CHARLES LANE HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE 1800 Charles Lane was born in Hackney, which at that time was a suburban village east of London. HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE 1841 Theodore Dwight, Jr.’s THE HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT FROM THE FIRST SETTLEMENT TO THE PRESENT TIME (NY:, Harper and Brothers, 450 pages). Charles Lane’s THE THIRD DISPENSATION, London, J. Pavey (a 24-page description of the “universal dispensation” which Lane hoped to inaugurate). At the back of James Pierrepont Greaves’s SPIRITUAL CULTURE; OR, THOUGHTS FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF PARENTS AND TEACHERS, Boston, Joseph Dowe, 22 Court Street, on pages 79-108, Bronson Alcott’s 1836 THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE OF HUMAN CULTURE was reprinted anonymously under the title THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL CULTURE. John T. Conquest edited THE HOLY BIBLE, CONTAINING THE AUTHORIZED VERSION ... WITH TWENTY THOUSAND EMENDATIONS (London: Longman, Brown & Company; Bungay: John Childs and Son). HISTORY OF THE BIBLE HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE 1842 September 28, Wednesday: A federal court decided John Brown’s bankruptcy case, as the culmination of years of dicey business decisions. His creditors were awarded all but the essentials which the Brown family needed to sustain life — but this proceeding did free him. A failed surveyor, farmer, speculator, schoolteacher, tanner, and cattleman, he showed up as a wool dealer in an 1848 credit report: “his condition is questionable.” Winter 1849: “may or may not be good.” Summer 1850: “his means are equally obscure.” Still in his forties, he looked sixty to credit reporters. The agency lost him when he switched lines of work yet again, only to fail yet again. Like many another misfit who pushed a doomed venture too far, he quit when he had no other choice. Having grown whiskers for the first time, his craggy face looked still more ancient. Everyone had an opinion of this broken man. “Served him right.” Overhearing such comments, Thoreau said he felt proud even to know him and questioned why people “talk as if a man’s death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.” The bankrupt court had restored this loser’s freedom in 1842. Now it was 1859, and no earthly court could save John Brown after his failure at Harpers Ferry. HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE Waldo Emerson continued in his journal: 1 Next morning, we begun our walk at 6 /2 o’clock for the Shaker 1 Village distant 3 /2 miles. Whilst the good Sisters were getting ready our breakfast, we had a conversation with Seth Blanchard & Cloutman of the Brethren, who gave an honest account by yea & by nay of their faith & practice. They were not stupid like some whom I have seen of their society, & not worldly like others.... From the Shaker Village we came to Littleton, & thence to Acton, still in the same redundance of splendour. It was like a day of July, and from Acton we sauntered leisurely homeward to finish the nineteen miles of our second day before four in the afternoon. After the two walkers returned to Concord, Margaret Fuller came visiting the Emerson home for two weeks. Lidian Emerson was on opium and began to fantasize connections between Margaret and Waldo, and Margaret had to defend by pointing out that on two of the evenings Lidian supposed she spent talking to Waldo, actually she had been with Ellery Channing or Henry Thoreau while Waldo had been alone, writing in his study. There was embarrassment at the dining table when Lidian burst into tears at an imagined slight. After the meal the two women went walking and evidently bonded somewhat, for Lidian confided to Margaret that “she has a lurking hope that Waldo’s character will alter, and that he will be capable of an intimate union.” Margaret mused on this in her journal: I suppose the whole amount of the feeling is that women cant bear to be left out of the question. ...when Waldo’s wife, and the mother of that child that is gone [Waldo Jr.] thinks me the most privileged of women, & that EH [Elizabeth Hoar] was happy because her love [Charles (?) Emerson] was snatched away for a life long separation, & thus she can know none but ideal love: it does seem a little too insulting at first blush. – And yet they are not altogether wrong. HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE An entanglement arose when Ellery Channing wanted to visit his former love Caroline Sturgis on Naushon Island one last time, at her suggestion, before his new wife Ellen Fuller Channing would arrive in Concord from Boston. Margaret Fuller had no objection and Ellery went to Naushon but then Ellen arrived early in Concord and discovered his absence and Margaret was unwilling to admit where he was — and everyone became rather upset. Margaret recorded: If I were Waldo’s wife, or Ellery’s wife, I should acquiesce in all these relations, since they needed them. I should expect the same feeling from my husband, & I should think it little in him not to have it. I felt I should never repent of advising Ellery to go whatsoever happened. Well, he came back next day, and All’s Well that Ends Well.... Mama [Emerson’s mother Ruth Haskins Emerson] & Lidian sympathized with me almost with tears. Waldo looked radiant, & HT [Henry Thoreau] as if his tribe had won a victory. Well it was a pretty play, since it turned out no tragedy at last. Ellery told Ellen at once how it was, and she took it just as she ought. Bronson Alcott, Henry Wright, Charles Lane, and Lane’s son William (who was about 9 years of age), embarked at Gravesend on the Leland for Boston. They brought a large library of books on mysticism to be used “in the commencement of an Institution for the nurture of men in universal freedom of action, thought, and being.” More important, Lane brought his life savings of approximately $2,000.00. Wright’s bride and infant waited in England for developments. HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE October 21, Friday: The Liberator. Frederick Douglass lectured at Rome, New York. Commodore Thomas Jones USN learned that in fact war has not broken out between Mexico and the United States of America, lowered his flag, and sailed out of the harbor of Monterrey, California. The United States of America would need to apologize to Mexico. Bronson Alcott, Henry Gardiner Wright,1 Charles Lane, and Lane’s son William Lane arrived at Dove Cottage in Concord, bringing with them from England many invaluably impressive volumes of metaphysical 1. This Henry Gardiner Wright was an English companion of Charles Lane. (The American ex-reverend, Henry C. Wright, was at this point on an extended tour of Europe.) HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES LANE CHARLES LANE speculation. …And speaking of sentiment brings us very naturally to the ‘Dovecote.’ That was the name of the little brown house which Mr. Brooke had prepared for Meg’s first home. Laurie had christened it, saying it was highly appropriate to the gentle lovers who ‘went on together like a pair of turtle- doves, with first a bill and then a coo.’ It was a tiny house, with a little garden behind and a lawn about as big as a pocket-handkerchief in the front. Here Meg meant to have a fountain, shrubbery, and a profusion of lovely flowers, though just at present the fountain was represented by a weather-beaten urn, very like a dilapidated slop-bowl, the shrubbery consisted of several young larches, who looked undecided whether to live or die, and the profusion of flowers was merely hinted by regiments of sticks to show where seeds were planted. But inside, it was altogether charming, and the happy bride saw no fault from garret to cellar. To be sure, the hall was so narrow it was fortunate that they had no piano, for one never could have been got in whole, the dining-room was so small that six people were a tight fit, and the kitchen stairs seemed built for the express purpose of precipitating both servants and china pell-mell into the coal-bin. But once get used to these slight blemishes and nothing could be more complete, for good sense and good taste had presided over the furnishing, and the result was highly satisfactory. There were no marble-topped tables, long mirrors, or lace curtains in the little parlor, but simple furniture, plenty of books, a fine picture or two, a stand of flowers in the bay-window, and, scattered all about, the pretty gifts which came from friendly hands and were the fairer for the loving messages they brought. THE ALCOTT FAMILY October 21st 42 The atmosphere is so dry and transparent, and as it were inflammable at this season — that a candle in the grass shines white and dazzling, and purer and brighter the farther off it is. Its heat seems to have been extracted and only its harmless refulgent light left. It is a star dropt down. The ancients were more than poetically true when they called fire Vulcan’s flower. Light is somewhat almost moral– The most intense — as the fixed stars and our own sun — has an unquestionable preeminence among the elements. At a certain stage in the generation of all life, no doubt, light as well as heat is developed– It guides to the first rudiments of life. There is a vitality in heat and light {One-third page blank} I never tire of the beauty of certain epithets which the ages have slowly bestowed, as the — Hunters moon and the Harvest moon.