OF -LETTERS* 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 125 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
jttett of 
 
 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI 
 

American 
 
 of %ettet$, 
 
 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 BT 
 
 THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 
 
 UNt r 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Cambritige 
 
Copyright, 1884, 
 BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY . 1 
 
 II. HEREDITARY TRAITS 7 
 
 III. GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE 20 
 
 IV. COUNTRY LIFE AT GROTON .... 43 
 V. FINDING A FRIEND 62 
 
 VI. SCHOOL-TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE 75 
 
 VII. SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN . .94 
 
 VIII. CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON .... 109 
 
 IX. A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN . . . 130 
 X. THE DIAL 154 
 
 XL BROOK FARM 173 
 
 XII. BOOKS PUBLISHED 187 
 
 XIII. BUSINESS LIFE IN NEW YORK .... 205 
 
 XIV. EUROPEAN TRAVEL 220 
 
 [ XV. MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD .... 232 
 
 XVI. LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE . 248 
 
 XVII. CLOSING SCENES 266 
 
 XVIII. LITERARY TRAITS 281 
 
 XIX. PERSONAL TRAITS . . 299 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 315 
 
 INDEX , . 319 
 
 213366 
 
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IT has long been my desire to write a new 
 memoir of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, a person whose 
 career is more interesting, as it seems to me, than 
 that of any other American of her sex ; a woman 
 whose aims were high and whose services great ; 
 one whose intellect was uncommon, whose activity 
 incessant, whose life varied, and whose death dra 
 matic. Thirty years having passed since the pub 
 lication of her " Memoirs," it has seemed possible 
 that a biography might now be written almost 
 wholly from new or unused material, thus afford 
 ing a positive addition to what was before known 
 of her, and not a mere restatement of what was 
 already before the public. In this aspect, at least, 
 the effort has been successful, nearly every cita 
 tion in the book being from manuscript sources ; 
 and the study of these materials having in all re 
 spects controlled the delineation here given of her 
 life. Recognizing the great value of the portrait- 
 l 
 
2 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 ure already drawn of her character by the authors 
 of the " Memoirs," and the excellence of Mrs. 
 Howe s more condensed biography, I have some 
 times ventured to vary from their estimate, and 
 to rely on my own. 
 
 It so happened that Margaret Fuller was asso 
 ciated with me, not closely but definitely, by va 
 rious personal ties. She was born and bred in the 
 same town, though more than thirteen years older ; 
 she was the friend of my older sisters, and I was 
 the playmate of her younger brothers ; her only 
 sister was afterwards closely connected with me 
 by marriage, and came for especial reasons, with 
 her children, peculiarly under my charge ; and, 
 though this was after Margaret Fuller s death, it 
 yet contributed with all the other circumstances 
 to make the Fuller family seem like kindred of 
 my own. It moreover happened that Margaret 
 Fuller had upon me, through her writings, a more 
 immediate intellectual influence than any one ex 
 cept Emerson, and possibly Parker. All this guar 
 antees that warm feeling of personal interest, with 
 out which no memoir can be well written, while 
 there was yet too little of intimacy to give place 
 for the glamour of affection. This biography may 
 therefore serve as an intermediate step between 
 the original "Memoirs" which gave the esti 
 mate offered by personal friendship and that 
 remoter verdict which will be the judgment of an 
 impartial posterity. 
 
 The sources on which I have chiefly relied are 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 (1) the five bulky volumes in possession of the 
 Fuller family, into which a great variety of writ 
 ten material was transcribed by Rev. A. B. Fuller, 
 after the publication of the " Memoirs," and 
 to which I have referred always as the " Fuller 
 MSS." ; (2) Margaret Fuller s letters to Mr. Em 
 erson, kindly lent me by Mr. Emerson s execu 
 tors ; (3) her letters to Dr. F. H. Hedge, lent me 
 by himself ; (4) those to the Hon. A. G. Greene, 
 of Providence, R. I., sent me by his daughter, 
 Mrs. S. C. Eastman, of Concord, N. H. ; (5) those 
 to the Hon. George T. Davis, shown to me by his 
 son, James C. Davis, Esq. ; (6) many letters and 
 papers of different periods, sent to me from Lon 
 don by the Rev. W. H. Channing ; (7) Margaret 
 Fuller s diary of 1844, lent by Mrs. R. B. Storer, 
 of Cambridge ; (8) her traveling diary in England 
 and Scotland, which I own ; (9) several volumes 
 of Mr. A. Bronson Alcott s MS. diary; (10) a 
 translation of her letters to her husband in Italy, 
 the version being made by the late Miss Eliza 
 beth Hoar, and lent me by her sister, Mrs. R. B. 
 Storer. To this I may add a store of remi 
 niscences from Margaret Fuller s old Cambridge 
 friends. In the cases where I have used the same 
 written material with the editors of the " Mem 
 oirs," the selections employed have been wholly 
 different. A few printed books, issued since the 
 publication of the " Memoirs," have given some 
 aid, especially Horace Greeley s " Recollections of 
 a Busy Life," Weiss s " Life of Theodore Parker," 
 
4 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 and the " Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence ; " but 
 the main reliance has necessarily been placed on 
 material not hitherto made public ; and to all the 
 friends who have helped me to this I am pro 
 foundly grateful. 
 
 If my view of Margaret Fuller differs a little 
 from that of previous biographers, it is due to the 
 study of these original sources. With every dis 
 position to defer to the authors of the " Mem 
 oirs," all of whom have been in one way or an 
 other my friends and teachers, I am compelled in 
 some cases to go with what seems the preponder 
 ance of written evidence against their view. Mar 
 garet Fuller was indeed, as one of them has lately 
 said to me, many women in one, and there is room 
 for a difference of opinion even in assigning a key 
 note to her life. In their analysis, these biogra 
 phers seem to me to have given an inevitable 
 prominence to her desire for self-culture, perhaps 
 because it was on this side that she encountered 
 them ; but I think that any one who will patiently 
 study her in her own unreserved moments will 
 now admit that what she always most desired was 
 not merely self-culture, but a career of mingled 
 thought and action, such as she finally found. She 
 who, at the age of thirteen, met young scholars re 
 turned from Europe with enthusiastic vindications 
 of American society against their attacks ; she who, 
 a few years after, read with delight all Jefferson s 
 correspondence, was not framed by nature for a 
 mystic, a dreamer, or a book-worm. She longed, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 as she herself said, to be a Pericles rather than an 
 Anaxagoras ; and she occupied her time with om 
 nivorous study, with writing, with talking, with 
 mysticism, while waiting for her career. In view 
 of all this, I cannot resist the opinion that the 
 prevalent tone of the " Memoirs " leaves her a 
 little too much in the clouds, and gives us too lit 
 tle of that vigorous executive side which was al 
 ways prominent in her aspirations for herself, and 
 which was visible to all after she reached Italy. 
 
 I am the more led to say this because it is 
 essential to the plan of the present series that I 
 should dwell chiefly on her literary life, while 
 knowing that this life was only preliminary, and 
 that she would not have wished to be judged by 
 it after she had once entered on the life of action. 
 The following pages will, I hope, be a more ade 
 quate record than has before been given of what 
 she did for our dawning literature ; but they yet 
 leave room for a book by some other hand that 
 shall fully delineate the Margaret Fuller Ossoli 
 who stood by the side of Mazzini in Italy, and 
 whose hands the young patriots clasped in the 
 hospital crying, " Viva 1 Italia " as they died. 
 At the very moment when Lowell was satirizing 
 her in his " Fable for Critics," she was leading 
 such a life as no American woman had led in this 
 century before. During our own civil war many 
 women afterwards led it, and found out for them 
 selves what it was ; but by that time Margaret 
 Fuller Ossoli had passed away. Still, as I said, 
 
6 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 I must now make that part of her record secon 
 dary and dwell chiefly on its intellectual side ; 
 only keeping before my readers the fact that the 
 best part of intellect is action, and that this was 
 always her especial creed. 
 
n. 
 
 HEREDITARY TRAITS. 
 
 " WE are never better understood," says Mar 
 garet Fuller in her fragment of autobiographical 
 romance, " than when we speak of 4 a Roman vir 
 tue, a Roman outline. She goes on : " There 
 is somewhat indefinite, somewhat yet unfulfilled 
 in the thought of Greece, of Spain, of modern 
 Italy ; but ROME, it stands by itself a clear Word. 
 The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose, 
 is what it utters. Every Roman was an em 
 peror." Tried by this standard, she herself may 
 be said to have had a Roman parentage. An ele 
 ment of strength went through all her ancestry. 
 
 And the quality which was their drawback 
 too much of self-assertion was essentially Ro 
 man also. " It never shocks us," the autobiogra 
 phy continues, " that the Roman is self-conscious. 
 One wants no universal truth from him, no phi 
 losophy, no creation, but only his life, his Roman 
 life, felt in every pulse, realized in every gesture. 
 The universal heaven takes in the Roman only to 
 make us feel his individuality the more. The 
 Will, the Resolve of Man ; it has been expressed, 
 fully expressed." 
 
8 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 There is no evidence that Margaret Fuller her 
 self had ever thought of any such analogy as I 
 find between the type thus strongly indicated 
 and the race from which she sprung ; but in my 
 own mind it is clear and gave the key to her life. 
 Let us go back to her ancestry and trace this fine 
 thread of New England vigor which was a 
 Roman vigor, touched by Christianity running 
 through it all. 
 
 Thomas Fuller, entitled "Lieutenant" in the 
 probate proceedings on his will, came from Eng 
 land to America in 1638, and left this record of 
 his spiritual experiences. 
 
 " In thirty-eight I set my foot 
 On this New England shore ; 
 My thoughts were then to stay one year, 
 And here remain no more. 
 
 " But, by the preaching of God s word 
 By famous Shepard he, 
 In what a wof ul state I was, 
 I then began to see. 
 
 " Christ cast his garments over me, 
 And all my sins did cover : 
 More precious to my soul was he 
 Than dearest friend or lover. 
 
 " His pardoning mercy to my soul 
 All thought did far surmount ; 
 The measure of his love to me 
 Was quite beyond account. . . . 
 
 " I said, My mountain does stand strong, 
 And doubtless t will forever ; 
 But soon God turned his face away, 
 And joy from me did sever. 
 
HEREDITARY TRAITS. 9 
 
 " Sometimes I am on mountains high, 
 Sometimes in valleys low : 
 The state that man J s in here below, 
 Doth ofttimes ebb and flow. . . . 
 
 " But surely God will save my soul ! 
 And, though you trouble have, 
 My children dear, who fear the Lord, 
 Your souls at death he 11 save." 
 
 The author of these lines was detained in Amer 
 ica, it seems, by the preaching of Rev. Mr. Shep- 
 ard, of Cambridge, known in the obituaries of 
 that period as " the holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting 
 and soul-ravishing Mr. Shepard." Thus guided 
 and influenced, Lieutenant Fuller bought lands in 
 Middleton, then a part of Salem, Mass., lands 
 a portion of which is still in the possession of some 
 of his descendants. He built a house there, but 
 afterwards removed to Woburn, where he died. 
 His son Jacob and his grandson Jacob succeeded 
 him at Middleton, and a great-grandson, Timothy, 
 was also born there in 1739, of whom more must 
 be said. 
 
 Timothy Fuller graduated at Harvard College 
 in 1760, and his name, with that date, might long 
 be seen upon the corner-stone of the building 
 called Stoughton. He became a clergyman, was 
 settled in Princeton, Mass., and differed from most 
 of his parishioners in regarding the impending 
 American Revolution as premature. He therefore 
 preached a sermon to the " minute-men," choosing 
 for his text the passage, " Let not him that gird- 
 eth on the harness boast himself as he that putteth 
 
10 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 it off." But the minute-men found it more satis 
 factory to gird on the harness and put off the min 
 ister ; so the Rev. Timothy Fuller was dismissed 
 from his parish by an ecclesiastical council in 
 1776. He preached elsewhere ; sued the town of 
 Princeton in vain for his salary ; had even to pay 
 the costs, for which contingency he had carefully 
 kept money ; but finally came back to the town as 
 a farmer, his large farm embracing the Wachusett 
 Mountain. He evidently regained the full confi 
 dence of his rebellious parishioners, for he repre 
 sented Princeton in the state convention which 
 accepted the Constitution of the United States. 
 Independent as ever, he voted steadily against 
 that instrument, and has left on record his rea 
 sons, all based on the fact that the Constitution 
 recognized human slavery. In this attitude he no 
 doubt found support from his wife, whose father, 
 the Rev. Abraham Williams, had emancipated his 
 own slaves by will ; had required his children to 
 give bonds for their support in old age, if needed ; 
 and had deprived any child so delinquent of all 
 share in his estate, substituting in that case " a 
 new Bible of the cheapest sort, hoping that, by 
 the blessing of Heaven, it may teach them to do 
 justice and love mercy." Thus fortified on his 
 wife s side, also, in Roman virtue and anti-slavery 
 principles, the Rev. Timothy Fuller died in 1805, 
 five years before the birth of his most eminent 
 grandchild, Margaret. 
 
 He left five daughters and five sons, all these 
 
HEREDITARY TRAITS. 11 
 
 last being lawyers, a monotony of occupation 
 more common in those days than now. These 
 sons were men of marked character, possessing 
 many admirable and some unpleasing qualities, 
 and these in sufficient uniformity to cause their 
 being liked and disliked especially the latter 
 in a body. Horace Mann, who was a person of 
 rather vehement preferences, and who, as a law 
 yer, knew the brothers well, once said to me that 
 if Margaret Fuller was unpopular, it was not from 
 any prejudice against her as a woman, but because 
 she probably combined "the disagreeableness of 
 forty Fullers." It was not true, for she had fortu 
 nately one of the sweetest mothers who ever lived, 
 and her nature was thus tempered on the " spin 
 dle-side ; " but the remark showed the traditions 
 of the paternal race. Several of the Fuller broth 
 ers I can distinctly remember, and, to one thus re 
 calling them, it is not difficult to comprehend just 
 where Horace Mann s dislike came in, although to 
 some of the brotherhood he doubtless did injustice. 
 They were in general men of great energy, push 
 ing, successful, of immense and varied informa 
 tion, of great self-esteem, and without a particle 
 of tact. My mother used to tell a characteristic 
 story of Abraham Fuller, who was a frequent 
 visitor at her house in Cambridge, and whom 
 every Cantabrigian of that period must remem 
 ber. Coming in and finding my mother darning 
 her children s stockings, he watched her a little, 
 while, and then said, abruptly, " You do not know 
 
12 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 how to darn stockings ; let me show you." He 
 being an old bachelor, and she the mother of ten 
 children, the remark seemed the very climax of 
 impudence ; but he took the needle from her, and 
 taught her, as she always maintained, more about 
 darning stockings than she had ever known in 
 her life before. This combination of unexpected 
 knowledge and amazing frankness in its proclama 
 tion shows what a critic like Horace Mann, him 
 self not wanting in self-assertion, might have found 
 to suggest antagonism in " forty Fullers." 
 
 Of a family thus gifted and thus opinionated, 
 Timothy Fuller, Margaret Fuller s father, was the 
 oldest, the most successful, and the most assured. 
 He was born July 11, 1778, and received his fa 
 ther s name ; graduated at Harvard College, with 
 the second honors of his class, in 1801 ; was at 
 different times a member of various branches of 
 the state government of Massachusetts ; and was 
 a representative in Congress from 1817 to 1825. 
 Pie was in politics a Jeffersonian Democrat, was 
 chairman of the House committee on naval affairs, 
 and was a warm supporter of John Quincy Adams 
 for the presidency. Many references to him may 
 be found in Mr. Adams s voluminous diary. In 
 heriting anti-slavery principles on both sides, he 
 warmly opposed the Missouri Compromise, and his 
 speeches on this and other subjects found their 
 way into print. He worked hard in his profes 
 sion, kept up his classical reading, and was mak 
 ing preparations to write a history of the United 
 
HEREDITARY TRAITS. 13 
 
 States, when he died suddenly of Asiatic cholera, 
 October 1, 1835. 
 
 I have carefully read some of his published ad 
 dresses : a Fourth-of-July oration at Watertown 
 in 1809, and one at Lexington in 1814 ; also an 
 address before the American Peace Society in 
 1826. In all these there are the characteristics 
 to be found in a thousand similar speeches of that 
 period, together with some not so common. They 
 are fervent, patriotic, florid ; but there is also a 
 certain exceptional flavor arising from the fact 
 that, unlike nine tenths of those who made such 
 addresses in New England, the speaker was a Re 
 publican or, as men were beginning to say, a 
 Democrat and not a Federalist. He does not 
 appear in these addresses as a bitter partisan ; he 
 is as ready to praise Washington and Adams as 
 Jefferson and Madison ; but he never mentions 
 Hamilton and Jay, and seems by implication to 
 condemn the policy of the one, and the treaty with 
 which the name of the other is still identified. 
 Nor does he take sides with Napoleon Bonaparte, 
 as the Federalists charged the Democrats with 
 doing, while he condemns, in a really striking 
 and felicitous passage, the selfish motives of the 
 Allied Powers in crushing him : 
 
 " At length the mighty warrior is prostrate ; his proud 
 trophies, the spoils of so many vanquished princes, are 
 leveled with the dust. Napoleon is no more ! No 
 more, did I say ? The blaze of that portentous meteor 
 shall gleam resplendent through all future time ! 
 
14 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 " The proud banner of England, in close contact with 
 her imperial coadjutors, waves in triumph over the 
 French metropolis. The destinies of the vast empire 
 of France and the partition of Europe await the nod of 
 those same princes, who so lately trembled in their cap 
 itals. The disinterested and magnanimous allies, the 
 * deliverers of the world, seem very affectionate to the 
 world they have delivered. Their labor of love is 
 only begun. One takes Poland under his gracious pro 
 tection, another is pleased to take Norway, a third 
 Italy ; and modest England resigns to each his favorite 
 portion of prostrate Europe, and only claims, as a small 
 gratuity, the rest of the world ! France pays fifteen hun 
 dred millions of francs for the acquisition of her ancient 
 dynasty. Oh, how would the heart of every American 
 rejoice; how should we at this moment hymn praises to 
 Heaven, if the generous prince who once espoused our 
 cause in distress, now filled his rightful throne ! But 
 it may not be, The son of St. Louis is ascended to 
 heaven. " l 
 
 True to the anti-slavery traditions of his father 
 and grandfather, Timothy Fuller pointed out, as 
 early as 1809, that the Constitution manifested 
 " a temporary indulgence to a system which it 
 nevertheless reprehends in the Southern States," 
 
 yet he found in this concession a masterpiece 
 
 of skill, although, as has been said, his own father 
 had voted against the instrument on this very 
 ground. He was faithful in denouncing, three 
 years before the war of 1812, those English out 
 rages in the way of search and impressment for 
 
 i Address, July 4, 1814, p. 20. 
 
HEREDITARY TRAITS. 15 
 
 which the Federalists mistakenly apologized ; and 
 if he was so hopeful as to assert, without qualifi 
 cation, " None but just wars can ever be waged 
 by a free country," we can pardon something to 
 republican zeal. Like other Americans in that 
 day, he found a hero in Bolivar ; and he held up 
 Napoleon Bonaparte with some vigor as a warn 
 ing to that popular leader : 
 
 " Should Bolivar, so much admired, so much ap 
 plauded, so often dignified by a comparison with the 
 highest name in the annals of patriotism, degenerate at 
 last into a vulgar hero, a military usurper, the betrayer 
 of his country ; great indeed will be his degradation, 
 loud the execrations of mankind, deep and eternal the 
 odium of posterity. Let him beware of the temptation, 
 lest he share the fate of him, who so lately seemed to 
 hold the destinies of EUROPE in his hand. The career 
 of military power glared upon the eye, and bewildered 
 the senses, but was followed by swift retribution upon 
 the usurper. He, who might forever have been honored 
 as the champion of freedom, is consigned to the faithful 
 historian to record in blood his deeds of injustice, usur 
 pation and oppression. Let him then, who still soars 
 in the meridian of success, warned by the fate of law 
 less ambition, take counsel from the GREAT and GOOD 
 FAYETTE, crowned with the benedictions of a grateful 
 nation ; let him learn wisdom from his own imputed 
 prototype, and become unequivocally, irrevocably, glo 
 riously, the benefactor of nations, THE WASHINGTON 
 OF THE SOUTH. vl 
 
 But that Timothy Fuller was capable of doing 
 
 1 Oration o* Peace, p. 19. 
 
16 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 some justice to opponents is evident in the tribute 
 which he pays, as a lawyer, to the integrity of 
 the British admiralty courts even in time of war. 
 When we consider how hard it was for the dis 
 ciples of Jefferson to admit that anything good 
 could come out of England, we are justified, I 
 think, in attributing to Timothy Fuller a certain 
 candor as well as independence of mind, in writ 
 ing thus : 
 
 " During the late wars in Europe, in which Great 
 Britain so largely participated, and when her cruisers 
 arrested the progress of our neutral commerce, the 
 appeals to her justice were first made through her 
 Courts of Admiralty ; and it is due to those courts to 
 admit that those appeals were seldom made in vain, un 
 til the Executive power interposed, and required their 
 obedience to unjust and arbitrary rules, and orders of 
 the King in Council, unknown to the codes of inter 
 national law. The interference was open, and avowed, 
 under the odious and infamous plea of retaliation upon 
 the enemy. The obstacle was too great to be overcome 
 by the integrity of the judge ; yet the rectitude of his 
 principles has not been questioned. 
 
 " This and other examples prove that it is not difficult 
 to constitute a tribunal of learned, intelligent, and up 
 right men, selected upon fair principles of reciprocal 
 and equal rights for the adjustment of controversies 
 between nations." l 
 
 Such was the father of Margaret Puller, a man 
 of some narrowness and undue self-assertion, very 
 
 1 Peace Address, p. 24. 
 
HEREDITARY TRAITS. 17 
 
 likely ; but conscientious, vigorous, well-informed, 
 and public-spirited. His daughter Margaret al 
 ways recognized, after all his mistakes, her great 
 intellectual obligations to him ; and his accurate 
 habits of mind were always mentioned by her 
 with admiration. " Your father " she wrote to 
 her brother Richard, many years later, " had very 
 great power of attention ; I have never seen any 
 person who excelled him in that;" 1 and she es 
 sayed to carry into her ideal realms the same 
 laborious and careful habits which he had brought 
 to bear in law and statesmanship. Meanwhile 
 she derived from her mother a different, and, in 
 some ways, a more elevating influence. Mrs. 
 Fuller long outlived both daughter and husband, 
 and I remember her very well. She must have 
 been one of the sweetest and most self-effacing 
 wives ever ruled by a strong-willed spouse. Her 
 maiden name was Margaret Crane, and she was 
 the daughter of Major Peter Crane, of Canton, 
 Mass. Of what good Puritan stock she also came 
 may be seen not alone in the sturdy militia- title 
 which her father bore, but in the following pic 
 ture, recalling some of Heine s or Erckmann- 
 Chatrian s peasant sketches, of her old mother 
 the maternal grandmother of Margaret Fuller. 
 The grand-daughter gives this description of the 
 good lady, as she appeared in later life : 
 
 "Mother writes that my dear old grandmother is 
 dead. I am sorry you never saw her. She was a 
 
 i Fuller MSS. ii. p. 691. 
 2 
 
18 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 picture of primitive piety as she sat, holding the * Saints 
 Rest in her hand, with her bowed, trembling figure 
 and her emphatic nods, and her bright, sweet blue eyes. 
 They were bright to the last, though she was ninety. 
 I went to see her just before I came back here. It is a 
 great loss to mother, who felt a large place warmed in 
 her heart by the fond and grateful love of this aged 
 parent." 1 
 
 Margaret Fuller s mother was married May 28, 
 1809 ; and came to dwell, with her husband, in 
 Cambridge. She had in youth great personal 
 beauty, the inheritance of which has conspicu 
 ously come down, here and there, to her descend 
 ants. This consisted especially in a peculiar rich 
 ness of complexion, which time had spared even 
 to the period when I knew her. She was tall, 
 slender, dignified in bearing, but awkward rather 
 than graceful in movement, and with an especial 
 sweetness of expression in her face. Her manner 
 is excellently described in a phrase applied by 
 Bettina Brentano to her friend Giinderode : " She 
 was timid-friendly." During her husband s pub 
 lic life she was much in Washington society ; but 
 withdrew, as years went on, into a sort of double 
 domesticity, dividing her life between her chil 
 dren and her flowers. Of each she had a large 
 family, and, when she removed from one residence 
 to another, the garden was transplanted like the 
 nursery. She had eight different homes during 
 her married life ; but there were families and gen. 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
HEREDITARY TRAITS. 19 
 
 erations of plants which went with her from place 
 to place, adhering to her fortunes, in the words of 
 her son, u like the tenantry of a feudal lord." One 
 family of lilies was thus perpetuated for a quarter 
 of a century, and was bequeathed to her children. 
 She wrote once to her daughter, " One must have 
 grown up with flowers and found joy and sweet 
 ness in them, amidst disagreeable occupations, to 
 take delight in them as I do. They have long 
 had power to bring me into harmony with the 
 Creator, and to soothe almost any irritation." In 
 accordance with this, the mother seems to have 
 naturally suggested to the daughter some flower- 
 like symbol. Margaret Fuller writes to her 
 brother, " We cannot be sufficiently grateful for 
 our mother so fair a blossom of the white ama 
 ranth truly to us a mother in this, that we can 
 venerate her piety. Our relations to her have 
 known no jar. Nothing vulgar has sullied them ; 
 and in this respect life has been truly domesti 
 cated." When we remember that she of whom 
 this was written was no feudal lady, " flower-like 
 and delicate " like Browning s Duchess ; but a 
 faithful and laborious New England matron, able 
 and willing to perform for her large household 
 the humblest services, we can see the value of 
 this tribute, and the treasure of this inheritance. 
 
 Such were the father and mother, such the an 
 cestry, of Margaret Fuller. We shall see, as we 
 go on, the traces of their inherited qualities per 
 vading her life. 
 
III. 
 
 GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 (1810-1833.) 
 
 SARAH MARGARET, the oldest of the eight chil 
 dren of Timothy and Margaret (Crane) Fuller, 
 was born May 23, 1810, in that part of Cambridge 
 still known as Cambridgeport. There are attrac 
 tive situations in that suburb, but Cherry Street 
 can scarcely be classed among them, and the 
 tide of business and the pressure of a tenement- 
 house population have closed in upon it since then. 
 The dwelling of Timothy Fuller still stands at the 
 corner of Eaton Street, and is easily recognized 
 by the three elms in front, two of which, at 
 least, were planted by him in the year when 
 Margaret was born. The garden, in which she 
 and her mother delighted, has long since van 
 ished ; but the house still retains a certain dig 
 nity, though now divided into three separate ten 
 ements, numbered respectively 27, 29, and 31 
 Cherry Street, and occupied by a rather migra 
 tory class of tenants. The pillared doorway, and 
 the carved wreaths above it, give still an old-fash 
 ioned grace to the somewhat dilapidated birth 
 place of Margaret Fuller. 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 21 
 
 In the fragment of an autobiographical romance, 
 given in her " Memoirs," there is a graphic sketch 
 of this early home ; and the following briefer one, 
 hitherto unpublished, occurs in a journal of travel 
 kept, many years after, for her brother Richard : 
 
 " I feel satisfied, as I thought I should, with reading 
 these bolder lines in the manuscript of Nature. Merely 
 gentle and winning scenes are not enough for me; I 
 wish my lot had been cast amid the sources of the 
 streams, where the voice of the hidden torrent is heard 
 by night ; where the eagle soars, and the thunder re 
 sounds in long peals from side to side ; where the grasp 
 of a more powerful emotion has rent asunder the rocks, 
 and the long purple shadows fall like a broad wing upon 
 the valley. All places, like all persons, I know, have 
 beauty which may be discovered by a thoughtful and 
 observing mind ; but only in some scenes and with some 
 people can I expand, and feel myself at home. I feel 
 this all the more for having passed my childhood in such 
 a place as Cambridge port. There I had nothing except 
 the little flower-garden behind the house, and the elms 
 before the door. I used to long and pine for beautiful 
 places such as I read of. There was not one walk for 
 me except over the bridge ; I liked that very much, the 
 river, and the city glittering in sunset, and the lovely 
 undulating line all round, and the light smokes seen in 
 some weather." l 
 
 Her father, from her early childhood, took 
 charge of her education, and devoted to it much 
 time. She began to study Latin at the age of six, 
 and was carried on, from that period, by an Intel* 
 
 i Fuller MSS. ii. 711-3. 
 
22 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 lectual forcing process. It was the custom of the 
 time. Rev. Dr. Hedge, afterwards her intimate 
 intellectual companion, assures me that there was 
 nothing peculiar, for that period, in Mr. Fuller s 
 method, except that it was applied to a girl. 
 Cambridge boys, if the sons of college-bred rnen, 
 were brought up in much the same way. Dr. 
 Hedge himself was fitted for college at eleven, 
 and had read half the body of Latin literature be 
 fore that time. What made the matter worse in 
 her case was not the mere fact that she was a girl, 
 though that doubtless created a need of such 
 watchful care as only a mother can give. There 
 was the serious additional evil that all her lessons 
 must be recited after her father came back from 
 his office, and therefore at irregular hours, often 
 extending late into the evening. High pressure 
 is bad enough for an imaginative and excitable 
 child, but high pressure by candle-light is ruin 
 ous ; yet that was the life she lived. The frag 
 ment of autobiographical romance in which she 
 vividly describes the horrors of this method must 
 not, as her brother Arthur has suggested, be taken 
 too literally ; but frequent references in her later 
 journals show her deep sense of the wrong she 
 suffered in mind and body by the mistaken sys 
 tem applied in her early youth. Writing in her 
 diary, many years afterwards, of some improve 
 ments in physical training, especially as to tight- 
 lacing, she says : 
 
 " If we had only been as well brought up in these 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 23 
 
 respects ! It is not mother s fault that she was igno 
 rant of every physical law, young, untaught country girl 
 as she was ; but I can t help mourning, sometimes, that 
 my bodily life should have been so destroyed by the ig 
 norance of both my parents." * 
 
 At thirteen, Margaret Fuller was so precocious 
 in mind and appearance as to take her place in 
 society with much older girls ; she went to parties 
 of young people, and gave such entertainments for 
 herself. Having been a pupil at the school, then 
 celebrated, of Dr. Park, in Boston, she once at 
 tempted to mingle her two sets of friends Bos 
 ton and Cambridge at a party given in her own 
 house. The attempt was disastrous ; she had lit 
 tle natural tact, and her endeavors to pay, as was 
 proper, the chief attention to the stranger guests 
 brought upon her the general indignation of her 
 little world in Cambridge. Partly in consequence 
 of this untoward state of things, and in order to 
 change the scene, she was sent as a pupil to the 
 school of the Misses Prescott, in Groton. There 
 she had a curious episode of personal experience, 
 recorded in her "Summer on the Lakes" as hav 
 ing occurred to a certain fabled " Mariana ; " and 
 she received from her teachers a guidance so kind 
 and tender as to make her grateful for it during 
 all her life. She returned from this school in the 
 spring of 1825, being then just fifteen. 
 
 At this time she lived, as always, a busy life, 
 rose before five in summer, walked an hour, prao 
 
 1 MS. Diary, 1844 
 
24 MARGARET FULLER OS80LI. 
 
 ticed an hour on the piano, breakfasted at seven, 
 read Sismondi s " European Literature " in French 
 till eight, then Brown s "Philosophy" till half 
 past nine, then went to school for Greek at twelve, 
 then practiced again till dinner. After the early 
 dinner she read two hours in Italian, then walked 
 or rode ; and in the evening played, sang, and re 
 tired at eleven to write in her diary. This, be it 
 observed, was at the very season when girls of 
 fifteen or sixteen are, in these days, on their 
 way to the seashore or the mountains. The school 
 where she recited Greek was a private institution 
 of high character in Cambridgeport, known famil 
 iarly as the " C. P. P. G. S.," or " Cambridge 
 Port Private Grammar School," a sort of acad 
 emy, kept at that time by Mr. Perkins, a gradu 
 ate of Yale College. It was so excellent that it 
 drew many pupils from what was then called Old 
 Cambridge, now Harvard Square, then quite 
 distinct from " the Port," and not especially dis 
 posed to go to it for instruction. Dr. Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes was one of Margaret Fuller s 
 fellow pupils, as were John Holmes, his younger 
 brother, and Richard Henry Dana. From those 
 who were her associates in this school, it is pos 
 sible to obtain a very distinct impression of her 
 as she then appeared. 
 
 She came to school for these Greek recitations 
 only, and was wont to walk in with that peculiar 
 carriage of the head and those half-shut eyelids 
 which have been so often described ; and which 
 
CHILDHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 25 
 
 were so far from producing antagonism among the 
 younger girls that they rather caused an amusing 
 sense of envy and emulation. " We thought," 
 said one among them to me, " that if we could 
 only come into school that way, we could know as 
 much Greek as she did." Other traits of hers 
 these youthful observers also noted with admira 
 tion. There was then a social library in one of 
 the village shops ; to this she would go, wearing 
 a hooded cloak ; she would take off the cloak, fill 
 the hood with books, swing it over her shoulders, 
 books and all, and so carry it home. "We all 
 wished," said my informant, " that our mothers 
 would let us have hooded cloaks, that we might 
 carry our books in the same way." Yet it does 
 not seem to have been their impression that she 
 neglected her home duties for the sake of knowl 
 edge ; such was her conceded ability that she was 
 supposed equal to doing everything at once. It 
 was currently reported that she could rock the cra 
 dle, read a book, eat an apple, and knit a stocking, 
 all at the same time ; and here also the indefati 
 gable imitation of her young admirers toiled after 
 her in vain. How she impressed the boys, mean 
 while, may be gathered from Dr. Holmes s amus 
 ing description of the awe with which he regarded 
 the opening sentence of one of her school compo 
 sitions : " It is a trite remark." l Alas ! he did 
 not know the meaning of the word " trite." 
 
 A lady, who at a later period knew Margaret 
 
 1 Atlantic Monthly, xxiii. 1 1 7. 
 
26 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 Fuller well, writes me a characteristic reminis 
 cence of the first glimpse of her ; at a time when 
 she came as an unexpected guest to my inform 
 ant s house, on the occasion of a little party of 
 younger children. She entered, a tall girl of 
 fifteen, plain, but with " a peculiar swaying grace 
 in her motion." She happened to carry in her 
 hand a large handkerchief, such as it was the 
 fashion of those days to use ; and with this hand 
 kerchief for a bdton she at once assumed direction 
 of the children ; waving her sign of office by one 
 corner as she guided them in new games, to the 
 great amusement of the mother and elder sisters, 
 who found themselves relieved of all trouble in 
 the entertainment. " I was greatly drawn to her," 
 says my informant, then a girl of eleven or 
 twelve. Children are keen critics of one another, 
 and this testimony from a juvenile hostess proves 
 the essential bonhomie and cordiality of the stran 
 ger guest. And whenever, from this time on, she 
 assumed the part of leadership in a mixed com 
 pany, it is to be observed that the attitude was al 
 ways accepted as natural and agreeable by those 
 present ; it was only the absent who criticised. 
 
 There seems to be no foundation for the view 
 suggested recently, that Mr. Fuller was moved, in 
 his efforts to give his daughter a high education, 
 by a baffled social ambition. In the first place, 
 there was very little room for any such thing ; the 
 Cambridge society was very simple, as it still re 
 mains; and Mr. Fuller s standing, being that of 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE 27 
 
 a lawyer and congressman, was as good as any 
 body s. There was a prejudice against him po 
 litically, no doubt, he being a Democrat when the 
 ruling classes in Massachusetts were Federalists ; 
 but his social position was unimpaired. Neither 
 he nor his wife had the attribute of personal ele 
 gance or grace ; but he evidently took pains to fill 
 the prominent place to which he was justly enti 
 tled ; and an entertainment given by him to John 
 Quincy Adams, the President, in 1826, was one of 
 the most elaborate affairs of the kind that had oc 
 curred in Cambridge since the ante-revolutionary 
 days of the Lechmeres and Vassalls. He was then 
 residing in a fine old mansion, built by Chief 
 
 Justice Dana, on what is still called Dana Hill, 
 
 a house destroyed by fire in 1839, and his guests 
 were invited from far and near to a dinner and a 
 ball. Few Cambridge hosts would then have at 
 tempted so much as this ; but had Mr. Fuller s 
 social prominence been far less than it was, he 
 would have been the very last person to find out 
 the deficiency. Had he lived next door to an im 
 perial palace, he would have thought that it was 
 he who did the favor by mingling with his neigh 
 bors. As to his daughter, he took pride in her 
 precocious abilities, and enjoyed her companion 
 ship in his favorite studies ; that tells the whole 
 story. Stimulating, even flattering, his compan 
 ionship might be ; but tender, wise, considerate, 
 it could not be. On that side and it was with 
 her the important side she cast herself against 
 
28 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 an iron wall. Her early diaries were burned by 
 herself long after, and it is only "by glimpses in 
 her later papers that we can reconstruct this 
 girlish life. Looking back, at the age of thirty, 
 she writes in a fragment of journal : 
 
 " When I recollect how deep the anguish, how deepev- 
 still the want, with which I walked alone in hours ot 
 childish passion and called for a Father, after saying the 
 word a hundred times, till it was stifled by sobs, how 
 great seems the duty that name imposes." 1 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances, the mothers in 
 fluence comes in to fill this void. Unfortunately 
 Mr. Fuller for many years deemed it his mission 
 to be both father and mother ; and his sweet 
 wife, absorbed in her younger children, insensibly 
 yielded. His authority over his daughter did not 
 stop with the world of books. Many a man feels 
 bound vigorously to superintend the intellectual 
 education of his little maiden, and then leaves 
 all else dress, society, correspondence to the 
 domain of the mother. Not so with Mr. Fuller. 
 It is the testimony of those who then knew the 
 family well that his wife surrendered all these 
 departments also to his sway. He was to control 
 the daughter s whole existence. Jean Paul says 
 that the mother puts the commas and the semi 
 colons into the child s life, but the father the co 
 lons and the periods. In the Fuller household the 
 whole punctuation was masculine. Had Margaret 
 an invitation, her father decided whether it should 
 i MS. 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 29 
 
 be accepted, and suggested what she should wear ; 
 did she receive company at home, he made out the 
 list; and when the evening came, he and his 
 daughter received them : the mother only cas 
 ually appearing, a shy and dignified figure in the 
 background. At a later period, after his death, 
 Margaret Fuller and her mother became all-in-all 
 to each other, but at this early period the tie be 
 tween them, though affectionate, was not inti 
 mate ; for almost all purposes of direction and 
 guidance she was her father s child. 
 
 Margaret Fuller s personal appearance at this 
 early period has been described by several of her 
 biographers ; but one hears very different accounts 
 of it from different quarters, the least flattering 
 being those given by her own sex. The inexora 
 ble memory of a certain venerable Cambridge lady 
 recalls her graphically as she appeared at the ball 
 given by her father to President Adams ; a young 
 girl of sixteen with a very plain face, half-shut 
 eyes, and hair curled all over her head ; she was 
 laced so tightly, my informant declares, by reason 
 of stoutness, that she had to hold her arms back 
 as if they were pinioned ; she was dressed in a 
 badly-cut, low-necked pink silk, with white mus 
 lin over it ; and she danced quadrilles very awk 
 wardly, being withal so near-sighted that she could 
 hardly see her partner. On the other hand, it is 
 maintained that she had in childhood something 
 of her mother s peculiar beauty of complexion, 
 this being, however, spoiled at twelve years old 
 
30 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 By a tendency of blood to the head, which the 
 tight-lacing must have assisted. It is also said 
 that her eyes would have been good had they not 
 been injured by near-sightedness, and that her pe 
 culiar smile had only a passing effect of supercil 
 iousness, and was really kind and truthful. She 
 had what her school-mate Dr. O. W. Holmes de 
 scribed as a long and flexile neck, arching and 
 undulating in strange, sinuous movements, which 
 one who loved her would compare to a swan, and 
 one who loved her not to those of the ophidian 
 who tempted our common mother." 1 Her hands 
 were smooth and white, and she made such prom 
 inent use of them that she was charged by her 
 critics as was also charged upon Madame de 
 Staci in respect to her arms with making the 
 most of her only point of beauty. 
 
 The total effect was undoubtedly that of per 
 sonal plainness ; and the consciousness of this fact 
 was no doubt made more vivid to her by the tradi 
 tions and remains of her mother s beauty, and by 
 the fact that this quality was transmitted in even 
 an enhanced form to her own younger sister Ellen, 
 whom she reared and educated. Ellen Fuller, 
 afterwards the wife of Ellery Channing, the poet, 
 was in person and character one of the most at 
 tractive of women. She had a Madonna face, a 
 broad brow, exquisite coloring, and the most noble 
 and ingenuous expression, mingled, in her sister 
 Margaret s phrase, with " the look of an appeal* 
 1 Atlantic Monthly, xxiii. 116. 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 31 
 
 ing child." I knew her intimately, her husband 
 being my near relative, and our households being 
 for various reasons closely brought together ; and 
 have always considered her one of the most ad 
 mirable women I have ever had the good fortune 
 to meet. She not only had an active and culti 
 vated mind, and a strength of character that sur 
 mounted some of life s severest trials, but she was 
 as singularly gifted in the sphere of home and so 
 cial life as was her sister in that of literature. 
 She instantly drew to her all strangers by her 
 face, while her elder sister had no such advantage ; 
 and though it is certain that no shade of jealousy 
 ever came between these high-minded persons, it 
 was not in human nature that Margaret Fuller 
 should not have felt her own conscious want of 
 attractions to be enhanced by the contrast. 
 
 As a tribute to this fair sister, and also to the 
 deep feeling which Margaret Fuller at last learned 
 to cherish toward her father, I copy the following 
 reminiscence from a diary kept by her many years 
 later : 
 
 "I remembered our walking in the garden avenue, 
 between the tall white lilies and Ellen s apple-tree ; she 
 was a lovely child then, and happy, but my heart ached, 
 and I lived in just the way I do now. Father said, see 
 ing me at a distance, < Incedo regiiia, etc. Poor Juno ! 
 Father admired me, and, though he caused me so much 
 suffering, had a true sense at times of what is tragic for 
 
 me. The other day, when C was cutting a lock of 
 
 my hair for one who so little knows how to value it, I 
 
32 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 thought of my finding it in Father s desk, with all these 
 other little tokens. It was a touching sight. Father, if 
 you hear me, know that your daughter thinks of you 
 with the respect and relenting tenderness you deserve. 
 Time has removed all obstructions to a clear view of 
 what you were. I am glad you were withdrawn from a 
 world which had grown so hitter to you ; but I wish we 
 might reach you with our gentle thoughts." * 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is now a city 
 of 52,000 inhabitants, had, at the time of Mar 
 garet Fuller s birth, but 2,323. When she was 
 twenty years old it had 6,072, divided between 
 three detached villages ; and was in many respects 
 a very pleasant place in which to be born and 
 bred. It was, no doubt, in the current phrase of 
 to-day, " provincial ; " in other words, it was not 
 one of the two or three great capitals of the civil 
 ized world ; but there are few places in any coun 
 try which bring together a larger proportion of 
 cultivated and agreeable families than must then 
 have been found in this quiet academic suburb. 
 One could not quite venture to say of it as Stuart 
 Newton, the painter, said of Boston, during a bril 
 liant London career about that period, " I meet in 
 London occasionally such society as I met in Bos 
 ton all the time ; " but it needs only to mention 
 some of the men who made Cambridge what it 
 was, between 1810 and 1830, to show that my 
 claim for the little town is not too high. Judge 
 
 1 MS. Diary, 1844. Mr. Fuller s reference was to Virgil s de 
 scription of Juiio, "Ast ego quae divum incedo regina." 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 33 
 
 Story, whose reputation is still very wide, was 
 then the head of the law school, and in the zenith 
 of his fame ; the all-accomplished Edward Everett 
 was Greek professor ; English was taught by Ed 
 ward T. Channing, who certainly trained more 
 and better authors than any teacher yet known 
 in America ; George Ticknor was organizing the 
 department of modern languages ; George Ban 
 croft was a tutor. The town in which these men 
 lived and taught may have been provincial in 
 population, but it was intellectually metropolitan ; 
 where McGregor sits, there is the head of the 
 table. Moreover, by a happy chance, the revolu 
 tions of Europe were sending to this country, about 
 that time, many highly cultivated Germans and 
 Italians, of whom Harvard College had its full 
 share. Charles Follen taught German ; Charles 
 Beck, Latin ; Pietro Bachi, Italian ; Friedrich Gra 
 ter gave drawing lessons. England, too, contrib 
 uted to the American Cambridge the most delight 
 ful of botanists and ornithologists, his books 
 being still classics, Thomas Nuttall. He or 
 ganized the Botanic Garden of the college, and 
 initiated the modern tendency toward the scien 
 tific side of education. From some of these men 
 Margaret Fuller had direct instruction ; but she 
 was, at any rate, formed in a society which was 
 itself formed by their presence. 
 
 And, since young people are trained quite as 
 much by each other as by their elders, it was for 
 tunate that Margaret Fuller found among the 
 
 3 
 
34 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 young men who were her contemporaries some 
 companions well worth having. She went into 
 society, as has been seen, very early far too 
 early. The class with which she may be said to 
 have danced through college to adopt Howells s 
 phrase was that of 1829, which has been made, 
 by the wit and poetry of Holmes, the most emi 
 nent class that ever left Harvard. With Holmes 
 she was not especially intimate, though they had 
 been school-mates ; but with two of the most 
 conspicuous members of the class William 
 Henry Channing and James Freeman Clarke 
 she formed a life-long friendship, and they became 
 her biographers. Another of these biographers 
 the Rev. Frederick Henry Hedge, her townsman 
 knew her also at this period, though he had 
 already left college and had previously been ab 
 sent from Cambridge for some years, at a Ger 
 man gymnasium. Still another associate, also of 
 the class of 1829, was her kinsman, George T. 
 Davis, afterwards well known as a member of 
 Congress from the Greenfield (Mass.) district, 
 a man of the world and of brilliant gifts. 
 
 But after all, the most important part of a 
 woman s training is that which she obtains from 
 her own sex ; and since Margaret Fuller s mother 
 was one of the self-effacing sort, it was fortunate 
 for the young girl that, by a natural reaction, she 
 sought feminine influences outside of her own 
 home. She was one of those maidens who form 
 passionate attachments to older women; and there 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 35 
 
 was fortunately in Cambridge at that time a group 
 of highly cultivated ladies, most of whom belonged 
 to the college circle, and who in turn won her ar 
 dent loyalty. My elder sister can well remember 
 this studious, self-conscious, overgrown girl as sit 
 ting at my mother s feet, covering her hands with 
 kisses and treasuring her every word. It was the 
 same at another time with my aunt, Miss Ann 
 G. Storrow, a person of great wit and mental 
 brilliancy ; the same with Mrs. J. W. Webster, 
 a most winning and lovely woman, born at the 
 Azores and bearing a tropic softness and sweet 
 ness in her manners. Most of these ladies were 
 too much absorbed in their own duties to give 
 more than a passing solicitude to this rather odd 
 and sometimes inconvenient adorer ; but she for 
 tunately encountered one friend who resolutely 
 took her in hand. 
 
 This lady was the wife of the Harvard professor 
 of astronomy ; a woman of uncommon character 
 and cultivation, who had lived much in Europe, 
 and who, with no children of her own, did many 
 good services for the children of her friends. She 
 was Mrs. Eliza Farrar, or, as she always preferred 
 to call herself on her title-pages, Mrs. John Farrar. 
 Having myself resided for some time beneath this 
 lady s roof, I can certify to her strong and well- 
 balanced nature, and her resolute zeal in mould 
 ing the manners as well as morals of the young. 
 She was one of our first and best writers for chil 
 dren ; her " Young Lady s Friend " was almost 
 
d6 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 the pioneer manual of its kind ; and her " Recol 
 lections of Seventy Years" is an admirable record 
 of a well-spent life. She was the friend of Miss 
 Martineau and others of the ablest English women 
 of her time ; she readily saw the remarkable in 
 tellect of Margaret Fuller, and also perceived the 
 defects of her training. She undertook to mould 
 her externally, to make her less abrupt, less self- 
 asserting, more comme il faut in ideas, manners, 
 and even costume. She had her constantly at 
 her own house, reformed her hairdresser, and in 
 structed her dressmaker ; took her to make calls, 
 took her on journeys. Mrs. Farrar had, moreover, 
 often with her a young kinswoman who furnished 
 outwardly and inwardly a cnarming model, Miss 
 Anna Barker, of New Orleans, now Mrs. S. G. 
 Ward. This lady, whose gifts and graces have 
 since won affectionate admiration in two conti 
 nents, was soon a warm friend of Margaret Ful 
 ler; who had already another friend of similar 
 attractions in Miss Harriet Fay, now Mrs. W. H. 
 Greenough, then living in the very next house at 
 Cambridgeport and for a time her inseparable 
 companion. Dr. Holmes has once or twice re 
 ferred to this last fair maiden in his writings as 
 " the golden blonde," and describes vividly in his 
 " Cinders from the Ashes " the manner in which 
 she won the hearts of all the school-boys. 1 One 
 of her especial attractions was a head covered 
 with sunny curls, the free gift of nature ; and it 
 
 1 Atlantic Monthly, xxiii. 116. 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 37 
 
 was believed by penetrating that is, feminine 
 observers that the less facile ringlets for which 
 Margaret Fuller s hair was kept in unsightly curl 
 papers all the morning were due to a hopeless 
 emulation of her lovely friend. It was, in short, 
 Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier in a 
 school-room. At any rate, it is very probable 
 that the early intimacy with these beautiful and 
 attractive maidens had much to do with creating 
 in Margaret Fuller that strong admiration for 
 personal charms amounting almost to envy, but 
 never to ungenerous jealousy which marked her 
 life-time. 
 
 How ardent and how deep were her emotions 
 towards these early friends can best be seen from 
 this passage, which appears without date in her 
 diary : 
 
 " I loved for a time with as much passion as 
 
 I was then strong enough to feel. Her face was always 
 gleaming before me, her voice was echoing in my ear, 
 all poetic thoughts clustered round the dear image. 
 This love was for me a key which unlocked many a 
 treasure which I still possess ; it was the carbuncle 
 (emblematic gem !) which cast light into many of the 
 darkest corners of human nature. She loved me, too, 
 though not so much, because her nature was * less high, 
 less grave, less large, less deep ; but she loved more 
 tenderly, less passionately. She loved me, for I well 
 remember her suffering when she first could feel my 
 faults, and knew one part of the exquisite veil rent 
 away." l 
 
 * Fuller MSS. i. 445. 
 
38 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 Margaret Fuller s precocity and her taste for 
 hard study naturally created for her the reputa 
 tion, among those who did not know her, of a 
 grave young pedant. Nothing could be wider of 
 the mark ; she was full of sentiment, began to 
 write poetry at fifteen, and produced some verses 
 at seventeen which her brother has preserved in 
 print ; verses mourning, as is the wont of early 
 youth, over the flight of years and life s freshness 
 already vanished. 
 
 STANZAS. 
 
 WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN. 
 
 * Come, breath of dawn ! and o er my temples play ; 
 
 Rouse to the draught of life the wearied sense ; 
 Fly, sleep ! with thy sad phantoms, far away ; 
 Let the glad light scare those pale troublous shadows hence ! 
 
 " I rise, and leaning from my casement high, 
 Feel from the morning twilight a delight ; 
 Once more youth s portion, hope, lights up my eye, 
 And for a moment I forget the sorrows of the night. 
 
 in. 
 
 " O glorious morn ! how great is yet thy power ! 
 
 Yet how unlike to that which once I knew, 
 When, plumed with glittering thoughts, my soul would soar, 
 And pleasures visited my heart like daily dew ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Gone is life s primal freshness all too soon ; 
 
 For me the dream is vanished ere my time ; 
 I feel the heat and weariness of noon, 
 And long in night s cool shadows to recline." l 
 
 1 Life Without and Within, p. 370. 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 39 
 
 When these moods passed by, she was the gayest 
 of companions, overflowing with wit, humor, anec 
 dote, and only too ready sarcasm. This can best 
 be seen in one of her letters to the correspondent 
 with whom she was at her gayest, a brilliant and 
 attractive woman long since dead, the wife of 
 the Rev. D. H. Barlow, of Lynn, Mass., and the 
 mother of General F. C. Barlow. To her Mar 
 garet Fuller writes thus, with girlish exuberance, 
 at the age of twenty ; fully recognizing, as the 
 closing words show, the ordeal of criticism through 
 which she often had to make her way : 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, November 19, 1830. 
 
 ..." Many things have happened since I echoed 
 your farewell laugh. Elizabeth [Randall] and I have 
 been fully occupied. She has cried a great deal, painted 
 a good deal, and played the harp most of all. I have 
 neither fertilized the earth with nay tears, edified its in 
 habitants by my delicacy of constitution, nor wakened its 
 echoes to my harmony ; yet some things have I achieved 
 in my own soft feminine style. I hate glare, thou 
 knowest, and have hitherto successfully screened my 
 virtues therefrom. I have made several garments fitted 
 for the wear of American youth ; I have written six 
 letters, and received a correspondent number ; I have 
 read one book, a piece of poetry entitled, Two Ago 
 nies, by M. A. Browne, (pretty caption, is it not ?) and 
 J. J. Knapp s trial ; I have given advice twenty times, 
 I have taken it once ; I have gained two friends and re* 
 covered two ; I have felt admiration four times, honor 
 once, and disgust twice ; I have been a journey, and 
 
40 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLT. 
 
 showed my penetration in discovering the beauties of 
 Nature through a thick and never-lifted shroud of rain ; 
 I have turned two new leaves in the book of human na 
 ture ; I have got a new pink bag (beautiful !). I have 
 imposed on the world, time and again, by describing your 
 Lynn life as the perfection of human felicity, and adorn 
 ing my visit there with all sorts of impossible adven 
 tures, thus at once exhibiting my own rich invention 
 and the credulous ignorance of my auditors (light and 
 dark, you know, dear, give life to a picture) ; I have 
 had tears for others woes, and patience for my own, 
 in short, to climax this journal of many-colored deeds 
 and chances, so well have I played my part, that in the 
 self-same night I was styled by two several persons, * a 
 sprightly young lady, and * a Syren ! ! Oh rapturous 
 sound ! I have reached the goal of my ambition. Earth 
 has nothing fairer or brighter to offer. Intelligency 
 was nothing to it. A * supercilious, * satirical, * af 
 fected, * pedantic, Syren ! ! ! ! Can the olla podrida 
 of human nature present a compound of more varied 
 ingredients, or higher gusto?" l . . . 
 
 At the beginning of 1833 she wrote as follows in 
 her diary, looking forward to an uneventful year. 
 She was at tins time living in what was then a 
 picturesque old house, now shorn of part of its 
 amplitude and of its superb row of great linden 
 trees, the Brattle House on Brattle Street, 
 Cambridge. The great buildings of the Univer 
 sity Press now cover the ground once laid out in 
 formal old -fashioned gardens, with fish ponds, 
 bridges, and spring-bouses, every inch of which 
 i Fuller MSS. i. 1. 
 
GIRLHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE. 41 
 
 was once familiar to me as I played there with 
 the younger Fullers, little dreaming that I should 
 ever be the biographer of the staid elder sister 
 who sat, book in hand, beneath the doorway, or 
 perhaps wrote at the window this passage in her 
 diary, by way of forecast of the immediate fu 
 ture : 
 
 " I have settled the occupations of the coming six 
 months. Some duties come first, to parents, brothers, 
 and sisters, but these will not consume above one 
 sixth of the time : the family is so small now, mother 
 will have little need of my sewing : we shall probably 
 see very little company. The visits required of me by 
 civility will be few. When the Farrars return, I hope 
 to see them frequently, and E. Woodward I may pos 
 sibly know, if she comes. But I shall not, of free-will, 
 look out of doors for a moment s pleasure. I shall 
 have no one to stay here for any time except E. I 
 love her, and she is never in the way. All hopes of 
 traveling I have dismissed. All youthful hopes, of 
 every kind, I have pushed from my thoughts. I will 
 not, if I can help it, lose an hour in castle-building and 
 repining, too much of that already. I have now a 
 pursuit of immediate importance: to the German lan 
 guage and literature I will give my undivided attention. 
 I have made rapid progress for one quite unassisted. I 
 have always hitherto been too constantly distracted by 
 childish feelings to acquire anything properly, but have 
 snatched a little here and there to feed my restless fancy 
 therewith. Please God now to keep my mind com 
 posed, that I may store it with all that may he here 
 after conducive to the best good of others. Oh, keep 
 
42 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 me steady in an honorable ambition ; favored by this 
 calm, this obscurity of life, I might learn everything, 
 did not feeling lavish away my strength. Let it be no 
 longer thus. Teach me to think justly and act firmly. 
 Stifle in my breast those feelings which, pouring forth 
 so aimlessly, did indeed water but the desert, and offend 
 the sun s clear eye by producing weeds of rank luxuri 
 ance. Thou art my only Friend ! Thou hast not seen 
 fit to interpose one feeling, understanding breast be 
 tween me and a rude, woful world. Vouchsafe then 
 thy protection, that I may hold on in courage of soul ! " 1 
 
 Before midsummer it had been decided that the 
 family should remove to Groton, and we find her 
 writing from that village, July 4, 1833. 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 409. She was reading Shelley at this time, 
 and in his early poem On Death occur the lines : 
 
 " man, hold thee on in courage of soul 
 Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way." 
 
IV. 
 
 COUNTRY LIFE AT GKOTON. 
 (1833-1836.) 
 
