Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne once described the 15 West Street as “ Mrs. Peabody’s Caravansary,”
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In 1839, Transcendentalist, activist, and reformer Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) leased a building at 13 West Street in Boston, where, at the end of July, 1840, she opened a circulating library and bookstore. Circulating libraries--privately owned collections of books and periodicals lent out for profit at fixed rates--had their heyday in America between 1800 and 1850, just before the rise of the public library movement. Miss Peabody, eager to meet a demand by her Transcendental associates for difficult-to-obtain foreign literature and mindful of the need to support herself, created in her Foreign Library a means of accomplishing both ends.
The Foreign Library at 13 West Street was very much a Peabody family enterprise. The library and bookstore were located in the front parlor. One section was allocated to Dr. Nathaniel Peabody--Elizabeth's father--for the sale of his homeopathic medicines. At the suggestion of Washington Allston, the shop was also stocked with imported art supplies. On its walls were displayed for sale paintings by Elizabeth's youngest sister Sophia. Both Elizabeth and her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, welcomed and assisted patrons. Miss Peabody's Foreign Library quickly became a kind of salon for the New England Transcendentalists. Margaret Fuller's famous "conversations" were held at West Street in late 1839 and the early 1840s. Dr. William Ellery Channing, the "father of Unitarianism" and Elizabeth Peabody's mentor, came to read the newspaper. George and Sophia Ripley, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, John Sullivan Dwight, and others talked over the reform of society and planned the Brook Farm community there. The editors of and contributors to the Transcendental periodical the Dial met at West Street. Elizabeth Peabody, in fact, published the Dial for a time (1842-1843) and wrote for it as well. Her "A Glimpse of Christ's Idea of Society," a piece about Brook Farm, appeared in the October, 1841 issue, her "Fourierism" in the April, 1844 issue. On the first floor, Elizabeth had established a publishing house and bookstore, stocking, among other things, European books and periodicals. Upstairs, Mary conducted a girls' school and a tutoring program, and Sophia had her combination bedroom and art studio. In 1837 Sophia met her neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne as he came to call on Elizabeth, who had identified his talent early and who would eventually draw the attention of the Emerson circle to Hawthorne. Sophia and Nathaniel were married by James Freeman Clarke on July 9, 1842, in the back room of Elizabeth's West Street Bookstore. On May 1, 1843, the bookstore was the site of another family wedding as Mary exchanged vows with Horace Mann. Mary had been infatuated with Mann since well before her trip to Cuba, though while there she had imagined that perhaps he was in love with Elizabeth, causing some hard feelings between the sisters. |
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