By Caroline Healey Dall, edited by Helen R. Deese; Reprinted from Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-century Woman, and used by permission of Beacon Press, www.beacon.org.

Introduction: Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912), a Boston-born writer, reformer, and second-generation Transcendentalist, had many connections to Concord and Concordians. A member of Emerson's lectures audiences from the time she was twelve, she had also participated in conversation groups led by Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott, had heard Thoreau lecture, and was friends with Frank Sanborn, Elizabeth Prichard Hoar (wife of Edward Sherman Hoar), and the Simon Brown family. In the 1850s she became active in the women's movement, writing and lecturing in Boston and surrounding areas. Invited to address in December 1859 the Concord Lyceum, she spoke on the topic "Lives of Noted Women," focusing on Mary Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller. As was her custom, she preserved the account of this occasion in what is probably the fullest account of a nineteenth-century American woman's life, her journal--a document that would eventually cover some three-quarters of a century. With some of her greatest heroes in the audience, this occasion clearly amounted to one of the high points of her life.

Wednesday -- Concord. Mass.
Dec. 14. 1859.
I took the Omnibus a little before 7 AM. & rode to the Fitchburg depot. At the Concord dépot Mr Brown & his wife & Mr Surette (150) met me. Mrs Brown kindly carried me to Mrs Alcott's where I passed a pleasant morning, talking to her and the girls, (151) and deciding which lecture I would read.²² After a vegetable dinner, I went back to Mrs Brown's in her sleigh. The sewing circle took tea there, and having done the agreeable as well as I could, I dressed and was taken down to the Town Hall where I was to speak. A heavy snow storm had increased since morning to a drifting gale. The driving cold was so painful on my cheeks, that I was faint & dizzy with the reaction. Mr Brown, said, You need not expect anybody tonight -- but there were about four hundred persons.

Mr Reynolds (152) who introduced me, Mr Alcott, Thoreau Frank Sanborn, (153) Mrs Emerson & others, paid me compliments with that dignified reserve that such persons do.(154) But Edith Emerson, (155) said a few words to Mrs Brown, worth them all. "I cannot often keep awake," she said, "during the best lectures, but I heard every word of this, she was so earnest."

Concord Mass --
Thursday. Dec 15. 1859.
Early this morning I drove down with Mr Brown (156) to Frank Sanborn's -- where he showed me his pretty parlor & dining room, and then I went with him to his school, where I heard the first recitations staying more than an hour.

Mrs Brown then appeared and took me to Mrs Alcott's & Mrs Horace Mann's (157) -- where I had a most interesting call. Mrs Mann seemed very much interested in my work, & told me that she thought Miss Lydia Mann (158) & Mrs Alcott -- were both women, prepared & ready to work in responsible posts -- As Confessor -- to women committed to trial -- or as Confessor to the States' Prison, Mrs Alcott would do admirably -- & the thought gave me new courage.

She read me an article she wrote about it in 1855 -- Mr Alcott spoke to me about my lectures, in tones it was very pleasant to hear. He had felt a sadness all through, which I do not know anything about, & confessed a fear that I sheathed far too often & too long -- a legitimate weapon satire. He asked me if I had not to use a great deal of self control -- in that respect. I told him that I began so early to do so, that I had nearly ceased to feel it. We then called at Mrs Emerson's where the Philosopher appeared in a dressing gown of royal purple, faced with velvet, and I entered for the first time the room where "Nature" was written. He lent me Vishnu Sarma, (159) and then we parted -- I promising to return to tea.

I then dined with Frank, his sister, (160) and Miss Waterman, one of his teachers, and had a very pleasant time.

Mr Alcott joined me, just as I walked over to the Hoars -- I found all the family were dining with the Pritchards and went in there, to see Lizzy. (161) They all seemed to have been much disappointed by the bad weather, which had kept them in, last night. I then went to Thoreau's where Mr Alcott left me. Much to my surprise I was glad to learn from Sophia (162) that he had liked my lecture.

She said he could seldom endure to listen, but that she saw by his eyes as soon as he came home, that he had been pleased. When she asked him; "Yes," he answered "it was good" "I liked her -- because she did not look in the least like Mrs Smith!!" ²³ We had much pleasant talk -- I saw Ellery Channing's (163) house -- & his last Poem, dedicated to Thoreau, (164) & all the store of Orient literature, Mr Cholmondely (165) had lately sent him. Soon Frank's hack came to carry me to Emerson's where I was delighted to see Mrs Frank Brown, a daughter of Mrs C. K. Whipple.166 Then came Alcott Thoreau, & Frank. It was a genial pleasant circle sat down to tea, but my time was so short -- I grudged every moment to food.

I heard a good deal I wanted to know. I teased Mr. Alcott for deserting me -- and he replied with emphasis that he had been with Mr Reynolds & that Mr Reynolds believed in Mrs. Dall! which of course I was glad to hear.

Frank went with me to the Depot -- & took me to the minute. On my way I read the last third of Sir Rohan's Ghost -- which I did not much like after all -- Higginson's praise -- 167 It is one of his wilful caprices to which the world, will refuse to yield.