 IN removing with her family to Groton, a 
 village nearly forty miles from Boston, and then 
 rather difficult of access, for this was long before 
 the building of the Fitchburg Railroad, Marga 
 ret Fuller felt a natural depression. If even the 
 Boston of those days afforded but a limited supply 
 of books and intellectual companionship, what 
 would Groton offer ? She gave up Cambridge 
 with its youthful society on one side, Boston with 
 its books on the other ; and this for a young woman 
 of twenty-three, overflowing with energy and am 
 bition, was quite a trial. She saw in advance what 
 it would be, and she found what she expected. 
 But her letters are enough to show that her mind 
 was still actively employed ; and that a life more 
 wholly rural gave a new and strong development 
 to her love of out-door nature. 
 
 She wrote to Dr. Hedge from Groton, July 4, 
 1833 : 
 
 "I highly enjoy being surrounded with new and 
 beautiful natural objects. My eyes and my soul were 
 
44 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 so weary of Cambridge scenery, my heart would not 
 give access to a summer feeling there. The evenings 
 lately have been those of Paradise, and I have been 
 very happy in them. The people here are much more 
 agreeable than in most country towns ; there is no vul 
 garity of manners, but little of feeling, and I hear no 
 gossip." * 
 
 Again she writes to him that she keeps " Uh- 
 land s poems for some still and lovely afternoon," 
 and there is henceforth a blending of natural ob 
 jects with literature and art in all she writes. 
 
 Cordial letters from her friends also removed 
 the natural dread of dropping out from her old 
 circle, and finding herself not missed. In the 
 same note to Dr. Hedge she wrote thus : 
 
 " Your letter was very grateful to me, and I confess I 
 had not expected such a token of remembrance. Since 
 I came here I have had much reason to believe that 
 there exists more warmth of feeling in the little world 
 wherein I have been living than I had supposed. I 
 expected that my place would immediately be filled 
 by some person " about my age and height." I have not 
 found it so. My former intimates sigh at least, if they 
 do not pine, for my society." 
 
 In Groton she read profusely, borrowing her 
 books chiefly from Dr. Hedge, then, as always, a 
 fountain of knowledge in the way of German. 
 It was a period, we must remember, when the 
 mere perusal of German books was considered 
 i MS. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROTON. 45 
 
 dangerous ; and even Mrs. Farrar records in her 
 " Recollections " the pious but extraordinary sus 
 picion that Harriet Martineau s final materialism 
 was due to her early study of Kant. Margaret 
 Fuller wrote at twenty-three, " I have with me 
 those works of Goethe which I have not read and 
 am now perusing, Kunst und Alterthurn and 
 4 Campagne in Frankreich. I still prefer reading 
 Goethe to anybody, and, as I proceed, find more 
 and more to learn." 1 
 
 She read also at this time Uhland, Novalis, 
 Tieck, and some volumes of Richter. She dipped 
 a good deal into theology and read Eichhorn and 
 Jahn in the original. She was considering what 
 were then called " the evidences of Christianity," 
 and wrote to Dr. Hedge that she had doubted the 
 providence of God, but not the immortality of the 
 soul. During the few years following she studied 
 architecture, being moved to it by what she had 
 read in Goethe ; she also read Herschel s " As 
 tronomy," recommended to her by Professor 
 Farrar; read in Schiller, Heine, Alfieri, Bacon, 
 Madame de Stael, Wordsworth, and Southey ; 
 with " Sartor Resartus " and some of Carlyle s 
 shorter essays ; besides a good deal of European 
 and American history, including all Jefferson s 
 letters. Mr. Emerson says justly that her read 
 ing at Groton was at a rate like Gibbon s. 
 
 All this continuous study was not the easy 
 amusement of a young lady of leisure ; but it was 
 1 MS. letter to Dr. Hedge, July 4, 1833. 
 
46 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 accomplished under such difficulties and preoccu 
 pations that every book might almost be said to 
 have cost her a drop of life-blood. " Teaching 
 little Fullers," as she called it, occupied much 
 of her time ; she had the sewing of four children 
 also on her hands ; her mother was often ill, her 
 grandmother always ; often they had no domes 
 tic ; and she sometimes had pupils not of her own 
 family. Three evenings in the week and odd 
 hours during the day were all that this omnivo 
 rous student could command for herself. She 
 worked herself ill at last, desperately ill ; her life 
 was saved with difficulty; and her father spoke 
 to her, as she came back to life, such words of 
 praise as his reticent lips had never before ut 
 tered. From this time the relation between her 
 and her father grew tenderer, and that with her 
 mother more intimate. 
 
 The earliest specimen of Margaret Fuller s 
 composition, so far as I have seen, is a single 
 school exercise, corrected by her father and pre 
 served by her for the sake of those corrections. 
 It is upon the Latin motto, " Possunt quia posse 
 videntur," and it certainly has the vigor of the 
 Roman temperament that she loved. It was 
 written probably between the ages of twelve and 
 sixteen, and her father s few corrections are all 
 in the direction of terseness and strength. The 
 position she takes is that while men can, up to a 
 certain point, do what they will to do, they are 
 yet so liable to be overruled by the pressure of 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROWN. 47 
 
 events that the only thing surely moulded by 
 their efforts is their own character. This she 
 thus illustrates : 
 
 " Leonidas saved his country by a strong exertion of 
 will, inspired by the most generous sentiment. Brutus 
 nerved his soul to break those ties most sacred to one 
 like him and failed. Resolved, united hearts, freed 
 America. The strongest exertion, the most generous 
 concentration of will, for a similar purpose, left Poland 
 in blood and chains at the feet of a tyrant." l 
 
 Her conclusion is that, although all outward 
 results may fail, " it is not in the power of circum 
 stance to prevent the earnest will from shaping 
 round itself the character of a great, a wise, or a 
 good man." It was strong meat, surely, for a 
 young girl to be feeding on such thoughts as 
 these ; such is not the diet on which mere senti 
 mentalists and dreamers are reared. 
 
 It is a striking fact in the development of her 
 mind, that when we next find her writing some 
 thing to please her father, she is still harping on 
 Brutus. The first composition ever published by 
 her, so far as I know, was in the " Daily Adver 
 tiser," in 1834. She had wished during the pre 
 vious autumn to print her translation of Goethe s 
 " Tasso," but had failed ; and this newspaper 
 communication was called forth by something 
 written by George Bancroft. In a letter to Dr. 
 Hedge (March 6, 1835), she thus describes the 
 occurrence : 
 
 i Fuller MSS. il 249. 
 
48 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 "Your ci-devant tutor, Mr. Bancroft, has been deliv 
 ering a curious (as we say in Groton) address at Deer- 
 field. If I thought you would care for it I would send 
 you the account in Cousin George s paper. My father 
 requested me to write a little piece in answer to Mr. 
 B. s attack on Brutus in the North American Review, 
 which he published in the i Daily Advertiser some time 
 since. It was responded to (I flatter myself by some 
 big-wig) from Salem. He detected some ignorance in 
 me ; nevertheless, as he remarked that I wrote with 
 * ability, and seemed to consider me as an elderly gen 
 tleman, / considered the affair as highly flattering, and 
 beg you will keep it in mind and furnish it for my 
 memoirs as such after I am dead." 1 
 
 Mr. Bancroft s paper on " Slavery in Rome " 
 appeared in the " North American Review " for 
 October, 1834, 2 and contained a very low esti 
 mate of Brutus. For some reason, although this 
 number of the review was then considered impor 
 tant enough to be elaborately criticised in several 
 successive issues of the " Advertiser," yet the in 
 dignation of Mr. Fuller and his daughter was 
 not brought to bear until nearly two months had 
 passed. On November 27, however, Miss Ful- 
 ler being then twenty-four, there appeared in 
 the leading Boston journal a communication in 
 small print, signed " J." and filling nearly a col 
 umn. It handled Mr. Bancroft firmly though re 
 spectfully, but disputed his view in regard to Bru 
 tus, and showed a good deal of care in consulting 
 1 MS. 2 xxxix. 413. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROWN. 49 
 
 original authorities. Plutarch was largely quoted, 
 in an English version, and Velleius Paterculus in 
 the original Latin, one extract filling five lines. 
 Upon these grounds the writer defends Brutus 
 successively from the charges of sycophancy, time 
 serving, cruelty, and avarice ; and modestly adds : 
 " I doubt not an infinity of similar authorities 
 might be quoted by one of more extensive read 
 ing and accurate memory." The conclusion is the 
 only part that can be called ambitious in tone, but 
 it is written with a wholly generous fervor, and 
 without conceit : 
 
 " The hearts of the dead are now tranquillized. . . . 
 But the faith of the young bleeds, and young ambition 
 droops when the shades of the just are summoned back 
 from the Elysium to which their appropriate judges had 
 consigned them, and appear before some revolutionary 
 tribunal of modern date. Let us not be too hasty in 
 questioning what is established, and tearing to pieces the 
 archives of the past. There are other sorts of skepti 
 cism, and not less desolating in their tendencies, than 
 that of religion. That keen observer, Dr. Spurzheim, 
 warned the people of this country that their great dan 
 ger lay in want of reverence. Those most distinguished 
 among us for talent and culture should rather check 
 than encourage this delay." 1 
 
 For one who was to help in organizing, six 
 years later, the most formidable party of literary 
 iconoclasts yet brought together in America, this 
 was beginning pretty well. The protest closes 
 
 1 Boston Daily Advertiser, November 27, 1834. 
 
50 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 with courteous expressions toward " the accom 
 plished gentleman said to be the author of the 
 article in question ; " and the only thing about the 
 whole communication that suggests a woman s 
 pen is the delicate adroitness with which she 
 turns against Mr. Bancroft, in closing, two lines 
 from one of his own juvenile effusions : 
 
 " Was it for this that Brutus left a name 
 Bright with the beams of freedom s holiest flame * " 
 
 A few days later, Mr. Bancroft found a defender, 
 as Miss Fuller indicates, in a correspondent sign 
 ing " H.," and giving Salem as his residence. He 
 in turn is courteous and complimentary, prob 
 ably not being at all aware that it is a young 
 woman of twenty-four to whom he is replying, 
 and says of the first communication that it is 
 written " with ability and candor, but I think 
 without fully investigating the subject." Never 
 theless, as he can only cite Gibbon and Middle- 
 ton s Cicero, while she had brought up Plutarch 
 and Velleius Paterculus, the heavier ordnance was 
 certainly with the defender of Brutus. But it 
 was quite a triumph to be gravely answered ; and 
 the father and daughter in that quiet Groton 
 farm-house must have taken great delight in cut 
 ting out for preservation those two momentous 
 extracts from the " Daily Advertiser." 
 
 It often happens that young people, when ban 
 ished from society to what seems solitude, find 
 compensation in being anew introduced to parents, 
 brothers, and sisters. This was eminently true of 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROT ON. 51 
 
 Margaret Fuller. To be sure, her brother Eu 
 gene, who was her nearest companion, was now 
 absent. " Eugene and I," she writes in a later 
 diary, " were near of an age, and loved to wander 
 out together, over the streams and through the 
 woods, walking and talking or oftener silent." 1 
 Eugene Fuller was not the most intellectual of 
 her brothers, but the most winning and attract 
 ive ; he had graduated at Harvard in 1834, and 
 was at this time private tutor at the plantation 
 of my uncle, Colonel Samuel Storrow, at Farley, 
 Culpeper County, Virginia. This explains an al 
 lusion in the following letter, written by Margaret 
 Fuller to her father during a temporary visit in 
 Cambridge, which I give to show how cordial 
 a tie really united them, in spite of her criticisms. 
 The " dearest " and " most affectionate " mean a 
 good deal. 
 
 "BOSTON, June, 2, 1835. 
 
 "DEAREST FATHER, I was very glad to receive 
 your letter although t was but brief. You have of late 
 omitted to write to me when I was absent, and I have 
 felt as if you thought of me less than I wished you 
 should. 
 
 "I have been passing ten days at Cambridge, with 
 Mrs. Farrar, and indeed they were most happy. Every 
 body so kind, the country so beautiful, and my own 
 spirits so light. We made little excursions almost 
 every day. Last Thursday I rode twenty-two miles on 
 horseback without any fatigue. Mrs. F. had a most 
 agreeable party the day before I came away. But of 
 i MS. Diary, 1844. 
 
52 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 all these things, Ellen will give you the particulars, if 
 you are interested to hear them. The Higginsons say 
 that Eugene s pupils love him extremely, and that 
 Colonel Storrow, too, seems much pleased with him. I 
 think we ought to feel satisfied that he should secure so 
 much love and esteem after five or six months close 
 scrutiny. W. H. is still very good, and as well-disposed 
 as ever. They seem much pleased with him at Avon- 
 Place. He passed yesterday with us, being excused 
 from the store, as it was Marsylvia s wedding-day. I 
 believe it is the first amusement he has allowed himself 
 since he left us. I saw a good deal of your former 
 ward, Thornton Davis, while in Cambridge, but prefer 
 giving you the account viva voce. 
 
 "And now I have something to tell you which I 
 hope, oh, I HOPE will give you as much pleasure as it 
 does me. Mr. and Mrs. Farrar propose taking me, with 
 several other delightful persons, to Trenton Falls this 
 summer. The plan is to set out about the 20th of July, 
 go on to New York, then up the North River to West 
 Point, pass a day there ; then to Catskill, pass a 
 day there ; then on to Trenton, and devote a week to 
 that beautiful scenery. I said I had scarcely a doubt 
 of your consent, as you had said several times last win 
 ter you should like to have me take a pleasant journey 
 this summer. Oh, I cannot describe the positive ec 
 stasy with which I think of this journey ! to see the 
 North River at last, and in such society ! Oh, do sym 
 pathize with me ! do feel about it as I do ! The pos 
 itive expenses of the journey we have computed at 
 forty-seven dollars ; I shall want ten more for spending- 
 money, but you will not think of the money, will 
 you? I would rather you would take two hundred 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROWN. 53 
 
 Hollars from my portion, than feel even the least un 
 willing. Will you not write to me immediately, and 
 say you love me, and are very glad I am to be so 
 happy ? ? ? 
 
 " It was very unkind in Mr. Robinson to have Mr. 
 Emerson [preach] during my absence. I think I shall 
 join Richard and Arthur in attending Mr. Kittredge s 
 [church]. I must write a few words to mother, so adieu, 
 from Your most affectionate daughter, M." l 
 
 Fathers are fortunately so constituted as rarely 
 to refuse appeals like this, and Margaret Fuller 
 had her journey. It was her first experience of 
 a pleasure which then, perhaps, had a greater zest 
 than now, as being rarer, "and involving more ad 
 venture. She went to Newport, then dear to her 
 as the summer home of the Rev. Dr. Channing, 
 to New York, and to Trenton Falls, accounted 
 one of the glories of America in the simple days 
 when the wonders of Colorado and the Yosemite 
 Valley were unknown. In the autumn she met 
 Miss Harriet Martineau at the house of Professor 
 Farrar, and a new delight opened before her vis 
 ion. It was proposed that she should make a voy 
 age to England with the Farrars ; and under the 
 guidance of her kind friends, long resident in 
 England, she hoped to meet the larger intellect 
 ual circle of which she had dreamed. But sud 
 denly a blow fell which crushed this hope and 
 brought the profoundest emotions. Her father 
 was taken ill of cholera, September 30, 1835, and 
 
 i Fuller MSS. i. 153. 
 
54 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 died October 1. His widow used to tell the story, 
 to the end of her days, how Margaret brought the 
 younger children together around the lifeless form 
 of her father, and, kneeling, pledged herself to 
 God that if she had ever been ungrateful or un- 
 filial to her father, she would atone for it by 
 fidelity to her brothers and sisters. This vow she 
 surely kept. 
 
 She wrote thus to her friend Mrs. Barlow, after 
 her father s death : 
 
 "GROTON, February 1, 1836. 
 
 ..." I returned into life to bear a sorrow of which 
 you know the heaviness. But my hard-won faith has 
 not deserted me, and I hav.e so far preserved a serenity 
 which might seem heartlessness to a common observer. 
 It was indeed sad when I went back, in some sort, into 
 the world, and felt myself fatherless. Yet I gave no 
 sign, and hope to preserve more or less fortitude." 1 
 
 Her father had made no will ; his property was 
 sorely involved, and she has told her keen regret 
 at that absence of business education which left 
 her unable to take direct charge of the family 
 affairs. They were placed finally under the care 
 of her uncle Abraham, the narrowest and most 
 arbitrary of all the paternal race. The estate 
 was probably well managed, as it finally yielded 
 two thousand dollars to each of the children ; but 
 this success was bought at a great cost of dicta 
 torial domineering on the part of the bachelor 
 uncle. the same man who gave my mother les* 
 
 i Fuller MSS. i. 21. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROTON. 55 
 
 sons in darning stockings, and there is extant 
 much correspondence which throws light on this. 
 Margaret Fuller fought like a lioness for the 
 proper education of her younger brothers and sis 
 ters, and especially for Ellen, whom the uncle 
 would evidently have brought up in old-fashioned 
 feminine ignorance, rather than let a dollar be 
 spent upon her schooling. The elder sister insisted 
 that she should be sent to a suitable school, offer 
 ing, if necessary, to sacrifice her own share of the 
 family income, or even of the estate itself, for this 
 purpose. Every New England farm-house has 
 been the scene of some touching tale of sisterly 
 devotion, but nowhere more genuine than in that 
 old homestead at Groton. 
 
 And, with other hopes, the dream of Europe 
 must go. Her family begged her to take in ad 
 vance her share of the family property and carry 
 out her purpose ; but she made, early in 1836, 
 what she called " the last great sacrifice," and de 
 cided to remain. Feeling no immediate strength, 
 as she records, to carry out her literary plans, she 
 planned to help her mother by teaching. " Cir 
 cumstances have decided," she wrote, " that I 
 must not go to Europe, and shut upon me the 
 door, as I think, forever, to the scenes I could 
 have loved. Let me now try to forget myself and 
 act for others sakes." l 
 
 Her mind recovered its tone, and deeper expe 
 rience gave her profounder sympathy. During 
 
 1 Memoirs, i. 161. 
 
56 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 her last summer in Groton she wrote this letter 
 to her friend Samuel G. Ward, showing at once 
 how external nature had made her a student and 
 observer of itself, and how penetrating and imag 
 inative were her powers of mind. I know of no 
 more delicate analysis of one of the most recon 
 dite and elusive aspects of nature. 
 
 " GROTON, 20th April, 1 836. 
 
 "You have probably just received a packet from me, 
 (oh ! what wild work makes a female pen !) yet I feel 
 tempted to scribble to you, my fellow votary, on the sub 
 ject of this morning s devotions to our common shrine. 
 
 " I strolled languidly far and far over the dull-brown 
 fields, and not an attempt at a life-like tint could I see. 
 Some tawny evergreens and oaks, with their last year s 
 leaves lingering, * like unloved guests, in vain attempted 
 to give animation to the landscape. The sweetest south 
 west wind was blowing, but it did not make the heavens 
 very blue, and was not enough for me, who wanted 
 something to look at, and had not vital energy enough 
 to be made happy through the pores of my skin. I was 
 returning homeward quite comfortless and ill-paid for my 
 time and trouble, when I suddenly came upon just what 
 I wanted. It was a little shallow pool of the clearest 
 amber. The afore-mentioned southwest was at work to 
 some purpose, breaking it into exquisite wavelets, which 
 flashed a myriad of diamonds up at each instant. 
 
 " Why is it that the sight of water stirs and fills the 
 mind so much more than that of any other thing in na 
 ture ? why ? Is it that here we see the most subtle 
 force combined with the most winning gentleness, or the 
 most impetuous force with the most irresistible subtlety? 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROTON. 57 
 
 " I used to love, at Trenton, to go to that place where 
 the water seemed collecting its energies so quietly, glid 
 ing on so stealthily, you could scarcely believe it was 
 firmly resolved to display such vehemence in one more 
 moment of time and rood of space. 
 
 " I love the force of water much, but its subMety is 
 magic in its effects. Perfectly do I comprehend what I 
 have heard of gazers on a river-side being tempted to 
 drown themselves by sight of the water, and all those 
 tales of mermaid enchantments which embody this feel 
 ing. This morning I felt a sort of timidity about stand 
 ing quite at that point to which the undulatory motions 
 (of all earthly things most lovely) seemed to tend. I 
 felt that, unless I had an arm of flesh and blood to cling 
 to, I should be too much seduced from humanity. 
 
 " These undulations I have seen compared in poesy 
 to the heaving of the bosom, and they do create a sim 
 ilar feeling, at least, I, when I see this in the human 
 frame, am tempted to draw near with a vague, instinct 
 ive anticipation (as far as ever I could analyze the emo 
 tion) that a heart will leap forth, and I be able to take 
 it in my hand. 
 
 " I dislike the comparison, as I always do illustrating 
 so-called inanimate nature by man or any shape of an 
 imal life. Byron s comparisons of a mountain splendor 
 to the light of a dark eye in woman, the cataract to 
 a tiger s leap, etc., displease my taste. Why, again ? I 
 am not sure whether it is because man seems more than 
 nature, or whether less, and that the whole is injured in 
 illustrating it by a part, or whether it is that one hates 
 to be forced back upon personalities when one is getting 
 calmed by meditations on the elemental manifestations. 
 Yet, though these comparisons displease my taste, they 
 
58 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 throw a light on the sympathies between the human 
 mind and nature. I feel as if I should some time attain 
 a precise notion of the meaning of Nature s most beau 
 tiful display, the undulatory motion" J 
 
 Margaret Fuller made great sacrifices for her 
 own household while living in Groton ; and showed 
 a self-devotion that undoubtedly told severely on 
 her health. She not only had the courage to do 
 this, but the courage to let it be known by those 
 for whom it was done, when it was best that they 
 should know it. Feminine self-sacrifice is a very 
 common fruit on every soil, and certainly on that 
 of New England ; but it often spoils its object by 
 leading to selfishness and then dying unrevealed, 
 all from a mistaken sense of duty. To make 
 this devotion, by revealing it, a means of elevating 
 the person for whom it is made, this is a far 
 rarer thing, and requires absolute frankness and a 
 wholly generous heart. To stimulate the brother 
 to do the work which the sister for his sake left 
 undone is to extract the very finest aroma of grat 
 itude. He to whom the following letter was ad 
 dressed the Rev. Arthur Fuller did not adopt 
 that literary career to which his sister would fain 
 have led him ; but his was a life of unwearied 
 labor and great practical usefulness ; and when, 
 after the resignation of his army chaplaincy, he 
 took a musket from the hands of a wounded sol 
 dier, saying, " I must do something for my coun 
 try," and went forward to his death at the battle 
 i MS. 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROTON. 59 
 
 of Fredericksburg, he showed that his sister s in 
 fluence had not been exerted in vain. 
 
 " You express gratitude for what I have taught you. 
 It is in your power to repay me a hundred-fold, by 
 making every exertion now to improve. I did not 
 teach you as I would ; yet I think the confinement and 
 care I took of you children, at a time when my mind 
 was so excited by many painful feelings, have had a 
 very bad effect upon my health. I do not say this to 
 pain you, or to make you more grateful to me (for, 
 probably, if I had been aware at the time what I was 
 doing, I might not have sacrificed myself so) ; but I say 
 it that you may feel it your duty to fill my place, and 
 do what I may never be permitted to do. Three pre 
 cious years, at the best period of my life, I gave all my 
 best hours to you children ; let me not see you idle 
 away time, which I have always valued so much ; let 
 me not find you unworthy of the love I felt for you. 
 Those three years would have enabled me to make 
 great attainments, which now I never may. Do you 
 make them in my stead, that I may not remember that 
 time with sadness." 1 
 
 In another letter to her younger brother, Rich 
 ard, four years later, she thus sums up their life 
 at Groton, and pictures the position of the house 
 hold after the father s death. 
 
 " Father s removal there was ill-judged, at least as re 
 garded himself, your mother, and myself. The younger 
 ones were not violently rent from all their former life 
 and cast on toils for which they were unprepared. 
 There your mother s health was injured and mine de- 
 i Fuller MSS. i. 623. 
 
60 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 stroyed ; there your father died, but not till the cares of 
 a narrowed income, and collision with his elder sons, 
 which would not have ended there, had so embittered 
 his life and made him so over anxious, that I have 
 never regretted that he did not stay longer to watch the 
 turning of the tide : for his life up to 1830 had been 
 one of well-earned prosperity, which, after that time, 
 was rapidly ebbing from him, and I do not think ad 
 versity would have done him good; he could not recon 
 cile himself to it ; his feeling was that after thirty years 
 labor and self-denial he was entitled to peace, and he 
 would not have had it. 
 
 " You were too young to feel how trying are the 
 disorders of a house which has lost its head, the miser 
 able perplexities which were in our affairs, the wounds 
 your mother underwent in that time of deep dejection 
 from the unfeeling and insolent conduct of many who 
 had been kept in check by respect for your father, her 
 loneliness and sense of unfitness for the new and heavy 
 burden of care. It will be many years yet before you 
 can appreciate the conflicts of my mind, as I doubted 
 whether to give up all which my heart desired for a 
 path for which I had no skill, and no call, except that 
 some one must tread it, and none else was ready. The 
 Peterborough hills and the Wachusetts are associated 
 in my mind with many hours of anguish, as great, I 
 think, as I am capable of feeling. I used to look at 
 them, towering to the sky, and feel that I, too, from my 
 birth had longed to rise, but I felt crushed to earth ; yet 
 again a nobler spirit said that could never be ; the good 
 knight may come forth scarred and maimed from the 
 unequal contest, shorn of his strength and unsightly to 
 the careless eye, but the same fire burns within and 
 
COUNTRY LIFE AT GROTON. 61 
 
 deeper than ever, and he may be conquered, but never 
 subdued. 
 
 " But if these beautiful hills, and wide, rich fields 
 saw this sad lore well learned, they also saw some 
 precious lessons given too, of faith, of fortitude, of self- 
 command, and of less selfish love. There, too, in sol 
 itude, heart and mind acquired more power of concen 
 tration, and discerned the beauty of a stricter method. 
 There the heart was awakened to sympathize with the 
 ignorant, to pity the vulgar, and hope for the seemingly 
 worthless ; for a need was felt of realizing the only 
 reality, the divine soul of this visible creation, which 
 cannot err and will not sleep, which cannot permit evil 
 to be permanent or its aim of beauty to be eventually 
 frustrated in the smallest particular." l 
 
 Before these last letters we^e written, she had 
 left Groton, for a time, and had entered on the 
 life of a teacher, first in Boston and then in Prov 
 idence. 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. ii. 721. 
 
V. 
 
 FINDING A FEIEND. 
 
 THE personal influence of Ralph Waldo Emer 
 son was so marked, during Miss Fuller s early ca 
 reer, that a separate chapter may well be devoted 
 to delineating it. The first trace of him that I 
 have found among her voluminous papers is this 
 from one of her lively and girlish letters to Mrs. 
 Barlow, dated October 6, 1834. She describes an 
 interview with th$ Rev. Dr. Dewey, who was, 
 with herself, a guest at Mrs. Farrar s in Cam 
 bridge, and adds : 
 
 " He spoke with admiration of the Rev. W. Emer 
 son, that only clergyman of all possible clergymen who 
 eludes my acquaintance. But n importe! I keep his 
 image bright in my mind." ] 
 
 Again, she writes to another correspondent 
 about the same time: 
 
 " I cannot care much for preached elevation of senti 
 ment unless I have seen it borne out by some proof, as 
 in case of Mr. Emerson. It is so easy for a cultivated 
 mind to excite itself with that tone ! " 2 
 
 More than a month later she writes to the Rev. 
 F. H. Hedge, from Groton (November 30, 1834), 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 17. * Fuller MSS. iii. 281. 
 
FINDING A FRIEND. 63 
 
 " With regard to Mr. Emerson, I had two reasons, if 
 they may deserve to be so called, for wishing him to see 
 my Tasso [translated from Goethe]. It gratified me 
 that a mind which had affected mine so powerfully 
 should be dwelling on something of mine, even though 
 t were only some new dress for the thoughts of another, 
 ^.nd I thought he might express something which would 
 be useful to me. I should like very much his correction 
 as well as yours, if it be not too much trouble." * 
 
 This clearly shows how powerfully Emerson 
 4vas already influencing other minds while lie was 
 Btill a clergyman, and had not printed a word that 
 is now included in his writings. 
 
 Before this, according to Mr. Emerson s own 
 statement, he had heard Margaret Fuller praised 
 by Dr. Hedge ; and he thinks, but is not quite 
 pure, that lie first met her at Mrs. Farrar s in 
 1835. 2 In July, 1836, she visited him in Concord. 
 He has left a record, in one of the most graphic 
 passages contributed by him to her " Memoirs," of 
 impressions received from her at this first visit. I 
 am glad to be able to place beside this a compan 
 ion picture of her, during a subsequent visit in 
 a letter written by that gifted and high-minded 
 woman, Elizabeth Hoar, of Concord, sister of the 
 judge and the senator of that family, and one of 
 the most intimate personal friends of Mr. Emer 
 son. Miss Hoar had been betrothed to Charles 
 Emerson at the time of his early death, and lived 
 all her subsequent life in the close vicinity of his 
 
 IMS. 2 Memoirs, I 201. 
 
64 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 more eminent brother, to whom she was as a 
 younger sister. Being a constant visitor at his 
 house, she was at times brought closely in contact 
 with Margaret Fuller, of whom she thus records 
 her judgment in a letter addressed to her friend, 
 Miss H. L. Chappell, of Southington, Conn. 
 
 "CONCORD, Aprils, 1839. 
 
 " MY DEAR HANNAH, Both your letters found me 
 at Mr. Emerson s, but I waited until I came home, to 
 answer them. Miss Fuller has been there for a week 
 past, and I have not yet learned the art of self-regula 
 tion so far as to be able to do anything when she is 
 near. I see so few people who are anything but 
 pictures or furniture, to me, that the stimulus of such 
 a person is great and overpowering for the time. And 
 indeed, if I saw all the people whom I think of as desir 
 able, and if I could help myself, I do not think I should 
 abate any of my interest in her. Her wit, her insight 
 into characters, such that she seems to read them 
 aloud to you as if they were printed books, her wide 
 range of thought and cultivation, the rapidity with 
 which she appropriates all knowledge, joined with 
 habits of severe mental discipline (so rare in women, 
 and in literary men not technically men of science ) ; 
 her passionate love of all beauty, her sympathy with 
 all noble effort ; then her energy of character and the 
 regal manner in which she takes possession of society 
 wherever she is, and creates her own circumstances ; all 
 these things keep me full of admiration not astonished, 
 but pleased admiration and, as genius does always 
 (vide R. W. E. on Genius ), inspire me with new life, 
 new confidence in my own power, new desires to fulfill 
 
FINDING A FRIEND. 65 
 
 1 the possible in myself. You would, perhaps, have 
 an impression of levity, of want of tenderness, from 
 her superficial manner. The mean hindrances of life, 
 the mistakes, the tedium, which eat into your soul, and 
 will take no form to you but the tragic, she takes up 
 with her defying wit and sets them down in comic 
 groups and they cease to be * respectabilities. You 
 feel at first as if this included ridicule or disregard of 
 the sufferings they bring to you ; but not so. Her heart 
 is helpfully sympathizing with all striving souls. And 
 she has overcome so much extreme physical and mental 
 pain, and such disappointments of external fortune, that 
 she has a right to play as she will with these arrows 
 of fate. She is a high-minded and generous servant of 
 Duty, and a Christian (not a traditional Christian, not 
 made one by authority) in her idea of life. But this is 
 all catalogue ; you cannot write down Genius, and I 
 write it more because I am thinking about her than 
 from any hope of doing her justice. Only her pres 
 ence can give you the meaning of the name Margaret 
 Fuller, and this not once or twice, but as various oc 
 casions bring out the many sides. And her power of 
 bringing out Mr. Emerson has doubled my enjoyment 
 of that blessing to be in one house and room with 
 him." l 
 
 In a fragment of diary, without date, all too 
 short, preserved among the Fuller papers, we 
 have a glimpse at these Concord interviews ; but 
 not at the very outset ; rather, after time had 
 mellowed the companionship and made it less ex 
 citing, but more wholly unconscious. In describ- 
 
 i MS. 
 
66 MARGARET FULLER 08SOLL 
 
 ing a long walk by Walden Pond, Margaret Fuller 
 says of Mr. Emerson, " He is a much better com 
 panion than formerly, for once he would talk 
 obstinately through the walk, but now we can be 
 silent and see things together." l 
 
 In another place she gives this striking glimpse 
 of his personal appearance : " It was raining hard 
 and quite cold he had on his blue cloak, falling 
 in large straight folds ; in that he looks as if he 
 had come to his immortality as a statue." 2 
 
 Elsewhere she describes him as reading to her 
 passages of his poetry, and quotes some lines 
 which I am unable to identify, while others appear 
 in the appendix to the edition just published : 
 
 " Waldo and I have good meetings, though we stop 
 at all our old places. But my expectations are moder 
 ate now ; it is his beautiful presence that I prize, far 
 more than our intercourse. He has been reading me 
 his new poems and the others. At the end he asked me 
 how I liked the little subjective twinkle all through. 
 He has indeed set off the picture lively. 
 
 * Lonely he sat, the men were strange, 
 
 The women all forbidden. 
 And, 
 
 Merge me in the brute universe 
 
 Or lift to some diviner dream/ 
 And, 
 
 His loves were sharp, sharp pains/ 
 A-nd, 
 
 Content with gods or fools to live/ 
 
 In the resolves of [fate ?] I acquiesce/ 
 Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme/ 
 * Fuller MSS. iii. 165. 2 Fuller MSS. iii. 183. 
 
FINDING A FRIEND. 67 
 
 " And that he will no more plague himself with the 
 mysteries of another sphere from his." l 
 
 Her visits to Concord not only established in 
 timacy with Mr. Emerson, but with all the mem 
 bers of his family. She writes to her mother, 
 during her first visit, " The baby here is beautiful. 
 ... I play with him a good deal and he comes 
 so natural after Dante and other poems." 2 The 
 cordial gayety of all her interchange of messages 
 in her letters to the Concord household shows 
 clearly the friendliness of her relations with alL 
 " Good love to Mrs. Emerson : I hope the baby 
 has not grown too large for me to hold." Then 
 in another letter, " What does Waldo say ? and 
 what has Ellen learnt?" and again, "Say to little 
 Waldo that I have thought since I came away of 
 a hundred witty things I forgot to say to him, and 
 he must want to see me again." In her diary she 
 has much to say of this remarkable child, who will 
 always have an interest for all lovers of poetry 
 as having occasioned Emerson s " Threnody." 
 
 It has been my privilege to examine a long 
 series of unpublished letters that passed thencefor 
 ward from Margaret Fuller to Emerson. Franker 
 and truer letters never went from woman to man ; 
 they were written under all circumstances and 
 from all places ; in one case from his own library, 
 while he was away. How much Mr. Emerson 
 valued them is plain from the fact that in some 
 cases where a letter is missing there is substituted 
 
 l Fuller MSS, iii. 175, 176. * Fuller M SS. i. 83. 
 
68 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 a copy in his handwriting. All are indorsed by 
 him in his systematic way, with date and theme, 
 and at first with the name " Miss S. M. Fuller ; " 
 then the more familiar " Margaret Fuller " takes 
 its place. She in turn, beginning with remote 
 and reverential phrases, grows gradually more in 
 timate. In the first letter I have seen (Septem 
 ber, 1836), she writes meekly from Boston, " My 
 dear friend, I may venture to say so, since you 
 have subscribed yourself my friend," but in a 
 year or two it becomes " Dear Waldo," at least. 
 In this first letter there is a phrase which shows 
 the honest beginning of their friendship : " While 
 I was with you," she says, " you very justly cor 
 rected rne for using too strong expressions on 
 some subject. But there is no exaggeration in 
 saying I must be allowed to say that I de 
 test Mr. Robinson at this time," he being her 
 Groton pastor who had twice invited Mr. Emerson 
 to preach there while she was away from home. 
 In this same letter she speaks of " Nature," then 
 just published, which he had sent her, and which 
 she and Miss Anna Barker had also mutually pre 
 sented to each other. To " show Anna to Mr. 
 Emerson " was just then one of her strong desires. 
 Soon the borrowing of books becomes a con 
 stant theme. On April 11, 1837, she returns him 
 Goethe s letters to Merck and the first two vol 
 umes of those to Zelter, and writes, " I look to Con 
 cord as my Lethe arid Eunoe after this purgatory 
 of distracting petty tasks. I am sure you will 
 
FINDING A FRIEND. 69 
 
 purify and strengthen me to enter the Paradise of 
 thought once more." In addressing Mrs. Emer 
 son she sends " dear love to the sainted Lidian," 
 who becomes simply Lidian in later messages. 
 44 Mrs. Emerson does not love me," she says in 
 one place, 44 more than I love her." 
 
 On May 30, 1837, she returns to Emerson, Cole 
 ridge s 4< Literary Remains," which she has " ran 
 sacked pretty thoroughly," and 44 The Friend," 
 with which she 44 should never have done ; " also 
 a volume of Goethe and one of Scougal, and she 
 asks him on the outside of the note what these 
 two worthies will be likely to say to one another 
 44 as they journey side by side." She begs to 
 keep for summer two volumes of Milton, two of 
 Degerando, the seventh and eighth of Goethe s 
 44 Nachgelassene Werke," besides one volume of 
 Jonson and one of Plutarch s 44 Morals." She 
 also subscribes for two copies of Carlyle s 44 Miscel 
 lanies." Later she writes (November 25, 1839) 
 to ask him 44 What is the 4 Harleyan (sz <?) Miscel 
 lany ? an account of a library ? " and says, " I 
 thought to send Tennyson next time, but I can 
 not part with him, it must be for next pacquet 
 (sic). I have been reading Milnes ; he is rich in 
 fine thoughts but not in fine poetry." 
 
 One of the best passages in these letters of Mar 
 garet Fuller, a passage that has in it a flavor of 
 Browning s imaginative wealth, is a little sketch 
 by her of the melancholy position of a queen who 
 has borne no heir to the throne. It is only by 
 
70 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 way of prelude to a playful condolence with Mr. 
 Emerson, followed by a very frank criticism : 
 
 "November, 1843. 
 
 ..." I always thought the saddest position in the 
 world must be that of some regal dame to whom hus 
 band, court, kingdom, world look in vain for an heir ! 
 She is only supposed to eat, breathe, move, think, nay ! 
 love, for this ; the book of her life is only perused for the 
 sake of its appendix. Meanwhile, she, perhaps, persists 
 in living on, as if her life by itself were of any conse 
 quence, is the mother of no prince, or has even the im 
 pertinence to incumber the kingdom with a parcel of 
 princesses, girls who must be * weel-tochered to make 
 them of any value. 
 
 " But what is this pathos compared to that percepti 
 ble in the situation of a Jove, under the masculine obli 
 gations of all-sufncingness, who rubs his forehead in 
 vain to induce the Minerva-bearing headache ! Alas ! 
 his brain remains tranquil, his fancy daughterless ! 
 Nature keeps on feeding him and putting him to sleep 
 as if she thought the oak was of consequence, whether 
 it bear the mistletoe or not ! 
 
 " Heaven help thee, my Druid ! if this blessed, brood 
 ing, rainy day do not. It is a fine day for composition, 
 were it not in Concord. But I trow the fates which 
 gave this place Concord, took away the animating influ 
 ences of Discord. Life here slumbers and steals on 
 like the river. A very good place for a sage, but not 
 for the lyrist or the orator. 
 
 " Gentle river, 
 Stealing on so slowly ever, 
 From reeds that grow thy bank along 
 Easy would flow the pastoral song. 
 
FINDING A FRIEND. 71 
 
 " But the shell 
 
 Which may be strong for lyric swell 
 Or trumpet spire for oratory, 
 Seek these mid the tritons hoary, 
 Where an incalculable wave 
 Wrecks the war-ship tall and brave, 
 Rushes up a mile-long strand, 
 Hails the stars and spurns the land, 
 Pushes back the noblest river 
 Seeking in vain its love forever, 
 There mightst thou find a shell 
 Fit to be strung for strains of Delphian swell." 1 
 
 Margaret Fuller s verses are not commonly quite 
 worth preserving, though no one could think so ill 
 of them as did she herself. But these which I 
 have just quoted have in them some of those 
 " lyric glimpses " that Emerson praised in her ; 
 the " incalculable wave " and " mile-long strand " 
 are terse and poetic ; and the suggestion that Em 
 erson may have lost, as well as gained, by a life 
 long residence among scenes so soothing, this 
 is something of value, and perhaps no one else 
 ventured to speak so frankly to the great leader 
 of thought as did this feminine disciple. Nor can 
 I remember to have seen elsewhere so much as a 
 hint that the world might have been the better 
 had some great combination of events wrenched 
 him for a time from that ideal chimney-corner in 
 Concord. Here one may easily differ from her; 
 nevertheless, her suggestion is worth preserving. 
 
 At any rate, this was the tone and temper of 
 her intercourse with the closest and most eminent 
 i MS. 
 
72 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 of her friends. Many other friendships she had, 
 which are commemorated in the pages of her pub 
 lished "Memoirs," and which, indeed, produced 
 the book. Moreover, she had half a dozen friend 
 ships with women for every one she maintained 
 with men, and yet made it a matter of conscience 
 to keep all these intimacies apart from one another. 
 She writes once to Emerson (July 5, 1840) : " Do 
 not think, because persons are intimate with me, 
 that they know this or any of my other friends 
 secrets : I know how to keep relations." 1 What 
 was her ideal of such a tie may be seen from this 
 passage, written to one of those nearest to her in 
 sympathy, and dissenting both from his and from 
 Emerson s definitions of friendship : 
 
 " July, 1841. 
 
 " The more I think of it, the more deeply do I feel 
 the imperfection of your view of friendship, which is 
 the same Waldo E. takes in that letter on Charles s 
 death. It is very noble, but not enough for our mani 
 fold nature. Our friends should be our incentives to 
 Right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic stars. 
 To love by right is much, to love by faith is more ; both 
 are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul 
 cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love 
 one another not merely for the absolute worth of each, 
 but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary char 
 acter. We are not merely one another s priests or gods, 
 but ministering angels, exercising in the part the same 
 function as the Great Soul in the whole, of seeing the 
 perfect through the imperfect, nay, making it come 
 i MS.; 
 
FINDING A FRIEND. 73 
 
 there. Why am I to love any friend the less for any 
 obstruction in his life ? Is not the very time for me to 
 love most tenderly when I must see his life in despite 
 of seeming ; when he shows it me I can only admire : I 
 do not give myself. I am taken captive. How shall I 
 express my meaning ? Perhaps I can do so from the 
 tales of chivalry, where I find what corresponds far 
 more thoroughly with my nature than in these stoical 
 statements. The friend of Amadis expects to hear prod 
 igies of valor of the absent preux [chevalier] ; but if 
 he be mutilated in one of his first battles, shall he be 
 mistrusted by the brother of his soul more than if he 
 had been tested in a hundred ? If Britomart finds Ar- 
 tegall bound in the enchanter s spell, can she doubt, 
 therefore, him whom she has seen in the magic glass ? 
 A Britomart does battle in his cause, and frees him from 
 the evil power ; a dame of less nobleness sits and watches 
 the enchanted sleep, weeping night and day, or spurs 
 away on her white palfrey to find some one more help 
 ful than herself. But they are always faithful through 
 the dark hours to the bright. The Douglas motto, 
 * Tender and true, seems to me the worthiest of the 
 strongest breast. To borrow again from your Spenser, 
 I am entirely suited with the fate of the three brothers, 
 Diamond and the rest. I could not die while there was 
 yet life in my brother s breast. I would return from 
 the shades and nerve him with twofold life for the fight, 
 I could do it, for our hearts beat with one blood. Do you 
 not see the truth and happiness of this waiting tender 
 ness ? The verse, 
 
 Have I a lover 
 
 Who is noble and free, 
 I would he were nobler 
 Than to love me. 
 
74 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 does not quite come home to me, though this does, 
 
 I could not love thee, sweet, 1 so much, 
 Loved I not honor more. . . . 
 
 " Do not, I implore you, whether from pride or affec 
 tion, wish to exile me from the dark hour. The manly 
 mind might love best in the triumphant hour ; but the 
 woman could no more stay from the foot of the cross 
 than from the transfiguration." 2 
 
 i Thus in the MS. a MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
 18 
 
VI. 
 
 SCHOOL-TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 
 (1837-1838.) 
 
 FOR a young American woman who wishes to 
 support herself and educate her younger brothers 
 and sisters, the natural refuge is still the desk of 
 a school-teacher. In Margaret Fuller s time this 
 was even more true than now. After her father s 
 death she must seek a shorter path to self-support 
 than was to be found in those alluring ways of 
 literature and philosophy which she would have 
 much preferred. An opening offered itself in the 
 school of Mr. A. B. Alcott, in Boston, where Miss 
 Elizabeth P. Peabody had been previously em 
 ployed. Mr. Alcott s unpublished diary gives the 
 successive steps in the negotiation and enables me 
 to present the beginning and the end together. 
 
 " 1836, August 2d. Emerson called this morning and 
 took me to Concord to pass the day. At his house I 
 met Margaret Fuller (I had seen her once before this), 
 and had some conversation with her about taking Miss 
 Peabody s place in my school." 
 
 " December 17th. I have seen M. F., who, besides 
 giving instruction in the languages, will report Hhe 
 Conversations on the Gospels as they proceed." 
 
76 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 " 1837, January 8th. I resume the Conversations, 
 which have been suspended since last July. Subject, 
 The Sermon on the Mount/ for a beginning. Miss 
 F. reports them ; if she succeeds in seizing their form 
 and spirit, we may add a third to the two published 
 volumes." 
 
 "1837, 12th January. This evening with M. F. 
 Clearly a person given to the boldest speculations, and 
 of liberal and varied acquirements. Not wanting in 
 imaginary power, she strikes me as having the rarest 
 good sense and discretion : qualities so essential to 
 success in any sphere, and especially to a woman ambi 
 tious of literary distinction, and relying solely on na 
 tive work. She adopts the spiritual philosophy, and has 
 the subtlest perceptions of its necessities and bearings." 
 
 " February 8th. Miss F. succeeds, after some trial, 
 in reporting the Conversations." 
 
 " March 17th. An agreeable hour with M. F., in whose 
 sympathy and insight I find great content. She takes 
 large and generous views of things, and her dispositions 
 are singularly catholic and liberal. She has great skill 
 in discourse, too : few converse with the like freedom 
 and elegance. I am pleased to learn of the interest 
 taken in her behalf by persons here in our city whose 
 favor is a passport to success. To her has been given 
 with the gift of intellect that of prudence, and when 
 these are united in one person, success must follow in 
 their train." 
 
 " April. Miss Fuller left town this week for Groton, 
 where she intends passing a few weeks, for recruiting 
 her health to enter the Green Street School at Provi 
 dence. Here, during the last winter, she has been en 
 gaged in teaching the French, German, and Italian 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 77 
 
 languages to private classes, also Latin and French in 
 my school." l 
 
 Her connection with Mr. Alcott s school, like 
 the school itself, was destined to be short-lived. 
 Mr. Alcott s characteristic methods of dealing with 
 children through minute questioning, joined with 
 some peculiar theories as to punishment, called 
 out an amount of indignation which, at this dis 
 tance of time, appears almost incredible. The 
 little volume called " Record of a School," fol 
 lowed by the two volumes called " Conversations 
 on the Gospels," roused this wrath to the highest 
 point. The books and the school were bitterly de 
 nounced by the " Daily Advertiser " and " Cou 
 rier," the latter seriously urging that Mr. Alcott 
 should be prosecuted for blasphemy, as Abner 
 Kneeland had lately been. To this Mr. R. W. 
 Emerson wrote an indignant reply, asserting that 
 Mr. Alcott s only offense lay in his efforts to "make 
 children think," and that his experiment was one 
 in which all the friends of education were inter 
 ested. The editor of the " Courier, " Mr. J. T. 
 Buckingham, rejoined by quoting the opinion of 
 a Harvard professsor that " one third of Mr. Al 
 cott s book was absurd, one third was blasphemous, 
 and one third was obscene." 2 
 
 Such was the hornet s nest into which Margaret 
 Fuller had unwarily plunged herself by following 
 the very mildest-mannered saint who ever tried 
 
 1 MS. by Mr. Alcott. 
 
 2 Biographical Sketch of A. B. Alcott , p. 15. 
 
78 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 his hand at the spiritual training of children. 
 With what discrimination she viewed the whole 
 affair how well she saw defects on the practical 
 side as well as moral excellence, is shown clearly 
 in this letter, addressed to one of her most culti 
 vated friends. 
 
 "BOSTON, 6th April, 1837. 
 
 ... " Why is it that I hear you are writing a piece 
 to cut up Mr. Alcott. I do not believe you are going 
 to cut up Mr. Alcott. There are plenty of fish in the 
 uet created solely for markets, etc. ; no need to try 
 your knife on a dolphin like him. I should be charmed 
 if I thought you were writing a long, beautiful, wise-like 
 article, showing the elevated air, and at the same time 
 the practical defects of his system. You would do a 
 great service to him as well as to the public, and I know 
 no one so well qualified as yourself to act as a mediator 
 between the two, and set both sides of the question in 
 a proper light. But the phrase * cutting up alarms 
 me. If you were here I am sure that you would feel 
 as I do, and that your wit would never lend its patron 
 age to the ugly blinking owls, who are now hooting 
 from their snug tenements, overgrown rather with net 
 tles than with ivy, at this star of purest ray serene. 
 But you are not here, more s the pity, and perhaps do 
 not know exactly what you are doing ; do write to me 
 and reassure me." * 
 
 But whether the newspapers were right or 
 
 wrong, their criticisms killed the school. Mr. Al- 
 
 cott s receipts, which during the previous year 
 
 had been $1,395, sank to f 549 during the year 
 
 i MS. 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 79 
 
 after the attack ; the forty pupils dwindled to ten, 
 and in April, 1837, the school furniture and appa 
 ratus were sold, and the assistant necessarily dis 
 charged. The school itself lingered for two years 
 more, until fresh wrath was kindled by the admis 
 sion of a colored child ; there was another with 
 drawal of pupils, leaving Mr. Alcott with nobody 
 to teach but his own three daughters, the colored 
 child, and one undismayed white pupil. " I earn 
 little or nothing in this miserable school," he writes 
 in his unpublished diary, April 23, 1839, " nor am 
 I laboring towards any prospective good in it." 
 During the same month (April 11), in a summary 
 of his small income for a period not stated he 
 credits the parents of his pupils with thirty dol 
 lars. 1 The school closed finally in June or July, 
 1839, and left its projector free to adopt his favor 
 ite conversational methods of urging his thought, 
 methods with which he has been identified for 
 forty years. This is not the place to discuss the 
 merits or demerits of his theories of teaching, but 
 the final close of his experiment certainly did him 
 no discredit ; he went down with his flag still fly 
 ing. 
 
 The school in which Margaret Fuller was to 
 teach at Providence was the Green Street Acad 
 emy, founded by Colonel Hiram Fuller, a gentle 
 man in no way her relative. He was a person of 
 some force of character and a good deal of ambi 
 tion, who perhaps showed both qualities in inviting 
 1 Alcott s MS. Diary, vol. xil 
 
80 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 Miss Fuller to be his assistant. She wrote of him 
 to Miss Peabody : " Mr. Fuller is as unlike as 
 possible to Mr. Alcott. He has neither his poetic 
 beauty nor his practical defects." 1 His offer to 
 her, as stated iti Mr. Alcott s diary, was a liberal 
 one for those days, and I am assured by Miss Ja 
 cobs, who followed Miss Fuller in the school, that 
 the thousand dollars were undoubtedly paid, though 
 Horace Greeley, in his " Recollections," states the 
 contrary. Mr. Fuller taught the school for a few 
 years only, then went to New York and became 
 connected with the New York "Mirror," edited 
 by N. P. Willis and George P. Morris. This he 
 abandoned after a time, " being tired," as he said, 
 44 of supporting two poets," and was afterwards 
 editor of the London " Cosmopolitan." In addi 
 tion to his bold choice of an assistant, he invoked 
 the rising prestige of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 
 viting him to give an address at the dedication 
 of the Academy (Saturday, June 10, 1837), and 
 suggesting to him, he being still in the ministry, 
 to bring sermons and preach in the two Unitarian 
 churches. 
 
 Margaret Fuller was ill for a time after reach 
 ing Providence, and wrote to Mr. Emerson in June, 
 1887 : " Concord, dear Concord, haven of repose, 
 where headache, vertigo, other sins that flesh is heir 
 to, cannot long continue." After this came a pe 
 riod of unusual health, during which she wrote in 
 great exhilaration to her friends. To Miss Pea- 
 i MS. 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 81 
 
 body, for instance (July 8, 1837), she exulted in 
 the " glow of returning health," and then gave 
 this account of the school : 
 
 "As to the school, ... I believe I do very well 
 there. I am in it four hours every morning, five days 
 in the week ; thus you see I can have much time, not 
 withstanding many casual interruptions. All Saturday 
 and Sunday to myself. I rise so early that I often get 
 an hour and a half before breakfast, besides two or three 
 hours in the afternoon on school days. This is quite 
 enough for health, and the time is good time, for the 
 school rarely tires me at all. I feel so perfectly equal 
 to all I do there, without any effort ; my pupils, al 
 though miserably prepared, are very docile, their hearts 
 are right, and I already perceive that I am producing 
 some effect on their heads. My plan grows quietly and 
 easily in my mind ; this experience here will be useful 
 to me, if not to Providence, for I am bringing my opin 
 ions to the test, and thus far have reason to be satis 
 fied." 1 
 
 Her mode of life in Providence, during this 
 period, she described in letters to her younger 
 brother. She lived methodically, as she usually 
 did ; almost always rose at five, it was in sum 
 mer, and sometimes at half-past four; it took 
 her till six to dress ; she studied till half-past seven, 
 the breakfast hour; school lasted from half-past 
 eight to half-past twelve ; she got home at one, 
 dined at half-past one ; lay down till three ; then 
 wrote or studied till tea-time, probably at six ; in 
 the evening, walked or made calls till ten; this 
 i MS. 
 
82 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 was her day. 1 Her task as to mere instruction 
 was not difficult, and her letters everywhere show 
 her to have had that natural love of children so 
 essential to the teacher. She never leaves a house 
 but some gay message, sent back to the youngest 
 members, shows unerringly that they, at least, 
 cannot have complained of her as haughty or su 
 percilious. 
 
 A lady who was, when a child, a housemate of 
 Margaret Fuller while in Providence, has lately 
 told me an anecdote which thoroughly illustrates 
 the noble and truthful way in which she habitu 
 ally dealt with children. My informant, who was 
 then a little girl, says that there were beautiful 
 books and other curiosities upon Miss Fuller s 
 table, and that the children in the house were al 
 lowed to see them sometimes, on condition that 
 they would not touch them. One day, in Miss 
 Fuller s absence, a young visitor came, and insist 
 ing on taking down a microscope, despite the little 
 girl s remonstrances, dropped and broke it. My 
 informant was found in an agony of tears amidst 
 the wreck ; all her protestations of innocence were 
 unheeded, and she was shut up as a prisoner, not 
 merely for disobedience, but for falsehood. No 
 one would even listen to her story, the circum 
 stantial evidence seemed so overwhelming. Miss 
 Fuller returned, and was told the incident ; she 
 came instantly to the room and took the weeping 
 child upon her knee. " Now, my dear little girl," 
 i Fuller MSS. i. 619. 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 83 
 
 she said, " tell me all about it, only remember that 
 you must be careful, for I shall believe every word 
 you say." Thus encouraged, the innocent tale 
 was told ; investigation followed, and complete 
 acquittal. My informant, herself to this day an 
 eminently successful teacher, told me that she then 
 learned the life-long lesson of treating children 
 with a noble confidence. 
 
 It is impossible for a teacher to write about 
 teaching without disclosing her own theories and 
 revealing her own experience. The year after 
 Margaret Fuller left Providence, we find her 
 writing to her brother Arthur, then teaching a 
 district school in Massachusetts ; and never had 
 young teacher a better counselor. She tells him, 
 for instance (December 20, 1840), 
 
 " The most important rule is, in all relations with our 
 fellow-creatures, never forget that if they are imperfect 
 persons they are immortal souls ; and treat them as you 
 would wish to be treated by the light of that thought." 
 
 " Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or 
 even beloved. As far as an amiable disposition and 
 powers of entertainment make you so, it is a happiness, 
 but if there is one grain of plausibility, it is a poison." 
 
 This last maxim seems to me simply admi 
 rable; and she has an equally good passage in 
 which she warns him against flattery, which, as 
 she keenly points out, is even more injurious to 
 children than to grown people. She adds : 
 
 " For to the child, the parent or teacher is the repre 
 sentative of justice, and as that [i. e., the justice] of life 
 
8-4 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 is severe, an education which in any way excites vanity 
 is the very worst preparation for that general and 
 crowded school." 1 
 
 It would be easy to transcribe many more of 
 these admirable aphorisms, which prove as clearly 
 as if one had seen her in school, that she who 
 wrote them had rare gifts for the work of educa 
 tion. With all this, I do not suppose that Mar 
 garet Fuller was a perfect teacher ; her health was 
 variable, and her heart was set on something else ; 
 she did not accept this as her life-work. The 
 teacher who followed her has told me that she 
 was worshiped by the girls as in her earlier 
 school-days, but was sometimes too sarcastic for 
 the boys ; and yet they certainly gave every evi 
 dence of attachment when she left them. Out 
 side the school, too, her personal qualities or her 
 exceptional attainments brought on her some of 
 those criticisms from which educated men are not 
 exempt, and which are quite sure to visit highly- 
 educated women. One lady said to her successor, 
 Miss Jacobs, soon after her arrival at the school : 
 41 Miss Fuller says she thinks in German ; do you 
 believe it ? " It was a discourteous question to a 
 new-comer, who would naturally wish to keep clear 
 of the feuds and the claims of her predecessor; 
 but fortunately Miss Jacobs had ready tact, if 
 Miss Fuller had not. " Oh, yes ! " she said, "I 
 do not doubt it ; I myself dream in Cherokee ; " 
 which left her assailant discomfited. 
 
 2 Fuller MSS. i. 643-645. 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 85 
 
 James Freeman Clarke has lately said in a ser 
 mon that he once went to see Margaret Fuller 
 when she had been teaching in Providence for a 
 year or two. She showed him two packages of 
 letters which she had received from her pupils. 
 "These letters," said she, "if you should read 
 them, would show you the work I have been do 
 ing for my scholars. The first package contains 
 the letters which they usually write to me after 
 they have been in the school two or three months. 
 They say, 4 O Miss Fuller, we did not know, till 
 we came to you, how ignorant we were. We 
 seem to know nothing at all, and not to be able 
 to learn anything. We might as well stop, and 
 give up. We are sure we shall never be able to 
 study to any purpose. This package of letters," 
 said their teacher, " I have labeled, Under convic 
 tion." 
 
 " This other package," she continued, " holds 
 the letters they write some time afterward. In 
 these they say, c We owe you ever so much for 
 showing us how we can become something better. 
 We are still very stupid, but we now feel as if we 
 were in the right way, and were making some 
 progress. Pray help us to do more and better. 
 You have given us courage, and taught us how to 
 go forward ! This package," said she, " I label, 
 Obtained a hope" 
 
 She went for occasional brief visits from Provi 
 dence to Boston, and it may be well to insert a 
 from one of her letters to Mr. Emerson, 
 
86 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 in which she gives a glimpse of the gay world 
 of that city forty-seven years ago. The picture 
 of Daniel Webster and Theodore Parker moving 
 among the jeunesse dore in a ball-room seems like 
 one of the far-fetched improbabilities of an his 
 torical novel. The " Gigrnan " allusion is to Car- 
 lyle s afterwards hackneyed phrase about the re 
 spectability that keeps a gig. It is possible that 
 the entertainment may have occurred just before 
 her actual removal to Providence. 
 
 ..." Last night I took my boldest peep into the 
 1 Gigman world of Boston. I have not been to a large 
 party before, and only seen said world in half-boots ; 
 so I thought, as it was an occasion in which I felt real 
 interest, to wit, a fete given by Mrs. Thorndike for 
 my beautiful Susan, I would look at it for once in 
 satin slippers. Dr. Channiug meant to go, but was too 
 weary when the hour came. I spent the early part of 
 the evening in reading bits of Dante with him, and talk 
 ing about the material sublime till half-past nine, when 
 I went with Mrs. C. and graceful Mary. It was very 
 pretty to look at. So many fair maidens dressed as if 
 they had stepped out of their grandmothers picture 
 frames, and youths with their long locks, suitable to 
 represent pages if not nobles. Signor Figaro was 
 there also in propria [persona] la et la. And Daniel 
 the Great, not, however, when I saw him, engaged in 
 an operation peculiarly favorable to his style of beauty, 
 to wit, eating oysters. Theodore Parker was there, and 
 introduced to me. I had some pleasant talk with him, 
 but before I could get to Spinoza, somebody seized on 
 me and carried me off to quite another S, to supper. 
 
I 
 
 TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 87 
 
 On the whole, it all pleased my eye ; my fashionable fel 
 low-creatures were very civil to me, arid I went home, 
 glad to have looked at this slide, in the magic lantern 
 also." ! 
 
 Writing from Providence, August 14, 1837, she 
 lays plans for her summer vacation, which is to 
 begin with unmerciful tardiness on August 19. 
 For her three weeks vacation she plans to visit, 
 with her friend Caroline Sturgis, that delicious 
 land of lotus-eating, Artichoke Mills, on the Mer- 
 rimack, " there to be silent and enjoy daily wood- 
 walks or boat excursions with her," or else to 
 go to Concord. As to Providence, she writes : 
 
 " I fear I have not much to tell that will amuse you. 
 With books and pens I have, maugre my best efforts, 
 been able to do miserably little. If I cannot be differ 
 ently situated, I must leave Providence at the end of 
 another term. My time here has been full of petty an 
 noyances, but I regret none of them, they have so en 
 larged my practical knowledge. I now begin really to 
 feel myself a citizen of the world. My plan lies clearer 
 before my mind, and I have examined almost all my 
 materials, but beyond this I have done nothing. I shall, 
 however, have so soon an opportunity to tell you all 
 that I will not now take time and paper. I attended 
 last week, somewhat to the horror of Mr. Fuller, the 
 Whig Caucus here, and heard Tristam B urges. It is 
 rather the best thing I have done." 2 
 
 Jefferson s correspondence bearing fruit again ! 
 With that impressed upon her, and her business 
 like father in her mind, she shrank from a merely 
 1 MS. 2 MS. 
 
88 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 intellectual life, while she yet felt its charms. 
 Her residence in Providence had made her " a citi 
 zen of the world," and the " best thing she had 
 done" there was to defy the disapproval of her 
 employer and attend a caucus, in those days a 
 rare exploit for a woman. We see the same half- 
 conscious impulse toward action manifested in one 
 of her letters to her younger brothers, in which 
 she describes with great fullness a visit to a 
 French man-of-war, the Hercules, which had an 
 chored in Narragansett Bay. She says, incident 
 ally, " I thought I much should like to command 
 such a vessel, despite all the hardships and priva 
 tions of such a situation." 1 When she wrote, 
 years after, the oft-quoted passage in " Woman 
 in the Nineteenth Century," " Let them be sea- 
 captains, if they will," it may have been with this 
 reminiscence in her mind. 
 
 On March 1, 1838, she wrote to Mr. Emerson 
 one of her most characteristic letters. I repro 
 duce it from the manuscript, because it shows 
 what Mr. Emerson was to her, a saint in her 
 oratory, and because it puts what was often 
 called, in her case, self-consciousness and vanity, 
 in their clearest light. She was sometimes said to 
 despise her fellow-creatures, and all that passed 
 for contempt in her is frankly uttered here. Yet 
 behind it, if I understand it rightly, is a profound 
 and even self-torturing humility. Always dissatis 
 fied with herself, she finds to her dismay that 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. G35. 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 89 
 
 other people share the same condition, or worse. 
 " I see no divine person ; I myself am more divine 
 than any one I see. I think that is enough to 
 say about them." To a lower depth, that is, she 
 can scarcely assign them than to say that they 
 seem to be accomplishing even less than she does. 
 The woman who wrote this was but twenty-seven, 
 poor, a martyr to ill-health, and with a desperate 
 hungering of the soul to do her appointed work 
 in the world, and make full use of the talents 
 confided to her. When we consider that she was 
 writing to her father-confessor, in absolute free 
 dom and in an almost fantastic mood of depres- 
 sion^ w ith her supposed profession of teaching 
 crumbling beneath her feet, and nothing before 
 her but an intellectual career, which in a worldly 
 way was then no career ; her plans uncertain, her 
 aims thwarted, her destiny a conundrum, what 
 man of intellectual pursuits, looking back on the 
 struggles of his own early years, can throw a stone 
 at Margaret Fuller ? 
 
 "PROVIDENCE, 1st March, 1838. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, Many a Zelterian l epistle 
 have I mentally addressed to you, full of sprightly 
 scraps about the books I have read, the spectacles I 
 have seen, and the attempts at men and women with 
 whom I have come in contact. But I have not been 
 able to put them on paper ; for, even when I have at 
 tempted it, you have seemed so busy and noble, and I 
 
 1 A phrase suggested by the correspondence between Goethe 
 and Zelter, which she had been reading. 
 
90 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 so poor and dissipated, that I have not felt worthy to 
 address you. 
 
 " At present I am not at all Zelterian in my mood, 
 but very sombre and sullen. I have shut the door for 
 a few days, and tried to do something ; you have really 
 been doing something. And that is why I write. I 
 want to see you, and still more to hear you. I must 
 kindle my torch again. Why have I not heard you this 
 winter ? I feel very humble just now, yet I have to 
 say that being lives not who would have received from 
 your lectures as much as I should. There are noble 
 books, but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And 
 I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than 
 any I see. I think that is enough to say about them. 
 I know Dr. Wayland now, but I shall not care for him. 
 He would never understand me, and, if I met him, it 
 must be by those means of suppression and accommo 
 dation which I at present hate to my heart s core. I 
 hate everything that is reasonable just now, wise lim 
 itations and all. I have behaved much too well for 
 some time past ; it has spoiled my peace. What grieves 
 me, too, is to find or fear my theory a cheat. I cannot 
 serve two masters, and I fear all the hope of being a 
 worldling and a literary existence also must be resigned. 
 Isolation is necessary to me, as to others. Yet I keep on 
 * fulfilling all my duties, as the technical phrase is, except 
 to myself. But why do I write thus to you who like noth 
 ing but what is good, that is, cheerfulness and forti 
 tude? It is partly because yours is an image of my 
 oratory, 1 and if I do not jest when I write to you, I 
 must pray. And partly as a preliminary to asking you, 
 
 1 " I suppose you will not know what this means, whether you 
 come or no. Do not disappoint me." 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 91 
 
 unsympathizing, unhelpful, wise, good man that you 
 are, to do several things for me. I hear you are to de 
 liver one of your lectures again in Boston. I would 
 have you do it while I am there. I shall come on 
 Wednesday next, and stay till the following Monday. 
 Perhaps you will come to see me, for, though I am 
 not as good as I was, yet, as I said before, I am better 
 than most persons / see, and, I dare say, better than 
 most persons you see. But perhaps you do not need to 
 see anybody, for you are acting, and nobly. If so, you 
 need not come yourself, but send me your two lectures 
 on * Holiness and Heroism. Let me have these two 
 lectures, at any rate, to read while in Boston." 
 
 But her prediction was fulfilled ; if she followed 
 her literary longings she must leave Providence, 
 and so she did. Mr. Ripley had suggested to her 
 to write a life of Goethe, but it ended in a trans 
 lation of Eckermann s " Conversations " with that 
 great man, prefaced by one of her "Dial " essays 
 on the subject and published in Ripley s series of 
 " Specimens of German Authors," probably with 
 out compensation. Her plans and purposes on 
 retiring from her school are best stated in a letter 
 to the Rev. W. H. Channing, not before pub 
 lished : 
 
 "PROVIDENCE, 9th December, 1838. 
 
 " I am on the point of leaving Providence, and I do so 
 with unfeigned delight, not only because I am weary 
 and want rest, because my mind has so long been turned 
 outward and longs for concentration and leisure for 
 tranquil thought, but because I have here been always 
 in a false position and my energies been consequently 
 
92 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 much repressed. To common observers I seem well 
 placed here, but I know that it is not so, and that I 
 have had more than average difficulties to encounter, 
 some of them insurmountable. But from these difficul 
 ties I have learned so much that I cannot but suppose 
 my experience is to be of further use. 
 
 " I do not wish to teach again at all. If I consult 
 my own wishes I shall employ the remainder of my life 
 in quite a different manner. But I foresee circum 
 stances that may make it wrong for me to obey my 
 wishes. 
 
 " Mother has sold her place at Groton, and as she 
 is to leave it in April, I shall go home and stay three 
 months at least. I dream of Elysian peace, of quiet 
 growth, and other benefits no doubt well-known to your 
 imagination. Then I hope to prevail on her to board 
 with Ellen and me, and send the boys to school for 
 some months. But after that we must find a sure foot 
 hold on the earth somewhere and plan anew a home. 
 
 " But this leaves me nearly a year for my own inven 
 tions. If at the end of that time it should seem neces 
 sary for the good of all concerned that I should teach 
 again, I wish to do it, and by the success I have already 
 attained, and by the confidence I now feel in my pow 
 ers, both of arrangement of a whole and action on 
 parts, feel myself justified in thinking I may do it to 
 much greater pecuniary advantage and with much more 
 extensive good results to others than I have yet done." 
 
 A plan suggested by Cincinnati friends for a 
 school in that city came to nothing, and she left 
 Providence for Boston in December, 1838. This 
 was the end of her school-teaching, though she 
 continued to take occasional private pupils in lan 
 
TEACHING IN BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE. 93 
 
 guages and other matters ; for whom she was paid, 
 as she wrote to her younger brother, at the rate 
 of two dollars an hour, or, rather, half a dollar for 
 quarter-hour lessons. That winter, however, as 
 she tells him, she is too tired to take them at 
 any price ; she must rest ; but she will give her 
 younger sister lessons in German, and will teach 
 Latin and composition to himself. This was her 
 idea of resting, and thus she rested at Groton for 
 the remainder of that winter. 
 
VII. 
 
 SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 
 
 (1838-1844.) 
 
 IN looking forward to leaving the scene of her 
 school-teaching, Margaret Fuller wrote thus to 
 Mrs. Barlow in a moment of headache and ner 
 vous exhaustion : 
 
 "November S, 1838. 
 
 " I shall go home about Christmas and stay till April, 
 and never set foot out of doors unless to take exercise ; 
 and see no , human face, divine or otherwise, out of my 
 own family. But I am wearied out and I have gabbled 
 and simpered and given my mind to the public view 
 these two years back, till there seems to be no good left 
 in me." l 
 
 She wrote to Mr. Emerson of the remaining 
 months of that winter, " My sufferings last winter 
 in Groton were almost constant, and I see the 
 journal is very sickly in its tone. I have taken 
 out some leaves. Now I am a perfect Phoenix 
 compared with what I was then, and it all seems 
 past to me." 2 
 
 During this invalid winter, however, she made 
 a brief visit to Boston, where she had three en- 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 22. 2 MS. letter, November 25, 1839. 
 
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 95 
 
 joyments, so characteristic as to be worth quot 
 ing: 
 
 "7 January, 1839. 
 
 " Three things were specially noteworthy. First, a 
 talk with Mr. Alcott, in which he appeared to me so 
 great, that I am inclined to think he deserves your 
 praise, and that he deceived neither you nor himself in 
 saying that I had not yet seen him. Beside his usual 
 attitude and closeness to the ideal, he showed range, 
 grasp, power of illustration, and precision of statement 
 such as I never saw in him before. I will begin him 
 again and read by faith awhile. 
 
 " There was a book of studies from Salvator Rosa, 
 from the Brimmer donation, at the Athenaeum, which 
 I looked over with great delight and got many thoughts 
 for my journal. There was at last an interview with 
 Mr. Allston. He is as beautiful as the town-criers have 
 said, and deserves to be Mr. Dana s Olympus, Lares, 
 and Penates, as he is. He got engaged upon his Art, 
 and flamed up into a galaxy of Platonism. Yet what 
 he said was not as beautiful as his smile of genius in 
 saying it. Unfortunately, I was so fascinated, that I 
 forgot to make myself interesting, arid shall not dare to 
 go and see him." x 
 
 Three months later the family left Groton for 
 ever, having taken a house at Jamaica Plain, 
 then and perhaps now the most rural and attract 
 ive suburb of Boston. Here their dwelling was 
 near a little stream, called Willow Brook, and 
 there were rocks behind it covered with cardinal 
 flowers. Margaret Fuller had with her two pu- 
 i MS. 
 
96 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 pils from Providence ; she was within easy reach 
 of friends, and could at the same time renew that 
 love of nature which Groton had first tanght her, 
 and which city -life had only suspended. From 
 this time, many charming outdoor sketches ap 
 pear among her papers. Inheriting a love of 
 flowers from her mother, she gave to them mean 
 ings and mysticisms of her own. Of her later 
 " Dial " sketches, " The Magnolia of Lake Pont- 
 chartrain " grew, as she writes in one of her un 
 published letters, out of the suggestion by some 
 one that its odor was so exquisite at that spot as 
 to be unlike any other magnolia ; and the " Yucca 
 Filamentosa" came wholly from a description 
 given her by Dr. Eustis, in his garden at Brook- 
 line, of its flowering at full- moon. " If you like 
 it " (the sketch of the magnolia), she says to 
 one of her correspondents, "I will draw the soul 
 also from the Yucca and put it into words." l 
 
 Among her unpublished papers there are sev 
 eral similar flower-pieces ; one upon the Passion 
 Flower, whose petals had just fallen from her 
 girdle, she says, while all her other flowers re 
 mained intact ; and with which she connects a 
 striking delineation of human character, as em 
 bodied in some person not now to be identified. 
 Again she has been hearing in some conversation 
 a description of the thorn called Spina Christi, 
 which still grows on the plains of Judasa, and this 
 leads her to a nobl winter reverie : 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 97 
 
 "Januarys, 1841. 
 
 " Recipe to prevent the cold of January from utterly de 
 stroying life. 
 
 " Beneath all pain inflicted by Nature, be not only 
 serene, but more, let it avail thee in prayer. Put up 
 at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for 
 thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some 
 being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept 
 thy ransom. 
 
 " My head is very sensitive, and as they described 
 the Spina Christi I shuddered all over, and could have 
 fainted only at the thought of its pressure on his head. 
 Yet if he had experienced the sufferings of humanity 
 and believed that by * thy will be done a steady 
 feeling in his breast during these hours of torture from 
 an ungrateful race he could free them from suffering 
 and sin, I feel how he might have borne it. It seems 
 to me I might be educated through suffering to the 
 same purity. 
 
 " Does any man wound thee ; not only forgive, but 
 work into thy thought intelligence of the kind of pain, 
 that thou mayst never inflict it on another spirit. When 
 its work is done, it will never search thy whole nature 
 again. 
 
 " Oh, love much, and be forgiven." 1 
 
 It will be seen from another letter that she set 
 an especial value on her flower sketches : 
 
 " You often tell me what to do when you are gone ; 
 if you survive me, will you not collect my little flower- 
 pieces, even the insignificant ones ? I feel as if from 
 mother I had received a connection with the flowers ; 
 
 i MS. (W. H. G.) 
 
 7 
 
98 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 she has the love, I the interpretation. My writings 
 about them are no fancies, but whispers from them 
 selves. I am deeply taught by the constant presence of 
 any growing thing. This apple-tree before my window 
 I shall mourn to leave. Seeing fruit trees in a garden 
 is entirely another thing from having this one before 
 my eyes constantly, so that I can t help seeing all that 
 happens to it. But I shall write out the history of our 
 acquaintance and give you a copy." l 
 
 Yet I must confess to liking her out -door 
 sketches even better when they are more wholly 
 descriptive and less imaginative, as with the fol 
 lowing : 
 
 "September 27 [1840?]. 
 
 " Oh, it is the loveliest morning. After those days of 
 glad light and calm, benign, roseate sunsets, how sweet 
 the unutterable love of such clouds as the west wind 
 has brought ; they keep sighing themselves away and 
 letting us see, behind the tenderest blue, the sky of May. 
 The utmost purity with such tenderness ! All the fra 
 grance of farewell is breathing out of the earth. The 
 flowers seem to have grown up express for the day. In 
 the wood where I have been they all thronged the path ; 
 it is a wood where none but me goes, and they can smile 
 secure. I was looking at the clouds and thinking they 
 could not choose but weep, there was no other way to 
 express such intense tenderness, when down came such 
 a sun-shower as you describe from Waldo s thoughts, the 
 clouds only looking the sweeter and more sunlit all the 
 time for being able to express themselves. All this mu 
 sic is playing upon me almost too fully ; I have scarcely 
 i MS. (W.H. C.) 
 
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 99 
 
 force to bear it. Perhaps it will be well when cold win 
 ter comes and locks the instrument up. I am living 
 like an angel, and I don t know how to get down. Yet 
 they are waiting all around, leaning on the packs they 
 expect me to lift ; they look at me reverently, affection 
 ately ; they are patient, yet I see they are waiting." i 
 
 Then comes the following, in which she extracts 
 quite as much from the wild asters as from yuccas 
 and magnolias : 
 
 " Tuesday [September, 1840?]. 
 
 "I have just returned from a walk this golden au 
 tumn morning, with its cloudless sky and champagne 
 air. I found some new wood walks, glades among black 
 pines and hemlocks, openings to the distant hills, grace 
 ful in silvery veils. A very peculiar feeling these asters 
 give me, gleaming on every side. They seem my true 
 sisters. They look so refined, so saintly, so melancholy, 
 so generous of their beauty, and the flowers look at me 
 more like eyes than any other. These are good reasons 
 for loving ye, sweet asters, but they do not go to the 
 root of the matter. I feel a really yearning tenderness, 
 a sense of relationship. But the golden-rod is one of 
 the fairy, magical flowers ; it grows not up to seek hu 
 man love amid the light of day, but to mark to the dis 
 cerning what wealth lies hid in the secret caves of earth. 
 . . . The disgust at unworthy care, the aching sense 
 of how far deeds are transcended by our lowest aspira 
 tion, pass away, and for a while I lean on the bosom of 
 nature, and inhale new life with her breath. Could but 
 love, like knowledge, be its own reward ; could we look 
 upon the objects of our affection and rejoice in their ex 
 istence, purely for its own sake, as we do with the ferns 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
100 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 and asters, but that is contrary to the nature of love ; 
 though it be true in one sense, as Schiller says, that he 
 only loves who loves without hope, yet in another it is 
 true that love cannot exist without desire, though it be 
 the desire of the moth for the star." l 
 
 Sometimes she records rambles with others, and 
 we have here a visit to Mount Auburn, at the pe 
 riod when it still retained its rural beauty : 
 
 " Saturday, . 
 
 " Ellery [Channing] and I had a good afternoon at 
 Mount Auburn. He was wondering why men had ex 
 pressed so little of any worth about death. I said I 
 thought they attached too much importance to it. On 
 this subject I always feel that I can speak with some 
 certainty, having been on the verge of bodily dissolu 
 tion. I felt at that time disengaged from the body, hov 
 ering and calm. And in moments of profound thought 
 or feeling, or when, after violent pain in the head, my 
 exhausted body loses power to hem me in, I have felt 
 changes more important than then. I believe that the 
 mere death of the body has no great importance except 
 when it is in no sense accidental, that is, when the mind, 
 by operations native to it, has gradually cast aside its 
 covering, and is ready for a new one. But this is very 
 seldom the case. Persons die generally, not as a natu 
 ral thing, but from extraneous causes ; then it must be 
 a change only one degree more important than going to 
 sleep ; for what the mind wants to develop it, it must 
 have, here or elsewhere. A death from love would be 
 perfectly natural. 
 
 " Reasons why there are no good monuments ? I 
 must write upon this subject. March, 1840." 2 
 
 i MS. 2 Fuller MSS. i. 429, 
 
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 101 
 
 She had fancies, as Mr. Emerson tells us, about 
 days and precious stones and talismans; and in 
 one of her letters I find these reveries about proper 
 names : 
 
 " It pleases that Raphael and Michael Angelo should 
 have received the archangelic names ; it seems inspira 
 tion in the parents. So that Swedenborg should bear 
 the name of Emanuel, and Kant, too. The name 
 of Beethoven s mother does not seem without mean 
 ing. In writing yesterday, I observed the names of 
 Mary and Elizabeth meeting again in the two queens 
 with some pleasure. William is the Conqueror. Per 
 haps it is from such association that I thought from ear 
 liest childhood I could never love one that bore another 
 name ; I am glad it was Shakespeare s. Shelley chose 
 it for his child. It is linked with mine in ballad as if 
 they belonged together, but the story is always tragic. 
 In the Douglas tragedy, the beauty is more than the 
 sorrow. In one of the later ones the connection is dis 
 mal." l 
 
 Again, after study of Goethe s " Farbenlehre " 
 (Theory of Colors), she writes, with similar zest : 
 
 " Sunday, February 21, 1841. 
 
 " I have been reading, most of the day, the Farben 
 lehre. The facts interest me only in their mystical 
 significance. As of the colors demanding one another 
 in the chromatic circle, each demanding its opposite, and 
 the eye making the opposite of that it once possessed. 
 And of nature only giving the tints pure in the inferior 
 natures, subduing and breaking them as she ascends. 
 Of the cochineal making mordants to fix its dye on the 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
102 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 vegetables where it nestles. Of the plants which, 
 though they grow in the dark, only make long shoots, 
 and refuse to seek their flower. 
 
 " There was a time when one such fact would have 
 made my day brilliant with thought. But now I seek 
 the divine rather in Love than law." l 
 
 If even these simpler thoughts show a tendency 
 to link themselves with something a little far 
 fetched and fantastic, we must remember that this 
 was a period when German romance was just in 
 vading us ; when Carlyle was translating the fan 
 tasy - pieces of Tieck, Hoffmann, and Musseus ; 
 and when some young Harvard students spent a 
 summer vacation in rendering into English the 
 mysteries of " Henry of Ofterdingen," by Novalis. 
 Margaret Fuller took her share in this ; typified 
 the mysteries of the soul as " Leila," in the " Dial," 
 and wrote verses about herself, under that name, 
 in her diary : 
 
 " Leila, of all demanding heart 
 By each and every left apart ; 
 Leila, of all pursuing mind 
 From each goal left far behind ; 
 Strive on, Leila, to the end, 
 Let not thy native courage bend ; 
 Strive on, Leila, day by day, 
 Though bleeding feet stain all the way ; 
 Do men reject thee and despise ? 
 An angel in thy bosom lies 
 And to thy death its birth replies." 2 
 
 These were her days of thought and exaltation. 
 Other days were given to society, usually in Bos- 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 2 MS. Diary, 1844. 
 
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 103 
 
 ton, where she sometimes took a room for the win 
 ter. Hawthorne, in his " American-Note Books," 
 records, under the date, November, 1840 : 
 
 " I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft s yesterday 
 with Miss Margaret Fuller ; but Providence had given 
 me some business to do, for which I was very thank 
 ful." ! 
 
 It must be remembered that Hawthorne was 
 always grateful for any dispensation which saved 
 him from a formal dinner-party. That he en 
 joyed a conversation with Margaret Fuller per 
 sonally is plain from an entry in his " American 
 Note-Books," describing an interview between 
 them during one of her visits to Concord : 
 
 "August^, 1842. 
 
 ..." After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson s I re 
 turned through the woods, and, entering Sleepy Hollow, 
 I perceived a lady reclining near the path which bends 
 along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had 
 been there the whole afternoon, meditating or reading ; 
 for she had a book in her hand, with some strange title, 
 which I did not understand, and have forgotten. She 
 said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just 
 giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Con 
 cord ever visited Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group 
 of people entering its sacred precincts. Most of them 
 followed a path which led them away from us ; but an 
 old man passed near us and smiled to see Margaret, re 
 clining on the ground, and me sitting by her side. He 
 made some remark about the beauty of the afternoon, 
 and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood 
 * American Note-Books, i. 221. 
 
104 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLT. 
 
 Then we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures 
 of being lost in the woods, and about the crows, whose 
 voices Margaret had heard ; and about the experiences 
 of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the 
 character after the recollection of them has passed 
 away; and about the sight of mountains from a dis 
 tance, and the view from their summits ; and about other 
 matters of high and low philosophy. In the midst of 
 our talk, we heard footsteps above us, on the high bank ; 
 and while the person was still hidden among the trees, 
 he called to Margaret, of whom he had gotten a glimpse. 
 Then he emerged from the green shade, and, behold ! it 
 was Mr. Emerson. He appeared to have had a pleasant 
 time ; for he said that there were Muses in the woods to 
 day, and whispers to be heard in the breezes. It being 
 now nearly six o clock, we separated, Margaret and 
 Mr. Emerson towards his home, and I towards mine." 3 
 
 Such scenes were but joyful interludes in her 
 life at Jamaica Plain ; at other times there were 
 what she calls the " rye-bread days " given to 
 domestic cares and country cousins, as in this de 
 scription : 
 
 " Saturday. This was one of the rye-bread days, all 
 dull and damp without. I accomplished many trifles, 
 
 and a little writing within. Cousin came to see 
 
 me ; came home to stay a fortnight. I passed 
 
 the evening with the Farrars. Around my path how 
 much humble love has flowed. These every-day friends 
 never forget my heart, never censure me, make no de 
 mands on me, load me with gifts and services, and, un 
 complaining, see me prefer my intellectual kindred. I 
 1 American Note-Books, ii. 85. 
 
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 105 
 
 am ungrateful, as Timon was to his servants. Yet, 
 Heaven be praised, though sometimes forgetful of them 
 in absence, I make it up in presence, so far that I think 
 I do not give pain, as I pass along this world." l 
 
 Other rye-bread days were spent in writing 
 letters of counsel to her younger brothers, who 
 were., during a portion of this time, away at 
 school. There is the whole range of a New Eng 
 land elder-sister s life in the two following ex 
 tracts from the same letter to Richard Fuller 
 (May 12, 1842). First, the love of Greek, per 
 haps flagging, must be stimulated : 
 
 " While here I have been reading (only in transla 
 tion, alas !) the * Cyropaedia, and other works of Xeno- 
 phon, and some dramas of Euripides ; and, were envy 
 ever worth our while, I should deeply envy those who 
 can with convenience gain access to the Greek mind in 
 its proper garb. No possession can be more precious 
 than a knowledge of Greek." 2 
 
 But the boyish wardrobe, a severer problem 
 than even Greek, must be also supervised ; she 
 must even encounter the dawning sensitiveness 
 as to shirt-collars, from which no sister can es 
 cape. 
 
 " Out of this money I wish you and Arthur both to 
 give your aunt some to buy linen for your shirt-bosoms. 
 No one here understands how you wish them made ; 
 whether you wish to have bosoms and collars sewed on 
 or separate ; and you must each leave with her separate, 
 1 MS. Diary. 2 Fuller MSS. ii. 691. 
 
106 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 precise written directions, signed with your separate 
 names, or they will not be done so as to suit you." l 
 
 Then comes a letter about the use of money it 
 self ; a letter whose clear good sense would have 
 surprised those who fancied her, in those days, a 
 dreamer or a pedant. 
 
 " I wish you had said distinctly how much money you 
 want. I send five dollars, which, perhaps, is not enough. 
 Yet this makes twenty I have sent you since mother 
 went away. So you see even your frugality does not 
 enable you wholly to dispense with the circulating 
 medium you so much despise, and whose use, when you 
 have thought more deeply on these subjects, you will 
 find to have been indispensable to the production of the 
 arts, of literature, and all that distinguishes civilized 
 man. It is abused like all good things, but without it 
 you would not have had your Horace and Virgil, stim 
 ulated by whose society you read the woods and fields 
 to more advantage than or [certain unedu 
 cated neighbors]. Well, enjoy your fields and trees, 
 supplicating the Spirit of all to bring you clear light 
 and full sight." 2 
 
 Then deeper chords are struck, this time in her 
 diary : 
 
 " October 1st [1842]. Anniversary of my father s 
 death. Seven years have passed, a generation, un 
 spotted by regrets, and rich in thought and experience, 
 though its gifts were bathed in tears oftentimes. 
 
 " October 2, Sunday. Dr. Channing left this world. 
 A blameless life came to an end, a high aspiration 
 was transferred elsewhere. He could not have died at 
 1 Fuller MSS. ii. 689. Fuller MSS. ii. 701. 
 
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN. 107 
 
 a better time ; it was indeed for him the fullness of time ; 
 but it is sad that we shall see him no more, meet no 
 more the pale benignant countenance, be greeted no 
 more by the gentle formal courtesy ; nay, it is even 
 sad that we shall be catechised no more for great truths 
 to feed his earnest mind." 1 
 
 The Fuller family resided at Jamaica Plain 
 from the spring of 1839 to that of 1842, when 
 Margaret took the responsibility of purchasing 
 a house in Ellery Street, Cambridge (now No. 
 8), not far from the site of her old abode, the 
 Dana House. Here they lived until July, 1843, 
 when the house was sold ; but the family, now 
 greatly lessened, bought another house on Pros 
 pect Street, which they occupied 2 until after 
 Margaret had transferred herself to New York, 
 in the autumn of 1844, to begin what she called 
 her "business life." But before passing to that, 
 we must consider the various literary and other 
 enterprises which engrossed her about this time ; 
 and meanwhile this record of suburban life may 
 well close with a graphic description of her as 
 she seemed, at this period of her career, to a child 
 ish neighbor, who writes thus to me : 
 
 "I had known Miss Fuller in my childhood when 
 she was our next-door neighbor in Ellery Street. Cam 
 bridge. She made a pet of me ; and the isolated little 
 German girl was indebted to her for a thousand trifles 
 that make a child happy. I often sat by her and looked 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 425. 
 
 2 Compare Memoirs, i. 319, 371, 382; ii. 120. 
 
108 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 at her eyes the only part of her face I remember 
 
 with a strong fascination. They were wide, and full, 
 and blue ; whether fine or not, I could not at seven 
 years old decide ; but they always seemed to look far 
 off, out of and beyond the story she was telling or the 
 picture she was showing me ; and in looking at her eyes 
 I seemed to travel with her fancy through fairy-land. 
 She was very sweet and good to me, and I missed her 
 very much when, after a time, my father moved to Bos 
 ton and I could no longer crawl under or climb over 
 the fence to my Miss Margaret ; for I scorned the gate, 
 which was just as near, but had not that touch of ro 
 mance." 
 
VIII. 
 
 CONVEESATIONS IN BOSTON. 
 
 IT was in the suburban quiet of Jamaica Plain 
 that the project of holding literary conversations 
 first shaped itself. When Madame de Stael asked 
 the Comte de Se*gur which he liked best, her con 
 versation or her writings, he is reported to have 
 replied, " Your conversation, madame, for then 
 you have not the leisure to become obscure." It 
 was really in the effort to avoid obscurity and 
 clarify her own thoughts that Margaret Fuller 
 began by talking instead of writing. Conversa 
 tions on literary an$ philosophical themes have 
 since become such common things, that we can 
 hardly appreciate the sort of surprise produced 
 when she first attempted them. It fell in with 
 the convenient theory of her vanity and presump 
 tion, while it is evident from her own diaries that 
 the enterprise was undertaken in a very modest 
 way. She felt a desire to do her part in the 
 world, but knew herself not yet mature enough 
 in intellect to write, even if there were any peri 
 odical to welcome her. Mere talking, which 
 seemed to other people such an audacious enter 
 prise, seemed to her the very easiest form of intel- 
 
HO MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 lectual action. Her general feeling on the sub 
 ject is best to be seen in a letter written a few 
 years later to the Rev. W. H. Channing, not on 
 this express theme, but in regard to a sermon 
 that she had just heard : 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, February 27, 1843. 
 
 ..." Many thoughts had risen in my mind during 
 the discourse. But when we cannot gratify these 
 wishes to express ourselves, it is probably as well. If 
 we are prevented from gathering and giving away the 
 flower, it withers indeed unenjoyed, but leaves a seed 
 on the stalk. My thoughts generally seem too slight 
 or too much in need of more to be written down, so I 
 like to speak them, but if they lie in the mind, they at 
 tract the more they want. Some degree of expression 
 is necessary for growth, but it should be little in propor 
 tion to the full life. 
 
 " As fire lays open, and the plow awakes a virgin 
 soil, successions of seeds are called into development, 
 which the powers of nature had generated in different 
 moods and left there in the cold dark, perhaps for ages, 
 quite forgotten. So shall it be with a mind that works 
 lonely, unsolicited, unutterable; the destined hour of 
 tillage shall find it rich. 
 
 " I will rejoice in every gladsome spring day, eloquent 
 with blooms, or autumn with its harvests, but the silent 
 fields of stubble or snow shall be no less prized." : 
 
 In this letter she clearly defines the power of 
 oral utterance, not as a sign of supreme strength, 
 but as rather, in her case at least, a resource of 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. Ill 
 
 weakness. Longing for expression, she yet finds 
 her thoughts, she says, too slight or inadequate to 
 be written down ; and therefore likes to speak 
 them, though conscious that even this amount of 
 expression may not always be an advantage. She 
 is going through the experience, in short, which 
 all thinkers have had, and which her favorite 
 Goethe has best formulated " Thought expands, 
 but lames ; action animates, but narrows." 
 
 It must be remembered that the feeling of de 
 sire to be among men and do her part, rather 
 than linger in solitary self-culture, is still visible 
 at this period. For instance, after spending some 
 delicious days about this time with her friend 
 Miss Sturgis on the Merrimack, she writes : 
 
 " I should not like such a life constantly. There are 
 few characters so vigorous and of such self-sustained 
 self-impulse that they do not need frequent and unex 
 pected difficulties to awaken and keep in exercise their 
 powers." l 
 
 Still longing for action, conscious of her fitness 
 for it, she took this method of conversation as her 
 best way of bringing to bear some influence upon 
 her age and time. How much more than this she 
 desired is to be seen in this fine piece of aspiration 
 occurring in a letter to the Rev. W. H. Chan- 
 ning : 
 
 " Like a desperate gamester I feel, at moments, as I 
 cling to the belief that he [the Deity] cannot have lost 
 i Fuller MSS. ii. 645. 
 
112 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLT. 
 
 this great throw of Man, when the lesser hazards have 
 ended so successfully. Men disappoint me so, I disap 
 point myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards, 
 Durindarte. There was an Epaminondas, a Sidney, 
 we need the old counters still. 
 
 % " I wish I were a man, and then there would be one. 
 I weary in this play-ground of boys, proud and happy 
 in their balls and marbles. Give me heroes, poets, law 
 givers, Men. 
 
 " There are women much less unworthy to live than 
 you, Men ; the best are so unripe, the wisest so ignoble, 
 the truest so cold ! 
 
 " Divine Spirit, I pray thee, grow out into our age 
 before I leave it. I pray, I prophesy, I trust, yet I 
 pine." 1 
 
 With these strong aspirations, she was not con 
 tent to do nothing, and she could at least talk. 
 The conversations did not begin with the blowing 
 of a trumpet ; there was not even a printed circu 
 lar, but only a manuscript letter to her friend, 
 Mrs. Ripley, of which the following is a part : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, I feel it more difficult to give 
 on paper a complete outline of my plan for the proposed 
 conversations than I expected. I find so much to say 
 that I cannot make any statement satisfactory to my 
 self, within such limits as would be convenient for your 
 purpose. As no one will wish to take the trouble of 
 reading a long manuscript, I shall rather suggest than 
 tell what I propose to do, and defer a full explanation 
 till the first meeting. The advantages of a weekly 
 meeting for conversation might be great enough to 
 1 MS. (W. H. C.), Sunday, February 21. 1841. 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 113 
 
 repay attendance, if they consisted only in supplying a 
 point of union to well-educated and thinking women, in 
 a city which, with great pretensions to mental refine 
 ment, boasts at present nothing of the kind ; and where 
 I have heard many of mature age wish for some such 
 place of stimulus and cheer ; and those younger, for a 
 place where they could state their doubts and difficul 
 ties, with a hope of gaining aid from the experience or 
 aspirations of others. And if my office were only to 
 suggest topics, which would lead to conversation of a 
 better order than is usual at social meetings, and to turn 
 back the current when digressing into personalities or 
 commonplaces, so that what is most valuable in the 
 experience of each might be brought to bear upon all, 
 I should think the object not unworthy of the effort. 
 But my ambition goes much farther. It is to pass in 
 review the departments of thought and knowledge, and 
 endeavor to place them in due relation to one another 
 in our mind. To systematize thought and give a preci 
 sion and clearness in which our sex are so deficient, 
 chiefly, I think, because they have so few inducements 
 to test and classify what they receive. To ascertain 
 what pursuits are best suited to us, in our time and state 
 of society, and how we may make the best use of our 
 means for building up the life of thought upon the life 
 of action. . . . 
 
 " I believe I have written as much as any one will 
 wish to read. I am ready to answer any questions 
 which may be put, and will add nothing more here 
 except, Always yours truly, 
 
 " S. M. FULLER." 1 
 
 The conversations began November 6, 1839, at 
 1 MS. 
 
114 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 Miss Peabody s rooms in West Street those 
 rooms where many young men and women found, 
 both then and at a later day, the companionship 
 of cultivated people, and the best of French, Ger 
 man, Italian, and English literature. The con 
 versations continued for five winters, closing in 
 April, 1844. Their theory was not high-flown 
 but eminently sensible, being based expressly on 
 the ground stated in the circular, that the chief 
 disadvantage of women in regard to study was 
 in not being called upon, like men, to reproduce 
 in some way what they had learned. As a sub 
 stitute for this she proposed to try the uses of 
 conversation, to be conducted in a somewhat sys 
 tematic way, under efficient leadership. Accord 
 ingly these meetings, although taking a wide 
 range, were always concentrated, and with a good 
 deal of effect, on certain specified subjects ; the 
 most prominent of these being, perhaps, that of 
 Mythology, or the reappearance of religious ideas 
 under varying forms. It is a theme which has 
 since assumed great importance and commanded 
 a literature of its own ; but it was then new, and 
 had to be studied at great disadvantage. Through 
 early versions of the " Bhagvat Geeta " and the 
 " Desatir," Margaret Fuller had made advances 
 into this realm : and for her, as for her early com 
 panion and life-long friend, Lydia Maria Child, it 
 had great fascinations. She writes in her jour- 
 nal, for instance (February 21, 1841) : 
 
 " This Hindoo mythology is like an Indian jungle, 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 115 
 
 The growth is too luxuriant for beauty and leaves a lair 
 for monsters. Being cleared away, here is an after- 
 growth of fair proportioned trees, and beauteous flow 
 ers, the Greek myths. 
 
 " Oh, Nature, History of man, last birth of Na 
 ture, how I see the fibres of God woven all through 
 every part as far as the eye can stretch ! " l 
 
 While Mrs. Child was making preparations to 
 develop this new thought in her " Progress of 
 Religious Ideas," Margaret Fuller made it a fre 
 quent theme of her conversations ; beginning with 
 the Greek mythology, and following up with illus 
 trations from other sources, the rich materials for 
 which are scattered everywhere in her note-books. 
 In later years, however, following the constant 
 current which led her toward life and action, she 
 had for her themes a variety of points in ethics 
 and education. 
 
 The usual hour for these conversations was 
 eleven in the morning. The persons present were 
 usually twenty-five or thirty in number, rarely 
 less, sometimes more ; and they were among the 
 most alert and active-minded women in Boston. 
 Ten or a dozen, besides Miss Fuller, usually took 
 actual part in the talk. Her method was to 
 begin each subject with a short introduction, 
 giving the outline of the subject, and suggesting 
 the most effective points of view. This done, she 
 invited questions or criticisms : if these lagged, 
 she put questions herself, using persuasion for the 
 i MS. 
 
116 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 timid, kindly raillery for the indifferent. There 
 was always a theme, and a thread. One whole 
 winter was devoted through thirteen conversa 
 tions to the Fine Arts ; another to Ethics, in 
 different applications ; another to Education, in 
 various respects ; another to the proper influence 
 of women on family, school, church, society, and 
 literature. On some of these subjects she had, in 
 her circle, undoubted experts, who knew on cer 
 tain particular points more than she did. Of these 
 she availed herself, but kept the reins in her own 
 hands. We all know that the best-planned talk 
 is a lottery; to-day blanks, to-morrow prizes; 
 and there were times when the leader could 
 bring out no cooperation, and had to fall back on 
 monologue. But this was not common, and even 
 the imperfect fragments in the way of report given 
 by Mr. Emerson in the " Memoirs " 1 are enough 
 to show the general success of these occasions. 
 When the subject was " Life," and she called 
 upon one of her favorite pupils to answer, "What 
 is life ? " the lively girl replied, " It is to laugh or 
 cry, according to our constitution." In such a 
 repartee, we can see that the most philosophic 
 teacher met her match and had original minds to 
 deal with. Yet, after all, reports of conversation 
 are failures ; and in this case their defects can 
 only be supplied by more general reminiscences 
 from pupils or friends, trying to give the secret of 
 her acknowledged power. Two of these testimo* 
 
 1 Memoirs, i. 324. 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 117 
 
 nials I shall cite ; the first from one of her life 
 long intimates, an artist by profession and a 
 woman of singularly clear and dispassionate na 
 ture, Miss Sarah Freeman Clarke : 
 
 " In looking for the causes of the great influence 
 possessed by Margaret Fuller over her pupils, compan 
 ions, and friends, I find something in the fact of her un 
 usual truth-speaking power. She not only did not 
 speak lies after our foolish social customs, but she met 
 you fairly. She broke her lance upon your shield. 
 Encountering her glance, something like an electric 
 shock was felt. Her eye pierced through your dis 
 guises. Your outworks fell before her first assault, and 
 you were at her mercy. And then began the delight of 
 true intercourse. Though she spoke rudely searching 
 words, and told you startling truths, though she broke 
 down your little shams and defenses, you felt exhil 
 arated by the compliment of being found out, and even 
 that she had cared to find you out. I think this was 
 what attracted or bound us to her. We expected good 
 from such a new condition of our relations, and good 
 usually came of it. 
 
 " No woman ever had more true lovers among those 
 of her own sex, and as many men she also numbered 
 among her friends. She had an immense appetite for 
 social intercourse. When she met a new person she 
 met him courageously, sincerely, and intimately. She 
 did not study him to see beforehand how he might bear 
 the shock of truth, but offered her best of direct speech 
 at once. Some could not or would not hear it, arid 
 turned away ; but often came back for more, and some 
 of these became her fast friends. 
 
118 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 " Many of us recoiled from her at first ; we feared 
 her too powerful dominion over us, but as she was pow 
 erful, so she was tender ; as she was exacting, she was 
 generous. She demanded our best, and she gave us 
 her best. To be with her was the most powerful stim 
 ulus, intellectual and moral. It was like the sun shin 
 ing upon plants and causing buds to open into flow 
 ers. This was her gift, and she could no more help 
 exercising it than the sun can help shining. This gift, 
 acting with a powerful understanding and a generous 
 imagination, you can perceive would make an educa 
 tional force of great power. Few or none could escape 
 on whom she chose to exercise it. Of her methods of 
 education she speaks thus simply : 
 
 " I have immediate and invariable power over the 
 minds of my pupils ; my wish has been more and more 
 to purify my own conscience when near them, to give 
 clear views of the aims of this life, to show them where 
 the magazines of knowledge lie, and to leave the rest to 
 themselves and the spirit that must teach and help them 
 to self impulse/ 
 
 " The best that we receive from anything can never 
 be written. For it is not the positive amount of 
 thought that we have received, but the virtue that has 
 flowed into us, and is now us, that is precious. If we 
 can tell no one thought, yet are higher, larger, wiser, 
 the work is done. The best part of life is too spiritual 
 to bear recording. " l 
 
 Another friend equally warm, and also of judi 
 cial nature, has borne her testimony to the value 
 of tbese conversations in terms so admirable that 
 they must be cited. This is the late Elizabeth 
 1 MS. 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 119 
 
 Hoar, of whom Emerson once wrote : " Elizabeth 
 consecrates ; I have no friend whom I more wisl> 
 to be immortal than she." A letter has already 
 been quoted from this noble woman, describing 
 her first impressions of Margaret Fuller at Con 
 cord ; and the following fragment gives her ma- 
 turer opinion : 
 
 " Her friends were a necklace of diamonds about her 
 neck. The confidences given her were their best, and 
 she held them to them ; the honor of the conversa 
 tions was the high tone of sincerity and culture from so 
 many consenting individuals, and Margaret was the key 
 stone of the whole. She was, perhaps, impatient of 
 complacency in people who thought they had claims, 
 and stated their contrary opinion with an air. For such 
 she had no mercy. But, though not agreeable, it was 
 just. And so her enemies were made." ] 
 
 To show that Margaret Fuller encountered 
 among her friends and pupils natures as heroic as 
 her own, I will yield to the temptation of quoting 
 a passage from another letter of this same lady ; 
 a bit of philosophy as fine as any that one finds in 
 Epictetus or Antoninus, stoicism in this case 
 softened and enriched by Christianity without los 
 ing a fibre of its force : 
 
 " When I was a little one I suffered agonies of terror 
 at the barking of a dog, yet was ashamed to run away 
 and avoid passing him. It suddenly occurred to my 
 thought, * What is it to fear ? That the dog should bite 
 me should inflict just so much pain as a dog s bite 
 i MS. 
 
120 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 can, upon me. Well, I can bear so much pain bravely, 
 I am sure, so I will take no further thought about it, 
 but walk boldly on, and be ready for the bite when it 
 comes and my fear was gone. The story sounds tri 
 fling, but it is not so in my life, because the philosophy 
 I learned from that moment s thought has been of so 
 much use to me since, in carrying me straight up to the 
 ghosts of possible evils, showing their real power. And 
 better than this philosophy is the trust which, by always 
 thinking unto it/ we hope to make our home the as 
 surance that we might and surely shall be so cared for 
 as we could not care for ourselves." 1 
 
 It is evident, from Margaret Fuller s letters, 
 that the effect of these occasions on herself varied 
 with mood, health, and external influences. She 
 enjoyed with eagerness the intellectual exercise ; 
 she felt that she was, perhaps, doing some good ; 
 and the longing for affection, which was one of 
 the strongest traits of her nature, was gratified by 
 the warm allegiance of her pupils. She went back 
 to Jamaica Plain, every now and then, to rest, 
 and, while rejoicing in that respite, still felt that 
 her field was action, and that she could not, like 
 Mr. Emerson, withdraw from the world to a quiet 
 rural home. She wrote thus, on one occasion, to 
 the Rev. W. H. Channing : 
 
 "I0th December, 1840. 
 
 " Two days in Boston ; how the time flies there and 
 
 bears no perfume on its wings, I am always most 
 
 happy to return to my solitude, yet willing to bear the 
 
 contact of society, with all its low views and rash blame, 
 
 i MS. 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 121 
 
 for I see how the purest ideal natures need it to temper 
 them and keep them large and sure. I will never do as 
 "Waldo [Emerson] does, though I marvel not at him." 1 
 
 The tone of this passage is saddened, no doubt, 
 by some ungenerous criticisms upon herself and 
 one of her favorite pupils, which she goes on to 
 refute in detail, ending in the following high tone 
 of aspiration : 
 
 " How, when I hear such things, I bless God for 
 awakening my inward life. In me, my Father, thou 
 wouldst not, I feel, permit such blindness. Free them 
 also, help me to free them, from this conventional stand 
 ard, by means of which their eyes are holden that they 
 see not. Let me, by purity and freedom, teach them 
 justice, not only to my individual self, of that small 
 part of myself I am utterly careless, but to this ever- 
 flowing Spirit. Oh, must its pure breath pass them 
 
 by?" 2 
 
 The criticisms which her conversations brought 
 upon themselves, in their day, were mostly so 
 trivial that they are not now worth recalling ; 
 but there has been one curious effort to pervert 
 these occasions from their true character, and this 
 occurs in the posthumous autobiography of a 
 woman of great prominence, who had, at one time, 
 a distinct influence over Margaret Fuller. Post 
 humous attacks are always the hardest to meet, 
 because in them the accuser still lives and testifies 
 without cross-examination, while it often happens 
 that the accused and his witnesses are alike dead, 
 i MS. (W. H. C.J a MS. (W. H C.) 
 
122 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 In this case the charge has an especial interest, 
 because Margaret Fuller lived in the day when a 
 great moral agitation was beginning to sweep over 
 the land, and she, like all her contemporaries, 
 must be judged in part by the test it applied. 
 
 It "is a point never yet wholly cleared up, either 
 by her printed memoirs or private letters, why 
 she entered with somewhat tardy sympathy into 
 the anti-slavery movement. Her personal friends 
 were identified with it, including Dr. Channing, 
 and more especially Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray 
 Loring ; also her nearest intimates of her own 
 age, Messrs. Clarke and Channing. Miss Marti- 
 neau, whom she admired, had entered ardently 
 into it ; but it was not until the agitation in re 
 gard to the annexation of Texas in 1844 that 
 Miss Fuller was strongly aroused in regard to the 
 encroachments of slavery. It is possible that the 
 influence of her father, as a Jeffersonian Demo 
 crat, worked the other way ; yet he had opposed 
 the Missouri Compromise of 1820 ; and the anti- 
 slavery tradition was strong in the family. It cer 
 tainly was not the social influence of those who 
 belonged to her classes and came to her conver 
 sations, for their influence tended, as will be pres 
 ently shown, in a different direction. 
 
 In her diary of 1844, she wrote as follows : 
 
 " Mrs. Loring here. They want something of me 
 about Texas. Went to walk, but could not think 
 about it. I don t like to do anything else just yet, don t 
 feel ready. I never can do well more than one thing at 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 123 
 
 a time, and the least thing costs me so much thought 
 and feeling ; others have no idea of it." 1 
 
 Afterwards she wrote : 
 
 " Might not we women do something in regard to this 
 Texas annexation project ? I have never felt that I 
 had any call to take part in public affairs before ; but 
 this is a great moral question, and we have an obvious 
 right to express our convictions. I should like to con 
 vene meetings everywhere and take our stand." 2 
 
 I wish to dwell especially on this aspect of Mar 
 garet Fuller s position, because it has been so very 
 unjustly dealt with in that singularly harsh and 
 unfair book, the " Autobiography of Harriet Mar- 
 tineau." At the time when Miss Martineau s 
 " Society in America " was published, Margaret 
 Fuller wrote her a letter on the subject a letter 
 of great dignity and courage. There is in it no 
 conceit, no arrogance, but only courteous, deferen 
 tial protest. It is not written de haut en bas, but 
 de bas en haut. In it she points out that one 
 may criticise even one s superiors : 
 
 " There are many topics treated of in this book of 
 which I am not a judge ; but I do pretend, even where 
 I cannot criticise in detail, to have an opinion as to the 
 general tone of thought. . . . When Webster speaks 
 on the currency, I do not understand the subject, but I 
 do understand his mode of treating it, and can see what 
 a blaze of light streams from his torch. When Harriet 
 Martineau writes about America, I often cannot test 
 that rashness and inaccuracy of which I hear so much, 
 l MS. Diary, 1844. 2 Memoirs, I 141. 
 
124 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 but I can feel that they exist. A Want of soundness, of 
 habits of patient investigation, of completeness, of 
 arrangement, are felt throughout the book, and, for all 
 its fine descriptions of scenery, breadth of reasoning, 
 and generous daring, I cannot be happy in it, because it 
 is not worthy of my friend ; and I think a few months 
 given to ripen it, to balance, compare, and mellow, 
 would have made it so." l 
 
 And when Miss Fuller came to touch the vexed 
 question of the anti-slavery movement in Amer 
 ica, as treated by Miss Martineau, she simply 
 wrote thus : 
 
 " I do not like that your book should be an aboli 
 tion book. You might have borne your testimony as 
 decidedly as you pleased ;. but why leaven the whole 
 book with it ? This subject haunts us on almost every 
 page. It is a great subject, but your book had other 
 purposes to fulfill." 2 
 
 This was the head and front of Miss Fuller s 
 offending. But Miss Martineau s reference to 
 this letter gives her the opportunity for one of 
 those curious examples of failing memory and un 
 failing self-confidence which were pointed out, by 
 the reviewers of her " Autobiography," at the time 
 of its publication. She describes the communica 
 tion as a letter which Miss Fuller " declares she 
 sent her," but she can only recall having received 
 a very different letter and one " quite unworthy 
 of the writer." 3 Yet Miss Martineau had herself 
 
 l Memoirs, i. 193. 2 Memoirs, i. 194. 
 
 8 Harriet Martineau s Autobiography, i. 381. 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 125 
 
 made an entry in her own diary for November, 
 1839, quoted by Mrs. Chapman in her appen 
 dix ; l and this record says of the letter then re 
 ceived : 
 
 " Tuesday. An immense letter from Margaret Ful 
 ler. Sad about herself, and very severe on my book ; 
 righteously so, but with much mistake in it. The 
 spirit is very noble. Do I improve in courage about 
 learning the consequences of what I do ? I commit my 
 self boldly, but I suffer a good deal. But I do not think 
 I go back. I suffered a good deal from her letter." 
 
 Now if the letter thus described was not the 
 letter which Margaret Fuller "declared she sent," 
 what was it ? It certainly was not that " unwor 
 thy" letter which Miss Martineau imputes to her, 
 or it would not have been praised so highly. The 
 fact is that the letter which Miss Martineau had 
 characterized at the time as " very noble " she 
 afterwards so far forgets as to insinuate that it 
 never was really sent ; but she remembers an " un 
 worthy" letter, about which she gives no partis 
 ulars and of whose existence there is no other me 
 morial. 
 
 As to the letter itself, there is nothing unrea 
 sonable in it ; nothing which history has not con 
 firmed. Miss Martineau s self-identification with 
 the abolitionists was courageous and noble, but 
 the habitual exaggeration of her mental action, 
 and her liability to error through her tempera 
 ment and her deafness, followed her into this 
 1 Harriet Martineau s Autobiography, ii. 319. 
 
126 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 sphere also. Her " Martyr Age in the United 
 States " will always remain the most dramatic 
 picture of the whole period she depicted. The 
 difficulty is that it is not only dramatic but 
 slightly melodramatic ; there is a theatrical tinge 
 in it all ; every man she describes is faultless, 
 every woman a queen ; and even those who, like 
 myself, knew and reverenced these heroes and her 
 oines, must admit this tone of excess. It was the 
 same with her larger book. She saw the sin 
 which was nearest, and painted it ; but she saw 
 little else. Now that slavery is abolished " Soci 
 ety in America " is obsolete ; while De Tocque- 
 ville s work, written earlier, is still a classic, and 
 is frequently cited in regard to the questions that 
 are before us to-day. 
 
 All this prepares us for Miss Martineau s curi 
 ous and as the facts prove utterly unfair crit 
 icisms upon Margaret Fuller s conversations. She 
 thus describes them : 
 
 " The difference between us was that while she was 
 living and moving in an ideal world, talking in private 
 and discoursing in public about the most fanciful and 
 shallow conceits which the Transcendentalists of Boston 
 took for philosophy, she looked down upon persons who 
 acted instead of talking finely, and devoted their for 
 tunes, their peace, their repose, and their very lives to 
 the preservation of the principles of the republic. While 
 Margaret Fuller and her adult pupils sat * gorgeously 
 dressed, talking about Mars and Venus, Plato and 
 Goethe, and fancying themselves the elect of the earth 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 127 
 
 in intellect and refinement, the liberties of the republic 
 were running out as fast as they could go, at a breach 
 which another sort of elect persons were devoting them 
 selves to repair ; and my complaint against the * gor 
 geous pedants was that they regarded their preservers 
 as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their work 
 as a less vital one than the pedantic orations which 
 were spoiling a set of well-meaning women in a pitiable 
 way/ * 
 
 To those of us who recall the plain Boston of 
 those days there is something quite unexpected in 
 thus fastening upon Margaret Fuller s circle the 
 sin of gorgeousness. Whence came this vehe 
 ment epithet, so hopelessly inconsistent with the 
 well-kept black silk or modest alpaca of that 
 period. It apparently came from the exuberant 
 phrase of one young admirer quoted in the " Mem 
 oirs " of Margaret Fuller, who went so far as to 
 say of her idol, " Margaret used to come to the 
 conversations very well dressed, and altogether 
 looked sumptuously." 2 Even sumptuousness, it 
 might be said, is not gorgeousness ; and there were, 
 moreover, young girls in Boston to whom what 
 has since been called " the gospel of good gowns " 
 was then very imperfectly revealed, and who so 
 adored their teacher that she would have looked 
 superbly in her oldest Groton wardrobe ; just as 
 when she was fifteen, the younger school girls ad 
 mired her way of coming into school and her half- 
 
 1 Autobiography of Harriet Martineau, i. 381. 
 
 2 Memoirs, I 336. 
 
128 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 shut eyes. So much for the gorgeousness; and as 
 to the real charge, it requires only the very plain 
 est comparison of Miss Martineau s own state 
 ments to correct them. She says that while Mar 
 garet Fuller and her pupils were doing so and so, 
 another sort of elect persons, whom the first set 
 despised, were saving the nation. The curious 
 fact is that all this antagonism lies wholly in Miss 
 Martineau s imagination, and that the two sets 
 were almost identically the same. It is easy to 
 show that the " spoiled women " of Margaret s 
 classes were the very women who were fighting 
 Miss Martineau s battles. 
 
 The only list known to me of any of these 
 classes is that given in Miss Fuller s " Memoirs." l 
 It contains forty-three names. Among these are 
 to be found the two women who taught Miss 
 Martineau her first lessons in abolitionism on her 
 arrival in America : Mrs. Lydia Maria Child and 
 Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring. The list comprises the 
 wives of Emerson and Parker and the high-minded 
 Maria White who afterwards, as the wife of Low 
 ell, did much to make him an abolitionist ; it in 
 cludes the only daughter of Dr. Channing ; it com 
 prises Miss Littlehale, now Mrs. Ednah D. Che 
 ney ; it includes many family names identified 
 with the anti-slavery movement in Boston and 
 vicinity from its earliest to its latest phase ; such 
 names as Channing, Clarke, Hooper, Hoar, Lee, 
 Peabody, Quincy, Russell, Shaw, Sturgis. These 
 i i. 338, note. 
 
CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 129 
 
 names form, indeed, the great majority of the list, 
 while not a person appears on it who was conspic 
 uously opposed to the anti-slavery agitation. Miss 
 Martineau s extraordinary mistake simply calls at 
 tention to the fact that it was not upon pedants or 
 dreamers, but upon the women who led the phil 
 anthropic thought and action of Boston, that Mar 
 garet Fuller s influence was brought to bear. She 
 did not at this time appreciate Garrison ; she after 
 wards lamented in Italy that she had not appre 
 ciated him better ; but she helped to train many 
 of the women who learned his lessons and stood 
 by his side. That these conversations served as a 
 moral even more than as a mental tonic is the 
 uniform testimony of all who took part in them ; 
 and the later career of these participants shows 
 how well the work was done. 
 9 
 
IX. 
 
 A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 
 
 APART from every word she ever wrote, Mar 
 garet Fuller will always be an important figure in 
 American history, for this plain reason : that she 
 was the organizer and executive force of the first 
 thoroughly American literary enterprise. The in 
 tellectual and spiritual excitement, popularly called 
 " Transcendentalism," had at least this one merit, 
 that, whatever else it was, it was indigenous. To 
 determine its real worth and weight, beyond this, 
 we must go back to the " Dial." That is its only 
 authentic record. To know what Emerson indi 
 vidually was, we can go to his books ; it is the 
 same with Parker, Thoreau, Alcott. But what it 
 was which united these diverse elements, what was 
 their central spirit, what their collective strength 
 or weakness, their maximum and minimum, their 
 high and low water mark, this must be sought in 
 the " Dial." That was the alembic within which 
 they were all distilled, and the priestess who su 
 perintended this intellectual chemic process hap 
 pened to be Margaret Fuller. It is a curious fact 
 that this aspect of her life being that which 
 will, on the whole, make her most interesting to 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 131 
 
 coming generations occupies but two pages and 
 a half in the two volumes of her published mem 
 oirs. It will be the duty of the present biogra 
 pher, in view of the plan which directs this liter 
 ary series, to dwell more fully on this aspect of 
 her life. 
 
 We can now see that a great deal of unneces 
 sary sympathy used to be wasted on our Amer 
 ican writers of fifty years ago. It was habitually 
 taken for granted that they lived on a peculiarly 
 barren soil, and that especial credit was to be al 
 lowed them if they accomplished anything at all. 
 The concession was quite needless. They un 
 doubtedly had nature and their own souls to draw 
 upon; they had few books, but those were the 
 best ; they had some remote glimpse of art through 
 engravings, at least ; they had around them the 
 inspiration of a great republic, visibly destined to 
 overspread a continent ; and they had two or three 
 centuries of romantic and picturesque pioneer his 
 tory behind them. We now recognize that Irving, 
 Cooper, Bryant, Whittier did not create their ma 
 terial ; they simply used what they found ; and 
 Longfellow s fame did not become assured till he 
 turned from Bruges and Nuremberg, and chose 
 his theme among the exiles of Acadia. It was 
 not Irving who invested the Hudson with romance, 
 but the Hudson that inspired Irving. In 1786, 
 when Mrs. Josiah Quincy, then a young girl, sailed 
 up that river in s. sloop, she wrote : " Our captain 
 had a legend for every scene, either supernatural 
 
132 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 or traditional, or of actual occurrence during the 
 war ; and not a mountain reared its head, uncon 
 nected with some marvelous story." Irving was 
 then a child of three years old, but Rip Van Win 
 kle and Ichabod Crane or their equivalents 
 were already on the spot, waiting for some one of 
 sufficient literary talent to tell their tale. 
 
 Margaret Fuller grew up at a time when our 
 literature was still essentially colonial ; not for 
 want of material, but for want of self-confidence. 
 As Theodore Parker said in his vigorous vernacu 
 lar, somewhat later, the cultivated American lit 
 erature was exotic, and the native literature was 
 " rowdy," consisting mainly of campaign squibs, 
 coarse satire, and frontier jokes. 1 Children were 
 reared, from the time they learned their letters, 
 on Miss Edge worth and Mrs. Trimmer, whose 
 books, otherwise excellent, were unconsciously sat 
 urated with social conventionalisms and distinc 
 tions quite foreign to our society. Mrs. Lydia 
 Maria Child, the leader in the now vast field of 
 American literature for children, and afterwards 
 one of the leaders in that other experiment of the 
 American novel, was then a young woman, and 
 the fellow-student of Margaret Fuller. Charles 
 Brockden Brown, Irving, Cooper these were our 
 few literary heroes. Fortunately for Margaret 
 Fuller, she had been led by the political tastes of 
 her father to turn from the weaker side of Amer 
 ican intellect, which then was literature, to the 
 
 1 Mass. Quarterly Review, ill 206. 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 133 
 
 strong side, which was statesmanship. She had 
 thus learned that there was a department of Amer 
 ican life which was not derivative and apologetic, 
 but strong and self-relying ; and she was just in 
 the mood to be a literary pioneer. 
 
 What is called the Transcendental movement 
 amounted essentially to this : that about the year 
 1836 a number of young people in America made 
 the discovery that, in whatever quarter of the 
 globe they happened to be, it was possible for 
 them to take a look at the stars for themselves. 
 This discovery no doubt led to extravagances and 
 follies ; the experimentalists at first went stum 
 bling about, like the astrologer in the fable, with 
 their eyes on the heavens ; and at Brook Farm 
 they, like him, fell into a ditch. No matter. 
 There were plenty of people to make a stand in 
 behalf of conventionalism in those very days ; the 
 thing most needed was to have a few fresh think 
 ers, a few apostles of the ideal ; and they soon 
 made their appearance in good earnest. The first 
 impulse, no doubt, was in the line of philosophic 
 and theologic speculation ; but the primary aim 
 announced on the very first page of the " Dial " 
 was " to make new demands on literature." 1 It 
 is in this aspect that the movement must espe 
 cially be treated here. 
 
 Even if they had not made this emancipation of 
 literature one of their prominent objects, they still 
 would have been laboring for it, even while uncon- 
 i Died, i. i. 
 
134 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 scious. The moment they made the discovery that 
 they could see the universe with their own eyes, 
 they ceased to be provincial. " He despises me," 
 wrote Ben Jonson, "because I live in an alley. 
 Tell him his soul lives in an alley." After all, 
 narrowness or enlargement are in the mind. Mr. 
 Henry James, turning on Thoreau the reverse end 
 of a remarkably good telescope, pronounces him 
 " parochial," because he made the woods and wa 
 ters of Concord, Massachusetts, his chief theme. 
 The epithet is curiously infelicitous. To be paro 
 chial is to turn away from the great and look at 
 the little ; the daily newspapers of Paris afford the 
 best illustration of this fault. It is not parochial, 
 but the contrary, when Dr. Gould spends his life 
 in watching the stars from his lonely observatory 
 in Paraguay ; or when Lafarge erects his isolated 
 studio among the Paradise Rocks near Newport ; 
 or when Thoreau studies birds and bees, Iliads 
 and Vedas, in his little cottage by Lake Walden. 
 To look out of the little world into the great, that 
 is enlargement ; all else is parochialism. 
 
 It is also to be remembered that people in 
 America, in those days, if they had access to no 
 great variety of thought, still had as in the 
 Indian s repartee about Time all the thought 
 there was. The sources of intellectual influence 
 then most powerful in England, France, and Ger 
 many, were accessible and potent in America also. 
 The writers who were then remoulding English 
 intellectual habits Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shel 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 135 
 
 ley were eagerly read in the United States ; and 
 Carlyle found here his first responsive audience. 
 There was a similar welcome afforded in Amer 
 ica to Cousin and his eclectics, then so powerful in 
 France ; the same to Goethe, Herder, Jean Paul, 
 Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Jacobi, and Hegel. All 
 these were read eagerly by the most cultivated 
 classes in the United States, and helped, here as 
 in Europe, to form the epoch. Margaret Fuller, 
 so early as October 6, 1834, wrote in one of her 
 unpublished letters, 1 " our master, Goethe ; " and 
 Emerson writes to Carlyle (April 21, 1840), " I 
 have contrived to read almost every volume of 
 Goethe, and I have fifty-five. 2 To have read 
 fifty-five volumes of Goethe was a liberal educa 
 tion. 
 
 Add to this, that Margaret Fuller, like Emer 
 son, had what is still the basis of all literary 
 training in the literature of Greece and Rome a 
 literature whose merit it is that it puts all its pos 
 sessors on a level ; so that if a child were reared in 
 Alaska and had JEschylus and Horace at his fin 
 gers ends, he would have a better preparation for 
 literary work, so far as the mere form goes, than 
 if he had lived in Paris and read only Balzac. 
 Still again, the vast stores of oriental literature 
 were just being thrown open ; and the " Dial" was, 
 perhaps, the first literary journal to place what it 
 called the " Ethnical Scriptures " in the light now 
 
 1 To Mrs. Barlow. Fuller MSS. i. 15. 
 
 2 Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, i. 285. 
 
136 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 generally conceded to them ; or to recognize what 
 has been latterly called " the Sympathy of Re 
 ligions." Thanks to this general fact, that the 
 best literature is transportable and carries the 
 same weight everywhere, these American inno 
 vators, living in their little Boston and Cambridge 
 and Concord, had for literary purposes a cosmo 
 politan training. This advantage would, however, 
 have been of little worth to them unless com 
 bined with the consciousness that they were living 
 in a new world and were part of a self-governing 
 nation. As Petrarch gave an impulse to modern 
 European literature when he thought himself 
 reviving the study of the ancient, BO the Tran 
 scendental movement in America, while actively 
 introducing French and German authors to the 
 American public, was really preparing the way 
 for that public to demand a literature of its own. 
 The utterances of the " Dial " were often, from 
 the very outset, tinged with the passing fashion 
 of a period now gone by. The writers took an 
 ideal view of things, sometimes extravagantly 
 ideal, and this has not proved a permanent 
 fashion. No matter ; no fashion is permanent ; 
 and the ideal point of view is as sure to have its 
 turn again, as is the world to roll round as sure 
 as the recurrence of Gainsborough hats and Queen 
 Anne houses. But with this fleeting show there 
 was achieved a substantial gain, which was not 
 subject to fashion, and which, when won, was won 
 forever. Behind all the catchwords, and even 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 137 
 
 cant, if you please, of the " Transcendentalists," 
 lay the fact that they looked immediately around 
 them for their stimulus, their scenery, their il 
 lustrations, and their properties. After fifty years 
 of national life, the skylark and nightingale were 
 at last dethroned from our literature, and in the 
 very first volume of the " Dial " the blue-bird and 
 the wood-thrush took their place. Since then, 
 they have held their own ; birds and flowers are 
 recognized as a part of the local coloring, not as 
 mere transportable property, to be brought over 
 by emigrants in their boxes, and good only as 
 having crossed the ocean. Americans still go to 
 England to hear the skylark, but Englishmen 
 also come to America to hear the bobolink. 
 
 This effect of the new movement was doubt 
 less partly unconscious ; for the impulse included 
 some who were illiterate, but thoughtful, and dis 
 trusted all literature. In the minds of the leaders, 
 however, the attitude was conscious and deliber 
 ate. 
 
 " He who doubts whether this age or this country can 
 yield any contribution to the literature of the world 
 only betrays his own blindness to the necessities of the 
 human soul. Has the power of poetry ceased, or the 
 need ? Have the eyes ceased to see that which they 
 would have, and which they have not? . . . The heart 
 beats in this age as of old, and the passions are busy as 
 ever." l 
 
 It was this strong conviction in their own 
 l Emerson in Dial, i. 157, 158 (October, 1840). 
 
138 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 minds of the need of something fresh and indig 
 enous, which controlled the criticism of the Tran- 
 scendentalists ; and sometimes made them un 
 just to the early poetry of a man like Longfellow, 
 who still retained the European symbols, and 
 exasperated them by writing about " Pentecost " 
 and " bishop s-caps," just as if this continent 
 had never been discovered. 
 
 The most striking illustration of the direct lit 
 erary purpose of this movement is not to be found 
 in the early writings of Emerson, though they 
 make it plain enough ; but in a remarkable ad 
 dress given at Cambridge by a young man, whose 
 career was cut short by death, after he had given 
 promise of important service. Robert Bartlett, 
 of Plymouth, Massachusetts, graduated at Cam 
 bridge in 1886, and in his " Master of Arts " 
 oration, three years after, took for his theme the 
 phrase, " No good possible, but shall one day be 
 real." The address attracted great attention, and 
 was afterwards published in an English maga 
 zine, 1 under the title, " A Voice from America. 
 The Hope of Literature." Nothing then written 
 nothing in even the " Dial " itself has pre 
 served for us so good a picture of the working of 
 the new impulse among educated minds, at that 
 day ; but the most remarkable passage was that 
 in which the young student announced the possi 
 bilities of American Literature, as follows : - 
 
 " When Horace was affecting to make himself a 
 1 Heraud s New Monthly Magazine, April, 1840. 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 139 
 
 Greek poet, the genius of his country, the shade of im 
 mortal Romulus, stood over him, post mediam noctem 
 visus quum soinnia vera, and forbade the perversion. 
 ... Is everything so sterile and pigmy here in New 
 England, that we must all, writers and readers, be for 
 ever replenishing ourselves with the mighty wonders of 
 the Old World ? Is not the history of this people tran 
 scendent in the chronicles of the world for pure, homo 
 geneous sublimity and beauty and richness ? Go down 
 some ages of ages from this day, compress the years 
 from the landing of the Pilgrims to the death of Wash 
 ington into the same span as the first two centuries of 
 Athens now fill our memories. Will men then come 
 hither from all regions of the globe will the tomb of 
 Washington, the rock of the Puritans then become 
 classic to the world ? will these spots and relics here 
 give the inspiration, the theme, the image of the poet 
 and orator and sculptor, and be the ground of splendid 
 mythologies ? . . . We do not express the men and the 
 miracles of our history in our social action, and corre 
 spondingly, ay, and by consequence, we do not outwrite 
 them in poetry or art. We are looking abroad and 
 back after a literature. Let us come and live, and 
 know in living a high philosophy and faith, so shall we 
 find now, here, the elements, and in our own good souls 
 the fire. Of every storied bay and cliff and plain, we 
 will make something infinitely nobler than Salamis or 
 Marathon. This pale Massachusetts sky, this sandy 
 soil and raw wind, all shall nurture us : 
 
 O Nature, less is all of thine, 
 Than are thy borrowings from our human breast/ 
 
 Rich skies, fair fields shall come to us, suffused with 
 the immortal hues of spirit, of beauteous act and 
 
140 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 thought. Unlike all the world before us, our own age 
 and land shall be classic to ourselves." 1 
 
 This oration, be it remembered, was delivered 
 and printed while the " Dial " was yet unborn ; 
 and before Emerson had published anything but 
 " Nature " and a few addresses. These words 
 which I have quoted were like a trumpet-call to 
 myself and others, half a dozen years later ; and 
 nothing of Emerson s ever touched us more deeply. 
 They make it very clear, at any rate, that the in 
 tellectual excitement of that day, whatever may 
 be thought of it as philosophy, produced in litera 
 ture the effect of emancipation. The " Dial" was 
 the embodiment of this movement; and without 
 Margaret Fuller it is doubtful whether the " Dial " 
 would ever have been born. 
 
 In conducting it, she had to attempt that hard 
 est thing in life, to bring reformers into sys 
 tematic cooperation. Reformers are like Esqui 
 maux dogs, which must be hitched to the sledge, 
 each by a separate thong ; if put in one common 
 harness, they turn and eat each other up. Un 
 der the common phrase, " Transcendentalists," 
 were comprised, at that day, people of the most 
 antagonistic temperaments. Nobody could dwell 
 higher among the clouds than Alcott ; no one 
 could keep his feet more firmly on the earth than 
 Parker ; yet they must be harnessed to the same 
 conveyance. Those who have had to do similar 
 charioteering amid the milder divergences and 
 1 Heraud s New Monthly Magazine, iii. 448. 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 141 
 
 smoother individualities of the present day can 
 best estimate what her task must have been. 
 
 Both the magazine and the literary club from 
 which it sprang seem to have been a subject of 
 correspondence among a circle of friends for sev 
 eral years before either took definite shape. Mar 
 garet Fuller writes to the Rev. F. H. Hedge, so 
 early as July 4, 1833 : 
 
 " I should be very willing to join such a society as 
 you speak of, and will compose a piece, if you will 
 give me a subject." 
 
 This, however, was merely a social club, com 
 posed of ladies and gentlemen in Cambridge, and 
 Dr. Hedge has no remembrance of any literary 
 exercises connected with it. But during the win 
 ter of 1834-35 there was a good deal of discus 
 sion in respect to a possible magazine, and on 
 March 5, 1835, nearly two years after, she 
 writes to him, still from Groton : 
 
 " Your periodical plan charms me ; I think you will 
 do good and, what is next best, gain favor. Though I 
 have been somewhat jostled in this working-day world, 
 I have still a great partiality for the goddess who 
 
 vires [que] acquirit eundo ; 
 Farva metu primo ; mox sese attolit in auras 
 . . . et caput inter nubila condit. l 
 
 I shall feel myself honored if I am deemed worthy of 
 
 lending a hand, albeit I fear I am merely Germanico, 
 
 and not transcendental. I go by fits and starts : there 
 
 1 The description of " Fama " in Virgil s JEneid, iv. 175-177. 
 
142 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 is no knowing what I should wish to write upon next 
 January." 1 
 
 Every knot of bright young thinkers is easily 
 tempted to plan a periodical which shall reflect 
 the thoughts of the coterie ; and it seemed for some 
 years as if this particular enterprise would go no 
 farther. The Rev. F. H. Hedge, who had urged 
 it most definitely, removed to Bangor, Maine, in 
 
 1835, and the project languished. But it so hap 
 pened that there was held in the autumn of 1836 
 the bicentennial celebration of Harvard College, 
 and it turned out an important circumstance for 
 this special movement. Four young Unitarian cler 
 gymen Emerson, Hedge, Ripley, and Putnam 
 meeting after the exercises, got into some conver 
 sation about the narrow tendencies of thought in 
 the churches. They adjourned to a room at Wil- 
 lard s Hotel then a place of some resort in 
 Cambridge, now converted into a horse-railroad 
 office and talked the matter over at length. It 
 ended in a small meeting for consultation at Rev. 
 George Ripley s in Boston, on September 19, 
 
 1836, at which were present Ripley, Emerson, 
 Hedge, Alcott, Clarke, and Francis, and one or 
 two divinity students. This led to a much larger 
 meeting at Mr. Emerson s in Concord, at which 
 were present, besides the above, O. A. Brownson, 
 T. Parker, C. A. Bartol, C. Stetson, and various 
 other men ; with Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth 
 P. Peabody. This was the inauguration of a club, 
 
 1 MS. 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 143 
 
 called " The Transcendental Club " by the world ; 
 sometimes, by Mr. Alcott, " The Symposium 
 Club ; " and occasionally, by its members, " The 
 Hedge Club," because its meetings were often 
 adapted to suit the Rev. F. H. Hedge s occasional 
 visits to Boston. This association met once a 
 month or thereabouts for several years. 
 
 In 1839 the theme of a much-desired journal 
 constantly appears in the manuscript diary of Mr. 
 Alcott, both in connection with this club and with 
 his own meditations. Thus he writes (March 12, 
 1839), "Before long a journal will be circulating 
 the thoughts which are now talked about in pri 
 vate circles," 1 yet this he says evidently in his 
 general attitude of prophet and seer, without 
 more definite forecast. 
 
 Soon after (March 27), he writes : 
 
 " Brought home with me Brownson s * Boston Quar 
 terly Review, for April. This is the best journal now 
 current on this side of the Atlantic, but falls far below 
 the idea of the best minds among us. Its circulation is 
 limited. A better work will appear before long. Some 
 of the freest pens now lie idle for want of a channel. 
 . . . The Christian Examiner is timid and conserva 
 tive." 2 
 
 Again, in his record of a meeting of the club, 
 May 8, 1839, it appears that the first topic of dis 
 cussion was " The Present Temper of our Jour* 
 
 1 Alcott s MS. Diary, xii. 464. 
 
 2 Ibid. xii. 542. 
 
144 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 nals." He continues, recording Ms own remarks 
 but not those of others : 
 
 " I said that they were destitute of proper freshness 
 and independence. The * Liberator was then the only 
 journal which had root in the soul and flourished." 1 
 
 The Club went on meeting, now at Mr. Emer 
 son s in Concord, now at Dr. Francis s in Water- 
 town, now at Mr. Bartol s in Boston. It was 
 made up of unusual materials. Hedge supplied 
 the trained philosophic mind ; Convers Francis, 
 the omnivorous mental appetite ; James Free 
 man Clarke, the philanthropic comprehensiveness 5 
 Theodore Parker, the robust energy ; Orestes A. 
 Brownson, the gladiatorial vigor ; Caleb Stetson, 
 the wit ; William Henry Channing, the lofty en 
 thusiasm ; Ripley, the active understanding ; Bar- 
 tol, the flame of aspiration ; Alcott, the pure ideal 
 ism ; Emerson, the lumen siccum, or dry light. 
 Among members or occasional guests were Tho- 
 reau, Jones Very, George P. Bradford, Dr. Le 
 Baron Russell, and a few young theological stu 
 dents from Cambridge, such as William D. Wilson, 
 now professor at Cornell University, and Robert 
 Bartlett, whose Harvard "Master of Arts" oration 
 has been already quoted. Once, and once only, Dr. 
 Channing and George Bancroft seem to have met 
 with them at Mr. Ripley s (December 5, 1839). 
 
 The project of a magazine, long pending, seems 
 to have been brought to a crisis by the existence 
 
 1 Alcott s MS. Diary, xii. 
 
4 LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 145 
 
 of an English periodical, which was at the time 
 thought so good as to be almost a model for the 
 American enterprise ; but which seems, on re-read 
 ing it in the perspective of forty years, to be quite 
 unworthy of the comparison. There was in Eng 
 land a man named John A. Heraud, author of a 
 Life of Savonarola, and described in one of Car- 
 lyle s most deliciously humorous sketches as " a 
 loquacious, scribacious little man of middle age, of 
 parboiled greasy aspect," and by Leigh Hunt, as 
 " wavering in the most astonishing manner be 
 tween being Something and being Nothing." He 
 seems to have been, if not witty himself, the cause 
 of wit in others, for Stuart Mill said of him : " I 
 forgive him freely for interpreting the Universe, 
 now when I find he cannot pronounce the A s." 
 When Carlyle once quoted to him the saying of 
 Novalis, that the highest problem of authorship is 
 the writing of a Bible, " That is precisely what 
 I am doing, answered the aspiring, unaspirat- 
 ing." 1 
 
 Nothing was more natural than that Mr. Alcott 
 who, upon a far higher plane of character, as 
 even Carlyle would have admitted, was engaged 
 in the same rather daring task with Heraud, and 
 even bound up some volumes of his manuscript 
 diary with the label, " Scriptures for 1840," or 
 whatever the date might be should have looked 
 eagerly toward Heraud, especially when the latter 
 began to publish his " New Monthly Magazine." 
 
 1 Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, i. 276, 277. 
 10 
 
 O* 
 
146 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 Dr. Convers Francis, who contrived upon the sal 
 ary of a poor country clergyman to subscribe to 
 everything and buy everything, of course took 
 Heraud s periodical ; and his copy, apparently the 
 only one to be found in these parts, now lies be 
 fore me. In this magazine it was proposed to 
 publish some other things from American sources 
 besides Bartlett s oration ; as, for instance, a re 
 view of Jones Very s poems, by Miss Fuller ; and 
 one of Tennyson s, by John S. Dwight ; but these 
 seem never to have appeared. Besides this month 
 ly, Heraud or his friends planned and announced 
 a still more esoteric periodical, to be called " Au 
 rora;" and his ally, Dr. J. Westland Marston, 
 actually published some numbers of one called 
 " Psyche." All these productions were read with 
 great eagerness by the Boston circle, Mr. Alcott s 
 diary recording from month to month the satisfac 
 tion taken by himself, Miss Fuller, and others in 
 Heraud s undertakings, and his own fear that 
 Americans could not support such an enterprise. 
 "It will be some time," he writes in his diary 
 (November 1, 1839), " before our contemplated 
 journal will be commenced, and I question whether 
 we shall find talent or spirit to equal that of our 
 English brethren. We have writers enough, but 
 they are neither accomplished nor free. Half a 
 dozen men exhaust our list of contributors ; Em 
 erson, Hedge, Miss Fuller, Ripley, Channing, 
 Dwight, and Clarke are our dependence." x But 
 
 1 Alcott s MS. Diary, xiii. 375. 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 147 
 
 the trophies of Heraud would not suffer Bosto- 
 nians to sleep. There was great interchange of 
 pamphlets and new books, and Mr. Alcott, while 
 planning to reprint a little work of Herand s from 
 an English volume called "The Educator," a 
 reprint actually accomplished by him two years 
 later, in a small volume called " Spiritual Cul 
 ture," followed the matter up still further, as 
 may be seen in the following extract from his 
 diary : 
 
 "Saturday, 28th [September, 1839]. 
 
 "I had an agreeable talk with G. Ripley on the 
 Times, and particularly on my transatlantic friends. He 
 is much taken with Heraud s journal, which he has read 
 from January last. He wishes to establish a journal of 
 like character among ourselves. We need such an or 
 gan, but lack the ability to make it worthy of our posi 
 tion. There are but few contributors, and those not at 
 all free from the influences of the past. Yet such a 
 journal we must have in due time. Doubtless it would 
 succeed even now. Brownson s Boston Quarterly is 
 pledged to a party in politics, and takes narrow ground 
 both in philosophy and literature. We must have a free 
 journal for the soul which awaits its own scribes." 1 
 
 Before this, however, as appears from other 
 memoranda by Mr. Alcott in my possession, Mar 
 garet Fuller, at a meeting of the " Symposium " 
 Club, September 18, " gave her views of the pro 
 posed Dial, which she afterwards edited." This 
 is the first instance I have found of the introduc- 
 1 Alcott s MS. Diary, xiii. 264. 
 
148 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 tion of the actual title of the American periodical ; 
 but the word was several times used by Mr. Alcott 
 to describe his own laborious diary ; and he ex 
 pressly states that it was transferred from his per 
 sonal use to that of the proposed magazine. " To 
 these papers," he says, speaking of his own manu 
 script volumes, " I give the name of The Dial, " 
 and indorses on a copy of the original prospectus, 
 "This journal takes its name from a MS. of mine 
 of like designation, referred to on pages 47 and 
 50 of this Scripture." l 
 
 The new magazine now at last impending 
 moved Mr. Brown son to make a final effort to 
 unite it with his own, and he came to Mr. Alcott 
 for that purpose, proposing that instead of estab 
 lishing the " Dial " its projectors should write un 
 der their own signatures in the " Boston Quarterly 
 Review." Alcott says of this suggestion (October 
 19, 1839) : " I shall speak with Emerson and Miss 
 Fuller about it ; " and the next day he and the 
 lady went together to Concord and discussed the 
 plan, apparently wisely rejecting it. He writes of 
 Miss Fuller after his return, " She has a deeper 
 insight into character than any of her contempo 
 raries, and will enrich our literature. * 
 
 We find her soon actively at work in writing to 
 friends and summoning forth contributions. Thus 
 she writes on New Year s Day, to the Rev. W. H. 
 Channing, then preaching at Cincinnati : 
 
 1 Alcott s MS. Diary, xiv. 79. 
 
 2 Ibid. xiii. 320, 321, 326. 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 149 
 
 "JAMAICA PLAIN, 1st January, 1840. 
 
 " I write to inform you that there is now every rea 
 son to hope that a first number of, the much-talked of 
 new journal may be issued next April, and to ask what 
 you will give. I have counted on you for the first 
 number, because you seemed so really in earnest and 
 said you had articles ready written. But I want to 
 know what part you propose to take in the grand sym 
 phony, and I pray you to answer me directly, for we 
 must proceed to tune the instruments. Mr. Emerson is 
 warmly interested and will give active assistance for a 
 year. Mr. Ripley and Mr. Dwight are also in earnest ; 
 for others I know not yet. 
 
 " Will not Mr. Vaughan give us some aid ? His article 
 on the Chartists excited interest here, and we should 
 like some such large sharp strokes of the pen very 
 much. . . . 
 
 " At Newport you prophesied a new literature : shall 
 it dawn in 1840 ? " l 
 
 On the same day she writes to Rev. F. H. 
 Hedge, at Bangor, Maine : 
 
 "JAMAICA PLAIN, 1st January, 1840. 
 " MY DEAR HENRY, I write this New Year s Day 
 to wish you all happiness, and to say that there is reason 
 to expect the new journal (in such dim prospect when 
 you were here) may see the light next April. And we 
 depend on you for the first number, and for solid bullion 
 too. Mr. Emerson will write, every number, and so will 
 you if you are good and politic, for it is the best way to 
 be heard from your sentry-box there in Bangor. My 
 friend, I really hope you will make this the occasion for 
 i MS. (W. H.C.) 
 
150 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 assailing the public ear with such a succession of melo 
 dies that all the stones will advance to form a city of 
 refuge for the just. I think with the greatest pleasure 
 of working in company with you. But what will it be ? 
 will you give us poems or philosophy or criticism, and 
 how much ? for we are planning out our first number by 
 the yard. Let me hear from you directly." l 
 
 Later, she writes to him again : 
 
 "JAMAICA PLAIN, Wth March, 1840. 
 ..." Henry, I adjure you, in the name of all the 
 Genii, Muses, Pegasus, Apollo, Pollio, Apollyon, ( and 
 
 must I mention ) to send me something good for 
 
 this journal before the 1st May. All mortals, my 
 friend, are slack and bare; they wait to see whether 
 Hotspur wins, before they levy aid for as good a plan as 
 ever was laid. I know you are plagued and it is hard 
 to write, just so is it with me, for I also am a father. 
 But you can help, and become a godfather! if you 
 like, and let it be nobly, for if the first number justify 
 not the magazine, it will not find justification ; so write, 
 my friend, write, and paint not for me fine plans on the 
 clouds to be achieved at some future time, as others do 
 who have had many years to be thinking of immortality. 
 " I could make a number myself with the help Mr. E. 
 [Emerson] will give, but the Public, I trow, is too as 
 tute a donkey not to look sad at that." 2 
 
 On March 18, 1840, Emerson writes to Car- 
 lyle: 
 
 1 MS. 
 
 2 MS. The allusion is to the lines in Rejected Addresses, 
 
 " And, when that donkey looked me in the face 
 Its face was sad ; and you are sad, my Public ! " 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND JTS ORGAN. 151 
 
 " My vivacious friend, Margaret Fuller, is to edit a 
 journal whose first number she promises for the first of 
 July next, which, I think, will be written with a good 
 will, if written at all." 1 
 
 Again he says, April 22, 1840 : 
 
 " I have very good hope that my friend Margaret Ful 
 ler s journal after many false baptisms now saying it 
 will be called The Dial and which is to appear in July 
 will give you a better knowledge of our young people 
 than any you have had." 2 
 
 On April 19, 1840, she writes to the Rev. W. 
 H. Channing again : 
 
 " I do not expect to be of much use except to urge on 
 the laggards and scold the lukewarm, and act like Helen 
 McGregor to those who love compromise, by doing my 
 little best to sink them in the waters of oblivion." 8 
 
 On May 31, 1840, she writes to Emerson : 
 
 " There are only thirty names on the Boston sub 
 scription list of the * Dial. I hope you will let me have 
 your paper by next Friday or Saturday." 4 
 
 Upon such modest encouragement did a period 
 ical proceed which was to be the beginning of a 
 new era in cis-Atlantic literature. The original 
 prospectus written, I suspect, by Mr. Ripley 
 was as follows : 
 
 1 Carhjle- Emerson Correspondence, i. 270. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 285. 3 MS. 4 M& 
 
152 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 "THE DIAL: 
 
 A 
 
 MAGAZINE 
 
 FOB 
 
 LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION. 
 To be Continued Quarterly. 
 
 " The purpose of this work is to furnish a medium for 
 the freest expression of thought on the questions which 
 interest earnest minds in every community. 
 
 " It aims at the discussion of principles rather than at 
 the promotion of measures ; and while it will not fail to 
 examine the ideas which impel the leading movements 
 of the present day, it will maintain an independent po 
 sition with regard to them. 
 
 " The pages of this journal will be filled by contribu 
 tors who possess little in common but the love of indi 
 vidual freedom and the hope of social progress ; who are 
 united by sympathy of spirit, not by agreement in spec 
 ulation ; whose faith is in Divine Providence, rather 
 than in human prescription ; whose hearts are more in 
 the future than in the past, and who trust the living 
 soul more than the dead letter. It will endeavor to 
 promote the constant evolution of truth, not the petri 
 faction of opinion. 
 
 " Its contents will embrace a wide and varied range 
 of subjects, and combining the characteristics of a Maga 
 zine and Review, it may present something both for 
 those who read for instruction and those who search for 
 amusement. 
 
 " The general design and character of the work may 
 be understood from the above brief statement. It may 
 be proper to add that, in literature, it will strive to ex- 
 
A LITERARY CLUB AND ITS ORGAN. 153 
 
 ercise a just and catholic criticism, and to recognize 
 every sincere production of genius ; in philosophy it will 
 attempt the reconciliation of the universal instincts of 
 humanity with the largest conclusions of reason ; and in 
 religion it will reverently seek to discover the presence 
 of God in nature, in history, and in the soul of man. 
 
 " The Dial, as its title indicates, will endeavor to oc 
 cupy a position on which the light may fall ; which is 
 open to the rising sun ; and from which it may correctly 
 report the progress of the hour and the day. 
 
 " * The Dial will be published once in three months, 
 on the first day of January, April, July, and October. 
 Each number will contain 136 octavo pages, making one 
 volume in a year of 544 pages, which will be furnished 
 to subscribers at Three Dollars per annum, payable on 
 the delivery of the second number. The first number 
 will be published on the first day of July next. 
 " WEEKS, JORDAN & Co., 
 
 "121 Washington Street. 
 "BOSTON, May 4, 1840." 
 
X. 
 
 THE DIAL. 
 
 NOTHING but the launching of a ship concen 
 trates into short space so much of solicitude as the 
 launching of a new magazine. Margaret Fuller 
 writes to her friend Mrs. Barlow : " I have the 
 pleasure of sending you the first number of a pe 
 riodical some of us, your old friends, are going to 
 scribble in. The introduction is by Mr. Emer 
 son ; pieces on Critics and the 4 Allston Gal 
 lery by me. The next number will be better." 1 
 
 To Mr. Emerson, as one of the ship-owners, she 
 writes far more freely (July 5, 1840) : 
 
 " Until I shall have seen Mr. R. [Ripley] I cannot an 
 swer all your questions ; metis a present, you can have as 
 many numbers as you want for yourself or your friends 
 of this first number, but our contract with them was that 
 twelve numbers should be given to Mr. R. each quar 
 ter for the use of contributors. Of these I receive two. 
 Mr. Thoreau will have it, of course, as we hope his fre 
 quent aid. But I did not expect to furnish it to all who 
 may give a piece occasionally. I have not sent it to E. 
 H. [Ellen Hooper] or C. S. [Caroline Sturgis] or N. I 
 sent a list to W. and J. [Weeks & Jordan] of those to 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 23. 
 
THE DIAL. 155 
 
 whom I wished this number sent. I did not give Mr. 
 Stone s name, but doubtless Mr. R. did. I will see 
 about it, however. I presume Mr. Cranch is a sub 
 scriber, as is J. F. Clarke and others who will write ; but 
 I will look at the list when in town next Wednesday. 
 
 " I desired Mr. Thoreau s Persius to be sent him, 
 as I was going away to Cohasset at the time it came out, 
 and I understood from Mr. R. that it was sent, and he did 
 not correct it. I do not know how this was ; the errors 
 are most unhappy. I will not go away again when it 
 is in press. 
 
 " I like the poetry better in small type myself and 
 thought the little page neat and unpretending, but have 
 no sucli positive feeling about such things that I would 
 not defer entirely to your taste. But now we have be 
 gun so, I should think it undesirable to make changes 
 this year, as the first volume should be uniform. I wish 
 I had consulted you at first, but did not know you at 
 tached great importance to externals in such matters, 
 as you do so little in others. The marks shall be made 
 and the spaces left as you desire, however, after our re 
 spective poems. 
 
 " I am glad you are not quite dissatisfied with the 
 first number. I feel myself how far it is from that 
 eaglet motion I wanted. I suffer in looking it over 
 now. Did you observe the absurdity of the last two 
 pages ; these are things they had to fill up blanks, 
 and which, thinking t was pity such beautiful thoughts 
 should be lost, they put in for climax. Admire the 
 winding up, the concluding sentence ! ! 
 
 "I agree that Mr. Alcott s sayings read well. I 
 thought to write about the expostulation in your last 
 letter, but finally I think I would rather talk with you. 
 
156 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 " The next number we will do far better. I want to 
 open it with your article. You said you might wish to 
 make some alterations if we kept it do you wish to 
 have it sent you, the first part is left in type ; they had 
 printed a good deal before finding it would be too long. 
 E. H. s < Poet/ some of C. s best, Ellery, and The Bard 
 born out of Time, we must have for that." 1 
 
 The poem described in these last words will 
 readily be recognized as Emerson s since cele 
 brated " Wood-Notes." The "Ellery" is an ar 
 ticle by Emerson entitled " New Poetry " and 
 made up chiefly of extracts from Ellery Chan- 
 ning s poems an essay received with mingled 
 admiration and rage by the critics, and with espe 
 cial wrath by Edgar Poe. " E. H. s 4 Poet " was 
 a strong poem, also contained in the second num 
 ber of tho " Dial," by Mrs. Ellen Hooper, wife of 
 Dr. R. W. Hooper, a woman of genius, who gave 
 our literature a classic in the lines beginning, 
 
 " I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty." 
 Margaret Fuller wrote of her long afterwards 
 from Rome, " I have seen in Europe no woman 
 more gifted by nature than she." Another of the 
 "Dial" poets was the sister of this lady, Miss 
 Caroline Sturgis, afterwards Mrs. William Tap- 
 pan, " some of whose best " are contained in this 
 same second number of the " Dial," where her 
 contributions are signed " Z." The opening 
 paper of this second number, " Thoughts on Mod 
 ern Literature," by Emerson, still yields to the 
 i MS. 
 
THE DIAL. 157 
 
 reader so much in the way of suggestion and 
 criticism as to impart especial interest to the fol 
 lowing letter ; and this, moreover, shows how 
 fearlessly Miss Fuller and her associate, the Rev. 
 George Ripley, criticised their most revered con 
 tributor : 
 
 "19th July, 1840. 
 
 " I suppose it is too warm for my dear friend to write, 
 at least to so dull a correspondent, or perhaps it is that 
 I have asked so many things. I am sorry you did not 
 send the verses, for I wanted to take one or two for 
 filling the gaps, and now have been obliged to take some 
 not so good. Have you not some distichs to bestow ? 
 I have two or three little things of yours which I wished 
 very much to use, but thought I must not without your 
 leave. 
 
 " When I wrote the first line of this letter I thought 
 I should fill it up with some notes I wished to make on 
 the Hall of Sculpture. But I was obliged to stop by a 
 violent attack of headache, and now I am not fit to write 
 anything good, and will only scribble a few lines to send 
 with your proof which Mr. R. [Ripley] left with me. 
 He is much distressed at what he thinks a falling off in 
 the end of your paragraph about the majestic artist, and 
 I think when you look again you will think you have 
 not said what you meant to say. The eloquence and 
 wealth, thus grouped, have rather Fair bourgeois. 
 Saddens and gladdens is good. Mr. R. hates pretti- 
 nesses, as the mistress of a boarding-house hates flower 
 vases. 
 
 " * Dreadful melody does not suit me. The dreadful 
 has become vulgarized since its natal day. 
 
 ** So much for impertinence ! I am very glad I am 
 
158 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLl 
 
 to own these remarks about the Meister. As to the 
 genius of Goethe, the statement, though so much better 
 than others, is too imperfect to be true. He requires 
 to be minutely painted in his own style of hard finish. 
 As he never gave his soul in a glance, so he cannot be 
 painted at a glance. I wish this Kosmos Beauty was 
 not here over again. One does not like their friend to 
 have any way, anything peculiar ; he must be too indi 
 vidual to be known by a cough or a phrase. And is 
 this costly true to the sense of kostliche ; that means 
 worthy a high price, the other ; obtained at a high price, 
 n est-ce pas ? I cannot like that illustration of the hu 
 mors of the eye. I wish the word whipped was never 
 used at all, and here it is twice in nearest neighborhood. 
 " At this place I was obliged to take to my bed, 
 my poor head reminding me that I was in no state for 
 criticism." 
 
 On comparing these criticisms with tbe paper 
 under discussion, 1 it will be found that while Emer 
 son has retained the words " humors " and, in one 
 case " whipped," in spite of criticism, he has 
 dropped the other causes of offense. The fine 
 paragraph on Goethe now closes as follows : 
 
 " Let him pass. Humanity must wait for its physi 
 cian still, at the side of the road, and confess as this 
 man goes out that they have served it better who as 
 sured it out of the innocent hope in their hearts that a 
 physician will come, than this majestic artist, with all the 
 treasures of wit, of science, and of power at his com 
 mand." 
 
 It is easy to see that if this last clause originally 
 
 l Dial, i. pp. 136-158. 
 
THE DIAL. 159 
 
 contained the words " eloquence " and " wealth " 
 it is greatly strengthened by the change. 
 
 As to obtaining a verse from Emerson to fill 
 the gap at the close of his paper, her appeal seems 
 to have been successful ; the five lines called 
 " Silence " being placed there, which, although 
 not included by him in his published volumes, are 
 now printed as his by his editor, Mr. Cabot. At 
 the time of its first appearance the little verse 
 was regarded as rather grotesque ; and it will 
 never, perhaps, be placed among his happiest ef 
 forts. 
 
 The storm of criticism which opened upon the 
 44 Dial," at the very outset, was something formid 
 able. It was directed even at the very moderate 
 peculiarities of Emerson ; the " Knickerbocker," 
 a New York monthly, making great fun of his 
 opening essay, which it derided as " literary eu 
 phuism." But the chief assault fell upon Alcott s 
 " Orphic Sayings," which provoked numerous par 
 odies, the worst of which Mr. Alcott composedly 
 pasted into his diary, indexing them, with his 
 accustomed thoroughness and neatness, as " Par 
 odies on Orphic Sayings." Epithets, too, were 
 showered about as freely as imitations ; the Phil 
 adelphia " Gazette," for instance, calling the editors 
 of the new journal "zanies," "Bedlamites," and 
 " considerably madder than the Mormons." 
 
 It will convey some impression of the difficul 
 ties which Margaret Fuller, as leading editor, had 
 to meet, when we consider that, all this time, Mr. 
 
160 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 Alcott and, perhaps, others of the stricter school 
 of Transcendentalism, were shaking their heads 
 over the "Dial" as being timid, compromising, and, 
 in fact, rather a worldly and conventional affair. 
 Even before its actual birth we find him writing 
 in his diary, " I fear that the work will consult 
 the temper, and be awed by the bearing of existing 
 things." l After the first number he writes to Dr. 
 Marston in England, " It is but a twilight 4 Dial ; 
 and to Charles Lane, " This Dial of ours should 
 have been a truer. It does not content the public, 
 nor even ourselves. Yours, the Monthly Maga 
 zine [Heraud s], pleases me better in several as 
 pects." To Heraud he writes at the same time : 
 " The Dial partakes of our vices, it consults the 
 mood and is awed somewhat by the bearing of 
 existing orders, yet is superior to our other liter 
 ary organs, and satisfies in part the hunger of our 
 youth. It satisfies me not, nor Emerson. It 
 measures not the meridian but the morning ray ; 
 the nations wait for the gnomon that shall mark 
 the broad noon." 2 
 
 These remarks are of value as illustrating the 
 difficulty that Margaret Fuller had to encounter 
 in endeavoring to keep her magazine somewhere 
 midway between the demands of Theodore Par 
 ker on the one side and those of Alcott on the 
 other. What Theodore Parker alone would have 
 made it may be judged by his " Massachusetts 
 
 1 Alcott s MS. Diary, xiv. 65. 
 
 2 Ibid. xiv. 65, 146, 150, 157. 
 
THE DIAL. 161 
 
 Quarterly Review," which followed it ; which, as 
 he said, was to be the " Dial " with a beard, but 
 which turned out to be the beard without the 
 " Dial." What Mr. Alcott alone would have 
 made of it may be judged by Heraud s " Monthly 
 Magazine," which did not, any more than Par 
 ker s " Quarterly," bear comparison in real worth 
 and suggestiveness with the " Dial " itself. That 
 on Alcott, at least, some gentle restrictive pres 
 sure had to be exercised may be seen by his 
 rather indignant introduction to " Days from a 
 Diary," in the last number that Margaret Fuller 
 edited. Here he chafes at some delay in publish 
 ing his contribution, and adds significantly : " The 
 4 Dial prefers a style of thought and diction not 
 mine ; nor can I add to its popularity with its 
 chosen readers. A fit organ, for such as myself, 
 is not, but is to be. The times require a free 
 speech, a wise, brave sincerity, unlike all examples 
 in literature ; of which the Dial is but the pre 
 cursor. A few years more will give us all we 
 desire the people all they ask." l 
 
 When we consider with what fidelity the editors 
 had held to him, although by all odds their least 
 popular contributor, it must be admitted that tliis 
 affords a new illustration of the difficulty of keep 
 ing radicals in a common harness. 
 
 After the third number, Margaret Fuller thus 
 writes to the Rev. W. H. Channing : 
 
 1 Dial, ii. 409. 
 11 
 
162 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 "February^, 1841. 
 
 " Write to me whatever you think about the * Dial. 
 I wish very much to get interested in it, and I can only 
 do so by finding those I love and prize are so. It is 
 very difficult to me to resolve on publishing any of my 
 own writing : it never seems worth it, but the topmost 
 bubble on my life ; and the world, the Public ! alas ! 
 give me to realize that there are individuals to whom I 
 can speak ! " 
 
 She appears, by her correspondence, to have 
 had the usual trials of an editor in respect to 
 the procrastination of others ; and we find her ac 
 tively angling for contributions from Emerson, 
 Parker, Hedge, Alcott, Channing, Clarke, Dwight, 
 Cranch, and the rest. Parker even sent her po 
 etry, as appears by the following letter from 
 him : 
 
 " Herewith I send you a couple of little bits of verse, 
 which I confess to you, sub rosa rosissimd, are mine. 
 Now, I don t think myself made for a poet, least of all 
 for an amatory poet. So, if you throw the lines under 
 the grate, in your critical wisdom, I shall not be grieved, 
 vexed, or ruffled ; for, though I have enough of the irri- 
 tabile in my composition, I have none of the irritabile 
 vatis." 2 
 
 These distrusted love verses were, as I learn 
 from Mr. G. W. Cook, those printed in the " Dial " 
 for July, 1841, under the name of " Protean 
 Wishes." 3 
 
 1 MS. 2 Weiss s Parker, ii. 303. 
 
 8 Dial, ii. 77. 
 
THE DIAL. 163 
 
 Besides these well-known contributors, she also 
 applied to other literary friends, whose response 
 apparently never came. Among them was her 
 old friend at Providence, Albert G. Greene, then 
 the recognized head of the literary society of that 
 city. To him she writes, October 2, 1840 : 
 44 Where are the poems and essays, 4 Pumpkin 
 Monodies, and * Militia Musters, we were prom 
 ised? Send them, I pray, forthwith." These 
 were humorous poems, in which Mr. Greene was 
 prolific, though only one of this class of his pro 
 ductions, 4t Old Grimes," has survived to posterity. 
 They would have been oddly out of place in the 
 " Dial," had they arrived. 
 
 In her first two years of editorship she brought 
 into prominence a series of writers each of whom 
 had his one statement to make, and, having made 
 it, discreetly retired. Such were the Rev. W. D. 
 Wilson, who wrote u The Unitarian Movement in 
 New England ; " the Rev. Thomas T. Stone, who 
 wrote " Man in the Ages ; " Mrs. Ripley, the 
 gifted wife of the Rev. George Ripley, who wrote 
 on " Woman ; " Professor John M. Mackie, now of 
 Providence, R. I., who wrote of " Shelley ; " Dr. 
 Francis Tuckerman, who wrote " Music of the Win 
 ter ; " John A. Saxton, father of the well-known 
 military governor of South Carolina, who wrote 
 44 Prophecy Transcendentalism - - Progress ; " 
 the Rev. W. B. Greene, a West Point graduate, 
 and afterwards colonel of the Fourteenth Mas 
 sachusetts Volunteers, who wrote "First Princi- 
 
164 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 pies." Miss Fuller herself wrote the more mys 
 tical sketches " Klopstock and Meta," " The 
 Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain," "Yucca Fila- 
 mentosa," and " Leila ; " as well as the more 
 elaborate critical papers " Goethe," " Lives of 
 the Great Composers," and " Festus." Poetry was 
 supplied by Clarke, Cranch, Dwight, Thoreau, 
 Ellery Channing, and, latterly, Lowell ; while Par 
 ker furnished solid, vigorous, readable, common- 
 sense articles, which, as Mr. Emerson once told 
 me, " sold the numbers." It is a curious fact that 
 the only early " Dial " to which Parker contrib 
 uted nothing was that which called down this 
 malediction from Carlyle : 
 
 " The Dial, too, it is all spirit-like, aeriform, aurora- 
 horealislike. Will no Angel body himself out of that ; 
 no stalwart Yankee man with color in the cheeks of him, 
 and a coat on his back ? " 
 
 Yet Theodore Parker was a good deal more stal 
 wart than Carlyle, had more color in his cheeks, 
 and wore a more presentable coat on his back ; and 
 he had written an exceedingly straightforward 
 paper for every number before that of October, 
 1841. This, as it happened, was prepared under 
 difficulties, and Margaret Fuller herself had to 
 write eighty-five of its one hundred and thirty -six 
 pages. It is plain, from the reluctance to write 
 which she so often expresses, that she occupied this 
 occasional prominence against her will. Instead of 
 being a monopolist, she appears as the scapegoat 
 
 1 Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, i. 352 
 
THE DIAL. 165 
 
 of the procrastination of others. To fill with first- 
 class material a magazine which does not pay a 
 dollar, and has only twelve free copies for all con 
 tributors put together, is not so easy. In case of 
 gaps, she must supply them. In such event, at 
 the last moment she must revert to her copious 
 note-books, and do that from which every careful 
 writer shrinks treat hurriedly and superficially 
 some theme that had been reserved for the care 
 ful elaboration of more fortunate months. Mr, 
 Emerson testifies to his " grateful wonder " l at 
 the courage with which she could do this; and we 
 see it recorded in such passages as the following, 
 which is taken from a letter to her mother, writ 
 ten on Christmas Day, either in 1840 or 1841 : 
 
 " I am in a state of extreme fatigue ; this is the last 
 week of the Dial, and, as often happens, the copy did 
 not hold out, and I have had to write in every gap of 
 time. M. and J. [two young ladies, her pupils] have 
 been writing for me extracts, etc., but I have barely 
 scrambled through, and am now quite unfit to hold a 
 pen." 2 
 
 She had one essential attribute of an editor, in 
 a keen and impartial judgment of her contribu 
 tors. " I wish," she writes in her diary, " I could 
 overcome my distrust of Mr. Alcott s mind." 3 Of 
 Theodore Parker she says : " He cannot be the 
 leader of my journal, . . . but his learning and 
 just way of thinking will make him a very valu* 
 
 i Memoirs, i. 324. 2 Fuller MSS. ii. 287. 
 
 8 Fuller MSS. i. 599. 
 
166 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 able aid." 1 This capital remark is also mad j, 
 in one case, upon a rather elaborate contributor : 
 " It was pity to break Mr. Lane s piece. He needs 
 to fall his whole length to show his weight." 2 
 But best of all is this clear statement, in which, 
 even against the authority of Emerson, she pleads 
 for breadth of judgment : 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, 12th November, 1843. 
 
 ..." When I had the care of the Dial, I put in 
 what those connected with me liked, even when it did 
 not well please myself, on this principle, that I consid 
 ered a magazine was meant to suit more than one class 
 of minds. As I should like to have writings from you, 
 Mr. Ripley, Mr. Parker, etc., so I should like to have 
 writings recommended by each of you. I thought it 
 less important that everything in it should be excellent, 
 than that it should represent with some fidelity the state 
 of mind among us, as the name of i Dial said was its 
 intent. 
 
 " So I did not regard your contempt for the long 
 prosa on Transcendentalism Progress, etc., any 
 more than Parker s disgust at Henry Thoreau s pieces. 
 
 " You go on a different principle ; you would have 
 everything in it good according to your taste, which is, 
 in my opinion, though admirable as far as it goes, far 
 too narrow in its range. This is your principle ; very 
 well ! I acquiesce, just as in our intercourse I do not 
 expect you to do what I consider justice to many things 
 I prize. . . . 
 
 " I do not care for your not liking the piece, because, 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 599. 
 
 2 MS. letter to Emerson, August 5, 1843. 
 
THE DIAL. 167 
 
 when you wrote in your journal that I cared for tal 
 ent as well as genius, I accepted the words written IL 
 dispraise as praise. I wish my tastes and sympathie* 
 still more expansive than they are, instead of more se 
 vere. Here we differ." 1 
 
 It was in reference to this same point that she 
 wrote in her journal thus : 
 
 " My friend spoke it in blame that I could prize talent 
 as well as genius ; but why not ? Do not Nature and 
 God the same ? The criticism of man should not dispar 
 age and displace, but appreciate and classify what it finds 
 existent. Let me recognize talent as well as genius, un 
 derstanding as well as reason, but each in its place. 
 Let me revere the statue of Moses, but prize at its due 
 rate yon rich and playful grotesque. Also, cannot one 
 see the merit of a stripling, fluttering muse like that 
 of Moore, without being blind to the stately muse of 
 Dante ? " 2 
 
 It is to be remembered that although Miss Ful 
 ler s salary, as editor of the "Dial," was nomi 
 nally $200, she practically had nothing ; and early 
 in its second year she writes to her brother Rich 
 ard (November 5, 1841) : " I have begun with a 
 smaller class this year than usual, and the 4 Dial is 
 likely to fall through entirely." In the same let 
 ter, and at a time of such discouragement as this, 
 she proposes to her brother that they should unite 
 in advancing $300 to an older brother in Louis 
 iana ; she pledging herself, however, to become 
 responsible for the whole amount, if necessary, 
 
 i MS. 2 Fuller MSS. i. 589. 
 
168 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 though then possessed of but about $500 in the 
 world. 1 Such acts of sisterly devotion were com 
 mon things with her ; and this is mentioned only 
 to show out of what patient self-denial the "Dial" 
 was born. 
 
 Four months later she was compelled to lay 
 down her task ; her own statement of circum 
 stances being as follows, in a letter to Mr. Emer 
 son, and briefly indorsed by him " Margaret Ful 
 ler March, 1842. Stop the " Dial I " 
 
 " MY DEAR WALDO, I requested Miss Peabody to 
 write to you, but, after looking over her letter, I want 
 to add some lines myself. I hoped they would get at 
 these particulars before you returned from New York, 
 that you might hear them on your way and not be 
 teased as soon as you arrive at your quiet home, but 
 you came earlier than I had expected. Yesterday I 
 found myself so unwell, and really exhausted, [while] 
 letters received from the family made my stay here so 
 uncertain, that I wrote the little notice with regard to the 
 possibility of suspending the Dial for a time, feeling 
 that I must draw back from my promise that I would 
 see to the summer number ; but this morning after J. 
 Clarke and Miss P. had at last the means of almost 
 entirely examining the accounts, they give me the result 
 you find in her letter to you, which makes it impossible 
 for me to go on at all. 
 
 " I could not do it, in future, if I have the same bur 
 den on me as I have had before, even as well as I 
 have done. There is a perceptible diminution of my 
 strength, and this winter has been one of so severe 
 1 Fuller MSS. ii. 661. 
 
THE DIAL. 169 
 
 labor, I shall not recover fully from it for two or three 
 months. Then, if I must take up a similar course 
 next winter, and have this tie upon me for the summer, 
 I think I should sink under it entirely. 
 
 " I grieve to disappoint you after all the trouble you 
 have taken. I am also sorry myself, for if I could have 
 received a maintenance from this Dial, I could have 
 done my duties to it well, which I never have all this 
 time, and my time might have been given to my pen ; 
 while now, for more than three months I have been 
 able to write no line except letters. But it cannot be 
 helped. It has been a sad business. 
 
 " I think perhaps Mr. Parker would like to carry it 
 on even under these circumstances. For him, or for 
 you, it would be much easier than for me, for you have 
 quiet homes, and better health. Of course, if you do 
 carry it on, I should like to do anything I can to aid 
 you. 
 
 " There must be prompt answer, as the press will wait. 
 " Your affectionate MARGARET." l 
 
 The following month, after the appearance of a 
 circular from Mr. Emerson announcing the con 
 tinuance of the magazine, she writes as follows : 
 
 "CANTON, April 18 [1842]. 
 
 " DEAR FRIEND, I received your letter before I 
 left Boston, but in the hurry of the last hours could not 
 write even a notelette with the parcel I requested J. 
 Clarke to make up for you of Borrow, Longfellow, some 
 more shreds of Dial, including the wearifu Napoleon, 
 and the Prayer Book, if Dorothea Dix could be induced 
 to grant the same. What awkward thing could I have 
 i MS. 
 
170 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 said about your advertisement ? I can t think. All 
 was understood, except that you had said I should put 
 my name on the cover and announce myself as editor, 
 only that I am not sure I can bind myself for so long as 
 a year, and so when I saw the advertisement I was 
 glad, and only so far surprised as that I had not felt 
 sure you would do it. How many tedious words ! 
 
 " I think I shall like being here much and find the 
 rest I need. The country is tolerably pretty, gentle, 
 unobtrusive within the house plain kindness, and gen 
 erally a silence unbroken except by the sounds from the 
 poultry, or the wind ; to appreciate which blessing one 
 should have lived half a year in a boarding-house with 
 as infirm a head as mine, and none to ward off inter 
 ruptions, sick or well." 
 
 Emerson wrote thus to Carlyle (March 31, 
 1842) in regard to the final transfer of editorship 
 to himself : 
 
 " I should tell you that my friend Margaret Fuller 
 who has edited our little Dial with such dubious appro 
 bation on the part of you and other men, has suddenly 
 decided a few days ago that she will edit it no more. 
 The second volume was just closing; shall it live for a 
 third year ? You should know, that if its interior and 
 spiritual life has been ill-fed, its outward and bibliopolic 
 existence has been worse managed. Its publishers 
 failed, its short list of subscribers became shorter, and 
 it has never paid its laborious editor, who has been very 
 generous of her time and labor, the smallest remuner 
 ation. Unhappily, to me alone could the question be 
 put whether the little aspiring starveling should be re 
 prieved for another year. I had not the cruelty to kill 
 
THE DIAL. 171 
 
 ft, and so must answer with my own proper care and 
 nursing for its new life. Perhaps it is a great folly in 
 me who have little adroitness in turning off work to as 
 sume this sure vexation, but the Dial has certain charms 
 to me as an opportunity, which I grudge to destroy. 
 Lately at New York I found it to be to a certain class 
 of men and women, though few, an object of tenderness 
 and religion. You cannot believe it ? " 1 
 
 It is to be noticed that Emerson in his printed 
 letters to Carlyle habitually speaks of the maga 
 zine as " Margaret Fuller s," and speaks of giving 
 his lectures to her for publication rather than make 
 any other use of them. 2 His loyalty to it seemed 
 inseparably connected with his loyalty to her, and 
 this seems to have been true in a measure with all 
 its contributors. She continued to write much 
 for it even after her editorship had ceased ; but is 
 sometimes found so discontented with her own 
 work as to withhold it. After the death of Dr. 
 Channing she thus writes to Mr. Emerson (No 
 vember 8, 1842) : - 
 
 " Should you write some notice of Dr. C. for your 
 Dial if I did not ? I have written, but the record 
 seems best adapted for my particular use, and I do not 
 know whether I shall come to anything more general. 
 If you should not write more than you have, will you 
 send me your one stroke on the nail-head for me to look 
 at ? " 3 
 
 Nothing could be better than this recognition 
 
 1 Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, i. 366. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 287, 320. 8 MS. 
 
172 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 of the extraordinary precision and vigor of Emer 
 son s single strokes. 
 
 The " Dial " expired after four years of preca 
 rious life. Perhaps those who best recognized its 
 power were not those who created it, and who, as 
 parents, recognized with anxious eyes the defects 
 of their child, but rather those who, like my 
 self, came too late upon the scene to do more than 
 have some boyish copy of verses judiciously re 
 jected from the last numbers, and who yet drew 
 from the earlier volumes a real and permanent im 
 pulse. When one considers the part since played 
 in American literature and life by those whose 
 youthful enthusiasm created this periodical, it is 
 needless to say that their words kindled much life 
 in the hearts of those still younger. It is a suf 
 ficient proof of the advantage of this potent in 
 fluence that it worked itself clear, at last ; and 
 those who were reared on the " Dial " felt the 
 impulse of its thought without borrowing its al 
 leged vagueness. Nor was this influence limited 
 to America, for on visiting England in 1846 Mar 
 garet Fuller had the pleasure of writing to Emer 
 son, " On my first arrival I encountered at Liver 
 pool and Manchester a set of devout readers of the 
 Dial, and still more of Emerson." l 
 i Fuller MSS. i. 209. 
 
XI. 
 
 BROOK FARM. 
 
 A CHAPTER on Brook Farm would be hardly 
 needed, in a life of Margaret Fuller, but for one 
 single cause, the magic wielded by a man of 
 genius. Zenobia in Hawthorne s " Blithedale Ro 
 mance " has scarcely a trait in common with Mar 
 garet Fuller ; yet will be identified with her while 
 the literature of the English language is read. 
 Margaret Fuller had neither the superb beauty 
 of Zenobia, nor her physical amplitude, nor her 
 large fortune, nor her mysterious husband, nor 
 her inclination to suicide ; nor, in fine, was she 
 a member of the Brook Farm community at all. 
 These points of difference would seem to be 
 enough, but were these ten times as many they 
 would all be unavailing, and the power of the ro 
 mancer would outweigh them all. It is impossible 
 to make the readers of fiction understand that a 
 novelist creates his characters as spiders their 
 web, attaching the thread at some convenient 
 point and letting it float off into free air ; per 
 haps to link itself at last to something very far 
 away. George Sand has well said that to copy 
 any character precisely from nature would be to 
 
174 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 make it unnatural ; since you cannot also transfer 
 to your book all the surroundings that have made 
 that character what it is. The author gets his 
 first hint from some real person, perhaps from 
 several, and all the rest is his own ; or it might 
 almost be said the character s own, so astounding 
 is the way in which these visionary people take 
 their fates into their own hands and perhaps do 
 the precise things which their creator intended to 
 prevent. If all this is true of the most common 
 place novelist, it is especially true of the most 
 ideal of all writers of fiction, Hawthorne. Even 
 his real people, when he writes what he means 
 for sober history, become almost ideal in the at 
 mosphere he paints ; how much more with those 
 in his romances. That there was a certain queen- 
 liness about Margaret Fuller, that she sometimes 
 came to Brook Farm, and that a cow which was 
 named after her lorded it over the other cows ; 
 this was all that she really contributed to Haw 
 thorne s Zenobia ; and much less than this would 
 have been sufficient for his purpose. 
 
 Nevertheless Brook Farm was for a few years 
 a fact so large among the circle to which she be 
 longed that it is well to have some good reason 
 for introducing it here. It was one of the best 
 probably the best incarnation of the ardent and 
 wide-reaching reformatory spirit of that day. It 
 was a day when it certainly was very pleasant to 
 live, although it is doubtful whether living would 
 have remained as pleasant, had one half the proj- 
 
BROOK FARM. 175 
 
 ects of the period become fulfilled. The eighty- 
 two pestilent heresies that were already reckoned 
 up in Massachusetts before 1638, or the " genera 
 tion of odd names and natures " which the Earl of 
 Strafford found among the English Roundheads, 
 could hardly surpass those of which Boston was 
 the centre during the interval between the year 
 1835 and the absorbing political upheaval of 1848. 
 The best single picture of the period is in Emer 
 son s lecture on "New England Reformers," de 
 livered in March, 1844 ; but it tells only a part 
 of the story, for one very marked trait of the 
 period was that the agitation reached all circles. 
 German theology, as interpreted by Brownson, 
 Parker, and Ripley, influenced the more educated 
 class, and the Second Advent excitement equally 
 prepared the way among the more ignorant. The 
 anti-slavery movement was the profoundest moral 
 element, on the whole, but a multitude of special 
 enterprises also played their parts. People habit 
 ually spoke, in those days, of " the sisterhood of 
 reforms," and it was in as bad taste for a poor 
 man to have but one hobby in his head as for a 
 rich man to keep but one horse in his stable. Mes 
 merism was studied ; gifted persons gave private 
 sittings for the reading of character through hand 
 writing ; phrenology and physiology were ranked 
 together; Alcott preached what Carlyle called a 
 44 potato gospel ; " Graham denounced bolted flour ; 
 Edward Palmer wrote tracts against money. In a 
 paper published in the " Dial " for July, 1842, on 
 
176 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 the u Convention of Friends of Universal Reform " 
 in Boston, Emerson says of that gathering : 
 
 " If the assembly was disorderly, it was picturesque. 
 Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Duukers, Mug- 
 gletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh- 
 Day Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calviriists, Unita 
 rians, and Philosophers all came successively to the 
 top." J 
 
 Having myself attended similar meetings soon 
 after, I can certify that this is not an exaggeration, 
 but, on the contrary, a plain, unvarnished tale. It 
 is to be remembered, too, that all this stir came 
 upon a society whose previous habit of life was 
 decidedly soberer and better ordered than that of 
 to-day ; stricter in observance, more conventional 
 in costume. There could hardly be a better il 
 lustration of this fact than when Emerson includes 
 in his enumeration of eccentricities " men with 
 beards ; " for I can well remember when Charles 
 Burleigh was charged with blasphemy, because 
 his flowing locks and handsome untrimmed beard 
 was thought to resemble as very likely he in 
 tended the pictures of Jesus Christ ; and when 
 Lowell was thought to have formally announced 
 a daring impulse of radicalism, after he, too, had 
 eschewed the razor. The only memorial we re 
 tain unchanged from that picturesque period is 
 in some stray member of the " Hutchinson Fam 
 ily" who still comes before the public with now 
 whitening locks and vast collar that needs no 
 
 1 Dial, iii. 101. 
 
BROOK FARM. 177 
 
 whitening ; and continues to sing with unchanged 
 sweetness the plaintive melodies that hushed the 
 stormiest meeting when he and his four or five 
 long-haired brothers stood grouped round their 
 one rose-bud of a sister like a band of Puritan 
 Bohemians. 
 
 Amid all these wild gospellers came and went 
 the calm figure of Emerson, peaceful and un 
 disturbed. I can remember that, after certain of 
 his lectures in Boston, his chosen hearers habitu 
 ally gathered to meet him at the rooms of one 
 young man, an ardent Fourierite, though not 
 actually a Brook-Farmer. Outside the door was 
 painted in flaming colors a yellow sun, at the cen 
 tre of whose blazing rays was the motto " Uni 
 versal Unity," while beneath it hung another 
 inscription in black and white letters, " Please 
 wipe your feet." This emblazonment and this 
 caution symbolized the whole movement. The 
 gateway of Brook Farm might have been simi 
 larly inscribed. There was a singular moral pu 
 rity about it which observers from the point of 
 view of Paris or even London have since found a 
 little contemptible. With the utmost freedom in 
 all things, and a comprehensiveness to which that 
 of " the latitude-men about Cambridge " in Eng 
 land was timid conservatism, Brook Farm, like all 
 other haunts of the " come-outers " of the period, 
 was as chaste as a Shaker household. 
 
 But it will readily be seen that amid this im 
 pulse of universal reform some such enterprise as 
 12 
 
178 MARGARET FULLER OS SOLI. 
 
 Brook Farm was inevitable. Already at New Har 
 mony, Zoar, and elsewhere in the Western States, 
 there had been socialistic experiments. But all 
 the others were more or less imported ; this was 
 indigenous, except that, like all other profoundly 
 sincere movements, it borrowed some examples 
 and incentives from the plains of Galilee. The 
 very name given to the first proclamation of the 
 enterprise in the " Dial," " A Glimpse at Christ s 
 Idea of Society," l written by Miss E. P. Pea- 
 body, shows that this clear element of religious 
 impulse came first ; the Fourierite gospel arrived 
 later, and rather marked the decline. To those 
 who like myself visited " the Community " only as 
 observant and rather incredulous boys, under guid 
 ance of some enlightened cousin, it all seemed a 
 very pleasant picnic, where youths and maidens 
 did pretty much what they wished, and sang du 
 ets over their labors. The very costume was by 
 no means that monotony of old clothes which 
 Hawthorne depicts in the " Blithedale Romance," 
 for some of the youths looked handsome as Ra 
 phael in flowing blouses of various colors and pic 
 turesque little vizor-less caps, exquisitely unfitted 
 for horny-handed tillers of the soil. Nowhere was 
 there such good company ; young men went from 
 the farm to the neighboring towns to teach Ger 
 man classes ; there were masquerades and gypsy 
 parties, such as would thrive on no other soil ; 
 whatever might be said of the actual glebe of 
 
 1 Dial, ii. 214 (October, 1841). 
 
BROOK FARM. 179 
 
 Brook Farm, the social culture was of the richest. 
 Those who ever lived there usually account it 
 to this day as the happiest period of their lives. 
 Even the shy Hawthorne does some justice to 
 this aspect of the society, and there is no reason 
 why any one should object to his making Mar 
 garet Fuller a leading figure in its short-lived 
 circle, except the fact justly trivial to a roman 
 cer that she was not there. 
 
 She doubtless, like Emerson, joined occasionally 
 in its merry-makings. In his "American Note- 
 Books," Hawthorne once describes them as ap 
 pearing together at a festival. But to her, from 
 the beginning, it was simply an experiment which 
 had enlisted some of her dearest friends; and, 
 later, she found at Brook Farm a sort of cloister 
 for occasional withdrawal from her classes and her 
 conversations. This was all ; she was not a stock 
 holder, nor a member, nor an advocate of the en 
 terprise ; and even " Miss Fuller s cow " which 
 Hawthorne tried so hard to milk l was a being 
 as wholly imaginary as Zenobia ; although old 
 Brook-Farmers report that Mr. Ripley was fond 
 of naming his cattle after his friends, and may, 
 very likely, have found among them a Margaret 
 Fuller. 
 
 Her general attitude toward the associative 
 movement, at the outset, may be seen in these 
 sentences, written to the Rev. W. H. Channing, 
 after a public meeting of the faithful : 
 
 1 American Note-Books, ii. 4. 
 
180 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 " I will not write to you of these conventions and com 
 munities unless they bear better fruit than yet. This 
 convention was a total failure, as might be expected 
 from a movement so forced. . . . O Christopher Co 
 lumbus ! how art thou admired when we see how other 
 men go to work with their lesser enterprises." 1 
 
 Again, she writes of an interview with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Ripley, when Brook Farm was being organ 
 ized (October 28, 1840) : 
 
 " In town I saw the Ripleys. Mr. R. more and more 
 wrapt in his new project. He is too sanguine, and does 
 not take time to let things ripen in his mind ; yet his aim 
 is worthy, and with his courage and clear mind his ex 
 periment will not, I think, to him at least, be a failure. 
 I will not throw any cold water, yet I would wish him 
 the aid of some equal and faithful friend in the begin 
 ning, the rather that his own mind, though that of a 
 captain, is not that of a conqueror. I feel more hopeful 
 as he builds less wide, but cannot feel that I have any 
 thing to do at present, except to look on and see the 
 coral insects at work. 
 
 " Ballou was with him to-night ; he seems a down 
 right person, clear as to his own purposes, and not un 
 willing to permit others the pursuit of theirs." 2 
 
 It appears from Mr. Alcott s MS. diary that 
 in October, 1840, while the whole matter was 
 taking form, he met George Ripley and Miss 
 Fuller at Mr. Emerson s in Concord, for the pur- 
 
 !MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
 2 MS. The Rev. Adin Ballou was a well-known leader among 
 the Associationists in that day, yet did not live at Brook Farm, 
 but at Mendon, Mass. 
 
BROOK FARM. 181 
 
 pose of discussing the new theme. Neither Alcott 
 nor Emerson accepted the project in its complete 
 ness. 1 During the following month Alcott enumer 
 ates these persons as being likely to join the pro 
 posed community, Ripley, Emerson, Parker, S. 
 D. Robbins, and Miss Fuller. 2 But I know no 
 reason to suppose that any of these, except Mr. Rip- 
 ley himself, had any such serious intention ; though 
 Mr. Emerson himself was so far influenced by the 
 prevailing tendency as to offer to share his house 
 with Mr. Alcott and his family, while suggesting 
 that other like-minded persons should settle near 
 them in Concord. Mr. Alcott himself speaks of 
 Brook Farm as " our community ; " but perhaps 
 uses the words in a very general sense. 
 
 At any rate, Brook Farm established itself 
 without them, and though Margaret Fuller often 
 visited it, this letter to Mr. Emerson shows the 
 motives, quite remote from Zenobia s, with which 
 she did so, that she might be gentle, dull, and 
 silent ! 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, IQth May, 1841. 
 
 " Your letter, my dear friend, was received just as I 
 was on the wing to pass a few days with the fledglings 
 of Community ; and I have only this evening returned 
 to answer it. I will come on Saturday afternoon next 
 if no cross accident mar the horizon of my hopes, and 
 the visible heavens drop not down Niagaras. All that 
 I have to say may best be reserved till I come ; it is 
 necessary that I should be economical, for I have of late 
 
 1 Alcott s MS Diary, xiv. 170. 
 
 2 Ibid. xiv. 199. 
 
182 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 been as gentle, as dull, and as silent as the most fussy 
 old bachelor could desire his housekeeper to be. You 
 said, however, I could come and live there, if I had not 
 a mind to talk, so I am not afraid, but will come, hoping 
 there may be a flow after this ebb, which has almost 
 restored the health of your affectionate 
 
 " MARGARET." J 
 
 Again, this extract from a letter to Mr. Emer 
 son (August 10, 1842) illustrates the same point. 
 It seems that Professor Farrar and his wife were 
 to have taken a journey, in which case Margaret 
 Fuller would have remained in their house at Cam 
 bridge, a plan that would have " insured several 
 weeks of stillness and solitude " for her ; she being 
 " tired to death of dissipation." This failing, she 
 expresses willingness to go to Concord, but, should 
 that be inconvenient, she can go to Brook Farm, 
 as the next best medicine : 
 
 " They will give me a room at Brook Farm, if I wish, 
 let me do as I please, and I think if I went there to 
 stay I could keep by myself, and employ myself, if 
 there is any force in my mind. Beside, I will not give 
 up seeing you. If you do not want me to stay in this 
 unlimited fashion I will come for two or three days, on 
 a visit technically speaking. But I want to know be 
 forehand which it shall be, for, if I come to stay, I shall 
 bring my paper, etc., but if not I shall leave them here, 
 write to Brook Farm to engage my room, and go there 
 so soon as I have seen you satisfactorily." 2 
 
 However she might dream of solitude, she could 
 1 MS. 2 MS. 
 
BROOK FARM. 183 
 
 not wholly maintain it, even in these " retreats " 
 at Brook Farm. She seems to have been in the 
 habit of going there on New Year s Eve ; and 
 there are among her papers successive meditations 
 or descriptions at that time, usually introducing 
 some poem of her own. One of these narratives 
 is as follows : 
 
 "Night preceding New Year s Day, 1844. 
 
 " The moon was nearly full, and shone in an un 
 clouded sky over wild fields of snow. The day was 
 Sunday, a happy Sunday. I had enjoyed being with 
 William equally when we were alone or with these 
 many of different ages, tempers, and relationships with 
 us, for all seemed bound in one thought this happy 
 day. 
 
 " William addressed them in the morning on the 
 Destiny of the Earth, and then I read aloud Ellery s 
 poem * The Earth. l . . . But in the night the thoughts 
 of these verses kept coming, though they relate more to 
 what had passed at the Fourier convention, and to the 
 talk we had been having in Mrs. R. s room, than to the 
 deeper occupation of my mind." 2 
 
 To find how this dream of silence filled her 
 soul, at times, we must turn to another passage 
 in the same letter to the Rev. W. H. Channing 
 which describes her interview with the Ripleys : 
 
 " It is by no means useless to preach. In my expe 
 rience of the divine gifts of solitude, I had forgotten 
 what might be done in this other way. O that crowd 
 
 1 A fine poem by Ellery Channing beginning 
 
 " My highway is unfeatured air." 
 
 2 MS. 
 
184 MARGARET FULLER OS SOLI. 
 
 of upturned faces with their look of unintelligent com 
 placency ! Give me tears and groans, rather, if there 
 be a mixture of physical excitement and bigotry. Mr. 
 Dewey is heard because, though he has not entered into 
 the secret of piety, he wishes to be heard and with a 
 good purpose ; can make a forcible statement and kindle 
 himself with his own thought. How many persons 
 must there be who cannot worship alone since they are 
 content with so little. Can we not wake the spark that 
 will weld them, till they take beautiful forms and can 
 assist each alone ? Were one to come now who could 
 purge us with fire ! . . . 
 
 " But all my tendency at present is to the deepest 
 privacy. Where can I hide till I am given to myself ? 
 Yet I love the others more and more, and when they 
 are with me must give them the best from my scrip. 
 When I see their infirmities I would fain heal them, 
 forgetful of my own ! But am I left one moment alone, 
 then, a poor wandering pilgrim, yet no saint, I would 
 seek the shrine ; would therein die to the world and 
 then if from the poor reliques some miracle might be 
 wrought, that is for them ! 
 
 " Yet some of these saints were able to work in their 
 generation, for they had renounced all ! " 
 
 It may have been on one of these New Year s 
 retreats that she wrote her most thoughtful and 
 most artistic poem ; almost the only one of hers 
 to which the last epithet could be applied, if, 
 indeed, it be applicable here. The poem was 
 printed in "Summer on the Lakes," and is on 
 a theme which suited her love of mystic colors 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
BROOK FARM. 185 
 
 and symbols the tradition of the Rosicrucians. 
 The modem theory is, however, that this word did 
 not come from the cross and the rose, as she as 
 sumes, but from the cross and the dew (ros); this 
 last substance being then considered as the most 
 powerful solvent of gold, and so used in the effort 
 to discover the philosopher s stone. 
 
 SUB ROSA CRUX. 
 
 " In times of old, as we are told, 
 When men more child-like at the feet 
 Of Jesus sat, than now, 
 A chivalry was known more bold 
 Than ours, and yet of stricter vow, 
 Of worship more complete. 
 
 " Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore 
 Its weight within the heart, but wore 
 Without, devotion s sign in glistening ruby bright; 
 The gall and vinegar they drank alone, 
 But to the world at large would only own 
 The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light. 
 
 " They knew the secret of the sacred oil 
 Which, poured upon the prophet s head, 
 Could keep him wise and pure for aye. 
 Apart from all that might distract or soil, 
 With this their lamps they fed, 
 Which burn in their sepulchral shrines unfading night and day 
 
 " The pass-word now is lost 
 To that initiation full and free ; 
 Daily we pay the cost 
 Of our slow schooling for divine degree. 
 We know no means to feed an undying lamp ; 
 Our lights go out in every wind or damp. 
 
 " We wear the cross of ebony and gold, 
 Upon a dark back-ground a form of light, 
 
186 MARGARET FULLER OS SOLI. 
 
 A heavenly hope upon a bosom cold, 
 
 A starry promise in a frequent night ; 
 
 The dying lamp must often trim again, 
 
 For we are conscious, thoughtful, striving men. 
 
 " Yet be we faithful to this present trust, 
 Clasp to a heart resigned the fatal must; 
 Though deepest dark our efforts should enfold, 
 Unwearied mine to find the vein of gold ; 
 Forget not oft to lift the hope on high ; 
 The rosy dawn again shall fill the sky. 
 
 " And by that lovely light, all truth revealed, 
 The cherished forms which sad distrust concealed, 
 Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand, 
 The kindred angels of a faithful band ; 
 Ruby and ebon cross both cast aside, 
 No lamp is needed, for the night has died. 
 
 " Be to the best thou knowest ever true, 
 Is all the creed ; 
 
 Then, be thy talisman of rosy hue, 
 Or fenced with thorns that wearing thou must bleed, 
 Or gentle pledge of Love s prophetic view, 
 The faithful steps it will securely lead." 
 
XII. 
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED. 
 
 THE first sign of marked literary talent, in a 
 young person, is apt to be an omnivorous passion 
 for books, followed, sooner or later, by the desire 
 to produce something ; this desire often taking 
 experimental and fugitive forms. The study of 
 "Sir James Mackintosh s Life and Works," at 
 Groton, seems to have impressed Margaret Ful 
 ler strongly with the danger of miscellaneous and 
 desultory preparation. She writes : 
 
 "The copiousness of Sir J. Mackintosh s reading 
 journals is, I think, intimately connected with his liter 
 ary indolence. Minds of great creative power take no 
 pleasure in going into detail on the new materials they 
 receive, they assimilate them by meditation and new 
 creations follow. A Scott, a Goethe, would neither talk 
 out nor write down the reflections suggested by what 
 the day had brought ; they would be transfused into new 
 works." 1 
 
 Later, she had a vision of writing romances, 
 like George Sand, and expressed herself thus in 
 her diary : 
 
 * Fuller MSS. iii. 27b. 
 
188 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 [GROTON, November, 1835.] 
 
 " These books have made me for the first time think 
 I might write into such shapes what I know of human 
 nature. I have always thought that I would not, that I 
 would keep all that behind the curtain, that I would 
 not write, like a woman, of love and hope and disap 
 pointment, but like a man, of the world of intellect and 
 action. But now I am tempted, and if I can but do 
 well my present work and show that I can write like a 
 man, and if but the wild gnomes will keep from me with 
 their shackles of care for bread in all its shapes of fac 
 titious life, I think I will try whether I have the hand 
 to paint, as well as the eye to see. But I cannot but 
 feel that I have seen, from the mouth of my damp cave, 
 stars as fair, almost as many, as this person from the 
 * Fleche of the Cathedral, where she has ascended at 
 such peril. But I dare boast no more ; only, please fate, 
 be just and send me an angel out of this golden cloud 
 that comes after the pelting showers I have borne so 
 long." l 
 
 The project of fiction went no farther, unless 
 her fragment of an " Autobiographical Romance," 
 written in 1840, was the result of it ; and her first 
 two published books were, naturally enough, trans 
 lations from the German. She had expected, as 
 early as November 30, 1834, as appears by a let 
 ter to the Rev. F. H. Hedge, to print her trans 
 lation of Goethe s " Tasso." 2 This had failed to 
 find a publisher; but several years later George 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. iii. 303-305. The allusion is to George Sand s 
 Sept Cordes de la Lyre. 
 
 2 Published after her death, in her Art, Literature, and the 
 Drama, 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 189 
 
 Ripley and other friends of hers projected and 
 carried out, to the extent of fifteen volumes, a se 
 ries of " Specimens of Foreign Literature," com 
 posed of translations from the German and French. 
 As announced in the preface to the first volume, 
 dated February 22, 1838, the series was to have 
 included "A Life of Goethe, in preparation for 
 this work, from original documents ; " and of this 
 memoir, apparently, Margaret Fuller was to have 
 been the compiler. For some reason this plan was 
 abandoned, but she was the translator and editor 
 of the fourth volume of the series, containing Eck- 
 ermann s " Conversations " with -the great Ger 
 man poet. The work was done, as her preface 
 states, under many disadvantages, much of it be 
 ing dictated to others, on account of illness ; and 
 these obstacles were the more felt, inasmuch as 
 she was not content with a literal translation, but 
 undertook to condense some passages and omit 
 others. Her preface is certainly modest enough, 
 and underrates instead of overstating the value of 
 her own work. She made a delightful book of it, 
 and one which, with Sarah Austin s " Characteris 
 tics of Goethe," helped to make the poet a familiar 
 personality to English-speaking readers. For one, 
 I can say that it brought him nearer to me than 
 any other book, before or since, has ever done. 
 This volume was published at Boston, by Hilliard, 
 Gray & Co., in 1839, her preface being dated 
 at Jamaica Plain on May 23 of that year, and 
 I suspect that she never had any compensation 
 
190 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 for it beyond the good practice for herself and 
 the gratitude of others. Her preface contains 
 some excellent things, giving a view of Goethe 
 more moderate than that which Carlyle had just 
 brought into vogue, though she still was ardent 
 and admiring enough. But she points out very 
 well though perhaps emphasizing them too 
 much some of the limitations of Goethe s na 
 ture. She does not even admit him to be in the 
 highest sense an artist, but says, " I think he had 
 the artist s eye and the artist s hand, but not the 
 artist s love of structure," a distinction admir 
 ably put. 
 
 From the subject of Goethe followed naturally, 
 in those days, that of Bettina Brentano, whose 
 correspondence with the poet, translated in an at 
 tractive German-English by herself, had appeared 
 in England in 1837, and had been reprinted at 
 Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1841. Margaret Fuller, 
 in the "Dial" in January, 1842, 1 had called atten 
 tion to another work from the same source : the 
 letters that had passed, at an earlier period than 
 the Goethe correspondence, between Bettina and 
 her friend Caroline von Giinderode. These letters 
 were published at Leipzig in 1840, after the death 
 of Giinderode. They were apparently written in 
 the years 1805-06, when Bettina was about six 
 teen ; and she in her letters to Goethe s mother, 
 published in " Correspondence of a Child," gives 
 an account of this friend and her tragic death, 
 1 Dial, ii. 313. 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 191 
 
 Bettina is now little read, even by young people, 
 apparently, but she then gave food for the most 
 thoughtful. Emerson says : " Once I took such 
 delight in Plato that I thought I never should 
 need any other book ; then in Swedenborg, then 
 in Montaigne, even in Bettina ; " and Mr. Al- 
 cott records in his diary (August 2, 1839), "he 
 [Emerson] seems to be as much taken with Bet 
 tina as I am." For the young, especially, she had 
 a charm which lasts through life, insomuch that 
 the present writer spent two happy days on the 
 Rhine, so lately as 1878, in following out the 
 traces of two impetuous and dreamy young women 
 whom it would have seemed natural to meet on 
 any hillside path, although more than half a cen 
 tury had passed since they embalmed their mem 
 ory there. 
 
 When first at work upon this translation, Mar- 
 geret Fuller wrote thus to the Rev. W. H. Chan- 
 ning : 
 
 " I meant to have translated for you the best passages 
 of Die Giinderode (which I prefer to the correspond 
 ence with Goethe. The two girls are equal natures, 
 and both in earnest. Goethe made a puppet-show for 
 his private entertainment of Bettina s life, and we won 
 der she did not feel he was not worthy of her homage). 
 But I have not been well enough to write much, and 
 these pages are only what I have dictated ; they are not 
 the best, yet will interest you. The exquisite little 
 poem by Giinderode read aloud two or three times, that 
 you may catch the music ; it is of most sweet mystery. 
 
192 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 She is to me dear and admirable, Bettina only interest 
 ing. She is of religious grace, Bettina the fullness of 
 nature." l 
 
 Again she writes to him, copying at the same 
 time Giinderode s poem, " 1st Alles stumm und 
 leer." 
 
 " Giinderode is the ideal ; Bettina, nature ; Gtinde- 
 rode throws herself into the river because the world is 
 all too narrow. Bettina lives, and follows out every 
 freakish fancy, till the enchanting child degenerates into 
 an eccentric and undignified old woman. There is a 
 medium somewhere. Philip Sidney found it; others 
 had it found for them by fate." 2 
 
 Apart from all other aspects of interest, Marga 
 ret Fuller s translation of the first part of these 
 letters is perhaps the best piece of literary work 
 that she ever executed ; so difficult was it to 
 catch the airy style of these fanciful German 
 maidens; and so perfectly well did she succeed, 
 preserving withal the separate individualities of 
 tbe two correspondents. Only one thin pamphlet 
 was published, in 1842, containing about a quar 
 ter part of the letters. It appeared without her 
 name; and apparently there was not enough of 
 patronage to lead her on ; but, after the death of 
 Bettina von Arnim, tbe translation was completed 
 by Mrs. Minna Wesselhoeft at the suggestion of 
 Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, the original pub 
 lisher, and was printed with Margaret Fuller s 
 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 2 MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 193 
 
 Fragment, by a Boston bookseller (Burnham) in 
 1860. There is nothing in the reprint to indi 
 cate the double origin, but the point of transition 
 between the two translations occurs at the end of 
 the first letter on page 86 ; while this volume, as 
 completed, retains Margaret Fuller s original pref 
 ace and an extract from her " Dial " essay. Mrs. 
 Wesselhoeft informs me that she revised Miss 
 Fuller s part of the translation, but found noth 
 ing to correct save two or three colloquial idioms, 
 pretty sure to be misinterpreted by one not a na 
 tive of Germany. 
 
 Margaret Fuller s first original work was the 
 fruit of the only long journey she ever took, in 
 her own country ; a summer spent in traveling in 
 what was then called " the far West " (May 25 
 to September 19, 1843) with her life-long friends, 
 James Freeman Clarke and his sister Sarah, under 
 the guidance of their brother, William H. Clarke, 
 of Chicago. The last named was one of Marga 
 ret Fuller s dearest friends ; a man of rare gifts, 
 a delightful out-door companion and thoroughly 
 acquainted with the pioneer life to which he in 
 troduced his friends. Their mode of traveling 
 seems of itself to mark a period a hundred years 
 ago instead of forty ; and is graphically described 
 in a letter to Mr. Emerson, written on the return 
 journey : 
 
 " CHICAGO, 4th August, 1843. 
 
 " We traveled in a way that left us perfectly free to 
 idle as much as we pleased, to gather every flower and 
 13 
 
194 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 to traverse every wood we fancied. We were then in 
 a strong vehicle called a lumber wagon which defied 
 all the jolts and wrenches incident to wood paths, mud 
 holes, and the fording of creeks ; we were driven by a 
 friend, who drove admirably, who had the true spirit 
 which animates daily life, who knew the habits of all 
 the fowl, and fish, and growing things, and all the war 
 like legends of the country, and could recite them, not 
 in a pedantical, but in a poetical manner ; thus our whole 
 journey had the gayety of adventure, with the repose of 
 intimate communion. Now we were in a nice carriage, 
 fit for nothing but roads, and which would break even 
 on those, with a regular driver, too careful of his horses 
 to go off a foot-pace, etc., etc. 
 
 " However, we had much pleasure and saw many pretty 
 things, of which I must tell you at my leisure. Our 
 time was chiefly passed in the neighborhood of a chain 
 of lakes, fine pieces of water, with the wide sloping 
 park-like banks, so common in this country." * 
 
 " Summer on the Lakes " was prepared for the 
 press after her return, with the aid of a good deal 
 of study at the Harvard College Library ; where 
 I can well remember to have seen Miss Fuller sit 
 ting, day after day, under the covert gaze of the 
 undergraduates who had never before looked upon 
 a woman reading within those sacred precincts, 
 where twenty of that sex are now employed as 
 assistants. She was correcting the press during 
 much of the spring of 1844, when the proof-sheets 
 came in every evening. " I expect it at night," 
 she writes, " as one might some old guardian." 
 i MS. 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 195 
 
 During this period she had many sleepless nights, 
 as appears by her diary, with such constant head 
 aches that she chronicles not the days when she 
 has them but when she is without them. One 
 day at last she writes, quite exhausted : 
 
 " I begin to be so tired of my book ! It will be 
 through next Thursday, but I m afraid I shall feel no 
 better then, because dissatisfied with this last part. I 
 ought to rewrite the Indian chapter, were there but 
 time ! It will, I fear, seem desultory and ineffectual, 
 when my materials are so rich ; owre rich, perhaps, for 
 my mind does not act on them enough to fuse them." 
 
 The work itself is of value as illustrating a 
 truth often noticed, that the ideal books of travel 
 last longer than the merely statistical ; since the 
 details, especially of our newer communities, are 
 superseded in a year, while it may be decades 
 before another traveler comes along who can look 
 beneath them and really picture the new scenes 
 for the mind s eye. A book of facts about Il 
 linois in 1843 would now be of little value, but 
 the things that Margaret Fuller noted are still in 
 teresting. Like Mrs. Jameson, who wrote her 
 "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles" about 
 the same time, she saw the receding Indian tribes 
 from a woman s point of view ; she sat in the wig 
 wams, played with the children, pounded maize 
 with the squaws. The white settlers, also, she 
 studied, and recorded their characteristics ; " the 
 Illinois farmers, the large, first product of the 
 soil ; " and the varied nationalities represented 
 
196 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 among the foreign immigrants. The following 
 extract from a letter to Mr. Emerson shows her 
 careful observation of these types, then so new: 
 
 " Here I am interested in those who have a mixture 
 of Indian blood. With one lady I may become well 
 acquainted, as she is to travel with us. Her melan 
 choly eyes, and slow, graceful utterance, and delicate 
 feeling of what she has seen, attract me. She is mar 
 ried here and wears our dress, but her family retain the 
 dress and habits of their race. Through her I hope to 
 make other acquaintance that may please me. 
 
 "Next week we are going into the country to ex 
 plore the neighborhood of Fox and Rock rivers. We 
 are going, in regular western style, to travel in a wagon, 
 and stay with the farmers. Then I shall see the West 
 to better advantage than I have as yet. 
 
 " We are going to stay with one family, the mother 
 of which had what they call a claim fight. Some 
 desperadoes laid claim to her property, which is large ; 
 they were supposed to belong to the band who lately 
 have been broken up by an exertion of lynch law. 
 She built shanties in the different parts ; she and her 
 three daughters each took one to defend it. They 
 showed such bravery that the foe retreated. 
 
 " Then there is an Irish gentleman who owns a large 
 property there. He was married to the daughter of an 
 Irish earl. His son, a boy who inherits the (her) fortune 
 he has left in Europe, and since the death of his wife 
 lives alone on the Rock River; he has invited us to 
 stay at his house, and the scenery there is said to be 
 most beautiful. 
 
 " I hear, too, of a Hungarian count who has a large 
 tract of land in Wisconsin. He has removed thither 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 197 
 
 with all his tenantry, several hundred persons they say. 
 He comes to market at Milwaukee ; they call him 
 there the Count ; they do not seem to know his other 
 name. We are to stay at Milwaukee, and I shall in 
 quire all about him. I should like to know how he has 
 modified his life from the feudal lord to the brotherly 
 landlord. I should think he must be a good and resolute 
 man to carry out such a scheme successfully. 
 
 "I want to see some emigrant with worthy aims, 
 using all his gifts and knowledge to some purpose hon 
 orable to the land, instead of lowering themselves to the 
 requisitions of the moment, as so many of them do." i 
 
 The book has, doubtless, great defects, as is apt 
 to be the case with a first work ; an author feels, 
 at such times, that he may never have another 
 opportunity, and so is tempted to load his book 
 down with episodes in order to lose nothing. This 
 was the case with Miss Fuller. To insert boldly, 
 in the middle of her book of travels, forty pages 
 about Kerner s " Seeress of Prevorst," which she 
 had read in Milwaukee, this showed the way 
 wardness of a student and talker, rather than the 
 good judgment which she ought to have gained in 
 editing even the most ideal of magazines. These 
 things weighed the book down too heavily for suc 
 cess, and her brother, in reediting her works, has 
 wisely printed them separately. Yet the value of 
 " Summer on the Lakes " remains ; and I found 
 afterwards, in traveling westward, that it had 
 done more than any other book to prepare me for 
 1 MS. 
 
198 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 some of the most important aspects of that new 
 world. It also excited interest in some quarters 
 through the episodes themselves, especially that 
 of " Mariana," which was taken to be autobio 
 graphical, as it partly was ; although the charac 
 ter of Sylvain, Mariana s supposed lover, was al 
 most wholly imaginary, as the following letter 
 will show : 
 
 " As to my book, there are complimentary notices in 
 the papers, and I receive good letters about it. It is 
 much read already, and is termed very entertaining ! 
 Little & Brown take the risk, and allow a percentage. 
 My bargain with them is only for one edition ; if this 
 succeeds, I shall make a better. They take their own 
 measures about circulating the work, but any effort 
 from my friends helps, of course. Short notices by 
 you, distributed at Philadelphia, New York, and even 
 Cincinnati, would attract attention and buyers ! ! Out 
 ward success in this way is very desirable to me, not 
 so much on account of present profit to be derived, as 
 because it would give me advantage in making future bar 
 gains, and open the way to ransom more time for writ 
 ing. The account of the * Seeress pleases many, and 
 it is pleasing to see how elderly routine gentlemen, such 
 as Dr. Francis and Mr. Farrar, are charmed with the 
 little story of Mariana. They admire, at poetic dis 
 tance, that powerful nature that would alarm them so 
 in real life. . . . Imagine prose eyes, with glassy curios 
 ity looking out for Mariana ! Nobody dreams of its 
 being like me ; they all thought Miranda was, in the 
 4 Great Lawsuit. People seem to think that not more 
 than one phase of character can be shown in one life. 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 199 
 
 " Sylvain is only a suggested picture ; you would 
 not know the figure by which it is drawn, if you could 
 see it. Have no desire, I pray thee, ever to realize 
 these ideals. The name I took from Fanny Ellsler s 
 partner. In the bridal dance, after movements of a 
 bird-like joy, and overflowing sweetness, when he comes 
 forward, she retires with a proud, timid grace, so beauti 
 ful ; it said, i See what a man I am happy enough to 
 love. And then came forward this well-taught dancer, 
 springing and pirouetting without one tint of genius, 
 one ray of soul; it was very painful and symbolized 
 much, far more than I have expressed with Sylvain and 
 Mariana." 1 
 
 " Summer on the Lakes " seems to have yielded 
 nothing to the author but copies to give away. It 
 is a pathetic compensation for an unsuccessful 
 book, that the writer at least has an abundant 
 supply of it ; and when we consider that Thoreau, 
 eight years later, was carrying up to his garret, 
 as unsold, seven hundred out of the thousand 
 copies of his " Week on the Concord and Merri- 
 mack," we may well feel that Miss Fuller s little 
 book of travels was successful, if it cost her noth 
 ing. At any rate she distributed it with some 
 freedom, writing to Mr. Emerson, May 22, 1845, 
 " Thirteen copies of Summer on the Lakes were 
 sent to your address in Boston ; five for you, four 
 for Caroline [Sturgis], four to be sent to Sarah 
 Clarke, through James, if you will take the trou 
 ble." There must have been, at some time, a 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
200 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 hope of a second edition, as Miss Sarah Clarke 
 etched some charming illustrations to accompany 
 it, a series of which I have seen. This re-issue 
 never came, but she sold, apparently, seven hun 
 dred copies ; 1 the whole edition of a new book at 
 that day being usually five hundred or a thousand. 
 
 Before assuming her editorial work she found 
 time to revise and amplify an essay which bad 
 been first published in the " Dial," and had at 
 tracted far more general attention than any of her 
 previous articles. It had appeared in October, 
 1843, under the name of " The Great Lawsuit, or 
 Man vs. Men, Woman vs. Women." This phrase 
 was awkward, but well intentioned, its aim being 
 to avert even the suspicion of awakening antago 
 nism between the sexes. The title attracted at 
 tention, and as the edition of the " Dial," in its 
 last year, was even smaller than ever before, this 
 number soon disappeared from the market, and 
 it is not uncommon to see sets of the periodical 
 bound up without it, as is the case with my own. 
 
 She added a great deal to the essay before re 
 printing it, and brought it to a final completion 
 during seven weeks delightfully spent amid the 
 scenery of the Hudson, at Fish kill, N. Y., where 
 she had the society of her favorite out-door com 
 panion, Miss Caroline Sturgis, lived in the open 
 air with her when the sun shone, and composed 
 only on rainy days. She wrote to Mr. Emerson 
 (November 17, 1844) : 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. ii. 755. 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 201 
 
 "I have been happy now in freedom from headache 
 and all other interruptions, and have spun out my thread 
 as long and many-colored as was pleasing. The result I 
 have not yet looked at ; must put some days between 
 me and it first. Then I shall revise and get it into 
 printer s ink by Christmas, I hope." ] 
 
 She wrote more fully, on the same day, to the 
 Rev. W. H. Charming : 
 
 "Sunday evening, \1th November, 1844. 
 
 " At last I have finished the pamphlet. The last day 
 it kept spinning out beneath my hand. After taking a 
 long walk early in one of the most noble, exhilarating 
 sort of mornings, I sat down to write, and did not put 
 the last stroke till near nine in the evening. Then I 
 felt a delightful glow, as if I had put a good deal of my 
 true life in it ; as if, suppose I went away now, the meas 
 ure of my footprint would be left on the earth. That 
 was several days ago, and I do not know how it will 
 look on revision, for I must leave several days more be 
 tween me and it before I undertake that, but think it 
 will be much better than if it had been finished at Cam 
 bridge, for here has been no headache, and leisure to 
 choose my hours. 
 
 " It will make a pamphlet rather larger than a num 
 ber of the Dial, and would take a fortnight or more to 
 print. Therefore I am anxious to get the matter en 
 train before I come to New York, that I may begin the 
 1st December, for I want to have it out by Christmas. 
 Will you, then, see Mr. Greeiey about it the latter part 
 of this week or the beginning of next ? He is absent 
 now, but will be back by that time, and I will write to 
 i MS. 
 
202 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 him about it. Perhaps he will like to undertake it him 
 self. 
 
 " The estimate you sent me last summer was made 
 expecting an edition of fifteen hundred, but I think a 
 thousand will be enough. The writing, though I have 
 tried to make my meaning full and clear, requires, shall 
 I say, too much culture in the reader to be quickly or 
 extensively diffused. I shall be satisfied if it moves a 
 mind here and there, and through that others ; shall be 
 well satisfied if an edition of a thousand is disposed of 
 in the course of two or three years. If the expense of 
 publication should not exceed a hundred or even a hun 
 dred and fifty dollars, I should not be unwilling to un 
 dertake it, if thought best by you and Mr. G. But I 
 suppose you would not think that the favorable way as 
 to securing a sale. 
 
 " If given to a publisher, I wish to dispose of it only 
 for one edition. I should hope to be able to make it 
 constantly better while I live, and should wish to retain 
 full command of it, in case of subsequent editions." ] 
 
 Of the reception of this book, re-baptized " Wo 
 man in the Nineteenth Century," she wrote thus : 
 
 " The book is out, and the theme of all the newspa 
 pers and many of the journals. Abuse, public and pri 
 vate, is lavished upon its views, but respect expressed 
 for me personally. But the most speaking fact, and the 
 one which satisfied me, is that the whole edition was sold 
 off in a week to the booksellers, and $85 handed to me 
 as my share. Not that my object was in any wise 
 money, but I consider this the signet of success. If one 
 can be heard, that is enough ; I shall send you two 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED. 203 
 
 copies, one for yourself and one to give away, if you 
 like. If you noticed it in a New Orleans paper, you 
 might create a demand for it there ; the next edition 
 will be out in May." ] 
 
 On December 10, 1845, we find her recording 
 in her journal the pleasure rarer in those days 
 than now of receiving an English reprint, pub 
 lished in Clarke s Cabinet Library. 2 She was 
 then visiting Mrs. Child ; and she records, also, 
 her hope of a second American edition, but I am 
 not aware that it ever arrived until the book was 
 reprinted, after her death, by her brother Arthur. 
 
 She also published, during her connection with 
 the " Tribune," two thin volumes of her miscella 
 neous writings, called " Papers on Literature and 
 Art." This work appeared in 1846, just before 
 her departure for Europe, and was, in the judg 
 ment of her brother Arthur, the most popular of 
 all her books. He has reprinted it, without alter 
 ation, in that volume of her writings called "Art, 
 Literature, and the Drama," including the preface, 
 which was thought to savor of vanity and became 
 the theme of Lowell s satire ; although the sen 
 tence he apparently had in view, " I feel with sat 
 isfaction that I have done a good deal to extend 
 the influence of Germany and Italy among my 
 compatriots," was strictly true. 
 
 It was in this volume that she published be 
 ing the only part of it that had not previously 
 appeared in print an essay on " American Liter- 
 1 Fuller MSS. ii. 769. 2 Fuller MSS. ii. 793. 
 
204 MARGARET FULLER OS SOL I. 
 
 ature," in which she expressed, more fully than 
 before, the criticisms on Longfellow and others 
 which were then not uncommon among the Tran- 
 scendentalists, and which, as uttered by her, 
 brought on her head some wrath. It did not 
 diminish this antagonism that the offending essay 
 attracted especial attention in England, and was 
 translated and published in a Paris review; but 
 this aspect of her career must be considered in a 
 later chapter. 
 
XIII. 
 
 BUSINESS LITE IN NEW YORK. 
 (1844-1846.) 
 
 THE transfer of Margaret Fuller, at the begin 
 ning of December, 1844, to what she called her 
 " business life " in New York, made a distinct 
 epoch in her career. After this her mental matu 
 rity began ; at any rate, her Wander j afore, in the 
 German sense, as distinct from mere apprentice 
 ship. She had come to be the housemate and lit 
 erary coadjutor of the man who, among all Amer 
 icans, then stood closest to the popular heart. 
 The name of his journal was no misnomer ; he 
 was a Tribune of the People in the old Roman 
 sense. His newspaper office was just at that time 
 the working centre of much of the practical rad 
 icalism in the country ; but he was also a person 
 of ideal aims and tastes, and was perhaps the first 
 conspicuous man in America, out of Boston, who 
 publicly recognized in Emerson the greatest of 
 our poets. He brought Margaret Fuller to New 
 York, not only that she might put the literary 
 criticism of the " Tribune " on a higher plane 
 than any American newspaper occupied, but that 
 she might discuss in a similar spirit all philan- 
 
206 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 thropic questions. To investigate these subjects 
 on the practical side she had two coadjutors be 
 sides Horace Greeley ; her early fellow-student, 
 Lydia Maria Child, then a resident of New York, 
 and also a later and yet closer friend, William 
 Henry Channing. This remarkable man, whose 
 gifts and services have in some degree passed from 
 the knowledge of the younger generation of Amer 
 icans, through his long residence in England, was 
 then the most ardent of social reformers, the lof 
 tiest among idealists, and after Wendell Phil 
 lips the most eloquent of orators upon the anti- 
 slavery platform. But he was also the most 
 devoted of city missionaries, in New York and 
 elsewhere ; and, under his guidance, Margaret 
 Fuller could penetrate the very recesses of the 
 Five Points, then the last refuge of poverty and 
 crime. He had been one of her earliest co-labor 
 ers on the " Dial ; " he was the intimate friend 
 of Horace Greeley; and his companionship thus 
 bridged for her the interval between the old life 
 and the new. He moreover preached on Sunday 
 to a small congregation of cultivated reformers ; 
 and here she found the needed outlet for the re 
 ligious element in her nature, always profound, 
 sometimes mystical, but now taking a most health 
 ful and active shape. It is a sign of her changed 
 life when she keeps her New Year s vigils, not in 
 poetic reveries, as at Boston and Brook Farm, but 
 in writing such a note as the following to Mr. 
 Channing : 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN NEW YORK. 207 
 
 "New Year s Eve [1845]. 
 
 " I forgot to ask you, dear William, where we shall 
 begin in our round of visits to the public institutions. I 
 want to make a beginning, as, probably, one a day and 
 once a week will be enough for my time and strength. 
 
 " Now is the time for me to see and write about these 
 things, as my European stock will not be here till 
 spring. 
 
 " Should you like to begin with Black well s Island, 
 Monday or Tuesday of next week ? " l 
 
 She was at this time living in full sight of that 
 celebrated penitentiary of which she writes. Afc 
 the suggestion of Mrs. Greeley, who had known 
 Margaret Fuller in Boston, she was not only in 
 vited to become a writer in the " Tribune " but a 
 member of the editor s family ; Mr. Greeley ex 
 pressly stating that he regarded her rather as his 
 wife s friend than his own. 2 He had lately taken 
 up his residence in a large old wooden house, 
 built as a country residence by a New York 
 banker, on what New Yorkers call the East River, 
 at Turtle Bay, nearly opposite the southernmost 
 point of Blackwell s Island. The house had 
 ample shrubbery and gardens, with abundant 
 shade trees and fruit trees ; and though the whole 
 region is long since laid out in streets and covered 
 with buildings, it was then accessible, as Mr. 
 Greeley tells us, only by a long winding private 
 lane, wholly dark at night and meeting the old 
 " Boston Road " at Forty-Ninth Street. The only 
 1 MS. (W. H. C.) 2 Parton s Greeley, p. 25a 
 
208 MARGARET FULLER OS SOLI. 
 
 regular communication with the thickly-settled 
 parts of that city two miles away was by an 
 hourly stage on the Third Avenue. 1 In this sub 
 urban retirement Margaret Fuller must have been 
 almost as much cut off from the evening life 
 of the metropolis as if she had remained at 
 Jamaica Plain; and this fact doubtless abbrevi 
 ated her stay there; but meanwhile she reveled 
 in its picturesqueness, the wide hall, the piazza, 
 the garden, the trees, the rocks, the gliding sails. 
 She thus describes her position to her brother 
 Eugene, in New Orleans : 
 
 ..." For me, I have never been so well situated. 
 As to a home, the place where we live is old and dilapi 
 dated, but in a situation of great natural loveliness. 
 When there I am perfectly secluded, yet every one I 
 wish to see comes to see me and I can get to the centre 
 of the city in half an hour. The house is kept in a 
 Castle Rackrent style, but there is all affection for me 
 and desire to make me at home, and I do feel so, which 
 could scarcely have been expected from such an arrange 
 ment. My room is delightful ; how I wish you could 
 sit at its window with me and see the sails glide by ! 
 As to the public part, that is entirely satisfactory. I do 
 just as I please, and as much or little as I please, and 
 the editors express themselves perfectly satisfied ; and 
 others say that my pieces tell to a degree I could not 
 expect. I think, too, I shall do better and better. I 
 am truly interested in this great field which opens be 
 fore me, and it is pleasant to be sure of a chance at half 
 a hundred thousand readers. 
 
 1 Greeley s Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 177. 
 
LIFE IN NEW YORK. 209 
 
 " Mr. Greeley I like, nay more, love. He is, in his 
 habits, a plebeian ; in his heart, a noble man. His 
 abilities, in his own way, are great. He believes in 
 mine to a surprising extent. We are true friends." 1 
 
 It was one result of the absorbing cares of her 
 New York life that they left her, from the begin 
 ning, no space for the letters and diaries which 
 before were so abundantly produced. Instead of 
 soliloquizing or talking to her friends, she had to 
 deal with the larger public of the " Tribune." 
 She indeed almost ceased letter - writing, as we 
 know from this brief note to the younger brother 
 to whom she had heretofore written so freely : 
 
 " I am very busy, and I receive, now I am separated 
 from all my friends, letters in great number, which I 
 do not attempt to answer, except in urgent cases. Nor 
 do they expect it, but write to me again and again. 
 They know that if I had the time and strength, which I 
 have not, I must not fritter away my attention on in 
 cessant letter-writing. I must bend it on what is before 
 me, if I wish to learn or to do." 2 
 
 We are therefore left to know her, at this 
 period, mainly through the testimony of Horace 
 Greeley, her chief and her first host. He never 
 could overcome a slight feeling of professional su 
 periority to the woman who could not write more 
 than a column of matter to his ten ; and who was 
 sometimes incapacitated from work by headaches, 
 whereas he plodded on, ill or well, doing always 
 his daily share. But to her public spirit, her love 
 
 i Fuller MSS. ii. 765-767. " Fuller MSS. ii. 749. 
 
 14 
 
210 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 of children, her generous attitude to all comers, he 
 bears explicit testimony in his " Recollections." 
 He describes the involuntary testimony paid to 
 her by the women who visited the Greeley house ; 
 the naturalness with which she took the lead 
 among them without exciting jealousy, and the 
 " almost oriental adoration " which she often 
 inspired among them. He expresses constant 
 amazement at the way in which those who had 
 known her but a day insisted on telling her their 
 secrets and asking counsel. " I judge," he says, 
 " that she was the repository of more confidences 
 than any contemporary, and I am sure no one had 
 ever reason to regret the imprudent precipitancy 
 of these trusts." Chambermaids and seamstresses 
 came to her and unburdened their souls ; and all 
 children loved her. " As the elephant s trunk," 
 Mr. Greeley says, " serves either to rend a limb 
 from the oak or pick up a pin, so her wonderful 
 range of capacities, of experiences, of sympathies, 
 seemed adapted to every condition and phase of 
 humanity." He speaks especially of her " mar 
 velous powers of personation and mimicry ; " 
 thinks she might, had she chosen, have been the 
 first actress of the century, but declares that she 
 seemed quite absorbed, while living, in the simple 
 effort to leave some small corner of the world 
 better than she found it. 1 
 
 She did not, however, dwell permanently at the 
 house of Horace Greeley, but afterwards at sev- 
 1 Greeley s Recollections, p. 181. 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN NEW YORK. 211 
 
 eral different abodes, nearer the " Tribune " office. 
 She resided, for a month or two, in the family of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Cranch ; having, during a part of 
 this time, the companionship of a favorite friend, 
 Miss Caroline Sturgis, with whom she enjoyed to 
 the utmost the social and artistic delights of New 
 York. We find her writing in the " Tribune " 
 about picture-galleries, the theatre, the Philhar 
 monic concerts, the German opera, Ole Bull s 
 performances on the violin, and Mr. Hudson s lec 
 ture on Shakespeare. Later she had lodgings for 
 a longtime at the house of Mrs. McDowell, where 
 she had opportunity to give receptions to her lit 
 erary friends and to preside as a gracious hostess 
 with a white japonica in her hair. She did most 
 of her writing and proof-reading at feme, not 
 keeping regular office-hours : and she evidently 
 worked very hard in her own way, which was not 
 always Mr. Greeley s method. Her researches 
 into poverty and crime took many of her leisure 
 hours ; and she sometimes, in the prosecution of 
 these researches, stayed a day or two with Mrs. 
 Child, who, like herself, was equally ready to be 
 absorbed in the music of the spheres and in the 
 sorrows of the streets. Her practical aims were 
 at this time well described in a letter written to 
 her old friend Miss Mary Rotch of New Bedford, 
 Massachusetts, one of those saints who are " Aunt 
 Mary " to a wide circle : 
 
212 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 "NEW YORK, January 15, 1845. 
 
 " ALWAYS DEAR AUNT MARY, ... This stopped 
 me, just as I had begun to visit the institutions here, of 
 a remedial and benevolent kind. So soon as I am quite 
 well, I shall resume the survey. Mr. Greeley is desir 
 ous I should make it, and make what use of it I think 
 best, in the paper. I go with William C. [Channing]. 
 It is a great pleasure to us to cooperate in these ways. 
 I do not expect to do much, practically, for the suffer 
 ing, but having such an organ of expression [the New 
 York Tribune ], any suggestions that are well grounded 
 may be of use. I have always felt great interest for 
 those women who are trampled in the mud to gratify 
 the brute appetites of men, and wished I might be 
 brought naturally into contact with them. Now I am 
 so, I think I shall have much that is interesting to tell 
 you when we meet. 
 
 "I go on very moderately, for my strength is not 
 great, and I am now connected with a person who is 
 anxious I should not overtask it ; yet I shall do more 
 for the paper by and by. At present, beside the time 
 I spend in looking round and examining my new field, 
 I am publishing a volume of which you will receive a 
 copy, called Woman in the Nineteenth Century ; a 
 part of my available time is spent in attending to it as 
 it goes through the press ; for really the work seems 
 but half done when your book is written. I like being 
 here ; the streams of life flow free, and I learn much 
 I feel so far satisfied as to have laid my plans to stay a 
 year and a half, if not longer, and to have told Mr. G. 
 that I probably shall. That is long enough for a mor 
 tal to look forward and not too long, as I must look 
 forward in order to get what I want from Europe. 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN NEW YORK. 213 
 
 " Mr. Greeley is a man of genuine excellence, honor 
 able, benevolent, of an uncorrupted disposition, and, in 
 his way, of even great abilities." 1 
 
 The breadth of her work in practical directions 
 the proof that she was now obtaining what she 
 had always sought, a working-place for something 
 beyond self-culture is to be seen in the very ti 
 tles of her papers in the " Tribune." She wrote, 
 Mr. Parton tells us, about three articles a week, 
 these discussing such themes as u The Rich Man," 
 " The Poor Man," " Woman in Poverty," " What 
 fits a Man to be a Voter ? " " The Condition of 
 the Blind," " Prison Discipline," " Appeal for an 
 Asylum for discharged Female Convicts," " Po 
 liteness to the Poor," " Capital Punishment." 
 Then there are Meditations for special days, as 
 Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year s, St. Valen 
 tine s Day, the Fourth of July, the first of Au 
 gust ; these having always some practical bearing. 
 Thus her St. Valentine s Eve was passed at the 
 Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane, and she de 
 scribes it. Mr. Greeley thus testifies in regard to 
 this practical tendency of her work : 
 
 " For every effort to limit vice, ignorance, and mis 
 ery she had a ready, eager ear, and a willing hand ; so 
 that her charities large in proportion to her slender 
 means were signally enhanced by the fitness and 
 fullness of her wise and generous counsel, the readiness 
 and emphasis with which she, publicly and privately, 
 commended to those richer than herself any object de- 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 43. 
 
214 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 serving their alms. She had once attended, with other 
 noble women, a gathering of outcasts of their sex ; 
 and, being asked how they appeared to her, replied, 
 As women like myself, save that they are victims of 
 wrong and misfortune. No project of moral or social 
 reform ever failed to command her generous, cheer 
 ing benediction, even when she could not share the 
 sanguine hopes of its authors : she trusted that these 
 might somehow benefit the objects of their self-sacrifice, 
 and felt confident that they must, at all events, be 
 blessed in their own moral natures. I doubt that our 
 various benevolent and reformatory associations had 
 ever before, or have ever since received such wise, dis 
 criminating commendation to the favor of the rich, as 
 they did from her pen during her connection with the 
 1 Tribune. " 1 
 
 Her sympathy was strong for these women, be 
 trayed into a life of crime by the sins of others ; 
 and Mr. Greeley expresses confidently his belief 
 that "If she had been born to large fortune, a 
 house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to 
 return to the ways of virtue would have been one 
 of her most cherished and first realized concep 
 tions." 2 And to show the strength and discrim 
 ination with which she handled another difficult 
 class of questions, I will quote a passage that par 
 ticularly pleased Mr. Greeley, in regard to the 
 vexed question of Irish immigration : 
 
 " When we consider all the fire which glows so untama- 
 
 1 Greeley s Recollections, pp. 179, 180. 
 
 2 Parton s Greeley, p. 260. 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN NEW YORK. 215 
 
 bly in Irish veins, the character of her people, consid 
 ering the circumstances, almost miraculous in its good 
 ness, we cannot forbear, notwithstanding all the tem 
 porary ills they aid in here, to give them all a welcome 
 to our shores. Those ills we need not enumerate ; they 
 are known to all, and we rank among them what others 
 would not, that by their ready service to do all the hard 
 work they make it easier for the rest of the population, 
 to grow effeminate and help the country to grow too 
 fast. But that is her destiny, to grow too fast ; it is 
 useless talking against it. Their extreme ignorance, 
 their blind devotion to a priesthood, their pliancy in the 
 hands of demagogues, threaten continuance of these ills ; 
 yet, on the other hand, we must regard them as a most 
 valuable element in the new race. They are looked 
 upon with contempt for their want of aptitude at learn 
 ing new things, their ready and ingenious lying, their 
 eye-service. These are the faults of an oppressed race 
 which must require the aid of better circumstances 
 through two or three generations to eradicate. Their 
 virtues are their own, they are many, genuine, and 
 deeply rooted. Can an impartial observer fail to ad 
 mire their truth to domestic ties, their power of gener 
 ous bounty and more generous gratitude, their indefati 
 gable good-humor (for ages of wrong which have driven 
 them to so many acts of desperation could never sour 
 their blood at its source), their ready wit, their elasticity 
 of nature ? They are at bottom one of the best nations 
 in the world. Would they were welcomed here, not 
 to work, merely, but to intelligent sympathy and efforts, 
 both patient and ardent, for the education of their chil 
 dren. No sympathy could be better deserved, no ef 
 forts wiselier timed." 
 
216 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 But while her articles on public questions, 
 signed always with an asterisk (*), were those 
 most read in New York, it was her literary criti 
 cism that traveled farthest and brought forth 
 most praise or blame. Her first paper in the 
 " Tribune " was a review of Emerson s " Essays," 
 which appeared December 7, 1844. 1 Here she 
 was, in a manner, on her own ground ; but she 
 soon had to plunge, so far as literature was con 
 cerned, into a sea of troubles. She entered on her 
 work at a time when the whole standard of liter 
 ary criticism, not only in America but in England, 
 needed mending. The tomahawk theory still 
 prevailed among editors and even among authors ; 
 men revenged literary slights by personal abuse ; 
 the desire to " make an example " of a person or 
 to "get even with him" had not then vanished 
 from literature, as it has not yet disappeared from 
 politics. Poe s miscellaneous writings were full 
 of this sort of thing ; Lowell s " Fable for Critics " 
 was not at all free from it. At such a time it 
 was no easy thing for a woman to pass from a 
 comparatively secluded life in Boston and her cir 
 cle of personal friends in the " Dial," to what then 
 seemed the metropolitan life of New York and 
 the hand-to-mouth existence of a daily newspaper. 
 
 To the bad tendencies of the time her work 
 furnished an excellent antidote. From some ex 
 periences of the daily journal she recoiled at first 
 and perhaps always; the break-neck speed, the 
 1 Parton s Greeley,-p. 255. 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN NEW YORK. 217 
 
 necessity of reviewing every book while fresh, no 
 matter though the calm reflection of many days 
 may be needed to do it justice. Horace Greeley, 
 a born gladiator, whose words came swift and 
 hard as blows, records his own impatience at her 
 too cautious habits. If an author s case was press 
 ing, he thought she should sit up an hour later 
 that night and give him the finishing stroke ; and 
 the papers that brought her most criticism were 
 those in which she yielded to these importunities, 
 against her own better judgment. 
 
 The editorial " we " brings its temptations alike 
 to women and men ; and sometimes her very ut 
 terances of deprecation were ill-expressed and 
 taken for new assertion of herself. When she 
 denied to Lowell the genuine poetic gift and said 
 that she must assert this " although to the grief 
 of many friends and the disgust of more," it was 
 unquestionably meant as a bit of sincere humility, 
 and she must have been amazed to find it taken 
 as a phrase of conceit. But she kept higher laws 
 than she broke. In that epoch of strife which I 
 so well remember, that storm-and-stress period, 
 that Sturm-und-Drangzeit, she held the critical 
 sway of the most powerful American journal with 
 unimpaired dignity and courage. By comparing 
 a single page of her collected works with any 
 page, taken almost at random, of Edgar Poe s, we 
 see the difference more clearly than it can be ex 
 pressed in words. On this we have the distinct 
 testimony of the most mercilessly honest of all 
 critics, Horace Greeley: 
 
218 MARGARET FULLER OS SOL I. 
 
 " But, one characteristic of her writings I feel bound 
 to commend, their absolute truthfulness. She never 
 asked how this would sound, nor whether that would do, 
 nor what would be the effect of saying anything ; but 
 simply, Is it the truth ? Is it such as the public should 
 know ? And if her judgment answered, Yes, she ut 
 tered it ; no matter what turmoil it might excite, nor what 
 odium it might draw down on her own head. Perfect 
 conscientiousness was an unfailing characteristic of her 
 literary efforts. Even the severest of her critiques, 
 that on Longfellow s Poems, for which an impulse in 
 personal pique has been alleged, I happen with cer 
 tainty to know had no such origin. When I first 
 handed her the book to review, she excused herself, as 
 signing the wide divergence of her views of poetry from 
 those of the author and his school, as her reason. She 
 thus induced me to attempt the task of reviewing it 
 myself. But day by day sped by, and I could find no 
 hour that was not absolutely required for the perform 
 ance of some duty that would not be put off, nor turned 
 over to another. At length I carried the book back to 
 her in utter despair of ever finding an hour in which 
 even to look through it ; and, at my renewed and ear 
 nest request, she reluctantly undertook its discussion. 
 The statement of these facts is but an act of justice to 
 her memory." 1 
 
 Meanwhile, she was always saving up money 
 for her long-desired trip to Europe ; though tins 
 fund was again and again depleted by the needs of 
 her family and friends. Several hundred dollars 
 went at once, for instance, to publish for a Danish 
 
 1 Parton s Greeley, p. 259- 
 
BUSINESS LIFE IN NEW YORK. 219 
 
 exile, Harro Hairing, a novel called " Dolores," 
 which the publisher had been frightened out of 
 issuing at the last moment, on theological grounds, 
 and which never yielded a dollar to anybody. At 
 last, receiving an invitation from her friends, 
 Marcus and Rebecca Spring, to accompany them 
 and their young son on their voyage, she left New 
 York after twenty months of residence ; " modi 
 fying but not terminating her connection with 
 the Tribune, " in Mr. Greeley s phrase, and 
 sailed for England on the first of August, 1846. 
 
XIV. 
 
 EUROPEAN TKAVEL. 
 (1346-1847.) 
 
 THIS was Margaret Fuller s last note to Mr. 
 Emerson before her departure for Europe : 
 
 "NEW YORK, 1 5th July, 1846. 
 
 " I leave Boston in the Cambria, 1st August. Shall 
 be at home at my mother s in Cambridgeport the morn 
 ing of the 30th July. Can see you either that day or 
 the next there, as I shall not go out. Please write to 
 care of Richard [Fuller], 6 State Street, Boston, which 
 day you will come. 
 
 " I should like to take the letter to Carlyle, and wish 
 you would name the Springs in it. Mr. S. has been 
 one of those much helped by Mr. C. I should like to 
 see Tennyson, but doubt whether Mr. C. would take 
 any trouble about it. I take a letter to Miss Barrett. 
 I am likely to see Browning through her. It would do 
 no harm to mention it, though. I have done much to 
 make him known here." * 
 
 Sailing on the appointed day, she landed at 
 
 Liverpool, August 12th. A note-book lies before 
 
 me, kept by her during the first weeks of her 
 
 European life. It contains hints that were often 
 
 IMS. 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 221 
 
 amplified for her " Tribune " letters ; but for my 
 self, I always find the first note-book more inter 
 esting. " Memory," says the poet Gray, " is ten 
 times worse than a lead pencil," and it is really 
 of more value to know what struck a traveler 
 at the outset than what was afterwards added 
 to his knowledge. Nothing tests one s habits of 
 mind and independence of character like the first 
 glimpse of a foreign country ; and it must be re 
 membered that Europe was far more foreign to 
 Americans forty years ago than to-day. Omitting 
 a few preliminary passages, the note-book goes on 
 as follows, being here printed precisely as it is 
 written ; the exact dates being rarely given in 
 it, but the time being the latter part of August, 
 1846, and thenceforward : 
 
 " Went to the Paradise-street chapel to hear James 
 Martineau. His over-intellectual appearance. His con 
 servative tendencies, liberality only in spots. Mr. Ire 
 land, a most liberal man, a devout reader of the Dial. 
 His early record of Waldo [Emerson]. Delight at see 
 ing these impressions confirmed by the stand he has 
 taken since. Mr. Ireland, declining all stimulants on 
 the most ultra ground, takes four or five strong cups of 
 tea, which he does not need. Monday morning. Me 
 chanics Institute, method of instruction seventeen 
 hundred pupils. Provision for the girls. Fine building 
 bought for them, at seven thousand pounds. Woman 
 nominally, not really, at the head. Royal Institute. 
 Series of works of early Italian art collected by Ros- 
 coe. Statue of Roscoe by Chantrey. 
 
 " Afternoon. Sweet place on the banks of the 
 
222 MARGARET FULLER OS SOLI. 
 
 sey, called the Dingle. Feeling of the man of let 
 ters toward the man of money. Park laid out by Mr. 
 Gates for use of the public, a very good means of doing 
 good. Marriage of Mr. J. at Dr. H. s. Peculiar man 
 agement of Fleas ! Mrs. H. the translator of * Spiri- 
 dion. Fine heads of Godwin, Herwegh, Hoffmann von 
 Fallersleben, Rachel. Splendid full length of Goethe, 
 which I want for myself. Mem. to get a fine head of 
 Rachel for Caroline. Herwegh, too, perhaps. Head 
 of Catharina of Russia. Colossal and Ideal head of 
 Beethoven. 
 
 " Early letters of Carlyle, written in the style of the 
 * Life of Schiller, occasionally swelling into that of 
 Dr. Johnson. Very low views of life, comfortable and 
 prudential advice as to marriage, envy of riches, thirst 
 for fame avowed as a leading motive. 
 
 " Tuesday. Pay up bill. Great expensiveness of 
 the Adelphi. Route from Liverpool to Lancaster. 
 From the latter canal boat to Kendal. Beautiful pic 
 ture presented by the young Bengalese, our fellow- 
 traveler. Cordial talk of English gentleman. Silly 
 German, with his horrid chat and smirk. His foolish 
 way of addressing an intelligent child. Kendal, the 
 Castle. To Ambleside. Drive presents a landscape for 
 once, lit up by sunshine as exquisite as I had hoped 
 even. Man and Nature go hand in hand here in Eng 
 land. Blue bell, Campanula. 
 
 " The fuchsia grows here to great size in the open 
 air. Directions for its culture, note in letter to mother. 
 Make a bed of bog-earth and sand, plant the fuchsias, 
 and give them constantly a great deal of water this 
 ; * all that is needful. 
 
 * Ambleside. Miss Martineau s house. The look of 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 223 
 
 health in her face, but a harried, excited, over-stimu 
 lated state of mind. Home at the confectioner s, a sweet 
 little English home, with modest, gentle, English Jane 
 to wait. Her courtesy about Eddie [Edward Spring]. 
 Many such little things show us how natural is the dis 
 gust of the English to the bad manners and careless 
 habits they find in America. Their ways of driving over 
 these excellent roads are even amusing from their care. 
 " Evening at Mrs. Derby s, sister-in-law of Sir Hum 
 phrey. Her mother, aged seventy-six, a fine specimen 
 of what I have heard of the Scotch lady. Next day 
 drive with Mrs. P. Handsome dwellings on the banks 
 of Windermere. Evening at Miss M. s. Mr. Milman, 
 Dr. Gregory. Stories about Hartley Coleridge, and 
 account of Sara C., author of l Phantasmion. Note 
 the chapter she has added to the Aids to Reflection 
 now about to be published. 
 
 "It seems the cause of Coleridge s separation from 
 his wife and family was wholly with himself : because 
 his opium and his indolence prevented his making any 
 exertions to support them. That burden fell on 
 Southey, who, without means, except from his pen, sus 
 tained the four persons thus added to his family. Just 
 
 as I might do for if I would. Hartley Coleridge s 
 
 bad habits naturally inherited from his father. Waiter 
 offers to keep the talking gentleman to board him, 
 to clothe him. Oh don t, don t take away the talking 
 gentleman ! How wicked to transmit these morbid 
 states to children ! Mr. Milman s hard and worldly esti 
 mate. Introduced to Dr. Gregory. A man of truly 
 large, benevolent mind. 
 
 " Next day Grasmere, Rydal Mount. I was disap 
 pointed in the habitation of Wordsworth. It is almost 
 
224 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 the least beautiful spot hereabout. Remarks of our 
 landlady about TV. how pleasing, constantly ending with 
 * And Mrs. Wordsworth, too. And really, ma am, I 
 think it is because he is so kind a neighbor. 
 
 " Winderinere. The professed magnetizer with his 
 beaux yeux and extreme sensibility, unable to confer 
 benefit without receiving injury, gave me yet another 
 view of this grand subject." l 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, specimens, we under 
 stand, of the first English hairy stocracy, spoken of as 
 something extra of their class, and, indeed, they 
 were very liberal. Mr. B. much engaged in prison and 
 other reforms. Owns a place in Athens, and lives there 
 often. 
 
 " Sunday evening with B. s and G. s. Gossip about 
 the upper classes, but in a good spirit. It amused me 
 to hear the mechanical, measured way in which they 
 talked of character. With all the abuses of America, 
 we have one advantage which outweighs them all. 
 Most persons reject the privilege, but it is, really, pos 
 sible for one to grow. 
 
 " Monday. Spent the morning in finishing letter 
 for the steamer. Afternoon on the lake of Grasmere. 
 Wet feet. Extraordinary kindness of the ladies of the 
 Clan Campbell. Easedale, Loughrigg, a most enchant 
 ing place, dear to Wordsworth. 
 
 " Thursday. Romantic story of our landlady s hus 
 band, quite in my line. Walk along the hills, little 
 ravine, arched bridge, and brook rushing beneath it. 
 Delightful walk over the fields past Fox How. Speak 
 
 1 This apparently refers to the celebrated H. G. Atkinson, who 
 converted Miss Martineau to his opinions. Another account of 
 him by Miss Fuller will be found in her Memoirs, ii. 173. 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 225 
 
 of Dr. Arnold and the justice done him all around. 
 Said to have made a happy and equal marriage. Visit 
 to Wordsworth. Evening at the Greys . Cultivated 
 and liberal mind of the manufacturer. Ditto of the 
 country gentleman. Countess Hahn Hahn had just 
 been at Ambleside. 
 
 " Wednesday. To Langdale. Scaurfell the scene of 
 the Excursion. Rothay church. First fall lunch in 
 the farm-house. Dungeon Ghyll Force. Most en 
 chanting view at last. As fine a day as I ever had. Ac 
 count in evening by tedious Miss Briggs of the ease 
 with which one may be lost in the mist. This -26th 
 was Eddie s birthday. 
 
 " Thursday. Farewell to Ambleside. A happy 
 eight days we have had here." l 
 
 Portions of a more complete narrative, based on 
 these sketches, will be found in her " Memoirs," 2 
 and other portions in her " Tribune " letters. 
 The instances of alternate contraction and ex 
 pansion, in these ampler narratives, are very 
 interesting and characteristic, and the total im 
 pression of truthfulness and accuracy is strong. 
 There are no signs of retouching for literary ef 
 fect, but in many cases the single word of mem 
 orandum suggests a paragraph, while on other 
 points caution or courtesy dictated a reticence 
 which it is now needless to maintain. 
 
 Here is a passage from her Edinburgh diary. 
 David Scott, whose pictures interested her so 
 
 * MS. Note-Book. 
 
 2 ii. 171. The Tribune letters may be found in At Home and 
 Abroad. 
 
 15 
 
226 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 much, painted a striking portrait of Emerson, 
 which is now in the Concord, Massachusetts, 
 public library : 
 
 [September, 1846.] " At Robert Chambers s. Saw 
 there beautiful book of Highlanders in their costumes. 
 Hopes of chemistry as to making food. Remark of R. 
 
 C. as to the clumsiness of nature s means of providing 
 for that purpose, etc. Mrs. C. with her fifteen children 
 and three pair of twins among them. 
 
 " Monday. Visit to the Bank of Scotland. To [Da 
 vid] Scott s room. He is a severe, earnest man with 
 high imaginations. I liked him much, and his pictures 
 from him, though there was not one which, taken by 
 itself, could be called really good. 
 
 " Note here, not that it has to do anything with these 
 matters, but because I happen to think of it here, that 
 the tune of Scots wha hae is, according to tradition, 
 the original one of Hey Tutti Taiti, to which the 
 Scots did actually march to the field of Bannockburn. 
 Shoemaker amazed at the N. Y. [New York] shoes. 
 Evening at Mrs. Crowe s. S. B. [Samuel Brown.] 
 
 D. S. [David Scott.] Mr. De Quincey. Pleasant flow 
 of talk, but the Opium Eater did not get into his gor 
 geous style. Good story told by S. B. about Burns. 
 Write it out for Tribune and quote the pertinent 
 verse. 1 I was very sorry to leave Edina now ; might 
 have had such good times with the two friends." 
 
 Her view of Mary Queen of Scots is put in 
 too striking a manner to be omitted : 
 
 [September, 1846.] " Holyrood. Prince LabanoflL 
 
 1 This story may be found in Memoirs, ii. 177 ; and the Tribune 
 letter in At Home and Abroad, p. 139. 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 227 
 
 The world would not suffer that poor beautiful girl to 
 have the least good time, and now cannot rest for cham 
 pioning her. Singular misery of the lot of a woman 
 with whom all men were dying in love, except her two 
 last husbands ; and with the first, a poor sickly child, 
 she had no happiness. A woman the object of desire 
 to so many, yet never suffered to become the parent of 
 more than two children, and from those separated in so 
 brief a space after birth, and never permitted to take the 
 least comfort in them afterwards. Picture of Montrose 
 charmed my eye. Some noble Vandykes. A full 
 length of George by Wilkie. Hateful old John Knox, 
 with a wife like himself. Came up the Canongate. 
 Were ever people so villainously dirty ? " J 
 
 During her tour in Scotland it is interesting to 
 see how lightly she passes by the night when she 
 was lost on Ben Lomond, of which so full an ac 
 count is given in her " Memoirs : " 2 
 
 [September, 1846.] " Inversnaid. In the boat to 
 Rowardennan. Loch Lomond. Boatmen. A fine 
 race. Gaelic songs. Relate their import. Undoubting 
 faith of these people in the story of The Lady of the 
 Lake/ Oh, yes, said the boatmen, we know they are 
 true, having been handed down from father to son for 
 so many generations. At Rowardennan. Down in 
 the boat to Luss. Character of the place. Cleanliness 
 for once. The minister, a * ceevil hamely man. The 
 Manse. Sunset on Ben Lomond. I was alone. Evening. 
 
 1 MS. Note-Book. There is a passage somewhat similar, but 
 not nearly so well stated, reprinted from the Tribune, in At Home 
 ttnd Abroad, p. 149. 
 
 2 Memoirs, ii. 178; also, At Home and Abroad, p, 153. 
 
228 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 Dance of the reapers in the barn. Highland strathspey 
 and fling ? Enormous price of fruit in Edinburgh ; total 
 want of it in the country. Quote of Sir W. Scott the 
 feelings of Fitz James about treachery, etc., in his 
 dream ; speak of his character and quote concluding 
 lines in * Lady of the Lake. 
 
 " Observation on figures of men and women engaged 
 in the Highland dances. Labor alone will not develop 
 the form. 
 
 "Next day. Saturday, 12th September. Ascent of 
 Ben Lomond. Lost, and pass the night on a heathery 
 mountain. All the adventures of the eventful twenty- 
 hours to be written out in full. Love Marcus and Re 
 becca [Spring] forever. 
 
 " Sunday. Sick all day from fatigue or excitement. 
 Dinner given by M. [Marcus Spring] to the shepherds. 
 Their natural politeness and propriety of feeling. Pe 
 ter Cameron. Monday. Still ill, but walked out in 
 the afternoon and saw the purple hills and lake, with 
 what delightful emotions. I seemed to have become 
 acquainted with their genius as I could not in any other 
 way. Inquiring lady thought it must have been l awk 
 ward for me on the hill between 12 and 1 ! Tuesday. 
 Leave Rowardennan. Steamboat with its execrable fid 
 dle, a I ordinaire. Tarbet. Rowed along lochs through 
 pass of Glencrae to Cairndow. Boat to Inverary on 
 Loch Fine. Night there. Read l Legend of Montrose. 
 
 "Wednesday morning. Duke of Argyle s place. 
 Highland servant in full costume, stupid as the stones 
 he trod on. Noble park. Black Highland cattle. 
 Cross in the market-place from lona." 
 
 Margaret Fuller s note-book closes abruptly, 
 like that of many a traveler, just as she reaches 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 229 
 
 London, where it would be the most interesting. 
 Her farther progress can be traced by her letters 
 to the " Tribune," which have been reprinted by 
 her brother in the volume of her works called 
 "At Home and Abroad." Over this period I 
 shall pass rapidly, as it is very amply treated 
 in the printed " Memoirs." She had, of course, 
 that peculiar delight of the cultivated American 
 in London, where, as Willis said, he sees whole 
 shelves of his library walking about in coats and 
 gowns. With her boundless love of knowledge, 
 and the scantiness of libraries and museums in the 
 America of that day, she was charmed by the 
 centralization of London ; the concentration in one 
 spot of treasures such as may by and by be found 
 scattered through many cities in America, but will 
 never be brought together in one. She saw the 
 heroes of that day, some of whom are heroes still : 
 Wordsworth, Dr. Chalmers, Andrew Combe, the 
 Howitts, Dr. Southwood Smith, De Quincey, Jo 
 anna Baillie. Browning, just married, had gone 
 to Italy. Her descriptions of Carlyle 1 are al 
 most as spicy as Carlyle s own letters, and she dis 
 misses Lewes in almost as trenchant a manner as 
 that in which Carlyle dismissed Heraud. Best of 
 all for her, she made acquaintance with Mazzini, 
 whom she was soon to meet again in Italy. She 
 was very cordially received, her two volumes of 
 " Miscellanies " having just been favorably re 
 viewed by the English press ; she was inundated 
 
 1 Memoirs, ii. 184. 
 
230 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 with invitations and opportunities, and could only 
 mourn, like so many Americans since her day, that 
 these delightful hospitalities encroached sadly upon 
 the time to be given to galleries and museums. 
 
 In Paris she saw La Mennais, Beranger, and 
 George Sand ; went constantly to the lectures, gal 
 leries, and Chamber of Deputies ; saw Rachel act 
 and heard Chopin play. She found her " Essay 
 on American Literature " translated and pub 
 lished in " La Revue Inde*pendante," though the 
 satisfaction was mitigated by having her name 
 announced as Elizabeth. She worked away at 
 learning colloquial French until she spoke it flu 
 ently, though not accurately ; and her teacher 
 pleased her by saying that her accent was like 
 that of an Italian, though this from French lips 
 can never be much of a compliment. Yet with 
 her deep love for Italy she was probably pleased 
 at the thought of speaking French like an Ital 
 ian, just as Englishmen are said to be pleased at 
 speaking it like Englishmen which, to do them 
 justice, they usually accomplish. On February 
 25, 1847, she left Paris for Italy, and in early 
 spring established herself for a time in Rome. 
 In summer she went to the different Italian cities, 
 then to Switzerland. In October she settled her 
 self for the winter in Rome, whose wonderful in 
 spiration she profoundly felt. She says of her 
 own first experiences there, " All mean things 
 were forgotten in the joy that rushed over me 
 like a flood." She felt, as so many Americans 
 
EUROPEAN TRAVEL. 231 
 
 feel in Europe, an impulse to separate herself 
 for a time from all English-speaking people and 
 plunge into a wholly untried atmosphere. She 
 had new and interesting friends, such as the Mi 
 lanese Madame Arconati, Marchesa Visconti ; and 
 a Polish lady, born Princess Radzivill. But un 
 like, alas ! the majority of Americans in Europe, 
 her whole sympathy was with the party of prog 
 ress, and the rapid unrolling of events in 1848 
 made an occasion for her, " such a time as I have 
 always dreamed of," she writes. She saw the up 
 rising against Austria ; the Austrian arms burned 
 in the public square. She was herself poor, a 
 stranger remote from home ; but she was for a 
 time better in health than since she was a child, 
 and her whole heart was with the Italian revolu 
 tion. When Mazzini returned from his seven 
 teen years of exile, she was able to stand by his 
 side. She saw the republic established ; she saw 
 it fall. In April, 1849, Rome was besieged by the 
 French army. Yet already a deeper thread than 
 even the welfare of Italy had mingled itself in her 
 life. In December, 1847, she had been secretly 
 married ; in September, 1848, her child had been 
 born. But for this climax of her life I must turn 
 to the narratives of others. 
 
XV. 
 
 MARRIAGE AND MOTHEEHOOD. 
 
 (1847-1850.) 
 
 MARGARET FULLER S profoundest feeling about 
 marriage and motherhood had already been re 
 corded for years in a fragment of her journal. 
 With strong, firm touches, in this confession, she 
 balances what she has against what she would 
 fain possess ; and visibly tries to make the best of 
 the actual : 
 
 " I have no home on the earth, and [yet] I can think 
 of one that would have a degree of beautiful harmony 
 with my inward life. 
 
 " But, driven from home to home as a Renouncer, I 
 get the picture and the poetry of each. Keys of gold, 
 silver, iron, and lead are in my casket. 
 
 " No one loves me. But I love many a good deal, 
 and see some way into their eventual beauty. I am 
 myself growing better and shall by and by be a worthy 
 object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or 
 need forbearance. Meanwhile I have no fetter on me, 
 no engagement, and as I look on others, almost every 
 other, can I fail to feel this a great privilege ? I have 
 no way tied my hands or feet. And yet the varied 
 calls on my sympathy have been such that I hope not 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 233 
 
 to be made partial, cold, or ignorant by this isolation. I 
 have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this 
 experience, that it has seemed the want of it must par 
 alyze me. But now as I look on these lovely children 
 of a human birth, what slow and neutralizing cares they 
 bring with them to the mother ! The children of the 
 muse come quicker, with less pain and disgust, rest 
 more lightly on the bosom and have "... [here the 
 fragment ends.] l 
 
 It may naturally be asked why, with such a 
 true woman s longing for home and children, Mar 
 garet Fuller had never been married. Loved 
 "with oriental adoration," in Horace Greeley s 
 phrase, by many women, she had also been loved 
 sincerely by many men, while some of each sex 
 had no doubt disliked her. Her letters to the 
 men with whom she was, in maturer years, most 
 intimate are singularly free, I will not merely say 
 from coquettishness or sentimentality, but from 
 anything that could fall short of her high stand 
 ard of friendship. There is, however, no question 
 that she had in early life at least one deep expe-- 
 rience of personal emotion, followed by a reaction 
 of disappointment. It is a satisfaction to know 
 that the same letters which prove this letters 
 which I am not authorized to publish, nor should 
 I wish to do it show her only in an unselfish 
 and generous aspect, while they bring her nearer 
 to us by proving that even she, with all her Ro 
 man ambition, was still " a very woman " at heart, 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
234 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 With this retrospect for a background, the mar 
 ried life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli may now be 
 studied. It will be portrayed, so far as possible, 
 from original documents ; the first place being 
 given to a letter, relating to her, not included in 
 the " Memoirs," from Mr. Cass, then American 
 charge d affaires at Rome, and one of the few in 
 whom she put confidence, at the great crisis of 
 her life. The letter is addressed to Mrs. W. El- 
 lery Channing, of Concord, Massachusetts, who, 
 as has already been said, was the younger sister 
 of Madame Ossoli. 
 
 "LEGATION DBS &TATS-UNIS D AMERIQUE. 
 ROME, May 10, 1851. 
 
 " MADAM, I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt 
 of your letter of the th ult., and to express my regret 
 that the weak state of my eyesight has prevented me 
 from giving it an earlier reply. 
 
 "In compliance with your request, I have the honor 
 to state, succinctly, the circumstances connected with my 
 acquaintance with the late Madame Ossoli, your de 
 ceased sister, during her residence in Rome. 
 
 " In the month of April, 1849, Rome, as you are no 
 doubt aware, was placed in a state of siege by the ap 
 proach of the French army. It was filled at that time 
 with exiles and fugitives who had been contending for 
 years, from Milan, in the North, to Palermo, in the 
 South, for the Republican cause : and when the gates 
 were closed, it was computed that there were, of Italians 
 alone, thirteen thousand refugees within the walls of 
 the city, all of whom had been expelled from adjacent 
 states, till Rome became their last rallying-point, and to 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 235 
 
 many their final resting-place. Among these was to be 
 seen every variety of age, sentiment, and condition, 
 striplings and blanched heads ; wild, visionary enthusi 
 asts ; grave, heroic men, who, in the struggle for free 
 dom, had ventured all and lost all ; nobles and beggars ; 
 bandits, felons, and brigands. Great excitement natu 
 rally existed ; and, in the general apprehension which 
 pervaded all classes that acts of personal violence and 
 outrage would soon be committed, the foreign residents, 
 especially, found themselves placed in an alarming situ 
 ation. 
 
 "On the 30th of April the first engagement took 
 place between the French and Roman troops, and a few 
 days subsequently I visited several of my countrymen, 
 at their request, to concert measures for their safety. 
 Hearing on that occasion, for the first time, of Miss 
 Fuller s presence in Rome, and of her solitary mode of 
 life, I ventured to call upon her, offering my services in 
 any manner that might conduce to her comfort and se 
 curity. She received me with much kindness, and thus 
 our acquaintance commenced. Her residence, on the 
 Piazza Barberini, being considered an insecure abode, 
 she removed to the Casa Dies, which was occupied by 
 several American families. 
 
 " In the engagements [which succeeded] between the 
 Roman and French troops, the wounded of the former 
 were brought into the city, and disposed throughout the 
 different hospitals, which were under the superintend 
 ence of several ladies of high rank, who had formed 
 themselves into associations, the better to insure care 
 and attention to these unfortunate men. Miss Fuller 
 took an active part in this noble work, and the greater 
 portion of her time, during the entire siege, was passed 
 
236 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 in the Hospital of the Trinity of the Pilgrims, which 
 was placed under her direction, in attendance upon its 
 inmates. 
 
 " The weather was intensely hot ; her health was fee 
 ble and delicate ; the dead and dying were around her 
 in every form of pain and horror ; but she never shrank 
 from the duty she had assumed. Her heart and soul 
 were in the cause for which these men had fought, and 
 all was done that woman could do to comfort them in 
 their sufferings. I have seen the eyes of the dying, as 
 she moved among them, extended upon opposite beds, 
 meet in commendation of her unwearied kindness ; and 
 the friends of those who then passed away may derive 
 consolation from the assurance that nothing of tender 
 ness and attention was wanting to soothe their last mo 
 ments. And I have heard many of those who recovered 
 speak with all the passionate fervor of the Italian na 
 ture of her, whose sympathy and compassion through 
 out their long illness fulfilled all the offices of love and 
 affection. Mazzini, the chief of the Triumvirate, who, 
 better than any man in Rome, knew her worth, often 
 expressed to me his admiration of her high character ; 
 and the Princess Belgiojoso, to whom was assigned the 
 charge of the Papal Palace on the Quirinal, which was 
 converted on this occasion into a hospital, was enthusi 
 astic in her praise. And in a letter which I received 
 not long since from this lady, who is gaining the bread 
 of an exile by teaching languages in Constantinople, 
 she alludes with much feeling to the support afforded 
 by Miss Fuller to the Republican party in Italy. Here, 
 in Rome, she is still spoken of in terms of regard and 
 endearment ; and the announcement of her death was 
 received with a degree of sorrow which is not often b& 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 237 
 
 stowed upon a foreigner, and especially one of a differ 
 ent faith. 
 
 " On the 29th of June the bombardment from the 
 French camp was very heavy, shells and grenades fall 
 ing from every part of the city. In the afternoon of 
 the 30th I received a brief note from Miss Fuller, re 
 questing me to call at her residence. I did so without 
 delay, and found her lying on a sofa, pale and trem 
 bling, evidently much exhausted. She informed me 
 that she had sent for me to place in my hands a packet 
 of important papers, which she wished me to keep for 
 the present, and, in the event of her death, to transmit 
 it to her friends in the United States. She then stated 
 that she was married to the Marquis Ossoli, who was in 
 command of a battery on the Pincian Hill. That being 
 the highest and most exposed position in Rome, and 
 directly in the line of the bombs from the French camp, 
 it was not to be expected, she said, that he could escape 
 the dangers of another night such as the last, and there 
 fore it was her intention to remain with him, and share 
 his fate. At the Ave Maria, she added, he would come 
 for her, and they would proceed together to his post. 
 The packet which she placed in my possession, con 
 tained, she said, the certificates of her marriage, and of 
 the birth and baptism of her child. After a few words 
 more, I took my departure, the hour she named having 
 nearly arrived. At the porter s lodge I met the Mar 
 quis Ossoli, and a few moments afterwards I saw them 
 walking towards the Pincian Hill. 
 
 " Happily the cannonading was not renewed that 
 night, and at dawn of day she returned to her apart 
 ment, with her husband by her side. 
 
 " On the same day the French army entered Rome, 
 
238 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 and, the gates being opened, Madame Ossoli, accompa 
 nied by the Marquis, immediately proceeded to Rieti, a 
 village lying at the base of the Abruzzi Mountains, 
 where she had left her child in the charge of a confiden 
 tial nurse, formerly in the service of the Ossoli family. 
 She remained, as you are no doubt aware, some months 
 at Rieti, whence she removed to Florence, where she 
 resided until her ill-fated departure for the United 
 States. During this period I received several letters 
 from her, all of which, though reluctant to part with 
 them, I inclose to your address, in compliance with your 
 request. 
 
 " I am, Madam, very respectfully, your obedient ser 
 vant, LEWIS CASS, JR." 1 
 
 The circumstances under which Margaret Ful 
 ler and her husband first met have been several 
 times described ; and every account of them must 
 mainly rest upon the important narrative by Mrs. 
 William W. Story, the greater part of which was 
 published long since in the " Memoirs." 2 In this 
 letter she not only describes the occasion when 
 Madame Ossoli confided the secret of the mar 
 riage and placed the evidences of it in Mrs. 
 Story s hands ; but she gives from immediate au 
 thority a narrative of the first interviews between 
 those who were thus strangely brought together. 
 If I vary somewhat from this account, as hereto 
 fore printed, it is because Mrs. Story s original 
 letter lies before me ; and I have attached impor- 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 669. Published also with Women in the Nine- 
 **enth Century, when reprinted in 1869. 
 a Memoirs, ii. 281. 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 239 
 
 tance to certain passages which were omitted, 
 perhaps for want of space or reasons of literary 
 convenience, in the " Memoirs." 
 
 Soon after Margaret Fuller s first coming to 
 Rome, early in 1847, she went, one day, to hear 
 vespers at St. Peter s, and, after the service, pro 
 posed to her companions, Mr. and Mrs. Spring, 
 that they should wander separately, at will, among 
 the chapels, and meet at a certain designated 
 point. Failing, however, to find them again, she 
 walked about, in some perplexity, scanning differ 
 ent groups through her eye-glass. Ere long a 
 young man of gentlemanly address came up to 
 her, seeing her evident discomfort, and offered his 
 services as guide. After they had continued their 
 search in vain, for some time, during which the 
 crowd had dispersed, he endeavored to find a car 
 riage for her; and this failing, they walked to 
 gether to her residence, conversing with some dif 
 ficulty, as he knew no English and she had not 
 yet learned Italian. At the door they parted, and 
 she told her friends the adventure. A day or two 
 after this, she observed the same young man walk 
 ing before the. house, as if meditating entrance ; 
 and they finally met once or twice before she left 
 Rome for the summer. She was absent from 
 June to October, visiting Florence, Bologna, Ven 
 ice, Milan, the Italian lakes, and Switzerland. In 
 October she established herself again in Rome, 
 having an " apartment " in the Corso, and trying 
 to live for six months on four hundred dollars. 
 
240 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 She wrote to her mother that she had not been so 
 well since she was a child, or so happy even then. 
 She had grown accustomed to the climate, which 
 had at first affected her unfavorably ; she could 
 study history and antiquities; she had near her 
 some tried friends, such as Mr. and Mrs. Cranch 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Story ; and she received her 
 acquaintances, at her rooms, in a simple way, 
 every Monday evening. Among these guests 
 came constantly her new acquaintance, the young 
 Italian, well known by this time as Giovanni 
 Angelo, Marquis Ossoli. He sympathized in her 
 zeal for what then seemed the promise of Italian 
 liberty, and it is thought by those who best knew 
 them that she did much in strengthening his pur 
 pose to throw off the traditions of his family, and 
 pledge himself to the party of the people. Yet 
 through his kindred he still kept up some rela 
 tions with the other side, and the two attended 
 the meetings held by the different factions ; being 
 meanwhile steadily drawn together by the excite 
 ment of a common interest. 
 
 It happened that the old Marquis Ossoli died 
 of a lingering illness that winter, and, as An 
 gelo was his youngest and only unmarried child, 
 the care of the father came peculiarly upon this 
 son. During this time of anxiety he used to 
 spend a few daily moments with Margaret Fuller, 
 sure of sympathy and strength ; and it was im 
 mediately after his father s death that he disclosed 
 his love, " telling her," according to Mrs. Story 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 241 
 
 " that he must marry her or be miserable." " She 
 refused to look on him as a lover," continued Mrs. 
 Story, " and insisted that it was not fitting, 
 that it was best he should marry a younger 
 woman ; that she would be his friend but not his 
 wife. In this way it rested for some weeks, dur 
 ing which we saw Ossoli pale, dejected, and un 
 happy. He was always with her, but in a sort 
 of hopeless, desperate manner, until at length he 
 convinced her of his love, and she married him." * 
 After this followed the siege of Rome, and Mar 
 garet Fuller s service in the hospitals, as already 
 described in Mr. Cass s letter, while Ossoli 
 was in the army outside the city. One day, after 
 great anxiety, she called Mrs. Story to her, and 
 confided to her the secret of her marriage, show 
 ing her the marriage certificate and those relat 
 ing to the birth of her child. These she confided 
 to Mrs. Story, with a book containing the narra 
 tive of her whole acquaintance with her husband. 
 The papers were kept for a time by Mrs. Story, 
 and at length returned to Madame Ossoli ; and 
 every trace of them is now lost forever. The 
 conclusion of Mrs. Story s narrative will now be 
 given almost entire, its picture of the married life 
 of the Ossolis being too valuable to be omitted. 
 Like the passages just quoted, this has never be 
 fore been printed : 
 
 ..." At once, Ossoli, Margaret, and the child went 
 to Florence. Rome was shut upon them, and they had 
 
 i MS. 
 16 
 
242 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 some difficulty in getting a permission to remain even 
 in Florence. (Mr. Greenough interested himself to get 
 this for them.) After this we never saw them ; some 
 letters I have which tell a tale of deep maternal happi 
 ness and satisfaction of the tenderness of her hus 
 band, and of serene days such as her life had known 
 but few. I look back upon those days in Florence as 
 the peacefullest she had ever known ; in them she had 
 sweet communion with nature, love, and a tender moth- 
 er s joy. I believe that she was coming home to richer 
 blessings, and a life if of some struggles, still of sure en 
 joyment. 
 
 " I have heard it suggested by some one that Ossoli 
 had married Margaret under the impression of her hav- 
 ing a large fortune. That this is utterly false I can de 
 clare, since to my own knowledge he was in the habit, 
 even from their first acquaintance, of making for her 
 what the Italians term little economies, and was in 
 Margaret s unreserved confidence as to the feeble state 
 of her purse. 
 
 " Again, I have heard it said that he was a person 
 entirely without education. I can only say that his edu 
 cation was equal to that of most Roman gentlemen, not 
 thorough, but such as suited him for his rank and po 
 sition. He had from his youth been under the care of a 
 priest, who taught him as a tutor. He knew not much 
 of foreign languages, read French a little, and was a 
 good deal interested in Italian history. 
 
 " Many of our countrymen who saw him could dis 
 cover little in him, but that was rather because he was 
 not quickly interested in others, than that he lacked in 
 teresting points. He was always reserved, and, when 
 with Margaret, preferred always to hear her talk, even 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 243 
 
 when she spoke a language he did not know, than to 
 talk himself or hear any one else. 
 
 " His manner towards Margaret was devoted and 
 lover-like to a striking degree. He cared not how trivial 
 was the service if he might perform it for her. I re 
 member to have seen him one morning, after they had 
 been married nearly two years, set off on an errand to 
 get the handle of her parasol mended, with as much 
 genuine knightly zeal as if the charge had been a much 
 weightier one. As he took it, he said, * How sweet it is 
 to do little things for you ; never attend to such yourself, 
 always leave them to me for my pleasure. When she 
 was ill he nursed and watched over her with the tender 
 ness of woman. When she said to him, * How have you 
 learned to be so good a nurse, he said, * My father was 
 ill, and I tended upon him. No service was too trivial, 
 no sacrifice too great for him. He never wished her to 
 give up any pleasure because he could not share it, but 
 if she were interested, he would go with her to any 
 house, leave her, and call again to take her home. Such 
 tender, unselfish love I have rarely before seen ; it made 
 green her days, and gave her an expression of peace 
 and serenity which before was a stranger to her. * No 
 companion in nature was ever so much to me as is Os- 
 soli ; does not this show that his soul was deep and full 
 of emotion ; for who that knew Margaret Fuller would 
 believe that any other companion would have been 
 agreeable to her in her communion with nature. What 
 a beautiful picture is that of their return to Rome after 
 a day spent on the Campagna ! " l 
 
 To this narrative I will add another letter, 
 from Mrs. Story to Mrs. J. R. Lowell, transcribed 
 i MS. 
 
244 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 by the latter for Miss Sarah F. Clarke, and giving 
 some additional particulars. It is without a date, 
 but belongs to just this period, and has not before 
 been printed : 
 
 " MY DEAR Miss CLARKE, I have just received a 
 letter from my friend, Emelyn Story, in which she 
 speaks of a friend of yours, and of her husband, in a 
 way which I thought might be interesting and pleasant 
 to you, so I copy it. 
 
 " As to Margaret Fuller s marriage, I might write 
 you at any length upon that subject, but from lack of 
 room to do so, I shall merely tell you that I have 
 known of the marriage since May, now some six months, 
 during which time I have been under a solemn pledge 
 of secrecy ; now she releases me, I can only say that 
 we knew and liked Mr. Ossoli, or, as his title goes, the 
 Marquis Ossoli, very much ; he is much younger than 
 Margaret, being, as I should judge, about William s 
 age (thirty), is good looking, quite handsome, as the 
 Italians go, has a melancholy expression about the eyes 
 is tall and thin. In character he seems to be remark 
 ably amiable and tender, not intellectual, simple, natu 
 ral, and good. During the attack of the French on 
 Rome he showed great courage, spirit, and zeal, was 
 conspicuous among the officers for his devotion to his 
 duties. So much we saw ourselves, for we often went 
 to his post and found him exhausted and faint for want 
 of food and rest, but always firm and resolute to re 
 main to the end. He was a captain of the Civic 
 Guard, and in many respects conspicuous for his ad 
 herence to Mazzini s views, so that now they cannot 
 remain in Rome, and were obliged to leave at once 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 245 
 
 npon the entrance of the French. His family are dis 
 tinguished for the same zeal on the other side, that of 
 the Pope, and are in the Papal household, his two 
 brothers being chamberlains to the Pope. His radical 
 ism causes him to be looked upon as the black sheep in 
 the family, and it was on account of family difficulties 
 that the marriage was not sooner made known. If 
 people were not always the best judges for themselves, 
 it would seem better that it should have been made 
 known at first ; but I know enough of their affairs to 
 say that they were prevented solely by family matters 
 from declaring it at the time it occurred. 
 
 " Margaret is now living in Florence ; their future is 
 rather dark in a pecuniary point of view, as the small 
 fortune he inherited is tied up, in some way, by the 
 change of government and depreciation of property, so 
 that, at least for the present, it is not available, and I 
 doubt if it ever comes to much. All I know is that 
 Margaret will have to exert herself. Now that their 
 little boy is with them, and is well, they are perfectly 
 happy. I wish with all my heart that Margaret might 
 be able to enjoy this happiness without anxiety about 
 meeting the expenses, etc., etc. Ossoli is a devoted 
 lover ; he is all kindness and attention to her, and I 
 think she has chosen the better part in marrying him, 
 for his love must be most precious to her. Judging from 
 what he was after a year s marriage, I should say he 
 was more of a lover than before their marriage. He is 
 a gentleman in manners and bearing, as he is by birth. 
 His father is at the head of one [of] the Rioni [wards 
 or quarters] in Rome, and his family are of undoubted 
 rank and position there. I believe her child is healthy 
 and strong, although it suffered much from the faithless- 
 
246 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 ness of its nurse, whose milk failing, [she] fed it upon 
 wine and bread, and this at the time when Mr. and Mrs. 
 Ossoli were, shut up in Rome, during the siege. When, 
 at last, she could leave Rome and go into the country to 
 see him, she found him quite ill, almost, as she feared, 
 beyond recovery, so that she at once took him to Flor 
 ence, where he has regained his health. 
 
 " * Mr. Ossoli does not speak English, not even a sen 
 tence, that I ever heard, so that he has not been known 
 to many Americans, not even to some of William s 
 friends ; but he was often at our house, and we knew 
 him, perhaps, better than any one. 
 
 " You may have seen this before, but not in the same 
 form, and I thought it might be interesting to you to 
 hear from a fresh person so pleasant a statement of Mr. 
 Ossoli s character, pleasanter than those we have some 
 times heard here. 
 
 " I shall not give up that day you promised me, but 
 find you soon, and make you fix upon one. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " MARIA LOWELL. 
 
 " CAMBRIDGE, ELMWOOD, Friday morn." 
 
 It is a curious fact that, throughout this letter, 
 Mrs. Lowell uniformly spells the name of Marga 
 ret Fuller s husband " Ossili," and it illustrates 
 how vague a knowledge of the whole affair had at 
 first reached America. Through such statements 
 as these it came to be better understood ; and the 
 really simple and noble character of Margaret 
 Fuller s young lover stood out above all distrust. 
 There lie before me two old-fashioned daguerreo 
 types of him, and a lock of his hair, the charac* 
 
MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD. 247 
 
 teristic blue-black hair of his nation. The pic 
 tures represent a thoroughly Italian face and fig 
 ure : dark, delicate, slender ; by no means the man, 
 one would say, to marry at thirty an American 
 woman of thirty-seven, she being poor, intellectual, 
 and without beauty. Yet it will be very evident, 
 when we come to read their letters to each other, 
 that the disinterested and devoted love which 
 marked this marriage was so far a fulfillment of 
 Margaret Fuller s early dreams. Mr. Kinney, the 
 American consul, wrote to Mr. Emerson from 
 Turin, May 2, 1851 : " It is abundantly evident 
 that her young husband discharged all the obliga 
 tions of his relation to her con amore. His admi 
 ration amounted to veneration, and her yearning 
 to be loved seemed at least to be satisfied." J There 
 is every reason to believe that this statement was 
 none too strong. 
 
 i MS. 
 
XVI. 
 
 LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 
 
 BY a happy fatality, the only Italian papers of 
 Margaret Ossoli s that are preserved are the let 
 ters that passed between her and her husband, 
 during their various separations, before and after 
 the birth of their child. The originals are now, 
 partially at least, in the possession of Miss Edith 
 Fuller, in Cambridge ; and a translation of the 
 whole, made by Miss Elizabeth Hoar, is in my pos 
 session. I wish that they could all be published, 
 for more loving and devoted letters never passed 
 between husband and wife. Fragments of them 
 appeared in the " Memoirs ; " but I have avoided 
 making use of any which are there printed, except 
 in one or two cases where scattered portions alone 
 have appeared. The preference has been given 
 to those written about the time of her child s 
 birth, because there is no period which tests more 
 deeply the depth and the heroism of conjugal affec 
 tion than those anxious weeks. At the birth of a 
 first child, every mother knows, and her husband 
 knows, that she is to meet much the same sort of 
 peril with any soldier who marches up to a bat 
 tery ; except that this danger is to be met alone, 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 249 
 
 without trumpet-blast or the thrill of companion 
 ship in danger, and that it also involves the peril 
 of a life unborn, and more precious than one s 
 own. In the case of a mother past her first youth, 
 the peril is doubled ; and, where she is without 
 skilled medical attendance or nursing, it is quad 
 rupled. All these evils were combined in the 
 case of Madame Ossoli ; and she lived withal 
 among ignorant and sordid mountaineers, whom 
 she could not propitiate, for the want of money, in 
 the only way that could reach them. This was 
 the situation ; the letters will speak for them 
 selves. I have employed Miss Hoar s translation, 
 with some modifications. 
 
 FROM OSSOLI. 
 
 [Between August 3d and 15th, 1848.] 
 
 " DEAR WIFE, There is nothing at the banker s but 
 the journals, which I send you. I fear that it will be 
 difficult for us to see each other again, because Pio IX. 
 now wishes the Civic Guard to go to the frontiers and 
 defend Bologna. I hope that I may at least be able 
 to come and make a visit, and embrace you yet once 
 more, but I cannot tell you anything certain. I have 
 been trying to deliver the letter for the doctor ; but his 
 coachman assures me that he will be in Rome in Sep 
 tember. To-morrow he will find some one to deliver 
 your letter. 
 
 " While I am awaiting good news of yourself, and of 
 a beautiful and good child, adieu, my love, and believe 
 me your G. O." 
 
250 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 FROM OSSOLI. 
 
 ROME, \nh August, 1848. 
 
 " MIA CARA, My state is the most deplorable that 
 can be ; I have had an extraordinary struggle. If your 
 condition were not such as it is, I could decide more 
 easily, but in the present moment I cannot leave you ; 
 I cannot remove myself to a distance from you, my dear 
 love ; ah ! how cruel is my destiny in this emergency. 
 It is true that my friends would not advise me to go, 
 hoping for me always a better fortune. But then must 
 I always hope, and be always in the presence of my 
 unkind brothers, at a moment when I might remove my 
 self from their hateful sight. The heart, duty, cannot 
 resolve it. 
 
 " In your dear last of the 7th, I understand well how 
 much you would sacrifice yourself for me. I am deeply 
 grateful to you for it, but I cannot yet decide." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 "RiETi, 18th August, 1848. 
 
 "I feel, love, a profound sympathy with your tor 
 ments, but I am not able to give you a perfectly wise 
 counsel. Only it seems to me the worst possible moment 
 to take up arms except in the cause of duty, of honor. 
 The Pope being so cold, his minister undecided, noth 
 ing will be well or successfully done. As the interven 
 tion of France and England is hoped for, it is yet un 
 certain whether the war will continue. If not, you will 
 leave Rome and the employment with your uncle for 
 nothing. 
 
 " If it is possible to wait two or three weeks, the 
 public state and mine also will be decided, and you can 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 251 
 
 make your decision with more tranquillity. Otherwise, 
 it seems to me that I ought to say nothing, but leave it 
 to your own judgment what to do. Only, if you go, 
 come here first. I must see you once more. 
 
 " It troubles me much that I can tell you nothing 
 certain of myself, but I am still in the same waiting 
 state. I have passed a very bad night, my head is this 
 morning much disturbed. I have bled a good deal at 
 the nose, and it is hard for me to write. 
 
 " Do not ask permission of your uncle, if it is so 
 difficult. We shall know how to arrange things with 
 out that. If you do not come I shall expect a letter 
 from you on Sunday ; also (if there are any) from the 
 banker s, and also the last of those Milanese papers. 
 Poor friends, shut up there. I wish so much for some 
 certain intelligence of their fate. 
 
 " Adieu, dear ; our misfortunes are many and un 
 locked for. Not often does destiny demand a greater 
 price for some happy moments. Never do I repent of 
 our affection, and for you, if not for me, I hope that 
 life has still some good in store. Adieu, may God give 
 you counsel and help, since it is now not in the power 
 of your affectionate ." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " Sunday, 20th August [1848]. 
 
 " Mio CARO, I expected you a little this morning, 
 and had your coffee all ready, but I believe you had 
 reason for delay. If there is nothing to the contrary, 
 come next Saturday evening. 
 
 " My nights become more and more disturbed, and 
 this morning I was obliged to be bled again ; since then, 
 I find myself relieved, but weak, and unable to say 
 more than that I am always yo ur affectionate . 
 
252 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 " Inclosed is another order on the banker, in case 
 you come Saturday. I write it now, being uncertain 
 that I can write many days longer. I embrace you ! " 
 
 FROM OSSOLI. 
 
 ROME, 21 st August, 1848. 
 
 Mio BENE, I have received your dear letter, and 
 am very sorry not to have found myself there to break 
 fast with you ; but I am waiting a message from you to 
 bring me directly to you, and I hope to find myself some 
 day so situated that you will no longer have need of a 
 companion. You tell me that you are not very well 
 able to write, and I am sorry for you ; but since it gives 
 you so much fatigue, ask the master of the house to 
 write, if nothing else, a little assurance of your health, 
 since this is a great solace to me, and I wish you would 
 at least put your seal ring upon it, for that is enough 
 for me. Believe me always the same. I embrace you, 
 adieu ; thy affectionate G. A. O." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " RIETI, 22d August, 1848. 
 
 " I am a little better, dearest ; but if I could thus pass 
 a less suffering day ! On the contrary, it troubles me 
 that this seems rather an indication that I must wait yet 
 longer. Wait ! That is always hard. But if I 
 were sure of doing well I should wish much to pass 
 through this trial before your arrival ; yet when I think 
 that it is possible for me to die alone, without the touch 
 of one dear hand, I wish to wait yet longer. So I hope 
 for your presence on Sunday morning. 
 
 " I see by the papers that the Pope suspends the de 
 parture of the troops. He acts as I thought he would 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 253 
 
 and I am now very glad that you did not actually enter 
 the service yet. In a short time our affairs will be more 
 settled, and you can decide more advantageously than 
 now. 
 
 " Try if you can hear any particulars from Milan ; 
 would it not be possible in the Gaffe degli Belli Arti ? 
 I am much troubled by the fate of those dear friends ; 
 how much they must suffer now. 
 
 " I still think so much of you. I hope that you are 
 less tormented. If we were together, it would be a 
 consolation. Now everything goes wrong, but it is im 
 possible it should always be so. Adieu, love ; it vexes 
 me that so many days must pass before your coming 
 so many, so many. I am glad that I have the little 
 picture ; I look at it often. God keep you." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " RIETI, 25th August. 
 
 " My LOVE, I have this morning your letter of 
 Wednesday. You do not say whether you are to come 
 Saturday evening or no, but I hope for it confidently. 
 I cannot wait longer, in any event, if I am not obliged 
 to do it by your affairs. Nothing comes for me yet. I 
 do not know what to think. 
 
 " Thero is a beautiful spot near, where we can go 
 together, if I am able still to go out when you come. I 
 shall expect you on Sunday morning, and will have 
 your coffee ready again. Nothing more now, because 
 writing is really difficult for your affectionate ." 
 
 On September 5, 1848, her child, Angelo Philip 
 Eugene Ossoli, was born. Two days after, she 
 writes, by an amanuensis, only signing the letter 
 herself : 
 
254 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 DICTATED BY MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " RIETI, Thursday, 7th September, 1848. 
 
 DEAR HUSBAND, I am well, much better than I 
 hoped. The baby also is well, but cries much yet, and I 
 hope that he will be more quiet when you come. For the 
 rest, I desire that you should be without anxiety about 
 me, and I will send you frequent accounts of myself, 
 writing again very soon. You may send to the post, 
 prepaid, the letter of mine for Paris, which you have. 
 
 " All this family with whom I am staying salute you. 
 Giving you an embrace and a kiss, in the person of this 
 dear child whom I have in my arms, I am your af 
 fectionate [in her own hand] MARGHERITA." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI, IN PENCIL. HER OWN WRITING. 
 
 Saturday. 
 
 " MY LOVE, I write in bed, a few words only. I 
 have received yours this morning, and hope for another 
 for to-morrow. I have been ill with milk-fever, but am 
 to-day better, and hope to gain strength daily. There 
 is need of it ; I am to-day obliged to send away Giu- 
 ditta to Rome, I can do nothing with her now. I am 
 taking one [a nurse], who also has milk, in case mine 
 is not sufficient. The baby is very beautiful. All say 
 so. I take much delight in watching him. He sends 
 you a kiss, as also your M." l 
 
 1 Of these two brief notes, the first dictated to a scribe and 
 taken down by him more or less accurately, and the second writ 
 ten in pencil by herself, I give the Italian originals, kjjidly 
 copied for me by Miss Edith Fuller, the niece of Madame Ossoli. 
 
 " RIETI, 7 Settembre, 1848. 
 
 " CAEO CONSORTE, lo sto bene, molto meglio che io sperava. 
 II Bambino anche va bene ma piauge molto ancora, e spero che 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 255 
 
 FROM OSSOLI. 
 
 "ROME, Uth September, 1848. 
 
 " MIA CARA, This morning I received your dear 
 letter, and am always more comforted in hearing of the 
 good condition of our dear baby, and likewise of yours. 
 I have also great pleasure in hearing that he is so beau 
 tiful, our child. How much I wish to see him, the time 
 seems very long to me, which must yet be passed. 
 Meanwhile give him a kiss and a tender embrace from 
 me." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " Friday, 15th September [18481. 
 
 " Mio CARO, I received this morning your dear let 
 ters, and the papers. The news from Milan seems to be 
 too good to be true, but I wait with anxiety to hear more. 
 " When you do not hear from me do not be anxious ; 
 
 sara piu tranquillo quando tu vieni. Per altro voglio che per me 
 sei tranquillo, e ti daro spesso mie nuove, scrivendoti di nuovo ben 
 presto. La mia lettera che hai per Parigi potrai affrancarla alia 
 Posta. 
 
 " Tutti di questa famiglia dove io mi trovo ti salutano. Dan- 
 ,doti un abbraccio, ed un bagio in questo caro Pupo che ho nelle 
 braccia sono. Vra affma 
 
 " MARGHERITA." 
 
 " Sabato. 
 
 " Mio BENE, Scrivo nel letto alcune parole solamente. Ri- 
 cevo tuo questa mattina, e spero altro per domani. Son stata 
 male col febbre di latte ma oggi meglio e spero tutti i giorni 
 stare piu forte. C e di bisogno ; son d obbligo oggi inviare Giu- 
 ditta in Roma, lei non pub fare niente adesso. Io prendo una 
 che ha anche latte si mio non basta. II bambino e molto bello, 
 tutti dicon cosi, io prendo molto piacere riguardarlo. Lui ti da 
 un bacio come anche tua M." 
 
256 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 you know I must necessarily be very weak for some 
 time yet ; I am not always able to write, or to rise, and 
 Ser Giovanni is not always here to write for me. It 
 is a miracle that I am as well as I find myself ; my 
 circumstances were so difficult. Now that I find myself 
 so content with my nurse, her child becomes ill ; and 
 if she is forced to leave me, the struggle begins again 
 but I hope not. If it is necessary to bear this too, I 
 can only hope counsel from God." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " Sunday, 17 th September [18481- 
 
 " MY LOVE, This morning I have nothing from you 
 but the journal of Friday. I suppose now I shall have 
 to wait till Tuesday to hear from you. as no post comes 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " The nurse s child is better, and I feel relieved. We 
 must have courage, but it is a great care to be alone 
 and ignorant with an infant in these first days of its 
 life. When he is a month old, I shall feel more quiet. 
 Then he will be stronger for the changes he will have 
 to undergo. Now he is well, begins to sleep well, is 
 very pretty for his age, and all the people around, 
 without knowing what name I thought of giving him, 
 call him Angiolino, because he is so lovely. He has 
 your mouth, hands, feet. It seems to me that his eyes 
 will be blue. For the rest, he is altogether a rogue 
 (birbone), understands well, is very obstinate to have 
 his will. 
 
 " I shall have much to say when you come, and also 
 we shall then have much to plan, because it will be too 
 cold in this room for me to stay here late in the an* 
 tumn. The forty days will terminate 15th October 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 257 
 
 and I wish to leave as soon as possible after that the 
 
 20th or 25th, if I can. Adieu, love ; always your M." 
 
 l 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " RIETI, Saturday, 23d September [1848]. 
 
 " Mio CARO, I have received this morning the pa 
 pers and your letter. I feel the truth of what you say, 
 that there ought to be the greatest care in the selection 
 of a nurse. I shall wait to consult with you about 
 everything. Consider only, if the baby is out of Rome, 
 you cannot see him often. Otherwise, the air of the 
 country would be better, without doubt, for his health. 
 
 " He is so dear, it seems to me sometimes, among all 
 the difficulties and disasters, that if he lives, if he is 
 well, he will become such a treasure for us two, that it 
 will compensate for everything. I wish very much 
 that you should see him again, but you must have pa 
 tience with his frequent cry ; he is an obstinate fellow. 
 Also, I hope that by the time you come my shoulder 
 will be cured again, and I strong enough to go out a 
 little with you. Now it is fine weather, and I go out 
 on the balcony. Ser Giovanni is good to me, but his 
 sisters are detestable, meddling in everything, and so 
 avaricious, so interested ; they would save me money in 
 order that they may get it for themselves. Yet I try 
 to keep the peace with them ; there are bad people 
 everywhere, and these, so interested and vulgar, are at 
 least not treacherous like Giuditta. Adieu, love. 
 
 " Thy M." 
 
 [It illustrates the kind of people among whom 
 Madame Ossoli was at this time living, that this 
 Ser Giovanni, who was her scribe in illness and 
 
 17 
 
258 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 the one person who was " good " to her, was all the 
 time amusing himself with the effort to seduce 
 Angelo s nurse, who was, according to another let 
 ter, " the loveliest young woman in the village," 
 and whose beauty was to Madame Ossoli a source 
 of constant anxiety, in view of the neighborhood 
 of Garibaldi s half-brigand troops, and those from 
 Naples who were worse. It was amid such solici 
 tudes and vexations that an inexperienced and 
 exhausted mother had to struggle for life in be 
 half of her baby and herself.] 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " RIETI, Tuesday, 26th September, 1848. 
 ..." Now we begin to be really well, my baby and 
 I. He sleeps all night, and my shoulder, the last night, 
 has not tormented me, so I have slept also. He is al 
 ways so charming, how can I ever, ever leave him ? I 
 wake in the night, I look at him, I think, ah ! it is im 
 possible to leave him. Adieu, love ; it seems that like 
 me you are impatient for your arrival ; then we can 
 speak and again have a few happy moments more. 
 
 Thy M." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " EIETI, 7th October, 1848. 
 
 " Mio CARO, I have received this morning the pa 
 per and your letter. I am glad that at least you had 
 a tranquil night for the journey. Yesterday it began 
 again to rain here. All that I have said to Ser Gio 
 vanni was, that it would be pleasant to have some friend 
 for a godfather. I am not very competent to give ad 
 vice in this matter of baptism, which I do not well un 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 259 
 
 derstand, but the godfather who would please me for 
 the baby is my friend, the Pole. He knows of the ex 
 istence of the child, is a devout Catholic, is a distin 
 guished man, who could be an aid to him in his future 
 life ; and I wish for him to have some friend in case of 
 accident to us. You can consider this unless you have 
 some confidential friend whom you wish as a godfather, 
 who could interest himself in the child if you were 
 obliged to leave him. 
 
 " It must be considered that your nephew will know 
 this affair at last, by means of Catalane. But I do not 
 know your relatives, nor if you can confide in one of 
 them." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 "RiETi, Thursday, 28tk September, 1848. 
 ..." I have seen more bad people this last year 
 than in all my life before, and I fear that I have not 
 yet ended. I think of your letter which came on Sun 
 day morning. How much I wish to see you ! The 
 baby does not grow much, but he is always so lovely 
 has really delicate little ways, like a dancer. For the 
 rest I can speak so much better than write, that, while 
 awaiting your visit, I will say no more now. 
 
 " Your affectionate M." 
 
 FROM OSSOLI. 
 
 "ROME, 9tk October, 1848. 
 
 "MiA CARA, I have received this morning your two 
 dear letters, it makes me very happy to continue to 
 hear from you often, and it is a great comfort for me 
 to hear that the baby knows who I am ; dear child, how 
 I long always to press him in my arms. As to what I 
 said of a godfather for our dear one, it would please me 
 
260 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 also to have the Pole, as he is a distinguished person ; 
 but how to find him, the time being so short ? Really 
 I do not know what to do, and I requested you to take 
 advice of Ser Giovanni, if you think best ; to tell him 
 that the person whom we decided on for a godfather is 
 too far off for us to get him in season, and plan to in 
 form me what can be done. If not, I will try to pro 
 vide differently ; as far as I see, it is a somewhat diffi 
 cult matter. You say that you are surprised the doctor 
 should leave Rome, but it was necessary, since there are 
 absolutely no foreigners in Rome. 
 
 " Saluting you dearly, and giving you, with our dear 
 love, a kiss, I am your G. A. OSSOLI." 
 
 FROM MADAME OS SO LI. 
 
 " RIETI, 15th October, 1848. 
 
 ..." Think always in seeking a house for me, not 
 to pledge me to stay in Rome. It seems to me often 
 that I cannot stay long without seeing the baby. He is 
 so dear, and life seems to me so uncertain, I do not 
 know how to leave my dear ones. Take the apart 
 ment for a short time. It is necessary that I should 
 be in Rome at least a month, to write, and also to be 
 near you, but I wish to be free to return here if I feel 
 too anxious for him, too suffering. O love, how diffi 
 cult is life ! But you, you are good ; if it were only 
 possible for me to make you happy ! " 
 
 FROM OSSOLI. 
 
 "ROME, 2\st October, 1848. 
 
 " MIA CARA, I learn by yours of the 20th that you 
 have received the ten scudi, and it makes me more tran 
 quil. I feel also Mogliani s indolence in not coming to 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 261 
 
 inoculate our child ; but, my love, I pray you not to dis 
 turb yourself so much, and not to be sad, hoping that 
 our dear love will be guarded by God, and will be free 
 from all misfortunes. He will keep him for us and 
 give us means to sustain him." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " Saturday Evening, 28th October, 1848. 
 . . . " It rains very hard every day, but to-day I have 
 been more quiet, and our darling has been so good, I 
 have taken so much pleasure in being with him. When 
 he smiles in his sleep, how it makes my heart beat ! 
 He has grown fat and very fair, and begins to play and 
 spring. You will have much pleasure in seeing him 
 again. He sends you many kisses. He bends his head 
 toward me when he asks a kiss." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI, AFTER BEING IN ROME. 
 
 " RIETI, 22d December, 1848. 
 
 " MY LOVE, I made the journey comfortably, and 
 arrived here at half-past four. I find our darling little 
 changed, much less than I expected. What surprises 
 me is, that he appears fat enough, seems to be perfectly 
 well, but is not much larger than when I left him. He 
 has the same ways, is very graceful, but otherwise he is 
 better than with me, sleeps well at night, rarely cries, 
 and then not so violently. He is diverted in this family, 
 seeing so many persons, and all play with him and seem 
 to wish him well. The house is dreadful, the wind com 
 ing in on all sides, but he does not seem to take cold, 
 and I hope that he will be stronger for being exposed 
 so much in his first months. He has had the small-pox 
 terribly ; his head, his body have been covered with 
 
262 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 spots ; it is wholly by the favor of Heaven that he has 
 passed through it so well. The physician, Mogliani, 
 never came to visit him ; his family say that I am avari 
 cious. I suppose he thought it not worth the trouble 
 to save our baby. His face is not injured. They have 
 not changed the house yet, and I do not know if they 
 will. They talk, in this house, of receiving ten scudi a 
 month for one room. These Bietines are all alike. If 
 I can do it without injury to my health, I shall remain 
 here. I have received nothing from you this morning, 
 and the family here had not received on Wednesday the 
 letter which was put in the post the Saturday before. 
 My letters never failed so before. I suppose it is the 
 fault of the post. I shall write every post-day. 
 
 " The baby salutes you with many kisses. He seemed 
 to recollect me ; when I took him, he rested his dear head 
 so long on my shoulder. I took so much pleasure in 
 sleeping with him last night. In the daytime it does 
 not go on so well, it is smoky and cold. Farewell, my 
 beloved, I will write a few lines on Sunday ; all the de 
 tails I will tell you when I come. Always thy M." 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 " RIETI, 27th March, 1849. 
 
 " Mio CARO, I found our treasure in the best health, 
 and now so good ! He goes to sleep all alone in bed, 
 day or night. He is asleep now, sucking his little hand. 
 He is very fat, but strangely small, his hair does not 
 grow at all, and he still wears those horrid black caps. 
 
 " At first all talked so loud, he looked at me all sur 
 prised, and cried a little. But when he was alone with 
 me, he seemed to recollect me, and leaned and rubbed 
 his forehead as in the first days." 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 263 
 
 FROM MADAME OSSOLI. 
 
 "RiETi, 30th March, 1849. 
 
 . . . "Yesterday the family were at dinner below, 
 and our darling asleep above in bed. I was sitting at 
 his side thinking how dear he was. Since I have 
 bathed him and dressed him well, he has seemed like 
 another child. Suddenly I heard tables and seats fall 
 ing and the women screaming terribly, * Help ! I flew 
 down, and there stood Niccola and Pietro [two broth 
 ers] trying to kill one another. I spoke to Niccola, he 
 did not answer, but looked at me like a wild beast. The 
 women held his arm so that he could not draw his knife ; 
 he seized their hair. Pietro, who had no knife, threw 
 W0 od a great piece just missed my head. All the 
 neighbors ran in directly. The landlord of Niccola took 
 away his knife, but if our baby had been below, he 
 would probably have been killed. I am convinced that 
 Niccola is a drunkard. I cannot tell you particulars in 
 writing, but I want to see you." 
 
 FROM THE SAME. BOTH IN ROME. 
 
 " CASA DIES, Friday, 4th May, 2 p. M. 
 " Mio CARO, I am going out at four, and return at 
 six, and shall be here an hour. At half-past seven I go 
 to the hospitals, and hope to return at nine. If you 
 come while I am gone out, wait for me, if possible, if 
 not. come up and leave a word to say when you can 
 come to-morrow morning. Do not fail to see me, I 
 pray ; it is terrible to pass so many uncertain hours 
 without meeting. It is said that the Neapolitans do 
 not advance, but all seems so uncertain. Always, al 
 ways your M . If ever you have need, send some 
 
 one immediately, dearest ; we can pay for this." 
 
264 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 FROM THE SAME. 
 
 "Monday, June 5th [1849]. 
 
 " Mio CARD, This morning I went to the garden of 
 the Vatican at half-past eight ; they sought you and said 
 when they returned that you had gone out. I returned 
 immediately home ; but as you have not been here, I 
 think it was a mistake. This evening I hope to be in 
 the house at eight ; if you come first, wait, I beg of you. 
 Thank God that you are yet living. How much 1 suf 
 fered yesterday you can believe. Till we meet again, 
 caro consorte, as that wicked Ser Giovanni always wrote. 
 I go out, because I ought to go to the hospitals." 
 
 FROM THE SAME. NO DATE. 
 
 " How hard it was for me, love, to miss you yester 
 day, and possibly also to-day, if you can come. I am 
 going to Casa Dies ; if possible, inquire there, the last 
 floor, if I am still there or have gone to the hospitals. 
 God keep you ! How much I have suffered in seeing 
 the wounded, and I cannot know if anything should 
 happen to you but I must hope. I have received the 
 letter from Rieti; our Nino is perfectly well, thanks 
 for this. It does me good that the Romans have at 
 least done something, if only you can remain. In event 
 of the death of both, I have left a paper with a certifi 
 cate in regard to Angelino, and some lines praying tho 
 Story s to take care of him. If by any accident / die. 
 you can revoke this paper if you will, from me, as being 
 your wife. I have wished Nino to go to America, but 
 you will do as seems best to you. We ought to have 
 planned this better, but I hope that it will not be 
 needed. Always, with benedictions, your 
 
 " MARCH ERITA. 
 
LETTERS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE. 265 
 
 " If you live, and I die, be always most devoted to 
 Nino. If you ever love another, think first for him, I 
 pray, pray, love." 
 
 This last imploring caution was never needed. 
 
XVII. 
 
 CLOSING SCENES. 
 
 ALTHOUGH Mrs. Story once read the certificate 
 of the marriage of her friends, and had it long in 
 her possession, she did not fix the date of it in 
 her memory, and this will probably remain forever 
 unknown. Their child was born September 5, 
 1848 ; and the mother was compelled, in order to 
 disarm suspicion and to earn money, to be alter 
 nately at Rieti and in Rome. Finally she was 
 unable to leave Rome, because of the siege ; and 
 after returning to Rieti, she wrote this letter to 
 Mr. Cass, in which she has made an evident effort 
 to describe what is around her, and not to dwell 
 on her own great anxieties. 
 
 " RIETI, \9thJuly, 1849. 
 
 " DEAR MR. CASS, I seem to have arrived in a 
 different world, since passing the mountains. This lit 
 tle red-brown nest, which those we call the aborigines of 
 Italy made long before Rome was, lies tranquil amid the^ 
 net-work of vineyards, its casinos and convents gleam 
 pleasantly from the hillsides, the dirt accumulates un 
 disturbed in its streets, and pigs and children wallow in 
 it, while Madonna-veiled, bare-legged women twirl the 
 distaff at every door and window, happy, if so they can 
 
CLOSING SCENES. 267 
 
 earn five cents a day. We have not been able to find 
 an apartment, so we have rooms at the rustic locanda, 
 which is on the piazza, clean and airy, and where may 
 be studied all the humors of the place. There is the 
 fountain where come the girls in their corset, long shift- 
 sleeves, and colored petticoat, the silver needle in their 
 fine hair ; attractive they look from my window, for the 
 dirt disappears in distance. Near, it not dismays their 
 lovers, who help them to adjust the water- vase on their 
 heads (N. B. no husband does this). All the dandies 
 of Rieti in all kinds of queer uniforms are congregated 
 below ; at the barber s, the druggist s, the caffe, they sit 
 and digest the copious slander, chief product of this, as of 
 every little hive of men. The baronesses and countesses, 
 in the extreme of Italian undress, are peeping through 
 the blinds ; at half-past seven, if the band plays, they 
 will put on their best dresses (alas ! mongrel French 
 fashions prevail here), and parade, fanning themselves 
 whether the weather be hot or cold, on foot, for the 
 Corso of Rieti is nominal. At present the scene is 
 varied by presence of the Spanish force, who promise 
 to stay only three days ; and I hope they will not, for 
 they eat everything up like locusts. For the moment, 
 it pleases to see their foreign features, and hear the 
 noble sounds of their 1 language. We have performed 
 our social duties ; have called on the handsome doctor s 
 
 wife, whom we found ironing in her antechamber ; , 
 
 the Gonfaloniere s sister, who had just had a child, and 
 received us in her chamber ; and on the father, guardian 
 of the beautifully placed monastery of St. Antonio, who 
 insisted on making us excellent coffee, which we must 
 take under the shade of the magnificent cypresses, for 
 women must not enter, only/ said he chuckling, * Gar- 
 
268 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLf. 
 
 
 
 ibaldi obliged us to let his enter, and I have even seen 
 them braiding their hair/ Maria of the episcopal gar 
 den has left her card in the form of a pair of pigeons. 
 I could find much repose for the moment in these sim 
 ple traits of a limited life, and in this pure air, were it 
 not for the state in which I find my baby. You know, 
 my dear Mr. Cass, I flattered you with the thought you 
 would be happy in having a child ; may you never know 
 such a pang as I felt in kissing his poor, pale little hand 
 which he can hardly lift. He is worn to a skeleton, all 
 his sweet childish graces fled ; he is so weak it seems to me 
 he can scarcely ever revive to health. If he cannot, I do 
 not wish him to live ; life is hard enough for the strong, 
 it is too much for the feeble. Only, if he dies, I hope 
 I shall, too. I was too fatigued before, and this last 
 shipwreck of hopes would be more than I could bear. 
 Adieu, dear Mr. Cass, write when you can ; tell me of 
 the world, of which I hear nothing here, of suffering 
 Rome always dear, whatever may oppress me and 
 of yourself. Ever yours, M. O." l 
 
 I add one more extract from a letter, without 
 date, but of the same period, from Madame Ossoli 
 to Mrs. Story : 
 
 ..." You say no secret can be kept in the civilized 
 world, and I suppose not long. But it is very impor 
 tant to me to keep this for the present, if possible, and 
 by and by to have the mode of disclosure at my option. 
 For this I have made the cruelest sacrifices. It will, 
 indeed, be just like the rest, if they are made of none 
 effect. 
 . " After I wrote to you I went to Rieti. The weather 
 
 i MS. 
 
CLOSING SCENES. 269 
 
 was mild when I set out, but by the fatality that has 
 attended me throughout, in the night changed to a cold 
 unknown in Italy, and remained so all the time I stayed. 
 There was, as is common in Italy, no fireplace except 
 in the kitchen. I suffered much in my room with its 
 brick floor, and windows through which came the cold 
 wind freely. My darling did not suffer, because he was 
 robed in wool. When I first took him in my arms, he 
 made no sound, but leaned his head against my bosom, 
 and stayed so. He seemed to say, how could you aban 
 don me. They told me that all the day of my departure 
 he could not be comforted, always looking toward the 
 door. He has been a strangely precocious infant. I 
 think it was through sympathy with me ; and that in that 
 regard it may be a happiness for him to be with these 
 more plebeian, instinctive joyous natures. I saw that he 
 was more serene, that he was not sensitive as when with 
 me, and slept a great deal more. 
 
 * You speak of my being happy. All the solid hap 
 piness I have known has been at times when he went 
 
 to sleep in my arms. You say when s beautiful 
 
 life had been so wasted, it hardly seemed worth while to 
 begin another. I had all those feelings too ; I do not 
 look forward to his career and his manly life, it is now 
 I want to be with him, before passion, care, and baf- 
 flings begin. If I had a little money I should go with 
 him into strict retirement for a year or two, and live for 
 him alone. This I cannot do ; all life that has been or 
 could be natural to me is invariably denied. God knows 
 why, I suppose. 
 
 " I receive with prof6und gratitude your thought of 
 taking him, if anything should happen to us. Should I 
 live, I don t know whether I should wish him to be an 
 
270 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 * 
 
 Italian or American citizen. It depends on the course 
 events take here politically." l 
 
 And now the pen that had so often described 
 the beauties of nature or art or literature is used 
 again and again to portray the charming gambols 
 of a little child. Here, for instance, is a passage 
 only partially printed in the " Memoirs," while I 
 give it in full ; or it may be that this is a compan 
 ion-picture sent to another person at about the 
 same time, and using many of the same words : 
 
 " When our little boy wakes, he always beckons and 
 cries to come into our room. He draws the curtains 
 himself with his little dimpled hand ; he laughs, he 
 crows, he dances in the nurse s arms, he shows his teeth, 
 he blows like the bellows, pretends to snuff candles, and 
 then, having shown off all his accomplishments, calls 
 for his playthings. With these he will amuse himself on 
 the floor while we are dressing, sometimes an hour after. 
 Then he goes to the window to hear the Austrian drums, 
 to which he keeps time, with head and hand. It is soon 
 eleven, and he sleeps again. Then I employ myself. 
 When he wakes, we go out to some church, or picture- 
 gallery or museum, almost always taking him." 2 
 
 This was written in Florence, where they took 
 up their residence after the entrance of the French 
 army into Rome. She busied herself with her 
 history of the Italian struggle, and he with efforts 
 to rescue his share of his father s estate. Another 
 picture of child-life records their very last Christ 
 mas Day : 
 
 1 MS. 2 MS. Compare Memoirs, ii. 307. 
 
CLOSING SCENES. 271 
 
 "Christinas Day I was just up, and Nino all nake(* 
 on his sofa, when came some beautiful large toys that 
 had been sent him : a bird, a horse, a cat, that could be 
 moved to express different things. It almost made me 
 cry to see the kind of fearful rapture with which he re 
 garded them, legs and arms extended, fingers and toes 
 quivering, mouth made up to a little round O, eyes di 
 lated ; for a long time he did not even wish to touch 
 them ; after he began to, he was different with all the 
 three, loving the bird, very wild and shouting with the 
 horse ; with the cat, putting her face close to his, star 
 ing in her eyes, and then throwing her away. After 
 wards I drew him in a lottery, at a child s party given 
 by Mrs. Greenough, a toy of a child asleep on the neck 
 of a tiger ; the tiger is stretching up to look at the 
 child. This he likes best of any of his toys. It is 
 sweet to see him when he gets used to them, and plays 
 by himself, whispering to them, seeming to contrive sto 
 ries. You would laugh to know how much remorse I 
 feel that I never gave children more toys in the course 
 of my life. I regret all the money I ever spent on my 
 self or in little presents for grown people, hardened sin 
 ners. I did not know what pure delight could be be 
 stowed. I am sure if Jesus Christ had given, it would 
 not have been little crosses. 
 
 " There is snow all over Florence, in our most beau 
 tiful piazza. Santa Maria Novella, with its fair loggia 
 and bridal church, is a carpet of snow, and the full 
 moon looking down. I had forgotten how angelical all 
 that is ; how fit to die by. I have only seen snow in 
 mountain patches for so long. Here it is the even holy 
 shroud of a desired power. God bless all good and bad 
 to-night, and save me from despair." l 
 
 i MS. 
 
272 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 It is evident from the closing words of this and 
 many other letters that a sense of foreboding was 
 always upon her. In the midst of revolution, war, 
 and death ; seeing constantly the separation of 
 families, the ruin of households ; her whole soul 
 clung with even more than a mother s usual yearn 
 ing to the actual presence of her boy. In inter 
 preting the last tragic moment of her life, this 
 must always be borne in mind. She writes to 
 an American friend in Italy : "I have never an 
 swered what you said of the loss of Maria L. s 
 [Lowell s] child. These things make me tremble 
 with selfish sympathy. I could not, I think, sur 
 vive the loss of my child ; I wonder daily how it 
 can be done." How fine and penetrating is that 
 phrase, " selfish sympathy." No other two words 
 ever expressed the precise emotion she describes, 
 and no one ever felt that emotion more absorb 
 ingly than she. It is something, that the one dan 
 ger she dreaded was the one calamity from which 
 she was to be spared. 
 
 After the brief vision of a Roman republic had 
 passed away, it seemed best for the Ossolis to 
 leave Italy for America. Apart from the trifle 
 that Ossoli had been able to secure of his own 
 property, their main dependence mast be on her 
 pen. Her book on the Roman republic was ready 
 for publication, and she believed that she could 
 make better terms for it, if once in America, than 
 the offers which she had received by mail. She 
 thus writes : 
 
CLOSING SCENES. 273 
 
 " I do not think I shall publish till I can be there [in 
 America] in person. I had first meant to [publish] in 
 England ; but you know this new regulation that a for 
 eigner cannot hold copyright there. I think if I pub 
 lish in the United States I should be there to correct 
 the proofs, see about the form of the work and altera 
 tions in MS. ; also I hope on the spot I may make bet 
 ter terms than are offered by letter." 1 
 
 This was soon so plain that nothing stood in 
 the way but the obstacles which she thus reported 
 to her brother : 
 
 " FLORENCE, 24th February, 1850. 
 
 ..." I hoped by this time to say decisively when I 
 [shall] come home, but do not yet know, we not being 
 sure yet we can get the money. The voyage, made in 
 the cheapest way we can, must cost us about two hun 
 dred and fifty dollars, as, even if we have the length and 
 discomforts of voyage by a merchantman, and go with 
 out any help for care of the baby in case of being sick, 
 we must still buy stores, and have a cow or goat to in 
 sure him proper food. We may have in this way two 
 months on the ocean. I have always suffered much in 
 my head at sea. However, to go by France would be 
 more than double the expense. Happy the fowls of the 
 air, who don t have to think so much about these things. 
 I hope by hook (we shan t try by crook) to get the 
 means and come somehow." 2 
 
 There were thus some actual difficulties in the 
 way, and there was, besides, an obstacle of fore 
 boding. It is common for those who are under 
 taking an important step in their lives, especially 
 
 1 MS. 2 MS. 
 
 18 
 
274 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 if it involves a voyage or a long journey, to be 
 haunted by some vague premonition of coming 
 evil. If all goes well, they afterwards laugh and 
 forget the foreboding ; if evil comes, they or their 
 friends remember it forever. This is, at any rate, 
 the commonest and easiest explanation of such 
 emotions, but if ever there was a case where the 
 solicitude seemed to amount to a prediction, it was 
 in regard to the voyage of the Ossolis. Italians 
 are apt to dread the sea, and Ossoli had been cau 
 tioned to beware of it by one who had told his for 
 tune when a boy. His wife, on the other hand, 
 had cherished a superstition that the year 1850, 
 probably as being the middle of the century, 
 would be a marked epoch in her life. But there 
 were more definite omens and warnings, or what 
 passed for such. On April 6 Madame Ossoli 
 wrote to her friend, the Marchioness Visconti 
 Arconati : 
 
 " I am absurdly fearful about this voyage. Various 
 little omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. 
 Among others, just now we hear of the wreck of the 
 Westmoreland bearing Powers * Eve. Perhaps we 
 shall live to laugh at these. But in case of mishap I 
 should perish with my husband and child, perhaps to be 
 transferred to some happier state." * 
 
 Again she wrote to Madame Arconati (April 
 21, 1850): 
 
 " It was an odd combination. I had intended, if I 
 went by way of France, to take the packet ship Arga 
 1 MS. 
 
CLOSING SCENES. 275 
 
 from Havre ; I had just written to Mrs. Story that I 
 should not do so ; and at the same time requested her 
 to find Miss Fitton, who had my muff, etc. ; having 
 closed the letter, I took up * Galignani, and my eye fell 
 on these words, Died, 4th April, at No. 10 Rue Ville 
 I lv6que, Miss E. Fitton. Turning the leaf, I read of 
 the wreck of the Argo returning from America to 
 France. There were also notices of the wreck of 
 the Royal Adelaide, a fine English steamer, and of the 
 John Skiddy, one of the fine American packets. Thus, 
 as it seems, safety is not to be found in the wisest cal 
 culation. I shall embark more composedly in my mer 
 chant ship ; praying, indeed, fervently, that it may 
 not be my lot to lose my babe at sea, either by un- 
 solaced sickness, or amid the howling waves. Or, that 
 if I should, it may be brief anguish, and Ossoli, he and 
 I go together. Pray with me, dear friend, as yours 
 ever, forever, MARGARET." l 
 
 It seemed best, finally, to take passage on the 
 Elizabeth, a merchant vessel that was to sail from 
 Leghorn. This was a new vessel, and Madame 
 Ossoli took the precaution of going with her 
 friend, Mrs. Mozier, to see it; they were much 
 pleased with Captain Hasty and his wife, who 
 came to Florence and spent a few days, as visitors, 
 with Mrs. Mozier. Yet at the very last moment 
 the feeling of foreboding recurred, and it was dif 
 ficult for Madame Ossoli to force herself on board. 
 Still, she went ; they sailed May 17, 1850, the 
 only other passengers being Horace Sumner, of 
 Boston, a younger brother of Charles Sumner, 
 IMS. 
 
276 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 and a young Italian girl, Celeste Paolini. Mis. 
 fortune soon began ; Captain Hasty sickened and 
 died of malignant small-pox, and was buried 
 beneath the waves in the harbor of Gibraltar. 
 There they were detained a week by adverse 
 winds, setting sail again June 9. Two days af 
 ter, little Angelo was also attacked with small 
 pox, and was restored with difficulty. At noon 
 of July 18 they were off the coast of New Jersey ; 
 the weather was thick, the officer in command 
 steered east-north-east, hoping, with the southeast 
 wind that was blowing, to be next morning in a 
 position to take a pilot and run before the wind 
 past Sandy Hook. So sure was he, that they 
 packed their trunks for landing. By nine P. M. 
 there was a gale, by midnight a hurricane ; but 
 the commander kept the vessel close-reefed, on 
 her fatal course, till at four o clock on the morn 
 ing of July 19 she struck on that fatal Fire Island 
 beach which has engulfed so many. 
 
 The story of that shipwreck has been told again 
 and again ; nor is it possible now to obtain much 
 new material to remould the description. But to 
 one point it is right to call attention ; the too hasty 
 assumption drawn from time to time, in the suc 
 cessive reproductions of the story, that Madame 
 Ossoli sacrificed the lives of the party by her per 
 sistent refusal to be separated from husband and 
 child. Had she done so, I know no one who could 
 justly condemn her ; it was within her right and 
 her husband s to elect whether they and their boy 
 
CLOSING SCENES. 277 
 
 should cling together or be separated ; and we 
 know that all her prayer before setting sail was 
 that there might be no division of the tie gained 
 so late and so hardly won. But when it comes 
 to actual evidence of such persistent refusal, it 
 not only has no support, but is directly contrary 
 to the final events. The simple fact that the little 
 Angelo was drowned in the arms of the steward is 
 sufficient refutation of the charge that his mother 
 refused to intrust him to anybody ; and it remains 
 only a question of judgment whether the attempt 
 to save him should have been made sooner. On 
 that point almost any inexperienced landsman 
 might think that he could have bettered the de 
 cision of those on the wreck, just as every civilian 
 sees where he could have won the particular battle 
 that Grant lost ; but the more closely even a 
 landsman looks at the actual evidence, the less 
 possible a revision of judgment becomes. 
 
 Upon what rests the impression that Madame 
 Ossoli peremptorily refused to risk the fate of 
 her husband or child apart from herself ? Mainly 
 on the evidence of the commanding officer ; an of 
 ficer who, having first wrecked his ship, and then 
 saved his own life while leaving all his passengers 
 and four seamen on board, was under the strong 
 est conceivable inducement to throw all the blame 
 possible on some one else. Nothing is more dif" 
 *ficult than to obtain a clear account of the cir 
 cumstances of a shipwreck, even by sifting the 
 testimony of all witnesses ; an eminent admiralty 
 
278 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 lawyer, who lias spent his life in attempting to do 
 this in his successive cases, tells me that he has 
 never yet thoroughly accomplished it. It is hard 
 enough to be perfectly sure of the facts in case of 
 a runaway accident which takes place in broad 
 daylight opposite our own windows. It is difficult 
 to this day to get a thoroughly correct account of 
 the most insignificant skirmish during our civil 
 war ; and of a wreck that happens at daybreak in 
 a howling storm, on a lee shore, the longest cross- 
 examination of the survivors hardly avails. In 
 this particular case there are now no witnesses to 
 reexamine ; we only know that the acting captain 
 left his ship long before his passengers, while four 
 seamen remained. Either they remained because 
 they thought they would have personally a better 
 chance by so doing, in which case their judgment 
 may have been as good as his ; or they remained 
 because of a devotion to their passengers which 
 the captain did not share. While they were still 
 on the wreck the case naturally did not seem 
 hopeless to the passengers. There was the shore 
 in sight ; with the life - boat which they might 
 suppose that the captain would get launched if 
 nobody else had ; with its life-saving mortar for 
 throwing a rope, which he at least might employ. 
 There was the chance of a lull in the storm, dur 
 ing which a raft might be built, on which they 
 might go together. It was not so clear that the* 
 only mode of escape was to trust themselves singly 
 on a little plank like that from which Mrs. Hasty, 
 
CLOSING SCENES. 279 
 
 ere landing, had been twice washed off. So at 
 least it may well have seemed to those on board. 
 All we know is that Angelo was in the steward s 
 arms to be taken on shore, when the deck was 
 swept away ; and that, by Mrs. Hasty s account, 
 the sailors " had just persuaded her [Madame 
 Ossoli] to trust herself to a plank, when the final 
 wave broke over the vessel." x 
 
 Two of the four sailors reached land alive ; and 
 the still warm bodies of the child and steward 
 came ashore. This shows that, even at the last, 
 rescue would not have been impossible, had the 
 life-boat been launched. The whole case is prob 
 ably summed up in the remark made by one of 
 the life-boat men to the Rev. W. H. Channing, 
 from whom I have it in writing, " Oh ! if we 
 had known there were any such persons of impor 
 tance on board, we should have tried to do our 
 best." It was natural for the passengers on the 
 wreck to suppose that the life-boat men were 
 there to do their best in any case. 
 
 Two only of Margaret Ossoli s treasures reached 
 the land, the beautiful body of her child, and a 
 trunk holding the letters that had passed between 
 herself and her husband. The body of little An 
 gelo was placed in a seaman s chest, while his 
 rough playmates stood tearfully around, and was 
 afterwards buried among the sand-hills ; to be at 
 last disinterred and brought to Mount Auburn 
 Cemetery by the relatives who had never seen 
 
 1 At Home and Abroad, Appendix, p. 451. 
 
280 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 him in life. Among the papers in the trunk was 
 found one memorial which lies before me now, 
 faded and wave-stained. It is a memorandum 
 that was written long before by Margaret Ossoli, 
 during one of her Italian intervals of separation 
 from her child, and folded round a lock of her 
 husband s hair. The paper is as follows : 
 
 "4fA February [1849?]. 
 
 " I saw this morning a beautiful child beginning to 
 walk. He had only eight months, yet is large, fair, 
 rosy, has sixteen teeth. His mother has begun to give 
 him food and wants to wet-nurse another child. Lives 
 55 via St. Basileo. He had already plenty of hair. 
 
 " How will Angelino seem when I go to him ? " 
 
 Little could she have foreseen under what cir 
 cumstances of deeper tragedy this mother s rev 
 erie would be read by strangers. As we read it, 
 the final question expands to a vaster significance 
 than it first had ; and represents the eternal un 
 answered longing of the human heart. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 LITEEAKY TEAITS. 
 
 LOOKING the other day into a manuscript jour 
 nal of a visit to London in 1878, I came upon a 
 description of a London dinner-party with this 
 remark in regard to Miss Helen Taylor, the 
 adopted daughter of Stuart Mill : " She is the 
 only woman I have happened to meet in Eng 
 land who seems to associate with intellectual men 
 on terms of equality." This same remark might 
 have been made by a traveler in America, forty 
 years ago, of Margaret Fuller. And it must be 
 remembered that, whereas the men who were her 
 companions had almost all been trained in the reg 
 ular channels of school, college, and profession, had 
 been stimulated by the hope of rank, aided by re 
 wards, or incited by professional ambition, she ac 
 complished whatever she attained by sheer zeal 
 for knowledge. She was encouraged, no doubt, by 
 her father, and helped by residence in a college 
 town ; but she was destitute of most of the advan 
 tages which her friends enjoyed. They fulfilled 
 their career, whatever it was, in the capacity of 
 men, and with men s facilities ; she attained hers, 
 so far as it was attained, under the disadvantages 
 
282 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLl. 
 
 of a woman. In spite of all this she associated 
 with them as their equal at least, and was really 
 for a time, as editor of the " Dial," their organ 
 izer and their point of union. 
 
 Sharing their advantages, she also shared, to 
 some extent, their drawbacks. If they, with all 
 their more regular training, were yet apt to be 
 discursive, unsystematic, with too much reliance 
 on intuition and imagination, if that in short 
 was the habit of the time, it was natural that 
 she should share the fault. Her defects were 
 those of Emerson and of Thoreau ; and yet, after 
 her " Tribune " training, she learned to shorten 
 her sword better than either of these; became 
 more capable of precise concentration on a speci 
 fied point. It is also to be noted that, unlike 
 them, she cannot be judged by her maturest 
 work ; not a page of her history of the Roman 
 republic of 1848 remains ; we can only infer what 
 it might have been from the progress already seen. 
 
 And sharing also the drawbacks, she also shared 
 inevitably the prejudices that her companions in 
 spired. These prejudices might be divided into 
 two general heads; it was thought that they 
 were unintelligible and it was said if this was 
 not indeed the same allegation that they were 
 German. It is now difficult to recall the peculiar 
 suspicion that was attached to any one in Amer 
 ica, forty years ago, who manifested much interest 
 in German thought. Immanuel Kant is now 
 claimed as a corner-stone of religion by evangels 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 283 
 
 cal divines, but he was then thought to be more 
 dangerous than any French novelist; and good 
 Mrs. Farrar, as I have already indicated, traces 
 the materialism of Miss Martineau s latter years 
 partly to her early studies of this philosopher. 
 " I have since thought," Mrs. Farrar writes, "that 
 her admiration of the philosophy of Kant may 
 have been one of her first steps on that path 
 which has conducted her to a disbelief in all reve 
 lation and the immortality of the soul too mel 
 ancholy a subject for me to dwell on here." l 
 
 If this feeling existed about Kant it was still 
 stronger about Goethe. Even the genial Long 
 fellow spoke of " that monstrous book, the 4 Elec 
 tive Affinities, " although this story was written 
 with a moral purpose, and would be far more leni 
 ently judged at the present day. Longfellow s 
 friend Felton translated Menzel s " German Lit- 
 ature," in which Goethe appears as a pretender 
 and quite a secondary person. Yet Margaret 
 Fuller, who has been lately censured by Professor 
 Harris as not admiring the great German poet 
 enough, was held up to censure in her day for ad 
 miring him too much. This ardent, slowly-tamed, 
 and gradually-tempered feminine nature, yearning 
 to be, to do, and to suffer, all at the same time, 
 was supposed to model herself after the marble 
 statue, Goethe. The charge was self-contradict 
 ing ; and is worth naming only as being a part of 
 that misconception which she, like all other would- 
 be reformers, had to endure. 
 
 1 Recollections of Seventy Years, p. 262. 
 
284 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 In the most important period of her early life 
 she wrote, "As to Goethe ... I do not go to him 
 as a guide or friend, but as a great thinker who 
 makes me think." 1 At this very time she was 
 planning to write Goethe s biography and prepar 
 ing to translate Eckermann s conversations with 
 him. In her correspondence, here and there, she 
 doubtless speaks of him as "the master," but the 
 light use of a trivial phrase is not to be set against 
 her distinct disclaimer, as just quoted. She was 
 indeed too omnivorous a reader, too ardent and 
 fertile a thinker, to go through the successive 
 bondages by which many fine minds especially 
 the minds of women work their way to freedom. 
 Miss Martineau, for instance, with all her native 
 vigor, was always following with implicit confi 
 dence some particular guide or model ; in early 
 life her brother James, then Mai thus, then Garri 
 son, then Comte, then even Atkinson ; but in 
 Margaret Fuller s case, though there were many 
 friendships, there was no personal and controlling 
 ruler. Emerson came the nearest to this, and yet 
 we see by her letters how frankly she could criti 
 cise even him. Her danger lay in the direction of 
 originality, not of imitation ; of too much diver 
 gence, not too much concentration. Coming in 
 contact, as she did, with some of the strongest men 
 of her time ; first the Boston Transcendentalists ; 
 then Horace Greeley in New York ; then Mazzini 
 in Italy : she was still her own mistress, still 
 1 MS. letter : Providence, R. I., July 3, 1837. 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 285 
 
 lius addicta jurare in verba magistri. This showed 
 not merely a strong nature for strength alone 
 does not secure independence but a rich and 
 wise one. 
 
 In regard to unintelligibleness, she also shared 
 the charge with others ; and I do not know that 
 she especially deserved it. She may be confused, 
 rambling, sometimes high-flown, but she offers no 
 paradoxes so startling as some of Emerson s, and 
 is incomparably smoother and clearer than Al- 
 cott. Nor is her obscurity ever wanton or whim 
 sical, but is rather of that kind which, as Cole 
 ridge has said, is a compliment to the reader. 
 Note also that she is merciful to her public, and 
 if she has a thought with which she struggles so 
 that she can hardly get it into every day words, it 
 is to be found in her letters, not in her publica 
 tions. Such a statement as this, for instance, she 
 would hardly have put into print ; because it is 
 not worked out so clearly that he who runs may 
 read. Yet it is full of suggestion. She is speak 
 ing of what she calls " The Third Thought." 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, October 27, 1843. 
 
 ..." Your mind has acted with beneficent force on 
 mine, and roused it now from a repose which it has long 
 enough enjoyed. Let me try a little to note some results 
 of my reflections. 
 
 " The third thought which is to link together each 
 conflicting two is of course the secret of the universe. 
 It is sought alike by the fondest dream of love, the 
 purest pain of thought ; the philosopher exacts, the poet 
 
286 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 expects it, the child believes it is already here. It Is 
 the beloved Son in whom both God and man will be 
 well pleased. . . . 
 
 " Faith and hope are gradually transmuted into 
 knowledge, but very slowly is this mass of matter leav 
 ened by the divine wisdom. Yet the third thought is 
 gradually taking possession of us ; when we have at 
 last become thoroughly possessed by, we may in turn 
 
 This statement belongs upon the same plane 
 with that made by Emerson in his essay on the 
 " Over-Soul," that " In all conversation between 
 two persons, tacit reference is made to a third 
 party, to a common nature ; " but Margaret Ful 
 ler s proposition is a somewhat different thing, and 
 is even more suggestive. Scattered through her 
 letters and journals everywhere there are pas 
 sages of which this is an example ; and it is such 
 as these to which Emerson refers when he speaks 
 of her "lyric glimpses." But in her published 
 writings she rarely attempted more than she felt 
 herself able to state clearly ; though her standard 
 of clearness was not just that which now prevails. 
 Even in her printed essays, however, she suf 
 fered from an exuberance of mental activity, 
 which she had not yet learned to control. Trained 
 early to be methodical in her use of time, she had 
 neither the leisure nor the health nor perhaps the 
 impulse to be methodical in thought. In that 
 teeming period when she lived, method was not 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 287 
 
 the strong point, nor did her friend Emerson set 
 her, in this respect, a controlling example. The 
 habit of conversation was perhaps bad for her, in 
 this way, and may have tended, as does all extern." 
 poraneous speaking, toward a desultory habit oi 
 mind. Journalism, which was her next resource, 
 leads in the same way ; that is, the single edito 
 rial demands concentration, but two successive 
 editorials are rarely linked together, and still 
 more rarely give room for what she calls " the 
 third thought." Accordingly her " Tribune " ar 
 ticles had more symmetry than her previous writ 
 ings, but it was symmetry within the restricted 
 field of the newspaper column, which often un 
 fits the best journalist for a more sustained flight. 
 How far the maturer experience of Italy may 
 have remedied this, in her case, we never shall 
 know, since her book was lost with her ; and her 
 record as a writer remains therefore unfinished. 
 Still it is something to know that on the whole 
 she tended more and more to completeness of 
 form, and to the proper control of her own abun 
 dant thoughts. 
 
 The evidence of this is not to be found in her 
 "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," which, 
 while full of thoughts and suggestions, is yet dis 
 cursive and unmethodical, but in her u Papers 
 on Literature and Art." The most satisfactory of 
 these is the essay on Sir James Mackintosh, which 
 Btill seems to me, as it has seemed for many years, 
 
288 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 one of the very best critical essays yet written in 
 America. Sir James was a peculiarly good sub 
 ject to test her powers, because his temperament 
 was wholly alien from hers. He stood to her in 
 a clear light, as the man who by the consent of 
 all contemporaries was best equipped for great 
 deeds, yet never accomplished them ; who must 
 be judged by his results as against his promise; 
 omnium consensu capax imperil, nisi imperdsset. 
 This has often since been pointed out, but no ono 
 stated it so early, or at least so clearly as Marga 
 ret Fuller. I know nobody else in American lit 
 erature who could have handled the theme so 
 well; Lowell would not have done the work so 
 simply, or Whipple so profoundly, while Emer^ 
 son would not have done it at all. If any reader 
 of this book wishes to be satisfied that Margaret 
 Fuller had her own place and a very high place 
 among American prose-writers, they may turn to 
 that essay. 
 
 There were two points in which no one exceeded 
 her at the time and place in which she lived. 
 First, she excelled in " lyric glimpses," or the 
 power of putting a high thought into a sentence. 
 If few of her sentences have passed into the com 
 mon repertory of quotation, that is not a final test. 
 The greatest poet is not necessarily the most 
 quoted or quotable poet. Pope fills twenty-four 
 pages in Bartlett s " Dictionary of Quotations," 
 Moore eight, Burns but six, Keats but two, and 
 the Brownings taken together less than half a 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 289 
 
 page. The test of an author is not to be found 
 merely in the number of his phrases that pass 
 current in the corners of newspapers else would 
 " Josh Billings "be at the head of literature ; 
 but in the number of passages that have really 
 taken root in younger minds. Tried by this 
 standard, Margaret Fuller ranks high, and, if I 
 were to judge strictly by my own personal ex 
 perience, I should say very high indeed. I shall 
 always be grateful to the person who fixed in 
 my memory, during early life, such sentences as 
 these : 
 
 " Yes, O Goethe ! but the ideal is truer than the ac 
 tual. This changes and that changes not." 
 
 " Tragedy is always a mistake ; and the loneliness of 
 the deepest thinker, the, widest lover, ceases to be pa 
 thetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the 
 mountains." 
 
 [In reading fiction] " We need to hear the excuses 
 men make to themselves for their worthlessness." [A 
 better criticism never was made on the current villain 
 of the drama and the novel.] 
 
 " For precocity some great price is always demanded 
 sooner or later in life." 
 
 " Genius will live and thrive without training, but it 
 does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning- 
 knife." 
 
 " A man who means to think and write a great deal 
 must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fin 
 gers." 
 
 " Man tells his aspiration in his God ; but in his de 
 mon he shows his depth of experience ; and casts light 
 19 
 
290 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 into the cavern through which he worked his cause up 
 to the cheerful day." 
 
 Other such passages might easily be added ; in 
 deed they are already to be found, here and there, 
 distributed through this memoir. And her criti 
 cal verdicts are often condensed into passages as 
 compact as the following as where she says of 
 Coleridge, " Give Coleridge a canvas and he will 
 paint a single mood as if his colors were made of 
 the mind s own atoms ; " or of Southey, " In his 
 most brilliant passages there is nothing of inspira 
 tion ; " or of Shelley, " The rush, the flow, the del 
 icacy of vibration in Shelley s verse can only be 
 paralleled by the waterfall, the rivulet, the notes 
 of the bird and of the insect world ; " or when she 
 speaks of the " balm " appjied by Wordsworth to 
 the public heart after the fever of Byron ; or de 
 picts the " strange bleak fidelity " of Crabbe ; or 
 says of Campbell that he did not possess "as 
 much lyric flow as force;" 1 or of literary phases 
 and fashions generally, " There is no getting rid 
 of the epidemic of the season, however amazing 
 and useless it may seem ; you cannot cough down 
 an influenza, it will cough you down ; " 2 in all 
 these statements she makes not merely a series of 
 admirable points, but she really gives the con 
 densed essence of criticism. 
 
 She seems to me to have been, in the second 
 place, the best literary critic whom America has 
 
 1 Papers, etc. p. 71, 77, 83, 93, 98. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 87. 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 291 
 
 yet seen. Her friend Ripley, who succeeded her 
 in the " Tribune " and held such sway for many 
 years, was not, in the finer aspects of the art, 
 to be compared with Margaret Fuller. Passing 
 from her single phrases and obiter dicta to her 
 continuous criticisms, I should name her second 
 paper on Goethe in the " Dial ; " l as ranking 
 next to that on Mackintosh ; and should add, 
 also, her essay on " Modern British Poets " in 
 "Papers on Literature and Art ;" and the "dia 
 logue " between Aglauron and Laurie in the same 
 volume. In this last there are criticisms on Words 
 worth which go deeper, I venture to think, than 
 anything Lowell has written on the same subject. 
 I do not recall any other critic on this poet who 
 has linked together the poems " A Complaint " 
 and the sonnet beginning 
 
 " There is a change and I am poor," 
 
 and has pointed out that these two give us a 
 glimpse of a profounder personal emotion and a 
 deeper possibility of sadness in Wordsworth than 
 all else that he has written put together. There 
 are also admirable remarks on Coleridge and on 
 Shakespeare ; and how fine in thought, how sim 
 ply and admirably stated, is this conclusion : 
 
 " Were I, despite the bright points so numerous in 
 their history and the admonitions of my own conscience, 
 inclined to despise my fellow-men, I should have found 
 
 1 Dial, ii. 1 (July, 1841, reprinted in Life Without and Life 
 Within, p. 23). 
 
292 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 abundant argument against it during this late study of 
 Hamlet. In the streets, saloons, and lecture rooms we 
 continually hear comments so stupid, insolent, and shal 
 low on great and beautiful works, that we are tempted 
 to think that there is no public for anything that is 
 good ; that a work of genius can appeal only to the 
 fewest minds in any one age, and that the reputation 
 now awarded to those of former times is never felt, but 
 only traditional. Of Shakespeare, so vaunted a name, 
 little wise or worthy has been written, perhaps nothing 
 so adequate as Coleridge s comparison of him to the 
 pine-apple ; yet on reading Hamlet, his greatest work, 
 we find there is not a pregnant sentence, scarce a word 
 that men have not appreciated, have not used in myriad 
 ways. Had we never read the play, we should find the 
 whole of it from quotation and illustration as familiar to 
 us as air. The exquisite phraseology, so heavy with 
 meaning, wrought out with such admirable minuteness, 
 has become a part of literary diction, the stock of the 
 literary bank ; and what set criticism can tell like this 
 fact how great was the work, and that men were worthy 
 it should be addressed to them ? " l 
 
 In this conversation, as in all the imaginary 
 conversations which were so in fashion at that 
 period, there are traces of Landor ; but Margaret 
 Fuller achieved, both in " Aglauron and Laurie," 
 and in " The Two Herberts," what Landor rarely 
 accomplished what Lowell could not achieve in 
 his "Conversations on the Dramatists," or her 
 other fellow-townsman, Story, in his more recent 
 " He and She," the distinct individualization of 
 
 1 Papers on iterature and Art, p. 173. 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 293 
 
 the two participants. Through the whole dia 
 logue we see two persons, not merely one person 
 speaking through two mouths. For instance, Lau 
 rie asks Aglauron : 
 
 " But have I not seemed heartless to you at times ? " 
 and Aglauron replies : 
 
 " In the moment, perhaps, but quiet thought always 
 showed me the difference between heartlessness and the 
 want of a deep heart." 
 
 Here we have not only an admirable glimpse into 
 the recesses of human character, but we have a 
 sharp demarkation between the two friends. Here 
 and elsewhere, the conversation is a real inter 
 change of thoughts and not a disguised monologue. 
 
 Margaret Fuller s career as a critic encountered, 
 at two points, the sincere opposition and even 
 hostility of many readers, especially in her own 
 home ; in relation, namely, to her fellow-towns 
 men Longfellow and Lowell. It may readily be 
 admitted at this time that she did less than jus 
 tice to them both. This admitted, the fact re 
 mains that there was not a trace of personal ran 
 cor or grievance in either case ; her whole career, 
 indeed, being singularly free from this lowest of 
 literary vices. In regard to Longfellow, she in 
 the first place, as Horace Greeley tells us, wished 
 to be excused from reviewing him ; and then 
 stated without disguise why she criticised him so 
 frankly : because he seemed to her over-praised, 
 and because she thought him exotic. This she 
 
294 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLT. 
 
 says in her own words more distinctly than any 
 one else can say it for her : 
 
 " We must confess to a coolness towards Mr. Long 
 fellow, in consequence of the exaggerated praises that 
 have been bestowed upon him. When we see a person 
 of moderate powers receive honors which should be re 
 served for the highest, we feel somewhat like assailing 
 him and taking from him the crown which should be re 
 served for grander brows. And yet this is, perhaps, un 
 generous." 
 
 The italics are my own. Then she defends 
 him from the special charge of plagiarism, which 
 Poe was just trying to fasten upon him, and goes 
 on: 
 
 " He has no style of his own, growing out of his own 
 experiences and observations of nature. Nature with 
 him, whether human or external, is always seen through 
 the windows of literature. There are in his poems 
 sweet and tender passages descriptive of his personal 
 feelings, but very few showing him as an observer, at 
 first hand, of the passions within, or the landscape with 
 out. 
 
 " This want of the free breath of nature, this perpet 
 ual borrowing of imagery, this excessive, because super 
 ficial, culture which he has derived from an acquaint 
 ance with the elegant literature of many nations and 
 men, out of proportion to the experience of life within 
 himself, prevent Mr. Longfellow s verses from ever be 
 ing a true refreshment to ourselves. . . . 
 
 " And now farewell to the handsome book, with its 
 Preciosos and Preciosas, its vikings and knights and 
 cavaliers, its flowers of all climes and wild flowers of 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 295 
 
 none. We have not wished to depreciate these writings 
 below their current value, more than truth absolutely 
 demands. We have not forgotten that, if a man cannot 
 himself sit at the feet of the muse, it is much if he prizes 
 those who may ; it makes him a teacher to the people. 
 Neither have we forgotten that Mr. Longfellow has a 
 genuine respect for his pen, never writes carelessly, nor 
 when he does not wish to, nor for money alone. Nor 
 are we intolerant to those who prize hot-house bouquets 
 beyond all the free beauty of nature ; that helps the 
 gardener and has its uses. But still let us not forget 
 4 Excelsior ! I" 1 
 
 This is, no doubt, overstated, but who will now 
 deny that there was a certain force in it ? As 
 Longfellow underwent deeper experiences and 
 mellowed into his beautiful old age, this criticism 
 seemed plainly inadequate ; and Margaret Fuller 
 herself, had she lived, would have been the first to 
 recognize the deepening Americanism of his tone 
 this being what she chiefly demanded of him. 
 The poems that she had singled out for praise in 
 his early volumes were those like " The Village 
 Blacksmith" and "The Driving Cloud," which 
 had a flavor of the soil ; and as he grew older, 
 this quality became unmistakable. But hers was 
 at any rate legitimate literary criticism, and would 
 perhaps have left no sting behind but for the sin 
 gle fact that she compared the weak portrait of 
 him, prefaced to the first illustrated edition of his 
 poems (Philadelphia, 1845), to "a dandy Pindar." 
 
 1 Papers on Literature and Art, pp. 330-335. 
 
296 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 Any one who will look to-day at that picture will 
 see that there could hardly be a more felicitous 
 characterization of it than in these three words; 
 but it was fancied at the time, most gratuitously, 
 that she meant it for a hit at Longfellow himself ; 
 and hence followed a very needless irritation, which 
 fortunately the amiable poet did not greatly share. 
 
 In regard to Lowell, the case was a little differ 
 ent, and her tone was blunter, though equally free 
 from all personal grudge. She had welcomed 
 very cordially his first volume of poems in the 
 " Dial ; " and again in 1845, when reviewing his 
 " Conversations " in the " Tribune," had taken 
 pains to do him justice while pointing out, as in 
 the case of Longfellow, that she felt bound to re 
 sist a certain tone of exaggeration in his admir 
 ers. She wrote of him : 
 
 " He shows great justness of feeling, delicacy of per 
 ception, comprehensive views ; and, for this country, an 
 unusual refinement and extent of culture. We have 
 been accustomed to hear Mr. Lowell so extravagantly 
 lauded by the circle of his friends, that we should be 
 hopeless of escaping the wrath of his admirers, for any 
 terms in which our expressions of sympathy could be 
 couched, but for the more modest and dignified tone of 
 his own preface, which presents ground on which the 
 world at large can meet him. With his admirers, we 
 have often been reminded of a fervent Italian who raved 
 at one of our country-women as a heartless girl, be 
 cause she would not go to walk with him alone at mid 
 night. But Mr. Lowell himself speaks of his work as 
 becomes one conversant with those of great and accom 
 plished minds." 
 
LITERARY TRAITS. 297 
 
 Later in the same year (1845), however, in that 
 essay on "American Literature " which appeared 
 for the first time in her " Papers," she wrote the 
 words which created so much indignation, and 
 which simply show that no critic can look forward 
 with infallible judgment to the future develop 
 ment of a poet. She wrote of Lowell, as has al 
 ready been said, that he was " absolutely wanting 
 in the true spirit and tone of poesy," adding : 
 
 " His interest in the moral questions of the day has 
 supplied the want of vitality in himself; his great facility 
 at versification has enabled him to fill the ear with a 
 copious stream of pleasant sound. But his verse is ster 
 eotyped ; his thought sounds no depth, and posterity will 
 not remember him." l 
 
 This last is very nearly what Coleridge said of 
 Scott. He said, " Not twenty lines of Scott s po 
 etry will ever reach posterity ; it has relation to 
 nothing." 2 Coleridge erred as to Scott, and Mar 
 garet Fuller as to Lowell ; but we must remember 
 that Scott s poetry was all published when Cole 
 ridge s criticism was made ; while Margaret Fuller 
 wrote when Lowell had printed only his " Class 
 Poem " and two early volumes ; the " Biglow Pa 
 pers " and " Sir Launfal," and all the works by 
 which he is now best known being still unwritten. 
 It was simply a mistaken literary estimate, not 
 flavored with the slightest personal sting ; and it 
 
 1 Papers on Literature and Art, p. 308. 
 
 2 Alsop s Letters, Conversations, etc. of Coleridge, Am. ed. p. 
 116. 
 
298 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 would be hardly possible, in these milder days, for 
 such a criticism to call out the kind of retaliation 
 that is to be found in the " Fable for Critics." 
 But that was a period, as has already been inti 
 mated, of great literary truculence ; a time when, 
 as Heine says of the Germans, an author, like an 
 African chief, felt bound to moisten the base of 
 his own throne with the blood of his slain foes. 
 Lowell, probably, also thought that, in the case of 
 Margaret Fuller, he was immolating the good-na 
 tured Longfellow s literary enemies with his own. 
 
XIX. 
 
 PERSONAL TKAITS. 
 
 THAT woman of genius, Mrs. Sarah Helen 
 Whitman of Providence, best known to the 
 world as having been the betrothed of Edgar Poe, 
 wrote once, in the " Providence Journal," a 
 description of a scene where the brilliant and 
 audacious John Neal gave a parlor lecture on 
 Phrenology, then at its high-tide of prominence ; 
 and illustrated it by Margaret Fuller s head. The 
 occasion is thus described : 
 
 "Among the topics of the evening, phrenology was 
 introduced, and Mr. Neal expressed a wish to give what 
 might be termed a topical illustration of his favorite 
 theory. Miss Fuller slowly uncoiled the heavy folds of 
 her light brown hair and submitted her haughty head to 
 his sentient fingers. The masterly analysis which he 
 made of her character, its complexities and contradic 
 tions, its heights and its depths, its nobilities and its 
 frailties, was strangely lucid and impressive, and helped 
 one who knew her well to a more tender and sympa 
 thetic appreciation of her character and career, a charac 
 ter which only George P^liot could have fully appre 
 ciated and portrayed." 1 
 
 1 Providence Journal, July 24, 1876. 
 
300 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 Many men, including some of the most gifted in 
 our American community, have since tried their 
 hands on Margaret Fuller s head ; and they have 
 given such varying results as their point of obser 
 vation might justify. With ready recognition of 
 my own inferiority to them as respects personal 
 knowledge, I find myself, after long and patient 
 study of her writings, forming conclusions some 
 times different from theirs. I do not think that 
 Mr. Emerson, with his cool and tranquil tempera 
 ment, always did quite justice to the ardent nature 
 that flung itself against him ; and it seems to me 
 that her other biographers have sometimes been 
 too much influenced by their own point of contact 
 with her to see that the self-culture which brought 
 her to them was by no means the whole of her 
 aim. Let me, therefore, consider her character 
 rather more minutely. 
 
 It is to be remembered, in the first place, that 
 her life was always saddened by the feeling that 
 she had been defrauded of her childhood by too 
 forced a precocity and deprived of her rightful 
 health through mismanagement. Under this dis 
 advantage she led thenceforward a life of con 
 stant checking and restriction, not as to pleas 
 ures, for which she rarely sighs in her diaries, 
 but as to doing her appointed work in the world 
 and employing the talents given her. Rising in 
 the morning, as Emerson says of all of us, " with 
 an appetite that could eat the solar system like a 
 cake," she soon finds herself restricted as to food 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS. 301 
 
 and wholly wanting in digestion. With the lar 
 gest views as to the aims and destiny of her nation, 
 she was obliged to see the timid and the pessi 
 mists work on while she was fettered. There are 
 many who, because they cannot do the great 
 things, refuse to do the little ones ; she was ready 
 to lavish herself on the smallest ; no one ever saw 
 a more devoted daughter, sister, friend ; and only 
 her diary and a very few intimates knew how 
 much this cost her or how she yearned for some 
 thing more. With inexorable frankness she saw 
 that even her resignation was often a kind of 
 despair, even the alms she gave were only a mis 
 erable substitute for the larger work she longed to 
 do ; and thus much she often expressed, not only 
 to herself but to others. 
 
 She thought that we human beings ought not, 
 as she wrote to Mr. Emerson (in 1839), " to sup 
 press the worst or select the best of ourselves," but 
 to be " altogether better." Even her own good 
 deeds thoroughly dissatisfied her, and she often 
 points out in her diaries that what passes for vir 
 tue in her is only the resigned acceptance of what 
 seems to her subordinate and unsatisfactory. Her 
 life, so far from being selfish, overflowed with con 
 stant acts of private kindness ; she was incessantly 
 bearing burdens for others, but she was haunted, 
 as many other strong natures have been, by the 
 spirit of Emerson s couplet, 
 
 " He who feeds men serveth few, 
 He serves all who dares be true." 
 
302 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 She demanded to serve all. When ill-health, do 
 mestic care, unsatisfied longings after life and 
 action combined to depress her, she found, as so 
 many others have found, that even self-devotion 
 was only a palliative. She writes in her diary : 
 
 " I went to walk with Richard, then sang psalm tunes 
 with Lloyd, then wrote to Aunt Mary. When I have 
 not joyous energy in myself, I can do these little things 
 for others ; very many of my attentions are of this 
 spurious sort ; they are my consolations ; the givers 
 [of gratitude] who thank me are deceived. But what 
 can I do ? I cannot always upbear my life all alone. 
 The heart sinks and then I must help it by persuasions 
 that it is better for others I should be here and theirs. 
 It is mere palliative, I know. 
 
 " In earliest days how many night-hours have found 
 me thus. I was always so lonely. I used to cheer my 
 self with my piano. I wish I had it now. 
 
 " When no gentle eye-beam charms, 
 No fond hope the bosom warms, 
 Of thinking the lone mind is tired, 
 Nought seems bright to be desired, 
 Music, by thy sails unfurled, 
 Bear me to thy better world ; 
 O er the cold and weltering sea 
 Blow thy breezes warm and free, 
 By sad sighs they ne er were chilled, 
 By skeptic spell were never stilled." l 
 
 Again she writes, at the same period, she hav 
 ing then various classes to teach : 
 
 " Did not get home till just before my class came. 
 Was obliged to lie on the bed all the time they wera 
 i MS. Diary, 1844. 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS. 303 
 
 with me. It was the last time, and they were pleasant. 
 They love me and fancy I am good and wise. Oh that 
 it gave me more pleasure to do a little good, and give a 
 little happiness. But there is no modesty or moderation 
 in me." l 
 
 These extracts are quite inconsistent, I think, 
 with the charge most commonly made against 
 Margaret Fuller, that of vanity and undue self- 
 absorption. It must always be remembered that 
 some previous descriptions of her have been in a 
 manner warped by the fact that they proceeded 
 from the most gifted and intellectual persons 
 whom she knew ; all these persons being almost 
 always men whom she met under a certain amount 
 of intellectual excitement, to whom she showed 
 her brightest aspirations, her deepest solicitudes. 
 It was in the very nature of such a description that 
 the every-day aspects should be left out ; that we 
 should see chiefly the seeress, the dreamer, the 
 student. She writes reproachfully to a cultivated 
 friend after an interview, " You seemed to con 
 sider me as some tete exalte, at the hour when I 
 was making bitter sacrifices to duty." Could a 
 memoir have been made up out of her letters to 
 her mother, full of suggestions about flower bulbs, 
 plans as to the larder, and visions of a renovated 
 silk dress ; or could we have before us a long se 
 ries of the sensible, warm-hearted, motherly letters 
 she wrote every week to her absent younger broth 
 ers, the whole effect produced would have been 
 1 MS. Diary, 1844. 
 
304 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 very different. The complaint is constantly made 
 that all her attainments and her self-culture did not 
 bring her happiness. It is asking a great deal of 
 any single woman to be positively happy in the 
 presence of tormenting ill-health, poverty, and a 
 self-sacrificing habit that keeps her always on the 
 strain. It is even something to ask of a person, 
 under such circumstances, that she should be habit 
 ually cheerful and hopeful. That this last was the 
 predominant tone of Margaret Fuller s daily life is 
 proved by all her more familiar letters and by the 
 general testimony of those who knew her best. No 
 doubt, in her diaries, there are passages which 
 record depression and sometimes almost morbid 
 periods of self-inspection and self-reproach. That 
 is what diaries are made for ; they exist in order 
 that imaginative and passionate natures may re 
 lieve themselves by expressing these moods, and 
 may then forget them and proceed. The trouble 
 comes when sympathetic biographers elevate these 
 heights and depths into too great importance and 
 find the table-lands of life uninteresting. There 
 never was a year of Margaret Fuller s life, after 
 her precocious maturity, when the greater part 
 of it was not given to daily, practical, common- 
 sense labor, and this usually for other people. 
 
 All periods have their fashions. It does not 
 mar our impression of the admirable capacity and 
 self-devotion of Abigail Adams that she signed her 
 early letters to her husband, John Adams, as 
 " Portia." It was the fashion of the time ; and 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS. 305 
 
 when Margaret Fuller afterwards tried to write 
 out her imaginative and mystical side under the 
 name of " Leila," it belonged to that period also ; 
 a period when German romance was just begin 
 ning to be translated, and Oriental poetry to be 
 read. These were her dreams, her idealities ; but 
 when it was a question how to provide school- 
 books and an overcoat for her little brother, no 
 mother of ten children ever set about the business 
 with less of haziness or indefiniteness of mind. If 
 I have seemed in this book to bring my heroine 
 down from the clouds a little ; it is simply be 
 cause I have used the materials at my command, 
 and have tried to paint her as she was ; a being 
 not fed on nectar and ambrosia, after all, but on 
 human nature s daily food. 
 
 It may be asked why, with this daily and noble 
 self-devotion she was not universally beloved. It 
 can be very briefly told : she wanted tact. As 
 some essentially selfish persons go through the 
 world winning all hearts by merely possessing 
 that quality, so others are always underrated for 
 want of it. There is a story told of her, that at a 
 party given expressly for her in Cambridge she 
 took a piece of cake from a plate offered, and then 
 impulsively replaced it with the remark, " I fear 
 there will not be enough to go round," thereby 
 giving more offense than if she had personally ap 
 propriated the whole plateful. It was this simple 
 and not always judicious honesty of purpose which 
 accounted for her frequent failure to attract at 
 20 
 
306 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 first sight, while there have been few women I 
 at least have never known any woman who left 
 behind an affection so deep and strong. It is now 
 thirty years since her death, and there is scarcely 
 a friend of hers who does not speak of her with as 
 warm a devotion as if she had died yesterday. 
 
 If Margaret Fuller was strict and unflinching 
 in her judgments of other people, it was because 
 she was so, above all, in dealing with herself. 
 This is seen on every page of her diaries, which 
 record the very heights and depths of a nature 
 as yet uncontrolled and passionately aspiring. 
 Feeling her own powers and capacities, she also 
 recognized her limitations ; but her statements of 
 these two sides of the question might be wholly 
 detached, and so gave the appearance of more 
 moodiness than really existed. At any rate, 
 moody or not, they were sincere. A lady once 
 said to me of the Fuller family : " Their only pe 
 culiarity was that they said openly about them 
 selves the good and bad things which we com 
 monly suppress about ourselves and express only 
 about other people." This was true, as has been 
 said, about the elder Fullers, even in public ; it 
 was true of Margaret Fuller in her diaries. She 
 was an acute analyst of character, and again and 
 again in her various diaries we come upon sketches 
 delineating the traits of each person in the room. 
 Some of these are printed in the " Dial." * She 
 always includes herself, and is usually more un- 
 * Dial, i. 136, etc. 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS. 307 
 
 flattering to herself than to anybody else. This 
 may be called self-consciousness, but it certainly 
 does not imply vanity ; it quite as often takes the 
 form of an almost excessive humility. 
 
 It would be easy to illustrate all this at great 
 length from her unpublished papers. The most 
 presumptuous passage about herself that I have 
 been able to find is this, which bears no date. In 
 speaking of Shelley s " Defense of Poesie," just 
 read, she expresses her joy at finding that he had 
 taken the matter up very much from the point of 
 view she had been presenting in her conversa 
 tions. " At least," she says, " I have all the great 
 thoughts, and whatever the world may say, I 
 shall be well received in the Elysian fields." 1 Yet 
 this follows close upon a passage expressing her 
 admiration of Shelley s prose style and her utter 
 despair of ever being able to write like him ; she 
 can only console herself by thinking that in con 
 versation, at least, she had met him on his own 
 ground. Soon after follow, again and again, pas 
 sages like these, written at different times : 
 
 " I feel within myself an immense power, but I can 
 not bring it out. I stand a barren vine-stalk ; no grape 
 will swell, though the richest wine is slumbering in its 
 roots." 
 
 " I have just about enough talent and knowledge to 
 furnish a dwelling for friendship, but not enough to 
 deck with golden gifts a Delphos for the world." 
 
 " As I read Ellery [Channing] my past life seems a 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 588. 
 
308 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 poor excuse for not living ; my so-called culture a col 
 lection of shreds and patches to hide the mind s naked 
 ness. Cannot I begin really to live and think now ? " l 
 
 How many authors, surrounded by a circle of 
 admiring friends, are found to have descended, in 
 their secret diaries, to quite such depths of humil 
 ity as appear in these extracts ? 
 
 Another point where I should diverge strongly 
 from the current estimate of Margaret Fuller is 
 in the prevailing assumption that her chief aim 
 at any period of her life was self-culture. The 
 Roman thread in her was too strong, the practical 
 inheritance from her parentage too profound, for 
 her to have ever contented herself with a life of 
 abstraction. The strong training that came from 
 her father, the early influence of Jefferson s let 
 ters, all precluded this. What she needed was 
 not books but life, and if she ever expressed 
 doubts of this need, she always came back to it 
 again. " Is it not nobler and truer," she wrote 
 in 1842 to W. H. Channing, "to live than to 
 think ? " 2 Here it is that she sometimes chafes 
 under the guidance of Emerson ; always longs to 
 work as well as meditate, to deal with the many, 
 not the few, to feel herself in action. This made 
 it the best thing in her Providence life to have 
 attended the Whig caucus, and made her think, on 
 board the French war-vessel, that she would like 
 to command it ; this made her delight in studying 
 
 1 Fuller MSS. i. 589, 593, 597. 
 
 2 MS. 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS. 309 
 
 Western character; this led her to New York, 
 where the matter-of-fact influence of Horace 
 Greeley simply confirmed what had been so long 
 growing. Like the noble youth in her favorite 
 Jean Paul s " Titan," she longed for an enterprise 
 for her idle valor. She says in her fragment of 
 autobiographical romance : 
 
 "I steadily loved this [Roman] ideal in my child 
 hood, and this is the cause, probably, why I have always 
 felt that man must know how to stand firm on the 
 ground before he can fly. In vain for me are men 
 more, if they are less, than Romans." 
 
 Again and again she comes back in her corre 
 spondence to this theme, as when she writes to W. 
 H. Channing (March 22, 1840) : 
 
 " I never in life have had the happy feeling of really 
 doing anything. I can only console myself for these 
 semblances of actions by seeing that others seem to be in 
 some degree aided by them. But oh ! really to feel 
 the glow of action, without its weariness, what heaven 
 it must be ! " 1 
 
 Again she writes to the same friend, contrast 
 ing the meditative life of Socrates and the active 
 
 life of Jesus Christ : 
 
 "CAMBRIDGE, June 17, 1842. 
 
 " In my quiet retreat I read Xenophon and became 
 more acquainted with his Socrates. I had before known 
 only the Socrates of Plato, one much more to my mind. 
 Socrates took the ground that you approve; he con 
 formed to the Greek Church, and it is evident with a 
 i MS. 
 
310 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 sincere reverence, because it was the growth of the na 
 tional mind. He thought best to stand on its platform, 
 and illustrate, though with keen truth, by received 
 forms : this was his right way, for his influence was 
 naturally private, for individuals who could, in some de 
 gree, respond to the teachings of his demon ; it made 
 no difference to him ; he knew the multitude would not 
 understand him ; but it was the other way that Jesus 
 took, preaching in the field and plucking ears of corn 
 on the Sabbath day." * 
 
 Again, after a day in the woods with Emerson s 
 " Nature," reading it through for the first time 
 to herself, Mr. Emerson himself having originally 
 read it aloud to her, she thus writes to him 
 (April 12, 1840) : 
 
 " The years do not pass in vain. If they have built 
 no temple on the earth, they have given a nearer view 
 of the city of God. Yet would I rather, were the choice 
 tendered to me, draw the lot of Pericles than that of 
 Anaxagoras. And if such great names do not fit the 
 occasion, I would delight more in thought-living than in 
 living thought. That is not a good way of expressing 
 it either, but I must correct the press another time." 2 
 
 This feeling led her to criticise more than once, 
 as we have seen, her friend s half cloistered life at 
 Concord. Describing in one of her letters some 
 speech which called for action, perhaps Kossuth s, 
 she says : 
 
 " Read these side by side with Waldo s paragraphs 
 and say, is it not deeper and truer to live than to think ? 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 2 MS. 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS. 311 
 
 . . . Yet is his [Emerson s] a noble speech ! I love to 
 reprove myself by it." l 
 
 As I read her letters and diaries, it seems plain 
 that her yearning desire, during her whole life, 
 was not merely to know but to do. She was 
 urged on by an intense longing, not for a selfish 
 self-culture, nor even for self-culture in its very 
 widest sense, but for usefulness in her day and 
 generation. 
 
 " He who alone knoweth," she writes in August, 
 1843, "will affirm that I have tried to work whole 
 hearted, from an earnest faith, yet my hand is often 
 languid and my heart is slow ; I must be gone, I feel, 
 but whither? I know not: if I cannot make this plot 
 of ground yield corn and roses, famine must be my lot 
 forever and forever, surely." 2 
 
 In accordance with this thought, she felt that 
 this country must create, as it has now done, its 
 own methods of popular education, especially for 
 the training of girls. She wrote in her " Summer 
 on the Lakes : " 
 
 " Methods copied from the education of some English 
 Lady Augusta are as ill suited to the daughter of an 
 Illinois farmer as satin shoes to climb the Indian 
 mounds. . . . Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, 
 of reference to European standards, penetrates and 
 threatens to blight whatever of original growth might 
 adorn the soil." 3 
 
 Had this protest come from an ignorant per- 
 
 i MS. (W. H. C.) 2 MS. (W. H. C.) 
 
 8 Summer on the Lakes, p. 47. 
 
* 
 812 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 
 
 son, it would have simply amounted to turning 
 one s back on all the experience of the elder 
 world. Coming from the most cultivated Ameri 
 can woman of her day, it meant that there was 
 something worth more than culture namely, 
 original thoughts and free action. Whatever else 
 she was, she was an American. 
 
 These are the reasons for thinking that neither 
 the charge of vanity nor of undue self-culture can 
 be sustained against Margaret Fuller. And this 
 is said after reading many hundred pages of her 
 letters and journals. They are clearly written, in 
 a hand quite peculiar, not a little formal, and as 
 it were jointed rather than flowing, and not 
 greatly varying throughout her whole life. She 
 is always clear in style where she takes pains to 
 be clear, is even business-like where she aims at 
 that, and knows how to make herself emphatic 
 without the aid of underscoring ; indeed she ab 
 stains from this to an extent which would quite 
 amaze Mr. Howells. To be sure, she was not at 
 all one of those charming, helpless, inconsequent 
 creatures whom he so exquisitely depicts ; she de 
 manded a great deal from life, but generally knew 
 what she wanted, stated it effectively, and at last 
 obtained it. It was indeed fortunate for her 
 younger brothers and sisters that she was of this 
 constitution. She lived at a time when life in 
 America was hard for all literary people, from 
 the absence of remuneration, the small supply of 
 books, the habit of jealousy among authors, and 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS. 313 
 
 the lingering prevalence of the colonial spirit, 
 which she battled stoutly to banish. It was espe 
 cially hard for women in that profession because 
 there were few of them, their early education was 
 won at great disadvantage, and much was con 
 ceded reluctantly that now comes as a matter of 
 course. Were she living to-day her life would be 
 far smoother ; she would find plenty of remuner 
 ative work, fair recognition, and kindly sympa 
 thy. On the other hand, she would have to 
 adapt herself to a somewhat different world, for 
 she would not be surrounded by that ardent 
 and effusive social atmosphere which prevailed 
 throughout the limited world of Transcendental 
 ism. It was a fresh, glowing, youthful, hopeful, 
 courageous period, and those who were its chil 
 dren must always rejoice that they were born be 
 fore it faded away. 
 
 My friend Mr. O. B. Frothingham, the only direct 
 historian of the Transcendental period, has failed, 
 in my judgment, to give more than the husk and 
 outside of it, although for this his book is valu 
 able. The trouble was that he was neither a part 
 of that great impulse nor immediately its child ; 
 in the day of Transcendentalism he was looking 
 in a different direction and had no sympathy for 
 its aims; and yet he was not quite far enough 
 away to view it in perspective. To its immediate 
 offspring, even if of a younger race, it bequeathed 
 a glow and a joy that have been of life-long per 
 manence. I have noticed that most of those who 
 
314 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 were nurtured under that influence have had the 
 good fortune to grow old slowly ; their world is 
 still poetic ; the material achievements, the utili 
 tarian philosophyof later years may come or go, 
 leaving their ideal, their confidence, their immor 
 tal hope unchanged. And now that much which 
 Transcendentalism sought is fulfilled, and that 
 which was ecstasy has as Emerson predicted 
 become daily bread, its reminiscences mingle with 
 all youth s enchantments, and belong to a period 
 when we too " toiled, feasted, despaired, were 
 
 happy." 
 
 And as for Margaret Ossoli, her life seems to 
 me, on the whole, a triumphant rather than a sad 
 one, in spite of the prolonged struggle with ill 
 ness, with poverty, with the shortcomings of others 
 and with her own. In later years she had the ful 
 fillment of her dreams ; she had what Elizabeth 
 Barrett, writing at the time of her marriage to 
 Robert Browning, named as the three great de 
 siderata of existence, "life and love and Italy." 
 She shared in great deeds, she was the counselor 
 of great men, she had a husband who was a lover, 
 and she had a child. They loved each other in 
 their lives, and in their death they were not di 
 vided. Was not that enough ? 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 WORKS OF MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 1. Correspondence with Goethe in the Last Years of his Life. 
 Translated from the German of Eckermann. Boston, 1839. 
 
 2. Correspondence of Fraulein Giinderode and Bettine von Ar- 
 nim. Boston, 1842. [Reprinted, with additions, by Mrs. 
 Minna Wesselhoeft. Boston, 1861.] 
 
 3. Summer on the Lakes. Boston, 1843. 
 
 4. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1844. 
 
 5. Papers on Literature and Art. New York, 1846. 
 
 6. Collected Works, edited by Arthur B. Fuller, with an intro 
 duction by Horace Greeley. New York, 1855. 
 
 I. Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and Kindred Papers, re 
 lating to the Sphere, Condition, and Duties of Woman. 
 II. At Home and Abroad. [Including Summer on the Lakes; 
 Tribune Letters from Europe ; Letters to Friends from Eu 
 rope ; Accounts of the Homeward Yoyage ; and Memorials.] 
 
 III. Art, Literature, and the Drama. [Including Papers on 
 Literature and Art, reprinted ; and a translation of Goethe s 
 Tasso.] 
 
 IV. Life Without and Life Within. [Including essays, reviews, 
 and poems, nearly all hitherto unpublished in book form.] 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS. 
 
 Boston Daily Advertiser.* Defense of Brutus. November 27, 
 
 1834. 
 
 Western Messenger, Review of Lives of Crabbe and Mora 
 , i. 20. 
 
316 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 Western Messenger. Review of Bulwer s Works, i. 101. 
 
 Western Messenger. Review of Philip van Artevelde. i. 398. 
 
 Western Messenger. Review of Korner. i. 306, 369. 
 
 Western Messenger. Review of Letters from Palmyra, v. 24. 
 
 Dial Vol. I. No. 1. Essay on Critics; Allston Exhibition ,- 
 Richter (poem) ; A Sketch (poem) ; A Sketch (poem) [?]. 
 No. 2. Record of the Months (part). No. 3. Klopstock and 
 Meta ; The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain ; Menzel s View 
 of Goethe; Record of the Months. No. 4. Leila; A Dia 
 logue. 
 
 Dial Vol. II. No. 1. Goethe; Need of a Diver; Notices of 
 Recent Publications. No. 2. Lives of the Great Composers; 
 Festus. No. 3. Yucca Filamentosa ; Bettine Brentano and 
 her Friend Giinderode ; Epilogue to the Tragedy of Essex ; No 
 tices of Monaldi and Wilde s Tasso (including part of her 
 translation of Goethe s Tasso). 
 
 Dial. Vol. III. No. 1. Entertainments of the Past Winter. 
 Notices of Hawthorne. No. 2. Romaic and Rhine Ballads; 
 Tennyson s Poems, in Record of the Months. No. 4. Canova ; 
 Record of the Months (part). 
 
 Dial. Vol. IV. No. 1. The Great Lawsuit; Man vs. Men, 
 Woman vs. Women. No. 3. The Modern Drama. No. 4. 
 Dialogue. 
 
 New York Tribune, 1844-46. Too numerous to be here catalogued. 
 They are usually designated by an asterisk (*) in the Tribune, 
 and many are reprinted in the volume "Life Without and 
 Life Within," mentioned above. 
 
 Liberty Bell (Anti-Slavery annual, 1846). The Liberty Bell 
 
 PUBLICATIONS CONCERNING HER. 
 
 BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 1. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, by R. W. Emerson, W. 
 H. Channing, and J. F. Clarke, 2 vols. Boston, 1852. [Edited 
 mainly by W. H. Channing. Reprinted at New York, 1869; 
 at Boston, 1884.] 
 
 2. Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli) , by Julia Ward Howa 
 [" Eminent Women " series.] Boston, 1883. 
 
 3. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 
 J" American Men of Letters " series.] Boston, 1884. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 317 
 
 BRIEFER MEMOIRS AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Crosland, Mrs. N. In "Memorable Women." London, 1854. 
 
 Dall, Mrs. C. H. In " Historical Pictures Retouched." Boston, 
 1850. 
 
 Frothingham, O. B. In " Transcendentalism in New England." 
 Boston, 1876. 
 
 Griswold, R. W. In "Prose "Writers of America." Philadel 
 phia, 1846. 
 
 Griswold, R. W. In "Female Poets of America." Philadel 
 phia, 1849. 
 
 Hale, Mrs. S. J. In "Woman s Record." New York, 1853. 
 
 Higginson, T. W. In "Eminent Women of the Age." Hart 
 ford, Conn., 1868. 
 
 Powell, T. In " Living Authors of America." New York, 1866. 
 
 Russell, W. In " Extraordinary Men and Women." London, 
 1860. 
 
 Russell, W. In "Eccentric Personages." New York, 1866. 
 
 Smiles, T. In " Brief Biographies." Boston, 1861. 
 
 REVIEWS, ETC., IN PERIODICALS. 
 
 [Prepared from Poole s Index, by the editor s permission, a 
 few references being added.] 
 
 1. Margaret Fuller and the Reformers. Brownson s Quarterly, 
 ii. 249. 
 
 2. " At Home and Abroad " (F. H. Hedge), N. A. Review, Ixxxiii. 
 261 ; London Athenaeum (1856), 489. 
 
 3. Character and Works (C. H. Dall), N. A. Review, xci. 119. 
 
 4. Life and Works. Democratic Review, xxx. 513. 
 
 5. "Memoirs." New Quarterly Review, i. 168; Prospective Re 
 view, viii. 199; Southern Literary Messenger, xx. 129; Living 
 Age, xxxiii. 28, 289 ; Eclectic Review, xcv. 678 ; London 
 Athenaeum (1852), 159; Eniile Moute gut, Revue des deux 
 Mondes, xiv. 37. 
 
 6. " Papers on Literature and Art." Democratic Review, xix. 
 198, 316. 
 
 7. Place in Literature. Potter s American Monthly, x. 74. 
 
 8. " Woman in the Nineteenth Century." Christian Examiner, 
 xxxviii. 416. Southern Quarterly, x. 148. (A. P. Peabody), 
 N. A. Review, Ixxxi. 557. 
 
318 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX. 
 
 9. Miscellaneous Notices. British Quarterly, xvi. 221. (S. Wad- 
 dington), Tinsley s Magazine, xvi. 172. (A. L. Johnson), Gal 
 axy, vi. 121. (M. R. Whittlesey), Radical, vi. 1. ( A. C. Brack- 
 ett), Radical, ix. 354. Chambers s Journal, xvii. 322. Dublin 
 University Magazine, xcii. 542, 686. Household Words, v. 121. 
 Sharpe s Magazine, xv. 201. Same article in Eclectic Magazine, 
 xxvi. 171. National Magazine, i. 314, 409, 529. Canadian 
 Monthly, xiii. 289. International Monthly, i. 162. 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 Ames, Mary C. At Home and Abroad, p. 458. 
 Cranch, C. P. Atlantic Monthly, xxvi. 231. 
 Cranch, C. P. At Home and Abroad, p. 456. 
 James, G. P. R. At Home and Abroad, p. 463. Also in Inter 
 national Monthly, i. 165. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage. At Home and Abroad, p. 464. 
 Smith, E. Oakes. At Home and Abroad, p. 460. 
 Anonymous. At Home and Abroad, p. 461. 
 
 BOOKS ON THE FULLER FAMILY. 
 
 Fuller, R. F. Chaplain Fuller, a Memoir. Boston, 1863. 
 Higginson, T. W. Memoir of Arthur B. Fuller (in Harvard 
 Memorial Biographies). Cambridge, 1866. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ADAMS, Abigail, 304. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 12, 27, 29. 
 
 Alcott, A. B., diary quoted, 75, 143, 
 144, 146-148, 180, 191 ; other refer 
 ences, 77-80, 95, 130, 140, 142, 148, 
 155, 159-162, 165, 175, 181, 285. 
 
 Alfieri, Victor, 45. 
 
 Allston, Washington, 95. 
 
 "American Literature, 1 essay on, 
 203, 297. 
 
 Americanism in literature, 137. 
 
 Anaxagoras, 5. 
 
 Arconati, Marchioness Visconti, let 
 ter to, 274 ; other references, 231. 
 
 Arnim, Bettina (Brentano) von, 18, 
 190-192. 
 
 Atkinson, H. G., 224. 
 
 Austin, Sarah, 189. 
 
 Autobiographical romance, 21, 22, 309. 
 
 BACHI, Pietro, 33. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, 45. 
 
 Baillie, Joanna, 229 
 
 Ballou, Adin, 180. 
 
 Bancroft, G., 33, 47, 48, 50, 103, 144. 
 
 Barker. See Ward. 
 
 Barlow, D. H.,39. 
 
 Barlow, Mrs. D. II., letters to, 39, 
 
 54, 62, 94, 154. 
 Barlow, F. C., 39. 
 Barrett, Miss. See Browning. 
 Bartlett, Robert, 138. 144, 146. 
 Bartol, C. A., 142, 144. 
 Beck, Charles, 33. 
 Belgiojoso, Princess, 236. 
 Beranger, J. P. de, 230. 
 Birthplace of Madame Ossoli, 20. 
 Bolivar, Simon, 15. 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 13, 15. 
 Bracebridge, Mr. and Mrs., 224. 
 Bradford, George P., 144. 
 Brentano, Bettina. See Arnim 
 Briggs, Miss, 225. 
 Brook Farm, 173. 
 Brovvn, Charles Brockden, 132. 
 Bro-n, Samuel, 226. 
 Brown s " Philosophy " studied, 24. 
 
 Browne, M. A., 39. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth (Barrett), 220, 
 
 314. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 19, 69, 220, 229. 
 Brownson, 0. A., 142-144, 147, 148. 
 Brutus, defense of, 47-50. 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 131. 
 Buckingham, J. T., 77. 
 Bull, Ole, 211. 
 Burges, Tristam, 87. 
 Burleigh, Charles, 176. 
 Burns, Robert, 226. 
 
 CABOT, J. E., 159. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., between 1810 and 
 
 1830, 32. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 290. 
 " Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence," 
 
 4, 135, 145, 151, 164, 170. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 45, 69, 102. 135, 145, 
 
 164, 175, 190, 220, 222, 229. 
 Cass, Lewis, Jr., 241 ; letter to, 266; 
 
 letter from, 234. 
 Chalmers, Thomas, 229. 
 Chambers, Robert, 226. 
 Channing, Edward T., 33. 
 Channiug, W. E. (Boston), 53, 86, 
 106,122,144,171. 
 Channing, W. Ellery (Concord), 30, 
 
 100, 156, 164, 307. 
 Channing, Ellen (Fuller), 30, 31, 52, 
 
 55, 92, 234. 
 Channing, W. H., letters to, 91, 110, 
 
 111, 120, 148, 151, 161, 180, 183, 191, 
 
 201, 207, 308, 309 ; other references, 
 
 3, 34, 206, 212, 279. 
 Channing. See Eustis. 
 Chapman, M. W., 125. 
 Chappell, H. L., letter to, 64. 
 Cheney, E. D.,128. 
 Child, L. M., 114, 115, 128, 132, 203, 
 
 206,211. 
 
 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 50. 
 Clarke, James Freeman, 34, 85, 122, 
 
 142, 144, 146, 155, 162, 164, 168, 169, 
 
 193, 199. 
 Clarke, Sarah F., 193, 199, 200 ; letter 
 
320 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 from, 117 ; illustrations for " Sum 
 mer on the Lakes," 200. 
 
 Clarke, William H., 193. 
 
 Club, a literary, 142. 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 223. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 69, 134, 135, 223, 290- 
 292, 297. 
 
 Combe, Andrew, 229. 
 
 Cooper, J.F., 131, 132. 
 
 Cousin, V., 135. 
 
 Crabbe, G., 290. 
 
 Cranch, C. P., 155, 162, 164, 211, 240. 
 
 Cranch, Mrs. C. P., 211. 
 
 Crane, Peter, 17. 
 
 Crane, Mrs., description of, 17. 
 
 Crowe, Mrs., 226. 
 
 DANA, Chief Justice, 27. 
 
 Dana, R. H.,95. 
 
 Dana, R. H., Jr., 24. 
 
 Dante degli Alighieri, 86. 
 
 Davis, George T M 3, 34. 
 
 Davis, J. C., 3. 
 
 Davis, W. T., 62. 
 
 Degerando, Baron. 69. 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, 226, 229. 
 
 Derby, Mrs., 223. 
 
 Devvey, 0., 62. 
 
 " Dial," origin and history of , 130 ; 
 
 prospectus of, 152. 
 Dwight, J. S., 146, 149, 162, 164. 
 
 EASTMAN, Mrs. S. C., 3. 
 
 Eckermann, J. P., 91, 189, 284. 
 
 Edgeworth, Maria, 132. 
 
 Eichhorn, J. G., 45. 
 
 Emerson, Ellen, 67. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., letters to, about 
 "Dial," 151, 154, 157, 166, 168, 169, 
 171 ; about Brook Farm, 181, 182 ; 
 from Chicago, 193, 196 ; on sailing 
 for Europe, 220 : other letters to, 67, 
 68, 70, 80, 86, 89, 94, 199, 301, 310. 
 Description of, in diary, 66 ; passages 
 from unpublished poemg of, 66 ; 
 letters concerning, 62, 63 ; crit 
 icisms on, by M. F. 0., 66, 70, 72, 
 121, 157, 166, 167, 284, 310 ; extracts 
 from his "Dial" papers, 137, 176; 
 his inadequate estimate of M. F. 0., 
 300 ; his defense of Alcott, 77 ; other 
 references, 3, 45, 53, 64, 65, 69, 71, 
 75, 77, 88, WL 103, 104, 116, 121, 
 130, 135, 138, 140, 142, 144, 146, US- 
 ISO, 156-160, 162, 164, 165, 172, 175, 
 177, 179, 180, 191, 205, 216, 221, 226, 
 247, 284-286, 308, 311. 
 
 Emerson, Mrs. R. W., 67, 69, 128. 
 
 Emerson, Waldo, 67. 
 
 Erckmann-Chatrian, 17. 
 
 Eustis, Dr., 96. 
 
 Euatis, Mary (Channing), 128. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 38. 
 
 FARRAR, John, 41, 45, 52, 53, 182. 
 Farrar, Mrs. John, 36, 36, 41, 45, 5L 
 
 52, 62, 63, 283. 
 Fitton, Miss E., 275. 
 Flowers, Mrs. Fuller s love of, 18. 
 Follen, Charles, 33. 
 Francis, Convers, 142, 144, 146. 
 Friendship, letter on, 72. 
 Frothingham, 0. B., 313. 
 Fuller, Abraham, 11, 64. 
 Fuller, ArthurB., letters to, 69, 83; 
 
 other references, 3, 22, 58, 106, 203. 
 Fuller. Edith, 248. 
 Fuller, Ellen. See Channing. 
 Fuller, Eugene, letters to, 202, 208 ; 
 
 other references, 61, 62. 
 Fuller, Hiram, 79, 80, 87. 
 Fuller, Hon. Timothy, 12, 14, 16, 20, 
 
 22, 26, 28, 32, 48 ; addresses of, 13, 
 
 16 ; oration of, 15 ; letter to, 51. 
 Fuller, Margaret (Crane), 17, 20. 
 Fuller, Rev. Timothy, 9, 10. 
 Fuller, Richard F., letters to, 69, 105, 
 
 106, 273; other references, 17, 21, 
 
 220. 
 Fuller, Thomas, poem by, 8. 
 
 GARRISON, W. L., 129. 
 
 Gibbon, E., 45, 50. 
 
 Giovanni, Ser, 256-258, 260, 264. 
 
 Goethe, J. W. von, 45, 47, 63. 68, 69, 
 91, 101, 135, 158, 188-191, 283, 284. 
 
 Gould, B. A., 134. 
 
 Graham, S., 175. 
 
 Grater, Friedrich, 83. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, Recollections quoted, 
 80,213; Life by Parton quoted, 213, 
 218 ; other references, 3, 80, 201, 
 206, 207, 209-214, 284, 293, 309. 
 
 Greeley, Mrs. Horace, 207 
 
 Greene, A. G.,3, 163. 
 
 Greene, W. B., 163. 
 
 Greenough, Harriet (Fay), 36. 
 
 Gregory, 0., 223. 
 
 Greys, The, 225. 
 
 Giinderode, Caroline von, 18, 190-192. 
 
 HAHN HAHN, Countess, 226. 
 
 Hairing, Harro, 219. 
 
 Hasty, Captain, 275. 276. 
 
 Hasty, Mrs., 276, 278, 279. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, extract from 
 "Note-Books," 103; other refer 
 ences, 173, 174, 178, 179. 
 
 Hedge, F. H., letters to, 43, 44, 48, 
 63, 141, 149, 150 ; other references, 
 3, 22. 34, 44, 46, 62, 141-144, 146, 
 162, 188. 
 
 Heine, Heinrich, 17, 45, 298. 
 
 Heraud, John A., 146-147, 160, 16L, 
 229 ; his magazine, 140, 145, 160. 
 
 Herschel, F. W.,46. 
 
 Higginsons, The, 62. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 321 
 
 Hoar, Elizabeth, letters from, 64, 119 ; 
 
 other references, 3, 248, 249. 
 Holmes, John, 24. 
 Holmes, 0. W., 24, 25, 30, 34, 36. 
 Hooper, Ellen (Sturgis), 154, 156. 
 Houghton, Lord (R. M. Milnes), 69. 
 Howe, Julia (Ward), 2. 
 Howitts, the, 229. 
 Hudson, II. N., 211. 
 Hunt, Leigh, 145. 
 Hutchinson Family, the, 176. 
 
 INDIANS, study of the, 196. 
 Ireland, Mr., 221. 
 Irish, defense of the, 214. 
 Irving, Washington, 131, 132. 
 
 JACOBS, Sarah S., 80, 84. 
 
 Jahn, F. L., 45. 
 
 James, Henry, 134. 
 
 Jameson, Anna, 195. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 4, 16, 45, 308. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 69, 134. 
 
 KANT, Immanuel, 45, 282, 283. 
 Klnney, Mr., letter from, 247. 
 Kittredge, Rev. Mr., 53. 
 Knapp, J. J., 39. 
 Kneeland, Abner, 77. 
 
 LAFARGB, John, 134. 
 
 Lafayette, Marquis de, 15. 
 
 La Mennais, II. F. R. de, 230. 
 
 Lane, Charles, 160, 166. 
 
 Leonidas, 47. 
 
 Lewes, G. II., 229. 
 
 Longfellow, II. W., criticisms on, 138, 
 204, 218, 293; other references, 131, 
 283, 293-295, 298. 
 
 Loring, Mr. and Mrs. E. G., 122, 128. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., criticisms on, 217, 296 ; 
 retaliation by, 5, 298 ; ofcher refer 
 ences, 128, 164, 176, 203, 216, 217, 
 293, 296-298. 
 
 Lowell, Maria (White), 128, 272 ; let 
 ter from, 244. 
 
 " Lyric Glimpses," 286, 288. 
 
 Me Do WELL, Mrs., 211. 
 
 Mackie, J. M., 163. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 187, 287, 288. 
 
 Mann, Horace, 11, 12. 
 
 Mariana, story of, 23. 
 
 Marston, J. Westland, 146, 160. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 36, 45, 63, 122- 
 
 129, 222, 223, 283, 284. 
 Martineau, James, 221. 
 Mary Queen of Scots, 226. 
 Mazzini, Joseph, 5, 229, 231, 236, 244, 
 
 284. 
 
 Middleton, Conyers, 50. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 146. 
 Vilman, II. II., 223. 
 
 21 
 
 Milnes, R. M. See Houghtan. 
 Milton, John, 69. 
 Morris, G. P., 80. 
 Mozier, Mrs., 276. 
 
 NEAL, John, 299. 
 
 Newton, Stuart, 32. 
 
 Novalis (F. von Hardenbure), 48, 145. 
 
 Nuttall, Thomas, 33. 
 
 OSSOLI, A. P. E., birth of, 253 : de- 
 scriptions of, 269, 268, 270, 271; 
 death of, 279. 
 
 Ossoli, G. A., descriptions of, 243, 244, 
 247; letters from, 249. 
 
 Ossoli, Sarah Margaret (Fuller), per 
 sonal relations of author with, 2; 
 manuscript letters and journals of, 
 3; demanded something beyond 
 self-culture, 4, 6, 87, 88, 111, 213, 
 308, 309, 311 ; reading Jefferson s 
 correspondence, 4, 45, 87, 308 ; crit 
 icism on her " Memoirs," 5, 203, 
 300; criticisms of Lowell on, 5, 
 298 ; ancestry, 7 ; birthplace, 20 ; 
 autobiographical romance, 22, 188, 
 309 ; division of her hours, 24, 81 ; 
 appearance at school, 24; appear 
 ance in company, 29 ; mode of ed 
 ucation, 21, 28 ; early companions, 
 34, 36 ; women who influenced her, 
 35 ; early verses, 38 ; letters from, 
 17, 21, 39, 43, 44, 48, 51, 54, 56, 69, 
 62, 63, 70, 72, 78, 81, 83, 86, 87, 89, 
 91, 94, 95, 97-99, 101, 106, 106, 110- 
 112, 120, 123, 124, 141, 149-151, 154, 
 167, 162, 165, 166, 168, 169, 171, 180- 
 183, 191-193, 196, 198, 200-202, 207- 
 209, 212, 220, 250, 266, 268, 270, 271, 
 273, 274, 309-311 ; passages from di 
 aries, 22, 28, 31, 37, 41, 66, 100, 104, 
 106, 114, 122, 167, 187, 188, 195, 221- 
 228, 232, 302 ; removal to Groton, 
 43 ; early composition, 46 ; first pub 
 lication, 47 ; first journey, 63 ; care 
 of family, 64, 68, 301, 303 ; friend 
 ship with Emerson, 62 ; love of chil 
 dren, 67, 82, 107, 210 ; reading, 68 ; 
 verses, 38, 70, 102, 185, 302 ; criti 
 cisms on Emerson, 71, 72, 157, 810 ; 
 teaching in Boston, 75 ; in Provi 
 dence, 79 ; description of party in 
 Boston, 86 ; self-esteem and humil 
 ity, 88, 303, 306-308, 312 ; life at Ja 
 maica Plain, 94 ; flower-pieces, 96 ; 
 description of nature, 98; "ry^- 
 bread days," 104 ; conversations, 
 109 ; interest in mythology, 114 : re 
 lations with Miss Martineau, 128 ; 
 women who took part in her conver 
 sations, 128 ; criticisms on contrib 
 utors to " Dial," 165 ; not a resident 
 at Brook Farm, 173; books pub- 
 
822 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 lished, 187 ; Western journey, 193 ; 
 removal to New York, 205 ; investi 
 gations of poverty and crime, 206, 
 211 ; religious feeling, 206 ; criti 
 cisms on Longfellow, 138, 204, 218, 
 293 ; on Lowell, 217, 296 ; departure 
 for Europe, 220 ; her European note 
 book, 220 ; stay in London, 229 ; ar 
 rival in Rome, 230 ; the Italian rev 
 olution, 231 ; marriage and mother 
 hood, 231, 253 ; early feeling about 
 them, 232 ; early attachment, 233 ; 
 service in hospitals, 236 ; first meet 
 ing with Marquis Ossoli, 239 ; life 
 at Rieti, 238, 250, 266 ; removal to 
 Florence, 241, 245 ; correspondence 
 with husband, 248, 279 ; description 
 of child, 268, 270, 271 ; her book on 
 Roman republic, 272, 282; voyage 
 to America, 272 ; forebodings, 273 ; 
 shipwreck, 276; literary traits, 281; 
 not a disciple of any one, 284 ; ex 
 amples of her power of statement, 
 289; personal traits, 299; phreno 
 logical examination, 299 ; her life 
 on the whole successful, 314. 
 
 PALMER, Edward, 175. 
 
 " Papers on Literature and Art," 203. 
 
 Park, Dr., 23. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, letter from, 162 ; 
 other references, 3, 86, 130, 132, 
 140, 142, 144, 160, 165, 169, 181. 
 
 Parker, Mrs. Theodore, 128. 
 
 Parton, James, 213. 
 
 Paterculus, Velleius, 49, 50. 
 
 Peabody, Miss Elizabeth P., 75, 114, 
 142, 168, 178, 192 ; letter to, 81. 
 
 Pericles, 5. 
 
 Perkins, Mr., 24. 
 
 Petrarch, F., 136. 
 
 Plutarch, 49, 50, 69 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 156, 216, 217. 
 
 Prescott, Misses, 23. 
 
 Putnam, George, 142. 
 
 QCINCT, Mrs. Josiah, 131. 
 
 RADZIVILL, Princess, 231. 
 
 Randall, Elizabeth, 39. 
 
 R5camier, Madame, 37. 
 
 Reformers in New England (1840- 
 
 1850), 175. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 28, 45. 
 Ripley, George, 91, 142, 144, 146, 147, 
 
 149, 154, 167, 179-181, 183, 189, 291. 
 Ripley, Mrs. G., 163, 180, 183 ; letter 
 
 Robbins, S. D., 181. 
 Robinson, Rev. Mr., 63, 68. 
 Rosa, Salvator, 95. 
 Roficoe, William, 221. 
 Rotch, Mary, letter to, 212, 
 
 Russell, Le Baron, 144. 
 "Rye-bread days," 104. 
 
 SAND, George, 178, 230. 
 
 Saxton, Rufus, 163. 
 
 Schiller, J. C. F. von, 45. 
 
 Scott, David, 225, 226. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 228, 297. 
 
 Scougal, Henry, 69. 
 
 Segur, Comte de, 109. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 291, 292. 
 
 Shelley, P. B., 42, 134, 290, 307. 
 
 Shepard, Mr., 9. 
 
 Sismondi, J. C. L. S. de, 24. 
 
 Slavery, American, 10, 12, 14, 126. 
 
 Smith, Southwood, 229. 
 
 Socrates, 309. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 45, 290. 
 
 Spring, Edward, 223. 
 
 Spring, Marcus and Rebecca, 219, 220, 
 
 2287239. 
 
 Spurzheim, J. G., 49. 
 Stael, Madame de, 30, 37, 45, 109 
 Stetson, Caleb, 142, 144. 
 Stone, T. T., 163. 
 
 Storer, Mrs. R. B., 3. . 
 
 Storrow, Miss Ann G., 35. 
 Storrow, Samuel, 51, 52. 
 Story, Joseph, 33. 
 Story, William W., 240. 
 Story, Mrs. William W., 238, 240, 241, 
 
 266, 275 ; narrative of, 241 ; letter 
 
 from, 244 ; letter to, 268. 
 " Summer on the Lakes," 194. 
 Sumner, Horace, 275. 
 
 TAPPAN, Caroline (Sturgis), 87, 111, 
 
 154, 156, 199, 200, 211. 
 "Tasso." by Goethe, translated, 47, 
 
 63, 188. 
 
 Taylor, Helen, 281. 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 69, 220. 
 "The Great Lawsuit" (essay in 
 
 "Dial 1 ), 200. 
 
 " The Third Thought," 285. 
 Thoreau, H. D., 130, 134, 144, 154, 
 
 155, 164, 282. 
 Thorndike, Mrs., 86. 
 Ticknor, George, 33. 
 Tieck, Louis, 45. 
 Tocqueville, A. de, 126. 
 " Transcendental " movement, the, 
 
 133, 314. 
 "Tribune," New York, papers in, 
 
 213. 
 
 Trimmer, Mrs., 132. 
 Tuckerman, J. F., 163. 
 
 UHLAND, J. L. 45. 
 
 VACGHAN, Mr., 149. 
 Very, Jones, 144, 146. 
 Visconti, Marchesa, 281. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 323 
 
 WARD, Anna (Barker), 36, 68. 
 Ward, Samuel G., letter to, 56. 
 Wayland, Francis. 90. 
 Webster, Daniel, 86. 
 Webster, Mrs. J. W., 35. 
 Weiss, John, 3. 
 
 Wesselhoeft, Mrs. Minna, 192, 193. 
 Whitman, Sarah Helen, 299. 
 Whittier, John G., 131. 
 
 Williams, Abraham, 10. 
 
 Willis, N. P., 80, 229. 
 
 Wilson, William D., 144, 163. 
 
 " Woman in the Nineteenth Cen 
 tury," 202, 287. 
 
 Woodward, E., 41. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 45, 134, 223- 
 225, 229, 290, 291. 
 
 Wordsworth, Mrs. William, 224. 
 
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 1946 
 
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YB 77002 
 
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