22


at West Roxbury: ‘That the Curtis brothers should decide to join Brook Farm was natural. Both had been impressed by Emerson when he had lectured on the “Over-Soul” at Providence in 1835, and Burrill had become a “willing captive to Emerson’s attractions”. Burrill found Emerson an “ethereal and angelic” man, who spoke as “an inhabitant of heaven and with the inspiration and authority of a prophet” (J. Myerson ‘James Burrill Curtis and Brook Farm’, in The New England Quarterly, vol 51, no. 3 (Sep. 1978), p. 397). Although their father wanted them to pursue business careers, Burrill’s interests lay elsewhere and, after considering and rejecting the Transcendentalist Christopher A. Greene’s proposed Happy Valley community, ‘Burrill wrote for information about Brook Farm, which had begun in April, 1841, to its founder George Ripley, who answered by giving the Curtises the terms at Brook Farm for people who wished to work for only part of their board, paying cash for the rest. Ripley was impressed by the “gem” of a letter he had received and wrote his friend Charles A. Dana, a vigorous supporter of the community, to personally assist the Curtises and to “open to them our Scripture”. And so they went, recalled Burrill, to Brook Farm, “at my suggestion & somewhat against our father’s preferences,” as boarders, “being unwilling to commit ourselves too deeply to any systematic schemes of social reconstruction”’ (loc. cit.). However, in August 1843, the brothers left Brook Farm, and they spent much of 1844 and 1845 in Concord, where they were amongst the ‘acquaintances’ who helped Thoreau to build his house (see Walden (Boston: 1854), p. 49) and met Emerson, before travelling to continental Europe, where Burrill remained (in Paris) when George returned to the United States in 1849 (see also Cooke I, pp. 35-36 for an account of the Curtis borthers at this time). In 1851 Burrill also visited the United States briefly, before travelling ‘to England, where he married and established his permanent residence. Unlike George, whose Brook Farm experience led to his advocacy of various social and political reforms, Burrill found an outlet for his early idealism in the church. He was ordained an Anglican clergyman in 1851, received an M.A. degree from Cambridge University in 1861, and settled as chaplain of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge’ (Myerson, p. 423), remaining resident in England until his death at Folkestone in 1895.


Margaret Fuller knew both of the Curtis brothers, possibly through their aunt Eleanor Burrill Burges ([?]1804-1865), the wife of Walter Snow Burges (1808-1892), who was part of the literary circles that Fuller moved in, and she certainly visited Brook Farm while the Curtis brothers were resident there in July and September 1842 (see letters of 1 and 30 July, and September 1842 to Charles K. Newcomb in M. Fuller The Letters, edited by R.N. Hudspeth (Ithaca, NY and London: 1983-1994), pp. 75-79 and 93-94), and the brothers then met her a number of times in Rome in 1847, writing to their family of ‘her wise and witty accounts of persons she has seen’ (quoted in C. Capper, Margaret Fuller; An American Romantic Life (Oxford: 1992-2007), II, p. 330). Interestingly, volume I has been extensively glossed in pencil with the names of contributors of anonymous pieces — perhaps three-quarters have been identified — and with occasional comments, and most of these annotations appear to be by Burrill. The majority of these identifications appear to have been added before the four individual parts were bound up, and consequently some of these notes have been cropped by the binder’s knife, and many of the cropped notes and Burrill Curtis’ ownership signature have been re-written in pencil over or beside the originals. However, the two brothers’ hands are very similar, so it is possible that George also added some of the identifications, perhaps due to his closer contact with the journal, as a contributor. The annotation to ‘A Record of Impressions’ on p. 73 is particularly interesting, since it states (correctly) ‘Margaret Fuller I think G.W.C.’, which seems to show that George identified that piece at least, if not more, and the gloss on p. 84 beside the poem ‘To ****’ (later titled ‘To Eva’) not only adds the correct name ‘[Ralph Waldo] Emerson’ but also the comment ‘To Elizabeth Hoar, who was engaged to Charles Emerson’. Although virtually all of the attributions which are made in this volume are correct, comparison with the authoritative index to The Dial compiled by Cooke — for which he canvassed contributors, including Curtis, for their assistance — reveals that there are three erroneous ones: ‘A Sign from the West’ is incorrectly given to James Freeman Clarke (recte C.P. Cranch); ‘Musings of a Recluse’ is first given to Margaret Fuller, and her name is then scored through and ‘Mrs Ripley’ inserted (recte C.P. Cranch); ‘Woman’, which is signed with the initials ‘W.N.’, is annotated ‘Newell?’ (recte Sophia Ripley). Interestingly, Caroline Tappan appears in the annotations under her maiden name of Caroline Sturgis, suggesting that the identifications may have been made before her marriage to Tappan in 1847 (see pp. 193 and 217). There is also a correction of ‘plan’ to ‘plea’ in W.E. Channing’s ‘Hermitage’, which is required for the rhyme and appears in the version of the poem published in Channing’s Poems (Boston: 1843); however, this appears to be in another, later hand. Cooke dedicates chapter XXVII of An Historical and Biographical Introduction to George William Curtis as a contributor to The Dial, and concludes with the statement that, ‘In later years Curtis frequently wrote in his essays of life at Brook Farm, and of the men and women connected with the transcendentaIist movement. Nothing more delightful or accurate has been written about that period. Though not usually classed as a transcendentalist, Curtis was one of its most legitimate products’ (II, p. 175).


