The central tenet of Alcott’s educational theory—and a cornerstone of transcendental thought—was that a child is born with an inner light, that is, with intuitive ideas that transcend the experience of the senses and the powers of reason. The teacher’s mission was not to fill the child’s mind with facts but to uncover and nurture and apply the truths that were already there. To this end Alcott adopted methods that in later times would be called progressive education. The classroom was a place of pleasure and challenge, not of discipline. He sought to draw forth the child’s own thoughts and to follow them wherever they led, even onto dangerous territory.

One of the topics he explored with the children was the miracle of birth. Ever so delicately he told them how “love begets love … the seed of the human being is placed in the midst of matter which nourishes it, and it grows and becomes perfected.... Is not a baby love made flesh?” Little Josiah Quincy, the class prodigy, aged six, offered another interpretation. The birth of a baby, he thought, had something to do with the “naughtiness of other people.”

If Alcott had kept these discussions within the classroom, he might have had no trouble. But in hopes of spreading his educational theory, he transcribed them in the book Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Then, while proper Boston parents were still reeling from the shock, he made matters worse by admitting a little black girl to his school. Enrollment dropped from nearly forty to ten, and the school had to close. The Alcotts moved to Concord, the most hospitable place for independent thinkers.

In the fall of 1842, Alcott’s spirits were lifted by news that his ideas had found fertile ground in England, where a group of educators had named their school Alcott House. Soon he was aboard ship, his passage paid by Emerson. In London he had a mixed reception. Invited to dinner by Carlyle, he dismayed his host by eating nothing but vegetables and drinking only water. The next morning Carlyle, still hoping to please this rustic philosopher, procured fresh strawberries for breakfast; Alcott put them on the same plate with mashed potatoes “so that the juices could mingle.” He was not invited back.

Among the educators, however, Alcott found true soul mates. When he sailed back to the United States, he brought with him Charles Lane and Lane’s young son. By the time they landed, they had formed a plan for a New Eden in America. They spelled out their goals in a prospectus: “simplicity in

For the time being, the English visitors moved into the little Concord cottage, forcing the Alcotts to double up. But that was not the worst of it. Lane imposed an iron discipline, banning all animal products, including milk (except, when Abby put her foot down, for the baby). No frivolous talk was allowed. In her diary Abby recorded that she “was always frowned down into stiff guilt.”

Alcott had hoped to find support for his colony among the philosophic elite of Concord. But some of them were already paying their intellectual dues to Brook Farm, the transcendental colony outside Boston. As for Henry David Thoreau, he took a loner’s view of all such communities: “I think I had rather keep bachelor’s hall in hell than go to board in heaven.”

In the end it was Lane who put up his life savings—two thousand dollars—to buy the farm at Harvard. Abby’s brother, Sam, added three hundred dollars and agreed to hold the property as trustee, paying the purchase price in installments. The Concord intellectuals gave only their blessing. The colonists who actually showed up at Fruitlands that summer were much farther out.

The only one waiting for the founders when they arrived from Concord was Joseph Palmer, a middle-aged farmer in white clothes and a long, bushy beard. In a clean-shaven period he had been under constant pressure from his neighbors to cut off his beard, and one day in Fitchburg three young toughs had ambushed him, wielding a pair of scissors. Palmer had pulled a knife, cutting them slightly. For that he was fined ten dollars and, when he refused to pay, was put in jail, where he stayed for a year, winning a small place in history as the “Martyr of the Beard.” Palmer was a godsend because, of all those who came to Fruitlands, he was the only one who knew about farming.

Alcott and Lane had brought almost a thousand books, mostly dealing with mystical philosophy, but not a single pamphlet on agriculture. They did have ideas on the subject, but many of those ideas were at war with practicalities. They abjured the use of horses or oxen- their fellow toilers—as draft animals. They would not rob the cow of its milk or the sheep of its wool. (Since cotton was grown by slave labor, that left only linen as acceptable fabric for clothing.) Some of the colonists wanted to grow only “aspiring” vegetables that reached toward heaven and none that grew downward, such as potatoes.

One of the first to join the community was Samuel Bower, a young Englishman who adhered to the principles of transcendentalism, uncooked food, and the rest, but who also had his own special crusade. He was an Adamite, firm in the belief that humans should shed their clothes and go about as God made them.

Among others who showed up during the summer were Samuel Larned, who was said to have lived for one year wholly on crackers and another wholly on apples, and Abram Wood, who had signalized his rebellion against society by changing his name to Wood Abram. In all sixteen men joined the community, but only one woman did so. That was Ann Page, a spinster from Providence, whose first question upon arrival elicited one of Abby Alcott’s rare complaints.

‘Are there any beasts of burden on the place?” asked Ann Page.

“Only one woman,” answered Abby.

Abby soon found that Ann Page was more interested in writing poetry than in cleaning house. They quarreled, and Ann left. It was just as well, for the everwatchful Lane had discovered that Ann kept cheese in her trunk. Worse, she had stopped by a neighbor’s at dinner time and eaten a morsel of fish. Louisa May described the confrontation:

“I only took a little bit of the tail,” sobbed the penitent poet.

“Yes, but the whole fish had to be tortured and slain that you might tempt your carnal appetite with that one taste of the tail,” Lane rebuked her. “Know ye not, consumers of flesh meat, that ye are nourishing the wolf and tiger in your bosom?” This and other memories of Fruitlands were recorded years later by Louisa May in a lively little book called Transcendental Wild Oats. In it she changed the names of the characters, but other sources confirm many of the episodes that she witnessed as a girl of ten.

The colonists’ lives fell into a daily pattern: up at dawn; cold baths in the river; music (Lane had brought a violin); breakfast of bread and fruit; work in the fields; the noon meal, followed by “deep-searching conversation”; more work; the evening meal; and “social communion” until sunset.

It was in the conversations that the Fruitlands experience found its justification. Alcott would propose a topic, such as “What is the highest aim?” and each person would expound his or her answer. (Lane: fidelity. Larned: thoughtfulness. Alcott: innocence.) All ages would contribute to the word-fest.

As the work in the fields went forward, some of the ideas the philosophers started with fell by the wayside. After a few tries at turning the sod by spade, they gratefully accepted Palmer’s offer of a team consisting of one ox and one cow. Potatoes were planted along with the aspiring vegetables. Unfortunately, Palmer was not around to keep them from sowing three different grains in the same field. Emerson paid a visit in midsummer. “They look well in July,” he wrote in his diary. “We shall see them in December.”