  MARGARET FULLER'S WORKS AND MEMOIRS. FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. EMILY BRONTE. FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. GEORGE SAND. FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. MARY LAMB. Famous Women Series. GEORGE ELIOT. The next volumes in the Famous Women Series will be:
Already published:
MARGARET FULLER(MARCHESA OSSOLI). BY JULIA WARD HOWE.BOSTON: Copyright, 1883, PREFATORY NOTE.The present volume bears the name of Margaret Fuller simply, because it is by this name that its subject is most widely known and best remembered. Another name, indeed, became hers by marriage; but this later style and title were borne by our friend for a short period only, and in a country remote from her own. It was as Margaret Fuller that she took her place among the leading spirits of her time, and made her brave crusade against its unworthier features. The record of her brief days of wifehood and of motherhood is tenderly cherished by her friends, but the story of her life-work is best inscribed with the [vi]name which was hers by birth and baptism, the name which, in her keeping, acquired a significance not to be lost nor altered. [vii] CONTENTS.
MARGARET FULLER.CHAPTER I.CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.—SCHOOL DAYS.The subject of the following sketch, Sarah Margaret Fuller, has already been most fortunate in her biographers. Cut off herself in the prime of life, she left behind her devoted friends who were still in their full vigor of thought and sentiment. Three of these, James Freeman Clarke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Henry Channing, set their hand, some thirty or more years ago, to the happy task of preserving for posterity their strong personal impressions of her character and influence. With these precious reminiscences were interwoven such extracts from her correspondence and diary as were deemed fittest to supply the outline of her own life and experience. What, it may be asked, can such biographers have left for others to do? To surpass their work is not to be thought of. But, in the turning{2} and perseverance of this planet, present soon becomes past, and that which has been best said asks to be said again. This biography, so rich in its suggestions and so valuable in its details, is already set in a past light by the progress of men and of things. Its theme has lost none of its interest. Nay, it is through the growing interest felt in Margaret and her work that a demand seems to have arisen for a later word about her, which cannot hope to be better or wiser than the words already made public, but which may borrow from them the inspiration for a new study and presentment. According to the authorities already established, Sarah Margaret Fuller, the child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane, was born at Cambridgeport, near Boston, on the 23d of May, 1810. She has herself given some account of her early life in an autobiographical sketch which forms the prelude to the work already published. Her father, she says, "was a lawyer and a politician," the son of a country clergyman, Harvard-bred both as to his college and his professional studies. She remembers him chiefly as absorbed in the business and interest of his profession, intent upon compassing the support of his family, and achieving such distinction as might prove compatible with that object. Her mother she describes as "one of{3} those fair, flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of life,—bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds." And in the arduous labor of her father's life, his love for this sweet mother "was the green spot on which he stood apart from the commonplaces of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence." The case between Margaret and her father is the first to be disposed of in our consideration of her life and character. In the document just quoted from she does not paint him en beau. Here and elsewhere she seems to have been inclined to charge upon him the excessive study which exaggerated her natural precocity of temperament, and the Puritan austerity which brought her ungratified imagination into early conflict with the circumstances and surroundings of her start in life. In a brief preface to the memoir already published, a surviving brother of Margaret characterizes this view of the father as inadequate and unjust. Margaret herself called her sketch an autobiographical romance, and evidently wrote it at a period of her life in which her personal experience had thrown little light upon the difficulties which parents encounter in the training of their children, and especially in that of their eldest-born.{4} From the sketch itself we gather that the Fuller household, although not corresponding to the dreams of its wonder-child, had yet in it elements which were most precious for her right growth and development. The family itself was descended from a stock deeply thoughtful and religious. With the impulses of such kindred came to Margaret the strict and thrifty order of primitive New England life, the absence of frivolity, the distaste for all that is paltry and superficial. In after years, her riper judgment must have shown her, as it has shown many, the value of these somewhat stern surroundings. The little Puritan children grew up, it is true, in the presence of a standard of character and of conduct which must have seemed severe to them. The results of such training have shown the world that the child so circumstanced will rise to the height of his teaching. Started on a solid and worthy plane of thought and of motive, he will not condescend to what is utterly mean, base, and trivial, either in motive or in act. If, as may happen, he fail in his first encounters with outside temptation, he will nevertheless severely judge his own follies, and will one day set himself to retrieve them with earnest diligence. In the instance before us we can feel how bitter may have been the contrast between the{5} child's natural tastes and the realities which surrounded her. Routine and restraint were burdensome to her when as yet she could not know their value. Not the less were they of great importance to her. The surroundings, too, which were devoid of artistic luxury and adornment, forced her to have recourse to the inner sense of beauty, which is sometimes lost and overlaid through much pleasing of the eye and ear. Childhood, indeed, insists upon having the whole heavenly life unpacked upon the spot. Its to-day knows no to-morrow. Hence its common impatience and almost inevitable quarrel with the older generation, which in its eyes represents privation and correction. The early plan of studies marked out for Margaret by her father was not devised by any commonplace mind. Mr. Fuller had gained from his own college life that love of culture which is valuable beyond any special attainment. His own scholarship had been more than common, and it became his darling object to transmit to his little daughter all that he himself had gained by study, and as much more as his circumstances would permit. He did indeed make the mistake, common in that day, of urging the tender intellect beyond the efforts proper to its stage of growth. Margaret says