Speechless

I titled my previous blog "Skirting the Issue" and never quite got around to conveying why, and I can't leave unfinished business like that. You may have picked up on it: here I've been in the outskirts of Boston for three days, hardly coming within sight of the city, and yet I'm reeling with the effort of choosing what I can see and fit into my schedule, and what will have to go. Heat waves notwithstanding, there are a few things I must do. Today I set out for Concord, fairly certain that I had my choices down and would be good. I would eliminate anything not strictly literary, and I went right to the visitor's center, where a friendly gentleman went over a map outlining the places to see.

I started out at Orchard House, the home that Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, lived in the longest. This is the home in which the story is set, although because of the family's pervasive poverty, they moved very often, sometimes yearly, in her childhood. (Her father was a teacher who had some progressive ideas that got him in trouble over and over, but he didn't neglect the family's need. He just refused to compromise on his ideals.) I can't say that just this book made me a reader, but it is as universal an experience for girls who read as anything I can think of, and I adored it. On the advice of a teacher friend, I had to include the tour. Julie, you were so right! Orchard House is not just beautifully preserved outside, but the objects in the house are, for the most part, the genuine article. (Alcott was famous enough in her lifetime to support her parents and several other family members, and they were mindful in keeping things intact for future generations.) There was even Jo's (Louisa's) "mood" pillow on the sofa, which indicated her temperament at the moment. Stood on end, it meant all was well. Laid flat, it meant she was not to be messed with. I asked the tour guide if they sold those, and she said they did but were out, so I would have to go to the website to order one. I'm thinking that could be useful at school. On the other hand, it might just lead to torment....

Well, the Alcott home was a marvel. Just as in her books (yes, there's more than Little Women, if you didn't know: Little Men and Jo's Boys), the family was passionate about abolition. In life, they harbored at least a few fugitive slaves. Marmee was known by many for her social causes, helping the poor and less fortunate no matter what. For that matter, so was Bronson Alcott. But it left the family in desperate situations at times. When the Alcotts lived next door at the Wayside, Marmee and the girls left to live with relatives in Boston after three years in the house, rather than face another winter with too little fuel and food. Bronson eventually followed, and the cycle continued. It's quite obvious why Louisa was driven to find a way to support the family. No one begrudged Bronson his ideology and he wasn't afraid of hard work, but something had to change their circumstances. She found the way to do that. She continued her work after the abolition of slavery by fighting for women's suffrage: she was the first female registered to vote in Concord and the first to cast a ballot.

After this fabulous tour, I walked past a short stretch of trees on the steep hillside, terraced by Bronson Alcott, to the Wayside. After the wonderful exterior preservation of Orchard House, I was shocked by the appearance of this most historic of all author homes, having housed at least three famous authors. The paint was the same color as I had always seen in pictures, an elegant creamy yellow, but there were few if any parts of the facade that weren't peeling as though the paint were cooking right off at that moment. Knowing this was part of the Minuteman National Park, I was confused at the seeming lack of pride it showed. So was our young ranger guide, I believe. He stopped at one part of the tour to point out some damage inside and mentioned that under new leadership, they were getting funds rolling in to repair some of the most dangerous damage, leaking roofs being the main thing.

After the care and detail presented at Orchard House, it was impossible for this tour to compete for my attention, and yet, here I had the strangest experience. The Lothrop family began preserving the house after buying it from Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter Rose and eventually sold it to the Park Service in 1965. (This was the only house he owned, sometime after the Alcotts, and he made at least one major change that I had wanted to see for a long time.) The Lothrop daughter who owned it last preserved the few things that she could from the Hawthorne's time there; he was a successful man in his time, and the Lothrop family recognized the importance of preservation of history. One of those items was a dining room table, of a sort you might find anywhere in a home of that time, rectangular with room for leaves to add to the size when necessary. In the low light of that room, it gleamed a rich reddish brown the color of ale, as though it had been waxed on a regular basis ever since Hawthorne's death 150 years ago. The ranger spoke of the people who were known guests of the Hawthorne family and sat at the table to share meals and discussions---the Emersons, Thoreau, the Alcott family, Franklin Pierce---and he spun a bit of magic, it seemed. The ranger confessed to being Boston Irish and one who treasured those sorts of traditions, and maybe that's what did it. But I looked at the unscarred surface of that table and I got goosebumps, and to my surprise, I got tears in my eyes. Was it all that greatness humbled by the everyday act of eating a meal at that one table that got me? My own joy at having all my family in one place sitting down to a meal together? Maybe even frustration that here was an object directly linked to so much history within my reach, and I couldn't touch it? Whatever it was, I felt a little breathless as we moved on through the house.

