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The History Channel Original Podcast.

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History This Week, July 8th, 1843.

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I'm Sally Helm. Massachusetts,

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a hillside overlooking the Nashua Valley.

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Woods, fields, a view

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of the mountains. There's a house

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and a tumble-down barn and a couple

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of apple trees. It may

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not sound like much, but two

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men have looked at this piece

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of land and said, this

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will be our paradise.

0:43

Bronson Alcott, an educator,

0:46

and Charles Lane, an editor, are

0:49

on a mission. They

0:51

want to live by the ideals of

0:53

transcendentalism. That

0:56

movement is surging at this moment

0:58

in the United States, and it holds

1:00

that nature has a central

1:02

role to play in our spiritual

1:05

development. The transcendentalists

1:07

want to live close to the land so

1:10

that they can feel more fully alive.

1:13

So, Alcott and

1:16

Lane have brought their families out

1:18

here to create a rural

1:20

commune, and they've given the

1:22

place a name. Despite

1:25

the fact that there are only those couple

1:27

of apple trees, they're calling it

1:30

Fruitlands.

1:32

And now, on this summer day,

1:35

the founding father of transcendentalism

1:37

drops by for a visit. He's

1:40

Ralph Waldo Emerson, and

1:43

he likes what he sees. Later,

1:45

he'll write, the sun and the

1:48

evening sky do not look calmer than

1:50

Alcott and his family at Fruitlands.

1:54

But

1:54

Emerson also sounds a

1:57

note of caution. They

1:59

look well. in July, he writes, we

2:02

will see them in December.

2:05

And sure enough, come winter,

2:08

things will not be so calm on this

2:10

bucolic hillside. Bronson

2:13

Alcott and Charles Lane will

2:15

be at each other's throats.

2:20

Today,

2:21

Transcendentalists in Trouble.

2:24

Why did a group of idealists

2:26

think they could succeed where

2:28

so many others had failed by

2:30

creating a utopia on Earth?

2:34

And what can we learn from

2:36

their attempt?

2:50

The writer Richard Francis first

2:53

heard about the Fruitlands community as

2:55

a mystery.

2:58

He was studying the ways that Americans have thought

3:01

over time about utopia. What

3:03

would it look like? So when he heard

3:06

about a utopia started by Bronson

3:08

Alcott, he was intrigued,

3:11

partly because Alcott had kept

3:14

diaries. A lot

3:16

of diaries.

3:17

Bronson Alcott was one of the

3:19

biggest, I mean, the most literal sense, diarists

3:22

of the 19th century. There's volume after

3:24

volume after volume of his diaries

3:27

in Harvard University Library.

3:30

But the volumes that

3:33

concern the Fruitlands experiment are

3:35

missing.

3:36

So he went looking for them.

3:39

What could have happened? Did Alcott

3:41

destroy them out of shame? Did

3:43

one of his enemies have them burned? No.

3:47

The real story is classic Bronson.

3:50

He was going on a short trip. He brought his diaries

3:53

with him in a trunk. And somehow,

3:56

he lost them. He got on a ferry

3:58

and they didn't get on with it. him.

4:00

Francis says that's what this guy was like.

4:03

He was legendarily unpractical.

4:07

You know, constantly broke, never paid any of his

4:09

bills. Was a dreamer,

4:11

as Emerson called him.

4:13

But a dreamer who was also

4:15

kind of a genius. He

4:18

captivated those who heard him speak. Alcott

4:22

was a legendary talker. Once

4:24

he's in the zone, he's extremely

4:26

hypnotic. He testifies to this,

4:30

that he kind of completely grips your attention.

4:36

So

4:37

Francis set out to understand the

4:39

Fruitlands experiment.

4:42

What was Bronson Alcott thinking when

4:44

he set up that utopia on a hillside?

4:48

Francis, of course, could not consult the diaries,

4:50

but he could still get a very

4:53

good picture of the man.

