distinguish herself, and made much the same impression in society
that she did in after years, with the exception that as she advanced
in life, she learned to control that tendency to sarcasm,--that
disposition to “quiz,”--which was then somewhat excessive. It
frightened shy young people from her presence, and made her, for a
while, notoriously unpopular with the ladies of her circle.
REV. F. H. HEDGE: _Communication_ in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller
Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Margaret at the Groton school.]
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 in 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
joined, 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 [Margaret’s love of Roman
history is here alluded to] 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.... 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.... 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, ... and was taken up senseless.”[7]
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.... 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.... 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, ... with the tact of true affection, drew the
young girl from the contemplation of her own failure.
JULIA WARD HOWE: ‘Margaret Fuller.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston:
Roberts Brothers, 1883.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: An “intolerable girl” at nineteen.]
She told me what danger she had been in from the training her father
had given her, and the encouragement to pedantry and rudeness which
she derived from the circumstances of her youth. She told me that she
was at nineteen the most intolerable girl that ever took a seat in a
drawing-room. Her admirable candor, the philosophical way in which she
took herself in hand, her genuine heart, her practical insight, and, no
doubt, the natural influence of her attachment to myself, endeared her
to me, while her powers, and her confidence in the use of them, led me
to expect great things from her.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1877.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her home at this time.]
Margaret’s home at this time was in the mansion house formerly
belonging to Judge Dana, a large, old-fashioned building, since taken
down, standing about a quarter of a mile from the Cambridge Colleges,
on the main road to Boston. The house stood back from the road, on
rising ground which overlooked an extensive landscape. It was always
a pleasure to Margaret to look at the outlines of the distant hills
beyond the river, and to have before her this extent of horizon and
sky. In the last year of her residence in Cambridge, her father moved
to the old Brattle place, a still more ancient edifice, with large,
old-fashioned garden and stately rows of linden trees. Here Margaret
enjoyed the garden walks, which took the place of the extensive view.
REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mr. Channing’s first impression.]
[Sidenote: Margaret too intense.]
[Sidenote: Imperiousness.]
[Sidenote: Sentimentality.]
I call to mind seeing, at the “Commencements” and “Exhibitions” of
Harvard University, a girl, plain in appearance, but of dashing air,
who was invariably the centre of a listening group, and kept their
merry interest alive by sparkles of wit and incessant small talk....
About 1830 ... we often met in the social circles about Cambridge, and
I began to observe her more nearly. At first her vivacity, decisive
tone, downrightness and contempt of conventional standards, continued
to repel. She appeared too _intense_ in expression, action, emphasis,
to be pleasing, and wanting in that _retenue_ which we associate
with delicate dignity. Occasionally, also, words flashed from her of
such scathing satire, that prudence counselled the keeping at safe
distance from a body so surcharged with electricity. Then again,
there was an imperial--shall it be said imperious?--air, exacting
deference to her judgments and loyalty to her behests, that prompted
pride to retaliatory measures. She paid slight heed, moreover, to
the trim palings of etiquette, but swept through the garden-beds and
into the door-way of one’s confidence so cavalierly that a reserved
person felt inclined to lock himself up in his sanctum. Finally, to
the coolly-scanning eye, her friendship wore such a look of romantic
exaggeration, that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of
sentimentalism....
But soon I was charmed, unaware, with the sagacity of her sallies,
the profound thoughts carelessly dropped by her on transient
topics, the breadth and richness of culture manifested in her
allusions or quotations, her easy comprehension of new views, her
just discrimination, and, above all, her _truthfulness_. “Truth at
all cost,” was plainly her ruling maxim. This it was that made her
criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern,
her speech so naked in frankness, her gaze so searching, her whole
attitude so alert.
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Emerson’s first impression.]
I still remember the first half hour of Margaret’s conversation.
She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that
would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was rather under
the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair.
She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of
lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing
prepossessing. Her extreme plainness--a trick of incessantly opening
and shutting her eyelids--the nasal tone of her voice--all repelled;
and I said to myself, we shall never get far. It is to be said that
Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons,
including those who became afterwards her best friends, to such an
extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This
was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening
sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice
of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to
her great scholarship.... I believe I fancied her too much interested
in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic
justice was done to everybody’s foibles. I remember that she made me
laugh more than I liked.... She had an incredible variety of anecdotes,
and the readiest wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the
eyes, which were so plain at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries,
and the very tides of joy and superabundant life.
This rumor was much spread abroad, that she was sneering, scoffing,
critical, disdainful of humble people, and of all but the intellectual.
It was a superficial judgment. Her satire was only the pastime and
necessity of her talent, the play of superabundant animal spirits....
