Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis eBook

It was while the Curtises were living at Hosmer’s that they assisted Thoreau in building his hut at Walden Pond.  Thoreau says that in March, 1845, he borrowed an axe and went into the woods to build him a house.  The axe was procured of Emerson, and he says he returned it sharper than when he received it.  He was assisted in building the house, he says, by some of his acquaintances, “rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity.”  These acquaintances were Emerson, Alcott, W.E.  Charming, Burrill and George Curtis, Edmund Hosmer and his sons John, Edmund, and Andrew.  Thoreau said that he wished the help of the young men because they had more strength than the older ones, and that no man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than he.  It was Thoreau’s custom while at Walden to dine on Sundays with Emerson, and to stop at Hosmer’s on his way back to the pond, often remaining to supper.  After the failure of his experiment at Fruitlands, it was into Hosmer’s house that Alcott found himself welcomed; and he was given much of help and encouragement by the farmer and his wife.

VI

At this time several of the Brook Farmers were living in Concord, and among them were Bradford, Pratt, and Mrs. Barlow; and later on Marianne Ripley, the sister of George Ripley, found a home there, and kept a school for small children.  On the third return of the Curtises to Concord, in the summer of 1846, they found a home in the house of Minott Pratt, who was living at the foot of Punkatassett Hill, on the top of which was the house of Captain Barrett.  In the same neighborhood lived William Ellery Channing, the poet, whose wife was a sister of Margaret Fuller.  They are frequently mentioned in Hawthorne’s and his wife’s letters from the Old Manse.  Pratt’s cottage was in a quiet, delightful location; and in the family George Curtis found himself quite at home.

Curtis made a very pleasant impression in Concord, for he was social in his ways, paid much deference to others, and always exemplified a fine etiquette.  The brothers are remembered by one person who then knew them as having no mannerisms, and as being perfect gentlemen.  His article on Emerson, in the “Homes of American Authors,” gave much offence in the town, and by Mrs. Alcott, as well as others, was warmly resented.  He was exact enough as to facts, but he drew from them wrong inferences.  He afterwards said that there was nothing romantic in his paper, and that every incident mentioned was an actual occurrence.  He had letters from Emerson and Hawthorne before he wrote his papers on those two authors, to enable him to verify certain details.

The relations of Curtis and Hawthorne were cordial if not intimate.  In a letter to Hawthorne, written from Europe, Curtis said:  “Does Mrs. Hawthorne yet remember that she sent me a golden key to the studio of Crawford, in Rome?  I shall never forget that, nor any smallest token of her frequent courtesy in the Concord days.”  In another letter to Hawthorne he speaks of Concord as “our old home, which is very placid and beautiful in my memory.”  In his paper on Hawthorne, in the “Homes of American Authors,” Curtis gave an interesting account of his acquaintance with that reticent genius during these Concord days: