Books and Play: The Belle of Amherst by William Luce; The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson; and a Recipe

Bring me the sunset in a cup

Autumn makes me think of New England, and New England makes me want to get out The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. In a former life, I played Emily in the play The Belle of Amherst, and ever since I have been making the black cake she is making at the beginning of that play. I make it on Thanksgiving weekend, wrap it in cheesecloth dipped in brandy and serve it on Christmas Eve. (Cut the recipe in half or one-quarter if you must, but DO NOT call it a fruitcake.)

EMILY DICKINSON’S BLACK CAKE

as adapted by Vera Marie Badertscher

• 2 Pounds flour (8 cups)
• 2 pounds sugar (4 cups)
• 2 pounds butter (4 cups)
• 19 eggs
• 5 pounds raisins
• 1 1/2 pounds citron
• 1 1/2 pounds currents
• 1/2 pint brandy* (1 cup)
• 1/2 pint molasses (1 cup)
• 2 nutmegs (4-6 tablespoons, ground)
• 5 tablespoons total: cloves, mace, cinammon
• 2 tablespoons soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt

* Emily says, “Not my father’s BEST brandy.”

Sift flour, soda, spices, salt.  Beat butter and sugar, add eggs a few at a time, beating after each addition.  Add brandy alternately with flour mixture.  Add molasses.  Sprinkle in fruit, slowly as you stir.
Bake at 250 degrees one and a half to three hours depending on the size of the pans you use. Full recipe makes one large “angel food cake” pan; plus 2-3 loaf pans.

Remove from pan to cool.  Wrap in cheesecloth dipped in brandy.  Store in air tight container for several weeks, dribbling on some more brandy from time to time.
Note: I have looked at other recipes on the Internet and immodestly believe this version is best. Slow baking and thorough basting are key.

Click on the image for an Emily poem. Come back every day this week for more New England. Tomorrow a book set in Cape Cod; Thursday a look at the Pilgrims, and France on Friday a surprise connection between France and New England.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library

©2010 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

The Old Manse

Perhaps the best way to understand Transcendentalism is to start where they did, in the study of an old minister’s house by a slow moving river in a town just nineteen  miles outside of Boston. It was there, in 1836, a young man named Ralph Waldo Emerson, living in his grandfather’s house, wrote the book that became the foundation Transcendentalism, Nature.

In it, Emerson is clear about the benefits of leaving both the actual rooms in which we live and our set ways of thinking, and striding out into nature:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — a mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

It was in this passage from Nature that Transcendentalism first came alive for me, and I structured A Journey into the Transcendentalists’ New England around what I view as Transcendentalism’s central quest: to forge an original relationship with the universe or, as Emerson puts it, to behold “God and nature face to face.”

So, the question is how did this group of writers, philosophers, poets, activists and dreamers conduct their quests? Where did they go for that “face to face” interaction? How does one forge one’s own unique relationship with the universe?

Forging One’s Own Unique Relationship With the Universe

Obviously, they went to Concord. They went to visit and converse with Emerson. They came to walk the paths around the town and draw inspiration from nature. In Boston, Elizabeth Peabody’s bookstore on West Street was another place they went to forge that relationship with the universe. They spent time here bouncing ideas off each other and searching for a better way before wandering up Tremont Street to School Street and the Old Corner Bookstore and the Parker House hotel.

Nathaniel Hawthorne went to Brook Farm and joined their utopian community in an unsuccessful effort to find his unique relationship. Bronson Alcott packed his family up and created Fruitlands utopian community just west of Concord in Harvard, Massachusetts…if only until winter came.

Emily Dickinson declined to travel much beyond her own home for God and the universe but found them among her garden plants and in the view from her second story room.

Perhaps the most well known method of forging an original relationship with the universe was the move to Walden Pond and attempt to “front only the essential facts of life” as Thoreau did from 1845 to 1847. His experiment in living the Transcendentalist quest, along with the record of it we know as Walden, has had perhaps the greatest impact of any of the Transcendentalist writings.

A Lake in the Woods

Perhaps there is no more telling example of the Transcendentalist legacy than the two square miles of Massachusetts surrounding and including Walden Pond. The lake itself and its shoreline are now part of a state reservation, with the Thoreau Institute tucked up among the woods south of the lake. Beyond that, the land is a patchwork of protected land, open fields and development. However, that is not to say that all is idyllic and tranquil. Route 2, Massachusetts’ main east/west thoroughfare north of the turnpike runs its four lanes of traffic less than a quarter mile from the site of Thoreau’s cabin. The exceedingly popular public beach at Walden Pond can see nearly a million visitors a year, only a fraction of whom are there because of Thoreau.

In sum, Walden Pond is an amalgamation of homage to Thoreau and his legacy; a beloved and much used natural place for swimming, fishing, and hiking; and a cautionary tale of shortsighted regional and urban planning. The same can be said for much of New England in general.

Transcendentalism Today

Transcendentalism has perhaps fared much better than the landscape which inspired it. While its heady ideas and radical philosophies seemed less thrilling as the industrial age got fully under way and many of its leading lights faded and died, Transcendentalism’s inherent optimism, recognition of our interconnectedness, and deeply-held appreciation of the natural world holds as true today as they did when Emerson first put pen to paper.

In fact (in a rough segue), one can still go to hear about Transcendentalism. I will be speaking at the All Souls Church in Manhattan this coming Thursday, February 26 about the Transcendentalists and my book, A Journey into the Transcendentalists’ New England. For more information about the event at All Souls Church and some of my other events, you can go to my Red Room page. I hope you will join me. If you can’t make it, please feel free to leave a comment here on my blog, Open Page – Open Road.

Thanks,

R. Todd

All the images seen here are linked to my photoshelter archive: http://pa.photoshelter.com/user/rtfelton.

NOTE: DO NOT FORGET. LEAVE A COMMENT HERE OR ON TOMORROW’S POST BY R. T. FELTON, AND YOU COULD WIN A COPY OF HIS “WALKING BOSTON.”

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library

©2010 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.