* * * * *
In 1839 I had met Margaret upon the plane of intellect. In the summer
of 1840, on my return from the West, she was to be revealed in a new
aspect.
It was a radiant and refreshing morning, when I entered the parlor of
her pleasant house, standing upon a slope beyond Jamaica Plain to the
south. She was absent at the moment, and there was opportunity to look
from the windows on a cheerful prospect, over orchards and meadows,
to the wooded hills and the western sky. Presently Margaret appeared,
bearing in her hand a vase of flowers, which she had been gathering in
the garden. After exchange of greetings, her first words were of the
flowers, each of which was symbolic to her of emotion, and associated
with the memory of some friend. I remember her references only to the
Daphne Odora, the Provence Rose, the sweet-scented Verbena, and the
Heliotrope; the latter being her chosen emblem, true bride of the sun
that it is.
From flowers she passed to engravings hanging round the room. 'Here,'
said she, 'are Dante and Beatrice.
"Approach, and know that I am Beatrice.
The power of ancient love was strong within me."
'She is beautiful enough, is not she, for that higher moment?
But Dante! Yet who could paint a Dante,--and Dante in heaven?
They give but his shadow, as he walked in the forest-maze of
earth. Then here is the Madonna del Pesce; not divine, like
the Foligno, not deeply maternal, like the Seggiola, not
the beätified "Mother of God" of the Dresden gallery, but
graceful, and "not too bright and good for human nature's
daily food." And here is Raphael himself, the young seer of
beauty, with eyes softly contemplative, yet lit with central
fires,' &c.
There were gems, too, and medallions and seals, to be examined, each
enigmatical, and each blended by remembrances with some fair hour of
her past life.
Talk on art led the way to Greece and the Greeks, whose mythology
Margaret was studying afresh. She had been culling the blooms of that
poetic land, and could not but offer me leaves from her garland. She
spoke of the statue of Minerva-Polias, cut roughly from an olive-tree,
yet cherished as the heaven-descended image of the most sacred shrine,
to which was due the Panathenaic festival.
'The less ideal perfection in the figure, the greater the
reverence of the adorer. Was not this because spiritual
imagination makes light of results, and needs only a germ whence
to unfold Olympic splendors?'
She spoke of the wooden column, left standing from the ruins of the
first temple to Juno, amidst the marble walls of the magnificent fane
erected in its place:--
'This is a most beautiful type, is not it, of the manner in
which life's earliest experiences become glorified by our
perfecting destiny?'
'In the temple of Love and the Graces, one Grace bore a rose,
a second a branch of myrtle, a third dice;--who can read that
riddle?
'"Better is it," said Appollonius, "on entering a small shrine
to find there a statue of gold and ivory, than in a large
temple to behold only a coarse figure of terra cotta." How
often, after leaving with disgust the so-called great affairs
of men, do we find traces of angels' visits in quiet scenes of
home.
'The Hours and the Graces appear as ornaments on all thrones
and shrines, except those of Vulcan and Pluto. Alas for us,
when we become so sunk in utilitarian toil as to be blind to
the beauty with which even common cares are daily wreathed!'
And so on and on, with myth and allusion.
Next, Margaret spoke of the friends whose generosity had provided
the decorations on her walls, and the illustrated books for her
table,--friends who were fellow-students in art, history, or
science,--friends whose very life she shared. Her heart seemed full
to overflow with sympathy for their joys and sorrows, their special
trials and struggles, their peculiar tendencies of character and
respective relations. The existence of each was to her a sacred
process, whose developments she watched with awe, and whose leadings
she reverently sought to aid. She had scores of pretty anecdotes
to tell, sweet bowers of sentiment to open, significant lessons of
experience to interpret, and scraps of journals or letters to read
aloud, as the speediest means of introducing me to her chosen circle.
There was a fascinating spell in her piquant descriptions, and a
genial glow of sympathy animated to characteristic movement the
figures, who in varying pantomime replaced one another on the theatre
of her fancy. Frost-bound New England melted into a dreamland of
romance beneath the spice-breeze of her Eastern narrative. Sticklers
for propriety might have found fault at the freedom with which she
confided her friends' histories to one who was a comparative stranger
to them; but I could not but note how conscientiousness reined in her
sensibilities and curbed their career, as they reached the due bounds
of privacy. She did but realize one's conception of the transparent
truthfulness that will pervade advanced societies of the future, where
the very atmosphere shall be honorable faith.
Nearer and nearer Margaret was approaching a secret throned in her
heart that day; and the preceding transitions were but a prelude of
her orchestra before the entrance of the festal group. Unconsciously
she made these preparations for paying worthy honors to a high
sentiment. She had lately heard of the betrothal of two of her
best-loved friends; and she wished to communicate the graceful story
in a way that should do justice to the facts and to her own feelings.
It was by a spontaneous impulse of her genius, and with no voluntary
foreshaping, that she had grouped the previous tales; but no drama
could have been more artistically constructed than the steps whereby
she led me onward to the denouement; and the look, tone, words,
with which she told it, were fluent with melody as the song of an
improvisatrice.
Scarcely had she finished, when, offering some light refreshment,--as
it was now past noon,--she proposed a walk in the open air. She led
the way to Bussey's wood, her favorite retreat during the past year,
where she had thought and read, or talked with intimate friends. We
climbed the rocky path, resting a moment or two at every pretty point,
till, reaching a moss-cushioned ledge near the summit, she seated
herself. For a time she was silent, entranced in delighted communion
with the exquisite hue of the sky, seen through interlacing boughs
and trembling leaves, and the play of shine and shadow over the wide
landscape. But soon, arousing from her reverie, she took up the thread
of the morning's talk. My part was to listen; for I was absorbed in
contemplating this, to me, quite novel form of character. It has
been seen how my early distaste for Margaret's society was gradually
changed to admiration. Like all her friends, I had passed through an
avenue of sphinxes before reaching the temple. But now it appeared
that thus far I had never been admitted to the adytum.