4:57

Alcott was an educator, and

4:59

soon before he started on the path to Fruitlands,

5:01

he had started a different utopian

5:04

project. A school. One

5:06

that used unusual methods for

5:09

the time.

5:09

What you might call Socratic teaching,

5:12

whereby he drags information from

5:14

children rather than pushes it into children.

5:16

Word of his innovative

5:19

schoolhouse starts to spread.

5:21

It developed a huge reputation. There

5:24

were three books written about the school,

5:26

records of the classes and so forth.

5:29

But it doesn't last long. It

5:32

failed for basically two

5:34

reasons. One, people

5:36

heard there had been a classroom discussion about

5:39

where babies come from, and they disapproved.

5:42

The other

5:42

was that he had

5:44

a black child in the school, a

5:47

little black girl who he absolutely

5:49

refused to remove from the class

5:52

to his credit, despite

5:54

the parents' disapproval.

5:55

The school closes.

5:59

For Alcott, it's a very important question. It is a blow. — Alcott

6:02

is terribly upset by the failure

6:04

of his school. — And it leaves

6:06

him broke, which to be fair is

6:08

pretty much his normal state. — He's also

6:11

extremely irritating. For one thing,

6:13

he never pays his way at all,

6:15

ever.

6:16

I mean, he just has no conscience

6:18

at all about his debts. — But

6:23

the hapless Alcott has always been

6:26

buoyed by the strength of his friendships.

6:29

While he is this broke, constantly

6:31

floundering teacher, he is also

6:34

a highly respected intellectual

6:37

who has the ear of one of the top thinkers

6:39

of the day, Ralph Waldo

6:42

Emerson.

6:46

Emerson and Alcott are both transcendentalists.

6:50

That means they downplay organized

6:52

religion and look instead to the spirit

6:54

of nature that courses through all

6:57

things, human beings included. Alcott,

7:00

at lectures, speaks of the way that people

7:02

need to protect the Earth, which

7:06

is threatened by the Industrial Revolution.

7:09

Factories on former meadows, mills

7:12

dumping chemicals into streams.

7:13

Alcott

7:16

has admirers, including

7:19

some all the way in England. And

7:21

Emerson tells the discouraged Bronson,

7:24

you should get away for a while. Go talk philosophy

7:27

with these people who think you're so smart.

7:29

— I'll pay for you to go there. And,

7:32

you know, you can sort of recuperate there

7:34

and enjoy the praise

7:36

and the admiration of these people. And

7:38

so that's how he ends up going to London.

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— And in London, Bronson

7:43

Alcott meets a man who, like

7:45

him, is itching to take on

7:47

a grand transcendentalist project,

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Charles Lane. He's

7:53

a writer and a thinker, like Alcott.

7:56

But unlike Alcott... — He's

7:58

got a head screwed on.

8:00

He was a very practical and pragmatic person.

8:03

Charles Lane was formidable,

8:06

even intimidating. And

8:08

he was drawn to Alcott's vision.

8:10

They both saw something they needed

8:12

in the other.

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One thing Alcott needs is cash.

8:20

Charles Lane can help with that. And Lane,

8:23

he needs a fresh start in life.

8:26

He's had a failed marriage. He's looking to

8:28

start over with his 10-year-old son. So,

8:31

Alcott and Lane start making plans.

8:35

They want to establish

8:38

a transcendental utopia

8:40

back in Massachusetts.

8:42

Bronson Alcott, Charles Lane,

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and his son William arrived in

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New England, from England in

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October 1842.

8:51

They end up at Bronson's house in Concord,

8:54

where he lives with his wife Abigail and their

8:56

four daughters. One of those

8:59

daughters is nine-year-old Louisa,

9:01

who will grow up to write one of the most famous

9:04

American novels of all time, Little

9:07

Women.

9:07

They all squash themselves

9:09

into this little cramped cottage in Concord.

