ODD, VERY

’Tis a new life—thoughts move not as they did

Jones Very stood pressed against Elizabeth Peabody, his livid hand gripping her by the temples. Each breathed evenly. Their clothes rustled. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece.

The day before—September 15, 1838—Very had left his teaching post at Harvard in disgrace, having spent the previous week boldly declaring himself the anointed instrument of Divine Will on earth. He’d returned to Salem and wasted no time in launching his mission. On his way to the Peabody residence, he’d informed nearly a dozen households that the advent of Christ was at hand. Now he’d arrived in the familiar parlor to bless his gentle friend. Elizabeth trembled.

“I come to baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire,” said Jones Very.

With slow uncertain steps across my mind;

Very’s father, Captain Jones Very, died three days before Christmas 1824—but not before stamping his image indelibly on the heart of his eleven-year-old son. Heroic, dashing Captain Very had, during the War of 1812, suffered torture at the hands of the British while imprisoned in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Afterward, he’d resumed his maritime career, commanding vessels for New England’s most prominent shipowner—and consequently spent months at a time at sea. He drew public notice for his “humanity and benevolence,” became an active Freemason, even wrote playful verse for his family. In 1823, after learning that his eldest son had grown pensive and solitary in his absence, Captain Very installed young Jones as cabin boy aboard the Aurelia. On their maiden voyage, the pair set sail for Helsingor, Denmark, where they visited Kronborg Castle—Hamlet’s Elsinore. Later, they saw New Orleans. Then a lung condition, contracted at Halifax, took its swift revenge—and for the rest of his life, Jones Very heard his father’s voice calling across a chasm.

In thronging haste fast pressing on they bid

During his years as a Harvard undergraduate, Very embarked on a self-directed literary apprenticeship. To buttress his efforts at poetry composition, he ransacked the work of his predecessors and regularly copied out striking passages in his notebook.

It didn’t take long to discover a disturbing affinity for George Gordon, Lord Byron.

Very’s stomach turned at the spectacle of Byron flaunting his reckless sensuality, his spitfire cynicism, his arrogant self-aggrandizement. Piety, Very felt, demanded censure. Yet the English sinner’s verse moved him to new heights of imaginative vision. In time Very came to modify his stance toward Byron, though he remained ambivalent. Ultimately, Byron became a kind of mental shadow, a dark, tempestuous brother—lit by lightning—of whom Very tried not to be ashamed.

The portals open to the viewless wind,

Lydia Very loved her son with a ferocity verging on mania and possessed a well-earned reputation as the most eccentric, headstrong, outspoken woman in Salem. Embittered by a life overfreighted with misfortune, she railed against the injustice and hypocrisy she saw infesting every level of society. She hated religion—and proudly declared her atheism. In retaliation against snickering gossips, she insisted that her marriage to Captain Very, her first cousin, had been consecrated by love, whatever objections might be raised on technical or legal grounds. Understandably, her neighbors withdrew, leaving her alone with her children and her garden. But Lydia remained defiant.

As Jones Very matured, he found himself torn by contradictory impulses. He longed both to escape his mother’s overwhelming influence—and to find some miraculous way to redeem her.

That comes not save when in the dust is laid

Night after night Very sprawled on his bed in Cambridge, tormented by lust. Though he had no experience to draw from, he found himself endlessly able to imagine even the most bestial acts. No young lady of his acquaintance escaped his fantasies, and at last his guilt sparked rebellion. Soon he’d formulated what would become one of the central tenets of Veryism—to uproot from his soul every trace of temptation by literally renouncing all conscious thought.

The crown of pride that gilds each mortal brow,

In a sunny room at McLean Hospital, Very sat calmly, clutching a dog-eared Bible. The episode with Elizabeth Peabody the previous morning had proved unforgivable—and he’d been brought here over the shrieking objections of Lydia Very.

Dr. Bell sat behind the empty table. To him, Very looked robustly healthy, almost beatific. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“I am a perfect man,” said Very, smiling. “God has vouchsafed to me a higher Truth, of which I am the living embodiment—the Word made flesh. I am incapable of sin. I have surrendered myself to Him Who has taken up residence within the deepest chamber of my soul. I am His instrument. It is His Will to fill me with inspiration, to send me on a mission of His design. The Second Coming of Christ has taken place within me.”

Dr. Bell nodded. “I’m going to admit you as a patient immediately,” he said.

And from before man’s vision melting fade

Meanwhile the outraged citizens of Salem clamored for an explanation. Very’s behavior, while bizarre, might ultimately be judged harmless were it not for his incendiary ideas. Where had he learned such blasphemy?

Only five months before, Very had met Ralph Waldo Emerson through the solicitude of Elizabeth Peabody. He’d read Emerson’s Nature in 1836—jotting cryptic notes in the margins—so when Elizabeth arranged for him to repeat in Concord a lecture on epic poetry he’d delivered in Salem, Very eagerly agreed. Emerson soon warmed to the young eccentric and encouraged his ambitions—especially his ideas for essays on Shakespeare and Hamlet. Very expressed his confidence to Emerson by remarking, “If I can move Shakespeare, then I will move the world.” He cocked an eyebrow before adding, “I begin to see him shake already.”

In July Emerson traveled to Cambridge to give his notorious Divinity School Address. To that complacent, orthodox audience, Emerson’s exhortations to spiritual self-reliance, his belief that personal intuition trumped doctrine, that God should be sought within rather than in the dubious historical record of a long-dead prophet—all bore the alarming ring of radicalism. In the uproar that followed, Emerson stoically bore taunts of “atheist” and “infidel.”

