readingthethings's review
5.0
⋆.ೃ࿔࿐ྂ I've been nursing a read of [b:Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father|5501194|Eden's Outcasts The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father|John Matteson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348025592l/5501194._SX50_.jpg|599150] for — a good three years? I remember buying it in a THRILL of excitement after beginning a library copy & running out of time to read it. I’d just acquired a Nook device & thought I CAN BUY THE EBOOK AND HAVE IT AGAIN IMMEDIATELY. But I am THE WORST at remembering to read what’s on my ereader list because it isn’t sitting in front of me collecting dust & saying READ ME SILLY FOOL. So I took it up again off & on throughout the years, reading a few pages here & there & forgetting again.
I love it A TON but have taken no notes & am frankly too appallingly disinclined to retrace my steps to read it again from the beginning, so I’m taking up today (September 12, 2020) at page 206 where I left off some time ago. I just have way too many books to read. But I’m craving this one, having recently read & thoroughly enjoyed The Journals of Bronson Alcott: Volume One, which leave off conveniently where Eden's Outcasts begins as I pick it back up again. Maybe after I finish I’ll go back & see what I read before.
Of these journals, I wrote in early 2020: ⋆.ೃ࿔࿐ྂ
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
❀ April 10: I love this idea from the Introduction by Odell Shepard: that Alcott wrote these journals so that one day, when old & no longer busy, he could look back on the parts of himself & his thoughts and see some cohesive whole. Shepard suggests in the introduction that we remember Alcott as an absurd man but fail to notice how many loved him and revered him in his day, or to contemplate why that might be. And though we remember he often borrowed money, we fail to consider why people might have been willing to lend it. Example: why was Ralph Waldo Emerson willing to send Alcott to England, and to pay for it?
❀ April 16: I’m loving how much influence Bronson clearly had over Ralph Waldo Emerson. Not that Emerson wasn’t his own man; I just didn’t realize how much they talked. I also love that Emerson & Henry David Thoreau confirm Bronson was totally open to their ideas. That he lived “we” over “I.” Bronson modeled his teaching style after Jesus & Socrates, loving teaching because he so strongly believed mind should seek mind, and preferring to teach children because their minds were still open. Idealistic, hopeful, he lived what he believed, never letting go whatever the world thought of him. Odell Shepard describes him as an old tree standing over Concord, dropping seeds over decades. // “Reason, thus hushed into slumber, sleeps in secure repose. To dare to think, to think for oneself, is denominated pride and arrogance. And millions of human minds are in this state of slavery and tyranny.” // Wow, he says think for yourself & be suspicious of popular ideas. He hadn’t even met Emerson yet. Summer of 1828 now, & he refers to himself as “we” :P He is planning to marry “May” & be a teacher. “I do love this good woman, & I love her because she is good. I love her because she loves me.” He’s discussing his melancholy spirit. He feels that doing math & science may bring him down to reality. He dislikes sermons which teach a man how to die rather than how to live. Abigail has now read his journal. Into 1829.
❀ April 19: He wants to write a history of the human mind from infancy to the end of one’s life, written first by the parents, then by the children. I agree it would be interesting to read. Now he is speaking of how long he lived without knowing the riches of true literature & how they fill his soul. & now he says his ideas don’t have words. I know exactly what he means. He says history gives us a vantage point not seen before. Speaking of a student: “His mind has got the mastery of his intellect.” // “[Facts] like the leafless trees in winter, are the mere memorials of the summer blossom and autumnal fruit.” // I love his description of a morning scene outside his window as he sits at his desk. Alcott is writing of the meaning and life we put on Nature. Emerson had these entries with him when he wrote his essay Nature. My this is making me joyful. I see a lot of myself in the way his mind works, though he better articulates what is feeling in me. “Biography is the only true historical record of human nature.” YES. “When God would reveal Himself to a people He entrusts that sacred truth not to the people in their aggregate capacity but to a gifted spirit among them, who transfuses it from himself into them.” // I’m getting a sense how his “Talks” must have sounded. I’d have attended. He says the volumes of life experience we need to know are written on our own hearts in purity. Turn to them first. He says to see God, look in an infant’s face. I love the relation of his discussions with Emerson & other Transcendentalists, as well as references to his home life. Now he’s explaining how he prefers his own thoughts to church-going. He says he’ll find God in the Holy temple of Self. He says people are to the spirit as buds are to the stem. Emerson is just beginning his essay Nature. The Transcendental Club just met for the first time! Next meeting they discuss American Genius, then The Education of Humanity. Alcott publishes Conversations with Children on the Gospels (which Emerson approves) & is hooted at in the streets by children. Teachers in the community view him as an interloper. He grows ill. He predicts Emerson’s name will live into the ages. Says every human must make a mark on his or her present, and correct its ills, in a way that speaks to other eras, and in this way live on. He critiques Emerson as too present in the world — too interested in fame. “I am an idea without hands.” He enjoys being among those who’ve not let book and education rob them of their nature: “His vocabulary is not shorn of woods, winds, water, shy, toil, humanity. It hath a soul in it… It is devoid of pretense. It is mother-tongue.” (I was just thinking this!) He writes of a tough year on his birthday 1837, but is grateful it has taught him much. The following year his school closes. Emerson suggests he write but pronounces his writing poor, so he begins to rely on the money made from his Conversations (lectures about town). England responds well to the same publications Boston disliked. He has to sell his books.