that the lessons{6} set for her were "as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond my age." These lessons were recited to her father after office hours; and as these hours were often prolonged, the child's mind was kept in a state of tension until long after the time when the little head should have rested serenely on its pillow. In consequence of this, it often rested very ill, and the youthful prodigy of the daytime was terrified at night by dreams and illusions, and disturbed by sleep-walking. From these efforts and excitements resulted, as she says, "a state of being too active and too intense, which wasted my constitution, and will bring me, although I have learned to understand and to regulate my now morbid temperament, to a premature grave." This was unhappy, certainly. The keen, active temperament did indeed acquire a morbid intensity, and the young creature thus spurred on to untimely effort began to live and to learn at a pace with which the slowness of circumstance was never able to keep abreast. Even with the allowance which must be made for the notion of that time as to what a child should be able to accomplish, it must grieve and surprise us to find Margaret at the age of six years engaged in the study of Latin and of English grammar. Her father "demanded accuracy{7} and clearness in everything." Intelligible statement, reasoned thought, and a certainty which excluded all suppositions and reservations,—these were his requirements from his young pupil. A certain quasi-dogmatic mode of enunciation in later life, which may have seemed, on a superficial view, to indicate an undue confidence and assumption, had probably its origin in the decided way in which the little Margaret was taught to recite her lessons. Under the controlling influence of her father, she says that her own world sank deep within, away from the surface of her life: "In what I did and said I learned to have reference to other minds, but my true life was only the dearer that it was secluded and veiled over by a thick curtain of available intellect and that coarse but wearable stuff woven by the ages, common sense." The Latin language opened for Margaret the door to many delights. The Roman ideal, definite and resolute, commended itself to her childish judgment; and even in later life she recognized Virgil as worthy to lead the great Dante "through hell and to heaven." In Horace she enjoyed the serene and courtly appreciation of life; in Ovid, the first glimpse of a mythology which carried her to the Greek Olympus. Her study "soon ceased to be a burden, and reading became a habit and a passion."{8} Her first real friends she found in her father's book-closet, to which, in her leisure moments, she was allowed free access. Here, from a somewhat miscellaneous collection, she singled out the works of Shakespeare, Cervantes, and MoliÈre,—"three great authors, all, though of unequal, yet of congenial powers; all of rich and wide, rather than aspiring genius; all free to the extent of the horizon their eye took in; all fresh with impulse, racy with experience; never to be lost sight of or superseded." Of these three Shakespeare was the first in her acquaintance, as in her esteem. She was but eight years old when the interest of Romeo and Juliet led her to rebel against the discipline whose force she so well knew, and to persevere in reading before her father's very eyes a book forbidden for the Sabbath. For this offence she was summarily dismissed to bed, where her father, coming presently to expostulate with her, found her in a strangely impenitent state of mind. Margaret's books thus supplied her imagination with the food which her outward surroundings did not afford. They did not, however, satisfy the cravings of her childish heart. These presently centred around a human object of intense interest,—a lady born and bred in polite European life, who brought something of its{9} tone and atmosphere to cheer for a while the sombre New England horizon. Margaret seems to have first seen her at church, where the general aspect of things was especially distasteful to her. "The puny child sought everywhere for the Roman or Shakespeare figures; and she was met by the shrewd, honest eye, the homely decency, or the smartness of a New England village on Sunday. There was beauty, but I could not see it then; it was not of the kind I longed for. "As my eye one day was ranging about with its accustomed coldness, it was arrested by a face most fair, and well known, as it seemed at first glance; for surely I had met her before, and waited for her long. But soon I saw that she was an apparition foreign to that scene, if not to me. She was an English lady, who, by a singular chance, was cast upon this region for a few months." This stranger seems to have been as gracious as she was graceful. Margaret, after this first glimpse, saw her often, sometimes at a neighbor's house, sometimes at her own. She was more and more impressed by her personal charm, which was heightened in the child's eyes by her accomplishments, rare in that time and place. The lady painted in oils and played on{10} the harp. Margaret found the greatest delight in watching the growth of her friend's pictures, and in listening to her music. Better still, they walked together in the quiet of the country. "Like a guardian spirit, she led me through the fields and groves; and every tree, every bird, greeted me and said, what I felt, 'She is the first angel of your life.'" Delight so passionate led to a corresponding sorrow. The lady, who had tenderly responded to the child's mute adoration, vanished from her sight, and was thenceforth known to her only through the interchange of letters. "When this friend was withdrawn," says Margaret, "I fell into a profound depression. Melancholy enfolded me in an atmosphere, as joy had done. This suffering, too, was out of the gradual and natural course. Those who are really children could not know such love or feel such sorrow." Her father saw in this depression a result of the too great isolation in which Margaret had thus far lived. He felt that she needed change of scene and, still more, intercourse with girls of her own age. The remedy proposed was that she should be sent to school,—a measure which she regarded with dread and dislike. She had hitherto found little pleasure in the society of other girls. She had sometimes joined the daughters of her neighbors{11} in hard play, but had not felt herself at home with them. Her retired and studious life had, she says, given her "a cold aloofness," which could not predispose them in her favor. Despite her resistance, however, her father persevered in his intention, and Margaret became an inmate of the Misses Prescott's school in Groton, Mass. Her experience here, though painful in some respects, had an important effect upon her after life. At first her unlikeness to her companions was uncomfortable both to her and to them. Her exuberant fancy demanded outlets which the restraints of boarding-school life would not allow. The unwonted excitement produced by contact with other young people vented itself in fantastic acts, and freaks amusing but tormenting. The art of living with one's kind had not formed a part of Margaret's home education. Her nervous