* * * * *
I became acquainted with Margaret in 1835. Perhaps it was a year
earlier that Henry Hedge, who had long been her friend, told me of
her genius and studies, and loaned me her manuscript translation of
Goethe's Tasso. I was afterwards still more interested in her, by the
warm praises of Harriet Martineau, who had become acquainted with her
at Cambridge, and who, finding Margaret's fancy for seeing me, took a
generous interest in bringing us together. I remember, during a week
in the winter of 1835-6, in which Miss Martineau was my guest, she
returned again and again to the topic of Margaret's excelling genius
and conversation, and enjoined it on me to seek her acquaintance:
which I willingly promised. I am not sure that it was not in Miss
Martineau's company, a little earlier, that I first saw her. And I
find a memorandum, in her own journal, of a visit, made by my brother
Charles and myself, to Miss Martineau, at Mrs. Farrar's. It was not,
however, till the next July, after a little diplomatizing in billets
by the ladies, that her first visit to our house was arranged, and
she came to spend a fortnight with my wife. I still remember the first
half-hour of Margaret's conversation. She was then 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; her complexion was
fair, with strong fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and
becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-possession. For the rest, her
appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness,--a trick
of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,--the nasal tone of
her voice,--all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never
get far. It is to be said, that Margaret made a disagreeable first
impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her
best friends, to such an extreme that they did not 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 of others,
and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation
for satire, in addition 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 history;
and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to
everybody's foibles. I remember that she made me laugh more than I
liked; 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 crackling 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.
She was curious to know my opinions and experiences. Of course, it was
impossible long to hold out against such urgent assault. She had
an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give an
absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain at
first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy
and superabundant life.
This rumor 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. And it will be
seen, in the sequel, that her mind presently disclosed many moods and
powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each, that
quite effaced this first impression, in the opulence of the following
pictures.
Let us hear what she has herself to say on the subject of
tea-table-talk, in a letter to a young lady, to whom she was already
much attached:--
I am repelled by your account of your party. It is beneath you
to amuse yourself with active satire, with what is vulgarly
called quizzing. When such a person as ---- chooses to throw
himself in your way, I sympathize with your keen perception of
his ridiculous points. But to laugh a whole evening at vulgar
nondescripts,--is that an employment for one who was born
passionately to love, to admire, to sustain truth? This would
be much more excusable in a chameleon like me. Yet, whatever
may be the vulgar view of my character, I can truly say, I
know not the hour in which I ever looked for the ridiculous.
It has always been forced upon me, and is the accident of my
existence. I would not want the sense of it when it comes, for
that would show an obtuseness of mental organization; but, on
peril of my soul, I would not move an eyelash to look for it.'
When she came to Concord, she was already rich in friends, rich in
experiences, rich in culture. 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 Molière, and
Rousseau, and any quantity of French letters, memoirs, and novels, and
was a dear student of Dante and Petrarca, and knew German books more
cordially than any other person, she was little read in Shakspeare;
and I believe I had the pleasure of making her acquainted with
Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Herbert, Chapman, 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 riot 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 in languages. Her father, whom
she had recently lost had been proud of her, and petted her. She had
drawn at Cambridge, 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 wonder 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.
These histories are rapid, so that she had already beheld many
times the youth, meridian, and old age of passion. She had, besides,
selected, from so many, a few eminent companions, and already felt
that she was not likely to see anything more beautiful than her
beauties, anything more powerful and generous than her youths. She had
found out her own secret by early comparison, and knew what power to
draw confidence, what necessity to lead in every circle, belonged 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.
Of the friends who surrounded her, at that period, it is neither easy
to speak, nor not to speak. A life of Margaret is impossible without
them, she mixed herself so inextricably with her company; and when
this little book was first projected, it was proposed to entitle it
"Margaret and her Friends," the subject persisting to offer itself in
the plural number. But, on trial, that form proved impossible, and it
only remained that the narrative, like a Greek tragedy, should suppose
the chorus always on the stage, sympathizing and sympathized with by
the queen of the scene.
Yet I remember these persons as a fair, commanding troop, every one
of them adorned by some splendor of beauty, of grace, of talent, or
of character, and comprising in their band persons who have since
disclosed sterling worth and elevated aims in the conduct of life.
Three beautiful women,--either of whom would have been the fairest
ornament of Papanti's Assemblies, but for the presence of the
other,--were her friends. One of these early became, and long
remained, nearly the central figure in Margaret's brilliant circle,
attracting to herself, by her grace and her singular natural
eloquence, every feeling of affection, hope, and pride.