❀ April 21: “Nature concretes soul.” Reverend Ezra Ripley tells Alcott his views on God seem like atheism because of their focus on humanity, and their near-sweeping away of God but for his presence in nature. I’m loving the frank friendship with Emerson. 1838 — & he journals what Emerson says about History in the essay Nature. He also suggests we need a distinctly American literature, which I believe Emerson stated in The Poet three or four years later! He says thought is more keen when activated in nature. I should try that. 1839 & he loses another school because he won’t dismiss a black student. Nearly all other parents withdraw their students. He just referenced his hope of writing a book about youth’s soul exposed which a footnote says was written by Louisa. Was it [b:Little Women|41557328|Little Women|Louisa May Alcott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1535485591l/41557328._SX50_.jpg|3244642]? He’s talking of his favorite book [b:The Pilgrim's Progress|29797|The Pilgrim's Progress|John Bunyan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405982367l/29797._SY75_.jpg|1960084]. Mine is [b:Gone with the Wind|819699|Gone with the Wind|Margaret Mitchell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347389987l/819699._SY75_.jpg|3358283]. Looking over Emerson’s writing notes: “I had my soul, but not voice.” Ah, that makes me cry for him. Again accused of atheism: “I have lived in God, during the day. I cannot write out the insight of the hours.” <3 He observes that Emerson is all intellect and lacks the heart to effectively speak on humor. Ha! He reads his journal to Abby (his wife Abigail) and she apparently goes through much of the parts about herself with scissors — lost to history! Bronson describes a butcher shop: “Death yawns at me as I walk up and down this abode of skulls.” I love this guy. I’d have gone to his school.
Oh, he’s just had and lost a baby son. I didn’t realize: “A true son of its mother — a Joy in a Winding Sheet.” How beautifully put. He’s so sweet in the letter to his mother. Now he’s reading Nicholas Nickleby! He speaks of Jesus’s “constancy to the soul” & greatness.” Of nature as a teacher in his childhood: “God spoke to me while I walked the fields. I read not the gospel of Wisdom from books written by man, but from the page inscribed by the finger of God. The breath of that mountain air, that blue and uncontained horizon, not less than my mother’s gentle teachings — not by words, but smiles of kindly approval — were my teachers.”
He wishes Jesus had kept a diary he could read. Margaret Fuller has joined the Transcendental Club & The Dial is suggested. He considers Fuller intelligent and lends her his journal. He says the Democrats speak of improving the masses, but not the Individual. Yikes, he lost the journals he wrote for 1841-1845! Abba May (“Amy” in [b:Little Women|41557328|Little Women|Louisa May Alcott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1535485591l/41557328._SX50_.jpg|3244642]) is born. He writes Orphic Sayings. He visits England at Emerson’s expense. Moves to Fruitlands. Between 1841 & 1846, he loses the experiment at Fruitlands, wants to die, and becomes forever altered. He spends his Sundays with Emerson, is becoming friends with Thoreau, reads, gardens, and apparently begins reading The Faerie Queen to his daughters.