system had already, no doubt, been seriously disturbed by overwork. Some plays were devised for the amusement of the pupils, and in these Margaret found herself entirely at home. In each of these the principal part was naturally assigned her, and the superiority in which she delighted was thus recognized. These very triumphs, however, in the end led to her first severe mortification, and on this wise:—{12} The use of rouge had been permitted to the girls on the occasion of the plays; but Margaret was not disposed, when these were over, to relinquish the privilege, and continued daily to tinge her cheeks with artificial red. This freak suggested to her fellow-pupils an intended pleasantry, which awakened her powers of resentment to the utmost. Margaret came to the dinner-table, one day, to find on the cheeks of pupils and preceptress the crimson spot with which she had persisted in adorning her own. Suppressed laughter, in which even the servants shared, made her aware of the intended caricature. Deeply wounded, and viewing the somewhat personal joke in the light of an inflicted disgrace, Margaret's pride did not forsake her. She summoned to her aid the fortitude which some of her Romans had shown in trying moments, and ate her dinner quietly, without comment. When the meal was over she hastened to her own room, locked the door, and fell on the floor in convulsions. Here teachers and schoolfellows sorrowfully found her, and did their utmost to soothe her wounded feelings, and to efface by affectionate caresses the painful impression made by their inconsiderate fun. Margaret recovered from this excitement, and took her place among her companions, but with an altered countenance and embittered heart.{13} She had given up her gay freaks and amusing inventions, and devoted herself assiduously to her studies. But the offence which she had received rankled in her breast. As not one of her fellow-pupils had stood by her in her hour of need, she regarded them as all alike perfidious and ungrateful, and, "born for love, now hated all the world." This morbid condition of mind led to a result still more unhappy. Masking her real resentment beneath a calm exterior, Margaret received the confidences of her schoolfellows, and used their unguarded speech to promote discord among them. The girls, naturally enough, talked about each other, and said things which it would have been kind and wise not to repeat. Margaret's central position among them would have enabled her to reconcile their small differences and misunderstandings, which she, on the contrary, did her utmost to foment, not disdaining to employ misrepresentation in her mischievous mediation. Before long the spirit of discord reigned throughout the school, in which, the prime mover of the trouble tells us, "scarcely a peaceful affection or sincere intimacy remained." She had instinctively followed the ancient precept, "Divide et impera," and ruled for evil those who would have followed her for good.{14} This state of things probably became unbearable. Its cause was inquired into, and soon found. A tribunal was held, and before the whole school assembled, Margaret was accused of calumny and falsehood, and, alas! convicted of the same. "At first she defended herself with self-possession and eloquence. But when she found that she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly threw herself down, dashing her head with all her force against the iron hearth, on which a fire was burning, and was taken up senseless." All present were of course greatly alarmed at this crisis, which was followed, on the part of Margaret, by days of hopeless and apathetic melancholy. During these she would neither speak nor eat, but remained in a sort of stupor,—the result of conflicting emotions. In the pain which she now felt, her former resentment against her schoolmates disappeared. She saw only her own offence, and saw it without hope of being able to pass beyond it. In this emergency, when neither the sorrow of her young companions nor the entreaties of her teachers seemed to touch her, a single friend was able to reach the seat of Margaret's distemper, and to turn the currents of her life once more into a healthful channel. This lady, a teacher in the school, had always{15} felt a special interest in Margaret, whose character somewhat puzzled her. With the tact of true affection, she drew the young girl from the contemplation of her own failure, by narrating to her the circumstances which, through no fault of hers, had made her own life one of sorrow and of sacrifice. Margaret herself, with a discernment beyond her years, had felt the high tone of this lady's character, and the "proud sensibility" expressed in her changing countenance. From her she could learn the lesson of hope and of comfort. Listening to the story, she no longer repulsed the hand of healing, but took patiently the soothing medicine offered by her visitor. This story of Margaret's school life she herself has told, in an episode called "Marianna," which was published in her "Summer on the Lakes," and afterwards embodied in Mr. Clarke's contribution to the memoir already published. We have already quoted several passages from it, and will here give her account of the end of the whole matter. "She returned to life, but it was as one who has passed through the valley of death. The heart of stone was quite broken in her; the fiery will fallen from flame to coal. "When her strength was a little restored, she had all her companions summoned, and said to{16} them: 'I deserved to die, but a generous trust has called me back to life. I will be worthy of the past, nor ever betray the trust, or resent injury more. Can you forgive the past?' And," says the narrative, "they not only forgave, but with love and earnest tears clasped in their arms the returning sister. They vied with one another in offices of humble love to the humbled one; and let it be recorded, as an instance of the pure honor of which young hearts are capable, that these facts, known to some forty persons, never, so far as I know, transpired beyond those walls." In making this story public, we may believe Margaret to have been actuated by a feeling of the value of such an experience both in the study of character and in the discipline of young minds. Here was a girl, really a child in age, but already almost a woman in selfhood and imagination. Untrained in intercourse with her peers in age, she felt and exaggerated her own superiority to those with whom her school life first brought her in contact. This superiority she felt impelled to assert and maintain. So long as she could queen it over the other pupils she was content. The first serious wounding of her self-love aroused in her a vengeful malignity, which grew with its own exercise. Unable as she found herself to command her little public by offices which{17} had seemed to her acts of condescension, she determined to rule through the evil principle of discord. In a fortunate moment she was arrested in this course by an exposure whose consequences showed her the reflection of her own misconduct in the minds of those around her. Extreme in all things, her self-reproach took the form of helpless despair, which yet, at the touch of true affection, gave way before the courageous determination to retrieve past error by future good desert. The excellence of Margaret's judgment and the generosity of her heart appear in the effect which this fortunate failure had upon her maturer life. The pride of her selfhood had been overthrown. She had learned that she could need the indulgence and forgiveness of others, and had also learned that her mates, lightly esteemed by her up to that time, were capable of magnanimous forgiveness and generous rehabilitation. In the tender strength of her young mind, those impressions were so received that they were never thereafter effaced. The esteem of Margaret for her own sex, then rare in women of her order, and the great charity with which she ever regarded the offences of others, perhaps referred back through life to this time of trial, whose shortcoming was to be redeemed by such brilliant achievements.