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.
When Margaret stepped for the last time across the threshold of her
mother's home, she must have had the rare comfort of knowing that she
had done everything in her power to promote the highest welfare of those
who, with her, had shared its shelter. The children of the household had
grown up under her fostering care, nor had she, in any flight of her
vivid imagination, forgotten the claims and needs of brothers, sister,
or mother. So closely, indeed, had she felt herself bound by the
necessity of doing what was best for each and all, that her literary
work had not, in any degree, corresponded to her own desires. Her
written and spoken word had indeed carried with it a quickening power
for good; but she had not been able so much as to plan one of the
greater works which she considered herself bound to produce, and which
could neither have been conceived nor carried out without ample command
of time and necessary conditions. In a letter written to one of her
brothers at this time, Margaret says:--
"If our family affairs could now be so arranged that I might be
tolerably tranquil for the next six or eight years, I should go out of
life better satisfied with the page I have turned in it than I shall if
I must still toil on. A noble career is yet before me, if I can be
unimpeded by cares. I have given almost all my young energies to
personal relations; but at present I feel inclined to impel the general
stream of thought. Let my nearest friends also wish that I should now
take share in more public life."
* * * * *
The opening now found for Margaret in New York, though fortunate, was by
no means fortuitous. She had herself prepared the way thereunto by her
good work in the "Dial." In that cheerless editorial seat she may
sometimes, like the Lady of Shalott, have sighed to see Sir Lancelot
ride careless by, or with the spirit of an unrecognized prophet she may
have exclaimed, "Who hath believed our report?" But her word had found
one who could hear it to some purpose.
Mr. Greeley had been, from the first, a reader of this periodical, and
had recognized the fresh thought and new culture which gave it
character. His attention was first drawn to Margaret by an essay of
hers, published in the July number of 1843, and entitled "The Great
Lawsuit,--Man _versus_ Men, Woman _versus_ Women." This essay, which at
a later date expanded into the volume known as "Woman in the Nineteenth
Century," struck Mr. Greeley as "the production of an original,
vigorous, and earnest mind." Margaret's "Summer on the Lakes" appeared
also in the "Dial" somewhat later, and was considered by Mr. Greeley as
"unequalled, especially in its pictures of the prairies and of the
sunnier aspects of pioneer life." Convinced of the literary ability of
the writer, he gave ear to a suggestion of Mrs. Greeley, and, in
accordance with her wishes and with his own judgment, extended to her
the invitation already spoken of as accepted.
This invitation, and the arrangement to which it led, admitted Margaret
not only to the columns of the "Tribune," but also to the home of its
editor, in which she continued to reside during the period of her
connection with the paper. This home was in a spacious, old-fashioned
house on the banks of the East River, completely secluded by the
adjacent trees and garden, but within easy reach of New York by car and
omnibus. Margaret came there in December, 1844, and was at once struck
with the beauty of the scene and charmed with the aspect of the
antiquated dwelling, which had once, no doubt, been the villa of some
magnate of old New York.
If the outside world of the time troubled itself at all about the
Greeley household, it must have considered it in the light of a happy
family of eccentrics. Upon the personal peculiarities of Mr. Greeley we
need not here enlarge. They were of little account in comparison with
the character of the man, who himself deserved the name which he gave to
his paper, and was at heart a tribune of the people. Mrs. Greeley was
herself a woman of curious theories, and it is probable that Margaret,
in her new surroundings, found herself obliged in a certain degree to
represent the conventional side of life, which her host and hostess were
inclined to disregard.
By Mr. Greeley's own account there were differences between Margaret and
himself regarding a great variety of subjects, including the use of tea
and coffee, which he eschewed and to which she adhered, and the
emancipation of women, to which Mr. Greeley proposed to attach, as a
condition, the abrogation of such small courtesies as are shown the sex
to-day, while Margaret demanded a greater deference as a concomitant of
the larger liberty. Mr. Greeley at first determined to keep beyond the
sphere of Margaret's fascination, and to burn no incense at her shrine.
She appeared to him somewhat spoiled by the "Oriental adoration" which
she received from other women, themselves persons of character and of
culture. Her foibles impressed him as much as did the admirable
qualities which he was forced to recognize in her. Vain resolution!