His wife's journal here takes up the narrative of intervening years (published as [b:My Heart is Boundless: Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa's Mother|15038613|My Heart is Boundless Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa's Mother|Eve LaPlante|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347278895l/15038613._SX50_.jpg|21523449]): “Some flowers give out little or no odour until crushed.” She obviously misses him. She writes about Fruitlands in 1843. She is growing weary of Charles Lane. The family post office has been established. Wow, Alcott just went to jail for not paying his taxes — two years before Thoreau did the same! Abba seems embarrassed by their family debts and Alcott’s unwillingness to labor and willingness to accept loans from friends. A feminist speech: woman does, man speculates. A footnote by Odell Shepard says Bronson would agree.
Now we’re back in 1842 during the England trip again in Bronson’s viewpoint, the bits of which were saved by his wife. I love the overlap! He visits Westminster Abbey — Elizabeth and Mary’s tombs. I want to see them! He visits the Tower. I love this description: “Saw Heraud again; but he gives me no pleasure, the poor self-worshipper gaping all the while at his own ghostly image in his books.” That’s it for Bronson’s journal until 1846, & we’re back in Concord after the failure of the Fruitlands experiment: “You can never hurry mankind, goad them never so fiercely.” He feels he can’t do anything else to help but work with children, & these are prohibited him. “Grief is the stalactites formed in the cave of the heart, whence the light of joy is shut out and where the tears are congealed.” He sounds far less excited. He wishes to renew his youthful excitement in his friendship with Emerson. He dreads the daily drudgery of life, clearly having lost his ideals & seeing only the dim present rather than the possible, hopeful future. I feel sorry for him.
❀ April 22, having finished the last of the journal: What an absolutely lovely read, & an absolutely lovely man. I’m not sure there’s a better way to spend one’s Spring 2020 quarantine than under a spring air in 1840s Concord beside Bronson Alcott. I feel sad that he lost his zeal after Fruitlands. He had much to offer but scarce few who would listen. I like Odell Shepard’s suggestion that in his later years he came to appreciate the patience in nature: changes are not swift. Not great changes. “When a man’s own culture falls behind that of his time, he is conservative. When it outstrips and enables him to over-see his time, he is a reformer.” // “Consider how few persons you shall meet who are as sweet & sane as nature is. One quaffs health, courage, genius, and sanctity from that cup, and is never satiated with it.”
The journal doesn’t go far beyond Fruitlands, so I’m glad to be taking up the tale again in [b:Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father|5501194|Eden's Outcasts The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father|John Matteson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348025592l/5501194._SX50_.jpg|599150]. :) ⋆.ೃ࿔࿐ྂ
I love it A TON but have taken no notes & am frankly too appallingly disinclined to retrace my steps to read it again from the beginning, so I’m taking up today (September 12, 2020) at page 206 where I left off some time ago. I just have way too many books to read. But I’m craving this one, having recently read & thoroughly enjoyed The Journals of Bronson Alcott: Volume One, which leave off conveniently where Eden's Outcasts begins as I pick it back up again. Maybe after I finish I’ll go back & see what I read before.
Of these journals, I wrote in early 2020: ⋆.ೃ࿔࿐ྂ
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
❀ April 10: I love this idea from the Introduction by Odell Shepard: that Alcott wrote these journals so that one day, when old & no longer busy, he could look back on the parts of himself & his thoughts and see some cohesive whole. Shepard suggests in the introduction that we remember Alcott as an absurd man but fail to notice how many loved him and revered him in his day, or to contemplate why that might be. And though we remember he often borrowed money, we fail to consider why people might have been willing to lend it. Example: why was Ralph Waldo Emerson willing to send Alcott to England, and to pay for it?
❀ April 16: I’m loving how much influence Bronson clearly had over Ralph Waldo Emerson. Not that Emerson wasn’t his own man; I just didn’t realize how much they talked. I also love that Emerson & Henry David Thoreau confirm Bronson was totally open to their ideas. That he lived “we” over “I.” Bronson modeled his teaching style after Jesus & Socrates, loving teaching because he so strongly believed mind should seek mind, and preferring to teach children because their minds were still open. Idealistic, hopeful, he lived what he believed, never letting go whatever the world thought of him. Odell Shepard describes him as an old tree standing over Concord, dropping seeds over decades. // “Reason, thus hushed into slumber, sleeps in secure repose. To dare to think, to think for oneself, is denominated pride and arrogance. And millions of human minds are in this state of slavery and tyranny.” // Wow, he says think for yourself & be suspicious of popular ideas. He hadn’t even met Emerson yet. Summer of 1828 now, & he refers to himself as “we” :P He is planning to marry “May” & be a teacher. “I do love this good woman, & I love her because she is good. I love her because she loves me.” He’s discussing his melancholy spirit. He feels that doing math & science may bring him down to reality. He dislikes sermons which teach a man how to die rather than how to live. Abigail has now read his journal. Into 1829.