No wonder Jones Very had disgraced himself!

The heavens and earth; their walls are falling now—

Exactly one month after being admitted, Very emerged from McLean Hospital essentially unchanged. Because he’d spent his time there administering spiritual balm to fellow patients—just as he’d done for his students at Harvard—while also bringing his Hamlet essay to near-completion and cheerfully composing new sonnets, Dr. Bell saw no reason to keep him confined. Nevertheless, his release sent ripples of anxiety throughout Salem.

A few days later, Very called again on Elizabeth Peabody and tried to smooth things over. She treated him kindly but with caution. Soon after Very announced his plans to visit Emerson—and to unfold for him the contents of his grand Revelation—Elizabeth wrote a letter to the Sage of Concord warning him that Jones Very, mad as ever, approached.

Fast crowding on, each thought asks utterance strong;

Very’s view of Shakespeare centered on a distinction between men of virtue and men of genius. The former, exemplified by Christ (and Very himself), consciously sought the influx of Wisdom, then spoke or wrote accordingly; the latter, including Shakespeare, “fell into genius” because of their unwillingness to bear the burden of ultimate knowledge. Like children, they haphazardly and imperfectly expressed the Will of the Father without acknowledging their source. Shakespeare, in short, compromised his art—rendered it amoral—by failing to accept his divine patrimony.

Very, on the other hand, counted himself uniquely qualified to judge these matters because he’d been granted personal, exclusive access to both the mind of Shakespeare and the mind of God.

Storm-lifted waves swift rushing to the shore,

Very spent five days in late October as a guest in the Emerson household. The two men passed much of their time together walking in the woods and discussing the vexed subject of Jones Very.

Of course, part of Emerson’s task was to gauge Very’s sanity. Fortunately, Emerson possessed an ear for metaphor and nuance keener than most and so was able to hear the poetic truth even in some of Very’s more outlandish statements. Encouraged by such receptivity, Very himself provided a gloss on his concept of the Second Coming. Far from intending to give offence, he explained, he’d wished only to point out that Christ lay dormant in every human heart, waiting to be resurrected.

But Very was not always so reasonable. When it became clear that he would not be winning any disciples in Concord, he grew increasingly petulant until at last the Spirit moved him to declare the final day of his visit a “day of hate”—during which he scolded Emerson’s wife for hypocrisy, declared his steadfast loathing for the entire Emerson family, and upbraided a local minister for preaching in empty platitudes. That his hosts responded to these outbursts with amusement and gratitude only exasperated Very further.

In the end, Emerson dubbed Very “our brave saint” and judged him “eminently sane,” albeit by his own unconventional standards. He bid Very an affectionate farewell—and silently hoped that his young friend’s fate wouldn’t ultimately turn tragic.

On from the sea they send their shouts along,

Over the next few months, Jones Very settled into what had become a radically altered life in Salem. He continued his missionary activities, expanded his circle of contacts to include—among others—Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau, attended Emerson’s lecture series in Boston, and soon found that he’d gained a broader reputation as a kind of spiritual curiosity. But he remained dissatisfied with his lack of progress in gaining converts. When at last he gave up his strategy of direct confrontation, he fell back on advising people to sacrifice their dominant character trait to clear ground for the Holy Spirit. When this also failed, he began uttering inscrutable riddles, initiated a vigorous letter-writing campaign—and, of course, continued to compose his sonnets.

Back through the cave-worn rocks their thunders roar;

In May 1839 Elizabeth Peabody, who had not heard from Jones Very in many weeks, called on him at home. She’d had to steel herself for the errand; any confrontation with the ferocious Lydia Very filled her with dread—even though she’d heard that the proud former atheist now believed every word her devout son spoke. Luckily, Lydia’s other son, Washington, answered the door instead.

Jones Very, Elizabeth soon learned, had turned recluse. His health had declined during the winter, and he wished, furthermore, to concentrate on assembling the manuscript for a book Emerson had offered to help him publish. Finally, he’d confided to his family that the allotted interval for his transformational period was one year—and that he’d decided to ride out the remainder of the ordeal in his room.

And I, a child of God by Christ made free,

Basking in solitude, Jones Very enacted within himself an epic saga of salvation. The sonnets that emerged from this activity took the form of dramatic monologues spoken by a questing pilgrim, God the Father, Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Read in sequence, they unfold a drama in which Very is singled out for special service, placed in a watchtower overlooking the City of the Dead, tested, purified, and reborn at last into an Edenic state of grace. Very hoped that his work might serve as a guide for others inclined to follow him into Divine Sonship. “I am your Resurrection and life,” he wrote, “believe in the Me that speaks and you though unborn, shall be born.”

Start from death’s slumbers to Eternity.

The metamorphosis of Jones Very had begun when he’d commanded his Harvard students, “Flee to the mountains, for the end of all things is at hand!” It finished—just as he’d predicted—exactly a year later when his only book, Essays and Poems, appeared in September 1839. Few took notice.

Then, with shocking abruptness, the Spirit that had inhabited Jones Very—filling him with light, invective, and poetry—abandoned him. He retreated again into seclusion. His friends, puzzled, drifted away.

For the next forty years, Very lived in self-imposed obscurity, a ghostly husk haunted by the promise of his early life, chastened by failure, martyred by silence.