'---- has infinite grace and shading in her character: a
springing and tender fancy, a Madonna depth of meditative
softness, and a purity which has been unstained, and keeps her
dignified even in the most unfavorable circumstances. She was
born for the love and ornament of life. I can scarcely
forbear weeping sometimes, when I look on her, and think what
happiness and beauty she might have conferred. She is as yet
all unconscious of herself, and she rather dreads being with
me, because I make her too conscious. She was on the point,
at ----, of telling me all she knew of herself; but I saw
she dreaded, while she wished, that I should give a local
habitation and a name to what lay undefined, floating before
her, the phantom of her destiny; or rather lead her to give
it, for she always approaches a tragical clearness when
talking with me.'
* * * * *
'---- has been to see us. But it serves not to know such
a person, who perpetually defaces the high by such strange
mingling with the low. It certainly is not pleasant to hear of
God and Miss Biddeford in a breath. To me, this hasty attempt
at skimming from the deeps of theosophy is as unpleasant as
the rude vanity of reformers. Dear Beauty! where, where, amid
these morasses and pine barrens, shall we make thee a temple?
where find a Greek to guard it,--clear-eyed, deep-thoughted,
and delicate enough to appreciate the relations and gradations
which nature always observes?'
An acute and illuminated woman, who, in this age of indifferentism,
holds on with both hands to the creed of the Pilgrims, writes of
Margaret, whom she saw but once:--"She looked very sensible, but as
if contending with ill health and duties. She lay, all the day
and evening, on the sofa, and catechized me, who told my literal
traditions, like any old bobbin-woman."
I add the testimony of a man of letters, and most competent observer,
who had, for a long time, opportunities of daily intercourse with
her:--
"When I knew Margaret, I was so young, and perhaps too much disposed
to meet people on my own ground, that I may not be able to do justice
to her. Her nature was so large and receptive, so sympathetic
with youth and genius, so aspiring, and withal so womanly in her
understanding, that she made her companion think more of himself, and
of a common life, than of herself. She was a companion as few
others, if indeed any one, have been. Her heart was underneath her
intellectualness, her mind was reverent, her spirit devout; a thinker
without dryness; a scholar without pedantry. She could appreciate the
finest thoughts, and knew the rich soil and large fields of beauty
that made the little vase of otto. With her unusual wisdom and
religious spirit, she seemed like the priestess of the youth, opening
to him the fields of nature; but she was more than a priestess, a
companion also. As I recall her image, I think she may have been too
intellectual, and too conscious of intellectual relation, so that she
was not sufficiently self-centred on her own personality; and hence
something of a duality: but I may not be correct in this impression."