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Where Bronson and Charles start

9:15

formulating their ideal

9:17

community. They

9:19

want to resist industrialization

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with all its pollution. And they also

9:24

want to show others, by example,

9:26

how to live a more fulfilling

9:28

life on the land. The

9:31

goal being

9:31

to create perfected

9:33

molecular society, which

9:35

could then reproduce itself. If

9:38

enough people follow their example,

9:41

maybe the world could be saved.

9:44

But first, they have to set this place up,

9:46

figure out the logistics. They

9:48

know they'll need space for nine people.

9:52

Charles Lane and his son Henry, Bronson's

9:54

family of six, plus one fellow

9:56

transcendentalist from London who's tagged along.

9:58

It's got two families. and

10:00

a third member welded together.

10:03

So it's kind of a community as well as a family.

10:06

And I think this is the heart of all the problems

10:08

the community had. They didn't know which they were going

10:10

for.

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But in the spring of 1843, they

10:14

find a patch of countryside that

10:16

seems perfect. Forests

10:25

on rolling hills, mountain views,

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just the place to do what transcendentalists

10:31

do, contemplate nature and

10:33

become better for it. After

10:35

seeing the land, Abigail Alcott writes

10:38

in her journal, one is transported

10:40

from his littleness and the soul expands

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in such a region of sights and

10:45

sounds.

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To be a little more specific, this

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is 90 acres of land, plus

10:53

a dilapidated farmhouse, a pretty

10:56

small one. As Emerson put

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it, they have nearly 100

11:00

acres of land which they do not need

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and no house which they do need. The

11:07

idea was to be self-sufficient. You don't need 90

11:09

acres to be self-sufficient. And

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also what they really wanted was

11:14

an orchard.

11:15

Yeah, I mean fruit lands, I guess that's what they're saying.

11:17

They wanted to be a land of fruit. Well, that's why they

11:19

called it that. It had no fruit.

11:23

There are at least

11:25

three or four trees and there's the

11:27

house and the land is beautiful. So

11:30

they buy the property for $1,800. Charles

11:35

Lane puts up most of it, $1,500, and

11:37

they'll pay the rest off in monthly installments.

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Abigail Alcott convinces her brother

11:43

to be their guarantor. On

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June 1st, the members of fruit

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lands arrive at their new home.

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And Bronson and Charles say, there

11:54

are

11:54

some rules. Rules

11:57

we have made with the goal of helping all

11:59

of us. to perfect ourselves in

12:01

body and mind. The

12:04

rules include no hot showers,

12:07

someone believes that they dull one's cheerfulness,

12:10

and a strict diet. They

12:13

were vegans a

12:14

century before the word was even

12:16

coined. They only wanted

12:18

to eat fresh foods those

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felt the most alive. So

12:23

raw fruit and some vegetables

12:26

if they grow upward toward heaven. So

12:29

like no carrots because those

12:31

grow down into the ground. The

12:34

community also doesn't use manure because

12:36

it's low and unclean.

12:37

They were dressing in

12:40

linen because they wouldn't wear wool

12:43

and they wouldn't wear leather because

12:45

of animal products.

12:46

A lot of these rules are for the

12:48

body. But there are rules

12:51

for the mind too. They're

12:53

supposed to be discussing high-minded topics,

12:55

no gossiping or complaining. Oh,

12:58

and there is one more thing about the body

13:01

and how it should be disciplined.

13:02

There was a kind of strong tendency

13:05

towards

13:07

celibacy advocated by

13:09

Lane. No sex. Lane

13:15

believes that erotic passion blocks

13:18

access to the higher self.

13:20

It is a difficult standard, many would say

13:23

impossible. And yet, as

13:25

people hear about the group's ideals, some

13:28

start to join.

13:33

There was a motley group assembling

13:35

there. Most of the men had to sleep in the barn

13:37

because there wasn't enough room in the house.

13:39

One of these is a local farmer

13:41

named Joseph Palmer, who

13:44

once spent 15 months in

13:46

jail

13:47

for wearing a beard.

