Realities Not Shadows: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the Early Years

Abstract

REALITIES NOT SHADOWS: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the Early Years Betty L. Mitchell On August 23, 1854, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Ariana Smith Walker exchanged marriage vows. This was no ordinary wedding. No happy bells rang out news of the union. The ceremony took place in a sickroom where the bride lay dying of some mysterious neurological disease which had plagued her since childhood. Eight days later, the young groom became a widower.1 "How can I ever bear to live without her?" grieved Sanborn to his friend Reverend Theodore Parker. "She has been so much to me—is so interwoven into my being that I cannot think of life without her." Who now would love him, guide him, be loved by him? Engulfed in emptiness, he poured out his need, his dependence, on the one who was forever lost. "Her influence turned the course of my life," he told Parker. "I was a boy, untrained, without self-possession or an aim— With her ... I have come to . . . manhood. Everything I have done, thought, studied has been for her and by means of her."2 Sanborn first met Ariana when he was eighteen years old—alone, in doubt, "at the parting of the ways." A tall lanky farm boy from Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, the fifth of seven children, Sanborn had spent most of his childhood with books as his favorite companions. Sheltered in his father's or grandfather's library, the young boy taught himself Latin, Greek, French, and German. Tales of violence, romance, and heroic adventure could transport him far beyond the narrow confines of home. By the time he was twelve, Sanborn had finished Plutarch 's Lives, the entire Old Testament, all of Sir Walter Scott's WaverIy novels, and the complete works of Lord Byron. Unfortunately, none of this prodigious reading had prepared him for any sort of career.3 A bright young man but unable to decide on a suitable vocation, Sanborn did the next best thing. He fell deeply in love with an older girl whose family had money. Ariana Walker, a petite brunette who had her own romantic notions, saw great possibilities in her shy "self1 Franklin B. Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston, 1909), II, 291; Franklin Sanborn to Theodore Parker, July 27, 1854, Sanborn Papers, Concord Public Library. 2 Sanborn to Parker, July 27, 1854, Sanborn Papers, Concord Public Library. 3 Sanborn to Parker, July 27, 1854, Sanborn Papers, Concord Public Library; Sanborn, Recollections, I, 13-14, 16-17, II, pp. 255, 268-269. 101 102civil war history cultivated" suitor whose fine good looks and feminine features reminded her of "the early portrait of Raphael." Intuitively she sensed that he was "seeking, seeking, groping in the dark" after some "steady aim," some noble and "definite end," for which to "strive heartily." Sanborn thought himself independent and capable of standing alone, but Ana perceived that "in his inmost soul he would be glad of some authority to lean on and is influenced more than he is aware by those whose opinions he respects."4 Gently, almost imperceptibly, Ana Walker assumed that role of authority . "She . . . taught me what lay before me," Sanborn later remembered , "and with a friend's hand would lead me along." Ana encouraged him to put off the choice of a career until after he had developed his intellectual talents. Acting on his sweetheart's advice, Sanborn attended Phillips Exeter Academy in 1851 and entered Harvard the following year. The couple wrote each other passionate love letters in which they pledged their betrothal, but decided to keep their engagement a secret until Sanborn had established himself in the world and the differences in their social positions would not be so glaring. It was in the summer before graduation that Ana fell ill for the last time.5 The aura of tragedy that surrounded his "romantic engagement, marriage, and bereavement" earned the young scholar some fame in Boston Brahmin circles. That winter Ralph Waldo Emerson, the noted Sage of Concord, visited him at Harvard with a job offer. Would Sanborn be interested in running a small co-educational school attended by the children of the local Concord literati? For Sanborn, the...