| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| James N. |
Posted - February 09 2012 : 2:15:50 PM
Concord, Mass., is in many ways the quintessential Massachusetts, New England, or American small town. Now something of a Boston suburb due to "improvements" in the transportation network, the inhabitants are wealthy enough to realize and protect their surroundings and rich Colonial, Revolutionary, and literary heritage. I was lucky enough to visit it twice in two consecutive springs back in the mid-1990's, and will here share with you some of its historical literary charms, saving the turbulent Revolutionary story for a later time.
Concord was originally built along a single road leading to Boston that ran East-West along the base of a ridge that provided a degree of shelter from the cutting New England northers. Following the Revolution it became notable for the activities and writings of a small number of people that formed the core of the intelligensia of New England ( and by extension, America ) in the mid-nineteenth century. Perhaps at least some of them were attracted by their acknowledged leader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, grandson of the local minister who had watched the battle at Concord bridge in 1775.
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Emerson's house still stands along Battle Road down which the British advance and retreat had passed; though it largely burned down in an 1874 fire while Emerson was away, it was susequently rebuilt. The writer lived here from 1835 until his death in 1882, and was often visited by his many literary friends and neighbors.
Other members of the Trancendentalist Movement who came to Concord included the family of Bronson Alcott, who located for a time ( 1845 - 48 ) in a Colonial-period house near Emerson's callled The Wayside. It was here that his daughter, Louisa May experienced some of the things she would later write about in her semi-autobiographical novel Little Women. Something of a restless spirit, Alcott moved his family again, allowing the house to come into the possession of Salem, Mass. novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Inspired by architecture he'd seen abroad while serving as U.S. Consul in Liverpool, Hawthorne comissioned what turned out to be a cloddish local builder to renovate and enlarge the old house; the result can be seen today, now preserved as a unit of the National Park Service. Especially jarring is the "tower" study ( which was supposed to have been a turret in the Queen Anne style then coming into vogue ) stuck on the top of the rambling structure and causing Hawthorne to say say he would be happy if the house just burned down!
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Another local resident of Concord to achieve lasting literary fame was the son of a local pencil manufacturer ( ! ), Henry David Thoreau, a noted eccentric whose fame grew mainly following his death. The house on Concord's downtown square in which he was born is now part of a complex called The Colonial Inn where I stayed and dined. ( Though I actually was in the cheaper dorm-like cinder-block addition to the rear of the historic structures. ) The main room in Thoreau's old house is now a dining room!
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The house above, on a quiet Concord street is where Thoreau died in 1862 during the Civil War, and now a private residence.
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| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| James N. |
Posted - February 09 2012 : 8:36:15 PM
As before noted, Concord rests at the base of a ridge, upon which is the Colonial/Revolutionary period town "burying ground". But around and behind it is the much larger Sleepy Hollow Cemetery ( NOT the one of Headless Horseman fame, which is in Tarrytown, N.Y.! ) dating from the nineteenth century. In the section known as Author's Ridge lie most of the Trancendentalist luminaries:
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Henry David Thoreau was the first to go, in May, 1862. The large stone is the Thoreau family marker; the small one visible to the immediate rear is his individual marker.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne was next, in 1864 joining his despised Salem Puritan Haythorne ancestors.
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Of course, L.M.A. is Louisa May Alcott, in the Alcott family plot; the American Legion rondel on her grave commemorates her service as a nurse in the Civil War, recounted in her postwar memoir Hospital Sketches. This almost killed her during the war when she contracted her patients' illness, forcing her "retirement" from that vocation, though she survived until 1888.
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Emerson and his wife are buried under the large slab of granite, center.
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| Monadnock Guide |
Posted - February 09 2012 : 7:42:07 PM
Nice town, - and quite "well off", ... |
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![The Mohican Board! [Bumppo's Redux!]](images/wwwboard.gif "The Mohican Board! [Bumppo's Redux!]")
