Davis called Fields “the shrewdest of publishers and kindest of men. He was the wire that conducted the lightning so that it never struck amiss.”
Most of the major writers of the time stopped by the Old Corner Bookstore once or twice a week, and some came every day. As George Curtis noted, it was “the hub of the Hub,” which attracted “that circle which compelled the world to acknowledge that there was an American literature.” Hawthorne, in particular, felt very comfortable here and came whenever he was in town. In Glimpses of Authors, Caroline Ticknor, the publisher’s granddaughter, describes Hawthorne’s “spot”:
In the small counting-room was “Hawthorne’s Chair,” in a secluded nook; there he was wont to sit dreaming in the shadow, while the senior partner was busy at his desk close by: ... There Hawthorne would take up his positions where he could see and yet be out of sight, and in his chair, for many years it was his custom to ensconce himself, whenever he visited the “Corner”; he often spent whole hours there resting his head upon his hand apparently in happy sympathy with his environment.
In some ways, the Old Corner Bookstore was a victim of its own success. After its heyday in the mid-nineteenth century, the publishing firm of Ticknor and Fields left (it later became Houghton Mifflin). The building then became home, successively, to a string of other bookstores, a haberdashery, a photo supply store, and a pizza joint. In 1960 it was saved from becoming a parking lot by the nonprofit group Historic Boston. Now a protected historic site, it has been home to the Globe Corner Bookstore and the Freedom Trail Foundation and is now a jewelry store. In an ironic twist, the small, two-story brick building is now dwarfed by the enormous glass-walled Borders bookstore just across the street.
Another major hub of Transcendentalist activity was (5) the Masonic Temple at 88 Tremont Street. Built in the early 1830s, this enormous Gothic structure served as a lyceum for Boston society. Emerson gave his first lectures there, a series of ten talks on English literature. The building also served as the meetinghouse for James Freeman Clarke’s Church of the Disciples. In addition, an elementary school begun by Bronson Alcott operated out of room 7 from 1834 to 1839.
Given Transcendentalism’s inherent optimism and belief in the pure spirituality of children, it was probably inevitable that it would spawn an educational reform movement. Although many took up this mantle over the years, including Elizabeth Palmer Peabody with her Pinckney Street kindergarten, George Ripley with Brook Farm, and Alcott and Franklin Sanborn with the Concord School of Philosophy, perhaps the best-known endeavor was Alcott’s School for Human Culture, better known as the Temple School.
Founded in 1834 with a class of thirty boys and girls, the Temple School took a radically different approach to the teaching of children than did the public schools of the time. As described in the 1836 Record of a School by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who was serving as his assistant, Alcott believed in the inherent intelligence of his pupils. Rather than education by memorization and recitation, he taught by lecture and discussion. Lessons frequently included a reading by Alcott and then a discussion led by him. Students, whose ages ranged from six to twelve, were encouraged to voice their own ideas and opinions.
The Gospels provided the basis for the discussions and the platform from which conversation ranged across many topics. The most controversial brushed on sexuality and human reproduction, as described in Alcott’s second volume describing his teaching practices, Conversations with Children on the Gospels:
Mr. Alcott. Yes; you have the thought. And a mother suffers when she has a child. When she is going to have a child, she gives up her body to God, and he works upon it, in a mysterious way, and with her aid, brings forth the Child’s Spirit in a little Body of its own, and when it has come, she is blissful. But I have known some mothers who are so timid that they are not willing to bear the pain; they fight against God, and suffer much more.
While this may not offend our modern sensibilities, any discussion of the birthing process, no matter how vague or sober, was scandalous for Victorian Boston. When Conversations with Children on the Gospels appeared in 1836, Alcott was scorched by the outcry. Many parents pulled their students from the school, and when he endeavored to educate a mulatto girl alongside the children of his Boston patrons, the rest of the families abandoned him. The school folded in 1839, devastating Alcott, who was bedridden for a number of months due to the stress of the personal crisis.
Abolitionist Movement
One of the central tenets of Transcendentalism was the belief that the very essence of God runs through each person and connects the individual with what Emerson termed the Oversoul. Therefore, many Transcendentalists found it intolerable that their black brethren were being held as slaves. Antislavery activities took a variety of forms, but nearly all of the major Transcendentalists became involved with the abolitionist movement in one way or another.
Not surprisingly, Boston was central to this movement. William Lloyd Garrison, one of the city’s earliest activists, made his first major antislavery speech in 1829 in the (6) Park Street Church, at 1 Park Street and began publishing the Liberator in 1831. In 1832 he started the New England Anti-Slavery Society at the African Meeting House at 8 Smith Court, in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, and he worked with the Tappan family of New York to form the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833.
Garrison’s power as an orator and writer is evident in this passage from the first issue of the Liberator:
On this subject [slavery], I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.
Ministers such as Parker, Channing, and Clarke were among Transcendentalism’s most visible abolitionists. All three of these men, as well as many others in churches across Massachusetts and New England, spoke out against slavery almost weekly in their sermons, while writers such as Emerson and Thoreau also took up the call.
Emerson was vocal on such issues as the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which established the states of Kansas and Nebraska and left the issue of slavery up to territorial settlers, or “popular sovereignty.” This allowed each side of the slavery issue to exert enormous pressure on the citizens of those new states, frequently leading to unrest and bloodshed. He hosted the abolitionist John Brown twice in his home and clearly supported Brown’s goals, if not his methods. Thoreau, whose lectures “Slavery in Massachusetts” and “A Plea for Captain John Brown” clearly demonstrated his position, was perhaps the most passionately vocal abolitionist writer. He first gave his lecture “Slavery in Massachusetts” at an antislavery convention in Framingham in 1854, after which William Lloyd Garrison burned the Constitution.
Others took an even more active role against slavery.