The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton (12 page)

With a puckish smile, she offered some recollections of my Good Samaritan's being hauled by his young ears across the schoolroom and over the benches by Masters Barret and Perkins to be beaten with their long pine ferules for various classroom delinquencies.

“Poor little Dana!” she said, and laughed outright. “But please, Mrs. Fullerton,” she went on, “enough of our friend. Tell me rather the true history of your life and your recent … incarceration.”

I began at the beginning, but as I spoke of the mills and of my most recent adventures, I saw that nothing seemed to ignite her outrage more than “the economic subjugation of women.” A particular vehemence she directed against those who seldom felt the lash of the law—procurers, keepers, and patrons—yet who were chiefly responsible for “the utter degradation of the indigent and ignorant.”

“Moreover,” she explained, “men generally have been for over a century rating women for countenancing vice. But at the same time, they have carefully hid from them its nature, so that the preference often shown by women for bad men arises from a confused idea that they are bold and adventurous, acquainted with regions which women are forbidden to explore, rather than from a corrupt heart in the woman.”

“I have had enough of adventurous vice,” I said.

“Indeed, Mrs. Fullerton!” Despite a rather too-nasal quality of her voice, she spoke with an energy most uncommon, and once aroused you could see the flash of the warrior's blade in her blue eyes, even though she habitually spoke much of the time with her eyelids half-closed. Yet these narrowed apertures lent greater penetration to her gaze.

I dared not speak a related question I had often asked myself about women practitioners in any of the arts: Did their work in fact lack something? Some stimulant of adventures and wars, of rough virtues and vices, of an exposed and energetic life? If Miss Fuller might have discovered an answer, this did not seem the moment to ask her.

“And as to marriage,” she continued, “it has been inculcated on women for centuries that men have not only stronger passions than they, but a sort that it would be shameful for them to share or even understand. So that a great part of women look upon men as a kind of wild beast, supposing ‘they are all alike,' and assured by married women that if they but knew men by being married to them, they would not expect continence or self-government from men.”

She stopped, smiling to see whether I followed her.

“I wonder but that women are often ashamed of their passions, Miss Fuller,” I said, “and that accounts for some of them charging all shame to the masculine sex, and all loss of virtue.”

She opened her eyes wide and looked at me. “Indeed! Is it not inevitable then,” she said, “that there should be so many monsters of vice? Is it not, rather, reasonable to ask whether virtue is not possible, perhaps necessary, to man as well as to woman?
Cette vie n'a quelque prix que si elle sert a l' education morale de notre coeur.
” She went on for some time in that vein, recommending to me still more issues of the
Friend
in my leisure.

Yet once Miss Fuller saw for herself that I had not been utterly debauched, but merely taken by force, maneuvered by cold calculation, and liberated through my own subterfuge, she seemed to take up my cause more as an equal and developed a deeper interest in my well-being. “This Dudley creature,” she said, “is but one more of those sporting men who consider women a kind of
fera naturae
to be hunted down like other game at his will and pleasure.”

I came to believe that she admired my cunning resistance to my captors. Because as much as she felt pity for fallen sisters and outrage for their debauchers, she also expressed her frustration over “the too frequent readiness of far too many women to be led by strangers into lives of iniquity.” I then told her that I had come away from my captivity determined to avoid all further capitulations to the desires of men; nay, that I now wished all such further relations to cease. “It is the memory of my husband alone that glows in my heart,” I said. “All my force, all my attention, I now wish to devote toward becoming one who shall paint.”

Once she fully comprehended the nature of my ambitions, she opened like a tulip on a morning in May.

“The very first order of business,” Miss Fuller said near the end of our second meeting, “is to remove you from the city and provide for your security and independence. For in the absence of liberty you can neither earn your bread honestly nor continue your development as an artist.”

What she proposed was a trial period, to begin in April or May, of six months or so living in a community just then getting underway in the rural reaches to the northwest. She had spoken to the committee of founders about me.

“You are quite safe here, Mrs. Fullerton, of course. Yet this is but a temporary home.” Then she added with a smile: “Surely, in this rural community you would be well out of the reach of your tormentors, for as long as you wish.” I felt less certain of that than she, but I had no better plan.

“There is no need of an Inferno,” Miss Fuller said at one point near the end of that second meeting. “It will be punishment enough for every fault if we never become creators.”