❀ April 19: He wants to write a history of the human mind from infancy to the end of one’s life, written first by the parents, then by the children. I agree it would be interesting to read. Now he is speaking of how long he lived without knowing the riches of true literature & how they fill his soul. & now he says his ideas don’t have words. I know exactly what he means. He says history gives us a vantage point not seen before. Speaking of a student: “His mind has got the mastery of his intellect.” // “[Facts] like the leafless trees in winter, are the mere memorials of the summer blossom and autumnal fruit.” // I love his description of a morning scene outside his window as he sits at his desk. Alcott is writing of the meaning and life we put on Nature. Emerson had these entries with him when he wrote his essay Nature. My this is making me joyful. I see a lot of myself in the way his mind works, though he better articulates what is feeling in me. “Biography is the only true historical record of human nature.” YES. “When God would reveal Himself to a people He entrusts that sacred truth not to the people in their aggregate capacity but to a gifted spirit among them, who transfuses it from himself into them.” // I’m getting a sense how his “Talks” must have sounded. I’d have attended. He says the volumes of life experience we need to know are written on our own hearts in purity. Turn to them first. He says to see God, look in an infant’s face. I love the relation of his discussions with Emerson & other Transcendentalists, as well as references to his home life. Now he’s explaining how he prefers his own thoughts to church-going. He says he’ll find God in the Holy temple of Self. He says people are to the spirit as buds are to the stem. Emerson is just beginning his essay Nature. The Transcendental Club just met for the first time! Next meeting they discuss American Genius, then The Education of Humanity. Alcott publishes Conversations with Children on the Gospels (which Emerson approves) & is hooted at in the streets by children. Teachers in the community view him as an interloper. He grows ill. He predicts Emerson’s name will live into the ages. Says every human must make a mark on his or her present, and correct its ills, in a way that speaks to other eras, and in this way live on. He critiques Emerson as too present in the world — too interested in fame. “I am an idea without hands.” He enjoys being among those who’ve not let book and education rob them of their nature: “His vocabulary is not shorn of woods, winds, water, shy, toil, humanity. It hath a soul in it… It is devoid of pretense. It is mother-tongue.” (I was just thinking this!) He writes of a tough year on his birthday 1837, but is grateful it has taught him much. The following year his school closes. Emerson suggests he write but pronounces his writing poor, so he begins to rely on the money made from his Conversations (lectures about town). England responds well to the same publications Boston disliked. He has to sell his books.
❀ April 21: “Nature concretes soul.” Reverend Ezra Ripley tells Alcott his views on God seem like atheism because of their focus on humanity, and their near-sweeping away of God but for his presence in nature. I’m loving the frank friendship with Emerson. 1838 — & he journals what Emerson says about History in the essay Nature. He also suggests we need a distinctly American literature, which I believe Emerson stated in The Poet three or four years later! He says thought is more keen when activated in nature. I should try that. 1839 & he loses another school because he won’t dismiss a black student. Nearly all other parents withdraw their students. He just referenced his hope of writing a book about youth’s soul exposed which a footnote says was written by Louisa. Was it [b:Little Women|41557328|Little Women|Louisa May Alcott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1535485591l/41557328._SX50_.jpg|3244642]? He’s talking of his favorite book [b:The Pilgrim's Progress|29797|The Pilgrim's Progress|John Bunyan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405982367l/29797._SY75_.jpg|1960084]. Mine is [b:Gone with the Wind|819699|Gone with the Wind|Margaret Mitchell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347389987l/819699._SY75_.jpg|3358283]. Looking over Emerson’s writing notes: “I had my soul, but not voice.” Ah, that makes me cry for him. Again accused of atheism: “I have lived in God, during the day. I cannot write out the insight of the hours.” <3 He observes that Emerson is all intellect and lacks the heart to effectively speak on humor. Ha! He reads his journal to Abby (his wife Abigail) and she apparently goes through much of the parts about herself with scissors — lost to history! Bronson describes a butcher shop: “Death yawns at me as I walk up and down this abode of skulls.” I love this guy. I’d have gone to his school.
