"Miss Fuller's fifth conversation was pretty much a monologue
of her own. The company collected proved much larger than any
of us had anticipated: a chosen company,--several persons from
homes out of town, at considerable inconvenience; and, in one
or two instances, fresh from extreme experiences of joy and
grief,--which Margaret felt a very grateful tribute to her.
She knew no one came for experiment, but all in earnest love
and trust, and was moved by it quite to the heart, which threw
an indescribable charm of softness over her brilliancy. It is
sometimes said, that women never are so lovely and enchanting
in the company of their own sex, merely, but it requires the
other to draw them out. Certain it is that Margaret never
appears, when I see her, either so brilliant and deep in
thought, or so desirous to please, or so modest, or so
heart-touching, as in this very party. Well, she began to say
how gratifying it was to her to see so many come, because all
knew why they came,--that it was to learn from each other and
ourselves the highest ends of life, where there could be no
excitements and gratifications of personal ambition, &c. She
spoke of herself, and said she felt she had undergone changes
in her own mind since the last winter, as doubtless we all
felt we had done; that she was conscious of looking at all
things less objectively,--more from the law with which she
identified herself. This, she stated, was the natural
progress of our individual being, when we did not hinder
its development, to advance from objects to law, from the
circumference of being, where we found ourselves at our birth,
to the centre.
"This advance was enacted poesy. We could not, in our
individual lives, amid the disturbing influences of other
wills, which had as much right to their own action as we to
ours, enact poetry entirely; the discordant, the inferior, the
prose, would intrude, but we should always keep in mind that
poetry of life was not something aside,--a path that might or
might not be trod,--it was the only path of the true soul;
and prose you may call the deviation. We might not always
be poetic in life, but we might and should be poetic in our
thought and intention. The fine arts were one compensation for
the necessary prose of life. The man who could not write his
thought of beauty in his life,--the materials of whose life
would not work up into poetry,--wrote it in stone, drew it on
canvas, breathed it in music, or built it in lofty rhyme. In
this statement, however, she guarded her meaning, and said
that to seek beauty was to miss it often. We should only seek
to live as harmoniously with the great laws as our social and
other duties permitted, and solace ourselves with poetry and
the fine arts."
I find a further record by the same friendly scribe, which seems a
second and enlarged account of the introductory conversation, or else
a sketch of the course of thought which ran through several meetings,
and which very naturally repeated occasionally the same thoughts. I
give it as I find it:--
"She then recurred to the last year's conversations; and,
first, the Grecian mythologies, which she looked at as
symbolical of a deeper intellectual and æsthetic life than
we were wont to esteem it, when looking at it from a narrow
religious point of view. We had merely skimmed along the
deeper study. She spoke of the conversations on the different
part played by Inspiration and Will in the works of man, and
stated the different views of inspiration,--how some had felt
it was merely perception; others apprehended it as influx upon
the soul from the soul-side of its being. Then she spoke of
the conversation upon poesy as the ground of all the fine
arts, and also of the true art of life; it being not merely
truth, not merely good, but the beauty which integrates
both. On this poesy, she dwelt long, aiming to show how
life,--perfect life,--could be the only perfect manifestation
of it. Then she spoke of the individual as surrounded,
however, by _prose_,--so we may here call the manifestation of
the temporary, in opposition to the eternal, always trenching
on it, and circumscribing and darkening. She spoke of the
acceptance of this limitation, but it should be called by the
right name, and always measured; and we should inwardly cling
to the truth that poesy was the natural life of the soul; and
never yield inwardly to the common notion that poesy was a
luxury, out of the common track; but maintain in word and
life that prose carried the soul out of its track; and then,
perhaps, it would not injure us to walk in these by-paths,
when forced thither. She admitted that prose was the necessary
human condition, and quickened our life indirectly by
necessitating a conscious demand on the source of life.
In reply to a remark I made, she very strongly stated the
difference between a poetic and a _dilettante_ life, and
sympathized with the sensible people who were tired of hearing
all the young ladies of Boston sighing like furnace after
being beautiful. Beauty was something very different from
prettiness, and a microscopic vision missed the grand whole.
The fine arts were our compensation for not being able to live
out our poesy, amid the conflicting and disturbing forces of
this moral world in which we are. In sculpture, the heights to
which our being comes are represented; and its nature is such
as to allow us to leave out all that vulgarizes,--all that
bridges over to the actual from the ideal. She dwelt long upon
sculpture, which seems her favorite art. That was grand, when
a man first thought to engrave his idea of man upon a stone,
the most unyielding and material of materials,--the backbone
of this phenomenal earth,--and, when he did not succeed,
that he persevered; and so, at last, by repeated efforts, the
Apollo came to be.
"But, no; music she thought the greatest of arts,--expressing
what was most interior,--what was too fine to be put into any
material grosser than air; conveying from soul to soul the
most secret motions of feeling and thought. This was the only
fine art which might be thought to be nourishing now. The
others had had their day. This was advancing upon a higher
intellectual ground.
"Of painting she spoke, but not so well. She seemed to think
painting worked more by illusion than sculpture. It involved
more prose, from its representing more objects. She said
nothing adequate about _color_.
"She dwelt upon the histrionic art as the most complete, its
organ being the most flexible and powerful.
"She then spoke of life, as the art, of which these all were
beautiful symbols; and said, in recurring to her opinions
expressed last winter, of Dante and Wordsworth, that she had
taken another view, deeper, and more in accordance with
some others which were then expressed. She acknowledged
that Wordsworth had done more to make all men poetical, than
perhaps any other; that he was the poet of reflection; that
where he failed to poetize his subject, his simple faith
intimated to the reader a poetry that he did not find in the
book. She admitted that Dante's Narrative was instinct with
the poetry concentrated often in single words. She uttered her
old heresies about Milton, however, unmodified.
"I do not remember the transition to modern poetry and Milnes;
but she read (very badly indeed) the Legendary Tale.
"We then had three conversations upon Sculpture, one of which
was taken up very much in historical accounts of the sculpture
of the ancients, in which color was added to form, and which
seemed to prove that they were not, after all, sufficiently
intellectual to be operated on by form exclusively. The
question, of course, arose whether there was a modern
sculpture, and why not. This led us to speak of the Greek
sculpture as growing naturally out of their life and religion,
and how alien it was to our life and to our religion. The
Swiss lion, carved by Thorwaldsen out of the side of a
mountain rock, was described as a natural growth. Those who
had seen it described it; and Mrs. ---- spoke of it. She was
also led to the story of her acquaintance with Thorwaldsen,
and drew tears from many eyes with her natural eloquence.
"Mrs. C. asked, if sculpture could express as well as painting
the idea of immortality.
"Margaret thought the Greek art expressed immortality as much
as Christian art, but did not throw it into the future, by
preëminence. They expressed it in the present, by casting out
of the mortal body every expression of infirmity and decay.
The idealization of the human form makes a God. The fact that
man can conceive and express this perfection of being, is as
good a witness to immortality, as the look of aspiration in
the countenance of a Magdalen.
"It is quite beyond the power of my memory to recall all
the bright utterances of Margaret, in these conversations on
Sculpture. It was a favorite subject with her. Then came two
or three conversations on Painting, in which it seemed to be
conceded that color expressed passion, whilst sculpture more
severely expressed thought: yet painting did not exclude the
expression of thought, or sculpture that of feeling,--witness
Niobe,--but it must be an universal feeling, like the maternal
sentiment."
* * * * *
"_March 22, 1841_.--The question of the day was, What is life?
"Let us define, each in turn, our idea of living. Margaret did
not believe we had, any of us, a distinct idea of life.
"A.S. thought so great a question ought to be given for a
written definition. 'No,' said Margaret, 'that is of no use.
When we go away to think of anything, we never do think. We
all talk of life. We all have some thought now. Let us tell
it. C----, what is life?'
