LOVE-LETTERS OF MARGARET FULLER Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller INTRODUCTION MARGARET FULLER S name is now one to conjure with. Few remain at the present day of those who felt her personal attraction, or heard her eloquent discourse. The literary material which she left behind her appears small in dimension, when thought of in com parison with the scope of her intellect and the height of her aspiration. Yet her name, once the subject of sarcasm, is now spoken with reverence, and her figure, carved or cast in en during marble or bronze, would appropriately guard the entrance of the enlarged domain of womanhood, of which she was the inspired Pythoness. Among the titles bestowed on women of un usual gifts, that of Sibyl appears to me to suit best with what we know of her. Like her con- INTRO- DUCTION VI Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller INTRO DUCTION temporary, George Sand, she felt keenly the wide discrepancy between the moral and intel lectual power of women, and the limits assigned them in the division of the world s work. But Margaret s Puritan inheritance had bred in her a religious faith in which she far excelled the great Frenchwoman, a faith in the fulfilment of all the glorious promises of humanity. As in a vision she walked, rapt, inspired, little sensitive to praise or blame, with a message to deliver, whose full import she could not know. The decades which have elapsed since her un timely death have made this import clearer to us. The new order has asserted and established itself, and, though time has swept away most of those who held converse with her while in the flesh, the number is greatly multiplied of those who claim fellowship with her in the spirit. A leading trait in this leader of the woman s cause was courage. Margaret dared to recog nise her own mental and moral power. There was nothing in her make-up to suggest the old- time phrase " only a woman." She certainly enjoyed exceptional advantages of early train- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller vn ing and surrounding, neither of her parents, having found their duty in the act of " Preaching down a daughter s heart." The way in which she embraced these oppor tunities of instruction made evident a spirit brave from the start. Foreign tongues might be difficult; they were not too difficult for her. The ancient classics, not then included in the curriculum of a girl s education, were not be yond her reach. Coming to womanhood, she was generous in sharing with others the results of her thoughtful study. The atmosphere of this fine culture, of this large and liberal view of life, went with her everywhere. Biography has done for her what it could. A very full account of her life was given many years since by Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing. To be so memorialized argued a subject nothing less than illustrious. At a later date, Colonel Higginson and the writer of these lines each gave to the world a more succinct appreciation of her life and work. The present volume contributes an unex- INTRO- DUCTION Vlll Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller INTRO DUCTION pected addition to what is known of her. A series of letters inspired by a very fervent friendship, and written in a tone of unreserve unusual with her, reveals to us something of the ardour and depth of her nature. These letters are not for profane eyes. They show the immense craving for sympathy of one who was herself most sympathetic. She who had given so freely of her own inspiration, who had aided so many of her own generation to aspire nobly and to live truly, sought with pas sionate longing one who should be to her what she had been to others. For a time she evi dently thought that she had found this spiri tual counterpart in the person to whom these letters were addressed. They were written at an intensely subjec tive period of Margaret s life, before the wider horizon of experience had fully opened before her. The neighbourhood of New York, even when viewed from the Greeley residence, may have afforded some enlargement to one hitherto imprisoned in the narrowness of the old Boston and its surroundings. But Margaret was made for wider knowledge and more varied observa- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller IX tion, and these came to her soon after the time now under consideration, in her visit to Europe and her residence in Rome. Margaret sailed for England with a party of congenial friends in 1846. Her reception in that country seems to have been gratifying on the whole. Abroad, as at home, she was the theme of some harmless satire, enjoying at the same time deserved recognition. On some occasion she was said to have remarked that she accepted the universe, on report of which say ing Carlyle was reported to have said : " She accepts the universe, does she? I think she had better." On being told that she had spoken of women as possible sea-captains, he was said to have expressed a doubt whether " she could command a smack." In letters to Mr. Emerson, nevertheless, he appears, after some question, to admit her claims to superior consideration. The enthusiastic friendship which dictated the letters now published came unexpectedly to an end, and was never renewed. She dismisses it from her thoughts in one or two significant sentences of her Dfary. While visiting friends in Scotland, Margaret INTRO DUCTION Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller INTRO DUCTION had the awful experience of passing a night on a solitary mountain-side. She had become sepa rated from her guide, who sought her anxiously, but in vain. She related this adventure after ward to the Rev. F. H. Hedge in a way which led him to consider it as the occasion of a pro found spiritual experience. He was wont to say, in speaking of it, " that night Margaret experienced religion." A season of European travel proved full of delighted interest to Margaret, whose pil grimage culminated in the Eternal City. There she encountered the husband of her choice, and became doubly wedded to that Italy which had always so strongly appealed to her imagination. Of the romantic interest of her years of resi dence in the Eternal City, Margaret has given us glimpses in her letters and Diary. A fuller account of that momentous period of 1848 and thereafter was prepared by her for publication, but has never seen the light. She should have lived to tell us, in her own impassioned manner, of the brief, brave struggle for Italian lib erty, of the joy of the brief deliverance, of the bitter disappointment that followed. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller XI She was present when the new French Re public aimed its murderous blows at the throat of its famous sister. To us dwelling at a dis tance, the tragedy seemed bitter enough. What must it have been to Margaret, in the midst of the turmoil, her young husband a soldier of the fight, her newly born son separated from her by the army which besieged Rome? A dear sister of mine, herself a witness of those evil days, was seated one day with her own infant child in her arms, when Margaret unexpect edly entered the room in which she sat. The visitor s eyes rested for a moment on the mother and child with an intensity of expression which my sister well understood, when some months later the facts of Margaret s marriage and maternity were made known. The sequel and culminating catastrophe of this very excep tional life have long been familiar to the public. A memorial raised by loving friends preserves Margaret s name and record on the shore of the fatal shipwreck. The volume herewith presented to the pub lic is a memorial, not of Margaret s fate, but of the brilliant forenoon of her existence, a INTRO DUCTION Xll Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller INTRO DUCTION period of " imagination all compact," in which neither difficulty nor disappointment had had power to darken the glowing interpretation of life and its conditions, which was her best gift to the men and women of her time, and of our own as well. JULIA WARD HOWE. BOSTON, May 25, 1903. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller xiii CON TENTS CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. By Julia Ward Howe PAGE V PREFATORY NOTE. By James Gotendorf, formerly James Nathan 1 THE LETTERS 7 I 9 II . . 10 Ill 12 IV 13 V 15 VI 15 VII 17 VIII 17 IX 18 X 22 XI 25 XII (with two poems) 29 XIII 31 xiv Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller CON TENTS XV ........ 35 XVI ........ 39 XVII ........ 41 XVIII ........ 43 XIX ........ 43 XX ........ 50 XXI ........ 55 XXII . . ... . . .59 XXIII ........ 64 XXIV ....... .65 XXV ........ 67 XXVI (with an unpublished poem) . 69 XXVII ........ 73 XXVIII ........ 76 XXIX ........ 80 XXX ........ 81 XXXI ...... . . 83 XXXII ........ 85 XXXIII (with two unpublished poems) . 87 XXXIV ........ 91 XXXV ........ 93 XXXVI ... ..... 97 XXXVII . 98 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller xv LETTER PAGE CON- XXXVIII 104 TENTS XXXIX . . . . . . . .110 XL 121 XLI 127 XLII . 135 XLIII 140 XLIV 149 XLV 158 XLVI 164 XLVII 168 XLVIII 175 XLIX 180 L 184 EDITORIAL NOTES : Passage from Margaret Fuller s Eng lish Diary 187 Letter from F. Delf to Mr. Na than 188 Mr. Nathan s change of his name to Gotendorf 190 Facsimile of Margaret Fuller s hand writing 191 xvi Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller CON - PAGE REMINISCENCES 193 By Ralph Waldo Emerson . . .195 By Horace Greeley 208 By Charles T. Congdon . . . .223 Love -Letter s of Margaret Fuller PREFA TORY NOTE PREFATORY NOTE Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller Written in the summer of 1873, by James Goten- PREFA dorf, formerly James Nathan NOTE THIRTY years ago the family of my late and lamented friend, Horace Greeley, occupied one of those old and spacious mansions on the banks of the East River, wherewith former generations had skirted both sides of Manhattan Island. From its large balcony in the rear it commanded a full and noble view over the shores of Long Island down to the Bay and up to the Sound. A long and well shaded lane, beginning at what was at that time called the old Cato Road, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present Fiftieth Street, led up to the good-sized and cultivated garden, which surrounded the house, and studded with fine old fruit- and shade-trees extended southerly over an un broken plot of ground towards a piece of wood land. A sweet rivulet ran its bubbling course, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller PREFA TORY NOTE meandering through knoll and dell or frolicking hither and thither, while an equally lovely and winding footpath sometimes accompanied, some times crossed it into the woods or led easterly to and over the craggy rocks, that overhung and bounded the river altogether, a still and chosen spot for walk and talk. It was here, at a place sometimes called " the Farm," and late in the fall of the year 1844, while Margaret Fuller (Ossoli) was residing in the family of the Greeley s and writing the artistic and literary criticisms for the Tribune, that I first met her. Her high intellectuality, purity of sentiment and winning conversation soon attracted me and my visits beyond the limits of leisure, afforded by the duties of an active business life, and the natural suggestion, that fragments of time, late evening- or early morning-hours might be em ployed for epistolary communications, soon re sulted on her part in the following letters, the first thirty -nine of which, mostly without date, were written either in answer to mine or in con nection with preceding conversations. The re mainder followed me upon travels. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller For many years after the tragical end of PREFA- their author, I would not part with this mother- NOTE less offspring of our spiritual intercourse and with the exception of a few detached leaves, submitted for a similar purpose to her friend and biographer, Mr. W. H. Channing, at his solicitation, no human eye has ever seen them. But now when more than a generation has passed and no earthly interest or feeling can possibly be injured, I cannot suffer their exquisite natu ralness and sweetness to sink into the grave. More especially do I not feel justified in with holding them from others, who, having deeply loved her in life and mourned her death, are en titled to this sacred experience of her inmost soul, while at the same time I feel, I can wreathe no fresher laurels around the cherished memory of " Margaret " than by showing, through these letters, that great and gifted as she was as a writer, she was no less so in the soft and tender emotions of a true woman s heart. Of a correspondence like this, so infinitely frank, confiding and truthful, it is but proper, that some passages and letters be withheld, but as soul and sentiment are valued by quality, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller PREFA TORY enough is given to answer every purpose. In the long lapse of time, a word or two has become NOTE illegible, but each has been reproduced as cor rectly as it could be deciphered. For the reader unacquainted with her sad fate I may say in con clusion that after these letters were written she, in London, found letters, and then went to Rome and to Heaven, but the mutually much longed for meeting is yet to be, somewhere ! somehow ! Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller THE LETTERS THE LETTERS Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 9 DEAR MR. NATHAN, LETTER My mind dwells often on what you are to tell I me. I have long had a presentiment, that I should meet nearly one of your race, who would show me how the sun of to-day shines upon the an cient Temple but I did not expect so gen tle and civilized an apparition and with blue eyes! It was one of those little incidents that have in them somewhat fateful, that, last Monday morning, a friend with whom I was walking asked me to go in and see the Jerusalem, 1 and I at first said yes, and then, I do not know why, changed my mind. But in the evening, you asked me and told me of yourself. Some day, when you are not bound to buying and selling, and I too am free, and when the sun shines as gloriously as it has some days of late, and the birds are again in full song, you will perhaps take me from Dr. Leger s in the morn ing, and show me some one of those beautiful 1 A plastic representation of that city, then on exhibition. io Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER places which I do not yet know, and, while I look, I will listen too, and, as we return, you will show me the " Holy city." On my side I have a poem I wish to read to you ; it is so corre spondent with the story you told me. Is this little plan a dream? If so, it will only fade like other buds of this premature spring. To-morrow will be the first day of spring. LETTER Friday evening. ii I cannot, dear Mr. Nathan, go with you to the concert, because before receiving your note, I had engaged to accompany another friend. But you will be there; and we shall, I hope, have- beautiful music that will associate us in sympathy. Perhaps you will be at the Farm on Sunday. I shall go out after dinner, but you must not let this intimation break up your Sunday, if you had planned any distant excursion. I know the charms of an unbroken day ; indeed it always seems that I do not half enjoy any scene till I have had its presence through an entire day. II Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 1 1 I am glad to have you wish to retain the LETTER book, but should sometime like to correct with my pen the little errors in the printing, of which I see too many, but hope to remove them all in another edition, for they begin to talk of that. It pleases me that you feel so truly what is told of Panthea. I believe there is nothing writ that is more to my mind. Can you doubt the pos sibility of such feelings? Do they not prove themselves as soon as seen to be just what nature intended, if only we would not be satisfied with affection less fervent and less pure? Au revoir. P. S. The reason of your not receiving my note earlier was that I did not send it. I wrote and carried it about, thinking, if we happened to meet, I would give it, but thought it too trifling to send. But that afternoon, which was of such blue sky and inspiring breezes, gave me an im pulse to send it, as I passed through the city. A note will scarcely ever fail to reach me in the course of twenty-four hours, if left at the office. 12 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER February MY DEAR FRIEND, For the memory of the frank words of yester day makes it impossible for me to address you more distantly I feared, when you went away, that you believed, I, too, did not sympathize with you, or I could not have said I was so happy, when you had just been telling me of your deep wants. You seemed repelled by this, but, indeed, it was not because I did not feel. It is difficult for me to put into words, what was in my mind, but you will understand it when you know me more. Yet let me say to you, that I think it is great sin ever to dream of wishing for less thought, less feeling, than one has. Let us be steadfast in prizing these precious gifts under all circumstances. The violet cannot wish to be again impris oned in the sod because she may be trampled on by some rude foot. Indeed our lives are sad, but it will not always be so. Heaven is bound to find for every noble and natural feeling its re sponse and its home at last. But I cannot say much, only I would have you remember yesterday with pleasure as does * Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller The birds this morning were in full song, like April. Should you like to go with me on Monday evening to hear the Messiah? If so, will you come to tea to Mr. Cranch s at six or a little later and take me? You may be engaged, or you may not love Handel s music ; in either case, let me know by note and I can find another guard ian without difficulty. They will send a note from the Tribune office, if you wish, but if it be your desire to go, that is not necessary. LETTER III LETTER Friday evening. IV I feel the need of writing, just to say good evening. Dear friend, good night a good day I cannot suppose you have had. But there was a good day along the riverside ; I have felt so con tented since, scarcely one little wish yet. When there has been time, a cloud of thoughts have floated over, thoughts suggested by the inspira tions of your mind ; but it was not a dark cloud, but one silvery white, full and volumed, such as we see in the days of early June upon a bright blue sky. But there has been little solitary time. I have with me the two girls, Georgiana and 14 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER Honora ; * they are preparing for their pilgrim age in a happy spirit. I brought Honora out with me to-day and had a full talk as we were walking. The love and trust shown by many seem to have given a new development to her men tal history. Her eyes are full of a good young herzlich look. I think she is naturally artful in the sense of having a great deal of tact, but that it may all be turned to good. They leave me to-morrow. The Springs are again prevented from going to Staten Island, and will, I think, be prevented for several Sundays, probably till after I lose you this is a relief to me. Even when I do not see you, I had rather not go out elsewhere, especially to ride. But I hope I shall see you next Sunday. We will worship by im promptu symbols, till the religion is framed for all Humanity. The beauty grows around us daily, the trees now are all in blossom and some of the vines ; there is a Crown Imperial j ust in perfection, to which I paid my evening worship by the light of the fire, which reached to us, and there are flashes of lightning too. But I do not 1 Two erring young girls she tried to reform. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller like the lightning so well as once, having been in too great danger. Yet just now a noble flash falls upon my paper, it ought to have noble thoughts to illumine, instead of these little noth ings, but indeed to-night I write only to say : thou dear, dear friend, and we must meet soon. Saturday morning. I sealed my letter last night and don t know what is in it, but it seems as if there was nothing. No response at all, and yet my mind has been en folded in your thought, as a branch w r ith a flame. Now the branch, perhaps too green, looks only black upon the hearth, yet if there is nothing, wait. Are you very busy ? If not, walk up through John Street toward the Doctor s about twenty minutes past ten. But if you are busy, don t disturb yourself. I go that way at any rate. Evening, Hth March. It is for me to regret now that I have troubled a gentle heart far more than was in- LETTER IV LETTER V LETTER VI i6 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER VI tended. I only wished to be satisfied, and when you told me how you had viewed the inci dent I really was so. Do not think of it ever again. It would be more generous to be more con fiding, but I cannot. You must see me as I am. Trifles affect me to joy or pain, but I can be ab solutely frank. You will see whether you find me fastidious and exacting. Our education and relations are so different, and those of each as yet scarce known to the other slight misunder standings may arise. Fate does not seem to favour my wish to hear more of your life and the position of your mind. But I do not feel, that, whatever I may know, I can misunderstand what is deepest. I have seen the inmost heart, what the original nature is. I am thus far con fiding. Tell me, if it is not wrong for me to ask, what was the " severe loss? " What has power to make you " heart-sick ? " I hear my host and his sweet little wife sing ing together. If I were only alone with them, I should have urged your stay; you would like them, but there are so many corner-pieces besides Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 17 in the parlour with living eyes, that are over-busy LETTER in taking note, I do not invite any friend to face them. Lebewohl. P. S. Do not fancy, that I have lost this day by staying. I have been well engaged and it has been still and sweet alone in my room by the bright fire with the rain falling so musically outside. One feels at home on the earth such days. I am sorry, that you should have come here in the wet for nought ; but hope, your day, also, is closing pleasantly. VII Though I wish to see you, yet come not on a LETTER cold, cloudy day. Though you are furthest from what is commonly meant by a " fair weather friend," I like to see you in sunshine best. Wednesday, 19th March. LETTER VIII I dine to-day with Mrs. Child, house of Isaac V Hopper, 20 Third Street. If you will come for me there at seven or half past seven, I will go with you. Tis said, the third attempt never 1 8 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER fails, but, if it should in this instance, we will not try again, but accept it as an omen, that we are not to see Zion together. For, though I dine in town one other day this week, it is at a place where I cannot easily excuse myself for going away in the evening. I have no time, now, for more, except to ex press happiness in the aspirations of my friend. May Heaven cherish them ! I cannot ask this for you in that ancient noble speech of the chosen people. Yet the Prayer, which he of Nazareth gave, is true for the heart of all Nations. " Lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil." The stars answer to that; while they reprove, they promise. Ask for me in the words of your own poet, his original words, which I cannot repeat : " keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins." If you receive this in time, let me know at Dr. Leger s whether you will come this evening. LETTER Sunday afternoon. IX The true lovely time is come at last. The leaves and grasses are out, so that the wind Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 19 can make soft music, as it sweeps along, in- LETTER stead of the rattling and sobbing of winter. A dear little shower is refreshing the trees and they grow greener and fairer every mo ment in gratitude. (I write so badly, because the wind shakes my paper too as well as the other leaves, but I can t bear to shut the window. ) You must use your moderation about our in terviews, and as you know best. I like best to rely entirely upon you, yet keep time as much as possible with the enchanting calls of outward na ture. It is nothing to be together in the parlour, or in the street, and we are not enough so among the green things. To-day the lilacs are all in blossom, and the air is full of a perfume which causes ecstasy. I hear you with awe assert power over me and feel it to be true. It causes awe, but not dread, such as I felt sometime since at the ap proach of this mysterious power, for I feel deep confidence in my friend and know that he will lead me on in a spirit of holy love and that all I may learn of nature and the soul will be legiti mate. The destiny of each human being is no 20 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER IX doubt great and peculiar, however obscure its rudiments to our present sight, but there are also in every age a few in whose lot the meaning of that age is concentrated. I feel that I am one of those persons in my age and sex. I feel chosen among women. I have deep mystic feel ings in myself and intimations from elsewhere. I could not, if I would, put into words these spirit facts, indeed they are but swelling germs as yet, and all I do for them is to try to do nothing that might blight them. Yet as you say you need forget your call, so have I need of escaping from this overpowering sense. But when forced back upon myself, as now, though the first turnings of the key were painful, yet the inner door makes rapturous music too upon its golden hinge. What it hides, you perhaps know, as you read me so deeply; indeed, some things you say seem as if you did. Yet do not, unless you must. You look at things so without their veils, yet that seems noble and antique to me. I do it when you hold me by the hand, yet, when I feel how you are thinking, I sometimes only say : Psyche was but a mortal woman, yet as the bride of Love, she became a daughter of the gods too. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 21 But had she learned in any other way this secret LETTER of herself, all had been lost, the plant and flower and fruit. But it is impossible to say these things, at least for me. They are myself, but not clearly defined to myself. With you, all seems to assume such palpable reality, though you do not forget its inner sense either. I love to hear you read off the secret, and yet you sometimes make me tremble too. I confide in you, as this bird, now warbling without, confides in me. You will un derstand my song, but you will not translate it into language too human. I wish, I long to be human, but divinely human. Let the soul invest every act of its abode with somewhat of its own lightness and subtlety. Are you my guardian to domesticate me in the body, and attach it more firmly to the earth ? Long it seemed, that it was only my destiny, to say a few words to my youth s companions and then depart. I hung lightly as an air-plant. Am I to be rooted on earth, ah! choose for me a good soil and a sunny place, that I may be a green shelter to the weary and bear fruit enough to pay for staying. Au revoir! Adieu! 22 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER X Tuesday. Yesterday was, perhaps, a sadder day than I had in all my life. It did not seem to me an act of " Providence," but of some ill demon, that had exposed me to what was to every worthy and womanly feeling so humiliating. Neither could I reconcile myself to your having such thoughts, and just when you had induced me to trust you so absolutely. I know you could not help it, but why had fate drawn me so near you ! As I walked the streets, " the piercing drops of grief would start into mine eyes " as the hymn-book promises they shall not in heaven, and it pained me to see the human beings. I felt removed from them all, since all was not right between me and one I had chosen, and knew not where to turn my thoughts, for nature was stripped of her charms, and God had not taken care of me as a father. But, in the evening, while present at the " Antigone," my heart was lightened by the presence of this darling sister, even in such dis guise. The straightforward nobleness of the maiden led her to Death ; we in modern times have not such great occasions offered us, we can only act out our feelings truly in the lesser ones, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller and die, if needs be, by inches ; but it is the only way, for one grain of distrust or fear is poison to a good nature, felt at once through every vein. I hoped to wake this morning blessing all man kind, but it was not so; I woke with my head aching, and my heart cold and still, just as on the day before. But a little while after on my way through the town, there came to me the breath I needed. I felt submiss to heaven, which permits such jars in the sweetest strains of earth. I saw a gleam of hope that the earth stain might be washed quite away. I thought of you with deep affection, with that sense of affinity, of which you speak to me, and felt as I said this morning, that it was suicide to do otherwise. I felt the force of kindred draw me, and that things could not be other than they were and are. Since they could be so, leave them! I cannot do other than love and most deeply trust you, and will drink the bitter part of the cup with patience. Since then, I have your note. Not one mo ment have I sinned against you ; to " disdain " you would be to disdain myself. Yet forgive, if I say one part of your note and some particulars of your past conduct seem LETTER X Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER X not severely true. Your own mind, strictly scanned, will let you know whether this is so. You have said there is in yourself both a lower and a higher than I was aware of. Since you said this, I suppose I have seen that lower ! It is is it not? the man of the world, as you said you see " the dame " in me. Yet shall we not both rise above it? I feel as if I could now, and in that faith, say to you, dear friend kill me with truth, if it be needed, but never give me less. I will never wish to draw any hidden thing from your breast, unless you begin it, as you did the other day, but if you cannot tell me all the truth, always, at least, tell me absolute truth. The child, even when its nurse has herself given it a blow, comes to throw itself into her arms for consolation, for it only the more feels the nearness of the relation. And so, I come to thee. Wilt thou not come with me before God and promise me severe truth, and patient tender ness, that will never, if it can be avoided, mis interpret the impulses of my soul. 1 am willing you should see them just as they are, but I am not willing for the reaction from the angelic view to that of the man of the world. Yet the Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller time is past when I could protect myself by reserve. I must now seem just as I feel, and you must protect me. Are you equal to this? Will an unfailing reverent love shelter the " sister of your soul? " If so, we may yet be happy to gether some few hours, and our parting be sad but not bitter. I feel to-day as if we might bury this ugly dwarf -changeling of the past, and hide its grave with flowers. I feel as if the joy ous sweetness I did feel in the sense of your life might revive again. It lies with you but if you take up the lute, oh do it with religious care. On it have been played hymns to the gods, and songs of love for men, and strains of heroic courage, too, but never one verse that could grieve a living heart, and should it not itself be treated delicately? With sorrow, but with hope, farewell. LETTER X LETTER Thursday. XI Yesterday I was able to be industrious, and to go to rest singing, if not with that sense of deep peace with which we would lie down in the bosom of night, saying as our sufficient prayer: Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XI " All is well." But to-day your letter, with its tone of sweet, pure reproach comes to touch the hidden springs of feeling. Art thou indeed yet better, lovelier, truer, than thou seemest to me? If so do not expect me to blame myself for the clouds. I shall be too happy to find a being rise beyond my expectations, one whom I must improve and expand to " understand." I shall have no time to blame myself. Yet forgive, if I have done amiss; forgive, when I shall do amiss. And I too " do not understand ! " From so many beautiful dwellings, whose door stood hospitably open, myself must turn away into the shivering, muddy street, because they would not let me in in my true dress and manner. And now am I to repel thee? Oh no! it will not be so; I shall understand yet ; have patience. And yet, dearest friend, indolent, cowardly that I am, 1 do wish, that I had not begun to read the book, but only learned the title-page by heart and left a happy kiss upon the cover. How sweet it would have been just to walk on with thee through the winding ways, without hope, without doubt or fear, gathering the flowers of the new day Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller iy or mosses from the old rocks for one another, LETTER with sometimes a mutual upward look to sun or star ! I needed no future, only that there should be no precaution or limitation as to the future, nothing to check that infinite hope, which is the only atmosphere for spring. Those winding ways would have led us to the beach, and there we should have parted, and I would have watched the white sail, with unwearied eye and saluta tion, till it was a dark speck in the blue, and then I would have wept away a portion more of this earthly life and wept myself to sleep, when absence and duty would have taken me again, and placed me on the spot where I ought to awake, and all would have been past, except a fair picture on the wall of my dwelling. Now it is deeper, and we cannot get out of the labyrinth, nor my heart find what it craves, sweet content with thee. God grant that a pure, high ministry may compensate for this loss, which to me is unspeakable. I do so long for childish rest and play, instead of all the depths, which never will go deep enough. Can it not be again? You promised the lighter chords should yet again vibrate. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XI You speak of the " cataract." When I get down here, I do always hear its plunge and almost see its white foam. But I know little about the mystery of life, and far less in myself than in others. I inclose you two little poems addressed to me, which seem to point at what you have in mind, do they not? Yet the echo from them is not homef elt. Your voice awakens a longer echo through the subterranean chambers, yet not long enough to teach me where to go. The one signed S. was given me last autumn, the other by my brother-in-law, W. E. Channing, and I like that particularly, as it is always pleasing, when the common intercourse of daily life does not de stroy, but enhances, poetic interest. And you I must cause to " stoop " ; that is uncongenial, indeed, nor could we have expected it. But truth truth we have resolved always to accept. I await the letter, finding myself always Your friend. Late evening. I hear to-night of a generous action, which gives me so much pleasure, I wish to say to you, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 29 that I am happy. Will you remind me to tell LETTER you about it, when we meet? FROM S. TO MARGARET. 1844. LETTER XII Each sat alone, girt round with plastered walls Of little rooms, how different from halls Which we should build, possessed we the de light To bring the treasures of our thoughts to sight. But our thoughts were not these; they soared away, I know not whither thine, but if I may Mine will I tell thee. Thou art the Wind, the Wanderer of the Air, The Searcher of the Earth, and everywhere Art unappalled; the dizziest heights are thine, Thy force is felt across the foaming brine ! Unbaffled thou dost dash aside the wave; Thou art not awe-struck by the loneliest cave When hollow sides reverberate thy voice. With eager swiftness wilt thou now rejoice, To emulate the cataract s uproar loud, Then dancest on into the city s crowd, 30 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER Who stand astonished at thy wayward play, And seek a shelter, where they sought the day. But when at length thou sink st to gentleness Thou art an angel s whisper sent to bless, And while thou art caressing the fair child, He smiles to meet thy touch so soft and mild. By thee the flames are fanned unto their height. The air is purified by thy swift flight, Thou mournest round the grave unvisited, To hollow ruins all thy sighs are paid ; The lonely harp that hangs upon the wall, Attuned by thee shall not neglected fall, But who shall e er attune thy symphony? Thou art a voice, but not a melody Where is thy home? The writer of this is a person all intellect and passion, no loveliness of character; impetu ous, without tender sympathy ; hard and secret, when not strongly moved, yet keenly sensitive to a wound from others, noble in the absence of little faults, ignoble in want of confiding sweet ness. Such a picture do I draw ; the sub j ect would, probably, no more accept it as a genuine portrait, than I do this of me. Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller FROM W. E. C. TO MARGARET. XII I mark beneath thy life the virtue shine That deep within the star s eye opes its day ; I clutch those gorgeous thoughts thou throw st away From the profound unfathomable mine, And with them this mean common hour do twine, As glassy waters o er the dry beach play. And I were rich as night, them to combine With my poor store, and warm me with thy ray. From the fixed answer of those dateless eyes I catch bold hints of spirit s mystery As to what s past, and hungry prophecies Of deeds to-day and things which are to be : Of lofty life that with the eagle flies, And lowly love, that clasps humanity. Saturday evening, March 31st. LETTER XIII MY DEAR FRIEND, I feel a strong desire to write you a few words at the close of this sweet day. And yet, there are no words, many or few, in which I can even begin to utter, what there is to say. It is indeed true, 3 2 Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER that the time is all too short. To feel, that there is to be so quick a bound to intercourse, makes us prize the moment, but then also makes it so difficult to use it. Yet this one thing I wish to say, where so many must be left unsaid. You tell me, that I may, probably, never know you wholly. Indeed the obstacles of time and space may prevent my understanding the workings of character; many pages of my new book may be shut against me. But to know the natural music of the being, what it is, will be, or may be, needs not long acquaintance and this perhaps is known to me, better than to yourself. Perhaps? I believe in Ahnungen beyond anything. Has this sweetest day been spent by you in busy life or doubtful thoughts? For that I grieve ; it is so much more lovely, than yesterday ; the mood in nature far tenderer and more ex pansive. I must again write you of the birds ; it is in early morning that they are in such a rapture ; their songs at other hours are cold and tame in comparison. I perceive they have learned and lived, since I first wrote of them. Then their notes were timid ; they were not sure but they must perish with cold before they could enjoy Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 33 LETTER XIII the sunshine of this beautiful world, but now they have had some of it, and are content. Will you smile at such a trifle being written down? After all, what better can we tell one another than those little things? Each is a note in the great music book, which historians and critics never opened, but which contains all that is worth our singing. Oh! there are glimpses in this world of a truly happy intercourse, simple as between little children, rich, various, intelligent as among perfected men. Sometime some where. Meantime benedicite. Wednesday, <2d April. LETTER XIV I must not, dear friend, try to answer your letter ; it moves me too much. May good angels guide you ! It was painful to see your letter cur tailed of a part, yet I appreciate the cause, that takes it from me. So would I have it. Let all that is given to me be with the full consent of your mind ; then shall I be at home in its perma nent temper. Though the veil of mystery must be sad for one, who would like to come close in reliance, yet 34 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XIV such is my belief in your honour, and shall I not say your tender regard for me, that I shall not, voluntarily, seek to penetrate it, even by a mental question. Yet certainly it will be happier for me, if you do not leave me thus in the dark, when you go for so long and so far a travel. The only part that can trouble me is to see you reproach yourself in some degree. Yet can I never look on you and believe, that conscience is seriously gekrarikt and you told me, that you had " only broken through the conventions of this world." That I know a generous and ardent nature may do, without deep injury; yet much out ward difficulty may ensue. But, again, only with your full consent would I hear ever a word more. You will act as the heart prompts in communion with me, and as to the circumstances of our outward intercourse, as there are influ ences unknown to me, you will consult them as you have consulted them, and my trust will be in you. Again, may our good angels guide you and foster daily the best and loveliest self ! P. S. I shall expect you to-morrow, but I wish it were to-day. Twenty-four hours are a Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 35 great many, more than enough to bring clouds, LETTER yet they will not come on the heaven of the mind, not this time. Waverley Place, LETTER Sunday afternoon, 6th April, 1845. Can my friend have a doubt as to the nature of my answer? Could the heart of woman re fuse its sympathy to this earnestness in behalf of an injured woman? Could a human heart refuse its faith to such sincerity, even if it had accompanied the avowal of error? Heaven be praised that it does not! Some of your expressions, especially the use of the word " atonement " had troubled me. I knew not what to think. Now I know all and surely all is well. The first day we passed together, as you told me of your first being here, when you came to the telling the landlord so ingenuously, that you had no money, and said " the tears ran down my boyish cheeks " my heart sprang toward you and across the interval of years and I stood be side you and wiped away those tears and told you they were pearls consecrated to Truth. You Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XV said you " would not do so now " but I believe you would act now with the same truthfulness, though in a different manner as becomes the man, according to the degree, in which circumstances should call on you. And so it is There are no tears nor cause to shed any ; I need not approach so tenderly as I might have to the boy, but if it be of avail to bless you, to express a fervent hope that your great and tender soul may har monize all your nature more and more, and create to itself a life, in which it may expand all its powers, this hope, this blessing take from the one in whom you have confided, and never again fear that such an experiment may fail. Indeed I have suffered much since receiving the letter. I came into town yesterday with that winged feeling, that often comes with the early sunshine. When the letter came, I could not wait, and though there was only time for a glance upon it, a cold faintness came upon me. I took off the flowers I had put on, expressive of my feelings a little hour before, and gave them to the blind girl, for I almost envied her for being in her shut up state less subject to the sudden shocks of feeling. For there I read at once the Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller exact confirmation of what had been told me of your position, and could not read the whole, to be soothed by its sense and spirit. For this day had been given to others, and the evening to a circle of new acquaintance. Not till I went to my room for the night was there any peace or stillness and all things swam before me, so I felt the falsity of the position in which you had placed yourself, that you had acted a fiction, and though from honourable, nay, from heroic, mo tives, had endured the part of a rogue. I felt, too, that you had probably been tempted by the romance of the position and with a firmer, clearer determination to acknowledge with sim plicity, might have found some other way. . . . I had placed the letter next my heart and all day it seemed to comfort me and assure me, that when I would be once alone, peace would come: and it has come. . . . As to our relations, I wish these circumstances to make no difference in them in private nor as to being together in public. Now that I know all, and have made up my own mind, I have no fear nor care. I am myself exposed to misconstruc tion constantly from what I write. Blame can- 38 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER not hurt me, for I have not done wrong, and have too much real weight of character to be sunk, unless by real stones of offence being attached to me. As I feel for myself, so do I for a friend. You are noble. I have elected to abide by you. We will act, as if these clouds were not in the sky. My feeling with you was so delightful. It was a feeling of childhood. I was pervaded by the ardour, upborne by the strength of your na ture, gently drawn near to the realities of life. I should have been happy to be thus led by the hand through green and sunny paths, or like a child to creep close to the side of my companion, listening long to his stories of things, unfamiliar to my thoughts. Now this deeper strain has been awakened; it proves indeed an unison, but will the strings ever vibrate to the lighter airs again ? And now farewell. Come to see me so soon as you will and may. Farewell and love ever your friend. P. S. I stay here to-day but go back to the Farm to-morrow morning. As to your letter, I cannot yet part with it; at present it is safe as Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 39 myself and before you go, shall be disposed of, LETTER as you desire. I feel as if I had not expressed XV enough my deep interest in what you have done, but it was because of beginning with a sense that you must know that and the wish to satisfy you as to myself. You will read, I believe, what was left unwrit. Tuesday evening, 8th April. LETTER XVI The Cedar Street merchant did well. Say, was that street selected from any association with Lebanon? How far the name wanders from the thing in this world ! Josey 1 commends himself to you with a mild but fond regret, if I read aright the glance of his eye, when I told him of your inquiries. He seems very content, but I marvel at him for it, for he is kept close a great deal. Sarah says she gives him a bath every day, but he does not look as he did with you. When you come out, perhaps you will give Henry some directions ; he appears to have more respect for the toilet than any mem- 1 A handsome Newfoundland puppy. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XVI her of this family except myself, and I should be sorry to have your pet get a dilapidated air ! He rejoices when he sees me and cries after me when I go, but I fear, there is no especial devo tion in that, but that he is a general lover, and more affectionate than deep in his feelings. The only fine day since you were here, I took him out with me, and for a while we were very happy together, but, when I fell a-dreaming, he disap peared and I had a sad time looking for him. I was so distressed, lest he should be lost, and by me. At last, I found the sun was burning me so, I went back for my bonnet, which I had forgot ten, and beside it I found poor Josey looking as if he felt as disturbed about me, as I had about him. When he has a collar, I shall not feel anxious in having him with me. This has been a sad day so cruel cold; it hurts me. This morning all the flowers lay with their poor heads on the ground and ice clinging round them, the blue-eyed flowers, that looked up so trusting to the blue sky ; the golden flowers that looked up so full of joy and sure of the sun. May to-morrow be more genial ! With love, Gute Nacht. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 41 P. S. It is, indeed, such a worthless little LETTER note, but I am sad. Two such dissipated days, and here at night comes a thick book, named " American Facts " and forbidding me to look at that best fact, the Moon. Help me, my friend ! be the Oasis with its fountain and its palm. I go to seek you in the land of dreams ! Evening of 9th April. LETTER XVII I take the little sheet to answer the long and beautiful letter, not because there is not much to say, but because it does not seem that I can say it yet. The sweet ray touches my life and I wish it might bring out full and splendid blossoms, like the pink cactuses seen in the windows of the rich these bright spring days. But my thoughts lie, rather, deep in the ground like lily roots; not till the full summer-time will they show themselves in their whiteness and their fragrance, but then, where they stand lovely in the confidential night, they will return a blessing for all that has been given. I am with you as never with any other one, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER I like to be quite still and have you the actor and the voice. You have life enough for both ; you will indulge me in this dear repose. Sweetly you answer to my thoughts and even in the same images in which myself had clothed them. I will trust you deeply. I will not recall my thoughts from an involuntary flight. But can there fail to be timidity? Of the many who have stretched out their arms, there was not one who did not sometimes scare back the little birds to their nest. Often when they pecked at the window to which they had been invited, the in mate was asleep, or hearing, said : " It is nothing but the wind." And on one pure altar they would always alight, save that sometimes the fire burned there too fiercely, and at others it was desolate with ashes. Long has it seemed they might not be permitted to soar and sing, until a better world should offer freer and surer invita tion. Yet the lark may never refuse her song, if the true sun should dawn. I hear the fire bells ; perhaps the happiness of hearths is being marred at this moment. Heaven bless all thy children and save them from inex- XVII Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 43 pressible ills. I am full of pity to-night. I LETTER know not why especially. Farewell, dear friend, take the little incoher ent letter in good part; if you are like me, you wish for one every day. But I wish still more to see you now and borrow courage from your eyes. I like to see the old-fashioned Deutscher Name written by your hand and should like to hear it from your lips, but would rather myself not sign, but come unannounced, and depart in formally as if at home. Wednesday evening. LETTER DEAR FRIEND, xvm To my great joy Mrs. Greeley appears to be satisfied, and I trust all will go sweetly to the end. Thus I take the sheet with the little hearts ease to repeat once more what resounds so con stantly in my heart: God bless you! Monday, 15th April. LETTER MY DEAR FRIEND, XIX What passed yesterday, seemed not less sad to-day. The last three days have effected as 44 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER violent a change as the famous three days of Paris, and the sweet little garden, with which my mind had surrounded your image, lies all desecrated and trampled by the hoofs of the demon who conducted this revolution, pelting with his cruel hailstones me, poor child, just as I had laid aside the protections of reserve, and laid open my soul in a heavenly trust. I must weep to think of it, and why, O God, must eyes, that never looked falsehood, be doomed to shed such tears! It seems unjust, as other things in my life have seemed, though none so much as this. Yet in that garden must be amaranth flow ers " not born to die." One of these should be a perfect understanding between us, and as " spirit identity " on which you relied, did not produce this, we will try words. For I perceived yesterday in you a way of looking at these things, different from mine more common sense and prudent, but perhaps less refined, and you may not, even yet, see my past as truly as I do myself, now. I have felt a strong attraction to you, al most ever since we first met, the attraction of a Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 45 wandering spirit towards a breast, broad enough LETTER and strong enough for a rest, when it wants to furl the wings. You have also been to me as sunshine and green woods. I have wanted you more and more, and became uneasy when too long away. My thoughts were interested in all you told me, so different from what I knew my self. The native poetry of your soul, its bold ness, simplicity and fervor charmed mine, of kindred frame. But this is all that can be said of my feel ings up to receiving your confidential letter a week ago. I enjoyed like a child the charm with which a growing personal interest clothes common life, and the little tokens of outward nature. You enjoyed this with me, and the vi brations were sweet. I received, indeed, with surprise, the intelligence, that you would go away. It startled me for the moment with a sense, that you did not prize me enough. I had felt that I could be so much to you to refine, expand and exalt. Could it be, I thought, you did not feel this? But then your words assured me that you did feel it, and I easily forgot pride and self-love. I was thinking more of you than 46 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER of myself, and I hoped the travel was, indeed, just what you wanted. But when I received from you the mark of truth so noble, and that placed your character in so striking a light, also seeming to attach so religious an importance to my view of it, my heart flew open, as if with a spring, and any hidden treasure might have been taken from it, if you would. I can never resist this kind of greatness. I may say, it is too congenial. At such times I must kneel and implore our God to bless with abundant love the true heart that consoles me for the littleness I must see in my race elsewhere. Afterward I thought of you with that fool ish tenderness women must have towards men that really confide in them. It makes us feel like mothers, and we wish to guard you from harm and to bless you with an intensity, which, no doubt, would be very tiresome to you, if we had force to express it. It seemed to me that when we should meet, I should express to you all these beautiful feelings, and that you would give me a treasure more from your rich heart. You know how we did meet. You seemed dis- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 47 satisfied. I had an undefined anxiety to do LETTER something, and I spoke of being as a bark that fears to leave the shore. This was partly in reply to what you had said so beautifully in your letter, of never recalling my thoughts, when they naturally rested on you, and of trust ing to nature and providence. I wanted to do so, but felt afraid, lest pain should ensue, such as has already ensued and which my heart, born for the most genial confidence, knows not well how to bear from a cherished hand. Truly the worldly and manlike way in which you spoke of circumstances so delicate and which had moved me so much, was sad for me to hear, yet was I glad to know what could pass in the mind even of the dear one who had claimed, and merited so large a trust. My guardian angel must take better care of me another time and make me still more timid, for truly nothing but perfect love will give a man patience to understand a woman, even such a man as you, who have so much of feminine sweetness and sensibility. After receiving your little note of Saturday, I again looked to you to make my feelings per- 48 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER fectly tuneful, when I saw you. I do not think any human being ever felt a lovelier confidence in the pure tenderness of another than I did, when we left the church. When you said what you thought necessary to say, it struck upon my heart like a blow. Something in your man ner seemed to mark it for me and yet I could not believe it, yet the weight pressed, and I could not rest till our final conversation made all clear. Oh ! was that like angels, like twin spirits bound in heavenly unison, to think that any thing could enslave my heart, short of perfect love, such as I myself am born to feel, and shall yet, in some age and some world feel for one that can feel it for me? My friend ! believe what I say, for I am self- conscious now. You have touched my heart and it thrilled at the centre, but that is all. My heart is a large kingdom. But your heart, your precious heart (I am determined to be absolutely frank), that I did long for. I saw how precious it is, how much more precious may be. And you have cruelly hung it up quite out of my reach, and declare: I never shall have it. Oh das ist hart! For no Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 49 price ! There is something I am not to have at LETTER any price. Das ist hart. You must not give it away in my sight at any rate, but you may give away all your prudence and calculations, and arrangements, which seem so unlike your fairer self, to whomsoever you like. It seemed the work of an evil angel, making you misread a word in my letter, but since it could lead you to think it needful so to act, I am glad you did, since I thus became apprized of these things in your mind; else my little birds might have flown to you in too thick flocks. You said " What shall our relation be now ? " I say : Most friendly; for we are really dear to one another; only it is like other earthly relations. Poison plants will sometimes grow up in the night. But we will weed them out, so soon as possible, and bear with them, since only perfect love casteth out fear. Think of me with love and honor. I deserve them. So do you, and shall ever have them from me. To the inspirer of all just thoughts and holy hopes commending you, farewell, my friend. For the sake of everything dear, don t mis read any words in this letter. I must tell you 50 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER why I was so slow to understand you yesterday. It was because you made use of the word " hope." Has any circumstance led to a " hope &c." Ah, Gretchen! has thy really proud and sacred life only led to such an episode, where thou art supposed, and by a most trusted friend, to be " hoping " about such things ? Where is the fault in thee that can lead to conclusions so humiliating? My own mind does not appreciate it. Yet again I am glad, my friend, to read the very word that could come into your mind. Truth is the first of jewels, yet let him feel, that if Margaret dared express herself more frankly than another, it is because she has been in her way a queen and received her guests as also of royal blood. What her vanity was you may see, if you read how ingenuously it was said : " Tell me and I will love you " as if prom ising a boon. Alas ! alas ! she must go to heaven and the journey is long. LETTER Saturday, 19th April, 1845. XX MY BELOVED FRIEND, Your hand removes at last the veil from my eyes. It is then, indeed, myself who have caused Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 51 all ill. It is I, who by flattering myself and let- LETTER ting others flatter me that I must ever act nobly and nobler than others, have forgot that pure humility which is our only safeguard. I have let self-love, pride and distrust creep upon me and mingle with my life-blood. All unawares I have let experience corrode the virgin-gold. I came from the battle field fancying myself a victor, and now in my arrogance have fallen be neath the just hopes of a kindred spirit, and grieved it and put this same darkness into its clear life. I need not say " pardon." " Long since " hast thou pardoned. (Nay! thou wilt bless our Father for making thee the instrument of good to me, in that only religion, which restores our innocence to us by making us weep for its beauty and implore a restoration through the divine original. I will now kneel, and, laying thy dear hand upon my heart, implore, that if pride or sus picion should hide there again, the recollection of this day may rise up, and with its sharp deep pulse, make them flutter their wings. And when I know they are there, indeed, indeed, there is 52 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER nothing I will not suffer myself to endure to drive them out. I have indeed always had a suspicion that I was not really good at all, and have longed for a baptism without to wash off the dust of the world; within, a deep rising of the waters to purify them by motion. And yet, while I wished, I feared it. Pain is very keen with me. I cannot help fearing it. Yet, O Father, against whose love as against the trust of man I have sinned, in this same moment I submit and say: when and how much Thou wilt. Thou wilt pro portion it to my strength to bear. My beloved friend, I will not say: Forget these days. We cannot and we need not, but I think, receding in the distance, the rough crags with their serpent brood, will not misbecome the landscape. You will not feel, that I am inca pable of faith because I have not yet shown it, nor misdoubt the light, which shone on you through me, because it does not yet pervade me. Fain would I never again give you pain or dis appointment, but you are noble enough to be willing to take me as I am. A higher will must govern and make my faults perhaps subservient Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller 53 to its purpose. Your trust in human nature LETTER will not be shaken; you have the vouchers in your own breast. If I ever fancied you other than " severely true," I do not now. I have now taken of the kernel of your life and planted it in mine. We have now been embraced in the eternal good ness and truth, and a certainty, a reality has superseded hope and, I trust, fear; at all events, that which has been a certainty must ever be. You complain of being bodily sick, but I think you must be better now. Do not regret the " nightmare " or distrust the words, poor blind messengers though they be from the true home; this time they found their way, and shed the light on all that came before. We shall now, I think, be " God s good children," and I shall be like a child otherways than in fancies and im pulses and childish longings. I too have been sick, and though seeming cheerful these last three days, it was outward and wilful, the spirit nestled not softly, saying : All is well. I was uberspannt; the feeling of alienation was dreadfully unnatural to me. 54 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER Indeed I was alienated from myself. How could it be borne? But coming home to-day with your letter, I could not forbear falling asleep, though it was broad daylight. There was such repose in these convictions, it gave me the power of sleep at once, which has not really been before since Sunday. I rested on the heart which is so good and noble, and which must surely find repose for itself, also, now its pain ful task is done. Yet to-night it shall be the last thought with me to wish it, though by me it cannot be given. I have not been good and pure and sweet enough. I have no words where with to say farewell my brother Seligkeit. Evening. The afternoon has been of such tender sweet ness, the little frequent showers so musical, and drawing from the earth and every leaf and bud fragrance till the air seemed full of soul. The clouds were very thin, with a faint glow on