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.

[v]

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 [vi]name which was hers by birth and baptism, the name which, in her keeping, acquired a significance not to be lost nor altered. [vii]

CONTENTS.

[{1}]

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[{2}] 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[{3}] 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.[{4}]

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[{5}] 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[{6}] 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[{7}] 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."[{8}] 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[{9}] 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[{10}] 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[{11}] 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:—[{12}]

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.[{13}] 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.[{14}]

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[{15}] 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[{16}] 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[{17}] 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.[{18}]

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.[{19}]

CHAPTER II.

LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE.—FRIENDSHIP OF DR. HEDGE AND JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

Dr. Hedge, a life-long friend of Margaret, has given a very interesting sketch of her in her girlhood. He first met her when he was a student at Harvard, and she a maiden of thirteen, in her father's house at Cambridge. Her precocity, mental and physical, was such that she passed for a much older person, and had already a recognized place in society. She was at this time in blooming and vigorous health, with a tendency to over-stoutness, which, the Doctor thinks, gave her some trouble. She was not handsome nor even pretty, but her animated countenance at once made its own impression, and awakened in those who saw her a desire to know more of her. Fine hair and teeth, vivacious eyes, and a peculiarly graceful carriage of the head and neck were points which redeemed her from the charge of plainness. This face of hers was, indeed, somewhat problematic in its expression, which carried with it the assurance of great possibilities, but not the certainty of[{20}] their fulfilment. Her conversation was already brilliant and full of interest, with a satirical turn which became somewhat modified in after life. Dr. Hedge fixes her stay in the Groton school at the years 1824, 1825, and mentions her indulgence in sarcasm as a source of trouble to her in a school earlier attended, that of Dr. Park, of Boston.

In the year 1826 his slight acquaintance with her grew into a friendship which, as we have said, ended only with her life. During the seven years that followed he had abundant occasion to note her steady growth and the intensity of her inner life. This was with her, as with most young persons, "a period of romance and of dreams, of yearning and of passion." He thinks that she did not at this time pursue any systematic study. "She read with the heart, and was learning more from social experience than from books." One leading trait of her life was already prominent. This was a passionate love of all beauties, both in nature and in art.

If not corresponding to a scholar's idea of systematic study, Margaret's pursuit of culture in those years must have been arduous and many-sided. This we may partly gather from the books named and the themes touched upon in her correspondence with the beloved teacher who had brought her such near and tender help[{21}] in her hour of need. To this lady, in a letter dated July 11, 1825, Margaret rehearses the routine of her daily life:—

"I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and then practise on the piano till seven, when we breakfast. Next I read French, Sismondi's 'Literature of the South of Europe,' till eight, then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy. About half-past nine I go to Mr. Perkins's school and study Greek till twelve, when, the school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and practise again till dinner, at two. Sometimes, if the conversation is very agreeable, I lounge for half an hour over the dessert, though rarely so lavish of time. Then, when I can, I read two hours in Italian, but I am often interrupted. At six I walk or take a drive. Before going to bed I play or sing for half an hour, and about eleven retire to write a little while in my journal,—exercises on what I have read, or a series of characteristics which I am filling up according to advice."

A year later she mentions studying "Madame de Staël, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and Castilian ballads, with great delight." She asks her correspondent whether she would rather be the brilliant De Staël or the useful Edgeworth. In 1827 we find her occupied with a critical study of the elder Italian poets. She now[{22}] mentions Miss Francis (Lydia Maria Child) as her intended companion in a course of metaphysical study. She characterizes this lady as "a natural person, a most rare thing in this age of cant and pretension. Her conversation is charming; she brings all her powers to bear upon it. Her style is varied, and she has a very pleasant and spirited way of thinking."

Margaret's published correspondence with her dear teacher ends in 1830, with these words:—

"My beloved supporter in those sorrowful hours, can I ever forget that to your treatment in that crisis of youth I owe the true life, the love of Truth and Honor?"

From these years of pedagogy and of patience we must now pass to the time when this bud, so full of promise, unfolded into a flower rare and wondrous.

The story of Margaret's early studies, and the wide reach of her craving for knowledge, already mark her as a creature of uncommon gifts. A devourer of books she had been from the start; but books alone could not content this ardent mind, at once so critical and so creative. She must also have life at first-hand, and feed her intelligence from its deepest source. Hence the long story of her friendships, so many and various, yet so earnest and efficient.