"C---- replied,--'It is to laugh, or cry, according to our
organization.'
"'Good,' said Margaret, 'but not grave enough. Come, what is
life? I know what I think; I want you to find out what you
think.'
"Miss P. replied,--'Life is division from one's principle of
life in order to a conscious reörganization. We are cut up by
time and circumstance, in order to feel our reproduction of
the eternal law.'
"Mrs. E.,--'We live by the will of God, and the object of life
is to submit,' and went on into Calvinism.
"Then came up all the antagonisms of Fate and Freedom.
"Mrs. H. said,--'God created us in order to have a perfect
sympathy from us as free beings.'
"Mrs. A.B. said she thought the object of life was to attain
absolute freedom. At this Margaret immediately and visibly
kindled.
"C.S. said,--'God creates from the fulness of life, and
cannot but create; he created us to overflow, without being
exhausted, because what he created, necessitated new creation.
It is not to make us happy, but creation is his happiness and
ours.'
"Margaret was then pressed to say what she considered life to
be.
"Her answer was so full, clear, and concise, at once, that
it cannot but be marred by being drawn through the scattering
medium of my memory. But here are some fragments of her
satisfying statement.
"She began with God as Spirit, Life, so full as to create and
love eternally, yet capable of pause. Love and creativeness
are dynamic forces, out of which we, individually, as
creatures, go forth bearing his image, that is, having within
our being the same dynamic forces, by which we also add
constantly to the total sum of existence, and shaking off
ignorance, and its effects, and by becoming more ourselves,
i.e., more divine;--destroying sin in its principle, we attain
to absolute freedom, we return to God, conscious like himself,
and, as his friends, giving, as well as receiving, felicity
forevermore. In short, we become gods, and able to give the
life which we now feel ourselves able only to receive.
"On Saturday morning, Mrs. L.E. and Mrs. E.H. were present,
and begged Margaret to repeat the statement concerning life,
with which she closed the last conversation. Margaret said she
had forgotten every word she said. She must have been inspired
by a good genius, to have so satisfied everybody.--but the
good genius had left her. She would try, however, to say what
she thought, and trusted it would resemble what she had said
already. She then went into the matter, and, true enough, she
did not use a single word she used before."
The fame of these conversations spread wide through all families and
social circles of the ladies attending, and the golden report they
gave, led to a proposal, that Margaret should undertake an evening
class, of four or five lessons, to which gentlemen should also be
admitted. This was put in effect, in the course of the winter, and
I had myself the pleasure of assisting at one--the second--of these
soirées. The subject was Mythology, and several gentlemen took part
in it. Margaret spoke well,--she could not otherwise,--but I remember
that she seemed encumbered, or interrupted, by the headiness or
incapacity of the men, whom she had not had the advantage of training,
and who fancied, no doubt, that, on such a question, they, too, must
assert and dogmatize.
But, how well or ill they fared, may still be known; since the same
true hand which reported for the Ladies' Class, drew up, at the time,
the following note of the Evenings of Mythology. My distance from
town, and engagements, prevented me from attending again. I was told
that on the preceding and following evenings the success was more
decisive.
"Margaret's plan, in these conversations, was a very noble
one, and, had it been seconded, as she expected, they would
have been splendid. She thought, that, by admitting gentlemen,
who had access, by their classical education, to the whole
historical part of the mythology, her own comparative
deficiency, as she felt it, in this part of learning, would be
made up; and that taking her stand on the works of art, which
were the final development in Greece of these multifarious
fables, the whole subject might be swept from zenith to
nadir. But all that depended on others entirely failed. Mr. W.
contributed some isolated facts,--told the etymology of names,
and cited a few fables not so commonly known as most; but,
even in the point of erudition, which Margaret did not
profess, on the subject, she proved the best informed of the
party, while no one brought an idea, except herself.
