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Famous Women.
MARGARET FULLER.
_The next volumes in the Famous Women Series will be:_
MARIA EDGEWORTH. By Miss Zimmern.
SARAH AND ANGELINA GRIMKE. By Mrs. Birney.
ANNE BRADSTREET. By Helen Campbell.
_Already published:_
GEORGE ELIOT. By Miss Blind.
EMILY BRONTË. By Miss Robinson.
GEORGE SAND. By Miss Thomas.
MARY LAMB. By Mrs. Gilchrist.
MARGARET FULLER. By Julia Ward Howe.
MARGARET FULLER
(_MARCHESA OSSOLI_).
BY
JULIA WARD HOWE.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1883.
_Copyright, 1883,_
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The present volume bears the name of MARGARET FULLER simply, because it
is by this name that its subject is most widely known and best
remembered. Another name, indeed, became hers by marriage; but this
later style and title were borne by our friend for a short period only,
and in a country remote from her own. It was as Margaret Fuller that she
took her place among the leading spirits of her time, and made her brave
crusade against its unworthier features. The record of her brief days of
wifehood and of motherhood is tenderly cherished by her friends, but the
story of her life-work is best inscribed with the name which was hers
by birth and baptism, the name which, in her keeping, acquired a
significance not to be lost nor altered.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Childhood and Early Youth.--School-days 1
CHAPTER II.
Life in Cambridge.--Friendship of Dr. Hedge and James Freeman Clarke 19
CHAPTER III.
Religious Beliefs.--Margaret's Early Critics.--First Acquaintance with
Mr. Emerson 32
CHAPTER IV.
Art Studies.--Removal to Groton.--Meeting with Harriet Martineau.--Death
of Mr. Fuller.--Devotion to her Family 44
CHAPTER V.
Winter in Boston.--A Season of Severe Labor.--Connection with
Green-Street School, Providence, R. I.--Editorship of the
"Dial."--Margaret's estimate of Allston's pictures 61
CHAPTER VI.
William Henry Channing's portrait of Margaret.--Transcendental
Days.--Brook Farm.--Margaret's visits there 84
CHAPTER VII.
Margaret's love of children.--Visit to Concord after the death of Waldo
Emerson.--Conversations in Boston.--Summer on the Lakes 100
CHAPTER VIII.
Farewell to Boston.--Engagement to write for the "New York
Tribune."--Margaret in her new surroundings.--Mr. Greeley's opinion of
Margaret's work.--Her estimate of George Sand 128
CHAPTER IX.
Margaret's residence at the Greeley mansion.--Appearance in New York
society.--Visits to women imprisoned at Sing Sing and on Blackwell's
Island.--Letters to her brothers.--"Woman in the Nineteenth
Century."--Essay on American Literature.--View of contemporary
Authors 140
CHAPTER X.
Ocean voyage.--Arrival at Liverpool.--The Lake
Country.--Wordsworth.--Miss Martineau.--Edinburgh.--De Quincey.--Mary,
Queen of Scots.--Night on Ben Lomond.--James Martineau.--William J.
Fox.--London.--Joanna Baillie.--Mazzini.--Thomas Carlyle.--Margaret's
impressions of him.--His estimate of her 170
CHAPTER XI.
Paris.--Margaret's reception there.--George
Sand.--Chopin.--Rachel.--Lamennais.--Béranger.--Chamber of
Deputies.--Berryer.--Ball at the Tuileries.--Italian Opera.--Alexandre
Vattemare.--Schools and Reformatories.--Journey to
Marseilles.--Genoa.--Leghorn.--Naples.--Rome. 189
CHAPTER XII.
Margaret's first days in Rome.--Antiquities.--Visits to Studios and
Galleries.--Her opinions concerning the Old Masters.--Her sympathy with
the People.--Pope Pius.--Celebration of the Birthday of
Rome.--Perugia.--Bologna.--Ravenna.--Venice.--A State Ball on the Grand
Canal.--Milan.--Manzoni.--The Italian Lakes.--Parma.--Second visit to
Florence.--Grand Festival 205
CHAPTER XIII.
Period of agitation in Rome.--Margaret's zeal for Italian Freedom.--Her
return to Rome.--Review of the Civic Guard.--Church Fasts and
Feasts.--Pope Pius.--The Rainy Season.--Promise of Representative
Government in Rome.--Celebration of this event.--Mazzini's Letter to the
Pope.--Beauty of the Spring.--Italy in Revolution.--Popular excitements
in Rome.--Pope Pius deserts the Cause of Freedom.--Margaret leaves Rome
for Aquila 219
CHAPTER XIV.