What the chosen associates of this wonderful[{23}] woman have made public concerning the interest of her conversation and the value of her influence tasks to the utmost the believing powers of a time in which the demon of self-interest seems to unfold himself out of most of the metamorphic flowers of society. Margaret and her friends might truly have said, "Our kingdom is not of this world,"—at least, according to what this world calls kingly. But what imperial power had this self-poised soul, which could so widely open its doors and so closely shut them, which could lead in its train the brightest and purest intelligences, and "bind the sweet influences" of starry souls in the garland of its happy hours! And here we may say, her kingdom was not all of this world; for the kingdom of noble thought and affection is in this world and beyond it, and the real and ideal are at peace within its bounds.

In the divided task of Margaret's biography it was given to James Freeman Clarke to speak of that early summer of her life in which these tender and intimate relations had their first and most fervent unfolding. The Harvard student of that day was probably a personage very unlike the present revered pastor of the Church of the Disciples. Yet we must believe that the one was graciously foreshadowed in the other, and[{24}] that Margaret found in him the germ of what the later world has learned so greatly to respect and admire.

The acquaintance between these two began in 1829, and was furthered by a family connection which Margaret, in one of her early letters, playfully characterized as a cousinship in the thirty-seventh degree.

During the four years immediately following, the two young people either met or corresponded daily. In explaining the origin of this friendship, Mr. Clarke modestly says:—

"She needed a friend to whom to speak of her studies, to whom to express the ideas which were dawning and taking shape in her mind. She accepted me for this friend; and to me it was a gift of the gods, an influence like no other."

This intercourse was at first on both sides an entertainment sought and found. In its early stages Margaret characterizes her correspondent as "a socialist by vocation, a sentimentalist by nature, and a Channing-ite from force of circumstance and of fashion." Further acquaintance opened beneath the superficial interest the deeper sources of sympathy, and a valued letter from Margaret is named by Mr. Clarke as having laid the foundation of a friendship to which he owed both intellectual enlightenment[{25}] and spiritual enlargement. More than for these he thanks Margaret for having imparted to him an impulse which carried him bravely forward in what has proved to be the normal direction of his life. Although destined, after those early years of intimate communion, to live far apart and in widely different spheres of labor and of interest, the regard of the two friends never suffered change or diminution.

And here we come upon a governing feature in Margaret's intercourse with her friends. She had the power of leading those who interested her to a confidence which unfolded to her the deepest secrets of their life. Now came in play that unexplained action of one mind upon another which we call personal magnetism, and which is more distinctly recognized to-day than in other times as an element in social efficiency. It is this power which, united with intellectual force, gives leadership to individual men, and enables the great orator to hold a mighty audience in the hollow of his hand.

With Margaret at the period we speak of the exercise of this power was intensive rather than extensive. The circumstances of the time had something to do with this. Here was a soul whose objects and desires boldly transcended the sphere of ordinary life. It could neither wholly contain nor fitly utter itself. Pulpit and[{26}] platform were then interdicted to her sex. The mimic stage, had she thought of it, would have mocked her with its unreality. On single souls, one at a time, she laid her detaining grasp, and asked what they could receive and give. Something noble she must perceive in them before she would condescend to this parley. She did not insist that her friends should possess genius; but she could only make friends of those who, like herself, were seekers after the higher life. Worthiness of object commended even mediocrity to her; but shallow worldliness awakened her contempt.

In the exercise of this discrimination she no doubt sometimes gave offence. Mr. Clarke acknowledges that she not only seemed, but was, haughty and supercilious to the multitude, while to the chosen few she was the very embodiment of tender and true regard.

It must also be acknowledged that this same magnetism which attracted some persons so strongly was to others as strongly repellent. Where she was least known this repulsion was most felt. It yielded to admiration and esteem where acquaintance went beyond the mere recognition of Margaret's air and manner, which made a stranger a little uncertain whether he would be amicably entertained or subjected to a reductio ad absurdum. As in any community[{27}] impressions of personality are more likely to be superficial than thorough, it is probable that a very general misunderstanding which, at a later day, grew up between Margaret and the great world of a small New England city had its origin in a misconstruction of her manner when among strangers, or on the occasion of a first introduction. To recall this shallow popular judgment of her is not pleasant, but some mention of it does belong to any summary of her life. With such friends as she had, she had no reason to look upon herself as one who was neither understood nor appreciated. Yet her heart, which instinctively sought the empire of universal love, may have been grieved at the indifference and dislike which she sometimes encountered. Those who know how, in some circles, her name became a watchword for all that was eccentric and pretentious in the womanhood of her day, will smile or sigh at the contrast between the portraitures of Margaret given in the volumes of the memoir and the caricature of her which was current in the mind of the public at large.