13:49

Beards at that time were rare. They signaled

13:52

non-conformity. Other men

13:54

attacked Palmer and tried to shave his

13:56

beard off. So he fought back

13:58

in self-defense. and stabbed

14:01

two of them in the leg. He

14:03

was tried and fined, and when

14:05

he refused to pay, he was thrown

14:08

in jail. Palmer is

14:10

an iconoclast, and he

14:12

doesn't follow all of Fruitland's rules either.

14:16

Bronson and Charles say that animals aren't supposed

14:18

to be used on the farm. No beasts

14:21

of burden. They feel it's unjust.

14:24

But farmer

14:24

Joseph Palmer thinks that rule

14:26

is dumb, so he ignores it. He

14:29

brings his own animals and uses them

14:31

to prepare for planting. What

14:33

do Bronson and Charles do?

14:36

They

14:36

momentarily surrender to common sense

14:39

and let it slide. They needed the

14:41

land to be plowed, so despite their distaste

14:44

for animals and their fear of manure, they

14:46

had animals on their land over

14:48

that summer.

14:48

Later, when people ask

14:50

Abigail, is it true that beasts of burden

14:53

were not kept on the property? They'll

14:55

reply, no, just one

14:58

woman.

15:01

Fruitlands soon attracts other

15:03

characters, like Samuel Larned,

15:06

who claims he'd lived for a year entirely

15:09

on apples.

15:10

There's also a poet named Anna Page.

15:13

She strays from veganism

15:15

by eating a piece of fish at a neighbor's house

15:18

and is kicked out of Fruitlands.

15:21

And then there is Samuel Bauer,

15:23

who firmly believes that people

15:26

should live in their natural state by

15:29

discarding their clothes.

15:31

Not everyone sees the wisdom in this.

15:34

They managed to persuade him to

15:36

wear a kind of linen shift

15:39

and also to confine his romps

15:42

across the landscape to the nighttime.

15:45

Soon, stories spread through the villages

15:48

of a ghostly figure wandering the Nashua

15:50

Valley. A ghostly figure

15:53

who appears to be naked. Fruitlands

15:56

neighbors shrug it off. They basically

15:58

see the commune as a bunch of harmless misfits.

16:02

But

16:04

they are actually more than

16:06

that. We talked to Catherine Shortliffe,

16:09

the director of engagement at the Fruitlands Museum.

16:12

She says members did work

16:14

hard around the farm, and they

16:17

developed themselves intellectually. The

16:20

reading, learning, conversations,

16:23

questioning, those were all really

16:26

central to the philosophies they were

16:28

seeking to live by.

16:30

After dinner, they'd talk about big questions,

16:33

like what is man's greatest

16:35

vice? What is the importance of

16:37

community? The children are

16:40

also expected to give their opinion. Luisa

16:42

writes in her journal, Father asked

16:45

us, what was God's noblest work?

16:48

Anna said men, but I said babies.

16:51

Men are often bad. Babies never

16:54

are.

16:56

Summer

16:56

comes, and the Fruitlanders

16:58

have found a satisfying routine.

17:01

The adults do chores by day and

17:04

study by night. The children split

17:06

their time between lessons and skipping

17:08

through the woods, pretending they're horses or

17:11

fairies. The kids will go

17:13

out and make flower crowns. Little

17:15

Anna Alcott writes a description of her sister

17:17

Lizzie's birthday party. An

17:20

idyllic scene. They take

17:22

to the woods, lane playing the fiddle,

17:24

everyone's singing. Bronson

17:26

reads some poetry and asks everyone

17:28

to choose a flower for Lizzie. Anna

17:31

starts. I said a rose, the

17:33

emblem of love and purity. Father

17:36

also chose a rose. Mother

17:38

said she should give her a forget-me-not

17:41

or remembrance. Mr. Lane

17:43

gave her a piece of moss or humility.