"Her general idea was, that, upon the Earth-worship and
Sabæanism of earlier ages, the Grecian genius acted to
humanize and idealize, but, still, with some regard to the
original principle. What was a seed, or a root, merely, in the
Egyptian mind, became a flower in Greece,--Isis, and Osiris,
for instance, are reproduced in Ceres and Proserpine, with
some loss of generality, but with great gain of beauty;
Hermes, in Mercury, with only more grace of form, though with
great loss of grandeur; but the loss of grandeur was also an
advance in philosophy, in this instance, the brain in the hand
being the natural consequence of the application of Idea to
practice,--the Hermes of the Egyptians.
"I do not feel that the class, by their apprehension of
Margaret, do any justice to the scope and depth of her views.
They come,--myself among the number,--I confess,--to be
entertained; but she has a higher purpose. She, amid all her
infirmities, studies and thinks with the seriousness of one
upon oath, and there has not been a single conversation this
winter, in either class, that had not in it the spirit which
giveth life. Just in proportion to the importance of
the subject, does she tax her mind, and say what is most
important; while, of necessity, nothing is reported from
the conversations but her brilliant sallies, her occasional
paradoxes of form, and, sometimes, her impatient reacting
upon dulness and frivolity. In particular points, I know, some
excel her; in particular departments I sympathize more with
some other persons; but, take her as a whole, she has the most
to bestow on others by conversation of any person I have ever
known. I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in
her presence. She distances all who talk with her.
"Mr. E. only served to display her powers. With his sturdy
reiteration of his uncompromising idealism, his absolute
denial of the fact of human nature, he gave her opportunity
and excitement to unfold and illustrate her realism and
acceptance of conditions. What is so noble is, that her
realism is transparent with idea,--her human nature is the
germ of a divine life. She proceeds in her search after the
unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as Mr.
E. does, but by comprehension,--and so, no poorest, saddest
spirit, but she will lead to hope and faith. I have thought,
sometimes, that her acceptance of evil was _too great_,--that
her theory of the good to be educed proved too much. But in a
conversation I had with her yesterday, I understood her better
than I had done. 'It might never be sin to us, at the moment,'
she said, 'it must be an excess, on which conscience puts the
restraint.'"
The classes thus formed were renewed in November of each year, until
Margaret's removal to New York, in 1844. But the notes of my principal
reporter fail me at this point. Afterwards, I have only a few sketches
from a younger hand. In November, 1841, the class numbered from
twenty-five to thirty members: the general subject is stated as
"Ethics." And the influences on Woman seem to have been discussed
under the topics of the Family, the School, the Church, Society, and
Literature. In November, 1842, Margaret writes that the meetings have
been unusually spirited, and congratulates herself on the part taken
in them by Miss Burley, as 'a presence so positive as to be of great
value to me.' The general subject I do not find. But particular
topics were such as these:--"Is the ideal first or last; divination
or experience?" "Persons who never awake to life in this world."
"Mistakes;" "Faith;" "Creeds;" "Woman;" "Dæmonology;" "Influence;"
"Catholicism" (Roman); "The Ideal."
In the winter of 1843-4, the general subject was "Education." Culture,
Ignorance, Vanity, Prudence, Patience, and Health, appear to have
been the titles of conversations, in which wide digressions, and much
autobiographic illustration, with episodes on War, Bonaparte, Goethe,
and Spinoza, were mingled. But the brief narrative may wind up with a
note from Margaret on the last day.
'_28th April, 1844_.--It was the last day with my class. How
noble has been my experience of such relations now for six
years, and with so many and so various minds! Life is worth
living, is it not?
'We had a most animated meeting. On bidding me good-bye, they
all, and always, show so much good-will and love, that I feel
I must really have become a friend to them. I was then loaded
with beautiful gifts, accompanied with those little delicate
poetic traits, of which I should delight to tell you, if we
were near. Last came a beautiful bouquet, passion-flower,
heliotrope, and soberer blooms. Then I went to take my repose
on C----'s sofa, and we had a most serene afternoon together.'