These remarks anticipate the pains and distinctions of a later period. For the present let us confine our attention to the happy days at Cambridge, which Margaret may not have recognized as such, but which must have seemed[{28}] bright to her when contrasted with the years of labor and anxiety which followed them.

Mr. Clarke tells us that Margaret and he began the study of the German language in 1832, moved thereunto by Thomas Carlyle's brilliant exposition of the merits of leading German authors. In three months' time Margaret had acquired easy command of the language, and within the year had read the most important works of Goethe and Schiller, with the writings also of Tieck, Körner, Richter, and Novalis. Extracts from her letters at this time show that this extensive reading was neither hasty nor superficial.

She finds herself happier in the companionship of Schiller than in that of Goethe, of whom she says, "That perfect wisdom and merciless reason seem cold after those seducing pictures of forms more beautiful than truth." The "Elective Affinities" suggests to her various critical questions, but does not carry her away with the sweep of its interest. From "the immense superiority of Goethe" she finds it a relief to turn to the simplicity of Novalis, "a wondrous youth, who has written only one volume," and whose "one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow seem refreshingly human" to her. Körner becomes a fixed star in the heaven of her thought. Lessing interests her less. She[{29}] credits him with the production of "well conceived and sustained characters and interesting situations," but not with any profound knowledge of human nature. "I think him easily followed; strong, but not deep."

This was with Margaret, as Dr. Hedge has well observed, the period of romance. Her superiority to common individuals appeared in the fact that she was able to combine with intense personal aspirations and desires a wide outlook into the destinies of the human race.

We find her, in these very days, "engaged in surveying the level on which the public mind is poised." She turns from the poetic tragedy and comedy of life to study, as she says, "the rules of its prose," and to learn from the talk of common people what elements and modes of thought go to make up the average American mind. She listens to George Thompson, the English anti-slavery orator, and is led to say that, if she had been a man, she should have coveted the gift of eloquence above all others, and this for the intensity of its effects. She thinks of writing six historical tragedies, and devises the plan for three of them. Tales of Hebrew history it is also in her mind to compose. Becoming convinced that "some fixed opinion on the subject of metaphysics is an essential aid to systematic culture," she addresses herself to the[{30}] study of Fichte and Jacobi, of Brown and Stewart. The first of these appeared to her incomprehensible. Of the second, she conjectures that his views are derived from some author whom she has not read. She thinks in good earnest of writing a life of Goethe, and wishes to visit Europe in order to collect the material requisite for this. Her appreciation of Dr. Channing is shown in a warm encomium on his work treating of slavery, of which she says, "It comes like a breath borne over some solemn sea which separates us from an island of righteousness."

In summing up his account of this part of Margaret's life, Mr. Clarke characterizes self-culture as the object in which she was content to lose sight of all others. Her devotion to this great end was, he says, "wholly religious, and almost Christian." She was religious in her recognition of the divine element in human experience, and Christian in her elevation above the sordid interests of life, and in her devotion to the highest standards of duty and of destiny. He admits, however, that her aim, noble as it was, long remained too intensely personal to reach the absolute generosity required by the Christian rule. This defect made itself felt outwardly by a certain disesteem of "the vulgar herd," and in an exaggerated worship of great[{31}] personalities. Its inner effects were more serious. To her darling desire for growth and development she sacrificed "everything but manifest duty." The want of harmony between her outward circumstances and her inward longings so detained her thoughts that she was unable to pass beyond the confines of the present moment, and could not foresee that true growth must bring her, as it soon did, a great enlargement of influence and relation.[{32}]

CHAPTER III.

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.—MARGARET'S EARLY CRITICS.—FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. EMERSON.

It was to be expected that in such a correspondence as that between Margaret and James Freeman Clarke the chord of religious belief would not remain untouched. From Margaret's own words, in letters and in her journal, we clearly gather that her mind, in this respect, passed through a long and wide experience. Fortunate for her was, in that day, the Unitarian pulpit, with its larger charity and freer exegesis. With this fold for her spiritual home, she could go in and out, finding pasture, while by the so-called Orthodox sects she would have been looked upon as standing without the bounds of all religious fellowship.