Living under the same roof with Margaret, he could not but come to know
her, and, knowing her, he had no choice but to join the throng of her
admirers. To him, as to others, the blemishes at first discerned "took
on new and brighter aspects in the light of her radiant and lofty soul."
"I learned," says Mr. Greeley, "to know her as a most fearless and
unselfish champion of truth and human good at all hazards, ready to be
their standard-bearer through danger and obloquy, and, if need be, their
martyr."
Mr. Greeley bears witness also to the fact that this ready spirit of
self-sacrifice in Margaret did not spring either from any asceticism of
temperament or from an undervaluation of material advantages. Margaret,
he thinks, appreciated fully all that riches, rank, and luxury could
give. She prized all of these in their place, but prized far above them
all the opportunity to serve and help her fellow-creatures.
The imperative drill of press-work was new and somewhat irksome to her.
She was accustomed indeed to labor in season and out of season, and in
so doing to struggle with bodily pain and weariness. But to take up the
pen at the word of command, without the interior bidding of the divine
afflatus, was a new necessity, and one to which she found it difficult
to submit. Mr. Greeley prized her work highly, though with some
drawbacks. He could not always command it at will, for the reason that
she could not. He found her writing, however, terse, vigorous, and
practical, and considered her contributions to the "Tribune" more solid
in merit, though less ambitious in scope, than her essays written
earlier for the "Dial." Margaret herself esteemed them but moderately,
feeling that she had taken up this new work at a time when her tired
faculties needed rest and recreation.
In a brief memorial of Margaret, Mr. Greeley gives us the titles of the
most important of these papers. They are as follows: "Thomas Hood,"
"Edgar A. Poe," "Capital Punishment," "Cassius M. Clay," "New Year's
Day," "Christmas," "Thanksgiving," "St. Valentine's," "Fourth of July,"
"The First of August"--which she commemorates as the anniversary of
slave-emancipation in the British West Indies.
In looking over the volumes which contain these and many others of
Margaret's collected papers, we are carried back to a time in which
issues now long settled were in the early stages of their agitation, and
in which many of those whom we now most revere in memory were living
actors on the stage of the century's life. Hawthorne and Longfellow were
then young writers. The second series of Mr. Emerson's "Essays" is
noticed as of recent publication. At the time of her writing, it would
seem that Mr. Emerson had a larger circle of readers in England than in
his own country. She accounts for this on the ground that "our people,
heated by a partisan spirit, necessarily occupied in these first stages
by bringing out the material resources of the land, not generally
prepared by early training for the enjoyment of books that require
attention and reflection, are still more injured by a large majority of
writers and speakers who lend all their efforts to flatter corrupt
tastes and mental indolence." She permits us, however, to "hail as an
auspicious omen the influence Mr. Emerson has obtained" in New England,
which she recognizes as deep-rooted, and, over the younger part of the
community, far greater than that of any other person. She is glad to
introduce Robert Browning as the author of "Bells and Pomegranates" to
the American public. Mrs. Browning was then Miss Barrett, in regard of
whom Margaret rejoices that her task is "mainly to express a cordial
admiration!" and says that she "cannot hesitate to rank her, in vigor
and nobleness of conception, depth of spiritual experience, and command
of classic allusion, above any female writer the world has yet known."
In those poems of hers which emulate Milton and Dante "her success is
far below what we find in the poems of feeling and experience; for she
has the vision of a great poet, but little in proportion of his classic
power."
Margaret has much to say concerning George Sand, and under various
heads. In her work on Woman, she gives the _rationale_ of her strange
and anomalous appearance, and is at once very just and very tender in
her judgments.
George Sand was then in the full bloom of her reputation. The light and
the shade of her character, as known to the public, were at the height
of their contrast. To the literary merit of her work was added the
interest of a mysterious personality, which rebelled against the limits
of sex, and, not content to be either man or woman, touched with a new
and strange protest the imagination of the time.
The inexorable progress of events has changed this, with so much else.
Youth, beauty, sex, all imperial in their day, are discrowned by the
dusty hand of Time, and ranged in the gallery of the things that were.
