Channing of Concord: A Life of William Ellery Channing II by Frederick T. McGill,Review by: Robert E. SpillerThe American Historical Review, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Apr., 1968), pp. 1241-1242Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1847550 .

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Americas 1241

The work, now printed, is filiopietistic in the better sense of that word. The author documents Scott's every gesture with sympathy and understanding. It is a religious biography of the old school, half monument and half reference book on denominational history. Indefatigably the author piles up a vast amount of detail on matters often peripheral to an understanding of the man or his de- nominational significance: church buildings, minor presbyters, local politics, Scott's brief acquaintance with Andrew Jackson, a pipe-by-pipe description of a new church organ, and even a calculation of the number of eggs eaten by Scott's party on a tour of the Nile River in I85I.

For historians of Presbyterianism on the frontier there is some interesting in- formation on Scott's early career in the old Southwest: he held pastorates from Nashville to New Orleans. Indeed, most of his religious career was spent not in California but in the old Southwest, in New York City, and in Europe.

For a work whose chief value will be for reference this book deserved a better index, especially since there are no footnotes and only two pages describing the extensive material examined. The book is profusely illustrated. University of Massachusetts, Amherst MARIO S. DE PILLIS

CHANNING OF CONCORD: A LIFE OF WILLIAM ELLERY CHAN- NING II. By Frederick T. McGill, Jr. (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press. I967. PP. xiii, 2I9. $7.50.)

STUDY of the minor transcendentalists drawn to Concord in the times of Emerson and Thoreau (I835-I855) is both enlightening and disillusioning. There were the other two Emerson brothers and John Thoreau, all of whom died before fulfillment, the Fuller sisters, Margaret and Ellen (Channing), Christopher Cranch, the insane Jones Very, the morbid Charles Newcomb; then there were Hedge, Ward, the magnetic Caroline Sturgis, the orphic Alcott, and the social revolutionist Ripley. One could go on and on to test the Emersonian: "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

The heart of William Ellery Channing II, nephew of the great Unitarian minister and son of Dr. Walter Channing of the Harvard Medical School, vibrated for a lifetime to the iron string of a failure that was so close to success that every turn in the road promised reconciliation of a life of personal achieve- ment with one of social irresponsibility. Probably the most gifted poet of the group, he wrote nothing memorable because of carelessness and basic flaws in the tex- ture of his work. A lifetime friend of Emerson and Thoreau, his loyalty probably had much to do with their success; their faith in him in spite of obvious weak- nesses of character, much to do with his self-indulgent failure in marriage and in art.

Mr. McGill had courage in undertaking to tell his story. His research is impeccable, his understanding far beyond the call of duty, even though not always sympathetic. This is the accurate account of an overprivileged and brilliant scion of a great family, whose failure is more revealing than the story of many a successful career, even though it should not be allowed to obscure, as it very nearly does in this book, the great importance of the transcendental movement to American intellectual history as a whole.

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I242 Reviews of Books The modern existentialist revolt against suppression of the individual has

much to learn from the final realization of a full personality by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, as well as from the failures that line the road to that goal. Human nature is weak, and great efforts toward fulfillment of the individual's potential inevitably attract the weak as well as the strong. Channing came very near to that goal. His life story is that of many near great, and McGill has told it well. University of Pennsylvania ROBERT E. SPILLER

JONES VERY: THE EFFECTIVE YEARS, I833-I840. By Edwin Gittleman. (New York: Columbia University Press. I967. PP. xx, 436. $I2.50.)

UNDER the tutelage of the late Ralph Rusk, indefatigable dean of Emerson studies for a generation, Mr. Gittleman has given us another valuable contribution to the history of American transcendentalism. From the bottomless resources of New England archives he has brought to his account of a minor poet a great deal of unused or half-used materials. The result is the most thorough study we have of the crucial years in Jones Very's strange career. It ended in I840, at the age of twenty-seven, though he lived on until I88o.

The first third of Gittleman's history of an intellect is dull going, and his commentaries on the poetry, throughout the study, are hopelessly old-fashioned. But beginning in I837, when Very's lectures at the Salem and Concord lyceums establish his contacts with the Peabody sisters, Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne, and others, Very comes alive; so does the New England mind; and, best of all, so does Gittleman. The balance of the book gives a fascinating, significant, and ingeniously constructed account of Very's year of "insanity," seen through its enormous impact on his Harvard students, and on the leading religious intel- lectuals and writers of the day, especially Emerson.

Very's "insanity"-an intense and of course humorless conviction that the Second Coming was in him, that he was infallible, and that a divine voice spoke through his sudden outpouring of sonnets-appalled conservatives like Dana and Ware, who saw it as an inevitable result of Emerson's recent "Divinity School Address." President Quincy quickly dismissed him from his Harvard tutorship in Greek, and the Reverend Charles Upham, an embarrassed Unitarian in Very's home town of Salem, saw to it that Very was carted off to McLean Hospital for one month (perhaps enabling Upham to get a feeling for his future study of Salem witchcraft). Hawthorne tried to avoid Very's messianic visits. The Pea- body sisters vacillated and filled their letters with speculations. Alcott, Margaret Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, the Channings-each had his own complex or brutal response. Emerson suffered most, learned most, did most: he took Very in as a house guest; he encouraged and edited Essays and Poems by Jones Very (I839).

Was Very a saint, a genius, or a madman? Gittleman's careful and restrained documentation of how Very's contemporaries responded to this question suggests, though he might not agree, that Very's major contribution to New England culture was not his writings, but the ambiguities his life exposed. Rutgers University WALTER E. BEZANSON

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