17:47

It is a joyful summer scene. But

17:50

flowers don't last, and summer

17:53

doesn't either. When the

17:55

cold sets in,

17:56

things will get much harder

17:59

at Fruitland.

18:00

The

18:18

first cold

18:20

winds are blowing through the Nashua Valley,

18:23

and many of Fruitlands members

18:25

have fled, probably to someplace

18:28

warmer and drier than the drafty

18:30

farmhouse. But

18:32

Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane

18:35

are determined to carry on. Author

18:38

Richard Francis says that's what any

18:40

good utopian idealist would

18:42

do. They've made considerable

18:44

sacrifices. There's a lot at stake. They've

18:47

invested their money. They've invested their energy.

18:49

They've invested their time.

18:50

But unfortunately, lots of utopian

18:53

communities have something else in common.

18:56

Internal strife.

18:58

At

19:00

Fruitlands, divisions begin

19:02

to form. For one, Abigail

19:05

Alcott is angry at Charles

19:07

Lane.

19:08

Mrs. Alcott kind of actually

19:11

feels that Lane is an interloper

19:13

and is hogging her husband's attention.

19:16

She's starting to resent the way Lane

19:19

pressures Bronson to spend so much of his energy

19:21

on the collective, instead of on his own

19:24

family. Charles says he doesn't

19:26

mean any harm.

19:27

He actually says, I won't be that

19:29

man from old England to break up

19:31

a husband, a wife in New England.

19:33

But he also says things like,

19:36

family love provokes passion and

19:38

distraction. And

19:40

Charles is focused on the community.

19:43

He is worried that it is too small

19:46

to survive.

19:54

His solution is to

19:56

evangelize. Take his message

19:59

on the road. He believes that people

20:01

are sick of crowded cities and numbing

20:04

factory work. He thinks they'd jump

20:06

at the chance to join a place like Fruitlands,

20:09

if only they knew about it. So

20:12

he and Bronson leave the Nashua

20:14

Valley and go to New York City to

20:17

try and find new recruits.

20:21

Meanwhile, back at the farm,

20:24

the harvest was due. The weather

20:26

was about to turn. And there

20:28

was Mrs. Alcott stuck with it.

20:31

Abigail

20:33

and her four daughters are left to

20:35

bring in the harvest, a

20:38

crucial task. At

20:40

first they're like, surely the men

20:42

will be back soon to help get these acres

20:45

of barley out of the fields. But

20:47

then a

20:48

storm rolls in, threatening

20:50

to destroy the crop. And Bronson

20:53

and Charles are nowhere to be found.

20:56

So Abigail and her daughters rush outside,

20:59

and with the help of Lane's son, William,

21:02

they bring in as much barley

21:04

as they can. So we have this

21:06

perfect contrast. Abigail Alcott

21:09

getting in a physical harvest

21:11

of crops. Bronson,

21:13

Alcott, and Charles Lane going

21:15

off for this harvest of people in

21:17

New York.

21:18

That second harvest

21:21

doesn't go well. They set about

21:23

giving their conversations, which

21:25

I suppose did attract the kind of aberration

21:29

that they always attracted, but also a lot of

21:31

mirth.

21:32

People think Fruitlands is

21:34

funny. And even worse, nobody

21:37

signed up.

21:42

Charles and Bronson return to the farm

21:44

with nothing to show for it.

21:47

Bronson Alcott was physically

21:49

ill? plus

22:00

grain to sell. And they'd

22:02

planned to use the money from those sales to help

22:04

pay off the land. Now they can't.

22:07

Katherine Shortliffe says, Abigail

22:10

is the first to realize this

22:12

is a serious problem.

22:17

She's much more of a realist than

22:19

her husband. She sees that the fruit

22:22

lenders don't have what they need to keep warm

22:24

or even feed themselves. They

22:27

are in linen sheaths in

22:29

a farmhouse in

22:30

Massachusetts and

22:34

don't

22:34

have the proper stores for the winter

22:37

in terms of food from some crop

22:40

failures in harvest season.

