Life of Father Hecker - Walter Elliott

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cannot wish myself out of this state. I have no will to do that—not that I have any desire to. All I can say is that I am in it. What would be the effect of necessity on me, I know not, whether it would lead me back or lead me on. My feeling of duty towards you is a continual weight upon me which I cannot throw off—it is best, perhaps, that I cannot. All appears to me as a seeming, not a reality. Nothing touches that life in me which is seeking that which I know not."

      TO GEORGE HECKER.—"Brook Farm, March 6, 1843.—What was the reason of my going, or what made me go? The reason I am not able to tell. But what I felt was a dark, irresistible influence upon me that led me away from home. What it was I know not. What keeps me here I cannot tell. It is only when I struggle against it that a spell comes over me. If I give up to it, nothing is the matter with me. But when I look to my past, my duty toward you all, and consider what this may lead me to, and then attempt to return, I get into a state which I cannot speak of …

      "By attempt to return I mean an attempt to return to my old life, for so I have to call it—that is, to get clear of this influence. And yet I have no will to will against it. I do not desire it, or its mode of living, and I am opposed to its tendency.

      "What bearing this has upon the question of my coming home you will perceive. As soon as I can come, I will. If I should do so now, it would throw me back to the place from which I started. Is this fancy on my part? All I can say is that if so the last nine or ten months of my life have been a fancy which is too deep for me to control."

      After paying his family a visit in April, he writes to them on his return:

      "Brook Farm, April 14, 1843.—Here I am alone in my room once more. I feel settled, and begin to live again, separated from everything but my studies and thoughts, and the feeling of gratitude toward you all for treating me so much better than I am aware of ever having treated you. May I ever keep this sense of obligation and indebtedness. My prayer is, that the life I have been led to live these few months back may prove to the advantage of us all in the end. I sometimes feel guilty because I did not attempt again to try and labor with you. But the power that kept me back, its hold upon me, its strength over me, all that I am unable to communicate, makes my situation appear strange to others, and to myself irreconcilable with my former state. Still, I trust that, in a short period, all things will take their peaceful and orderly course."

      TO GEORGE HECKER.—"Brook Farm, May 12, 1843.—How much nearer to you I feel on account of your good letter you cannot estimate—nearer than when we slept in the same bed. Nearness of body is no evidence of the distance between souls, for I imagine Christ loved His mother very tenderly when He said, 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?'"

      "I have felt, time and again, that either I would have to give up the life that was struggling in me, or withdraw from business in the way that we pursue it. This I had long felt, before the period came which suddenly threw me involuntarily out of it. Here I am, living in the present, without a why or a wherefore, trusting that something will shape my course intelligibly. I am completely without object. And when occasionally I emerge, if I may so speak, into actual life, I feel that I have dissipated time. A sense of guilt accompanies that of pleasure, and I return inwardly into a deeper, intenser life, breaking those tender roots which held me fast for a short period to the outward. In study only do I enter with wholeness; nothing else appears to take hold of my life." … "I am staying here, intentionally, for a short period. When the time arrives" (for leaving) "heaven knows what I may do. I am now perfectly dumb before it. Perhaps I may return and enter into business with more perseverance and industry than before; perhaps I may stay here; it may be that I shall be led elsewhere. But there is no utility in speculating on the future. If we lived as we should, we would feel that we lived in the presence of God, without past or future, having a full consciousness of existence, living the 'eternal life.' …

      "George, do not get too engrossed with outward business. Rather neglect a part of it for that which is immortal in its life, incomparable in its fulness. It is a deep, important truth: 'Seek first the kingdom of God, and then all things will be added.' In having nothing we have all."

      TO MRS. HECKER.—"Brook Farm, May 16, 1843.—DEAR MOTHER: You will not take it unkind, my not writing to you before? I am sure you will not, for you know what I am. Daily I feel more and more indebted to you for my life, especially when I feel happy and good. How can I repay you? As you, no doubt, would wish me to-by becoming better and living as you have desired and prayed that I should, which I trust, by Divine assistance, I may.

      "Mother, I cannot express the depth of gratitude I feel toward you for the tender care and loving discipline with which you brought me up to manhood. Without it, oh! what might I not have been? The good that I have, under God, I am conscious that I am greatly indebted to thee for; at times I feel that it is thou acting in me, and that there is nothing that can ever separate us. A bond which is as eternal as our immortality, our life, binds us together and cannot be broken.

      "Mother, that I should be away from home at present no doubt makes you sorrowful often, and you wish me back. Let me tell you how it is with me. The life which surrounds me in New York oppresses me, contracts my feelings, and abridges my liberty. Business, as it is now pursued, is a burden upon my spiritual life, and all its influence hurtful to the growth of a better life. This I have felt for a long time, and feel it now more intensely than before. And the society I had there was not such as benefited me. My life was not increased by theirs, and I was gradually ceasing to be. I was lonely, friendless, and without object in this world, while at the same time I was conscious of a greater degree of activity of mind in another direction. These causes still remain. …

      " … I feel fully conscious of the importance of making any change in my life at my present age—giving up those advantages which so many desire; as well as the necessity of being considerate, prudent, and slow to decide. I am aware that my future state here, and hence hereafter, will greatly depend upon the steps I now take, and therefore I would do nothing unadvised or hastily. I would not sacrifice eternal for worldly life. At present I wish to live a true life, desiring nothing external, seeing that things external cannot procure those things for and in which I live. I do not renounce things, but feel no inclination for them. All is indifferent to me—poverty or riches, life or death. I am loosed. But do not on this account think I am sorrowful; nay, for I have nothing to sorrow for. Is there no bright hope at a distance which cheers me onward and beckons me to speed? I dare not say. Sometimes I feel so—it is the unutterable. Yet I remain contented to be without spring or autumn, youth or age. One tie has been loosened after another; the dreams of my youth have passed away silently, and the visions of the future I then beheld have vanished. I feel awakened as from a dream, and like a shadow has my past gone by. With the verse at the bottom of the picture you gave me, I can say:

      "'Oh! days that once I used to prize,

       Are ye forever gone?

       The veil is taken from my eyes,

       And now I stand alone.'

      "But I would not recall those by-gone days, nor do I stand alone. No! Out from this life will spring a higher world, of which the past was but a weak, faint shadow."

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       Table of Contents

      AT BROOK FARM

      THE famous though short-lived community at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, where Isaac Hecker made his first trial of the common life, was started in the spring of 1841 by George Ripley and his wife, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. Dwight, George P. Bradford, Sarah Sterns, a niece of George Ripley's, Marianne Ripley, his sister, and four or five others whose names we do not know. In September of the same year they were joined by Charles A. Dana, now of the New York Sun. Hawthorne's residence at the Farm, commemorated in the Blithedale Romance, had terminated before Mr. Dana's began. The Curtis brothers, Burrill and George William, were there when Isaac Hecker came. Emerson was an occasional visitor; so was Margaret Fuller. Bronson Alcott, then cogitating his own ephemeral experiment at

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