George Sand's volumes still glow and sparkle on the bookshelf; but
George Sand's personality and her passions are dim visions of the past,
and touch us no longer. When Margaret wrote of her, the woman was at the
zenith of her power, and the intoxication of her influence was so great
that a calm judgment concerning it was difficult. Like a wild Bacchante,
she led her chorus of bold spirits through the formal ways of French
society, which in her view were bristling with pruriency and veiled with
hypocrisy. Like Margaret's, her cry was, "Truth at all hazards!" But
hers was not the ideal truth which Margaret followed so zealously. "So
vile are men, so weak are women, so ruthless is passion," were the
utterances of her sincerity. Mistress of the revels, she did indeed
command a new unmasking at the banquet, thoughtless of the risk of
profaning innocent imaginations with sad facts which they had no need to
know, and which, shown by such a master of art and expression, might
bear with them the danger fabled in the mingled beauty and horror of the
Gorgon's head.
George Sand was saved by the sincerity of her intention. Her somnambulic
utterances had told of her good faith, and of her belief in things truly
human and divine. Her revolutionary indignation was against the really
false and base, and her progress was to a position from which she was
able calmly to analyze and loftily to repudiate the disorders in which
she was supposed to have lost for a time the sustaining power of reason
and self-command.
To those of us who remember these things in the vividness of their
living presence, it is most satisfactory to be assured of the excellence
of Margaret's judgment. The great Frenchwoman, at the period of which we
write, appeared to many the incarnation of all the evil which her sex
could represent. To those of opposite mind she appeared the inspired
prophetess of a new era of thought and of sentiment. To Margaret she was
neither the one nor the other. Much as she loved genius, that of George
Sand could not blind her to the faults and falsities that marred her
work. Stern idealist as she was, the most objectionable part of Madame
Sand's record could not move her to a moment's injustice or uncharity in
her regard.
In "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" Margaret says:--
"George Sand smokes, wears male attire, wishes to be addressed as _mon
frère_. Perhaps, if she found those who were as brothers indeed, she
would not care whether she were brother or sister."
And concerning her writings:--
"This author, beginning like the many in assault upon bad institutions
and external ills, yet deepening the experience through comparative
freedom, sees at last that the only efficient remedy must come from
individual character.
"The mind of the age struggles confusedly with these problems, better
discerning as yet the ill it can no longer bear than the good by which
it may supersede it. But women like Sand will speak now, and cannot be
silenced; their characters and their eloquence alike foretell an era
when such as they shall easier learn to lead true lives. But though such
forebode, not such shall be parents of it. Those who would reform the
world must show that they do not speak in the heat of wild impulse;
their lives must be unstained by passionate error. They must be
religious students of the Divine purpose with regard to man, if they
would not confound the fancies of a day with the requisitions of eternal
good."
So much for the woman Sand, as known to Margaret through her works and
by hearsay. Of the writer she first knew through her "Seven Strings of
the Lyre," a rhapsodic sketch. Margaret prizes in this "the knowledge of
the passions and of social institutions, with the celestial choice which
was above them." In the romances "André" and "Jacques" she traces "the
same high morality of one who had tried the liberty of circumstance only
to learn to appreciate the liberty of law.... Though the sophistry of
passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue seemed to
grow upon the dark and dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the
slough of her past life, and begun a new existence beneath the sun of a
new ideal." The "Lettres d'un Voyageur" seem to Margaret shallow,--the
work of "a frail woman mourning over her lot." But when "Consuelo"
appears, she feels herself strengthened in her first interpretation of
George Sand's true character, and takes her stand upon the "original
nobleness and love of right" which even the wild impulses of her fiery
blood were never able entirely to oversweep. Of the work itself she
says:--
"To many women this picture will prove a true _consuelo_ (consolation),
and we think even very prejudiced men will not read it without being
charmed with the expansion, sweetness, and genuine force of a female
character such as they have not met, but must, when painted, recognize
as possible, and may be led to review their opinions, and perhaps to
elevate and enlarge their hopes, as to 'woman's sphere' and 'woman's
mission.'"