Her mind presently disclosed many moods and powers, in successive
platforms or terraces, each above each, that quite effaced this first
impression, in the opulence of the following pictures.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her circle of friends.]
[Sidenote: Conversation.]
She was the centre of a group very different from each other, and whose
only affinity consisted in their all being polarized by the strong
attraction of her mind--all drawn toward herself. Some of her friends
were young, gay, and beautiful; some old, sick, or studious. Some
were children of the world, others pale scholars. Some were witty,
others slightly dull. But all, in order to be Margaret’s friends,
must be capable of seeking something--capable of some aspiration for
the better. And how did she glorify life to all! All that was tame
and common vanishing away in the picturesque light thrown over the
most familiar things by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp
insight, her creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of
her knowledge, and the copious rhetoric which found words and images
always apt and always ready. Even then she displayed almost the same
marvellous gift of conversation, which afterwards dazzled all who knew
her--with more, perhaps, of freedom, since she floated on the flood
of our warm sympathies. Those who know Margaret only by her published
writings, know her least; her notes and letters contain more of her
mind; but it was only in conversation that she was perfectly free and
at home.
REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her friends.]
[Sidenote: Passionate friendships.]
She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace
of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that
Margaret seemed to represent them all and to know her, was to acquire
a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and
she held them to them. She was an active, inspiring companion and
correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New
England, seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it.... I am
to add, that she gave herself to her friendships with an entireness
not possible to any but a woman, with a depth possible to few women.
Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with women, were
not unmingled with passion, and had passages of romantic sacrifice
and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but could
not trust my profane pen to report. There were also the ebbs and
recoils from the other party--the mortal unequal to converse with an
immortal--ingratitude, which was more truly incapacity, the collapse
of overstrained affections and powers. At all events, it is clear that
Margaret, later, grew more strict, and values herself with her friends
on having the tie now “redeemed from all search after Eros.”
R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Personal appearance.]
[Sidenote: Two prominent traits.]
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 dilatation, 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.
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her liberality.]
With a limited income and liberal wants, she was yet generous beyond
the bounds of reason. Had the gold of California been all her own,
she would have disbursed nine-tenths of it in eager and well-directed
efforts to stay, or at least diminish, the flood of human misery. And
it is but fair to state that the liberality she evinced was fully
paralleled by the liberality she experienced at the hands of others.
Had she needed thousands, and made her wants known, she had friends
who would have cheerfully supplied her. I think few persons, in their
pecuniary dealings, have experienced and evinced more of the better
qualities of human nature than Margaret Fuller. She seemed to inspire
those who approached her with that generosity which was a part of her
nature.
HORACE GREELEY: _Communication_ in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Self-esteem.]
Margaret at first astonished and repelled us by a complacency that
seemed the most assured since the days of Scaliger. She spoke, in the
quietest manner, of the girls she had formed, the young men who owed
everything to her, the fine companions she had long ago exhausted. In
the coolest way she said to her friends, “I now know all the people
worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my
own.”... I have heard that from the beginning of her life, she
idealized herself as a sovereign. She told ---- she early saw herself
to be intellectually superior to those around her, and that for years
she dwelt upon the idea, until she believed that she was not her
parents’ child, but an European princess confided to their care. She
remembered that when a little girl, she was walking one day under the
apple trees with such an air and step that her father pointed her out
to her sister, saying, “_Incedit regina_.”
[Sidenote: A “mountainous me.”]
It is certain that Margaret occasionally let slip, with all the
innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather
mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She
could say, as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating
the merits of somebody, “He appreciates _me_.” There was something
of hereditary organization in this, and something of unfavorable
circumstance in the fact, that she had in early life no companion, and
few afterwards, in her finer studies; but there was also an ebullient
sense of power, which she felt to be in her, which as yet had found no
right channels.
R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Humor.]
Those who think of this accomplished woman as a mere _bas bleu_, a
pedant, a solemn Minerva, should have heard the peals of laughter
which her profuse and racy humor drew from old and young. The Easy
Chair remembers stepping into Noah Gerrish’s West Roxbury omnibus one
afternoon in Cornhill, in Boston, to drive out the nine miles to Brook
Farm. The only other passenger was Miss Fuller, then freshly returned
from her “summer on the lakes,” and never was a long, jolting journey
more lightened and shortened than by her witty and vivid sketches of
life and character. Her quick and shrewd observation is shown in the
book, but the book has none of the comedy of the _croquis_ of persons
which her sparkling humor threw off, and which she too enjoyed with
the utmost hilarity, joining heartily in the laughter, which was only
increased by her sympathy with the amusement of her auditor.
GEO. WM. CURTIS, ‘Easy Chair,’ _Harper’s Magazine_, March, 1882.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Ill health.]