Oh, he’s just had and lost a baby son. I didn’t realize: “A true son of its mother — a Joy in a Winding Sheet.” How beautifully put. He’s so sweet in the letter to his mother. Now he’s reading Nicholas Nickleby! He speaks of Jesus’s “constancy to the soul” & greatness.” Of nature as a teacher in his childhood: “God spoke to me while I walked the fields. I read not the gospel of Wisdom from books written by man, but from the page inscribed by the finger of God. The breath of that mountain air, that blue and uncontained horizon, not less than my mother’s gentle teachings — not by words, but smiles of kindly approval — were my teachers.”
He wishes Jesus had kept a diary he could read. Margaret Fuller has joined the Transcendental Club & The Dial is suggested. He considers Fuller intelligent and lends her his journal. He says the Democrats speak of improving the masses, but not the Individual. Yikes, he lost the journals he wrote for 1841-1845! Abba May (“Amy” in [b:Little Women|41557328|Little Women|Louisa May Alcott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1535485591l/41557328._SX50_.jpg|3244642]) is born. He writes Orphic Sayings. He visits England at Emerson’s expense. Moves to Fruitlands. Between 1841 & 1846, he loses the experiment at Fruitlands, wants to die, and becomes forever altered. He spends his Sundays with Emerson, is becoming friends with Thoreau, reads, gardens, and apparently begins reading The Faerie Queen to his daughters.
His wife's journal here takes up the narrative of intervening years (published as [b:My Heart is Boundless: Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa's Mother|15038613|My Heart is Boundless Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa's Mother|Eve LaPlante|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347278895l/15038613._SX50_.jpg|21523449]): “Some flowers give out little or no odour until crushed.” She obviously misses him. She writes about Fruitlands in 1843. She is growing weary of Charles Lane. The family post office has been established. Wow, Alcott just went to jail for not paying his taxes — two years before Thoreau did the same! Abba seems embarrassed by their family debts and Alcott’s unwillingness to labor and willingness to accept loans from friends. A feminist speech: woman does, man speculates. A footnote by Odell Shepard says Bronson would agree.
Now we’re back in 1842 during the England trip again in Bronson’s viewpoint, the bits of which were saved by his wife. I love the overlap! He visits Westminster Abbey — Elizabeth and Mary’s tombs. I want to see them! He visits the Tower. I love this description: “Saw Heraud again; but he gives me no pleasure, the poor self-worshipper gaping all the while at his own ghostly image in his books.” That’s it for Bronson’s journal until 1846, & we’re back in Concord after the failure of the Fruitlands experiment: “You can never hurry mankind, goad them never so fiercely.” He feels he can’t do anything else to help but work with children, & these are prohibited him. “Grief is the stalactites formed in the cave of the heart, whence the light of joy is shut out and where the tears are congealed.” He sounds far less excited. He wishes to renew his youthful excitement in his friendship with Emerson. He dreads the daily drudgery of life, clearly having lost his ideals & seeing only the dim present rather than the possible, hopeful future. I feel sorry for him.
❀ April 22, having finished the last of the journal: What an absolutely lovely read, & an absolutely lovely man. I’m not sure there’s a better way to spend one’s Spring 2020 quarantine than under a spring air in 1840s Concord beside Bronson Alcott. I feel sad that he lost his zeal after Fruitlands. He had much to offer but scarce few who would listen. I like Odell Shepard’s suggestion that in his later years he came to appreciate the patience in nature: changes are not swift. Not great changes. “When a man’s own culture falls behind that of his time, he is conservative. When it outstrips and enables him to over-see his time, he is a reformer.” // “Consider how few persons you shall meet who are as sweet & sane as nature is. One quaffs health, courage, genius, and sanctity from that cup, and is never satiated with it.”
The journal doesn’t go far beyond Fruitlands, so I’m glad to be taking up the tale again in [b:Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father|5501194|Eden's Outcasts The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father|John Matteson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348025592l/5501194._SX50_.jpg|599150]. :) ⋆.ೃ࿔࿐ྂ
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