“If we never fulfill our gifts, such as they are?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “Just so, Mrs. Fullerton. Just so.”

Portrait of Mrs. Littlefield of Salem, Massachusetts
, Artist Unknown. Published courtesy of the Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, Massachusetts.

It seemed as if Miss Fuller infected the very air of Matron's receiving room with the malaise of freedom and self-reliance. At each of our meetings, she entreated me to be at once cautious and bold. And as she advised me in this regard, I saw before me again certain of those other women I had met in my travels: Caroline Parrie, Tirzah and Harriet Fiske, Sarah Clarke, and now Miss Fuller herself. Indeed, we discovered Miss Clarke to be a mutual acquaintance, a friend of Miss Fuller's from her own days as a pedagogue at Mr. Alcott's Temple School. Miss Clarke was a gifted painter, whom I had the pleasure to meet through Julian, and who was the only woman privileged to study with Allston.

All these women, I say, bending like supple reeds under the weight of Necessity, nevertheless had fashioned lives of vital interest to themselves, of, by, and for themselves, so that they might then participate in the community of others—their families, their customers, or the powerless and ignorant among us. But in every case, before she could join the community through her chosen labors, each had first to map and pursue a path to the independent, cultivated core of herself, to the inner source of ripening and furtherance, without which even economic independence were but hollow.

NINE

Eden in Massachusetts
Et in Arcadia ego

M
iss Fuller arranged for my conveyance by wagon to the incipient “Community of Newspirit.” My driver was a silent young man named Martin who perhaps suffered from intolerable shyness. For one so long incarcerated as I had been, it was a pleasing journey: breezes and clouds playing over the May-green hills and scattered country dwellings, sun warming saddened bones, the very air of freedom filling my lungs at every breath. Only as we finally neared our destination did the winds freshen, the sky turn bleak, and the rains begin. My umbrella soon became unruly and my cloak and clothes soaked through to my skin.

Once in the farmhouse, I dried myself off in my tiny new room and changed into fresh clothes of homespun linen that had been laid out for me. My welcoming committee had left for me a place in the kitchen close by a pungent fire of peat and maple logs in a large fireplace, while they—two men and a woman—sat at the long, plain dining table. They introduced themselves in a friendly manner, despite their tendency to avoid smiling, to speak with unnatural calmness, and to refer to one another as “Brother” and “Sister” so-and-so.

I should explain that these leaders of the Community had agreed to address me, and to introduce me to their cohorts, as “Miss Sigourney.” Mr. Dana had suggested some such appellation to further insulate from the world my presence here.

“Miss Fuller has told you of our principles and purposes, I believe,” the woman, Rebecca Lovejoy, said.

“In the main,” I answered. Through the intermediacy of Miss Fuller, it was agreed that I was to be given refuge in return for my contributions in the garden and kitchen as chores came to hand.

“And that no more nor less will be expected of you, Miss Sigourney, than we expect of ourselves,” said the man who had introduced himself as Hiram Miles. Even as he sat before me I could see that he was as tall as he was thin, and his eyes were, for lack of a better word, angelic.

Then the second man, Lucius Brown, spoke: “Yet perhaps we should recapitulate the essentials to be certain of that mutual understanding so necessary to harmonious relations.”

“As you wish,” I said. “I am not averse to any increase in our mutual understanding, Mr. Brown.”

“Very well, Miss Sigourney,” he continued. “We have all, those of us here committed to our project, invested our worldly wealth—each according to his ability—to liberate this estate from mere human ownership. Here we seek to initiate a Family in harmony with the purer, more primitive instincts of mankind. Our Community will cultivate this land of some hundred acres with sobriety and devotion, and thereby provide a model of human freedom.” He paused for a moment, as if to consider the effect of his rant, and ran a thin finger along the ridge of his bony nose. “Neither shall we neglect to cultivate the inner life of our members. On the contrary, Mrs… . or … Miss Sigourney, our program embraces all disciplines and habits conducive to the purification of each.”

“That pleases me, sir,” I said when he finished. Mr. Dana had purchased a small store of supplies for me to begin painting again, and I had hoped, following my discussions of the Newspirit Community with Miss Fuller, to devote two or three hours every day to prosecute my “discipline and habit,” to use their phrase, of making pictures. “Honest labor on the land,” I added, “tunes body and soul to the Author of Nature.”

