If you have heard his name before, forget what you have heard. Especially if you have ever read anything to which this name was attached, be sure to forget that; and, inasmuch as in you lies, permit this stranger when he arrives at your gate to make a new and primary impression. I do not wish to bespeak any courtesies or good or bad opinion concerning him. You may love him, or hate him, or apathetically pass by him, as your genius shall dictate; only I entreat this, that you do not let him go quite out of your reach until you are sure you have seen him and know for certain the nature of the man. And so I leave contentedly my pilgrim to his fate” (397; letter of 31 March 1842).

On reform, Emerson observes: “We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly. George Ripley is talking up a colony of agriculturists and scholars, with whom he threatens to take the field and the book. One man renounces the use of animal food; and another of coin; and another of domestic hired service; and another of the State; and on the whole we have a commendable share of reason and hope” (334-335; letter of 30 October 1840).

 

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