Two others I recall, whose rich and cultivated voices in song
were,--one a little earlier, the other a little later,--the joy of
every house into which they came; and, indeed, Margaret's taste for
music was amply gratified in the taste and science which several
persons among her intimate friends possessed. She was successively
intimate with two sisters, whose taste for music had been opened, by a
fine and severe culture, to the knowledge and to the expression of all
the wealth of the German masters.
I remember another, whom every muse inspired, skilful alike with the
pencil and the pen, and by whom both were almost contemned for their
inadequateness, in the height and scope of her aims.
'With her,' said Margaret, 'I can talk of anything. She is
like me. She is able to look facts in the face. We enjoy the
clearest, widest, most direct communication. She may be no
happier than ----, but she will know her own mind too clearly
to make any great mistake in conduct, and will learn a deep
meaning from her days.'
'It is not in the way of tenderness that I love ----. I prize
her always; and this is all the love some natures ever know.
And I also feel that I may always expect she will be with me.
I delight to picture to myself certain persons translated,
illuminated. There are a few in whom I see occasionally the
future being piercing, promising,--whom I can strip of all
that masks their temporary relations, and elevate to their
natural position. Sometimes I have not known these persons
intimately,--oftener I have; for it is only in the deepest
hours that this light is likely to break out. But some of
those I have best befriended I cannot thus portray, and very
few men I can. It does not depend at all on the beauty of
their forms, at present; it is in the eye and the smile, that
the hope shines through. I can see exactly how ---- will look:
not like this angel in the paper; she will not bring flowers,
but a living coal, to the lips of the singer; her eyes will
not burn as now with smothered fires, they will be ever
deeper, and glow more intensely; her cheek will be smooth, but
marble pale; her gestures nobly free, but few.'
Another was a lady who was devoted to landscape-painting, and who
enjoyed the distinction of being the only pupil of Allston, and who,
in her alliance with Margaret, gave as much honor as she received, by
the security of her spirit, and by the heroism of her devotion to her
friend. Her friends called her "the perpetual peace-offering," and
Margaret says of her,--'She is here, and her neighborhood casts the
mildness and purity too of the moonbeam on the else parti-colored
scene.'
There was another lady, more late and reluctantly entering Margaret's
circle, with a mind as high, and more mathematically exact, drawn by
taste to Greek, as Margaret to Italian genius, tempted to do homage
to Margaret's flowing expressive energy, but still more inclined and
secured to her side by the good sense and the heroism which Margaret
disclosed, perhaps not a little by the sufferings which she addressed
herself to alleviate, as long as Margaret lived. Margaret had a
courage in her address which it was not easy to resist. She called
all her friends by their Christian names. In their early intercourse
I suppose this lady's billets were more punctiliously worded
than Margaret liked; so she subscribed herself, in reply, 'Your
affectionate "Miss Fuller."' When the difficulties were at length
surmounted, and the conditions ascertained on which two admirable
persons could live together, the best understanding grew up, and
subsisted during her life. In her journal is a note:--
'Passed the morning in Sleepy Hollow, with ----. What fine,
just distinctions she made! Worlds grew clearer as we
talked. I grieve to see her fine frame subject to such rude
discipline. But she truly said, "I am not a failed experiment;
for, in the bad hours, I do not forget what I thought in the
better."'
None interested her more at that time, and for many years after, than
a youth with whom she had been acquainted in Cambridge before he left
the University, and the unfolding of whose powers she had watched with
the warmest sympathy. He was an amateur, and, but for the exactions
not to be resisted of an _American_, that is to say, of a commercial,
career,--his acceptance of which she never ceased to regard as an
apostasy,--himself a high artist. He was her companion, and, though
much younger, her guide in the study of art. With him she examined,
leaf by leaf, the designs of Raphael, of Michel Angelo, of Da Vinci,
of Guercino, the architecture of the Greeks, the books of Palladio,
the Ruins, and Prisons of Piranesi; and long kept up a profuse
correspondence on books and studies in which they had a mutual
interest. And yet, as happened so often, these literary sympathies,
though sincere, were only veils and occasions to beguile the time, so
profound was her interest in the character and fortunes of her friend.
There was another youth, whom she found later, of invalid habit, which
had infected in some degree the tone of his mind, but of a delicate
and pervasive insight, and the highest appreciation for genius in
letters, arts, and life. Margaret describes 'his complexion as clear
in its pallor, and his eye steady.' His turn of mind, and his habits
of life, had almost a monastic turn,--a jealousy of the common
tendencies of literary men either to display or to philosophy.
Margaret was struck with the singular fineness of his perceptions,
and the pious tendency of his thoughts, and enjoyed with him his proud
reception, not as from above, but almost on equal ground, of Homer and
Æschylus, of Dante and Petrarch, of Montaigne, of Calderon, of Goethe.
