Fruitlands (The Book)

 

Fruitlands (the place) was a utopian community established in June 1843 by New England Transcendentalists Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) and Charles Lane (1800-1870) that lasted until January 1844. Lane purchased what was known as the Wyman farm and its 90 acres, which also included a dilapidated house and barn in Harvard, Massachusetts. Residents were committed to what today would be called a vegan diet, drinking only water, washing in cold water, avoiding animal labor on their farm, and communal ownership of property. The remaining historical buildings are now part of the Fruitlands Museum (which I visited in 2008).

Fruitlands (the book) is Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands, Compiled by Clara Endicott Sears, with Transcendental Wild Oats, by Louisa M. Alcott, first published in 1876, reprinted 1915 (Pantianos Classics). Fruitlands (the book) is this month's selection for our parish book club.

Unless one has a particular historical or philosophical interest in 19th-century New England Transcendentalism and its utopian community experiments at Brook Farm and its short-term unsuccessful offshoot Fruitlands, why read this book? The obvious answer (at least for our book club) is a particular youthful adherent of the Brook Farm community who joined the Fruitlands group briefly in the summer of 1843, namely Servant of God Isaac Hecker (1819-1888), who a year later abandoned transcendentalism for Roman Catholicism, and later became a priest and a famous Catholic apologist and in 1858 founded the Paulist Fathers

Hecker's own personal description of his experience of Fruitlands occupies some six pages of this book, which is a compilation of various contemporary commentaries and recollections of the Fruitlands experiment. Hecker's comments include diary entries from July-August 1843, corresponding with his actual time at Fruitlands, followed by some final comments from 1888, the year both Alcott and later Hecker himself died. The earlier comments reflect how Hecker  experienced Fruitlands and his feelings about it at the time. The end-of-life comments obviously reflect not just recollections from years long past but also his post-transcendentalist, Roman Catholic perspective and re-interpretation of his life.

In 1888, Hecker, asked about the recently deceased Alcott and how he had received Hecker at Fruitlands, responded, "Very kindly, but from mixed and selfish motives. I suspect he wanted me because he thought I would bring money to the Community. Lane was entirely unselfish." (The "money" presumably referred to the Hecker family wealth, which if Isaac had persevered at Fruiltands, might have been made available by his brothers and thus might have contributed to Fruiltands' survival - and seeming success.) Hecker acknowledged "Alcott was a man of great intellectual gifts or acquirements. His knowledge came chiefly from experiences and instinct. He had an insinuating and persuasive way with him." Alcott, however, was also, in Hecker's view, "naturally and constitutionally so odd." Hecker called Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau "three consecrated cranks."

Hecker's contemporary comments at Fruitlands were more well disposed but quite critical even then. He admired Alcott, et al., but doubted Fruiltands would fulfill his long-term needs. He was also homesick. "I have thought of my family this afternoon, and the happiness and love with which I might return to them." Eventually, he decided, "I will go home, be true to the spirit with the help of God, and wait for further light and strength." The Fruiltands community "have been the means of giving me much light on myself, but I feel I would live and progress more in a different atmosphere." After Hecker left, Alcott (according to Hecker's later-in life recollections) said "Hecker has flunked out. He hadn't the courage to persevere. He's a coward." Lane, however, replied, "No; you're mistaken. Hecker is right. He wanted more than we had to give him."

That "more" obviously was what Hecker would eventually find in the Church.

Hecker aside, Fruiltands (the book) is an often rather entertaining, occasionally comic account of the "consecrated cranks" and other unusual characters who briefly populated Fruiltands, along with the long-suffering Mrs. Alcott and her children. Ellery Channing said, "Mrs. Alcott was one of the most refined persons of my acquaintance. She told me afterwards that in 1843-44 she feared for her husband's sanity; he did such strange things without seeming to know how odd they were; wearing only linen clothes and canvas shoes, and eating only vegetables."  According to Lane, "Mr. Alcott makes such high requirements of all persons that few are likely to stay, even of his own family, unless he can become more tolerant of defect."

That last comment, by Charles Lane, summarizes the inevitably failed outcome of such secular utopian communal experiments, of which there were in fact many in the 19th century - a century which widely encouraged the post-Christian belief in human perfectibility and hence utopian possibility. (Contemporaneously, the Shakers were a religiously oriented utopian community which proved much more successful in their time - and were acknowledged as such even by the Fruiltands leadership. According to Lane, some associates, including Hecker, "visited the Shakers and were much attracted by them.")

The community at Fruitlands lasted seven months. It was dependent on farming, which turned out to be too difficult. Fruitlands quotes a certain Mr. Sanborn's Memoirs of Bronson Alcott, "A lack of organizing power to control the steady current of selfishness, as well as the unselfish vagaries of his [Alcott's] followers, was the real cause. Nothing in fact could be more miserable than the failure of this hopeful experiment."

Hecker, for one, went on soon to find something so much better, more long-lasting, more true to authentic human aspirations, while fully aware of human limits.