Margaret's marriage.--Character of the Marchese Ossoli.--Margaret's
first meeting with him.--Reasons for not divulging the
marriage.--Aquila.--Rieti.--Birth of Angelo Eugene Ossoli.--Margaret's
return to Rome.--Her anxiety about her child.--Flight of Pope Pius.--The
Constitutional Assembly.--The Roman Republic.--Attitude of France.--The
Siege of Rome.--Mazzini.--Princess Belgiojoso.--Margaret's care of the
Hospitals 232
CHAPTER XV.
Siege of Rome.--Margaret's care of the sick and wounded.--Anxiety about
her husband and child.--Battle between the French and Italian
troops.--The Surrender.--Garibaldi's departure.--Margaret joins her
husband at his post.--Angelo's illness.--Letters from friends in
America.--Perugia.--Winter in Florence.--Margaret's domestic
life.--Aspect of her future.--Her courage and industry.--Ossoli's
affection for her.--William Henry Hurlbut's reminiscences of them
both.--Last days in Florence.--Farewell visit to the Duomo.--Margaret's
evenings at home.--Horace Sumner.--Margaret as a friend of
the people 245
CHAPTER XVI.
Margaret turns her face homeward.--Last letter to her mother.--The
barque "Elizabeth."--Presages and omens.--Death of the
captain.--Angelo's illness.--The wreck.--The long struggle.--The
end 265
CHAPTER XVII.
Margaret Fuller's Literary Remains 280
INDEX 293
FOOTNOTES
MARGARET FULLER.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.--SCHOOL DAYS.
The subject of the following sketch, Sarah Margaret Fuller, has already
been most fortunate in her biographers. Cut off herself in the prime of
life, she left behind her devoted friends who were still in their full
vigor of thought and sentiment. Three of these, James Freeman Clarke,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Henry Channing, set their hand, some
thirty or more years ago, to the happy task of preserving for posterity
their strong personal impressions of her character and influence. With
these precious reminiscences were interwoven such extracts from her
correspondence and diary as were deemed fittest to supply the outline of
her own life and experience.
What, it may be asked, can such biographers have left for others to do?
To surpass their work is not to be thought of. But, in the turning and
perseverance of this planet, present soon becomes past, and that which
has been best said asks to be said again. This biography, so rich in its
suggestions and so valuable in its details, is already set in a past
light by the progress of men and of things. Its theme has lost none of
its interest. Nay, it is through the growing interest felt in Margaret
and her work that a demand seems to have arisen for a later word about
her, which cannot hope to be better or wiser than the words already made
public, but which may borrow from them the inspiration for a new study
and presentment.
According to the authorities already established, Sarah Margaret Fuller,
the child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane, was born at
Cambridgeport, near Boston, on the 23d of May, 1810. She has herself
given some account of her early life in an autobiographical sketch which
forms the prelude to the work already published. Her father, she says,
"was a lawyer and a politician," the son of a country clergyman,
Harvard-bred both as to his college and his professional studies. She
remembers him chiefly as absorbed in the business and interest of his
profession, intent upon compassing the support of his family, and
achieving such distinction as might prove compatible with that object.
Her mother she describes as "one of those fair, flower-like natures,
which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of
life,--bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic
birds." And in the arduous labor of her father's life, his love for this
sweet mother "was the green spot on which he stood apart from the
commonplaces of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence."
The case between Margaret and her father is the first to be disposed of
in our consideration of her life and character. In the document just
quoted from she does not paint him _en beau_. Here and elsewhere she
seems to have been inclined to charge upon him the excessive study which
exaggerated her natural precocity of temperament, and the Puritan
austerity which brought her ungratified imagination into early conflict
with the circumstances and surroundings of her start in life. In a brief
preface to the memoir already published, a surviving brother of Margaret
characterizes this view of the father as inadequate and unjust.
Margaret herself called her sketch an autobiographical romance, and
evidently wrote it at a period of her life in which her personal
experience had thrown little light upon the difficulties which parents
encounter in the training of their children, and especially in that of
their eldest-born.
From the sketch itself we gather that the Fuller household, although not
corresponding to the dreams of its wonder-child, had yet in it elements
which were most precious for her right growth and development. The
family itself was descended from a stock deeply thoughtful and
religious. With the impulses of such kindred came to Margaret the strict
and thrifty order of primitive New England life, the absence of
frivolity, the distaste for all that is paltry and superficial. In after
years, her riper judgment must have shown her, as it has shown many, the
value of these somewhat stern surroundings. The little Puritan children
grew up, it is true, in the presence of a standard of character and of
conduct which must have seemed severe to them. The results of such
training have shown the world that the child so circumstanced will rise
to the height of his teaching. Started on a solid and worthy plane of
thought and of motive, he will not condescend to what is utterly mean,
base, and trivial, either in motive or in act. If, as may happen, he
fail in his first encounters with outside temptation, he will
nevertheless severely judge his own follies, and will one day set
himself to retrieve them with earnest diligence.