Margaret wished, also, to defend his privacy from the dangerous
solicitations to premature authorship:--
'His mind should be approached close by one who needs its
fragrance. All with him leads rather to glimpses and insights,
than to broad, comprehensive views. Till he needs the public,
the public does not need him. The lonely lamp, the niche, the
dark cathedral grove, befit him best. Let him shroud himself
in the symbols of his native ritual, till he can issue forth
on the wings of song.'
She was at this time, too, much drawn also to a man of poetic
sensibility, and of much reading,--which he took the greatest pains to
conceal,--studious of the art of poetry, but still more a poet in his
conversation than in his poems,--who attracted Margaret by the flowing
humor with which he filled the present hour, and the prodigality with
which he forgot all the past.
'Unequal and uncertain,' she says, 'but in his good moods,
of the best for a companion, absolutely abandoned to the
revelations of the moment, without distrust or check of any
kind, unlimited and delicate, abundant in thought, and free of
motion, he enriches life, and fills the hour.'
'I wish I could retain ----'s talk last night. It was
wonderful; it was about all the past experiences frozen down
in the soul, and the impossibility of being penetrated by
anything. "Had I met you," said he, "when I was young!--but
now nothing can penetrate." Absurd as was what he said, on
one side, it was the finest poetic-inspiration on the other,
painting the cruel process of life, except where genius
continually burns over the stubble fields.
"Life," he said, "is continually eating us up." He said, "Mr.
E. is quite wrong about books. He wants them all good; now I
want many bad. Literature is not merely a collection of gems,
but a great system of interpretation." He railed at me as
artificial. "It don't strike me when you are alone with me,"
he says; "but it does when others are present. You don't
follow out the fancy of the moment; you converse; you have
treasured thoughts to tell; you are disciplined,--artificial."
I pleaded guilty, and observed that I supposed that it must
be so with one of any continuity of thought, or earnestness
of character. "As to that," says he, "I shall not like you the
better for your excellence. I don't know what is the matter.
I feel strongly attracted towards you; but there is a drawback
in my mind,--I don't know exactly what. You will always be
wanting to grow forward; now I like to grow backward, too. You
are too ideal. Ideal people anticipate their lives; and they
make themselves and everybody around them restless, by always
being beforehand with themselves."
'I listened attentively; for what he said was excellent.
Following up the humor of the moment, he arrests admirable
thoughts on the wing. But I cannot but see, that what they say
of my or other obscure lives is true of every prophetic, of
every tragic character. And then I like to have them make me
look on that side, and reverence the lovely forms of nature,
and the shifting moods, and the clinging instincts. But I must
not let them disturb me. There is an only guide, the voice in
the heart, that asks, "Was thy wish sincere? If so, thou canst
not stray from nature, nor be so perverted but she will make
thee true again." I must take my own path, and learn from
them all, without being paralyzed for the day. We need great
energy, faith, and self-reliance to endure to-day. My age
may not be the best, my position may be bad, my character
ill-formed; but Thou, oh Spirit! hast no regard to aught but
the seeking heart; and, if I try to walk upright, wilt guide
me. What despair must he feel, who, after a whole life passed
in trying to build up himself, resolves that it would have
been far better if he had kept still as the clod of the
valley, or yielded easily as the leaf to every breeze! A path
has been appointed me. I have walked in it as steadily as I
could. I am what I am; that which I am not, teach me in the
others. I will bear the pain of imperfection, but not of
doubt. E. must not shake me in my worldliness, nor ---- in the
fine motion that has given me what I have of life, nor this
child of genius make me lay aside the armor, without which I
had lain bleeding on the field long since; but, if they can
keep closer to nature, and learn to interpret her as souls,
also, let me learn from them what I have not.'
And, in connection with this conversation, she has copied the
following lines which this gentleman addressed to her:--
"TO MARGARET.
I mark beneath thy life the virtue shine
That deep within the star's eye opes its day;
I clutch the gorgeous thoughts thou throw'st away
From the profound unfathomable mine,
And with them this mean common hour do twine,
As glassy waters on 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 meet 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 humble love that clasps humanity."
I have thus vaguely designated, among the numerous group of her
friends, only those who were much in her company, in the early years
of my acquaintance with her.
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, inspiring companion and
correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New
England, seemed, at that moment, related to her, and 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 favorable 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 parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences,
and to whom every question had been finally referred.
Persons were her game, specially, if marked by fortune, or character,
or success;--to such was she sent. She addressed them with a
hardihood,--almost a haughty assurance,--queen-like. Indeed, 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 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 were not less struck, on reflection, at the suddenness of the
friendship which had established, 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 common-place in her presence.