Mr. Brown smiled briefly. I continued: “And as a painter, I also believe that to amuse the imagination in this life is wisdom.”

No one spoke immediately, but I felt as though something in the air between us finally settled. Mr. Brown leaned back in his chair and began to chew pea pods out of a basket set before him on the table.

All three were dressed as I now was. Here was no cotton, silk, or wool, as Miss Fuller had forewarned me, because these were taken to be the products of human and animal bondage. Instead, long tunics over loose trousers of brown linen adorned the men and Miss Lovejoy alike, though her tunic seemed to be of greater length, as did my own.

“Yes,” Miss Lovejoy said finally, “cultivating the inner life is best done by casting off the vanities of a depraved world and, as you say, by honest labor and innocent cultivation of the powers of the mind.” She did not smile, but she seemed pleased with herself.

“We therefore see our duty,” she persisted, “in terminating much that mankind does. The false stimulations of tea, coffee, or wine. The consumption of animal flesh. The subjugation of animals and property to our base wants, to greed and trade. The mere orthodoxies of this or that religion. The distracting sound and fury of politics. From how many of these things—if we but look a little more deeply—should we abstain?”

“Indeed, Miss Lovejoy,” I said.

A smile brushed her lips. “All our efforts,” she continued, “are bent to living independently of foreign aids, by procuring all articles for subsistence by production on the spot, under an elevated regimen of healthful labor and recreation, with benignity toward all creatures.” She was a plain, brown woman in whom, however, a bright coal of zeal smouldered.

Our interview soon drew to a close. That evening and the next morning at breakfast I learned something of the rigors of diet consequent to these principles. Water, unleavened bread, porridge, vegetables, and fruit were to be our constant fare. No teapot sullied our kitchen, no blood of steer or lamb our gridiron. Nor did cheese, sugar, or milk profane our palates. But I had become used to reduced intake under Mr. Dudley's constrictions. And after certain initial discomforts of digestion, I soon adapted to much of the diet they espoused.

That first morning broke sunny after the storm, and we all devoted the day to labors in the fields, orchard, and vegetable garden. Miss Lovejoy and I, along with Mrs. Lucy Miles, spent our energies on planting and weeding the kitchen garden—already underway and conveniently laid out and fenced. This fence was the only safeguard against marauding deer, woodchucks, or raccoons; to say nothing of our chickens, whose freedom was not otherwise restrained, and who were never wrung and thrown into the pot, but kept in a sort of absolute liberty for their gift of eggs alone.

Most of the men, with the help of Hiram and Lucy's children—a daughter and a son—worked in the fields planting maize, rye, oats, barley, potatoes, beans, peas, melons, and squash. Other fields had already been sown, I was given to understand, in clover and buckwheat to be turned in for the succeeding year's planting so as “to redeem the land without the filth of animal manures.”

In those first days far beyond the strike of city clocks I did not feel settled enough to return to my paints and canvas. So the second afternoon, following a dinner of bread, early vegetables, and water, I set out to explore my environs, to see and understand a little better just where Destiny, as it were, had so firmly set me down.

The old farm was situated in the hilly country some two- or three-score miles west of the city, not nearly so high as the distant mountains in our view, but high enough for good drainage and fresh breezes. If it was far retired from the public road and inconvenient of access (which the Community counted one of its chief advantages), it was nonetheless a lovely, inspiring setting for their experiments. The approach was up a serpentine cart-path well off the road and bordered by elm and maple, among whose branches wild grapevines leapt from branch to branch and, in fruitage I imagined, festooned heavy clusters. Swallows and martins twittered round the old chimney of their hermitage and above the barn. And the low, old-fashioned doorways and ample porches were wreathed in honeysuckle.

I climbed the hill behind the house the better to survey my new home and found for the first time those delightful nooks of repose that would serve me well during the mild seasons of my stay at Newspirit. Where the flower would open her pretty face between rock-shelves, or the stream would spring in the woods or shimmer along still-emerald fields, or where velvet moss would spread a seat in the forest and the blooming clematis embrace the aged trunk, or the enripening grains sway in the breezes, there would I often repair to collect my thoughts, contemplate some new work, or, indeed, apply paint to canvas.