Volumes II to IV are in a uniform binding and have the ownership signatures of Sarah Shaw throughout the volumes, as detailed above. Born Sarah Blake Sturgis, she and her siblings had known Margaret Fuller since childhood, and the friendship continued and grew after Sarah married Francis George Shaw (1809-1882). Shaw had worked for his father’s very successful business before retiring in 1840 with a significant fortune, and the Shaws lived on Spring Street, West Roxbury (close to Brook Farm), where they were active and prominent members of literary and anti-slavery circles. Francis Shaw published translations of numerous works, including George Sand’s Consuelo (Boston: 1846) and its sequel The Countess of Rudolstadt (Boston: 1846), Eliphas Lévi’s The Last Incarnation (New York: 1848), Charles Pellerin’s The Life of Charles Fourier (New York: 1848), and Heinrich Zschokke’s The History of Switzerland (New York and London: 1855), and he was ‘one of the staunchest friends and supporters of Brook Farm, who lived in its immediate vicinity, but never became a member of the community’ (Cooke I, p. 187). Sarah Shaw was an associate of (amongst others) the writers and reformers Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Theodore Parker (who was also a contributor to The Dial). The abolitionist principles and literary interests of Francis and Sarah Shaw were inherited by their children: their son Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863) was a Civil War hero and the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first African-American regiment to be raised in the United States Army; their daughter Josephine Shaw Lowell married Colonel Charles Russell Lowell, a nephew of James Russell Lowell; and their daughter Anna Shaw Curtis married George William Curtis. It is possible that Sarah Shaw only began to subscribe to The Dial after the first volume had been published and that they were bound up for her in these three volumes, as her signature on the first page of II, part 1 shows that she was buying individual parts. Shaw has also occasionally annotated the contents leaf and the text in volume II, in most instances identifying the authors correctly, although ‘Prophecy—Transcendentalism—Progress’ is erroneously given to Emerson on the contents leaf, but correctly given to J.A. Saxton in the text (possibly by another hand). However, there appear to be further annotations both in another hand and Brown’s, and some of the attributions have been overwritten, suggesting that volume I and volumes II-IV may have been subsequently owned by George Curtis, having received the first volume from his brother and the second, third, and fourth either through his wife or from his mother-in-law. Certainly, this set seems to have been together in this form by the early twentieth century when a bookseller’s note indicates that it was sold as a set of four volumes for $75. Due to the small number of subscribers (a maximum, it is believed, of 300), the print-runs for The Dial were always small, and consequently complete sets are rare on the market — Anglo- American auction records only cite four complete sets at auction since 1978.


Sabin 19920.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74