From a distance, the life that was led there has a very pretty and idyllic look. There was teaching, and there was intellectual talk; there was hard domestic and farming work in pleasant companionship, and a general effort to be disinterested. The various buildings in which the associators found shelter were baptized with cheerful and sentimental names; The Hive, The Pilgrim House, The Nest, The Eyrie, and The Cottage. The young women sang as they washed the dishes, and the more prepossessing and eligible of the yeomen sometimes volunteered to help them with their unpoetic and saponaceous task. The costume of the men included a blouse of checked or plaided stuff, belted at the waist, and a rough straw hat; and the women also wore hats, in defiance of the fashion then ruling, and chose calico for their gowns. In the evenings, poems and essays composed by the members, or else a play of Shakespeare, would be read aloud in the principal gathering held at one of the houses. A great deal of individual liberty was allowed, and Hawthorne probably availed himself of this to keep as much as possible out of sight. One might fancy, on a casual glance, that Brook Farm was the scene of a prolonged picnic. But it was not so at all. Hawthorne had hoped that by devoting six hours a day to mechanical employments, he could earn the time he needed for writing; but, as it proved, the manual labor more nearly consumed sixteen hours, according to Dr. Ripley, who declared of Hawthorne that "he worked like a dragon!"
Sundry of Hawthorne's common sense observations and conclusions upon the advisability of his remaining at the farm are to be found in his "Note-Books," and have often been quoted and criticised. They show that, as might be expected in a person of candor and good judgment, he was considering the whole phenomenon upon the practical side. There is an instructive passage also in "The Blithedale Romance," which undoubtedly refers to his own experience:--
"Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to need these occasional retirements, even in a life like that of Blithedale, which was itself characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unless renewed by a yet further withdrawal towards the inner circle of self-communion, I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughts became of little worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a tuft of moss ... crumbling in the sunshine, after long expectance of a shower."