But on that day of my explorations, I met one of the most curious of our brethren. As I sat upon the margin of deep woods in a high field still in sunlight, looking over the tree tops of the old orchard where two members of the Community had labored all morning, I heard a footfall behind me. I turned to see emerging from the circumjacent wood and into the shimmering sunlight a man wearing the now-familiar tunic and trousers. But his clothes were of white linen and, together with his great whitening beard and hair, gave him a bridal—even spiritual—appearance, in spite of his powerful frame. I might have been forgiven if I thought that the Lord had come to ask of me this day my life.

But I soon recognized that he was a man of this world, rather than some other, and so stood and introduced myself as Miss Sigourney. He seemed nearly as stunned as I at suddenly discovering me in his path.

There was, moreover, something familiar about him, and only after he told me his name was I able to understand, after rummaging about in my memory, why. He was none other than Asa Perry, the very butcher Tom and I had seen so violently persecuted for his unshorn head. So here, I assumed, was the butcher turned vegetarian and idealist, perhaps now the brightest gem, to all appearances at any rate, among the Community. I now recalled Cousin Bede's account of the man, whose oddity had put him in opposition to the ways of the world, as an “infamous crank” ever unwilling to bend to the small-minded opinions of townsfolk, as an abstemious promoter of nakedness as one path to health, and as an abolitionist to boot. But now his great mane of sandy hair and beard was, as I say, all enwhitening, and I wondered if the sufferance of prison or of further persecutions had been the cause.

As soon as I said that my brother and I had witnessed and been horrified by that violent assault two years ago, his eyes twinkled and his face regained complete composure. Indeed, he bade me sit down again and asked if he might sit as well where he now stood.

Despite having just met me, he proved to be a man without reticence, on this point at least, and seemed to trust me implicitly.

“I heard, to my chagrin,” I said, “that you, Mr. Perry, were the one charged with disorder, fined, and sent to prison for refusal to pay.”

“That is so, I'm afraid,” he said. “I was guilty of nothing, you see.”

“For how long?”

“Oh, somewhat close to a year it was.” He smiled at me pleasantly, as if remembering worthy moments from his imprisonment.

“My goodness, sir!” I recalled the injustice of my own loss of liberty and shuddered (imperceptibly, I hoped). “Did you suffer much?”

“There were times. My jailers and inmates also tried to shave me, but grew tired finally of fighting me for the privilege. And I was denied water and food on occasions; also I enjoyed a stint of solitary confinement in Worcester jail. But I managed to sneak out letters about my and other prisoners' mistreatments to the
Worcester Spy
, and then the ill-treatment abated. Once even the High Sheriff came to my aid.” He heaved a sigh. “But the threats and calumny within jail were never much different from without.”

“The ways of this world reign in every high and low corner of our lives.”

“Indeed, Miss Sigourney, indeed. As one finds out sooner or later.”

He then related an experience in Boston once on his way to a meeting of Phillips and Garrison and other abolitionists. He was confronted on Washington Street by a growing crowd that hooted and jeered and began to grow so nasty that the police had to come to his rescue.

“For your abolitionist's views?”

“Oh no,” he said, smiling again, almost in a kind of satisfaction at the memory. “Just for the same old beard, it was. They had no way of knowing where I was going, or my views. But you'd have thought I was Will Garrison himself!” He laughed. “And just such a one as I sport!” He stopped, as if considering with satisfaction the gregarious stupidity of our race.

“Once a man asked me: ‘Truly now, why do you insist on wearing it, Perry?' And my response was what it has always been: ‘If anyone can tell me why many men scrape their faces from neck to nose from fifty-two to three-hundred and sixty-five times a year, I will be happy to tell him truly why I choose not to.'”

We both laughed, and I felt as if I had made my first friend at Newspirit.

“Well, they cheated me in jail too,” he continued, “because I had to pay for all my food, drink, and coal, and was constantly defrauded of an honest return for the amount paid. So once my time was up, I insisted that since they had put me in there they would have to put me out, until I had the sheriff and jailers begging me to go.” He laughed again. “Finally, they carried me out in my chair and set me on the sidewalk smack in the beautiful sunlight of midday! I must say, it was most glorious sunshine and the most exhilarating breath of freedom I have ever felt, Miss Sigourney.”