Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis eBook

“My dear George,—­With this I send you formal invitation, on the part of the committee of arrangements, for the celebration of the anniversary of the foundation, by Dr. Howe, of the Institution for the Blind....  We wish to have an address—­not long, say half an hour—­partly historical; and we all (committee, director, teachers, pupils) have set our hearts upon having you perform that service.  It would delight us all; and I know that you would find the occasion, the very sight of those sightless children made so happy, most inspiring....  A more responsive audience than the blind themselves cannot be found.  Dear George, do think seriously of it, and tell me you will come.  Your own wishes in respect to the arrangements and conditions shall in all respects be consulted.  But come, if you wish to have a good time, a memorable time, and make a good time for us.

“George, how many times have I been on the point of writing to you since that delightful week we spent at dear old Tweedy’s.  To me it was a sweet renewal of good old days, and I came away feeling that it must have added some time to my life.  Then, too, I wished to thank you for your most friendly, hearty, and delightful talk about me and my Journal in the ‘Easy Chair.’  It was so like you, like the dear old George.  I tell you, it made me feel good, as if life wasn’t all a failure.  And now I am finding laziness agreeing with me too—­too well....  And if I were not so very, very old, if it were not my fate to have been sent into the world so long before my time, I verily believe I should confess myself over head and ears in love!  At any rate, I love life.  Yet nearly all my old friends seem to be dead or dying.  When I write you again, I hope to be able to say that I am well at work again; but how?—­on what?  Thank God, I am not a ‘critic!’”

IV

The winter of 1843-44 was spent by the Curtis brothers at their father’s house in New York.  George studied somewhat, heard much music, and read extensively.  In the spring of 1844 they went to live in Concord for purposes of study and recreation.  They wished to know country life, and they regarded it as a desirable part of education that they should become acquainted with practical affairs, and especially with agriculture.  That tendency of the time which established Brook Farm and sent Thoreau into the Concord woods, worked itself out in this desire of two young men to find life at first hand.  Colonel Higginson has said of the fresh life started by the transcendental movement:  “Under these combined motives I find that I carefully made out, at one time, a project of going into the cultivation of peaches, thus securing freedom for study and thought by moderate labor of the hands.  This was in 1843, two years before Thoreau tried a similar project with beans at Walden Pond; and also before the time when George and Burrill Curtis undertook to be farmers at Concord.  A like course was actually adopted and successfully pursued through life by another Harvard man a few years older than myself, the late Marston Watson, of Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Such things were in the air, and even those who were not swerved by ‘the Newness’ from their intended pursuits were often greatly as to the way in which they were undertaken.”