the horizon. The great tree is far more glorious to-day. I have worshipped it much, and very soon it will be all starred over with blossoms. The world may be wicked, but it is impossible Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 55 on such a day not to rejoice that we have been hnvn intn it born into it. LETTER XX Tuesday evening, %%d April. LETTER XXI Your aid, dear friend, is all you ought to give and more than I would receive, knowing that the claims on one, placed as you have been and with your heart, must be numberless and boundless, did I not take especial pleasure in receiving it from you in this matter. I have written to Boston for the rest, as there are a circle of young and rich persons, whose purses were always open to my call, and who are desirous I should appeal to them in the same way from this distant sphere, when I think best. But I shall do it sparingly and only hope that the same affinities will draw to me here similar spon sors for my good desires. For at home I did not suffer that worst evil of narrow circumstances, inability to do any good in extreme cases, others being willing to do what was pointed out by me. I wish you would remind me to give you some particulars about this, as there is a sweet picture of generous sympathies which you would enjoy. There are innumerable pleasures worthy your XXI 56 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER acceptance and which I often wish to give you, of knowing the good and beautiful in books and men. I could bring you facts that would em bellish all your mortal years, but ah! still this daily grief: There is not time. This very day have I been reading some what and long especially to impart, but it would take you a deep silent night-hour to enjoy it, and will you have such an one to spare? The little notice gave the glad certainty that you will remain a good part of the blissful May month. Last night which was so beautiful, I thought sadly that I had not en j oyed this moon with you, and should not, but you will at least see the May moon grow with us. I am willing to see her wane alone. If you are here some moonlight evening, I shall bring you up here, and show you the loveliness I see from my win dow, to me enough to repay my coming to New York. I keep your guitar by this window ; if only I could play upon it ! Mit SelinsucTit, ja infinite, exquisite, tremulously lovely, as this light upon the waters. But Wehmuth! Ah ! the word is faint to express the depth of shadow, which yet the soul would Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 57 not be without, for is it not the overshadowing LETTER of a heavenly birth? XXI I had this morning the fairest rose, which my little lover Eddie Spring sent me, the only child of his rose-bush. I wanted to send it to you, as the reply to your note, but his mother was by, and I could not act out the perfidy of my heart, so it went home with me in the hot sun and withered so. This day has been one rapture; nature had decked herself during the rain with a thousand new charms, the most tender and delicate. The trees are in their fragrant veil of blossoms, the green deepening, the leaves opening each mo ment, every flower awake; the winds and waves full of happy inspiration. You can have no idea of the beauty of the myrtle-bed, as I pass to go down where we have been together, low on the rocks ; it is now one heaven of blue flowers. I gathered two buds, one for you and one for me. While I sat there, it seemed too bad, that you were probably in the midst of dust, and of what your generous soul rejects far more painfully than the body can its kindred earth. But soon, soon you will be Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXI where you can expand and let your own life grow. When I sit alone on these rocks, I shall, at least, think it is well with you or besser! As you tell me of this uncongenial life, I feel it all, but long to lay a soft hand on your forehead, there between the eyebrows, where it makes you knit them so. Say, have not I the force to bless you from the distance ? At evening you occupy me much. I know you are freer and often it seems that you are thinking of me. But the morning is the time I am most drawn towards you ; often the image comes as the light first salutes my eyes; some times I have a rush of feeling, that seems like the passage of a spirit through me, and ought to flow to you like blessing. This is the most beautiful feeling I ever experienced ; it is indeed divine, and too much for mortal force: there is no music for it; it can never, I fear me, be ex pressed. I have abjured dread, and yet with it comes dread, lest it return no more. Like sunset it cannot be remembered. Farewell, dear Friend, bless me if you can. P. S. Since finishing, I receive nearly forty dollars from Boston. I send you a leaf of the Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 59 note, that you may see my daughters are as LETTER good as yours. My friend, Mrs. Ward, gave me five dollars, that with yours is enough! The moon has just risen; oh it is almost too beautiful. I hope you feel as happy as I do. This moment is so happy, when human beings are kind and do not jar with Nature. Sunday evening, 27th April. LETTER XXII MY BELOVED FRIEND, For from its short and dissatisfying flights my mind returns to rest on the broad certainty that such you really are. The mists have given place to a lovely shower, which refreshes the trees, while it makes the blossoms fall. I have a fire in my own room, and the evening light falls on the pictures, gifts of a most cherished hand, which have been my companions, ever since my earthly father died. I feel quite happy now, it seems domestic in the stillness, and, my heav enly Father, it is that makes the " home." He, I feel, will care for me. He will make me to bear the want of the soft, mother s arms, and father s sheltering breast, and the music of 60 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER love s heart-beat tuned to perfect melody. He will help me not to misjudge my fellow men, and to bear the weight of spirit s mystery, though it must turn me pale. " The beautiful are never desolate For some one always loves them, God or man, If man forsakes God himself takes them," and I am surely one of the beautiful, so far that the soul is full of beauty. This day has been like life as it is in the blossoming sweetness of outward nature and the equally sweet promises of the eye, the brutal at tacks of wicked men, and the shrewd comments of worldly ones, no less than the Tantalus cup filled for one another by two, who really meet, if not enough. The life that will be is the fruit of this worm-assailed flower. Fate will not grant both at once it seems, the joys of absence and of presence. The day we passed together, Wednesday, I enjoyed thoroughly, except the hour we spent I know not why in mining in one another s hearts. Perhaps we found treasure by doing so, and yet the rest of the day had been passed merely in culling what grows on the surface of the earth, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 61 and that is so entirely sweet. Yet that day ended in satisfaction, too, and I drew nearer to you. I did not wish to speak of it to-day, but never have I felt anything like that night after writing the note, which you so clearly saw was but an evasion. What I felt that night was worth our knowing one another, for it was beautiful and full indeed. But these times of pure soul communion are almost too much for my strength. All is so rapid; in real intercourse, such as that of the day we rode, life proceeds with a gentle tranquil step, and her fresh green garland is better than the halo, till one be to that crown of light gewachsen. My friend, I send you a book with which, more than any, except Wilhelm Meister, I have sympathized. These two books express some thing of the peculiar life of this age of which we are part. I know not what it is on us lies the weight of giving it to the light. Tennyson knows some things about it, but none like this man. Keep it by you a week or two; there is much that might tire, but your eye may fall on passages that go deep, and which you may un derstand as well as I or better. The person, who LETTER XXII 62 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXII called me unnatural, or rather my way of view ing things so, said, that if I had the experience of passionate life, it would alter my view. Such an experience has this Festus and you too, I sup pose ; perhaps that is, what you mean by unlike- ness in our experiences. We parted in the lane and went our opposite ways, and I thought : my brother wishes to make his existence more poetic, I need mine should be more deeply real; must we go opposite ways in the same road? I send the little gift, but you will not wear it for a daily companion; yours to me is also something that I shall lay aside, to look at only now and then, but it is a thing exquisitely fair and pure ; and mine to you is a memento of that truly human heart, which first turned mine to you, for I saw you had a heart for all mankind. 1 In return let me say one thing. The sadness, that lingers in memory of that period, when your spirit-life took its painful birth, is almost gone. These are the last bitter drops which I drink with you. 1 Marginal note to letter : "Here is not the exact truth, and yet it seemed so, while writing." Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller I cannot bear to write any more except : God bless you and protect me. Tuesday evening. This morning brought on its glittering wings your letter written at the same time with mine. (I expected to receive it this morning.) As always you express yourself with more simple force than I can, but the mood was iden tical in both of us. When writing, I had your flower by me. Well did I understand, when you likened yourself to that flower. The passage in yours, beginning " Oh for wings " receive back in echo, for even in words I said it to myself also. Now I will not send you Festus there is no time for books and no poem like the poem we can make for ourselves. This day has been to me one of rapturous joy; the earth has decked herself in such beauty as if for the fairest of festivals ; it is impossible not to meet her, it is incredible the dawning of sweetness since yesterday. Many deep things have also dawned in my thought which are yours, but to-night they can- LETTER XXII 64 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER not be expressed, for I feel subdued. My head is heavy, let me lean it on your shoulder, and you divine these deep things. A sweet good-night. LETTER May day. XXIII This bleak morning is like those by which the hopes of the children in my native state (of the rock-bound coast and terrible climate) are almost always disappointed. The world is full of blossoms, but they are not happy in this cold air. I meant to have sent you some of the fair est, but now will not. Let everything be alike in so bleak a day. You too will pass it in the midst of car-men. After you went away the other night, I felt unusually grieved, not to have shown my soul more. I felt so deeply all you felt about this mis-tuned life, and longed to express my sym pathy in a thousand sweet ways, but the things that come to me to do are so childish. I have not courage, being grow r n up, and they sometimes mutiny with the forms of the world. But the thoughts I had, with the swell of their religion, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 65 kept me awake all night, and thus I was unfit LETTER to meet a very fatiguing day, and last night, tired and with headache, could not write. Thus it so often is. Feeling keeps from doing, what would show it. The Editor is gone away till Sunday and the evenings are open to music. Will you not come to-morrow evening? You know there was to be one with the guitar and there may not be such another free opportunity. Farewell, mem Liebster. Shall I not find a letter? I want one. Friday evening. LETTER XXIV You come not, dear friend. The day was full of golden sunlight, and kind words and deeds as well, for the thought of you stood at the end, but you come not. My head has ached ever since you were here, and needed you to take away its pain but you come not. You said once, I was too sensitive and that such little disappointments would affect me. It is indeed the absence of the light, but would never affect me any other way, where I am sure of love as I am of yours ; but that absence is sad. 66 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER The shadows and damps of evening settle down upon me as they do upon the earth, for where is the torch that was to cheer the in-door re tirement ! You come not and now I realize, that soon will be the time, when evening will come always, but you will come no more. We shall meet in soul, but the living eye of love, that is in itself almost a soul, that will beam no more. O Heaven, O God, or by whatsoever name I may appeal ; surely, surely O All-causing, Thou must be the All-sustaining, All-fulfilling too. I, from Thee sprung, do not feel force to bear so much as one of these deep impulses in vain ! Nor is it enough that the heavenly magic of its touch throws open all the treasure-cham bers of the universe, if these enchanted doors must close again. My little rose-tree casts its shadow on the paper. They bade me cut it down to make it blossom, and so have I done, though with a reluctant hand. So is it on this earth. But not so will it always be. The soul protests against it, and sometime, somewhere claims its own in full. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 67 Wilt thou search out such mysteries ir the LETTER solitude of the cave? Wilt thou prepare for men an image fair and grand enough of hope? Give that to men at large, but to me send some little talisman, that may be worn next the secret heart. And let it have a diamond point, that may pierce when any throb swells too far to keep time with the divine frame of things. We would not, however, stifle one natural note, only tune all sweet. My head aches still and I must lean it on the paper as I write, so the writing goes all amiss. Ah ! I really needed you to-night and you could not come yet you are not away from me; are you ? I long to hear whether the most wearisome part of your winding up is not now over. May morning, after thinking it was unfit to send the flowers, I changed my mind, for it seemed per haps they might not be uncongenial in the even ing after the fret and dust of the day were over. Farewell. Evening. LETTER xxv I am seized with feelings of regret for thee, and seem to enter into thy mind. How selfishly 68 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER I fret for loss of my pet dream, to walk like a child with its brave playmate. Is not yours broken just as much, finding so much of mortal in your angel? " And yet," said Beethoven at such a time, " there is the god-like in man ! " There is also the angel-like in woman she is thus angelic long before she is angel. We love what is pure. You, I believe, will never regret aught that makes your poetic soul more con scious of its hidden treasures. All shall yet be so sweet, gaining, like the plants, beauty and fragrance from these cold rain-storms. The blossoms, for which I begged you to stay, are opening on the trees ; will you not take me into the country the first fine da} T ? The dust will now be laid and the air pure after the storm. Will it be inconvenient to you on Saturday, if the weather is fine? I stay in town that day to attend the Philharmonic concert in the evening. Mr. and Mrs. Spring wished me to go to Staten Island on Sunday, but I have not said yet whether I would go, and I hate the thought of going, thinking it might be the only day on which I could see you. But you said last Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller Sunday, you had parting visits to make; per haps it will be so next Sunda3 T . Let me know about this on Saturday morning, and if not, whether I shall see you on Sunday, that I may know how to arrange. And will you let the little messenger be in waiting for me at Dr. Leger s at nine, or a few minutes before, on Saturday morning. I feel a growing persuasion that we shall now meet most sweetly, and that our minds will be tuned in the same key and tuned with nature. So as you have begged of me not to grieve or be weary, let me pray of you not to be oppressed or embarrassed any more. LETTER XXV Wednesday evening, 7th. Mein Liebster, do not reproach yourself as the cause of what I suffered yesterday, for the fault was with my own imprudence. I knew I was not well able to stand or walk, but there was no good place to sit still, and I was so bent on hearing you out, I could not bear to say this. I wish much I were strong, that I might be a fit companion for you and not weigh upon your motions. Coming home, I lay down in the dark LETTER XXVI 7 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXVI room, and the dark was what I wanted. Shut ting out all outward objects, the thoughts seem to grow upon me and clothe themselves in forms and colors so glorious. Much, much appeared before the closed eyes. Mem Liebster, you tell me to rest, but how can I rest when you rouse in me so many thoughts and feelings ? What good does it do for you to stay away, when, absent or present, every hour you grow upon me and the root strikes to my inmost life ! There is far more repose in being with you, when your look fills my eye and your voice my ear, than in try ing to keep still, for then these endless thoughts rush upon me. And then comes, too, that tor menting sense that only a few days more shall we be together, and how can I rest, though indeed I am desirous to do as you desire. It was hard for me to have you pass from the door unseen by me. I would have given much to call you to me for one cheering moment, but that the customs of this world did not per mit, and I was unable to rise and go to you. It is impossible now for me to express the many thoughts born in my mind from yours, but time and unison will perhaps perfect them and enable Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 71 me to do it ; if not, it is no matter, as they are LETTER all yours and must at any rate bloom in your garden, perhaps far larger and fairer. Yet the birds from your own bosom should return per fected in beauty and song to their nest. I send you within a little poem. It is one of those I wrote last Summer when living quite alone in a country house, near a thick wood, where I passed many sweet hours. It seems to me a prelude to this time. How much in the past so seems, were but one full strain permitted ! O my God ! My friend, unspeakably affect ing to me was your appeal to the angels. I also bow the head to their commands, to their prohibitions. But that is only on one side. On the other, life seems so full, so creative. Every hour an infinite promise. I cannot keep in mind prohibitions or barriers or fates. You said: " write without concentration," and surely I have done so, written I know not what, for the sense of all that has flowed through my mind, confuses it, and makes my head ache again. But take it gently, and take me near your heart. I must stop now and make one of those attempts to rest. J2 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER I will be out at quarter past ten, will walk towards Bowling Green and then back again. Poem, hitherto unpublished July, 1844. MOONLIGHT, GENTLE SHOWERS Lead, lunar ray To the crossing of the way, Where to secret rite Rises the armed knight, My champion for the fight. Fall heavier still, sweet rain, Free from their pain Plants, which still in earth Are prisoned back from birth, Teach the Sun their worth. Soul ! long lie thus still, Cradled in the will, Which to this motley ball, Sphere so great, so small, Did thee call. Suns have shone on thce Brooding thy mystery. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 73 Now, this sweet rain LETTER Might free from the pain Of birth the golden grain. Yet within the nest Patience still were best, Birds of my thought! Food shall be brought To you by mother Thought. Let your wings grow strong, For the way is long To that other zone, Where glows the throne Of your phoenix-king so lone. Nestle still, keep still, Cradled by the will Which must you daily fill, If, while callow, ye keep still. Thursday afternoon. LETTER XXVII I will not this time wait till the dark night before I open my thoughts to the loved soul who has brought me so much sunlight. 74 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXVII Thou hast brought me so much and I would gladly make return. But I know you ask noth ing of your moon except a pure reflection in a serene sky. When I listen to your many perplexities, I long for the privilege of " sage counsel in cum ber " but it comes not. Yet I have, have I not? power to soothe for the moment by listening, understanding, loving; and you have force and honour and aspiration to find your way out of them all in time. You have force and take with you the sense that I am thus deeply in your debt. The sense that has always been mine, that I should not be restless, sad, or weary with one who combined force with tenderness and delicacy, has become certainty. This is much; it is an assurance, also a promise. Yes, there is one who under stands, and when we are separated and I can no longer tell the impulse or the want of the moment, still I will not forget that there has been one. But I feel that you begin to go, that you are much taken from me already by your plagues and your preparations. I have been very ill; last night the pain in Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 75 my neck became so violent, that I could not lie LETTER still and passed a night suffering and sleepless. There were in the house no remedies and none to apply them. I went crying into town this morning, my nerves all ajar and the pain worse than ever; it was a sort of tic douloureux. I brought out a very strong remedy and since applying it, have been asleep. Now, waking almost free from pain, earth seems almost as good as heaven. Still, it hurts me to lean down my head and write. I must look rather out of the window on the soft shadowy land scape, which stills me. Put me in mind then, when we meet, to say two or three little things I had meant to write, and Lebewohl! How dull reads this letter, burn it " take the heart from out the breast " read that. Let me say in reply to your last, that you had bet ter leave my letters. You will not find it of any use to take them with you. They have been like manna, possible to use for food in their day, but they are not immortal like their source. Let them perish ! Let me burn them. Keep my image in the soul without such aids and it will be more livingly true and avail you more. 7 6 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER Friday evening, May 9th. DEAREST, I must begin by " babbling of green fields." Though it be true, as you say that this region of beautiful symbols is not the highest, I do find such relief in the soft trance, the still rapture they can give. I live in their life and am nour ished by it, as the infant from the mother s breast. Do you not cease to love this region too. You shall upbear me to the stars, when your energies overflow, and I feel sure that you will not find me incompetent to be received in the region of ideas. But let me sometimes hold you by the hand to linger with me here and listen while the grass grows ; it does me so much good, the soft warm life close to the earth. Perhaps it is, that I was not enough a child at the right time, and now am too childish ; but will you not have patience with that? The tulips are out now and the crimson ones seem to me like you. They fill gloriously with the sunlight, and the petals glow like gems, while the black stamens in the cup of the flower look so rich and mystical. I have gathered two and put them in my vase, but the perfume is al- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 77 most overpowering; there are also two golden LETTER ones, that have rooted themselves on the edge of a grassy bank. I do not know how they could get there; it was a strange elopement from the regular flower-bed, but the effect is beautiful of flowers so vornehm willing to be wild. I have been sitting in the twilight in the spot w r here we have been several times. Always something unpleasant occurred when we were there, but it has all endeared us to one another and ennobled the relation. And now a shrub has starred itself all over with white flowers and bends over the place. The young moon bent her pure crescent above the rocks, my parapet be hind; the waves stole in, vibrating through the silence with insidious murmur. Spulen! how expressive is the German word ; we have none like it. In this enchanting solitude, I thought of thee, of thy great thoughts. I have well under stood all that has been told me. Do not hesi tate to unfold the whole, only, indeed, in the musical order. I feel sure of being equal to it. Indeed, it seems as if there had been a gradual and steady preparation in me to hear Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXVIII it all. It will not be in vain that we have met. Whatever be your destiny, whether you be born to give form to these ideas, or are only the har binger, the father of him who is to come, that they have been uttered on earth and found their due vibration, predicts that their fulfilment is near. Man shall stand upon the earth as Man, and no more content himself with specific titles and partial claims. My dearest, I feel a deep desire to utter my self, to answer the inspirations of your life from my inmost soul, but I cannot. The easy powers, the superficial eloquence all fail me here. The little wings on my feet upbear me in the world, but they are not strong enough here. You would have to take me to heart and read my silence, but I believe you will. Since I began to write, I grow more power less, whether that you are thinking of me now, or from the sense of your thoughts that have been poured upon me, I do not know this time. But often I feel, that you are thinking of me and it takes away all power of thought or mo tion. You say it will not always be so, that by- and-bye it will stimulate me to be more myself. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 79 This may be. There is at present so much for me to assimilate and absorb. Could I indeed but let it rest in me till I grow to the stature of what I feel. You know how it will be, since you have the secret of this vital energy. You must know how it works in all forms of life, especially in mine, with which you are now in conjunction. I feel the most tender reliance, and also faith, that I shall never be a trouble to you. I observe, that it is with you, as it has been with me in many cases. You attract beings so much, that after a while it is too much for their good or your pleasure. Then comes the painful retro grade motion. But I feel confident that my angel will not let it be so with me. I have never been able to go a step, where you did not take me. Now, when I want you most, I feel that I cannot seek you, unless you do me. So not even by a thought shall I be permitted to follow you, where I cannot accompany. Now there is more and far better to be said, but again I cannot. Yet it is delightful to know that you will read all that is left unsaid. Now why say anything? but it is sweet to express all one can. LETTER XXVIII 8o Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER Michelangelo, whenever he paints a great form full of soul, paints young cherubs near, so powerful radiant and gentle; these are the thoughts of that soul at that moment. May such attend you now, my friend ! And in love, good-night. P. S. Do not come into Wall Street for me Sunday morning till twenty minutes past ten and then I will come so soon as I can, but some times they will keep me, talking. If it rains Sunday morning I suppose I shall go to church, as then I could not see you this proposed way. But I do hope for sunshine. LETTER Friday evening. XXIX I have been quite unwell, so that I could not go to town to-day, but hope to to-morrow. Yes terday I wrote some lines but think they will not come with this, lest they be morbid or languid. It were best to write only when well to my friend who is well. Hoping news of you in the morn ing, no more to-night, for the mood is not brighter than the skies without. May yours be more so, and daylight be seen amid all your per plexities, is the last thought ! Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 81 Saturday morning. LETTER y yjy I remain here a little while, twenty minutes perhaps, cannot you send a note to tell me, whether you still expect to go early in the week. I thought you would write to me this morning, you cannot be less able just now than I. Monday evening, 19th May. LETTER XXX DEAREST FRIEND, For such I cannot choose but have thee, oh it was a waste of this heavenly day to walk upon that terrace away from the gentle growing things and talk about these barriers that keep us apart. Better to forget them ! better be blest in the affinities while we may ! And then you have so much more energy and spirit for the fight! I must try not to throw down the poor little silk glove again in defiance of the steel gauntlet. And you, oh set up no mental limits against me; do not, I pray. Is it not hard on my side? You can think what thoughts of conquest you will, and I can not disprove them to you. On the other side you must be as the stone, if I give way to feelings 82 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXX of love and reliance, and you have jour myste rious reasons against me there. You talk to me with such cold wisdom sometimes, I do not know the brother of my soul, to whom I had but just flown. Next time we must go to Hoboken it is not so confined there. You must tell me things, and I will forget myself; that is always the best way. I look up the free and noble river. I feel myself associated with you in the new religion and that suits me, but to-day you put me in the dust, and a hundred miles from you, too. This afternoon, though, a singular change took place in my feelings. I am curious to know, whether induced by you, or rising in myself, and shall ask you so soon as we meet. There has been the most glorious thunder- shower. I hope you have enjoyed it. Now the moon is shining queenly. I must be with you one more moonlight evening. She seems to bless so purely. I feel all fears and piques melt as I look upon her. Yet through pain, through pain, sweet Queen, must we come to where thy pale mother s smile calls. As says Novalis : Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 83 No angel can ascend to heaven LETTER Till the whole heart has fallen to the earth in ashes. Might these be the right lines ? I cannot remem ber what they are. Come to-morrow morning without fail. Tuesday evening. LETTER MY DEAR FRIEND, XXXI I have just had with Mrs. Greeley a talk in full, which may, I hope, be of use, so that before you go, an interview will, indeed, leave things straight. I believe I ought to have been angry w r ith you the other evening for asking whether I had ever told her what you had communicated to me in confidence. How could such a thought cross a mind like yours? The scene was so beautiful and I so moved I could not bear to be angry, but ought I not to have been so? Would not you have been so at such a doubt from me? To-day has been very lovely, fragrant and fresh after yesterday s shower, a new era, too, of blossoms. But I was up at five o clock to write for the paper, and have been in society ever since, up to this date, half-past nine. Yesterday 84 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER it was just the same, so I have no thoughts to give XXXI you. I have not had time to let any grow. You too have been engaged in just such dissipation of thought and feeling. Ah ! it is painful, when we might be so much to one another. I look to another meeting, to cherish life anew. To-mor row at furthest let it be ! Now there is only one little week left. Yes ! the memory of Sunday evening is sweet to me. If a flow of gentle love be natural, surely there was nature. But why do you say you were less the genuine man ? You must always instruct me very clearly. I am a dull scholar, though perhaps a good atmosphere. About the evening I feel simply : "There is no silence it is music ceased." But all you said to me in the morning lies distinct in my mind. I understood that deeply the history ! My friend, take this note kindly, though it be not much. Find nothing to "jar" in it. There is nothing in my mind. I seek inspiration from your thoughts, life from your life. I seek repose upon your heart. One little week ; it is Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 85 long enough for a drama, but to the good chil- LETTER XXXI dren might it not be one hymn? Friday evening, May <23d. LETTER DEAE FRIEND, xxxn I do not just now find anything to write ; the fact of an approaching separation presses on my mind, and makes me unable to make the best use of the hours that remain. I will therefore borrow from the past. Many little things have made me feel as if there had been a gradual and divinely moved preparation for our meeting. To-day I took out of the portfolio some leaves, written last autumn among the mountains, and found there these lines, which will impress you from their consonance, in some respects, with what you have since uttered to me. Many such things I write down. They seem dictated to me, and are not understood fully at the time. They are of the things, which are received mystically long before they are appreciated intellectually. Perhaps you had better destroy them not now for you will hardly be at leisure for them yet, but sometime when you feel ready, as they are so intimately personal. 