As, leaning on one arm, she poured out her stream of thought, turning
now and then her eyes full upon me, to see whether I caught her
meaning, there was leisure to study her thoroughly. Her temperament
was predominantly what the physiologists would call nervous-sanguine;
and the gray eye, rich brown hair and light complexion, with the
muscular and well-developed frame, bespoke delicacy balanced by vigor.
Here was a sensitive yet powerful being, fit at once for rapture or
sustained effort, intensely active, prompt for adventure, firm for
trial. She certainly had not beauty; yet the high arched dome of the
head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole
air of mingled dignity and impulse, gave her a commanding charm.
Especially characteristic were two physical traits. The first was a
contraction of the eyelids almost to a point,--a trick caught from
near-sightedness,--and then a sudden dilation, till the iris seemed to
emit flashes;--an effect, no doubt, dependent on her highly-magnetized
condition. The second was a singular pliancy of the vertebræ and
muscles of the neck, enabling her by a mere movement to denote each
varying emotion; in moments of tenderness, or pensive feeling, its
curves were swan-like in grace, but when she was scornful or indignant
it contracted, and made swift turns like that of a bird of prey.
Finally, in the animation, yet _abandon_ of Margaret's attitude and
look, were rarely blended the fiery force of northern, and the soft
languor of southern races.
Meantime, as I was thus, through her physiognomy, tracing the outlines
of her spiritual form, she was narrating chapters from the book of
experience. How superficially, heretofore, had I known her! We had met
chiefly as scholars. But now I saw before me one whose whole life
had been a poem,--of boundless aspiration and hope almost wild in its
daring,--of indomitable effort amidst poignant disappointment,--of
widest range, yet persistent unity. Yes! here was a poet in deed, a
true worshipper of Apollo, who had steadfastly striven to brighten and
make glad existence, to harmonize all jarring and discordant strings,
to fuse most hard conditions and cast them in a symmetric mould, to
piece fragmentary fortunes into a mosaic symbol of heavenly order.
Here was one, fond as a child of joy, eager as a native of the tropics
for swift transition from luxurious rest to passionate excitement,
prodigal to pour her mingled force of will, thought, sentiment, into
the life of the moment, all radiant with imagination, longing for
communion with artists of every age in their inspired hours, fitted by
genius and culture to mingle as an equal in the most refined circles
of Europe, and yet her youth and early womanhood had passed away
amid the very decent, yet drudging, descendants of the prim Puritans.
Trained among those who could have discerned her peculiar power, and
early fed with the fruits of beauty for which her spirit pined, she
would have developed into one of the finest lyrists, romancers and
critics, that the modern literary world has seen. This she knew; and
this tantalization of her fate she keenly felt.
But the tragedy of Margaret's history was deeper yet. Behind the poet
was the woman,--the fond and relying, the heroic and disinterested
woman. The very glow of her poetic enthusiasm was but an outflush of
trustful affection; the very restlessness of her intellect was
the confession that her heart had found no home. A "book-worm," "a
dilettante," "a pedant," I had heard her sneeringly called; but now it
was evident that her seeming insensibility was virgin pride, and her
absorption in study the natural vent of emotions, which had met
no object worthy of life-long attachment. At once, many of her
peculiarities became intelligible. Fitfulness, unlooked-for changes of
mood, misconceptions of words and actions, substitution of fancy
for fact,--which had annoyed me during the previous season, as
inconsistent in a person of such capacious judgment and sustained
self-government,--were now referred to the morbid influence of
affections pent up to prey upon themselves. And, what was still more
interesting, the clue was given to a singular credulousness, by
which, in spite of her unusual penetration, Margaret might be led away
blindfold. As this revelation of her ardent nature burst upon me, and
as, rapidly recalling the past, I saw how faithful she had kept to her
high purposes,--how patient, gentle, and thoughtful for others, how
active in self-improvement and usefulness, how wisely dignified she
had been,--I could not but bow to her in reverence.
We walked back to the house amid a rosy sunset, and it was with no
surprise that I heard her complain of an agonizing nervous headache,
which compelled her at once to retire, and call for assistance. As
for myself, while going homeward, I reflected with astonishment on the
unflagging spiritual energy with which, for hour after hour, she
had swept over lands and seas of thought, and, as my own excitement
cooled, I became conscious of exhaustion, as if a week's life had been
concentrated in a day.
The interview, thus hastily sketched, may serve as a fair type of our
usual intercourse. Always I found her open-eyed to beauty, fresh for
wonder, with wings poised for flight, and fanning the coming breeze of
inspiration. Always she seemed to see before her,
"A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn,
And the invisible rain did ever sing
A silver music on the mossy lawn."
Yet more and more distinctly did I catch a plaintive tone of sorrow
in her thought and speech, like the wail of an Æolian harp heard at
intervals from some upper window. She had never met one who could love
her as she could love; and in the orange-grove of her affections
the white, perfumed blossoms and golden fruit wasted away unclaimed.
Through the mask of slight personal defects and ungraceful manners,
of superficial hauteur and egotism, and occasional extravagance of
sentiment, no equal had recognized the rare beauty of her spirit. She
was yet alone.