[Sidenote: Alleged second sight.]
She was all her life-time the victim of disease and pain. She read and
wrote in bed, and believed that she could understand anything better
when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle to give tension to her
powers. A lady who was with her one day during a terrible attack of
nervous headache, which made Margaret totally helpless, assured me that
Margaret was yet in the finest vein of humor, and kept those who were
assisting her in a strange, painful excitement, between laughing and
crying, by perpetual brilliant sallies. There were other peculiarities
of habit and power. When she turned her head on one side she alleged
she had second sight, like St. Francis. These traits or predispositions
made her a willing listener to all the uncertain science of mesmerism
and its goblin brood, which have been rife in recent years.
It was soon evident that there was somewhat a little pagan about
her; that she had some faith more or less distinct in a fate, and
in a guardian genius; that her fancy or her pride, had played with
her religion. She had a taste for gems, ciphers, talismans, omens,
coincidences, and birth-days. She had a special love for the planet
Jupiter, and a belief that the month of September was inauspicious to
her. She never forgot that her name, Margarita, signified a pearl....
She chose carbuncle for her own stone, and when a dear friend was to
give her a gem, this was the one selected.... She was wont to put on
her carbuncle, a bracelet or some selected gem, to write letters to
certain friends. One of her friends she coupled with the onyx, another
in a decided way with the amethyst.... Coincidences, good and bad,
_contretemps_, seals, ciphers, mottoes, omens, anniversaries, names,
dreams, are all of a certain importance to her.... She soon surrounded
herself with a little mythology of her own.
She had a series of anniversaries, which she kept. Her seal-ring of the
flying Mercury had its legend.
R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her love of children.]
Her love of children was one of her most prominent characteristics.
The pleasure she enjoyed in their society was fully counterpoised by
that she imparted. To them she was never lofty, nor reserved, nor
mystical; for no one had ever a more perfect faculty for entering into
their sports, their feelings, their enjoyments. She could narrate
almost any story in language level to their capacities, and in a manner
calculated to bring out their hearty, and often boisterously-expressed
delight. She possessed marvellous powers of observation and imitation,
or mimicry; and had she been attracted to the stage, would have been
the first actress America has produced, whether in tragedy or comedy.
Her faculty of mimicking was not needed to commend her to the hearts
of children, but it had its effects in increasing the fascinations
of her genial nature and heart-felt joy in their society. To amuse
and instruct was an achievement for which she would readily forego
any personal object; and her intuitive perception of the toys, games,
stories, rhymes, etc., best adapted to arrest and enchain their
attention was unsurpassed.
HORACE GREELEY: _Communication in_ ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A welcome guest.]
She was everywhere a welcome guest. The houses of her friends in town
and country were open to her, and every hospitable attention eagerly
offered. Her arrival was a holiday, and so was her abode. She stayed a
few days, often a week, more seldom a month, and all tasks that could
be suspended were put aside to catch the favorable hour, in walking,
riding, or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, who brought wit,
anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her, and with her
broad web of relations to so many fine friends, seemed like the queen
of some parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and
to whom every question had been finally referred.
The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory, and I, who
knew her intimately from July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed
for Europe, never saw her without surprise at her new powers.
R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Margaret’s account of her Boston Conversation Class.]
My class is prosperous. I was so fortunate as to rouse, at once, the
tone of simple earnestness, which can scarcely, when once awakened,
cease to vibrate. All seem in a glow, and quite as receptive as I
wish.... There are about twenty-five members, and every one, I believe,
full of interest.... The first day’s topic was, the genealogy of heaven
and earth; then the Will (Jupiter); the Understanding, (Mercury); the
second day’s, the celestial inspiration of genius, perception and
transmission of divine law (Apollo); the terrene of inspiration, the
impassioned abandonment of genius (Bacchus).
Of the thunderbolt, the caduceus, the ray, and the grape, having
disposed as well as might be, we came to the wave, and the sea-shell it
moulds to Beauty, and Love her parent and her child.
I assure you, there is more Greek than Bostonian spoken at the
meetings; and we may have pure honey of Hymettus to give you yet.
MARGARET FULLER: _Letter to R. W. Emerson_, November, 1839, in ‘Memoirs
of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A pupil’s account.]
Margaret used to come to the conversations very well dressed, and,
altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in
which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent,
from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and
from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess; and
from the gracefulness with which they were brought down, at last, to a
possible level for others to follow. She made a pause, and invited the
others to come in. Of course, it was not easy for every one to venture
her remark, after an eloquent discourse, and in the presence of twenty
superior women, who were all inspired. But whatever was said, Margaret
knew how to seize the good meaning of it with hospitality, and to make
the speaker feel glad, and not sorry, that she had spoken.