86 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXII I wish you would ask me to explain the differ ence, the Greeks made between the moon as Hecate and as Diana, and the allusions to the girdle of Apollo, and at the conclusion to Tan talus; these are beautiful things in the Greek mythology, which you will appreciate. I feel it is true what you say, that in the new and greater religion we shall rise above the need of this mythology ; for all which they intimated in poetry we must realize in life, but as yet I cling to these beautiful forms as I do to the green and flowery earth, and again will say, lin ger with me here a while. Our friend, here, asks anxiously whether you are gone yet? She expresses a great desire to hear you play on your guitar once more, and I am glad you left it ; we will pass an hour together so. She is really quite content about us now. I am not well. You cannot bend your mind on me now. I know it is not because you love me less, but because there are necessarily so many things, at present, to distract. But I feel it. The strength that was only given is gone. Or rather it was not given, only lent, but you would have given it, if you could, I know. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 87 Later. LETTER XXXIII I have copied out the poem and hope there are no words miswrit, but cannot read it over. Do not smile at all, Liebster. I am a little afraid of your smiles, and it is only in the deepest recess of our mutual life I could have shown it you, for to me it is prophecy. Poem, hitherto unpublished AMONG THE MOUNTAINS, OCTOBER, 1844 Afternoon in the dell, where was A broken fall and many-voiced, With evergreens and red and golden trees At varying elevations grouped around, Its basin hid and cool and circular On which the leaves rested as dreamily, As if the stream could never wake again ; The mountains towered around, purple and rose ; The sun, still climbing, vainly sought to peer Into that still recess. My soul sank there A prayer that Intellect with its broad light Will ne er reveal, nor even clearly know, But Nature holds it to her secret heart. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller TO THE FACE SEEN IN THE MOON XXXIII Evening moonlight . Oft, from the shadow of my earthly sphere, I looked to thee, orb of pale pearly light, To lose the weariness of doubt and fear In thy soft mother-smile so pensive bright. Thou seemedst far and safe and chastely liv ing, Graceful and thoughtful, loving, beauty-giving ; But, if I steadfast gaze upon thy face, A human secret, like our own I trace, For, through the woman s smile looks the male eye So mildly, steadfastly, but mournfully. He holds the bush to point us to his cave, Teaching anew the truth so bright, so grave: Escape not from the riddle of the earth. Through mortal pangs to win immortal birth, Both men and woman from the natural womb Must slowly win the secrets of the tomb, And then, together rising, fragrant, clear, Be worthy angels of a better sphere. Diana s beauty shows what Hecate wrought, Apollo s lustre rays the Zodiac thought, Love -Letter s of Margaret Fuller In Leo regal, as in Virgo pure, LETTER As Scorpio secret, as the Archer sure. In unpolluted beauty mutual shine Earth, Moon and Sun, the human thought divine, For Earth is purged by tameless central fire, And Moon in man has told her hid desire, And Time has found himself eternal Sire And the Sun sings all on his ray-strung lyre. Steady bear me on, Counting life s pulses all alone, Till all is felt and known and done. Thus far have I conquered fate. I have learned to wait, Nor in these early days snatch at the fruits of late. The man from the moon Looks not for an instant noon, But from its secret heart Slow evolves the art Of that full consummation needed part. For thee, my Apollo, The girdle I weave, From whose splendid hollow Thy young breast shall its impulse receive. 90 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER I am the mother of thy spirit life, xxxm . .. And so in law thy wife ; And thou art my sire, For all this treasured fire Learns from thee Its destiny, And our full mutual birth Must free this Earth. From our union shall spring The promised king Who, with white sail unfurled Shall steer through heavens of Soul an unpolluted world. In that world. Earth s tale shall be A valued page Of poesy. As Grecian bards Knew how to praise The kingly woes Of darker days, And Tantalus, soaring where the mist is over blown, Meets on his hard-won throne a Juno of his own. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 91 LETTER Monday afternoon, 26th May. xxxiv Mem Liebster, I will use the word again and correct my mistake ; and yet was not that mistake an instinct, seeking the woman in you, when myself was in the melting mood? I have come in, while the sun still shines and the warm airs blow, pleasing my self to give up to you a part of the first beautiful afternoon we have had for long, since you, prob ably, are not enjoying it, neither will I this day any longer. You say, the sadness has been on you for some time. So has it upon me, and Nature has reflected our feelings, instead of, like a good mother, displaying sweet love to win us from them; it has been either too damp, or cold to a degree which to my frame is absolutely cruel, but now the mild winds have come again ! Pray heaven they may continue, and we both may have sw r eeter, brighter hours and moods. Yet this is sweet to me, that you come to my heart to soothe away your sadness ; it would be to me the dearest office. I have felt so often, that I could find comfort in you and wished to fly thither like Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXIV a bird, and I would have you come to me like the sick lion and let me see if I cannot take out the thorn and if I cannot, let me at least soothe to rest for a while. You bid me, on beautiful evenings, if I sat alone in our bower, call you and you would pres ently be there. If it should indeed be sad on the wide waters, will you not, on your side, call me? And I will hasten there, wherever I be or howso ever engaged. Yes ! dearest, the sadness will crystallize more and more the burning coal, or what was burning, to diamond, and what was the heat of life shall be turned to permanent light. This was what I forgot to say to you, that the Greek thought about Hecate and Diana seemed to me the same that had risen in your mind about the volcanic nature of the moon and her pure white light. White ! We will be wor thy to wear white. " La dame blanche nous re- garde; " we will not act lightly or faithlessly. I like much your way of writing to me on the music ; it binds me with the past, besides seeming so appropriate now. I was also much pleased to hear you speak of looking for the moss-rose again Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 93 that is the most modest and yet most full of all LETTER the roses may it bloom again for you ! I do not wish the past eclipsed or forgotten, but I do long to see you entirely consoled, and that the deep wound should seem to be a mine which opened such precious treasures as to make the violence with which it was done forgotten. Yet I prize you more, that this may not easily be done. You have asked me not to cross my letters, so I will not now write any more. Shall I not see you to-morrow, if it is still lovely? And come so as to have some sunshine with me, as well as evening dusk. The baby has just brought me two sweet roses. I wish I could send you one fresh. XXXV Evening of 30th May, 181^5. LETTER I was disappointed, dear friend, to receive no token from you this morning, for it had seemed, as if you, like myself, would not be happy till our minds were again tuned to acknowledged har mony. Perhaps you think I did not myself do what I ought last night to produce this result. Indeed I wished to do so. Long before you went 94 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER I felt that the tone, which had for a moment re pelled me, was caused by the mood of the hour, the trials of the day, and above all, by the pres ence of a third person. Had we been alone, I should have dropped a few tears, and then the sun would have shone again and have lighted to the higher ground, far more natural to us. But as it was, I could not act as I felt, and the warm tide of sympathy, with which I had begun the evening, was turned back upon me and seemed to oppress my powers of speech and motion. Yet it was very sad to me to have you go forth from the place, whither you came in hope and trust, into the dark night and howling wind. So far as the fault of this was mine, forgive me dear friend. I feel as if such difficulties would not occur after longer acquaintance had tempered us to one another, and made that faith, which is already so deep, pervade the character more thoroughly. But perhaps it might not be so; perhaps I am, as you say, too sensitive, and, in that case, it is well we are to separate now, for we are already too near to be easy or well, if the unison be broken. You reproached me for not stating with dis- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 95 tinctness the difference betwixt us last night. I LETTER did not feel able to do so then, but will try now. The view you stated had undoubtedly a founda tion of nobleness, of manly honour and inde pendence. It would well become a relation, which began from without, where the parties were to become acquainted by gradual test and trial. But you have proposed to me to become related from within. You have claimed me on the score of spiritual affinity and I have yielded to this claim. You have claimed to read my thoughts, to count the pulses of my being, often to move them by your heart or will. You have ap proached me personally nearer than any other person, and have said to me words most unusual and close, to which I have willingly listened. After this, could there remain doubts that we should sympathize with the griefs of one an other ; would it indeed be possible to conceal them if there is that unity you have supposed? If there is that faith you have demanded could we wish it? I felt that you went back from ground to which you had led. I also felt that it was not well to talk of there being only one perfect relation, in these parting hours, when I naturally 9 6 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXV wish to do all I can for you. I want to cast soft light over these hours ; why say to your moon, that there might be a better light ? She admits it, but when told that hers is of no use even at present, what can she do but veil in cloud the pallid beams? Yet I speak of this with reluctance, for again I say, it was the mood of the hour and not your deepest self, I believe. You would really wish to trust me just as I wish to trust you, and do in fact hold me as dear as at any hour you ever thought you did. Your mind will not repent but revert with joy to what has been sweet and generous in our intercourse, to the confidence you have put in me as to the ills that beset, the thoughts that engaged you, to the hidden aspira tions of your soul. Nor will the flowers we have been enabled to gather from the moment be for gotten. If not perfect, they were lovely and in nocent ; nor must the violet be cast aside, because she is not a rose. This is probably my last letter, and I have written it with the inclosed pen, which I wish to give you, and hope it will pen down some fine thoughts and passages of life during your jour- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 97 neyings. It also contains a pencil. I send it LETTER to-day, thinking you will have your initials put upon it, that you may be the less likely to lose my parting gift. A small copy of Shelley s poems I wish also to make your companion, but keep that till I give it into your hand and point out some passages. I feel, as you may see, rather subdued to night, having been unwell all day. But it seems as if to-morrow would be better. With you, at any rate, may it be so ; with you be energy and light and peace and love! You, in your turn, have patience w r ith the Psyche, and draw the best music you can from the Lyre. Reading over my letter it seems too restrained. Believe that my whole soul utters God bless you, and feels that your whole soul returns the same. May we meet as we feel! Saturday morning. LETTER XXXVI I have slept sweetly ; the sun rises bright, yet still I feel sick at heart. May I find just the right word in town fromi you, or rather see you. 9 8 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXVI LETTER XXXVII If I do not, it will seem very dark. But this is your last day in the busy mart amid the false hoods. I will cheer myself beneath that sad word the last by thinking you will soon be on your way to scenes more congenial to one of Gross- muth, Sanftmuth und Wahrheit. " Nature never did deceive the heart that loved her"- This will not, I believe, be my last letter as I wrote. There must be a better, fuller, deeper tone. Thursday evening, 5th June, 1845. I will no longer delay my letter of regrets, for one such, I feel, must be written before the mind can shake off its weight of sadness, and turn to brighter things. To be sure, before you can receive it, these hours will be past with you, yet come back with me, and sit down here by my window, and share the feelings of this hour. Ever since you went, it has been the most beautiful weather, such as we never had at all. I do not think, my friend, fate smiled upon us ; how much cold and storm there was, how little warm soft air when we" could keep still out of Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 99 doors in peace, how much interruption through- LETTER out from other affairs and relations, and the cloud of separation threatening from the dis tance from the very first. One good month, con taining unbroken days of intercourse, and with no thought of the future, would have been worth, in happiness, these five that we have known each other in such a way. But then, as we have met in common life, and amid all its cares and inter ruptions, all we do possess from one another is a more precious possession, for it is tested gold. Yet I do wish we might have had together these glowing hours of the season s pride ; every thing is so rich, so full and fragrant, with the warm breeze sighing all the time in excess of hap piness. The roses are all out now, and the en chanting magnolia too, and oriental locust. All the fruit is turned red in the sunlight; that on my tree, to which you so sweetly likened your self, glances like carnelians and corals among the leaves. All is full and lustrous, as it has not been and will not be again, for these first days of June are the bridal days of the year ; but through all breathes to me a tone of sorrow, over all droops a veil. For I have lost my dear companion, the first ioo Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER I ever had who could feel every little shade of life and beauty as exquisitely as myself, whose strength gladdened and whose gentleness soothed me, and, wanting this finishing note, Nature her self pleases no more. It will not be so long, I trust, but it is so now. Morning of the 6th. When I had written the last words, I could write no more ; all seemed too sad and heavy, and I went to take counsel of my pillow. Here I never fail to find comfort. Night seems to me the gentlest mother. We are taught in our childhood verses, to which I know not if you have anything corresponding in German: Receive my body pretty bed, Dear pillow, thou receive my head. And this feeling of trust in the confidential, gen tle night, that she will drive away dusky thoughts and needless cares, and bring sweet counsel and hope for the morrow, deepens in me year by year. It pleased me much when you told of your father taking the flowers to bed with him ; he must have had the same feeling. And I was not disap- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 101 pointed, but awoke brightly this morning. But LETTER it is daily a sadness to me, again to go to the town and know I shall not find the little messenger with your letter. Out here I want you to enjoy the beauty of the solitude, in the city I feel alone among the multitude of men, because you are gone. Strange that there should be just one with whom I could hold deep sympathy, and just that one of all the thousands must go as I came. Ah well! I will fret as little as I can, but this sighing is of some use just to exhale one s sorrow. The day you went, I was interrupted by visits all the time. At night I had promised to accom pany Mrs. Child and Mr. Benson to the Park theatre. There an actress, once beautiful and celebrated, whom Mrs. Child had raised from the most degrading fall, was to reappear before a New York audience. Mrs. Child, after attending her as a sister till she learned to love her as one, had secured her engagements in the other cities, and from the gutter (as one may say) she had come into the enjoyment of an honourable inde pendence and respectable relations. But she had never revisited New York, which was the scene of her former degradation, till now, and was very 102 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER nervous in the fear of being hissed. Mrs. Child XXXVII had engaged me and other friends to be present, to sustain her by our sympathy. But we were there only to heighten her disgrace; the poor woman, unable to sustain her anxiety, took some stimulant, and it set her quite beside herself. It was the saddest sight, to see her robed in satin and crowned with roses, ruining w r ith every word all her hopes of future ease or peace, till no re source seemed left her but suicide (for she is unfit for anything but her profession to which she was educated) and dealing such blows on hearts which had shown her real disinterested love. Although I had felt averse to going, be cause it was the day of your parting, and it would have been best to be alone and still, I be came painfully interested. But in the very midst my heart beat suddenly ; your image rose before me. I could think of nothing else for a long time ; you must, I think, have called me that eve ning, as you looked out on the blue waters. Aft erward, as I witnessed Mrs. Child s trouble, I thought of you, and that your labour of love, to which you have sacrificed so much, and me and this summer among others, was at least likely to Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 103 end well. That is a rare blessing in this tangled LETTER world, to bring a good to fulfilment, even by great sacrifices. Write me all you can about this, for I feel deeply interested. After all I forgot to say to you, what I meant about Mrs. Child s marriage, and it comes a propos to this event. It was this, that with great affectionateness and love of disinterested action, she had not the surest instincts as to selecting objects or occasions, so that much which she has done has been of no good, except to her own heart. I know not, however, that in either of these cases she had much choice ; she married very young, before she knew much of herself, and in the case of the actress she could not choose but do all she could for one, whom none else would help, and so she did it nobly, with the whole heart ! Since you went, I have been looking over " The Crescent and the Cross " a book of East ern travels. There are in the Appendix " Hints to travellers in the East " you may possibly not know all he mentions. Mr.-Delf will easily get you the book, and it is worth your looking at. Mrs. Greeley thinks a great deal about you ; io4 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER she was left with a perfectly sweet feeling, in which I rejoice. She has been in these days very tranquil. I take Josey out with me. He is very gay, but does not mind me well. I cannot get him to go into the water at all ; last night I had to ask some boys to throw him in. I shall not cross my letters much, though you did ask it, because I know, you will enjoy reading them more if I do not. I have arranged all yours in company with the white veil and the memorandum-book and some dead flowers that once bloomed sweetly in hours of sweet life, but have not had courage to read them yet. To our Father s care commend ing you, lebewohl. Please mention the receipt of each of my let ters, that I may be sure none of them are lost. LETTER New York, 12th June, 1845. XXXVIII After these three days of intense heat we usually have in June comes one shadowy, sigh ing, cool, which seems very suitable for writing to you. You will not find too many letters in London, if you feel like me. I thought, when Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 105 you went, letters would be nothing, after the LETTER fulness of living intercourse, but already I begin to want them very much and be disconsolate to think I can receive none for near a month yet. I hope you will have written on the voyage. But we are on unequal terms in this ; all around you is new, while every object here is associated with you, and the more lovely the scene, the stronger my regret that you are not beside me. Into the wood, it seems as if I could no more go at all. Yet you seem to be much with me, espe cially now the moonlight evenings have again begun. Last evening I had no lamp lit after the sunset and lay looking at the moon stealing through the exquisite curtain of branches which now overhangs all my windows. You seemed entirely with me, and I was in a sort of trance as on evenings when you used to sing to me. At these times heaven and earth seemed mingled as in twilight. But when I was roused, I did not feel so happy, as after these evenings. I have really suffered in my health as I feared. It is no imagination my being much less strong, and my head has ached constantly, but to-day I begin to hope to be better again. I try to picture you, io6 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXVIII where you are, and enter into your new hopes and plans, but somehow I cannot, you seem still to be here. Almost I hear your voice. But after your letter comes, perhaps I shall be able to imagine your new life and wean my thoughts from all this. Last Sunday I passed at Staten Island. Oh it was most lovely, the long drives in the wooded lanes and still breezy spots on the hills. It is a pity we could never go there. You forgot to tell me which was the drive you were fond of there; mention, when you write, its name, as I shall go there on a visit, by-and-bye. There a beautiful moss-rosebud was given me ! All the evening, riding home and in the boat, though people were talking to me and I answering me chanically, I was really conversing with you. But this is a dull song to send so far. I have been thinking you wanted me to write of the people and things that interest you here and how shall I? For I do not know them by name. When you have told me stories you have not told me the names of the actors. What has been the main subject of our talk has been personal to ourselves and life and religion in general. If Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 107 there are special subjects you want to hear about, LETTER will you tell me? And write whether you ever get that letter from Mr. Polk. If you do not, let me try and get it and send to your address in time for the use you wish. I forgot to beg you would let the friend you commissioned to receive it apprize me of the result, and now I have no way of finding out. Do not fail your self, dear friend, to tell me. I know, at this distance you must feel so affectionately, you will like to have me do it for you. Say, is it not so? Many, many things I forgot to ask and say. Many questions now occur I wish I had asked you ; many words, some as good as wine or honey, I wish I had said. But the effect of our inter course was to make me so passive: sometimes I wonder it was so interesting to you, and yet I do not, for I seem a part of yourself. We were born, surely, under the same constellation. You found much of yourself in me ; though veiled by a light haze, there was a long soft echo to the deepest tones. Sometimes you doubted whether I fully comprehended you, and probably I did not ; but I felt able to, and it was so pleasant to io8 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXVIII be led on and supported at the same time. When ever there was dissonance between us, it ended as being so superficial: It seemed but tuning of the breast To make the music better. I never had these feelings at all toward any other. And now, loved friend, I find myself just so passive, waiting. You have told me much of your history, and of the inward call of your heart. This seems to be the crisis in your life. I can not at all look forward to the result. Whether it will lead you inward or outward, to pilgrim- sorrows or a small harmonious sphere of earthly uses and blessings, I long to know; but only from yourself can I know ! Impart all you can to the chosen sister. I never did like to ask you questions and now shall still less, but know that I always want to know. And forgive, should my letters be somewhat reserved. I am afraid it will make me timid that my letters must go so far and be so long of getting answered, and through many hands and public offices. When they only went by the little foot-page a street or two, and I could presently add with lips and Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 109 eyes all that was wanting to explain them, I had more courage than I can have this way. You, I hope, I trust, will draw to you in the spirit what is best and truest. But you are a man, and men have the privilege of boldness. Put your soul upon the paper as much as you can. Your amiable townsman, Mr. Benson, as if he had an instinct that I was forsaken, came the day you sailed, to offer me all kinds of kind offices. Would I go to Long Branch, to Rock- away; he knew all the prettiest places in the neighbourhood, and would take me in his gig; he would come out with his boat and take me. He has been out in the boat one afternoon, but I was sick and did not see him. Alas ! how full the world is of persons and kind ones, too, but how few with whom we can make music. But you find such an one in Mr. Delf, do you not? You will find yourself at home with him in London. Mrs. Storms is coming on Saturday with a set of Texan distingues to dine here! I am to break off for a time with Dr. Leger. He says, while my head aches I had better not LETTER XXXVIII no Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER come, but change the scene and air, and I mean to make some excursions. Matters go on here in their usual disjointed fashion. Mr. Greeley is, I believe, really going to the West soon. I am trying to devote myself to the paper, so as to make it easy for him. Little Arthur grows pretty and mischievous ; his mother is in better spirits. I may not be able to write by the Western as there is much to be done these next coming days, but will the last of the month. LETTER NO. I. XXXIX New York, 24th June, 1845. This beautiful summer morning finds me free to write to you, dear friend, but a good hour of it have I wasted, lying here, thinking which of the many things I have to say, shall be selected for the letter. They are so many and yet so little. None seems well worth writing down by itself, though I should say them all to you, if you were here. If you were here; alas! that you are not. The softness and splendour of everything around Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller in me, the musical sweep of these breezes still sug gest that melancholy if. You would enjoy them all so fully, and there is none else, who could enjoy them so, except me, and now having had you with me, I cannot be happy as I should have been, if I had not had your companionship at all. Now I must miss you ; I try not, but cannot yet help it. I do not now go out in the afternoon or eve ning, which was the time we used to be together, but choose the morning rather. I have got a new place on the rocks which is delightful in the morn ing, much more so than the one where we used to go; it is more shadowed and retired; yet the water comes up to my feet. But you, I fear, will never see it. Everything looks, as if our hosts would not remain here another year, and as if you, having lost the pleasure of being here this summer, will not have it another, even if you should come back. I will not tell you more about them at present ; but the same griefs keep break ing out with violence, and I feel as if no peace or security could be expected from connection with persons so circumstanced. My dear mother is staying with me now; her sweetness and ele- LETTER XXXIX H2 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER gance make the house seem a very different place from what it ever did before. While she stays, I feel it s almost like home, but she will leave me early in July. I have had many visitors, and been about a great deal ; for the last month of your stay I used to put all such engagements off till you were gone, and they have accumulated. I take some pleasure in them for mother; to her they are fresh and amusing. I take pleasure, too, in being the means that some persons, weary of the city, and to whom it is a delight to come here, can come. I have also tried to revive my energies about the paper, and have succeeded in doing a good deal. Mr. Greeley told me that he could not bear to urge me, but unless I took more interest, he should not feel that he would go away ; how ever his journey seems still in the distant per spective. I doubt his going before September. This is the day of the great procession to pay funeral honours to General Jackson, honours with which I do not sympathize, except on this score, that the flaming old warrior was so down right. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 113 There is also a new movement against the LETTER Texas annexation, but which will not, it is to be feared, raise a very full wave. What else shall I tell you ? Nothing has hap pened that interests me, except that the Prison Association has taken a house in Twelfth Street as a temporary asylum for released female con victs while finding them employment. I have written an appeal to the public, to procure aid to this house, which has interested a good many. Last Sunday I went there, found ten of these women, one about eighteen, whose face you would like. Her eyes were brown and very soft, around the mouth signs of great sensibility. She seems to be in consumption. It pained me to see the poor things so bowed down, much more so than they seem in their prisons ; some pious ladies were exhorting them, Bible in hand. I had some pleas ant chat with them. I like them better than most women I meet, because, if any good is left, it is so genuine, and they make no false preten sions, nor cling to shadows. But then, in talk ing with me, they do not show the contamina tion and painful images that must haunt their lonely hours. They are pleased and cheered Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXIX . , side. and show only the womanly and self-respecting We have had one interesting book, Longfel low s " Poets and Poetry of Europe." Look over it if you have a chance any time ; it contains a good course in these charming studies, and there are some things, I wish I could read with you. Little Arthur grows very handsome and en gaging. He walks firmly and lightly now, and his figure is full of spirit. He likes much to run into my room and have me show him pictures, and understands all the stories I tell him about them. He has learned from my lips to say several words, but man-like, he will only say them at his own time, and not when I ask him. The first one was bird, which is a good one to begin with. Josey is thriving. We have now an excellent man who will take good care of him. Now, dear friend, I have told you all the gos sip. I wish I could do better, but I cannot. In deed there are soul-realities. I feel a perfect stream of life beneath all this. But it is not one of the times when I can fathom it. It carries me on, I know not whither, but only feel borne by the stream, and fanned by the gales. But it seems as Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 117 I long to know what news you find in London, whether you will be permitted to pursue your journey, or obliged to go to your home. There you will see your mother, too, and what a holy hope it must be, after such a long separation. I think from traits you have told me, she is in some respects like mine. I want to copy for you two pieces which have fallen under my eye since you went ; tis no matter if I do make such use of this sheet, as it will probably find you in London ; indeed you are there now, it may be. But when the paper has to travel after you, I shall be more avaricious of it. The first is a Volkslied of your adopted nation, and deeply expressive of that deepest sadness in life, that, though blessings come, they so often come too late. Mutter, ach Mutter, es hungert mich, Gieb mir Brod, sonst sterbe ich. Warte nur, mein liebes Kind, Morgen wollen wir saen geschwind. Und als das Korn gesaet war Rief das Kind noch immerdar : Mutter, ach Mutter, es hungert mich, Gieb mir Brod, sonst sterbe ich. LETTER XXXIX n8 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XXXIX Warte nur, mein liebes Kind, Morgen wollen wir erndten geschwind. Und als das Korn geerndtet war, Rief das Kind noch immerdar : Mutter, ach Mutter, es hungert mich, Gieb mir Brod, sonst sterbe ich. Warte nur, mein liebes Kind, Morgen werden wir dreschen geschwind. And so on through the threshing, the grinding, the baking, till : Als das Brod gebacken war Da lag das Kind schon auf der Bahr . The next is from Shelley and was not, I feel pretty sure, in your volume. Even if you do not like him generally, you will the exquisite pensive- ness of this : When passion s trance is overpast, If tenderness and truth could last And live, while all wild feelings keep Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, I should not weep, I should not weep. After the slumber of the year, The woodland violets reappear, All things revive in field and grove And sky and sea but two, which move As for all others life and love. XXXIX Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 1 1 9 Perhaps the haze of his style and want of LETTER clear finish in the expression of his thoughts will prevent your liking him. I feel in copying his verses, that he must be. harder than others for a foreigner to understand. Now I will stop for this day. I sent no letter by the Western in consequence of an oversight, but two by the Boston steamer, which I hope reached you safely, though they contained little beyond the words of love and regret. Evening of the 25th. Your companion, Mr. Miller, has just been here. I thought I recognised traits of which you have told me, but he had with him a talkative gentleman, who would not let him say much. I wanted to ask if he knew the name of your ship (I never asked you and am disturbed, because you would have been willing to tell me, and now, if you do not write at once, I shall have no way of knowing that you arrive safe) but I think you cannot fail to write at once ; you will feel, that I shall be anxious. A poor, pretty young girl, a cousin of Mrs. Grceley s, who is staying here, has just heard of I2O Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER the death of a brother of her own age by drown ing. To me it always seems so. We tremble constantly on the verge of separations; I do not feel steeled against tfrem yet, so that I can forbear clinging to what I hold dear. 26th. Again a day of the most splendid beauty. I have been walking; everything is so full of fra grance, all objects so joyous. I feel happy too. I have just finished some essays for the paper; one little one on " the Irish Character " I wish you were here to read, you would like its scope and character. Perhaps you can give me some hints from what you observe in London as to matters, that will interest in this country too. Now I am going away for two or three days, and expect to have no further chance to write, before it is time to send by the steamer. You cannot think how touching it is to me to see the fruit ripened which was in flower when you were here. Now the blackberries are ripe, whose tender white flower-buds you used to gather for me. May all your hopes bear fruit as well! Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 121 Adieu ; a month is passed ; in it I have written LETTER you four letters this one is the continuation of another. They are more long than good, but you will take them kindly from your friend, who com mends you ever A Dieu. New York, %d July, 1845. LETTER XL DEAR FRIEND, With pleasure inexpressible, I have at last received your letters. At last! I hope there may not be cause for so long an interval of silence again. And yet it cannot again be so hard to bear. Seven weeks was so cruelly long after the habit of almost daily intercourse had been formed. It was an inevitable pain and so I have tried to bear it well, but all this month, since I began to look forward to hearing, it has been very hard. This morning I wrote to Mr. Bancroft, but hardly expect to get an answer so as to let you know by the 1st, for I do not know that he is in Washington; he has lately been absent. I did not think before of the probability of being re- 122 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER fused, as I never was any trifling favour by Mr. Bancroft. But it may be, that " honours will change manners " as the proverb threatens, the rather as I can be of no use to him, am connected with a paper of the hostile party and in which, unfortunately, was published a ludicrous anec dote about him three or four days since, and one which, if he chances to see it, will make him very angry. But, if he refuses, it will affect me no other way than with regret because you cannot have what might be useful to you. I have been a frequent guest at Mr. Bancroft s house, and treated by him with a marked courtesy that gives me a right to feel I do not intrude in making the application. This being the case, refusal will not mortify me, though it would prevent my ever asking him for any other favour. On the other hand, I should have no right to resent a refusal. He owes me nothing ; all the favours hitherto have been from him to me; if he does not see fit to add this to the list, it will not, as I said before, affect me anyhow, except that I have it not to send to you. So, however it ends, have no trouble on my account. If I write nothing fur ther by this steamer, leave orders to have the Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 123 letter sent after you, in case I get it to send by the 15th. I mentioned last winter another friend of in fluence in the party, but as he has not taken office, and I know not where he is, shall not at tempt to do anything by his means, as it would be too long a process to be of use. I wish I had acted before, but supposed the Sun editors far more likely than I to get it done to advantage, and supposed it, besides, too trifling a favour to be refused. Most sweetly breathes your spirit to me through your words ; it is indeed what I felt, and felt as if you were feeling, but it is a great satisfaction to see it written down, to hold it in my hand and to my heart. The moss-roses bear transplanting well, they w r ill grow in either cli mate. It is true, as you say, that the precious certainty of spiritual connection, which will bear the test of absence and various influences, is worth great sacrifices, but our sacrifice was pre mature. We needed the suns and moons of this summer to ripen our knowledge of one another (to say nothing of the loss of happiness). I always felt and feel, that at the end of a few LETTER XL 124 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XL months more, separation would have been more natural, and that, though circumstances on your side seemed to command it now, yet their doing so seemed sad and of evil omen. Yet oh ! May we at least ever keep pure and sweet the joys that have been given, and the tender and elevated strain of your letters makes me trust we may. Me too, it moved tearfully, to read what you say of lying down to die, that you might not even by your presence abet false hoods. When this heart-sickness comes again, may I not draw nigh, and lay my arms about your neck and my cheek to yours, and will you not then feel that, in a world where such true affection still finds a home, there must be salt enough to keep the whole from corruption, and that we must live to be as good as we can, a comfort and earnest of better things to one another and to other vexed and clouded spirits, born for love and light, still walking and working in the dark? You are, indeed, continually present with me. When other voices are silent, yours is soon heard. I only need to be alone and undisturbed. But Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 125 sometimes the sense of communion is more deep and sweet, and things are told that I much ad mire, indeed hardly understand as yet. I do not know whether it is that seeds planted in the spring-time are growing up now in the green solitude of summer, or whether there is a rush of our souls to meet at the same moment in time, as used to be the case, and I want you to date the times when this happens with you, and I will do the same, that we may know. I am very sorry that I did not write the 16th, but you, I thought, told me to write up to the 1st of July and not again till I heard from you. You will be disappointed, I know, since you had forgotten this. But I shall be faithful, when I understand about writing. The only difficulty is the same as yours where to begin. I might as well write all day long as any one hour. Of outward events little has occurred of late ; in the city the great fire of which you w r ill read in the papers, by w r hich you, I trust, are no loser, for even where there is so much suffering, selfishness impels to think first and most of dear friends. The still smoking ruins looked really sublime LETTER XL 126 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XL last night by the setting sun. Many chimneys and balconies are left standing in picturesque blackness upon this large area. A gazing crowd animated the foreground ; it gave some notion of the miseries of war. A man lost his young wife, to whom he had been married only four months, in the fire ; he is seeking her remains, half distracted, among the ruins. A girl was found in convulsions in the Fulton ferry-house. Having been burned out and lost everything, she wandered a while home less and then took laudanum to kill herself. A corpse has been disinterred grasping in one hand charred ledgers, in the other some gold, a clerk they suppose, the Chevalier of the counting- room, vowed to Duty to the last moment of his life. Our friend, Mrs. Greeley, is more dejected than ever; indeed she has much cause, but I cannot now speak of this. I gave her all from your letters I could, and all your messages, except what related to going abroad. It only unsettles her to think of that, and I fear Mr. Greeley would never consent, now they have the child. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 127 LETTER XL The letter from Mr. Bancroft is received and accompanies this in an envelope from me. I hope, it will not fail to reach you; if it should by any chance, Fate must have determined to leave you entirely to the impression made by your personal presence. Sunday, 27th. I am anxious you should take pencil-notes as you used to sometimes, of things as they rise in your mind and then write them out for me. I want the little thoughts and little feelings as well as the great results. Now, dear Friend, fare well! May we be tender and true, it was the motto of the noblest house of a noble race, and one that would do honour to any one and any relation. Farewell. I w r ill now begin upon another letter rather than spoil this by crossing. New York, 22d, 1845. LETTER XLI Our friend would wish to be perfectly gen erous and affectionate towards me ; generally 128 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER she is, but at times she compares herself with me. She then seems to think me an unduly privileged person, forgets or does not see the dark side of my lot, of which once she thought with so much tenderness, as if it would be the privilege of her life to free me from pain and care. She wishes then to make me feel my faults, and told me the other day (to [quote] her own opinion) that you thought, I could not bear being told of them. Do you think so? I do not wish to hear about them constantly, espe cially from those whom I think younger in mind than myself, for I do not think they can apprehend me as a whole enough to be of use to me, and I do not like a great deal of that sort of intercourse, for I think, as a general thing we improve most by being loved and trusted and by loving and trusting. But I think too, with one whose judgment I valued, I should receive fault finding in the spirit in which it was meant, and if it gave me pain, should be more likely to mend than many who take it more easily. I knew you thought me too sensitive, and I have thought about it, and admit it to be so; now if you think I could not bear fault-finding, as a Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 129 seeker for truth ought, perhaps that is true also. LETTER You need not, however, answer upon this point, if you have not leisure or inclination to do it to your mind ; it will not rest upon mine, except to make me examine myself more strictly. I rather wished at the time it had not been told me, but you know I promised you to hear only yourself about yourself, which promise I shall not find it difficult to keep, for I feel that we are so much more deeply known to one another than to others, that anything you would say or do would always seem entirely different to me from yourself to what it would, coming through another. I also make it my request that you will never speak to her of this. Her main feeling is one of warm affection for both of us, she yielded to a sudden impulse in telling me this. She is sometimes satirical on the deficiencies in my care of Josey and indeed there is room, for I do not know enough about such things to take the best care of him. He grows, however, strong and hand some, swims nobly and is very fond of me, with out regard to my faults or my unwillingness to hear about them, and I believe his master also will be indulgent. \ confess I want indulgence 10 13 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER from those I love, but it seems to me it is not that I want blind idolatry, but as a child never finding repose on the bosom of love, I seek it now, childishly perhaps. God knows all about it. One trifle let me add. I don t know that any words from your mouth gave me more pleasure, a strange kind of pleasure, than these " You must be a fool, little girl." It seemed so whim sical that they should be addressed to me, who was called on for wisdom and dignity long before my leading-strings were off, and so pleasant too. Indeed thou art my dear brother and must ever be good and loving as to a little sister. Dear mother left me more than a fortnight since. The only drawback on her visit was that she could not conceive of my being content here. She could not fully see how far the outward beauty of nature and my confidence in the real goodness and honour, which both my hosts have at bottom, outweigh with me the want of order, com fort, and, far more, mental harmony. At first she could not forbear trying to put things to rights. At last she found upon trial what I saw from the first, that they would never " stay put," Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 13 and contented herself with the enjoyment of the LETTER place and of being with me. The 4th of July we spent on the rocks, read ing; it was a soft, cloudy, dreamy day, I felt very happy w r ith this sweet mother. You would love her, for she, at least, is all gentleness, and she would understand your noble human heart. She is much taller than I and larger and prettier and kinder. While she w r as here I went about with her a good deal, but since have been abso lutely still and secluded, for the heat has been too great for me or any one to go about, steady intense heat for a fortnight, such as has not been known in New York for many years. The nights however have been enough to make up for the sufferings of the days, so warm that you could be out all night and with floods of that mellow moonlight that is seen only in such warm weather. If She came to you laden with my love before, what must she now, when the whole scene was but one thought of love! Earthly sweetness trans figured in celestial light. One night when I was out bathing at the foot of the tall rock, the waters rippling up so gently, the ships gliding full-sailed and dreamy-white Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLI over a silver sea, the crags above me with their dewy garlands and the little path stealing away in shadow, oh it was almost too beautiful to bear and live. I have had my hammock slung on the piazza; I lie and swing there with the baby in the daytime, in the evening alone; while the breezes whisper and the moon glimmers through the stately trees, and am very sorry it was not so while you were here that I might have heard you sing there some happy evening; it is just like being in a cradle. The baby has been a great pleasure to me since I have been at home so much, and has grown very fond of me ; w r hen I propose taking him he says yes, and is very gay; he is an arch child and good to frolic with, but also he likes to be talked to and understands the tones, if not the words. I carry him about and talk to him in the most wonderful w r ay ; he clings to my neck and says little assenting sounds to the poetic remarks, and looks straight in my eyes. The look in a child s eyes at this time is heavenly, so much dawning intelligence, yet so unsullied ; while they are the object of unbroken love from those older they seem as if tended by gods and fragrant with their thoughts; when they begin Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller to play much with other children they lose it gradually. My dear friend, I say so many little, little things, it will never be done. It gratifies me deeply you feel so to " Sum mer on the Lakes " for that is just a piece out of my common summer-life ; it seems as if I might write just such a volume every summer, only one lives so fast there is no time to write it down. I wish I might write something good before you come back, but really the paper when I attend to it as much as Mr. Greeley wishes, takes all the time I feel disposed to read or write. He is now quite content again. I write often and at length. Some of the pieces have attracted a good deal of attention and reply, especially pieces on Swedenborgianism, which I should like you to have seen, and two upon the Irish character; but the merit of such things is for the day. Mr. Greeley still intends going to the West, so whatever you write for the Tribune, you had better inclose to me, or it will fall under the care of his clerks and be treated accordingly ; indeed you had better always inclose it to me, if you wish to make sure of my seeing it before it LETTER XLI 134 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLI comes out. Now, how many, many things besides I have to say but must stop for this time. Evening. I think with the utmost pathos of your poor maiden returning to her parents. Though the faults of a child are generally traceable to the mismanagement of parents, yet it must be so. Better to return under such circumstances. I hope Heaven will teach them to be wise and tender to her and that you may have every rea son to look back with happiness on your work. But she must suffer greatly to part from you, you who have been a friend to her such as it has been given few mortals to find once in this world, and surely none could hope to find twice. May Heaven forever bless you for it ! And she must bid you farewell! I shall always regret that I did not in some way see her so as to have in my mind her image, for now this want torments me when I think of her. It is the still, sweet Sunday, just two months since you went. How many things have I Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 135 thought of since, that I might have said that night, but it is always impossible to do as you wish at such times. As to Mrs. Greeley, let me add, these clouds are slight, the effect often of undue heat from other causes and I doubt not will always yield soon to her great affection for both of us. Perhaps I will not write about such any more; I like to write just as I used to talk with you of whatever is uppermost in my mind at the moment, but when I do not have a chance to explain and qualify as when we were near, it may be right to practise reserve, where others are concerned. Saturday, July 26th. Mr. Bancroft attended to my request at once and accompanied the inclosed with a most cordial note expressive of his pleasure in doing so. As I told him what had been done previously and that it was said a private letter would be sufficient, he sends such an one, and though it is addressed only to persons connected with the navy, I sup pose it will prove sufficient, as such consuls or officers will give you other letters if you need them. I could, no doubt, procure good letters LETTER XLI LETTER XLII 136 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER to the Consul at Rome, and one from a cousin of his, my intimate friend, to Mr. Langdon, a distinguished merchant at Smyrna, to whom many Americans go, if you need anything fur ther. You will answer fully on this score, whether this is enough and whether you want more, will you not, dear friend? Every sweet will have its sour, and the same post which brought me a bit of paper that may be of use to thee, brought also the news that my poor Georgiana had lost the brother whom she adopted and brought to this country. The poor boy died alone among strangers. He had kept at work to the last moment he was able to sit up, indeed much too long, yet his sickness, funeral, etc., leaves a debt to his sister which embittered his last thoughts. She says " I cannot sleep at night for thinking how he must have longed oh more than that to see me; of his working, when so miserable, from sense of necessity." I try to drive away such thoughts and believe that he is now in good society, where he is bound by no fetters but those his own spirit imposes ; " but how shall I tell mother ! I could w y ish to lie dow r n and die too." Oh, my friend, how often that Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 137 wish must come to all of us, yet it would be use less ; we must pay our ransom out of our own earnings either in this world or the next, and the Beethovens the heaviest. I have been thinking of you to-day more than ever; I have been entirely alone, all the others gone to Coney Island, and no sound ex cept the murmur of the summer-wind to invade the deep, sweet stillness. All day it was sweet, yet towards nightfall it grew oppressively sad. I longed to be summoned by your voice, catch animation from your eye. Yet to-day my thoughts have been concentrated on our relation as never before. It seems to me not only peculiar but original. I have never had one at all like it, and I do not read things, in the Poets or any where, that more than glance at it; they do not touch that which is especially its life. Your thoughts are growing in my mind, the influence of your stronger organization has at times almost transfused mine, and has effected some permanent changes there; there have been moments when our minds were blended in one, yet what I mean is the inner fact, the kernel, of whose existence these are only the tokens. It has never made LETTER XLII 138 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLII me so deeply sensible of its presence as to-day, beating like a heart within me, a heart that seems strong enough to cast aside this weed of flesh and clothe itself anew. If others enjoy the same, they nowhere speak of it. And is it not by living such relations that we bring a new re ligion, establishing nobler freedom for all? For that which takes place in us, must, by spiritual law, widen its circles, till it embraces all. But I talk to thee of what thou knowest better than I, yet indeed I feel when known to me, it will be angelic knowledge. Farewell, Du Bester, take me to thyself in that deep sincerity which is pra} 7 er, and God s will be done ! Sunday evening. As I lie thinking, I begin to be troubled, lest the inclosed should not suffice for what you want, as one from the President or Secretary of State would. It is, of course, credentials as to who you are, but you may not always wish to make use of it, when you want such. In this case, let me name persons, from whom I could get letters that might supply the want Mr. Glidden, not known to me, but much indebted to some of my friends. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 139 Dr. Howe, well known to me and to Greece. Mr. Edward Everett, who will soon be on his return and who, though he has left office, might have the desirable connections abroad. He has shown me much kindness and would, I doubt not, still do so. If any of these can be of use, name it to your sister, who is best entitled of any here, to act for you, since you say you love her best, and she is most anxious you should have the full profit of your travel and not be exposed to inter ruption and useless annoyance. Even if you wrote to me that you wanted any thing, and circumstances should then have so changed that I could not with perfect delicacy and propriety apply, I would not, because I know you would not in such case be willing to have me. So do not again scruple to speak, for I do not know the case clearly enough to divine. A letter from Mr. Bancroft seems more ap propriate to use with professional or literary objects in travel than one either from the Presi dent or Mr. Buchanan. I left it at his own dis cretion what to do, and suppose he did what was easiest, but it will, I think, be sufficient. I am sorry that I have scrawled so all over LETTER XLII 14 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER the thick letter which accompanies this. I fear it will hardly be legible to you and will try not to do so any more, but one thing came to hand thick after the other, till I had regularly covered almost every inch. I have shown the utmost senselessness in wri ting this envelope ; forgive if it costs you pence additional to put another. I forgot what I was about and have not time to copy. Imagine you economized enough by my omission to w r rite the 15th to pay for the additional envelope. I never did anything so clumsy before. I draw my pen through the above, for how silly it seems to jest at such a distance ; even in this flat, heartless way, it is too uncongenial. Next week I hear from you, and shall then know whether I am to write again. Already I begin to feel like it. LETTER New York, 12th August, 1845. XLIII MY VERY DEAR FRIEND, It is true that I have been indulging myself day by day in writing to you, but " that letter " has swollen to such a bulk that it really seems Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 141 wrong to send it, when it may have to travel LETTER after you from station to station till it comes to cost its weight in gold. Yet this circum stance seems but an outward obstacle express ive of the will of the spirit, that it will rather be trusted to communicate in full between us what is there stammered out with childish pro lixity. I will not however destroy the letter, perhaps on some future occasion I may send or show it you. The Cambria brought yours with wonder ful speed, full four days before I hoped. But now I fear, I must wait a long time, to pay for this favour of Fate. The Great Britain brought in all its mighty bulk not one little seed for my garden. I did not expect it, yet was dis appointed; so unreasonable is affection. The letters to the Tribune appeared on 8th August. By a mistake which I did not fore see, they mistook your J for an A. and the sig nature stands A. N. This shall be amended in future. They are under the head " Wayside- Notes Abroad." I have kept six copies for you. They did not need copying, and needed but little 142 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLIII retouching, which I easily gave to your manu script. Pan is literally the All; it is the Universal Spirit best known in the Solitudes of Nature. As this did not correspond with what you wished to express I substituted the Oreads and Dryads. These are nymphs, representing, the first, the lights and shadows that play upon hills and open fields the second the secret recesses of the woods, the trees and fountains. There is no god who stands both for free nature and agriculture, and those nymphs represent the aspect of a cultivated country interspersed with woods. These first letters are written with freedom and sweetness, the facts selected are of a leading character, the second a beautiful poem. Truth to tell, I rather grudged it to the Public. Mrs. Greeley was charmed with the letters. Foster, one of our editors, asked if I had read them ! expressed admiration of them and said, the image of the moon passing the pillars of her palace was entirely original yet reminded him of Shelley! I hope you will follow it up by letters from London and Paris. Dr. Lardner writes us quite Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 143 good business accounts of matters in Paris, but LETTER different things would strike you. I have been much interested by the letter of the Carpenters and the homage paid to the mother of the Car penters by them! My loved friend, I am deeply sorry that the affair that has troubled you so long finds not a definite and peaceful issue. There is somewhat, also, in the course of the maiden that strikes one painfully, but, perhaps, imperfect knowledge of the circumstances makes me unjust. Is it not possible I might aid you? My friend, Mrs. Far- rar, is English; her mother, a benevolent old lady, widely acquainted with good people, lives in London. My pupil, Maria, who has been two years on the continent, will be there this autumn, in the house of this, her grandmother. She loves me much and would, I think, act energetically for me, if without acquainting her with the extra circumstances. I told her that a fair girl who had been in this country, and in whom I was interested, needed friends and employment. (So would Miss Martineau, if in London.) But per haps they could not do better than the friend under whose care you have left her. But if you 144 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER think they could, give me her name and address, and tell me just what to say about her. She may need female protection and the old lady, a Quaker, would be a refuge to her. Whatever else this affair brings, believe that it has brought you a portion of immortal love. It is not only your noble frankness towards me, though you avowed to me the thoughts and possibilities, which prevented your first action in this case from being wholly disinter ested and though the falsehood and other cir cumstances of your position were painful to me, yet I know, that your main impulse was always noble, and that the latter part of the time you acted solely from fidelity to the duty you had undertaken, and disinterested regard to its subject. The sense of this is immortal with me. Yet I do ardently hope that you will now be able to find a clear path. Now is the crisis. You have great experience, great ideas, a religious heart and unbroken manhood. You ought to have a place, where you can act freely, and, so far as is given to men, bless and be blessed. We all ascend the mountain; some after conquering Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 145 the obstacles near the base find a path amid lofty LETTER trees, and though they may have to climb over terrible rocks and be beset by wild beasts or fretted by thorns or hunger, still they have a distinct path, and are often comforted and ani mated by wide outlooks, or bright sunlight vis iting them through the branches. But others have to cut wearily their course day by day through the thicket and never know their way nor their journey s aim, till they see the stars from the top. May my brother be of the first! He would know how to use and enjoy a free life for himself and others. You will laugh perhaps, but whenever I meet one of those wagons, labelled Rockland Lake Ice, I think it will all be well, that you will be the bearer of something as clear and refreshing in a more suitable vehicle, and I myself shall drink it in with the water and milk which every-day earth affords. Much did I write of these and other matters in the big letter; especially was a deep mood, while staying last week in New Jersey, noted down. That was the 6th and 7th August. I made a request to you in the end. We shall see 11 146 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER if you will not comply without being asked in XLIII words. Your pictures are all correct, except that I do not go to the little wood. I have never, even with mother. I have been to the wall, but you always used to take me over, and now to get over by myself and walk there alone is too sad. I could not go. I pray for you sometimes on the rocks, but they are little fluttering prayers that may not rise very high. Yourself will be your own prayer, but I, if indeed your Muse, may help inspire you to make it earnest. I wear my pret tiest dresses at those times that I go to think of you, as if you were here, but when I take Josey, he gets salt water all over them. I have not the heart, however, to be angry he looks up with such loving eyes. When he is in the water, ever so far off, if I make the least sound, he turns them right upon me. I am much troubled about him; his eyes looked so bad two or three weeks ago, that I begun to take all the charge of him, but he seems as yet little better, and a gentleman who was here yesterday, said they had an expres sion as if he would not live long. Would it not be a great grief to you to come back and find him Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 147 not? Can you tell me what to do? The people LETTER round here say he should take sulphur, but Mrs. Greeley is not willing. She has been quite ill and I now think it was nervous irritation that occasioned some appear ances of which I wrote you. She is better. The baby is beautiful now. In each letter you have spoken as if you might remain in Europe ; is anything now influencing you ? You always said to me, you felt yourself permanently a citizen of the United States. You expressed some care about me in addi tion to your other perplexities, but do not feel it ; nothing threatens near ; there are causes that might break the domestic relations, but do not seem likely to the business ones. I feel fixed here for the present. I passed some days last week in New Jersey of which was also some notice in the big letter. Dur ing my absence Mrs. P. stayed here. This lady does not improve upon me. Her conversation and temper of mind bear traces of much low converse. I have had some congenial hours, for Mr. Emerson has been here two days, full of free talk and in serene beauty as ever ; he went yesterday. 