Margaret resolved, again and again, to devote herself no more to these
disappointing forms of men and women, but to the children of the muse.
'The _dramatis personæ_' she said, 'of my poems shall henceforth be
chosen from the children of immortal Muse. I fix my affections no
more on these frail forms.' But it was vain; she rushed back again to
persons, with a woman's devotion.
Her pen was a non-conductor. She always took it up with some disdain,
thinking it a kind of impiety to attempt to report a life so warm and
cordial, and wrote on the fly-leaf of her journal,--
'"_Scrivo sol per sfogar' l'interno_."'
'Since you went away,' she said, 'I have thought of many
things I might have told you, but I could not bear to be
eloquent and poetical. It is a mockery thus to play the artist
with life, and dip the brush in one's own heart's blood. One
would fain be no more artist, or philosopher, or lover, or
critic, but a soul ever rushing forth in tides of genial
life.'
* * * * *
'_26 Dec., 1842._--I have been reading the lives of Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, and of Sir Kenelm Digby. These splendid,
chivalrous, and thoughtful Englishmen are meat which my
soul loveth, even as much as my Italians. What I demand of
men,--that they could act out all their thoughts,--these have.
They are lives;--and of such I do not care if they had as many
faults as there are days in the year,--there is the energy
to redeem them. Do you not admire Lord Herbert's two poems on
life, and the conjectures concerning celestial life? I keep
reading them.'
* * * * *
'When I look at my papers, I feel as if I had never had a
thought that was worthy the attention of any but myself; and
'tis only when, on talking with people, I find I tell them
what they did not know, that my confidence at all returns.'
* * * * *
'My verses,--I am ashamed when I think there is scarce a line
of poetry in them,--all rhetorical and impassioned, as Goethe
said of De Stael. However, such as they are, they have
been overflowing drops from the somewhat bitter cup of my
existence.'
* * * * *
'How can I ever write with this impatience of detail? I shall
never be an artist; I have no patient love of execution; I
am delighted with my sketch, but if I try to finish it, I am
chilled. Never was there a great sculptor who did not love to
chip the marble.'
* * * * *
'I have talent and knowledge enough to furnish a dwelling for
friendship, but not enough to deck with golden gifts a Delphi
for the world.'
* * * * *
'Then a woman of tact and brilliancy, like me, has an undue
advantage in conversation with men. They are astonished at our
instincts. They do not see where we got our knowledge; and,
while they tramp on in their clumsy way, we wheel, and fly,
and dart hither and thither, and seize with ready eye all the
weak points, like Saladin in the desert. It is quite another
thing when we come to write, and, without suggestion from
another mind, to declare the positive amount of thought that
is in us. Because we seemed to know all, they think we can
tell all; and, finding we can tell so little, lose faith in
their first opinion of us, _which, nathless, was true_.'
And again:
'These gentlemen are surprised that I write no better, because
I talk so well. But I have served a long apprenticeship to
the one, none to the other. I shall write better, but never, I
think, so well as I talk; for then I feel inspired. The means
are pleasant; my voice excites me, my pen never. I shall not
be discouraged, nor take for final what they say, but sift
from it the truth, and use it. I feel the strength to dispense
with all illusions. I will stand steady, and rejoice in the
severest probations.'
* * * * *
'What a vulgarity there seems in this writing for the
multitude! We know not yet, have not made ourselves known to
a single soul, and shall we address those still more unknown?
Shall we multiply our connections, and thus make them still
more superficial?
'I would go into the crowd, and meet men for the day, to help
them for the day, but for that intercourse which most becomes
us. Pericles, Anaxagoras, Aspasia, Cleone, is circle wide
enough for me. I should think all the resources of my nature,
and all the tribute it could enforce from external nature,
none too much to furnish the banquet for this circle.
'But where to find fit, though few, representatives for all
we value in humanity? Where obtain those golden keys to the
secret treasure-chambers of the soul? No samples are perfect.
We must look abroad into the wide circle, to seek a little
here, and a little there, to make up our company. And is not
the "prent book" a good beacon-light to tell where we wait the
bark?--a reputation, the means of entering the Olympic game,
where Pindar may perchance be encountered?
'So it seems the mind must reveal its secret; must reproduce.
And I have no castle, and no natural circle, in which I might
live, like the wise Makaria, observing my kindred the stars,
and gradually enriching my archives. Makaria here must go
abroad, or the stars would hide their light, and the archive
remain a blank.
'For all the tides of life that flow within me, I am dumb and
ineffectual, when it comes to casting my thought into a form.
No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the
pleasure of creation would make it possible for me to write.
What shall I do, dear friend? I want force to be either a
genius or a character. One should be either private or public.
I love best to be a woman; but womanhood is at present too
straitly-bounded to give me scope. At hours, I live truly as
a woman; at others, I should stifle; as, on the other hand, I
should palsy, when I would play the artist.'