Pedlar Without CustomersnMadelon Bedell: The Akotts, Biographynof a Family; Clarkson N. Potter;nNew York.nby Robert C. SteensmanHmerson called him “the most extraordinarynman and highest genius of thentime” and “a God-made priest,” whilenThoreau saw him as “a King of Men .. .none of the last of the philosophers.”nBut Bronson Alcott perhaps describednhimself best as a “Pedlar … set bodily,nmystically, down in the best market innthe world . . . without a customer fornhis wares,” although at another time hisnvisionary enthusiasm could make himnhallucinate that “I am God. I am greaternthan God. Greater is the container thannthe contained. Therefore I am greaternthan God.”nMadelon Bedell’s book traces the publicnand private career of Alcott from hisnbirth in 1799 to his death in 1888. It isna story of frustrated idealism, financialnrecklessness and intellectual endeavornwithin the context of New Englandntranscendentalism and the exciting daysnof the young American republic. Thensubtitle, “Biography of a Family,” isnsomewhat misleading in that the spotlightnof the narrative is focused uponnAlcott while his wife and four daughtersnserve mainly as supporting actresses.nAlcott began his career as an unorthodoxnschoolmaster who challenged thenrigid educational theories which hadndominated American education forndecades. At his first school in Connecticut,nas well as at the more famous onesnin Pennsylvania and Boston (the latternthe well-known Temple School), hentaught by innovative and unconventionalnmethods derived from a theory ofnchild psychology which viewed thenyoung mind as impressionable, flexiblenDr. Steensma is professor of Englishnat the University of Utah.n26inChronicles of Culturenand capable of incredible feats of learningnif taught with sympathy, understandingnand care.nBut his methods were no more welcomenin his own time than they wouldnbe in colleges of education and publicnschool systems today. His attempt tonintegrate his school by the enrollmentnof a black girl, his use of the Socraticnmethod, and an economic depressionnprevented him from achieving the successnhe so desperately sought, thus drivingnhim into, as he put it with a phrasenborrowed from Shakespeare. “Familynstraits. This is the winter of my discontent.”nHis enthusiasm never flagged, however.nWith consistent verve he threwnhimself into writing and lecturing, visitingnwith his intellectual and artisticnfriends, working on the transcendentalistnDial magazine, and pursuing his endlessnstream of projects.nAlcott tried his hand at establishingna Utopian community at Fruitlands,nabout fourteen miles from Concord.nThis little paradise flourished for a fewnmonths and fulfilled Emerson’s expectations:n”The sun and the evening do notnlook calmer than Alcott and his familynat Fruitlands. They seem to have arrivednat the fact, to have got rid of snow, & sonto be serene I will not prejudge themnsuccessful. They look well in July. Wenwill see them in September.”nEmerson was right. Fruitlands failed,nbut Alcott continued his crusades fornvegetarianism, women’s rights, educationalnreform and the abolition of slavery.nAfter long years of poverty andnhumiliation through which he draggednhis long-suffering family, he finallynachieved a very modest financial security,npartly by several lecture tours innthe West, but mostly by the great successnof his daughter Louisa May’s LittlenWomen (1868). “Paid up all the debts,”nshe wrote wearily; “Thank the Lord!n. . . Now I could die in peace.”nnnBedell’s book, the first biography ofnAlcott since Odell Shepard’s Pedlar’snProgress (1937) and only the secondnsince Sanborn and Harris’s A. BronsonnAlcott (1893), is one of those finelyntuned biographies (always rare) thatncombine a pleasant wit, a graceful style,na respect for facts and a suspicion ofnexotic interpretation. Bedell carefullynsets Alcott within the context of transcendentalismnand wisely avoids the kindnof psychiatric claptrap so tempting tonbiographers of visionaries and eccentrics.nAlthough Alcott was one of thenlesser lights of the transcendental movementnand the Concord circle, his career,nas traced by Bedell, sheds a great deal ofnlight on such figures as Emerson andnThoreau and gives a splendid insightninto what F. 0. Matthiessen called thenAmerican Renaissance.nAlcott’s death in 1888 perhapsnmarked the end of an age and of a literaryngeneration, that of the romanticsnwho had appeared on the scene withnIrving, Cooper, Bryant, Poe and Emersonnin the 1820’s and 1830’s. Thesenwere the years when American writersnbroke away from British and continentalntraditions to fashion a literature expressivenof the aspirations of the newnnation.nThe history of American transcendentalismnhas usually been written fromnthe perspective of its two giants, Emersonnand Thoreau. But a deeper andnbroader view of this major force in thenhistory of American culture must involvenan appreciation of lesser figuresnsuch as William Ellery Channing, TheodorenParker, Orestes Brownson, MargaretnFuller and Alcott if its full impactnis to be felt. Transcendentalism wasnmore than “the complicated state ofnmind … idle chatter of a transcendentalnkind,” as Gilbert and Sullivan ridiculednit, or “moonshine,” as Carlyle describednit.n