{18} Margaret's school days ended soon after this time, and she returned to her father's house, much instructed in the conditions of harmonious relations with her fellows.{19} CHAPTER II.LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE.—FRIENDSHIP OF DR. HEDGE AND JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.Dr. Hedge, a life-long friend of Margaret, has given a very interesting sketch of her in her girlhood. He first met her when he was a student at Harvard, and she a maiden of thirteen, in her father's house at Cambridge. Her precocity, mental and physical, was such that she passed for a much older person, and had already a recognized place in society. She was at this time in blooming and vigorous health, with a tendency to over-stoutness, which, the Doctor thinks, gave her some trouble. She was not handsome nor even pretty, but her animated countenance at once made its own impression, and awakened in those who saw her a desire to know more of her. Fine hair and teeth, vivacious eyes, and a peculiarly graceful carriage of the head and neck were points which redeemed her from the charge of plainness. This face of hers was, indeed, somewhat problematic in its expression, which carried with it the assurance of great possibilities, but not the certainty of{20} their fulfilment. Her conversation was already brilliant and full of interest, with a satirical turn which became somewhat modified in after life. Dr. Hedge fixes her stay in the Groton school at the years 1824, 1825, and mentions her indulgence in sarcasm as a source of trouble to her in a school earlier attended, that of Dr. Park, of Boston. In the year 1826 his slight acquaintance with her grew into a friendship which, as we have said, ended only with her life. During the seven years that followed he had abundant occasion to note her steady growth and the intensity of her inner life. This was with her, as with most young persons, "a period of romance and of dreams, of yearning and of passion." He thinks that she did not at this time pursue any systematic study. "She read with the heart, and was learning more from social experience than from books." One leading trait of her life was already prominent. This was a passionate love of all beauties, both in nature and in art. If not corresponding to a scholar's idea of systematic study, Margaret's pursuit of culture in those years must have been arduous and many-sided. This we may partly gather from the books named and the themes touched upon in her correspondence with the beloved teacher who had brought her such near and tender help{21} in her hour of need. To this lady, in a letter dated July 11, 1825, Margaret rehearses the routine of her daily life:— "I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and then practise on the piano till seven, when we breakfast. Next I read French, Sismondi's 'Literature of the South of Europe,' till eight, then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy. About half-past nine I go to Mr. Perkins's school and study Greek till twelve, when, the school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and practise again till dinner, at two. Sometimes, if the conversation is very agreeable, I lounge for half an hour over the dessert, though rarely so lavish of time. Then, when I can, I read two hours in Italian, but I am often interrupted. At six I walk or take a drive. Before going to bed I play or sing for half an hour, and about eleven retire to write a little while in my journal,—exercises on what I have read, or a series of characteristics which I am filling up according to advice." A year later she mentions studying "Madame de StaËl, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads, with great delight." She asks her correspondent whether she would rather be the brilliant De StaËl or the useful Edgeworth. In 1827 we find her occupied with a critical study of the elder Italian poets. She now{22} mentions Miss Francis (Lydia Maria Child) as her intended companion in a course of metaphysical study. She characterizes this lady as "a natural person, a most rare thing in this age of cant and pretension. Her conversation is charming; she brings all her powers to bear upon it. Her style is varied, and she has a very pleasant and spirited way of thinking." Margaret's published correspondence with her dear teacher ends in 1830, with these words:— "My beloved supporter in those sorrowful hours, can I ever forget that to your treatment in that crisis of youth I owe the true life, the love of Truth and Honor?" From these years of pedagogy and of patience we must now pass to the time when this bud, so full of promise, unfolded into a flower rare and wondrous. The story of Margaret's early studies, and the wide reach of her craving for knowledge, already mark her as a creature of uncommon gifts. A devourer of books she had been from the start; but books alone could not content this ardent mind, at once so critical and so creative. She must also have life at first-hand, and feed her intelligence from its deepest source. Hence the long story of her friendships, so many and various, yet so earnest and efficient. What the chosen associates of this wonderful{23} woman have made public concerning the interest of her conversation and the value of her influence tasks to the utmost the believing powers of a time in which the demon of self-interest seems to unfold himself out of most of the metamorphic flowers of society. Margaret and her friends might truly have said, "Our kingdom is not of this world,"—at least, according to what this world calls kingly. But what imperial power had this self-poised soul, which could so widely open its doors and so closely shut them, which could lead in its train the brightest and purest intelligences, and "bind the sweet influences" of starry souls in the garland of its happy hours! And here we may say, her kingdom was not all of this world; for the kingdom of noble thought and affection is in this world and beyond it, and the real and ideal are at peace within its bounds. In the divided task of Margaret's biography it was given to James Freeman Clarke to speak of that early summer of her life in which these tender and intimate relations had their first and most fervent unfolding. The Harvard student of that day was probably a personage very unlike the present revered pastor of the Church of the Disciples. Yet