In the instance before us we can feel how bitter may have been the
contrast between the child's natural tastes and the realities which
surrounded her. Routine and restraint were burdensome to her when as yet
she could not know their value. Not the less were they of great
importance to her. The surroundings, too, which were devoid of artistic
luxury and adornment, forced her to have recourse to the inner sense of
beauty, which is sometimes lost and overlaid through much pleasing of
the eye and ear.
Childhood, indeed, insists upon having the whole heavenly life unpacked
upon the spot. Its to-day knows no to-morrow. Hence its common
impatience and almost inevitable quarrel with the older generation,
which in its eyes represents privation and correction.
The early plan of studies marked out for Margaret by her father was not
devised by any commonplace mind. Mr. Fuller had gained from his own
college life that love of culture which is valuable beyond any special
attainment. His own scholarship had been more than common, and it became
his darling object to transmit to his little daughter all that he
himself had gained by study, and as much more as his circumstances would
permit. He did indeed make the mistake, common in that day, of urging
the tender intellect beyond the efforts proper to its stage of growth.
Margaret says that the lessons set for her were "as many and various as
the hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond my age." These lessons
were recited to her father after office hours; and as these hours were
often prolonged, the child's mind was kept in a state of tension until
long after the time when the little head should have rested serenely on
its pillow. In consequence of this, it often rested very ill, and the
youthful prodigy of the daytime was terrified at night by dreams and
illusions, and disturbed by sleep-walking. From these efforts and
excitements resulted, as she says, "a state of being too active and too
intense, which wasted my constitution, and will bring me, although I
have learned to understand and to regulate my now morbid temperament, to
a premature grave."
This was unhappy, certainly. The keen, active temperament did indeed
acquire a morbid intensity, and the young creature thus spurred on to
untimely effort began to live and to learn at a pace with which the
slowness of circumstance was never able to keep abreast.
Even with the allowance which must be made for the notion of that time
as to what a child should be able to accomplish, it must grieve and
surprise us to find Margaret at the age of six years engaged in the
study of Latin and of English grammar. Her father "demanded accuracy
and clearness in everything." Intelligible statement, reasoned thought,
and a certainty which excluded all suppositions and reservations,--these
were his requirements from his young pupil. A certain _quasi_-dogmatic
mode of enunciation in later life, which may have seemed, on a
superficial view, to indicate an undue confidence and assumption, had
probably its origin in the decided way in which the little Margaret was
taught to recite her lessons. Under the controlling influence of her
father, she says that her own world sank deep within, away from the
surface of her life: "In what I did and said I learned to have reference
to other minds, but my true life was only the dearer that it was
secluded and veiled over by a thick curtain of available intellect and
that coarse but wearable stuff woven by the ages, common sense."
The Latin language opened for Margaret the door to many delights. The
Roman ideal, definite and resolute, commended itself to her childish
judgment; and even in later life she recognized Virgil as worthy to lead
the great Dante "through hell and to heaven." In Horace she enjoyed the
serene and courtly appreciation of life; in Ovid, the first glimpse of a
mythology which carried her to the Greek Olympus. Her study "soon ceased
to be a burden, and reading became a habit and a passion." Her first
real friends she found in her father's book-closet, to which, in her
leisure moments, she was allowed free access. Here, from a somewhat
miscellaneous collection, she singled out the works of Shakespeare,
Cervantes, and Molière,--"three great authors, all, though of unequal,
yet of congenial powers; all of rich and wide, rather than aspiring
genius; all free to the extent of the horizon their eye took in; all
fresh with impulse, racy with experience; never to be lost sight of or
superseded."
Of these three Shakespeare was the first in her acquaintance, as in her
esteem. She was but eight years old when the interest of Romeo and
Juliet led her to rebel against the discipline whose force she so well
knew, and to persevere in reading before her father's very eyes a book
forbidden for the Sabbath. For this offence she was summarily dismissed
to bed, where her father, coming presently to expostulate with her,
found her in a strangely impenitent state of mind.
Margaret's books thus supplied her imagination with the food which her
outward surroundings did not afford. They did not, however, satisfy the
cravings of her childish heart. These presently centred around a human
object of intense interest,--a lady born and bred in polite European
life, who brought something of its tone and atmosphere to cheer for a
while the sombre New England horizon. Margaret seems to have first seen
her at church, where the general aspect of things was especially
distasteful to her.