22:43

So they were not in a good situation

22:46

and really did need to leave for

22:49

safety and for survival. Abigail

22:52

turns to Charles Lane. She

22:55

tells him, this experiment

22:57

is over. It's time to pack it in. But

23:01

Charles is stubborn. He refuses

23:04

to admit defeat. So

23:06

Abigail decides that if the men won't

23:08

end it, she will. She

23:11

writes to her brother Samuel. Together

23:14

they decide he will stop covering

23:16

the monthly payments on the land. She

23:19

says, I do not wish you to put

23:21

a cent here. Next, she

23:23

announces to the men, I'm leaving

23:26

and taking the children. Bronson

23:29

isn't ready to let go. He spends

23:31

December trying to carry on as usual, but

23:34

Lane has grown tired

23:36

of funding the Alcotts and

23:38

he sees that the experiment is dissolving.

23:41

So finally, he leaves. He

23:44

takes his son to live with another communal group

23:46

that's more to his liking, the Shakers,

23:49

who as a rule don't have sex.

23:52

In January, Bronson finally

23:54

gives in two. Though

23:56

it plunges him into despair, he

23:59

goes days without ease.

24:01

The Alcotts finally leave Fruitlands.

24:08

Richard Francis says people are often

24:11

tempted to laugh at Fruitlands, just

24:13

as those New Yorkers did when Charles and Bronson

24:15

tried to get them to join.

24:17

But this community really was made

24:19

up of serious intellectuals trying

24:22

to make a real mark.

24:24

I think it was a noble enterprise

24:26

in many ways, very, very flawed, very confused, people

24:30

who never quite nailed their ideas. And

24:33

yet they were playing with ideas that

24:35

still

24:36

have a lot of relevance decades later. Things

24:39

like ecology, animal rights, mindfulness. Francis

24:44

says all

24:45

those ideas floating

24:47

around today, to his mind, they're not unconnected

24:51

to Fruitlands. It was

24:53

not a total failure. In fact,

24:55

he doesn't even think of it as over.

24:58

The community of Fruitlands is still alive because

25:01

it's alive in the vibrations in

25:03

the ether. They love conversations, they love

25:05

that notion of an electrical spark. That's

25:08

where things really have their life, not in

25:10

a hard material form, but

25:13

in a charge or a ripple or a spark.

25:15

Or in that perfect

25:17

little space or

25:19

in that perfect little molecule that

25:22

they hoped would replicate and

25:24

carry their ideas into the future.

25:33

Thanks for listening to History This

25:35

Week. For moments throughout history

25:38

that are also worth watching, check your local

25:40

TV listings to find out what's on the History

25:42

Channel today. If you wanna get

25:44

in touch, please shoot us an email at

25:46

our email address, historythisweekathistory.com,

25:49

or you can leave us a voicemail, 212-351-0410. Special

25:56

thanks to our guests, Richard Francis,

25:58

author of Fruitlands.

25:59

the Alcott family and their search

26:02

for utopia, and Catherine

26:04

Shortliffe, engagement manager of

26:06

the Fruitlands Museum and the Old Mance

26:09

at the Trustees.

26:09

This episode was

26:11

produced by Corinne Wallace with help from

26:13

Hazel May. It was sound designed by

26:16

Brian Flood and story edited by

26:18

Jim O'Grady. Our senior producer

26:20

is Ben Dixteen. History this week is also

26:22

produced by Julia Press, Chloe Weiner,

26:24

and me, Sally Helm. Our associate

26:27

producer is Emma Fredericks. Our supervising

26:29

producer is Mckamey Lynn, and our executive

26:31

producer is Jesse Katz. Don't

26:33

forget to subscribe, rate, and review history

26:36

this week wherever you get your podcasts, and

26:38

we will see you next week.