we must believe that the one was graciously foreshadowed in the other, and{24} that Margaret found in him the germ of what the later world has learned so greatly to respect and admire. The acquaintance between these two began in 1829, and was furthered by a family connection which Margaret, in one of her early letters, playfully characterized as a cousinship in the thirty-seventh degree. During the four years immediately following, the two young people either met or corresponded daily. In explaining the origin of this friendship, Mr. Clarke modestly says:— "She needed a friend to whom to speak of her studies, to whom to express the ideas which were dawning and taking shape in her mind. She accepted me for this friend; and to me it was a gift of the gods, an influence like no other." This intercourse was at first on both sides an entertainment sought and found. In its early stages Margaret characterizes her correspondent as "a socialist by vocation, a sentimentalist by nature, and a Channing-ite from force of circumstance and of fashion." Further acquaintance opened beneath the superficial interest the deeper sources of sympathy, and a valued letter from Margaret is named by Mr. Clarke as having laid the foundation of a friendship to which he owed both intellectual enlightenment{25} and spiritual enlargement. More than for these he thanks Margaret for having imparted to him an impulse which carried him bravely forward in what has proved to be the normal direction of his life. Although destined, after those early years of intimate communion, to live far apart and in widely different spheres of labor and of interest, the regard of the two friends never suffered change or diminution. And here we come upon a governing feature in Margaret's intercourse with her friends. She had the power of leading those who interested her to a confidence which unfolded to her the deepest secrets of their life. Now came in play that unexplained action of one mind upon another which we call personal magnetism, and which is more distinctly recognized to-day than in other times as an element in social efficiency. It is this power which, united with intellectual force, gives leadership to individual men, and enables the great orator to hold a mighty audience in the hollow of his hand. With Margaret at the period we speak of the exercise of this power was intensive rather than extensive. The circumstances of the time had something to do with this. Here was a soul whose objects and desires boldly transcended the sphere of ordinary life. It could neither wholly contain nor fitly utter itself. Pulpit and{26} platform were then interdicted to her sex. The mimic stage, had she thought of it, would have mocked her with its unreality. On single souls, one at a time, she laid her detaining grasp, and asked what they could receive and give. Something noble she must perceive in them before she would condescend to this parley. She did not insist that her friends should possess genius; but she could only make friends of those who, like herself, were seekers after the higher life. Worthiness of object commended even mediocrity to her; but shallow worldliness awakened her contempt. In the exercise of this discrimination she no doubt sometimes gave offence. Mr. Clarke acknowledges that she not only seemed, but was, haughty and supercilious to the multitude, while to the chosen few she was the very embodiment of tender and true regard. It must also be acknowledged that this same magnetism which attracted some persons so strongly was to others as strongly repellent. Where she was least known this repulsion was most felt. It yielded to admiration and esteem where acquaintance went beyond the mere recognition of Margaret's air and manner, which made a stranger a little uncertain whether he would be amicably entertained or subjected to a reductio ad absurdum. As in any community{27} impressions of personality are more likely to be superficial than thorough, it is probable that a very general misunderstanding which, at a later day, grew up between Margaret and the great world of a small New England city had its origin in a misconstruction of her manner when among strangers, or on the occasion of a first introduction. To recall this shallow popular judgment of her is not pleasant, but some mention of it does belong to any summary of her life. With such friends as she had, she had no reason to look upon herself as one who was neither understood nor appreciated. Yet her heart, which instinctively sought the empire of universal love, may have been grieved at the indifference and dislike which she sometimes encountered. Those who know how, in some circles, her name became a watchword for all that was eccentric and pretentious in the womanhood of her day, will smile or sigh at the contrast between the portraitures of Margaret given in the volumes of the memoir and the caricature of her which was current in the mind of the public at large. These remarks anticipate the pains and distinctions of a later period. For the present let us confine our attention to the happy days at Cambridge, which Margaret may not have recognized as such, but which must have seemed{28} bright to her when contrasted with the years of labor and anxiety which followed them. Mr. Clarke tells us that Margaret and he began the study of the German language in 1832, moved thereunto by Thomas Carlyle's brilliant exposition of the merits of leading German authors. In three months' time Margaret had acquired easy command of the language, and within the year had read the most important works of Goethe and Schiller, with the writings also of Tieck, KÖrner, Richter, and Novalis. Extracts from her letters at this time show that this extensive reading was neither hasty nor superficial. She finds herself happier in the companionship of Schiller than in that of Goethe, of whom she says, "That perfect wisdom and merciless reason seem cold after those seducing pictures of forms more beautiful than truth." The "Elective Affinities" suggests to her various critical questions, but does not carry her away with the sweep of its interest. From "the immense superiority of Goethe" she finds it a relief to turn to the simplicity of Novalis, "a wondrous youth, who has written only one volume," and whose "one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow seem refreshingly human" to her. KÖrner becomes a fixed star in the heaven of her thought. Lessing interests her less. She{29} credits him with the production of "well conceived and sustained characters and interesting situations," but not with any profound knowledge of human nature. "I think him easily followed; strong, but not deep." This was with Margaret, as Dr. Hedge has well observed, the period of romance. Her superiority to common individuals appeared in the fact that she was able to combine with intense personal aspirations and desires a wide outlook into the destinies of the human race. We find her, in these very days, "engaged in surveying the level on which the public mind is poised." She turns from the poetic tragedy and comedy of life to study, as she says, "the rules of its prose," and to learn from the talk of common people what elements and modes of thought go to make up the average American mind. She