There was little in the life of the people of New England in the early
part of the present century upon which to feed the imagination of a
precocious and romantic child like Margaret Fuller; and her childhood,
though outwardly fortunate and well placed, was one of labor and
repression, and far from happy, if we may judge by her own account of
it. The theology of the people was gloomy. They made everything
connected with religion unlovely, and this austerity was particularly
distasteful to one of Margaret's imaginative temperament and heroic
disposition. Her ungratified imagination brought her early into conflict
with the circumstances and surroundings of her life.
All the poetry of her nature cried out against the lives of toil and
care by which she was surrounded,--lives at that time lighted up by
little of art or literature or music, but held to a stern standard of
duty and self-abnegation. Margaret's nature craved beauty and poetry and
art and lavish affection, and it was nursed on a somewhat grim diet of
hard work and little expressed affection, although her parents were both
loving and intelligent. Her father himself educated her, being a Harvard
graduate, and a lawyer and politician of that day. He taught her Latin
at the age of six years; and she says that the lessons set for her were
as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond
her age. These lessons were recited to her father after office hours,
which kept the poor tired child up till late in the evening, and as a
result the youthful prodigy was terrified at night by dreams and
illusions, and given to sleep-walking. The result of such over-tension
of a childish mind was a morbid and unhealthy state of both body and
mind; and though she loved study, these great demands made upon her
powers almost overcame her with their weight. She had a natural passion
for reading, and when a mere child singled out Shakespeare, Cervantes,
and Moliere, from all the books in the library, for her especial
favorites.
She was but eight years old when she took a passionate interest in
"Romeo and Juliet," and was disgraced in the family for perusing it on
Sunday; and the imaginative child was always seeking for the heroic
figures of her Shakespearian world in the every-day life about her, and
was always disappointed. Altogether, we must call it an unhappy and
unfortunate childhood, and cannot but think much finer intellectual as
well as moral results would have followed a different treatment in her
home.
In her early girlhood she mixed much in the college society at
Cambridge, and would have been taken for a much older person than she
really was. She was not handsome, but her animated countenance made its
own impression, and awakened interest in almost all who saw her. She
made some of her life-long friends at this time. Dr. Hedge, James
Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing were among them. With Emerson
she made acquaintance a little later, through Miss Martineau, then
visiting in this country. She was not at this time an agreeable person.
She was much derided for her self-esteem by people who knew her
slightly, and was also accused of hauteur and arrogance. Even Lowell was
thus impressed by her, and put her in the pillory in the "Fable for
Critics." He proposes to establish new punishments for criminals,
thus:--
"I propose to shut up every doer of wrong
With these desperate books, for such terms, short or long,
As by statute in such cases made and provided
Shall be by our wise legislators decided:
Thus:--Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler,
At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ----."