She was perfectly true to this confidence. She never confounded
relations, but kept a hundred fine threads in her hand, without
crossing or entangling any. An entire intimacy, which seemed to make
both sharers of the whole horizon of each others' 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 at her new powers.
Of the conversations above alluded to, the substance was whatever was
suggested by her passionate wish for equal companions, to the end
of making life altogether noble. With the firmest tact she led
the discourse into the midst of their daily living and working,
recognizing the good-will and sincerity which each man has in his
aims, and treating so playfully and intellectually all the points,
that one seemed to see his life _en beau_, and was flattered by
beholding what he had found so tedious in its workday weeds, shining
in glorious costume. Each of his friends passed before him in the
new light; hope seemed to spring under his feet, and life was worth
living. The auditor jumped for joy, and thirsted for unlimited
draughts. What! is this the dame, who, I heard, was sneering and
critical? this the blue-stocking, of whom I stood in terror and
dislike? this wondrous woman, full of counsel, full of tenderness,
before whom every mean thing is ashamed, and hides itself; this new
Corinne, more variously gifted, wise, sportive, eloquent, who seems to
have learned all languages, Heaven knows when or how,--I should think
she was born to them,--magnificent, prophetic, reading my life at her
will, and puzzling me with riddles like this, 'Yours is an example of
a destiny springing from character:' and, again, 'I see your destiny
hovering before you, but it always escapes from you.'
The test of this eloquence was its range. It told on children, and on
old people; on men of the world, and on sainted maids. She could hold
them all by her honeyed tongue. A lady of the best eminence, whom
Margaret occasionally visited, in one of our cities of spindles,
speaking one day of her neighbors, said, "I stand in a certain awe of
the moneyed men, the manufacturers, and so on, knowing that they will
have small interest in Plato, or in Biot; but I saw them approach
Margaret, with perfect security, for she could give them bread that
they could eat." Some persons are thrown off their balance when in
society; others are thrown on to balance; the excitement of company,
and the observation of other characters, correct their biases.
Margaret always appeared to unexpected advantage in conversation
with a large circle. She had more sanity than any other; whilst, in
private, her vision was often through colored lenses.
Her talents were so various, and her conversation so rich and
entertaining, that one might talk with her many times, by the parlor
fire, before he discovered the strength which served as foundation 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, and make herself useful, and, if need be,
formidable.
The old Anaximenes, seeking, I suppose, for a source sufficiently
diffusive, said, that Mind must be _in the air_, which, when all men
breathed, they were filled with one intelligence. And when men have
larger measures of reason, as Æsop, Cervantes, Franklin, Scott, they
gain in universality, or are no longer confined to a few associates,
but are good company for all persons,--philosophers, women, men of
fashion, tradesmen, and servants. Indeed, an older philosopher
than Anaximenes, namely, language itself, had taught to distinguish
superior or purer sense as _common_ sense.
Margaret had, with certain limitations, or, must we say, _strictures_,
these larger lungs, inhaling this universal element, and could speak
to Jew and Greek, free and bond, to each in his own tongue. The
Concord stage-coachman distinguished her by his respect, and the
chambermaid was pretty sure to confide to her, on the second day, her
homely romance.
I regret that it is not in my power to give any true report of
Margaret's conversation. She soon became an established friend and
frequent inmate of our house, and continued, thenceforward, 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 suspected 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 conversation was
there held, whose details, if they could be preserved, would justify
all encomiums. They interested me in every manner;--talent, memory,
wit, stern introspection, poetic play, religion, the finest personal
feeling, the aspects of the future, each followed each in full
activity, and left me, I remember, enriched and sometimes 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 problems of the day, these two attracted
her chiefly, Mythology and Demonology; then, also, French Socialism,
especially as it concerned woman; the whole prolific family of
reforms, and, of course, the genius and career of each remarkable
person.
She had other friends, in this town, beside those in my house. A lady,
already alluded to, lived in the village, who had known her longer
than I, and whose prejudices Margaret had resolutely fought down,
until she converted her into the firmest and most efficient of
friends. In 1842, Nathaniel Hawthorne, already then known to the world
by his Twice-Told Tales, came to live in Concord, in the "Old Manse,"
with his wife, who was herself an artist. With these welcomed persons
Margaret formed a strict and happy acquaintance. She liked their
old house, and the taste which had filled it with new articles of
beautiful form, yet harmonized with the antique furniture left by the
former proprietors. She liked, too, the pleasing walks, and rides, and
boatings, which that neighborhood commanded.
In 1842, William Ellery Channing, whose wife was her sister, built
a house in Concord, and this circumstance made a new tie and another
home for Margaret.