listens to George Thompson, the English anti-slavery orator, and is led to say that, if she had been a man, she should have coveted the gift of eloquence above all others, and this for the intensity of its effects. She thinks of writing six historical tragedies, and devises the plan for three of them. Tales of Hebrew history it is also in her mind to compose. Becoming convinced that "some fixed opinion on the subject of metaphysics is an essential aid to systematic culture," she addresses herself to the{30} study of Fichte and Jacobi, of Brown and Stewart. The first of these appeared to her incomprehensible. Of the second, she conjectures that his views are derived from some author whom she has not read. She thinks in good earnest of writing a life of Goethe, and wishes to visit Europe in order to collect the material requisite for this. Her appreciation of Dr. Channing is shown in a warm encomium on his work treating of slavery, of which she says, "It comes like a breath borne over some solemn sea which separates us from an island of righteousness." In summing up his account of this part of Margaret's life, Mr. Clarke characterizes self-culture as the object in which she was content to lose sight of all others. Her devotion to this great end was, he says, "wholly religious, and almost Christian." She was religious in her recognition of the divine element in human experience, and Christian in her elevation above the sordid interests of life, and in her devotion to the highest standards of duty and of destiny. He admits, however, that her aim, noble as it was, long remained too intensely personal to reach the absolute generosity required by the Christian rule. This defect made itself felt outwardly by a certain disesteem of "the vulgar herd," and in an exaggerated worship of great{31} personalities. Its inner effects were more serious. To her darling desire for growth and development she sacrificed "everything but manifest duty." The want of harmony between her outward circumstances and her inward longings so detained her thoughts that she was unable to pass beyond the confines of the present moment, and could not foresee that true growth must bring her, as it soon did, a great enlargement of influence and relation.{32} CHAPTER III.RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.—MARGARET'S EARLY CRITICS.—FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. EMERSON.It was to be expected that in such a correspondence as that between Margaret and James Freeman Clarke the chord of religious belief would not remain untouched. From Margaret's own words, in letters and in her journal, we clearly gather that her mind, in this respect, passed through a long and wide experience. Fortunate for her was, in that day, the Unitarian pulpit, with its larger charity and freer exegesis. With this fold for her spiritual home, she could go in and out, finding pasture, while by the so-called Orthodox sects she would have been looked upon as standing without the bounds of all religious fellowship. The requirements of her nature were twofold. A religious foundation for thought was to her a necessity. Equally necessary was to her the untrammelled exercise of critical judgment, and the thinking her own thoughts, instead of accepting those of other people. We may feel sure that Margaret, even to save her own soul, would{33} not and could not have followed any confession of faith in opposition to her own best judgment. She would have preferred the hell of the free soul to the heaven of the slave. To combine this intellectual interpretation of religious duty with the simple devotion which the heart craves is not easy for any one. We may be very glad to find that for her it was not impossible. Her attitude between these two points of opposition is indeed edifying; for, while she follows thought with the daring of a sceptic, and fearlessly reasons concerning the highest mysteries, she yet acknowledges the insufficiency of human knowledge for themes so wonderful, and here, as nowhere else, bows her imperial head and confesses herself human. One thing we may learn from what Margaret has written on this subject, if we do not already know it, and this is, that in any true religious experience there must be progress and change of attitude. This progress may be first initiated by the preponderance of thought or by that of affection, but, as it goes on, the partiality of first views will be corrected by considerations which are developed by later study. Religious sincerity is, in the end, justified in all its stages; but these stages, separately considered, will appear more or less incomplete and sometimes even irreligious.{34} When first interrogated by her correspondent, she says: "I have determined not to form settled opinions at present. Loving or feeble natures need a positive religion, a visible refuge, a protection, as much in the passionate season of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave. But mine is not such. My pride is superior to any feelings I have yet experienced; my affection is strong admiration, not the necessity of giving or receiving assistance or sympathy." So much for the subjective side of the matter with Margaret at this time. The objective is formulated by her in this brief creed: "I believe in Eternal Progression. I believe in a God, a Beauty and Perfection to which I am to strive all my life for assimilation. From these two articles of belief I draw the rules by which I strive to regulate my life. Tangible promises, well-defined hopes, are things of which I do not now feel the need. At present my soul is intent on this life, and I think of religion as its rule." Those last words are not in contrast with the general tone of religious teaching to-day, but when Margaret wrote them to James Freeman Clarke, an exaggerated adjournment of human happiness to the glories of another world was quite commonly considered as essential to a truly Christian standpoint.{35} Even at this self-sufficing period of her life Margaret's journals were full of prayer and aspiration. Here are some of the utterances of this soul, which she herself calls a proud one: "Blessed Father, nip every foolish wish in blossom. Lead me any way to truth and goodness, but if it might be, I would not pass from idol to idol. Let no mean sculpture deform a mind disorderly, perhaps ill-furnished, but spacious and life-warm." After hearing a sermon on the nature of duties, social and personal, she says: "My heart swelled with prayer. I began to feel hope that time and toil might strengthen me to despise the 'vulgar parts of felicity,' and live as becomes an immortal creature. Oh, lead me, my Father! root out false pride and selfishness from my heart; inspire me with virtuous energy, and enable me to improve every talent for the eternal good of myself and others." Seasons of bitter discouragement alternated at this time with the moments in which she felt, not only her own power, but also the excellence of her aims in life. Of one of these dark hours Margaret's journal gives a vivid description, from which some passages may be quoted. The occasion was a New England Thanksgiving, a day on which her attendance at church was almost compulsory.