Footnotes:

²²Dall apparently decided on the third of her series "Woman's Claim to Education," using the lives of Mary Wollstonecroft and Margaret Fuller as illustrations, called here "Lives of Noted Women." See "Caroline Dall in Concord," The Thoreau Society Bulletin 62 (Winter, 1858): 1-2, and Register of Public Addresses, Dall Papers, Bryn Mawr.

²³After Elizabeth Oakes Smith lectured in Concord on December 31, 1851, Thoreau wrote in his journal that "she was a woman in the too common sense after all." Smith asked him to carry her lecture to the hall, and the result was that his pocket smelled like cologne. See Walter Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau (New York: Dover Publications, 1982), 304-305.

Endnotes:

150. Simon and Ann Brown, friends of Dall's from her year in Washington and Georgetown; Louis Surette (1819-1897), Concord merchant (Massachusetts VR).

151. Abigail May Alcott, the future "Marmee" of Little Women, and her daughters, Anna Bronson (1831-1893), Louisa May (1832-1888), and Abby May (1840-1879). Elizabeth Sewell (b. 1835) had died in 1858. See Richard L. Herrnstadt, The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1969), vii-ix. See also Chapter 7, note 36.

152. Grindall Reynolds (1822-1894) was minister to the Unitarian Church in Concord, 1858-1894 (pastor emeritus after 1881) and secretary of the American Unitarian Association, 1881-1894 (Heralds 3:323-329).

153. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1831-1917), second-generation Transcendentalist and Concord teacher who would become an author, journalist, and reformer. His life and work were to intersect often in the following years with Dall's. See Wesley T. Mott, Biographical Dictionary of Transcendentalism (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996).

154. Alcott reported in his own diary, "Hear Mrs. Dall's lecture. She gave us accounts of the principal incidents in the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Martineau, Lady Morgan, Mrs. Jameson, Margaret Fuller & others. It was a well considered performance, and gave pleasure to our people generally" ("Diary for 1859," December 14, 1859, Amos Bronson Alcott Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University).

155. Edith Emerson (1841-1929), daughter of Lidian Jackson Emerson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, married in 1865 William H. Forbes (NEHGR 84:220).

156. Simon Brown.

157. Mary Peabody Mann.

158. Lydia B. Mann (1798-1888), sister of Horace Mann, was a teacher for half a century. See George S. Mann, Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Man of Scituate, Mass. (Boston: David Clapp & Son, 1884), 26.

159. The Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma, in a Series of Connected Fables, Interspersed with Moral, Prudential, and Political Maxims, translated by Charles Wilkins (Bath: R. Cruttwell, 1787). In 1842 Emerson included excerpts of this work in the third volume of The Dial.

160. Sarah Elizabeth Sanborn (b. 1823) was her brother's assistant for several years in the private school that he conducted in Concord. From 1863 to 1889 she was the confidential secretary of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities. In 1891 she retired to the family homestead at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. See V. C. Sanborn, Genealogy of the Family Samborne or Sanborn in England and America (Concord, New Hampshire: Rumford Press, 1899), 296.

161. "The Hoars" refers to the family of the late prominent Concordian "Squire" Samuel Hoar (1778-1856), including his wife, Sarah Sherman Hoar (1783-1866); daughter Elizabeth Hoar (once engaged to Charles Emerson); son Edward Sherman Hoar (1823-1893), friend and traveling companion of Thoreau; and son Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (1816-1895), Concord lawyer and later U.S. attorney general, and his family. "The Pritchards" were the Moses (b. 1789?) and Jane T. (b. 1791?) Prichard family. A daughter, Elizabeth Hallet Prichard ("Lizzie") (1822-1917), had been friends with the Dalls during the early months of their marriage in Baltimore; she was now married to Edward Sherman Hoar. See Ancestry.com, accessed November 8, 2004; Elizabeth Maxfield-Miller, "Elizabeth of Concord: Selected Letters of Elizabeth Sherman Hoar to the Emersons, Family, and the Emerson Circle, Part 1," SAR 1984 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia), 229-298; Mott, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Transcendentalism.

162. Sophia Thoreau (1819-1876), Henry's sister.

163. William Ellery Channing the Younger (1817-1901), known as Ellery, Transcendentalist poet, friend of Thoreau, and widower of Margaret Fuller's sister Ellen.

164. Ellery Channing's Near Home (Boston, 1858) consisted of a long poem of that title, prefaced by an opening dedicatory poem entitled "To Henry."

165. The English aristocrat Thomas Cholmondeley (1823-1863), who met Thoreau on a visit to Concord in 1854, boarded with his family, and became his friend and correspondent, sent him in 1855 the generous gift of a forty-four-volume collection of Oriental books (Mott, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Transcendentalism, 44-46).

166. Lizzie Goodwin Brown was the wife of Lidian Emerson's nephew Frank Brown; Charles K. Whipple was the second husband of Emmeline C. Goodwin (b. 1813?). See Selected Letters of Lidian Jackson Emerson, ed. Delores Bird Carpenter (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987), 158, and the 1860 U.S. Census.

167. This anonymous novel was by the young Harriet Elizabeth Prescott (later Spofford) (1835-1921) of Newburyport, a protégée of T. W. Higginson. Spofford became a popular and prolific writer (NAW).

©2005 by Helen R. Deese

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