Hawthorne, who I love for his dark side, his torment, as much as for his gift with the language, needed a place to work without distraction, so he added a writing room as a third story and called it his "Sky Parlor." He had bookshelves built in and a writing desk and chair, but he also liked to write standing up, so he had a drop-leaf writing table installed here facing away from any windows so that he wouldn't be distracted. He had used a similar desk at the Salem Custom House where he worked earlier in life, and the ranger gave us the impression that he got in the habit there. That's what I most wanted to see, since I'm usually of the opinion of "Why stand when I can sit?" I think I understand it better now; the discipline of standing would probably make me more focused and less likely to wool-gather. It was more than worth the veeery steep climb!

I was shocked to find I had already spent half the day in just these two sights, with so much more to cover, so I decided to do things geographically and drive to the next closest site, the Emerson house. I had not been that impressed with him when I was younger, but things change when you teach an author, and teaching Self-Reliance to young people is like a call to arms for a battle they are already engaged in. When the light bulb goes on, you see their perception of life change in that moment! So I couldn't skip Emerson. But I thought about it once they let me inside, at 2:30, with no air and 90+ temps outside. It was roasting, but I made it through. It was worth it; the house had passed directly from Emerson's unmarried daughter into a Memorial Association, so it was full of things that belonged to him: his walking canes, his hat, over 3,000 books, his robes, and many paintings. He was (and is still) so respected that the town gave Emerson money to rebuild when a part of his house burned, and so much was given that they suggested he use what was left to travel, so he went to Africa for several months with his daughter while his wife oversaw construction. He was able to travel extensively, meeting Thomas Carlysle and Alfred Lord Tennyson in Europe and exploring the American West with Naturalist John Muir. He himself was revered nearly everywhere and lectured up until the last years of his life. He met Presidents Lincoln and Grant, and was greatly honored when Lincoln told him that he had come to hear Emerson lecture a number of years before. And I learned today the story of another Emerson associate, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who was caned nearly to death on the floor of the Senate for his uncompromising stand against slavery by South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks. I'm ashamed that such a thing happened, but more ashamed that I never knew the story. This is what I love most about teaching literature: always, always, there is something new to learn. The gifts we receive, the insight, are boundless and bottomless. They're limited only by our willingness to study, read, see, think, react, respond. Emerson knew that power and was not afraid to use it, gentle man that he was. He had firm views on abolition, and when his good friend Hawthorne brought him a copy of his newest book that was dedicated to Hawthorne's Bowdoin classmate and friend Franklin Pierce, the president who fought against abolition, Emerson ripped that page out in front of Hawthorne. What kind of conviction must that have taken? What kind of love? Emerson must have known.

There were some details given today about his life that I already knew, about his first wife dying young and the death of his young son, the travel, the abiding love of home despite his many travels. What I didn't have a sense of before was of his reality. I've fallen prey to the English teacher's dilemma of raising some authors to the level of demi-god and forgetting the human presence. (It doesn't help that he was a Unitarian minister, and I'm Unitarian. He's often quoted in our services.) I've walked his halls, breathed the dust of his books, felt the weight of his spirit. I think he can be real now and take a rest from that dangerously high pedestal.

That was six hours of a sweltering day, time that flew like no other. It was enough. I found some lunch at my first real Boston Market restaurant and returned to my cool cave to rest and write---another of the world's longest blogs. Thanks for persevering this far!

Tomorrow: Walden and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I have to try to get to Walden before everyone else on a blistering Saturday morning; they close the park at 1000 visitors and warn that it happens often when it's hot. It's officially hot! Place your bets and check back tomorrow.