148 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLIII I am going to-morrow evening with Mr. Ben son, to hear The Huguenots since you did. It seems whimsical or like the influence of a star to go thus with your townsman. He is the bodily, you the spiritual presence of that Hamburg in fluence. I am inclined to scold Fate who has given him all the money and the broad place to stand on, and you chiefly the cares and scruples that haunt the life of trade, and certainly I see no propriety in her keeping him here and send ing you there ! Yet are you with me more than ever, espe cially when I wake, so that I do not like to rise and break it all up. Always we were nearest at early morning and are so still. Is it that we have met in dreams or only that the mind has been refreshed by sleep? I told you in the big letter of the next scene in the life of Mrs. Barnett and how she was be friended by one who had been her schoolboy lover. But I shall have occasion yet to tell you all these little things, for surely we shall yet sit together in the greenwood shade and reveal those finer facts or signs of life, that others do not ap preciate. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 149 Another thing I must quote from the bygone LETTER letter. Now you are in the region of artists will you not have your picture taken? If a good miniature on ivory is too great an extravagance, I have seen excellent likenesses in coloured cray ons of large miniature size. But do not have it taken at all, unless it can be excellently well done. Evening of 12th. Mrs. Greeley has just come in and sends her love, but I in vain suggest a kiss in return for the one she received by steamer last. Keep by me and Josey let me not go till the whole mystery be known. And now, at least with this pen, farewell, could but the words be come instinct with the soul, how sweetly would they beam and breathe upon thee, liebster Freund. By last steamer I sent two large letters from me and a circular from Mr. Bancroft, not all you need, I fear, yet hope it arrives safe. New York, 31st August, 1845. LETTER XLIV We said farewell the first day of summer and now it is the last. It is again Sunday, the same 5 o Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLIV hour in the evening. I am by the window in the little study recess with the tree looking in, and the stars looking through it, " but where art thou ! " It is gone forever, the beautiful summer, \\ hen we might have been so happy together, and happy in a way, that neither of us ever will be with any other person. Oh, it is very sad ! My friend, shed some tears with me. Why, why must you leave me? If you had stayed, I should have been well and strong by this time, and had so much natural joy and so many thoughts of childhood! And you? have you gained much thus far? I will write no more to-night. I am heart sick about it all. I am wishing so much for a letter, yet when it comes, how little it will be; letters are so little and you do not love writing ; that makes it worse yet. O the summer ! " the green and bowery summer ! " gone, irrecoverably gone! Yet, all through it, have I been growing in the knowledge of you. You would be surprised to find how much better I know you than when we parted. But I should have been so much more Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller in the ideal intercourse ! I must fret, must, must happy in real than Why! Why? Yes grieve. 5th September. Last night came the wished for letter, dated Paris, 12th August. But dearest, it seemed cold and scanty. It was five weeks since I had had one ; that is a long revolution for an earthly moon. She needs then to come into full light. You say " be embraced " but this letter is not an embrace, and that was what I needed, to feel the warmth of your heart and soul ; it would have enlivened me at once. Yet I do feel as if I lived in your thoughts constantly, as you do in mine, but the need of some outward sign is only the same as that you express about having with you no letters, " nothing to kiss " it would be such a relief, and " cast a light upon the day, a light that would not go away, a sweet forewarning." I acquiesce in what you say of the dissipating influence of travel, and that you will ever with me be truthful, nor profane the pen by writing from any but the mood you are in. This truth fulness, which has made us to one another all that we are, shall ever be welcome to me, however LETTER XLIV Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER bitter the truths it may bring ; but is it not true that you were chilled by not receiving a letter from me when you expected? Now this was in consequence of your own directions that I " should write by the two next steamers and not again till I heard from you." I pray thee, if any disappointment of this kind occur in future, attribute it to misunderstanding or accident ; I must change indeed, more than seems now pos sible, if I can voluntarily omit writing. On the contrary, it is a painful repression, that I can not write far oftener. I feel peculiarly anxious on this point, because Mr. Greeley has twice now mislaid my letters when they were of importance and in both instances I have only discovered his having done so by accident. There is no help for this, as he is far more careful of my affairs than his own, and only at times, when he has some piece of writing in his head is so incurably careless. Promise me, then, that if any gap of silence should occur, you will attribute it to some such cause. I, on my side, have deep confidence in your honourable and tender care of me. I know, if you give yourself to other influences, it is not likely to be lightly or suddenly, for your Love -Letter s of Margaret Fuller 153 nature is not light or shallow, and you are now a LETTER mature man, so I shall not lightly believe in your silence. I feel more apprehension on this subject, because once in my life, two consecutive letters, intercepted on their passage to me, occasioned great unhappiness to another, and in my mind would have left wonder and sadness always but for an accident that cleared all up. So, my loved brother, believe ever I hold thy hand, though the veil of darkness may have fallen so that thou canst not see where I am. And then, remember, that only a day or two before you went away, you talked of " whether a man of honour ought to seek Kingsbury " unless sure of being able to feel as much. And sometimes, when sadness op presses me, and I might like to give way to all the impulses of my soul, I cannot but remember, that if sometimes you have called on me to do so at others there have been on your part careful limitations as to yourself, doubting the extent or permanence of your feelings for me. Dearest, Heaven grant that all this may be tempered betwixt us to a permanent music; we have reason to hope it may be so, for Heaven alone has brought us near; no earthly circum- 1 54 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER stance favoured it at all. Yet again we may only be lent to one another for eason and then withdrawn for other duties and relations. The sense of this sometimes checks my feelings on their sweetest flight. All the flowers are worth cultivating; those which have on them the doom of mortality are even more touchingly beautiful that we must prize them to-day, since they have no to-morrow, but only the amaranth is worthy to be watered, the purple with our life-blood, the white with our holiest tears. Yet let not chance snatch anything from us, she is a wicked goddess and would not be especially kind to us, who have never been willing to trust her. For in this we are alike, looking forward, planning life. Enough ! You will love me as much, as long, and as care fully as you can, will you not? For though the essence be indestructible, the crystal that incloses it may be broken, and the perfume escape far into another life perhaps. I on my side will be equally careful, for though you are a strong man, I do not think you, in this sense, less delicate than I. I wish, that I had written, if only that the letter might go with you into Switzerland. I Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 155 think of you now beside those torrents or look- LETTER ing up to those sublime peaks, for which I have so longed in vain. You will have these holy places much to yourself, at least I see that a great proportion of the professed tourists and sketch- ers, who usually infest these beautiful scenes, have been kept away by the agitations of the country. And Rome greet the Sistine and the halls of the Vatican for me, and say that I am no longer fevered to see them, for Rome has grown up in my soul in default of the bodily presence, nor could the interval of space hinder my communion with Domenichino, Raphael and Michelangelo. I am glad you begin to love pictures; that is a world by itself, and the true comfort from the strifes of this world to see human nature represented as it ought to be, as, yet, in some serene world, it must and will be. In Michelangelo you would find an echo to the deep est tones of Jewish inspiration, men and women sublimed to children of God and masters of Eternity. In my letters of 1st and 15th August (three in all, long and pardon me too heavy, at least in a material sense) you will find what I 156 Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER say of your letters to the Tribune ; the same ap- XLIV plies to these. They are very good. I shall however remodel those I have now, a little, leav ing out some particulars, that are better known than you suppose. Already you write well, and a year or two of composition for such purposes would correct trifling faults and give you full command of English. I hope you will continue as often and as earnestly as you can. Give next, letters from Paris (in full), from Switzerland, beautiful as that on the moon at sea. Rome is an all-hackneyed theme and by the most accom plished pens, but you will find somewhat of your own, no doubt. Do not describe outward objects there in detail : we know every nook of St. Peter s, every statue, every villa by heart almost. But what you see characteristic and your own thoughts will interest. Now if you want the particulars from the " Crescent and the Crown " I will inclose them with my letter. After finishing the copy I lay down and fell asleep for a while, when that happened which has several times while you were here, when I had seemed to be put from you during an interview. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 157 The next time I fell asleep, my spirit would LETTER seem to be drawn to yours and there soothed and cherished like a pet dove, till it came back in its native buoyancy and peace. I feel quite happy now, and I have you with me as a river that has passed through another, rushes joyous and en riched on its course. Yet the time of words and discussions must come again, but do thou, oh Father, lead us through. Bless thy children! You do not speak to me of the deep things of the Spirit, but you will in due time, and of the promises. But I will write no more, for there is neither time nor word as yet. But sometime, surely, I shall have beautiful things to tell and to hear. How rejoiced w r as I to hear that the maiden is like to do so well. I had cumbered myself much since hearing that she could not go to her home. But I had not urged to see her and persuaded her to stay here, for I felt sure I could have had her well placed in Massachusetts. But now it is well and thy deed of love will yet, I trust, bear worthy fruits. I live here still in extreme seclusion, too much I believe for my spirits. I have only been to Rockaway a few days; these I enjoyed much; it i 5 8 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLIV LETTER XLV was transcendent moonlight all the time and then by day I was in the surf or riding fleetly on the noble beach. At home the baby is my chief company, he grows more and more lovely and begins to talk ; it is enchanting to see the faculties developed one after the other and learn yourself in the clear eyes of a child. His mother is well again. I am going to Massachusetts soon for a month and I need it, for there I shall be obliged or induced to keep in bodily motion all the time and not use my eyes for reading or writing. Josey is pretty well ; I have given him up to the man again after taking care myself for some weeks. I had too much trouble, not with, but about him. 13th Sept., 1845. DEAREST, I must begin all the leaves this time with the sweet word, I feel so confiding and affectionate. Last night came your book Foscolo on Pe trarch. I have read this book, but am very glad to own it, and to feel with what thoughts you sent it. It was delightful too, to receive Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 59 something unexpectedly. I touched my lips to the well-known characters and felt that we w r ere together. There came, too, a book from Mr. Delf. It was translations from the Vita Nuova and Con- vito of Dante with a fine head of him on the first leaf. The Vita Nuova has been one of the most cherished companions of my life. Dante has made a record which corresponds in some degree with my intuitions, as to the new r life of love, although I have an idea of much, besides what he mentions, for he loved from afar and never entered into the most intimate relations. But both Dante and Petrarch, though they truly loved, did not keep themselves sacred to the celes tial Venus, but turned aside in hours of weakness to a lower love. Michelangelo alone was true to his idea of love, even when he could not hope the possession of its object. But all three of these great Italians seem to me to have discerned the true nature of Love, enough to have received some of its almighty revelations. I was glad, too, to have the book from Mr. Delf for I would like to have your best friend become mine. Yet, have no confidant as to LETTER XLV 160 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER our relationship. I have had and shall have none. I wish to be alone with you in strict communion. I feel much happier now, about your absence ; in this sense, if it is improving you, I ought to be willing, and now the summer is over, it is not so much matter. We could not have such happy times together in the winter, even if you were here, as when we could wander through the woods and fields. I will try to do without you now, only earnestly, fervently hoping you will not be debarred from visiting the East, but that Novem ber or December will see you on the lotus-bear ing Nile. By the way, I wish much I had told you the story of Isis and Osiris. It is like your religion. But a time may come. Yet yesterday a proposition was made me, which, if accepted, might take me to Europe just as you come back. Would not that be like all the rest of the Angel s management? But I do not think it will happen so. I want you very much to write so that I shall get letters every two or three weeks, whether you hear from me or not, for when you do not, it will always be that I do not get your address in time, XLV Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 161 and as mine is always the same, you might write LETTER as often to me ; do ! Your letters to the Tribune are printed, ex cept the last which will probably be in the daily of 16th the others are 10th, 12th. The first and last (3d and 5th) are best; there is most of your direct observation in them. If you could mix in them personal life still more, it would im prove them. Send these, too, as often as you can, that the interest may be kept alive. I expect very good ones about Paris, as you will see through veils, and want you to give free play to your feelings in writing of Switzerland and beauti ful nature everywhere ; there is strong practical sense enough to give enthusiasm the needed relief. Not having heard from Mr. Tobler I went yesterday and spoke to him, but he had nothing as yet to say, if he had, would write me a note for you to-morrow. I have had a most lovely letter from my loved brother Eugene. Brighter prospects seem dawn ing on him. He is now to be co-editor of a very good paper in New Orleans and in part proprie tor by-and-bye, when he wishes. His love and de votion for me seem even greater than ever and 12 1 62 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER there is now a prospect of our playing into one XLV another s hands and by-and-bye meeting. May you experience the joys of sympathy when meet ing those of your blood ! may they prove such that you can meet in deep congeniality of inter course. I often wonder when I think how entirely you have been debarred from these sweet charities, that you are so generous and good in the inmost heart and so warm and tender in life as you are ! But the Angels had a care of you ! For to-day with them I leave you. Sunday evening, 15th. I have kept open the letter, hoping to have news for you from Mr. Tobler, but he has sent no note. This has been a very happy day with me. A dear friend came about noon to announce a joy ful change in his fate and has only just left me. I am feeling very happy in the crisis that brings a noble being liberation from many woes and per plexities, but over-excited. My head throbs; it is time to go to rest, but I feel I shall not sleep and the hand trembles so, I can hardly write. I Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 163 feel grateful for something manifestly right, LETTER and more noble, more confident in God than usual. I blame myself for writing in the within : " Let us love, carefully." I ought not thus to shrink from giving or receiving pain yes, it is most true, the fault you find in me. I am faultily sen sitive, I ought to have more noble faith, I will try ; we both will will we not, loved brother, to be constantly nobler and better? I know not that I can write more to-night. Many little events have occurred to me and I have been away ; last moon at Rockaway on the noble beach with the surf rushing in, I thought of thee every night and in a sense all the time, so near wert thou, and to-night when her holy rays steal through my windows, I bless thee and pray that life may purify and perfect thy noble nature, until the message of thy soul be fully spoken. God grant this prayer and make it a solace to the pilgrim to know, that it lives always and more and more warmly in the heart of his Muse. P. S. I looked all through the life of Pe trarch for your pencil-marks, but had to fancy them. 164 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLVI The Farm, September 29th, 1845. Here I am still, dear friend, although next Saturday will see me in Massachusetts. These are the loveliest days of the American year; the breezes are melody and balm, the sunlight pours in floods through the foliage, itself transparent gold. The water is so very blue and animated, the sail-boats bound along, as if they felt like me. I have been inexpressibly happy these last few days, the weather within has been just the same as without. I am generally serene and rather bright, but these feelings are joy. Even for thee, I seldom feel regret; sometimes indeed I turn suddenly, my heart full of something 1 want to say, and long to meet thine eye, but oftener I feel, thou art indeed here much of the time and the rest looking on what is beautiful and full of rich suggestions ; thou art living and growing and in all this I have my part. Yes, in all that enriches and dignifies thy life I have my part. And say, dear brother, brother of my soul, have I not been much with thee in beautiful Switzerland and Italy? Had I been with thee indeed, often we might have shared the same Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller 165 quick glance, the same full gaze and every joy LETTER of sympathy, where nature, at least, and the memories of human greatness are worth sym pathy. But then there would have been many rough and difficult places, where thou must have up borne me in thy strong arms or else I could not have gone. So I should have been in fact some times a burden, but in thought, in memory, I have been altogether a sweet companion, have I not? One who gives no trouble and shares all joys ! If I had written you any letters that were good, I should think, you had just received such an one, from this joy I have in being drawn to you. But I know too well, how frivolous, feeble and inexpressive of what I really thought all mine have been. I think it must be merely that you are happy in the grandeur and beauty you have seen and that your feelings of happiness ex tend to me. I feel as if we were both within the pure white veil. I have kept my promise and never thought why you gave me that token, but when ever I have these lovely feelings as if we were both in an atmosphere of love and purity, I take it out i66 Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLVI and look at it, and then again I vow to trust our God, and what is deepest in the impulses he has given. He will protect, and the pure silver haze he will cast around, shall be more efficient than armour of triple brass against all evil pow ers. And amid that silver haze I am with thee, my brother, and repeat the holy vows I made, when thy generous soul was most made known to mine, and I meet the full look of thy eye, and it is not tearful and thy voice in its rich persuasive tones answers to the vow. At such times there is no more age or sin or sadness. Oh may the immortal births of them those creatures of our true selves grow daily in strength, in sweetness and in purity. I will not write any more ; it is all in vain, I cannot relieve my heart ; it craves expression, but cannot find it in words. 80th Sept. This is a most lovely, pensive evening. My willow shakes its long graceful locks with deep sighs, warm breezes sweeping slowly by. I have taken infinite pleasure in that tree and hope it has some consciousness of what it has Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 167 been to a human heart. I shall see it no more LETTER in beauty, for when I return from Massachusetts its leaves will have fallen and will not dress it again by the time we go next spring. For it is decided that we go and no more shall my brother and I meet on the rocks, where the waves lap so gently or in the little paths of our dear wood. I have never been there yet since Sunday 1st June. Last Sunday it looked tempting, but I would not. I have made no vow lest I be forced to break it by some chance, but feel as if I should never go there again, unless with you. To-night is the anniversary of my father s death; just about this time he left us and my hand closed his eyes. Never has that hand since been employed in an act so holy, yet it has done so much, it seems as I look on it, almost a separate mind. It is a pure hand thus far from evil; it has given no false tokens of any kind. My father, from that home of higher life you now inhabit, does not your blessing still accompany the hand, that hid the sad sights of this world from your eyes, which had begun to weep at them? My friend, I think it does; I think he thus far would bless his child. We have both 1 68 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER upright and pure men to our fathers. Is it not a great happiness? I realize it more and more. Our star had some benign rays. LETTER New York, 31st Dec., 1845. XLVII I have waited till the last moment, dear friend, hoping to hear from you again before writing. I have received only one letter in the course of more than three months. That was dated Florence 27th September but did not reach me till 1st December, nor till I had felt much troubled by so long a pause. You had not then had any letters from me since leaving England, but as I knew by a letter from Mr. Delf, that they would reach you in Rome by the middle of October, I have been expecting ever since to hear from you in answer to them. But not a word ! I feel entirely unlike writing without hearing, nor would I, but that you express a strong wish to find letters in Hamburg on your arrival, and now the semi-monthly steamers have stopped for the winter, I shall not have a chance to send quick again before 1st February if I do not write bv this one. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 169 You said in the letter from Florence that you told me you " would not be able to keep up a real correspondence with me while absent." But, on the contrary, while here, you used always to be telling me that you could not write, be cause people interrupted you at the office, or because you had a person with you at home, whom you did not wish to see you writing the letters. I often felt as if you sacrificed both writing to me and seeing me to trifles, and wished it had been otherwise, for I thought the greater was sacrificed to the lesser, even according to your own view of our relation. Still I did not listen to these feelings, as they were super ficial, compared with that of the inevitable- ness and deep root in the character of both, of the bond between us. But when urging me to write at our last meeting you said expressly " I have not been able to write as I would, but I shall now and shall answer in full, if you w r ill write." You are your own master, at present ; you have no companions, unless from choice, noth ing to interrupt you. You are amid the scenes and impressions, it seems to me, most congenial LETTER XLVII 17 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER with the thought of me, and if you cannot write now, when, my friend, could you? I am deeply touched by what you say of not finding help as to repose of mind or religion. Many considerations have occurred to me as to the burning pain which the wrongs and woes of men cause you. But I will not write them yet, hoping we shall meet again, when they can in full be expressed and you see whether you find any worth in them. I feel much disappointed to find that you can not, after all, go to the East this winter. It was all useless then for you to hurry away. You might have stayed longer and last summer not have been lost. And how will it be now? Shall you not return here in the spring? Shall you go to the East another autumn? Shall you give it up altogether? Write me of this as soon as possible. I am glad but not surprised that the great works of art have become familiar to you. But you will find deeper and deeper senses as you look more. I am glad and a little surprised that the Medicean Venus did not please you. I want much to know what you saw in Rome. And Naples? Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 171 you are going there surely? There and in LETTER Switzerland it was my place to have been with you. We have lately had published here books of travel very minute about Switzerland by Mr. Cheever who saw a great deal, but mixed it all up with sectarianism and books, and by Mr. Headley who has a real love of natural beauty and picturesque power in describing it. Mr. Headley is one of the few entertaining persons I know here ; he is full of vivacity and feeling, quick if not deep, and sparkles along in talk very pleasantly. I am boarding in town for the winter in an excellent house in Warren Street for the present. I find it a most agreeable change in point of order and comfort. The people in the house are such, as you, I suppose, have seen constantly, I scarce ever at all men of business who seem like perfect machines. No wonder they wearied you to death! I see but little of them however, only at the table. I devote myself a great deal to the paper, as I am more and more interested by the generous course of Mr. Greeley and am desirous to make 172 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLVII my own position important and useful. As I shall find no longer a home in the house of Mr. Greeley except for a brief space in the spring, I must therefore live at much greater expense, if I remain. They are to make me a new offer, as soon as they have settled up their affairs this new year. Mr. Greeley said, they should do all they possibly could for me. I shall remain till September at any rate, as he wishes much to be at liberty during the summer. As to other things, now I am in town, I make many acquaintance and see many amusing peo ple and some who are very friendly to me, but none of deep interest. I feel very lonely, some times very sad, and I still pine for you, my friend, and that home of soul, where you used to receive me and strengthen me and all the flowers that grew from frequent meeting. I do not, indeed, feel separated from you ; your silences or the want of personal intercourse does not seem to have that effect at all. When I am alone, your image rises before me, or indeed in the presence of others I sometimes am suddenly lost to them, and seem absorbed by this commu nion. But I do not feel refreshed or invigorated Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 173 enough by this there is a void, and I can only LETTER commend myself to the care of Heaven. I want to think that you feel the need of me in the same way and surely you must, yet I do not know r how to understand some things in your letter ; it was as if you said " do not think it is you I want " and then you say " do not misun derstand ; " so I will not misunderstand, and therefore must let it all go, but that is difficult. I feel inclined to write no more " unless we can have a real correspondence." What is the use of any other? I feel sick and my head aches at this moment. Do try to have things better. I beg you by that time when I left off taking care of myself and put it all into your care in holy keeping. You then gave me the veil, and when ever I look at it, it seems like peace and that thou must bring it to me. I suffer writing this letter; when it is gone, I may receive one that may make me feel so differently. I cannot help feeling jealous of you, knowing your nature, knowing you went away on your wanderings seeking new impres sions. I never did, and never shall feel happy any way but in answering you. When you draw 174 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER me, I like to come. I do not like to come of my XLVII own accord. You are now to be among your kindred. I do hope you will find joy in it, and that it may be possible to take up the ties, as if all these years had not passed between. May you be happy with mother and brethren ; your sisters by blood I cannot permit to take the place of your sister of your soul. I want you to write me how they all strike you, but do not, loved friend, speak to them of me, except outwardly, as you have to Mr. Delf and others. I want the mysterious tie that binds us to remain unprofaned forever and that if in this cruel fatal sphere we are in, we have to bury the sweet form of the Past, that we should do it quite alone, we the only ones that could appreciate its budding charms, how lovely it was, and of capacity how glorious. Then we would weep together and part, and go our several ways alone; but we would tell no man. Promise me this. This is the last day of the year in which I have known you. It is just a year since we met. May our Father bless you and give to Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 175 your other years joys, hopes and sorrows no less LETTER pure than these have been. Oh may he add tranquility and fruition. Do you bless me when you receive this and bend your mind to have me feel it. Mrs. Greeley has been in a sad state of mind and body, but seems a little better now. Her boy is beautiful, the picture of health and gai ety. Shall I send you at Hamburg the copies of the Tribune, containing your letters? how many? and how? Did you know my book on Woman, etc., had been republished in England? February %8th, 1845. LETTER XLVIII Evening by my bright fire in the prettiest little room imaginable which I tenant for the present in Amity Place. MY DEAR FRIEND, Last month brought me a letter which repaid for long waiting, your letter from Rome, full of soul and sweetness as ever was yourself in the best hours of our life together last spring. How I do wish I could answer to it as I ought, as I would, but unhappily this last day i 7 6 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLVIII before preparing for the March steamer has brought me one of my bad headaches, of which I have not before had one for some time, and I feel paralyzed, not myself. I think, however, you may prefer having such a letter as I can write to none at all. I feel hope that you may by this time be at home with mother and brethren and that the next steamer may bring me a leaf to tell of your pilgrimage, and how the home of your child hood looks after it, and after the long separation. I feel as if it might be a sad survey, the changes must have been so very great; but I want to hear all. I hope to have this part, before you can receive this, but when you do, write quick in reply, and tell me of your plans. When do you return to the United States? A plan which I mentioned to } r ou in an earlier letter is now matured and if nothing unexpected intervenes, I shall with Mr. and Mrs. Spring leave here for England by the middle of August. We are going also to Germany, France and Italy. I expect to stay a year; they may travel longer. Shall I not see you all that time ? Shall you not return Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 177 here before I go, or if not shall we not meet in LETTER some place the other side of the water ? I rather think the latter by your sending for Josey. Answer decisively whether you will have him sent the 1st May. The Greeleys break up from our dear old place then. Mrs. Greeley will have no objection to parting with him. I have paid dear for your love. Let it be immortal, and if we meet no more, let it shine on me from the distance with a steady and cheering ray. It was pure and fresh as the blossoms amid which it grew, and if it never cornes to fruit, let it, at least, forever bloom as they in memory. Yes, do write to Mrs. Greeley a good and full letter, but do not, I counsel you, speak of her coming to Germany. But write as a friend. Her child is one of the finest imaginable. I love him much and he me no less. I send through Mr. Benson, Tribunes con taining your letters ; the last describing ancient Rome I did not publish. Every object in the Eternal City is too familiar to the reading pub lic. I wish you had sent, instead, the letter on modern Rome, for your observations on what you 13 178 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER personally meet are always original and interest ing. I hope you will write yourself out in let ters on Egypt and Palestine and not describe ob jects which, there also, have already been de scribed many times. Yourself, yourself. The rose from Shelley s grave would have been dear to me, but somehow in opening the letter I lost the rose and when I had finished could find only the green leaves. Is not that rather sad? Your picture I shall see abroad, if not your self. I have been in town ever since 1st January when I wrote to you. I have had an outwardly gay and busy life, made many new acquaintance and two or three friends. Among these number two men of heroic blood, Cassius Clay who was here on Jan. 7th and Harro Harring, the Dane, a stormy nature but full and rich and with a child like sweetness in him at times, when the vexed waves recede. All the little demons warn me, not to send this letter. First the headache, then I have dropped ink upon it, then let it go against the Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 179 candle. But if thou be minded towards me as LETTER in thy last, all these threats will go for nothing ; thou wilt take it in good part and turn the soiled and blotted leaves to precious purpose. Unless I hear from you again, I shall not write by steamer of 1st April. I want to know first that you are at home and how you are feel ing. I want too that you should receive this. Nevertheless, if I have a letter from you in March that draws an answer, it will come in April. I shall now be overwhelmed with things to do for a while. I am to bring out my Miscellanies in two volumes, which will be a constant care, as they claim revisal and additions. I am also to keep on writing for the Tribune up to the last. I have some family troubles that keep obliging me to write to Massachusetts. In fine, if I saw you, I could say much, but at this crisis I cannot get repose of mind for it. When you receive this, breathe a prayer, that I may be sustained and aided by the Angels, for just now I need aid. On you my blessings always wait. P. S. I have a few days since a note from Mr. Delf . He had not heard from you. 180 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER Sunday, April 25th, 46. XLIX T^ ^ DEAR Jb RIEND, Lost too soon, too long; where art thou, where wander thy steps and where thy mind this day? This day, the last of leisure, I shall pass in the place that was the scene of our meeting when our acquaintance grew with the advance of spring, knew indeed its frequent chills, blights and delays, but also its tender graces, its young joys and at last its flowers. This place, I think, will always be lovely in my memory. But alas! we shall meet here no more. Strangers to us will haunt the rocks and little green paths, where we gave one another so much childish happiness, so much sacred joy. Hast thou forgotten any of these things, hast thou ceased to cherish me, O Israel ! I have felt, these last four days, a desire for you that amounted almost to anguish. You are so interwoven with every thought of this place, it seemed as if I could not leave it, till w r e had walked and talked here once more. This is such a day as came last year after our reconciliation, when the trees had put on their ex- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 181 quisite white mantles and you gave me the white LETTER veil. That evening you went home and wrote me the sweet little letter, in which you likened yourself to the cherry-tree by my window. The tree has again decked itself with blossoms and I see it in its best loveliness before my departure. But thou dost not return ; could you but be here all this day, only one day. So many things have happened, such a crowd of objects come be tween us ! Alas ! there is too much to be said we cannot say rightly in letters. I say Alas ! and Alas ! and once again Alas ! I send a leaf and flower of the myrtle that grew at the foot of the rock, of which I gave you some the day w r e seemed to be separated for ever. But we were not. Where are you? What are you doing? I have not heard from you for more than four months. I do not know w r hether you passed safe through the East, I do not know whether you have ever reached your home. And I do not know what has been or is in your mind. How unnatural ! for such ignorance and darkness to follow on such close communion, such cold eclipse on so sweet a morning. Is it the will of 182 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER XLIX the Angels? Have they drawn the veil between us and given us to other duties, other ties? We leave this place the last day of April. Mrs. Greeley goes with her child to Brattleboro (Vermont), for the summer. I have taken lodg ings in Brooklyn near the Heights for the sum mer or rather till the 1st August, when I expect to go to England. We intend to go in the steamer from Boston 1st August, on arriving in England to travel about, see Scotland and West moreland and be in London in September. Then the plan is to go to Hamburg and from there to see a little of Germany. Then, on the last of September or first of October, if you are there, I shall see you again, at least for an hour or two. But do write, the moment you receive this, if you have not long before, and tell me everything good and bad. I thought surely to have heard before this, if only to know what to do about sending you Josey. He is now to be left, I don t know how. Mrs. Greeley has seemed more kindly towards him of late. She has sometimes even fed him herself. He is strong and seems tolerably well now, but he will never be the intelligent Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 183 and fine creature he might, if you had not LETTER ,,,,,. XLIX lett him. Farewell ! for to-day, I have no heart to write any more. 16th May. Still no letter from you, I do not yet know that you are safe. And in one fortnight it will be a year, since you went away. The spring is now at its loveliest. I am not, where I can enjoy its loveliness as at the Farm, yet am happier, for I have a home now, where peace, order and kindness prevail. Poor Josey remains at the Farm. I suffer much annoyance by continual questions from Mr. Greeley w r hether I have not heard from you, so as to let him know what to do with the dog, who remains only on sufferance with the new occu pants and is exposed to loss or injury. The affairs of this country are at present dis turbed by wars and rumours of wars. Still there seems no likelihood as yet of our being prevented from going to Europe the 1st August. We ex pect to go in the mail-steamer from Boston. Farewell. Unless I hear from you I shall not 184 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER write any more. If I do not hear at all, I shall feel great anxiety and shall write to Mr. Delf to ascertain whether you are safe, as there is no one here that can inform me. Wherever and however you are, that God may bless you always is the prayer of MARGARET. LETTER New York, IJ^ih July, 18J+6. MY FRIEND, I have been absent from town and unable to act upon your request of getting the papers to send by Messrs. Appleton to Mr. Delf and will 1st August take them myself and send them on arriving in Liverpool straight to Mr. Delf that he may send them to you. To-morrow morning is the last time I shall have before the steamer goes and I probably shall not be able to go to town and see about it, having imperative engage ments. I have hardly a minute to write this line, which is of importance for you to receive. I have talked with Mr. Greeley about the nar rative of your journey. He says you had best make it brief and vivid and look into the many Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 185 books of travel in that region that have been pub- LETTER lished lately, so as to repeat no information ; that, if you have it written out fairly and sent to him, he will do as well as he can in getting it pub lished for you, but could not expect much pecu niary profit, as your name is not known as a writer. I suggested Noah s Weekly Messenger, think ing the information would be of special interest to the Jews, but Mr. Greeley said, there would be no pay there. I think you may find Mr. Delf could get it published in London to better advantage as to money, than here, where the reward of the writer is so very little. But, if you prefer sending to America, I should think Mr. Greeley could and would do as well for you as almost any one, only no doubt, if I were here, I might put more zeal into the affair than a mere business friend would. I am sorry on that account to be gone. Your old acquaintance, Mr. Miller, is in the employ ment of Wiley and Putnam ; with his aid and thai of Mr. Delf and Mr. Greeley you certainly have a very fair chance for one who is served by men alone. 1 86 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller LETTER I am overwhelmed with things to be done in the last days. We go in the Cambria 1st August, and I to Boston for a few days previous, to bid farewell to my family and friends. After arri ving in England we travel a while and shall not be in London till early in September. I shall there expect to hear from you in some shape. I shall notify Mr. Delf of my arrival. Mrs. Greeley I have seen only once since we left the Farm, as she is far in the country. She was much pleased with your letter and I was very glad. 15th, morning. Interrupted last night and only time to add a word. I was about to say that I was glad you wrote to Mrs. Greeley and repeated your invita tion to Germany. She cannot accept it, being soon to become a mother, but, no doubt, it would please her that it should be given. Adieu, may happiness and good be with you. I hope to find a good letter if not yourself in London early in September. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 187 EDITORIAL NOTES IN the Public Library of Cambridge, Mass., is preserved the diary which Margaret Fuller wrote during her sojourn in England in 1846. The following passage obviously makes refer ence to this romance: " Leave Edinburgh on Monday morning, 8th (Sept.), for Perthshire. Letter containing virtual reply to my invitation of 1st Sept. also dated 1st Sept. From 1st June, 1845, to 1st Sept., 1846, a mighty change has taken place, I ween. I understand more and more the character of the tribes. I shall write a sketch of it and turn the whole to account in a literary way, since the affections and ideal hopes are so unpro ductive. I care not. I am resolved to take such disappointments more lightly than I have. I ought not to regret having thought other of humans than they deserve." EDITO RIAL NOTES 1 88 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller EDITO- Along with the foregoing letters of Margaret Fuller, there has come to the publishers of this NOTES book the following letter to Mr. Nathan, written in October, 1846 (a month after the above), by his friend, Mr. F. Delf . Mr. Delf was then living in London as the agent of D. Appleton and Com pany. London, October 9, 1846. FRIEND NATHAN, I received a letter from you some two or three weeks ago, which I have mislaid. It arrived the same day I received one from Miss Fuller, at Edinburgh, to which I replied inclosing yours. Miss Fuller has since arrived in London, and I truly have enjoyed a few hours in her society, which exalt her in my estimation more than any thing I have hitherto read of her writings. She intends staying here some three weeks longer, and then proceeds to Paris. She bade me to say to you, when I wrote, that she had received your letter, but was too much involved in the routine of visiting and receiving visitors to allow her mind a moment s repose to reply to it. By the way, I often ask myself how stands Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 189 your friendship with her, and how will it bear EDITO- the effects of your contemplated foreign alli ance? Is she prepared for such a condition of affairs ? I am stimulated to ask this perhaps im pertinent question from the warmth with which she speaks of your friendship, which, by the way, may be too cold a name for her feeling; but of this I must not judge until I know her better, for perhaps I misinterpret her natural warmth of feeling. Although I feel the imperative duty of wri ting to you to-day, my mind is so distracted by various matters that I cannot collect my thoughts to communicate many things that I know you ex pect from me. The time is fast drawing on when I must embark for the United States. One of the young Appletons is coming to take my place during my absence. With Joe matters continue in stain quo neither better nor worse. Miss Fuller asked to see him, in order to try to do something for his welfare, but I felt it my duty to resist her inclination in this matter, for I felt sure that no good could come of it. Do not be discouraged by my abortive at- 19 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller EDITO- tempt at a letter. It is the best I am at present capable of, but write me on the receipt of this. I am yours truly, F. DELF. James Nathan was born on the 9th of Febru ary, 1811, in Eutin, Holstein, Germany, and in 1830 came to the United States, where he was engaged in the commission business until 1850. From that year until 1862 he was in the bank ing business in Wall Street, New York. He then retired and went to Hamburg, where he died in 1888, on the 5th of October. By act of Con gress in 1855, and under the advice of Horace Greeley, he changed his name to Gotendorf, which was the name of a place in Holstein that belonged to his father. <~ ^^cs ^VC^^eX?x^-<--<^C -33?^ ^ x~~ x^o ^^ <0<?^^) c*^c*7 -^~C <*L^^s<Z &. ^-^**c. ; ^ tx^jg^ FACSIMILE OF ONE PAGE OF MARGARET FULLER S LETTERS. See pages 15-16 for the same in print. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 193 REMINIS CENCES REMINISCENCES 14 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 95 REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 I STILL remember the half hour of Margaret s conversation. She was twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity of life. She was rather under the middle height ; but her complexion was fair, with strong fair hair. She was then, as always, care fully and becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plain ness a trick of incessantly opening and shut ting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice all repelled, and I said to myself we shall never get far. It is to be said that Margaret made a dis agreeable first impression on most persons, in cluding those who became afterward her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not 1 From Memoirs of Margaret Fuller (Ossoli), by Ralph Waldo Emerson and others. 196 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power and slight esteem for others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in ad dition to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and the women did not like one who despised them. I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal his tory; and her talk was a comedy in which dra matic justice was done to everybody s foibles. I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked ; for I was at that time an eager scholar of ethics, and had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me, and, when I returned to my library, had much to think of the cracking of thorns under a pot. Margaret, who had stuffed me out as a philosopher in her own fancy, was too intent on establishing a good footing between us to omit any art of winning. She studied my tastes, piqued and amused me, challenged frankness by frankness, and did not conceal the good opinion of me she brought with her, nor her wish to please. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 197 She was curious to know my opinions and ex periences. Of course, it was impossible long to hold out against such urgent assault. She had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readi est wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed ; and her eyes, which were so plain at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life. This rumour was much spread abroad that she was sneering, scoffing, critical, disdainful of humble people, and of all but the intellectual. I had heard it whenever she was named. It was a superficial judgment. Her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent, the play of superabundant animal spirits. . . . When she came to Concord she was already rich in friends, rich in experiences, rich in cul ture. She was well read in French, Italian, and German literature. She had learned Latin and a little Greek. But her English reading was incomplete, and while she knew Moliere and Rousseau, and any quantity of French letters, memoirs and novels, and was a dear student of Dante and Petrarch, and knew German books more cordially than any other person, she was REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON 198 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON little read in Shakespeare ; and I believe I had the pleasure of making her acquainted with Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Herbert, Chap man, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, with Bacon, and Sir Thomas Browne. I was seven years her senior, and had the habit of idle reading in old English books, and, though not much versed, yet quite enough to give me the right to lead her. She fancied that her sympathy and taste had led her to an exclusive culture of southern European books. She had large experiences. She had been a precocious scholar at Dr. Park s school ; good in mathematics and languages. Her father, whom she had recently lost, had been proud of her, and petted her. She had drawn, at Cam bridge, numbers of lively young men about her. She had had a circle of young women who were devoted to her, and who described her as a " won der of intellect who had yet no religion." She \ had drawn to her every superior young man or young woman she had met, and whole romances of life and love had been confided, counselled, thought, and lived through, in her cognizance and sympathy. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 199 These histories are rapid, so that she had and old age of passion. She had, besides, select- ed from so many a few eminent companions, and already felt that she was not likely to see any thing more beautiful than her beauties, anything more powerful and generous than her youths. She had found out her own secret by early com parison, and knew what power to draw confi dence, what necessity to lead in every circle, be longed of right to her. Her powers were maturing, and nobler sentiments were subliming the first heats and rude experiments. She had outward calmness and dignity. She had come to the ambition to be filled with all nobleness. . . . She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that Margaret seemed to represent them all, and to know her was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them. She was an active, inspi ring companion and correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New Eng land seemed at that moment related to her, and REMINIS- already beheld many times the youth, meridian, " EMERSON 200 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON she to it. She was everywhere a welcome guest. The houses of her friends in town and country were open to her, and every hospitable attention eagerly offered. Her arrival was a holiday, and so was her abode. She stayed a few days, often a week, more seldom a month, and all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to catch the favourable hour, in walking, riding or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her, and, with her broad web of relations to so many fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parlia ment of love, who carried the key to all confi dences, and to whom every question had been finally referred. Persons were her game, especially if marked by fortune or character or success to such she was sent. She addressed them with a hardihood almost a haughty assurance queen-like. In deed, they fell in her way, where the access might have seemed difficult, by wonderful casualties; and the inveterate recluse, the coyest maid, the waywardest poet, made no resistance, but yielded at discretion, as if they had been waiting for her, all doors to this imperious dame. She disarmed Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 201 the suspicion of recluse scholars by the absence of bookishness. The ease with which she entered into conversation made them forget all they had heard of her ; and she was infinitely less interested in literature than in life. They saw she valued earnest persons, and Dante, Petrarch, and Goethe, because they thought as she did, and gratified her with high portraits, which she was everywhere seeking. She drew her companions to surprising confessions. She was the wedding- guest to whom the long-pent story must be told ; and they w r ere not less struck, on reflection, at the suddenness of the friendship which had estab lished in one day new and permanent covenants. She extorted the secret of life, which cannot be told without setting heart and mind in a glow, and thus had the best of those she saw whatever romance, whatever virtue, whatever impressive experience this came to her; and she lived in a superior circle, for they suppressed all their commonplace in her presence. She was perfectly true in this confidence. She never confounded relations, but kept a hun dred fine threads in her hand, without crossing or entangling any.) An entire intimacy, which REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON 2O2 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON seemed to make both sharers of the whole horizon of each other s and of all truth, did not yet make her false to any other friend ; gave no title to the history that an equal trust of another friend had put in her keeping. In this reticence was no prudery and no effort. For so rich her mind that she never was tempted to treachery by the desire of entertaining. The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory ; and I, who knew her intimately for ten years (from/ July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed! for Europe), never saw her without surprise ay her new powers. . . . Her talents were so various and her conversa tion so rich and entertaining that one might talk with her many times by the parlour fire before he discovered the strength which served as foun dation to so much accomplishment and eloquence. But concealed under flowers and music was the broadest good sense, very well able to dispose of all this pile of native and foreign ornaments, and quite able to work without them. She could always rally on this, in every circumstance and in every company, and find herself on a firm footing of equality with any party whatever, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 203 and make herself useful, and, if need be, for- REMINIS- . , T , CENCES midable. . . . BY I regret that it is not in my power to give EMERSON my true report of Margaret s conversation. She soon became an established friend and frequent inmate of our house, and continued thenceforth for years, to come once in three or four months to spend a week or a fortnight with us. She adopted all the people and all the interests she found here. Your people shall be my people, and yonder darling boy I shall cherish as my own. Her ready sympathies endeared her to my wife and my mother, each of whom highly esteemed her good sense and sincerity. She suited each and all. Yet she was not a person to be sus pected of complaisance, and her attachments one might say were chemical. She had so many tasks of her own that she was a very easy guest to entertain, as she could be left to herself day after day without apology. According to our usual habit, we seldom met in the forenoon. After dinner we read something together, or walked or rode. In the evening she came to the library, and many and many a con versation was there held whose details if they 204 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS- could be preserved would justify all encomiums. They interested me in every manner talent, BY EMERSON memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the aspects of the future each followed each in full activ ity, and left me, I remember, enriched and some times astonished by the gifts of my guest. Her topics were numerous, but the cardinal points of poetry, love, and religion were never far off. She was a student of art, and, though untravelled, knew much better than most persons who had been abroad the conventional reputation of each of the masters. She was familiar with all the field of elegant criticism in literature. Among the prob lems of the day, these two attracted her chiefly: mythology and demonology; then, also, French socialism, especially as it concerned women ; the whole prolific family of reforms, and, of course, the genius and career of each remarkable person. . . . I said that Margaret had a broad, good sense, which brought her near to all people. I am to say that she had also a strong temperament, which is that counter-force which makes individ uality by driving all the powers in the direction Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 205 of the ruling thought or feeling, and, when it is REMINIS- allowed full sway, isolating them. These two tendencies were always invading each other, and EMERSON now one and now the other carried the day. This alternation perplexes the biographer, as it did the observer. We contradict on the second page what we affirm on the first, and I remember how often I was compelled to correct my impressions of her character when living; for after I had settled it once for all that she wanted this or that perception, at our next interview she would say with emphasis the very word. I think, in her case, there was something ab normal in those obscure habits and necessities which we denote by the word temperament. In the first days of our acquaintance I felt her to be a foreigner, that, with her, one would always be sensible of some barrier, as if in making up a friendship with a cultivated Spaniard or Turk. She had a strong constitution, and, of course, its reactions were strong; and this the reason why in all her life she has so much to say of her fate. She was in jubilant spirits in the morning, and ended the day with nervous head ache, whose spasms, my wife told me, produced 206 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON total prostration. She had great energy of speech and action, and seemed formed for high emergencies. . . . She was all her lifetime the victim of disease and pain. She read and wrote in bed, and be lieved that she could understand anything better when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle, to give tension to her powers. A lady who was with her one day during a terrible attack of nervous headache, which made Margaret totally helpless, assured me that Margaret was yet in the finest vein of humour, and kept those who were assist ing her in a strange, painful excitement, between laughing and crying, by perpetual brilliant sal lies. There were other peculiarities of habit and power. When she turned her head on one side, she alleged she had second sight, like St. Fran cis. These traits or predispositions made her a willing listener to all the uncertain science of mesmerism and its goblin brood, which have been rife in recent years. . . . I have inquired diligently of those who saw her often, and in different companies concerning her habitual tone, and something like this is the report: In conversation, Margaret seldom, ex- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 207 cept as a special grace, admitted others upon an equal ground with herself. She was exceed ingly tender when she pleased to be, and most cherishing in her influence ; but to elicit this ten derness, it was necessary to submit first to her personally. When a person was overwhelmed by her, and answered not a word except " Mar garet, be merciful to me, a sinner," then her love and tenderness would come like a seraph s, and often an acknowledgment that she had been too harsh, and even a craving for pardon, with a humility which, perhaps, she caught from the other. But her instinct was not humility that was always an afterthought. This arrogant tone of her conversation, if it came to be the subject of comment, of course, she defended, and with such broad good-nature, and on grounds of simple truth, as were not easy to set aside. REMINIS CENCES BY EMERSON 208 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY BY HORACE GREELEY 1 MY wife, having spent much time in and near Boston, had there made Margaret s acquaint ance, attended her conversations, accepted her leading ideas; and, desiring to enjoy her society more intimately and continuously, Mrs. Greeley planned and partly negotiated an arrangement whereby her monitor and friend became an in mate of our family and a writer for the Tribune. Up to the close of the Presidential canvass in 1844, 1 had lived thirteen years in New York, and never half a mile from the City Hall usu ally within sixty rods of it. The newspaper business requiring close attention, and being wholly prosecuted " down town " it seemed, when I once ventured to live up so far as Broome Street, that I had strayed to an inconvenient dis- 1 From Greeley s Recollections of a Busy Life, by per mission of the heirs of Ida Greeley Smith. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 209 tance from my work ; but when the great struggle REMINIS- was over, and I the worst beaten man on the BY continent worn out by incessant anxiety and GREELEY effort, covered with boils, and thoroughly used up I took a long stride landward, removing to a spacious old wooden house, built as a country or summer residence by Isaac Lawrence, formerly president of the United States Branch Bank, but which, since his death, had been neglected and suffered to decay. It was located on eight acres of ground, including a wooded ravine, or dell, on the East River, at Turtle Bay, nearly opposite the southernmost point of Blackwell s Island, amid shade and fruit trees, abundant shrubbery, ample garden, etc. ; and, though now for years perforated by streets, and in good part covered by buildings, was then so secluded as to be only reached by a narrow, devious, private lane, exceedingly dark at night for one accus tomed to the glare of gas-lamps ; the nearest high way being the old " Boston Road " at Forty- ninth Street ; while an hourly stage on the Third Avenue, just beyond, afforded our readiest means of transit to and from the city proper. Ac customed to the rumble and roar of carriages, the 15 2IO Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY stillness here at night seemed at first so sepul chral, unearthly, that I found difficulty in sleep ing. Of the place itself, Margaret who be came one of our household soon after we took possession wrote thus to a friend: " This place is, to me, entirely charming ; it is so completely in the country, and all around is so bold and free. It is two miles or more from the thickly settled parts of New York, but omni buses and cars give me constant access to the city ; and, while I can readily see what and whom I will, I can command time and retirement. Stopping on the Harlem Road, you enter a lane nearly a quarter of a mile long, and going by a small brook and pond that lock in the place and ascending a slightly rising ground, get sight of the house, which, old-fashioned and of mellow tint, fronts on a flower-garden filled with shrubs, large vines, and trim box borders. On both sides of the house are beautiful trees, standing fair, full-grown, and clear. Passing through a wide hall you come out upon a piazza stretching the whole length of the house, where one can walk in all weathers ; and thence, by a step or two, on a lawn, with picturesque masses of rocks, shrubs, Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 2 1 1 and trees overlooking the East River. Gravel- REMINIS- paths lead by several turns down the steep bank to the water s edge, where, round the rocky point, GREELEY a small bay curves, in which boats are lying, and owing to the current and the set of the tide, the sails glide sidelong, seeming to greet the house as they sweep by. The beauty here, seen by moonlight, is truly transporting. I enjoy it greatly, and the genus loci receives me as to a home." The first impressions made by Margaret, even on those who soon learned to admire her most, were not favourable; and it was decidedly so in my case. A sufferer myself, and at times scarcely able to ride to and from the office, I yet did a day s work each day, regardless of nerves or moods; but she had no such capacity for inces sant labour. If quantity only were considered, I could easily write ten columns to her one; in deed, she would only write at all when in the vein ; and her headaches and other infirmities often precluded all labour for days. Meantime, perhaps, the interest of the theme had evapo rated, or the book to be reviewed had the bloom brushed from its cheek by some rival journal. 212 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY Attendance and care were very needful to her; she would evidently have been happier amid other and more abundant furniture than graced our dwelling ; and, while nothing was said, I felt that a richer and more generous diet than ours would have been more accordant with her tastes and wishes. Then I had a notion that strong- minded women should be above the weakness of fearing to go anywhere, at any time, alone that the sex would have to emancipate itself from thraldom to etiquette and the need of a mascu line arm in crossing the street or a room before it could expect to fight its way to the bar, the bench, the jury-box, and the polls. Nor was I wholly exempt from the vulgar prejudice against female claimants of functions hitherto devolved only on men, as mistaking the source of their dis satisfaction. . . . I very soon noted, even before I was prepared to ratify their judgment, that the women who visited us to make or improve her acquaintance seemed instinctively to recognise and defer to her as their superior in thought and culture. Some who were her seniors, and whose writings had achieved a far wider and more profitable popu- Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 213 larity than hers, were eager to sit at her feet, REMINIS- and to listen to her casual utterances as to those BY of an oracle. Yet there was no assumption of GREELEY precedence, no exaction of deference, on her part ; for, though somewhat stately and reserved in the presence of strangers, no one " thawed out " more completely, or was more unstarched and cordial in manner when surrounded by her friends. Her magnetic sway over these was mar vellous, unaccountable; women who had known her but a day revealed to her the most jealously guarded secrets of their lives, seeking her sym pathy and counsel thereunto, and were them selves annoyed at having done so when the mag netism of her presence was withdrawn. I judge that she was the repository of more confidences than any contemporary ; and I am sure no one had ever reason to regret the imprudent precipi tancy of their trust. Nor were these revelations made by those only of her own plane of life, but chambermaids and seamstresses unburdened their souls to her, seeking and receiving her counsel ; while children found her a delightful playmate and a capital friend. My son Arthur (otherwise " Pickie "), who was but eight months old when 214 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY she came to us, learned to walk and to talk in her society, and to love and admire her as few but nearest relatives are loved and admired by a child. For, as the elephant s trunk serves either to rend a limb from the oak, or to pick up a pin, so her wonderful range of capacities, of experi ences, of sympathies, seemed adapted to every condition and phase of humanity. She had mar vellous powers of personation and mimicry, and, had she condescended to appear before the foot lights, would have soon been recognised as the first actress of the nineteenth century. For every effort to limit vice, ignorance, and misery 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 fulness of her wise and generous counsel, the readiness and emphasis with which she, publicly and privately, commended to those richer than herself any object deserving 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 vic tims of wrong and misfortune." No project of Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 215 moral or social reform ever failed to command her generous, cheering 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, discriminating commendation to the favour of the rich, as they did from her pen during her connection with the Tribune. . . . Though ten years had not passed since her first visit to Emerson, at Concord, so graphically narrated by him in a reminiscence wherefrom I have already quoted, care and suffering had meantime detracted much from the lightness of her step, the buoyancy of her spirits. If in any of her varying moods she was so gay -hearted and mirth-provoking as he there describes her, I never happened to be a witness \ but then I was never so intimate and admired a friend as he became at an early day and remained to the last. Satir ical she could still be, on great provocations ; but she rarely, and, I judge, reluctantly, gave REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY 2l6 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY evidence of her eminent power to rebuke assump tion or meanness by caricaturing or intensifying their unconscious exhibition. She could be joy ous, and even merry ; but her usual manner, while with us, was one of grave thoughtfulness, ab sorption in noble deeds, and in paramount aspira tions and efforts to leave some narrow corner of the world somewhat better than she had found it. ... / In the summer of 1846 modifying but not terminating her connection with the Tribune Margaret left New York for Boston, and, after a parting visit to her relatives and early friends, took passage thence (August 1st) for Europe. As I last saw her on the steamboat that bore her hence, I might, perhaps, bid her adieu. But my recollections of her do not cease with her de parture ; and I feel that my many young readers, whose previous acquaintance with her was but a vague tradition, cannot choose that she be thus abruptly dismissed from these reminiscences, but will prefer to hear more of the most remarkable, and in some respects the greatest, woman whom America has yet known. I therefore devote some pages to her subsequent career, only regretting Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 217 that time and space do not serve to render that career ampler justice. Leaving in the company of admiring, devoted friends, who welcomed her to the intimacy of their family circle, and writing to the Tribune whenever she (too seldom) found topics of inter est that did not trench upon her deference to the sanctities of social intercourse, she first traversed Great Britain, meeting with and conversing with Wordsworth, Joanna Baillie, DeQuincey, Car- lyle, Mazzini, Dr. Chalmers, the Howitts, and many other celebrities most of whom have since passed away thence crossing to France, where she met George Sand, Beranger, La Mennais, saw Rachel act, and listened to a lecture by Arago. The next spring (1847), she, with her party, sped to Italy, coasting to Naples, and thence returning leisurely to Rome, where Pius IX had just been made Pope, and had signalized his accession by words of sympathy and cheer for the aspiration to freedom of down-trodden millions, which he has long since recanted, but they refused to forget. Passing thence to Florence, Bologna, Ra venna, to Venice, she there parted with the REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY 2i 8 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS- friends who had thus far been her companions in travel they crossing the Alps on their home- BY GREELEY ward way, while she, fully identified with the newborn hopes of Italy had decided to remain. After hastily visiting Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Milan, the lakes Garda, Maggiore, and Como, and spending a few days in southern Switzerland, she returned, via Milan and Flor- rence, to Rome, august " city of the soul," which she had chosen for her future home, and whence she wrote (December 20th) to her friend Emer son: " I find how true was the hope that always drew me towards Europe. It was no false in stinct that said I might here find an atmosphere to develop me in ways that I need. Had I only come ten years earlier. Now my life must be a failure, so much strength has been wasted on abstractions, which only came because I grew not on the right soil." She was privately married, not long after her return to Rome, to Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, of a noble but impoverished Roman family. He had caught the infection of liberal principles from the air, or from her, his three brothers Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 2 1 9 being, as he had been, in the papal service, and so REMINIS- remaining after the Pope had disappointed the BY hopes excited by his first words and acts under GREELEY the tiara. In the troublous times then imminent, it was deemed expedient to keep their marriage a close secret, as their only hope in securing their share of the patrimony of Ossoli s recently de ceased father ; and she spent the ensuing summer at the little mountain village of Rieti, where her son Angelo was born. Returning before winter to Rome, she became at once a trusted counsellor of Mazzini during the brief but glorious era of the republic ; and, when the city was invested and besieged by a French army, she was appointed director of a hospital, and therein found a sphere of sad but earnest and beneficent activity. . . . Having somewhat regained her health and calmness at Rieti, she journeyed thence, with her husband and child, by Perugia to Florence, where they were welcomed and cheered by the love and admiration of the little American col ony, and by the few British Liberals residing there the Brownings prominent among them. Here they spent the ensuing winter, and Mar garet wrote her survey of the grand movement 22O Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY for Italian liberty and unity, which had mis carried for the moment, but which was still cher ished in millions of noble hearts. With the en suing spring came urgent messages from her native land, waking, or rather strengthening, her natural longing to greet once more the dear ones from whom she had now been four years parted ; and on the 17th of May, 1850, they embarked in the bark Elizabeth, Captain Hasty, at Leg horn, for New York, which they hoped to reach within sixty days at farthest. Margaret s correspondence for the preceding month is darkened with apprehensions and sin ister forebodings, which were destined to be fear fully justified. First, Captain Hasty \vas pros trated when a few days on his voyage, with what proved to be confluent small-pox, whereof he died, despite his wife s tenderest care, and his body was consigned to the deep. Then Angelo, Mar garet s child, was attacked by the terrible dis ease, and his life barely saved, after he had been for days utterly blind and his recovery seemed hopeless. So, after a week s detention by head winds at Gibraltar, they fared on, under the mate s guidance, until at noon on July 15th, in Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 221 a thick fog with a southeast breeze, they reck oned themselves off the Jersey coast, and headed northeast for the bay of New York, which they expected to enter next morning. But the eve ning brought a gale, which steadily increased to a tempest, before which, though under close- reefed sails, they were driven with a rapidity of which they were unconscious, until about four o clock the next morning the Elizabeth struck heavily on Fire Island Beach, off the south coast of Long Island, and her prow was driven harder and farther into the sand, while her freight of marble broke through her keel, and her stern was gradually hove around by the terrible waves until she lay broadside to their thundering sweep, her deck being careened towards the land, the sea making a clear sweep over her at every swell. . . . But Margaret and her husband refused to be saved separately, or without their child; and the crew were directed to save themselves, tthich most of them did. Still, some remained on the wreck, and were persuading the passengers to trust themselves to planks, when, at 3 p. M., a great sea struck the foremast, together with the deck and all upon it. Two of the crew saved REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY 222 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY GREELEY themselves by swimming ; the steward, with little Angelo in his arms, both dead, were washed ashore twenty minutes later; but of Margaret and her husband nothing was evermore seen. Just before setting out on this fateful voyage she had written apprehensively to a friend at home: " I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid howling waves ; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go to gether, and that the anguish may be brief." So passed away the loftiest, bravest soul that has yet irradiated the form of an American woman. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 223 REMINIS CENCES BY CONG- DON BY CHARLES T. CONGDON 1 MARGARET FULLER (not yet a marchioness, but a school-mistress) lived then and pursued her noble calling nobly in Providence. I saw her sometimes in company and heard her talk it would be hardly proper to say converse, for no body else said much when she was in the Delphic mood. The centre of a circle of rapt and devoted admirers, she improvised not merely pamphlets, but thick octavos and quartos. Such an astonishing stream of language never came from any other woman s mouth. " She brought with her," said Mr. Emerson, " anecdotes, love- stories, tragedies, oracles." She did not argue. I think she had a way of treating dissentients with a crisp contempt which was distinctly femi nine. She had no taste for dialectics, as she 1 From Congdon s Reminiscences of a Journalist, by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 224 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY CONG- DON took care to inform those who did not agree with her. She considered her own opinion to be conclusive, and a little resented any attempt to change it. Yet there w r as something eminently elevated in her demeanor, for it was that of a woman swaying all around her, not by fascinating man ner, nor yet by personal beauty, of which she had none, but through the sheer force of a royal intellect. There were peculiarities in her ways and carriage which were not agreeable a fash ion of moving her neck, and of looking at her shoulders as if she admired them and her voice was not euphonious. Mr. Emerson says that personally she repelled him upon first acquaint ance ; but I was so astonished and spellbound by her eloquence, by such discourse as I had never before heard from a woman, and have never heard from a woman since, that I sat in silence, and, if my ears had been fifty instead of two, I should have found an excellent use for them. I do not mean to say that I comprehended all that she said ; I had not read the philosophers and poets of Germany as she had ; but simply to listen was enough, without cheap understanding. Some- DON Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 225 thing like this fascination must have been exer- REMINIS- cised by Coleridge over the listeners who gath ered about him at Highgate, and went away CONG- charmed but puzzled delighted they knew not why. Was it a pleasure analogous to that of music, a suggestion too delicate for analysis? While writing for the Tribune, Miss Fuller was, for a while, a member of Mr. Horace Gree- ley s family, and I have sometimes thought that the table-talk of these peculiar persons must have been at once instructive and amusing instruct ive, I mean, in matter, and amusing in manner. Each was dogmatic and opinionative, and neither inclined to admit error or mistake. Each held personal convictions in high reverence, but Miss Fuller was especially disposed to resent any in terference with her own methods of thought and action. I believe that Mr. Greeley has himself put upon record that it was impossible for him to agree with his guest about diet, and especially about tea, of which the lady was fond. He was wont to attribute her breakfast headaches to a consumption over night of that noxious bever age; but as he tells us amusingly, she soon let him know unmistakably that no discussion of her 16 226 Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY CONG- DON tastes would be tolerated ; and he was too gen tlemanly to say a word even of the deleterious effects of tea after that. There was a habit once, which fortunately is not now so common, of comparing our Ameri can reputation with old staple fames. This poet was like Wordsworth; Mr. Emerson, I be lieve was the American Montaigne; Miss Fuller was the American Do Stael; Mr. Poe was the American Hoffmann. This prattle was espe cially silly when it was about Miss Fuller, who was no more like De Stael than she was like Bet- tina, with whom I have also heard her paralleled. Schiller wrote to Goethe of the brilliant French woman, " She insists upon explaining every thing." I am sure that Miss Margaret did not attempt to explain anything, for that would have been a condescension to which she was not prone. Schiller speaks also of De Stael s " horror of the Ideal Philosophy, which she thinks leads to the mysterious and superstitious " ; there was no likeness there, nor was the American lady like the French, " passionate and rhetorical." If I re member rightly, she was calm in her speech, though occasionally swift; but she had a talent Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller 227 for summing up concisely, as when she said of REMINIS- Goethe : " I think he had the artist s hand and CE * CES the artist s eye, but not the artist s love of struc- CONG- ture." This compactness sometimes became al most comical, as when, in The Dial, she dis missed Mr. Longfellow s latest work with only the remark : " This is the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow s thin volumes," which was hardly kind and scarcely critical. It is remarkable that this noteworthy wom an s fame has already become traditional; she is remembered as a voluble talker, but much is not said of her books. She had colloquial habits of composition, and was rather a careless writer. The work upon which she had bestowed the great est pains was lost with her in the remorseless sea; her literary contributions to the Tribune were not of permanent value. It was her task to deal mainly with the temporary and evanes cent, and to be obliged to toil too much from day to day ; but always, in American literature, she will remain a remarkable biographic phenome non, while the tragic death of this Lycidas of women, a most painful personal story of ship wreck, was intensified by so many melancholy 228 Love -Letters of Margaret Fuller REMINIS CENCES BY CONG- DON incidents that whoever, long years hence, may read them, will wonder how the gods could have been so pitiless, and why the life of new happi ness and larger intellectual achievement which was before her should so suddenly have ended upon that savage and inhospitable shore. THE END or THE y RSSTY I FASCINATING FRENCH MEMOIRS* Recollections of the Court of the Tuileries. By Mme. CARETTE, Lady of Honor to the Empress Euge nie. Translated from the French by Elizabeth Phipps Train. i2mo. Cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents. " A gossiping and very interesting account of the Second Empire. The narra tive has to do mainly with the social life of the court, and yet it offers many a glimpse of the larger world of politics. Its sprightly style, us keen insight into social character, and its bright comments on men and events, make the book very readable." Tht Critic. u The many surviving Americans who were presented at the French court during the last empire, and are still fondly cherishing the memory of things as they were, will be delighted with this little book. According to Mme. Carette, things in the days of the third Napoleon were about as they should be in France, especially at courtj and the narrative is written with a simplicity and sincerity which disarm criticism." Ntw York Herald. Memoirs of Madame de Remusat, 1802-1808. Edited by her Grandson, PAUL DE REMUSAT, Senator. i2mo. Cloth, $2.00. u These Memoirs are not only a repository of anecdotes and of portraits sketched from life by a keen-eyed, quick-witted woman ; some of the author s reflections on social and political questions are remarkable for weight and penetration." New York Sun. "Notwithstanding the enormous library of works relating to Napoleon, we know of none which cover precisely the ground of these Memoirs. Mme. de Remusat was not only lady in waiting to Josephine during the eventful years 1802-1808, but was her intimate friend and trusted confidante. Thus we get a view of the daily life of Bonaparte and his wife, and the terms on which .they lived, not elsewhere to be found." New York Mail. A Selection from the Letters of Madame de Remusat, 1804-1814. Edited by her Grandson, PAUL DE REMUSAT, Senator. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. " A most attractive volume. The letters will be read by those who have perused the Memoirs with as much pleasure as by those who in them make the writer s acquaintance for the first time." Ntw York Herald. u These letters have the character of intimate correspondence, and though they do not avoid public events, are not devoted to them. They depict the social aspect the times, and .form ents which form the author." The Indepenc do not avoid public events, are not devoted to them. They depict the social aspect of the times, and .form an excellent background against which to review the public events which form the principal subject of the previous Memoirs by the sam< tdent. O . APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. THE LIVES OF ROYALTIES. The Private Life of the Sultan. By GEORGES DORYS, son of the late Prince of Samos, a former minister of the Sultan, and formerly Governor of Crete. Translated by Arthur Hornblow. Uniform with "The Private Life of King Edward VII." Illustrated. lamo. Cloth, $1.20 net ; postage, 10 cents additional. The high position which the writer s father held at Constantinople gave the son a close insight into the personality of one of the least known of modern rulers, so far as personality is concerned. It is unnecessary to say that the author has long since left the domain of the Sultan of Turkey, and he is now a member of the Young Turk party and a resident of Paris. It is announced that he has been recently condemned to death by the Sultan on account of this book. The Private Life of King Edward VII. By a Member of the Royal Household. Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. " While the book gives a narrative that is intimate and personal in character, it does not descend to vulgar narrative. It is a book which will be found of unusual interest." Brooklyn Eagle. The Private Life of the Queen. By a Member of the Royal Household. Illustrated. J2mo. Cloth, $1.50. " A singularly attractive picture of Queen Victoria. . . . The interests and occu pations that make up the Queen s day, and the functions of many of the members of her household, are described in a manner calculated to gratify the natural desire to know what goes on behind closed doors that very few of the world s dignitaries are privi leged to pass." Boston Herald. The Sovereigns and Courts of Europe. The Home and Court Life and Characteristics of the Reigning Families. By " POLITIKOS." With many Portraits. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. "The anonymous author of these sketches of the reigning sovereigns of Europe appears to have gathered a good deal of curious information about their private lives, manners, and customs, and has certainly in several instances had access to unusual sources. The result is a volume which furnishes views of the kings and queens con cerned, far fuller and more intimate than can be found elsewhere." New York Tribune. The Life of his Royal Highness the Prince Consort. By Sir THEODORE MARTIN. In five volumes, each with Portrait. i2mo. Cloth, $10.00. " A full and impartial biography of a noble and enlightened prince. . . . Mr. Mar tin s work is not gossipy, not light, nor yet dull, guarded in its details of the domestic lives of Albert and Victoria, but sufficiently full and familiar to contribute much inter- esting information." Chicago Tribune. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. RETURN TO: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 198 Main Stacks LOAN PERIOD 1 Home Use 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS. Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. Books may be renewed by calling 642-3405. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW. FORM NO. DD6 50M 3-02 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Berkeley, California 94720-6000 U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CDtS3flfi37E