{36} This church was not to her a spiritual home, and on the day now spoken of the song of thanksgiving made positive discord in her ears. She felt herself in no condition to give thanks. Her feet were entangled in the problem of life. Her soul was agonized by its unreconciled contradictions. "I was wearied out with mental conflicts. I felt within myself great power and generosity and tenderness; but it seemed to me as if they were all unrecognized, and as if it was impossible that they should be used in life. I was only one-and-twenty; the past was worthless, the future hopeless; yet I could not remember ever voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my aspiration seemed very high." Looking about in the church, she envied the little children for their sense of dependence and protection. She knew not, she says, "that none could have any father but God," knew not that she was "not the only lonely one, the selected Œdipus, the special victim of an iron law." From this intense and exaggerated self-consciousness, the only escape was in fleeing from self. She sought to do this, as she had often done, by a long quick walk, whose fatigue should weary out her anguish, and enable her to return home "in a state of prayer." On this day this resource did not avail her.{37} "All seemed to have reached its height. It seemed as if I could never return to a world in which I had no place, to the mockery of humanities. I could not act a part, nor seem to live any longer." The aspect of the outer world was in correspondence with these depressing thoughts. "It was a sad and sallow day of the late autumn. Slow processions of clouds were passing over a cold blue sky; the hues of earth were dull and gray and brown, with sickly struggles of late green here and there. Sometimes a moaning gust of wind drove late, reluctant leaves across the path—there was no life else." Driven from place to place by the conflict within her, she sat down at last to rest "where the trees were thick about a little pool, dark and silent. All was dark, and cold, and still." Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds "with that transparent sweetness, like the last smile of a dying lover, which it will use when it has been unkind all a cold autumn day." And with this unlooked-for brightness passed into her soul "a beam from its true sun," whose radiance, she says, never departed more. This sudden illumination was not, however, an unreasoning, unaccountable one. In that moment flashed upon her the solution of the problem of self, whose perplexities had followed her from her childish days.{38} She comprehended at once the struggle in which she had been well-nigh overcome, and the illusion which had till then made victory impossible. "I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act under these limitations of time and space and human nature; but I saw also that it must do it. I saw there was no self, that selfishness was all folly, and the result of circumstance; that it was only because I thought self real that I suffered; that I had only to live in the idea of the all, and all was mine. This truth came to me, and I received it unhesitatingly; so that I was for that hour taken up into God.... My earthly pain at not being recognized never went deep after this hour. I had passed the extreme of passionate sorrow, and all check, all failure, all ignorance, have seemed temporary ever since." The progress of this work already brings us to that portion of Margaret's life in which her character was most likely to be judged of by the world around her as already determined in its features and aspect. That this judgment was often a misjudgment is known to all who remember Margaret's position in Boston society in the days of her lessons and conversations. A really vulgar injustice was often done her by those who knew of her only her appearance and supposed pretensions. Those to whom she{39} never was a living presence may naturally ask of those who profess to have known her, whether this injustice did not originate with herself, whether she did not do herself injustice by habitually presenting herself in an attitude which was calculated to heighten the idea, already conceived, of her arrogance and overweening self-esteem. Independently of other sources of information, the statements of one so catholic and charitable as Mr. Emerson meet us here, and oblige us to believe that the great services which Margaret was able to render to those with whom she came into relation were somewhat impaired by a self-esteem which it would have been unfortunate for her disciples to imitate. The satirists of the time saw this, and Margaret, besides encountering the small-shot of society ridicule, received now and then such a broadside as James Russell Lowell gave her in his "Fable for Critics." Of this long and somewhat bitter tirade a few lines may suffice as a specimen:— "But here comes Miranda. Zeus! where shall I flee to? These remarks, explanatory and apologetic, are suggested partly by Mr. Emerson's statements concerning the beginning of his acquaintance with Margaret, and partly by the writer's own recollections of the views of outsiders concerning her, which contrasted strongly with the feeling and opinion of her intimates. Mr. Emerson first heard of Margaret from Dr. Hedge, and afterwards from Miss Martineau. Both were warm in their praise of her, and the last-named was especially desirous to introduce her to Mr. Emerson, whom she very much wished to know. After one or more chance meetings, it was arranged that Margaret should spend a fortnight with Mrs. Emerson. The date of this visit was in July, 1836. To the description of her person already quoted from Dr. Hedge, we may add a sentence or two from Mr. Emerson's record of his first impressions of her:— "She had a face and frame that would indicate{41} fulness and tenacity of life.... She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice, all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get far." But Margaret greatly esteemed Mr. Emerson, and was intent upon establishing a friendly relation with him. Her reputation for satire was well known to him, and was rather justified in his eyes by the first half-hour of her conversation with him. "I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked." Passing into a happier vein, she unfolded her brilliant powers of repartee, expressed her own opinions, and sought to discover those of her companion. Soon her wit had effaced the impression of her personal unattractiveness; "and the eyes, which were so plain at first, swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life." He now saw that "her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent," and as he learned to know her{42} better, her plane of character rose constantly in his estimation, disclosing "many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each." Mr. Emerson likens Margaret's relations with her friends to the wearing of a necklace of social brilliants of the first water. A dreaded waif among the merely fashionable, her relations with men and women of higher tastes were such that, as Mr. Emerson says, "All the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it." In the houses of such friends she was always a desired guest, and in her various visitings she "seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had been referred." Mr. Emerson gives some portraits which make evident the variety as well as the extent of Margaret's attraction. Women noted for beauty and for social talent, votaries of song, students of art and literature,—men as well as women,—vied with each other in their devotion to her. To each she assumed and sustained a special relation whose duties and offices she never neglected nor confounded. To each she became at once a source of inspiration and a court of appeal. The beneficence of her influence may be inferred from the lasting gratitude of her friends, who always{43} remembered her as having wisely guided and counselled them. Any human life is liable to be modified by the supposition that its results are of great interest to some one whose concern in them is not a selfish one. Where this supposition is verified by corresponding acts, the power of the individual is greatly multiplied. This merciful, this providential interest Margaret felt for each of her many friends. There was no illusion in the sense of her value which they, all and severally, entertained. Where, we may ask, shall we look to-day for a friendliness so wide and so availing? We can only answer that such souls are not sent into the world every day. Few of us can count upon inspiring even in those who are nearest and dearest to us this untiring concern in our highest welfare. But such a friend to so many it would be hard to find. When we consider Margaret's love of literature, and her power of making its treasures her own, we must think of this passion of hers for availing intercourse with other minds as indeed a providential gift which no doubt lavished in passing speech much that would have been eloquent on paper, but which evidently had on society the immediate and intensified effect which distinguishes the living word above the dead letter.{44} CHAPTER IV.ART STUDIES.—REMOVAL TO GROTON.—MEETING WITH HARRIET MARTINEAU.—DEATH OF MR. FULLER.—DEVOTION TO HER FAMILY.Margaret's enthusiasm for art was in some measure the result of her study of Goethe. Yet she had in herself a love of the beautiful, and a sense of its office in life, which would naturally have led her far in the direction in which this great master gave her so strong an impulsion. In her multifarious reading she gave much time to the literature of art, and in those days had read everything that related to Michael Angelo and Raphael, QuatremÈre de Quincy, Condivi, Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, and others. The masters themselves she studied in the casts of the Boston AthenÆum, in the Brimmer Collection of Engravings, and in the contents of certain portfolios which a much-esteemed friend placed at her service, and which contained all the designs of Michael and Raphael. The delight which Margaret felt in these studies demanded the sympathy of her elect associates, and Mr. Emerson remembers certain{45} months as having been "colored with the genius of these Italians." In 1839 Mr. Allston's numerous works were collected for a public exhibition which drew to Boston lovers of art from many distant places. In the same year some sculptures of Greenough and Crawford were added to the attractions of the Boston AthenÆum. In Margaret's appreciation of these works, if we may believe Mr. Emerson, a certain fanciful interpretation of her own sometimes took the place of a just estimate of artistic values. Yet he found her opinion worthy of attention, as evincing her real love of beautiful things, and her great desire to understand the high significance of art. He makes some quotations from her notes on the AthenÆum Gallery of sculpture in 1840. Here she finds marble busts of Byron and Napoleon. The first, with all its beauty, appears to her "sultry, stern, all-craving, all-commanding," and expressive of something which accounts for what she calls "the grand failure of his scheme of existence." The head of Napoleon is, she says, not only stern but ruthless. "Yet this ruthlessness excites no aversion. The artist has caught its true character, and given us here the Attila, the instrument of fate to serve a purpose not his own." She groups the poet and{46} the warrior together as having, "the one in letters, the other in arms, represented more fully than any other the tendency of their time; [they] more than any other gave it a chance for reaction." Near these she finds a head of the poet Ennius, and busts also of Edward Everett, Washington Allston, and Daniel Webster. Her comment upon this juxtaposition is interesting. "Yet even near the Ennius and Napoleon our American men look worthy to be perpetuated in marble or bronze, if it were only for their air of calm, unpretending sagacity." Mr. Henry James, Jr., writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne, speaks of the Massachusetts of forty or more years ago as poor in its Æsthetic resources. Works of art indeed were then few in number, and decorative industry, in its present extent, was not dreamed of. But in the intellectual form of appreciative criticism the Boston of that day was richer than the city of our own time. The first stage of culture is cultivation, and the art lovers of that day had sowed the seed of careful study, and were intent upon its growth and ripening. If possession is nine points of the law, as it is acknowledged to be, the knowledge of values may be said to be nine points of possession, and Margaret and her friends, with their knowledge of the import{47} of art, and with their trained and careful observation of its outward forms, had a richer feast in the casts and engravings of that time than can be enjoyed to-day by the amateur, who, with a bric-a-brac taste and blasÉ feeling, haunts the picture-shops of our large cities, or treads the galleries in which the majestic ghosts of earnest times rebuke his flippant frivolity. We have lingered over these records of Margaret's brilliant youth, because their prophecies aid us greatly in the interpretation of her later life. The inspired maiden of these letters and journals is very unlike the "Miss Fuller" who in those very days was sometimes quoted as the very embodiment of all that is ungraceful and unfeminine. How little were the beauties of her mind, the graces of her character, guessed at or sought for by those who saw in her unlikeness to the popular or fashionable type of the time matter only for derisive comment! It may not be unimportant for us here to examine a little the rationale of Margaret's position, and inquire whether the trait which occasioned so much animadversion was not the concomitant of one of Margaret's most valuable qualities. This we should call a belief in her own moral and intellectual power, which impelled her to examine and decide all questions for herself, and which enabled her to accomplish many a brave{48} work and sacrifice. This sense of her own power was answered by the common confession of weakness which then was, and still is, a part of the received creed of women on the level of good society. Did not the prone and slavish attitude of these women appear to Margaret as fatal to character as it really is? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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