"The puny child sought everywhere for the Roman or Shakespeare figures;
and she was met by the shrewd, honest eye, the homely decency, or the
smartness of a New England village on Sunday. There was beauty, but I
could not see it then; it was not of the kind I longed for.
"As my eye one day was ranging about with its accustomed coldness, it
was arrested by a face most fair, and well known, as it seemed at first
glance; for surely I had met her before, and waited for her long. But
soon I saw that she was an apparition foreign to that scene, if not to
me. She was an English lady, who, by a singular chance, was cast upon
this region for a few months."
This stranger seems to have been as gracious as she was graceful.
Margaret, after this first glimpse, saw her often, sometimes at a
neighbor's house, sometimes at her own. She was more and more impressed
by her personal charm, which was heightened in the child's eyes by her
accomplishments, rare in that time and place. The lady painted in oils
and played on the harp. Margaret found the greatest delight in watching
the growth of her friend's pictures, and in listening to her music.
Better still, they walked together in the quiet of the country. "Like a
guardian spirit, she led me through the fields and groves; and every
tree, every bird, greeted me and said, what I felt, 'She is the first
angel of your life.'"
Delight so passionate led to a corresponding sorrow. The lady, who had
tenderly responded to the child's mute adoration, vanished from her
sight, and was thenceforth known to her only through the interchange of
letters.
"When this friend was withdrawn," says Margaret, "I fell into a profound
depression. Melancholy enfolded me in an atmosphere, as joy had done.
This suffering, too, was out of the gradual and natural course. Those
who are really children could not know such love or feel such sorrow."
Her father saw in this depression a result of the too great isolation in
which Margaret had thus far lived. He felt that she needed change of
scene and, still more, intercourse with girls of her own age. The remedy
proposed was that she should be sent to school,--a measure which she
regarded with dread and dislike. She had hitherto found little pleasure
in the society of other girls. She had sometimes joined the daughters of
her neighbors in hard play, but had not felt herself at home with them.
Her retired and studious life had, she says, given her "a cold
aloofness," which could not predispose them in her favor. Despite her
resistance, however, her father persevered in his intention, and
Margaret became an inmate of the Misses Prescott's school in Groton,
Mass.
Her experience here, though painful in some respects, had an important
effect upon her after life.
At first her unlikeness to her companions was uncomfortable both to her
and to them. Her exuberant fancy demanded outlets which the restraints
of boarding-school life would not allow. The unwonted excitement
produced by contact with other young people vented itself in fantastic
acts, and freaks amusing but tormenting. The art of living with one's
kind had not formed a part of Margaret's home education. Her nervous
system had already, no doubt, been seriously disturbed by overwork.
Some plays were devised for the amusement of the pupils, and in these
Margaret found herself entirely at home. In each of these the principal
part was naturally assigned her, and the superiority in which she
delighted was thus recognized. These very triumphs, however, in the end
led to her first severe mortification, and on this wise:--
The use of rouge had been permitted to the girls on the occasion of the
plays; but Margaret was not disposed, when these were over, to
relinquish the privilege, and continued daily to tinge her cheeks with
artificial red. This freak suggested to her fellow-pupils an intended
pleasantry, which awakened her powers of resentment to the utmost.
Margaret came to the dinner-table, one day, to find on the cheeks of
pupils and preceptress the crimson spot with which she had persisted in
adorning her own. Suppressed laughter, in which even the servants
shared, made her aware of the intended caricature. Deeply wounded, and
viewing the somewhat personal joke in the light of an inflicted
disgrace, Margaret's pride did not forsake her. She summoned to her aid
the fortitude which some of her Romans had shown in trying moments, and
ate her dinner quietly, without comment. When the meal was over she
hastened to her own room, locked the door, and fell on the floor in
convulsions. Here teachers and schoolfellows sorrowfully found her, and
did their utmost to soothe her wounded feelings, and to efface by
affectionate caresses the painful impression made by their inconsiderate
fun.
Margaret recovered from this excitement, and took her place among her
companions, but with an altered countenance and embittered heart. She
had given up her gay freaks and amusing inventions, and devoted herself
assiduously to her studies. But the offence which she had received
rankled in her breast. As not one of her fellow-pupils had stood by her
in her hour of need, she regarded them as all alike perfidious and
ungrateful, and, "born for love, now hated all the world."
This morbid condition of mind led to a result still more unhappy.
Masking her real resentment beneath a calm exterior, Margaret received
the confidences of her schoolfellows, and used their unguarded speech to
promote discord among them. The girls, naturally enough, talked about
each other, and said things which it would have been kind and wise not
to repeat. Margaret's central position among them would have enabled her
to reconcile their small differences and misunderstandings, which she,
on the contrary, did her utmost to foment, not disdaining to employ
misrepresentation in her mischievous mediation. Before long the spirit
of discord reigned throughout the school, in which, the prime mover of
the trouble tells us, "scarcely a peaceful affection or sincere intimacy
remained." She had instinctively followed the ancient precept, "Divide
et impera," and ruled for evil those who would have followed her for
good.
This state of things probably became unbearable. Its cause was inquired
into, and soon found. A tribunal was held, and before the whole school
assembled, Margaret was accused of calumny and falsehood, and, alas!
convicted of the same.
"At first she defended herself with self-possession and eloquence. But
when she found that she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly
threw herself down, dashing her head with all her force against the iron
hearth, on which a fire was burning, and was taken up senseless."
All present were of course greatly alarmed at this crisis, which was
followed, on the part of Margaret, by days of hopeless and apathetic
melancholy. During these she would neither speak nor eat, but remained
in a sort of stupor,--the result of conflicting emotions. In the pain
which she now felt, her former resentment against her schoolmates
disappeared. She saw only her own offence, and saw it without hope of
being able to pass beyond it.
In this emergency, when neither the sorrow of her young companions nor
the entreaties of her teachers seemed to touch her, a single friend was
able to reach the seat of Margaret's distemper, and to turn the currents
of her life once more into a healthful channel.
This lady, a teacher in the school, had always felt a special interest
in Margaret, whose character somewhat puzzled her. With the tact of true
affection, she drew the young girl from the contemplation of her own
failure, by narrating to her the circumstances which, through no fault
of hers, had made her own life one of sorrow and of sacrifice.
Margaret herself, with a discernment beyond her years, had felt the high
tone of this lady's character, and the "proud sensibility" expressed in
her changing countenance. From her she could learn the lesson of hope
and of comfort. Listening to the story, she no longer repulsed the hand
of healing, but took patiently the soothing medicine offered by her
visitor.
This story of Margaret's school life she herself has told, in an episode
called "Marianna," which was published in her "Summer on the Lakes," and
afterwards embodied in Mr. Clarke's contribution to the memoir already
published. We have already quoted several passages from it, and will
here give her account of the end of the whole matter.
"She returned to life, but it was as one who has passed through the
valley of death. The heart of stone was quite broken in her; the fiery
will fallen from flame to coal.
"When her strength was a little restored, she had all her companions
summoned, and said to them: 'I deserved to die, but a generous trust
has called me back to life. I will be worthy of the past, nor ever
betray the trust, or resent injury more. Can you forgive the past?'
And," says the narrative, "they not only forgave, but with love and
earnest tears clasped in their arms the returning sister. They vied with
one another in offices of humble love to the humbled one; and let it be
recorded, as an instance of the pure honor of which young hearts are
capable, that these facts, known to some forty persons, never, so far as
I know, transpired beyond those walls."
In making this story public, we may believe Margaret to have been
actuated by a feeling of the value of such an experience both in the
study of character and in the discipline of young minds. Here was a
girl, really a child in age, but already almost a woman in selfhood and
imagination. Untrained in intercourse with her peers in age, she felt
and exaggerated her own superiority to those with whom her school life
first brought her in contact. This superiority she felt impelled to
assert and maintain. So long as she could queen it over the other pupils
she was content. The first serious wounding of her self-love aroused in
her a vengeful malignity, which grew with its own exercise. Unable as
she found herself to command her little public by offices which had
seemed to her acts of condescension, she determined to rule through the
evil principle of discord. In a fortunate moment she was arrested in
this course by an exposure whose consequences showed her the reflection
of her own misconduct in the minds of those around her. Extreme in all
things, her self-reproach took the form of helpless despair, which yet,
at the touch of true affection, gave way before the courageous
determination to retrieve past error by future good desert.
The excellence of Margaret's judgment and the generosity of her heart
appear in the effect which this fortunate failure had upon her maturer
life. The pride of her selfhood had been overthrown. She had learned
that she could need the indulgence and forgiveness of others, and had
also learned that her mates, lightly esteemed by her up to that time,
were capable of magnanimous forgiveness and generous rehabilitation. In
the tender strength of her young mind, those impressions were so
received that they were never thereafter effaced. The esteem of Margaret
for her own sex, then rare in women of her order, and the great charity
with which she ever regarded the offences of others, perhaps referred
back through life to this time of trial, whose shortcoming was to be
redeemed by such brilliant achievements.
Margaret's school days ended soon after this time, and she returned to
her father's house, much instructed in the conditions of harmonious
relations with her fellows.