"Friends she must have, but in no one could find
A tally fitted to so large a mind."
It is certain that Margaret, though unattractive in person, and
assuming in manners, so that the girls complained that "she put upon
them," or, with her burly masculine existence, quite reduced them to
satellites, yet inspired an enthusiastic attachment. I hear from one
witness, as early as 1829, that "all the girls raved about Margaret
Fuller," and the same powerful magnetism wrought, as she went on, from
year to year, on all ingenuous natures. The loveliest and the highest
endowed women were eager to lay their beauty, their grace, the
hospitalities of sumptuous homes, and their costly gifts, at her feet.
When I expressed, one day, many years afterwards, to a lady who
knew her well, some surprise at the homage paid her by men in
Italy,--offers of marriage having there been made her by distinguished
parties,--she replied: "There is nothing extraordinary in it. Had she
been a man, any one of those fine girls of sixteen, who surrounded
her here, would have married her: they were all in love with her, she
understood them so well." She had seen many persons, and had entire
confidence in her own discrimination of characters. She saw and
foresaw all in the first interview. She had certainly made her own
selections with great precision, and had not been disappointed. When
pressed for a reason, she replied, in one instance,
'I have no good reason to give for what I think of ----. It
is a dæmoniacal intimation. Everybody at ---- praised her, but
their account of what she said gave me the same unfavorable
feeling. This is the first instance in which I have not had
faith, if you liked a person. Perhaps I am wrong now; perhaps,
if I saw her, a look would give me a needed clue to her
character, and I should change my feeling. Yet I have never
been mistaken in these intimations, as far as I recollect. I
hope I am now.'
I am to add, that she gave herself to her friendships with an
entireness not possible to any but a woman, with a depth possible
to few women. Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with
women, were not unmingled with passion, and had passages of romantic
sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but
could not trust my profane pen to report. There were, also, the ebbs
and recoils from the other party,--the mortal unequal to converse
with an immortal,--ingratitude, which was more truly incapacity, the
collapse of overstrained affections and powers. At all events, it is
clear that Margaret, later, grew more strict, and values herself with
her friends on having the tie now "redeemed from all search after
Eros." So much, however, of intellectual aim and activity mixed with
her alliances, as to breathe a certain dignity and myrrh through them
all. She and her friends are fellow-students with noblest moral aims.
She is there for help and for counsel. 'Be to the best thou knowest
ever true!' is her language to one. And that was the effect of her
presence. Whoever conversed with her felt challenged by the strongest
personal influence to a bold and generous life. To one she wrote,--
'Could a word from me avail you, I would say, that I have firm
faith that nature cannot be false to her child, who has shown
such an unalterable faith in her piety towards her.'
* * * * *
'These tones of my dear ----'s lyre are of the noblest. Will
they sound purely through her experiences? Will the variations
be faithful to the theme? Not always do those who most
devoutly long for the Infinite, know best how to modulate
their finite into a fair passage of the eternal Harmony.
'How many years was it the cry of my spirit,--
"Give, give, ye mighty Gods!
Why do ye thus hold back?"--
and, I suppose, all noble young persons think for the time
that they would have been more generous than the Olympians.
But when we have learned the high lesson _to deserve_,--that
boon of manhood,--we see they esteemed us too much, to give
what we had not earned.'
The following passages from her journal and her letters are
sufficiently descriptive, each in its way, of her strong affections.
'At Mr. G.'s we looked over prints, the whole evening, in
peace. Nothing fixed my attention so much as a large engraving
of Madame Recamier in her boudoir. I have so often thought
over the intimacy between her and Madame De Stael.
'It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and
a man with a man. I like to be sure of it, for it is the same
love which angels feel, where--
'"Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib."
'It is regulated by the same law as that of love between
persons of different sexes; only it is purely intellectual and
spiritual. Its law is the desire of the spirit to realize a
whole, which makes it seek in another being what it finds not
in itself. Thus the beautiful seek the strong, and the strong
the beautiful; the mute seeks the eloquent, &c.; the butterfly
settles always on the dark flower. Why did Socrates love
Alcibiades? Why did Körner love Schneider? How natural is the
love of Wallenstein for Max; that of De Stael for De Recamier;
mine for ----. I loved ----, for a time, with as much passion
as I was then strong enough to feel. Her face was always
gleaming before me; her voice was always echoing in my ear;
all poetic thoughts clustered round the dear image. This love
was a key which unlocked for me many a treasure which I still
possess; it was the carbuncle which cast light into many of
the darkest caverns of human nature. She loved me, too, though
not so much, because her nature was "less high, less grave,
less large, less deep." But she loved more tenderly, less
passionately. She loved me, for I well remember her suffering
when she first could feel my faults, and knew one part of the
exquisite veil rent away; how she wished to stay apart, and
weep the whole day.
* * * * *
'I do not love her now with passion, but I still feel towards
her as I can to no other woman. I thought of all this as I
looked at Madame Recamier.'
* * * * *