The requirements of her nature were twofold. A religious foundation for thought was to her a necessity. Equally necessary was to her the untrammelled exercise of critical judgment, and the thinking her own thoughts, instead of accepting those of other people. We may feel sure that Margaret, even to save her own soul, would[{33}] not and could not have followed any confession of faith in opposition to her own best judgment. She would have preferred the hell of the free soul to the heaven of the slave. To combine this intellectual interpretation of religious duty with the simple devotion which the heart craves is not easy for any one. We may be very glad to find that for her it was not impossible. Her attitude between these two points of opposition is indeed edifying; for, while she follows thought with the daring of a sceptic, and fearlessly reasons concerning the highest mysteries, she yet acknowledges the insufficiency of human knowledge for themes so wonderful, and here, as nowhere else, bows her imperial head and confesses herself human.

One thing we may learn from what Margaret has written on this subject, if we do not already know it, and this is, that in any true religious experience there must be progress and change of attitude. This progress may be first initiated by the preponderance of thought or by that of affection, but, as it goes on, the partiality of first views will be corrected by considerations which are developed by later study. Religious sincerity is, in the end, justified in all its stages; but these stages, separately considered, will appear more or less incomplete and sometimes even irreligious.[{34}]

When first interrogated by her correspondent, she says: "I have determined not to form settled opinions at present. Loving or feeble natures need a positive religion, a visible refuge, a protection, as much in the passionate season of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave. But mine is not such. My pride is superior to any feelings I have yet experienced; my affection is strong admiration, not the necessity of giving or receiving assistance or sympathy." So much for the subjective side of the matter with Margaret at this time. The objective is formulated by her in this brief creed: "I believe in Eternal Progression. I believe in a God, a Beauty and Perfection to which I am to strive all my life for assimilation. From these two articles of belief I draw the rules by which I strive to regulate my life. Tangible promises, well-defined hopes, are things of which I do not now feel the need. At present my soul is intent on this life, and I think of religion as its rule."

Those last words are not in contrast with the general tone of religious teaching to-day, but when Margaret wrote them to James Freeman Clarke, an exaggerated adjournment of human happiness to the glories of another world was quite commonly considered as essential to a truly Christian standpoint.[{35}]

Even at this self-sufficing period of her life Margaret's journals were full of prayer and aspiration. Here are some of the utterances of this soul, which she herself calls a proud one: "Blessed Father, nip every foolish wish in blossom. Lead me any way to truth and goodness, but if it might be, I would not pass from idol to idol. Let no mean sculpture deform a mind disorderly, perhaps ill-furnished, but spacious and life-warm."

After hearing a sermon on the nature of duties, social and personal, she says: "My heart swelled with prayer. I began to feel hope that time and toil might strengthen me to despise the 'vulgar parts of felicity,' and live as becomes an immortal creature. Oh, lead me, my Father! root out false pride and selfishness from my heart; inspire me with virtuous energy, and enable me to improve every talent for the eternal good of myself and others."

Seasons of bitter discouragement alternated at this time with the moments in which she felt, not only her own power, but also the excellence of her aims in life.

Of one of these dark hours Margaret's journal gives a vivid description, from which some passages may be quoted. The occasion was a New England Thanksgiving, a day on which her attendance at church was almost compulsory.[{36}] This church was not to her a spiritual home, and on the day now spoken of the song of thanksgiving made positive discord in her ears. She felt herself in no condition to give thanks. Her feet were entangled in the problem of life. Her soul was agonized by its unreconciled contradictions.

"I was wearied out with mental conflicts. I felt within myself great power and generosity and tenderness; but it seemed to me as if they were all unrecognized, and as if it was impossible that they should be used in life. I was only one-and-twenty; the past was worthless, the future hopeless; yet I could not remember ever voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my aspiration seemed very high."

Looking about in the church, she envied the little children for their sense of dependence and protection. She knew not, she says, "that none could have any father but God," knew not that she was "not the only lonely one, the selected Œdipus, the special victim of an iron law."

From this intense and exaggerated self-consciousness, the only escape was in fleeing from self. She sought to do this, as she had often done, by a long quick walk, whose fatigue should weary out her anguish, and enable her to return home "in a state of prayer." On this day this resource did not avail her.[{37}]

"All seemed to have reached its height. It seemed as if I could never return to a world in which I had no place, to the mockery of humanities. I could not act a part, nor seem to live any longer."

The aspect of the outer world was in correspondence with these depressing thoughts.

"It was a sad and sallow day of the late autumn. Slow processions of clouds were passing over a cold blue sky; the hues of earth were dull and gray and brown, with sickly struggles of late green here and there. Sometimes a moaning gust of wind drove late, reluctant leaves across the path—there was no life else." Driven from place to place by the conflict within her, she sat down at last to rest "where the trees were thick about a little pool, dark and silent. All was dark, and cold, and still." Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds "with that transparent sweetness, like the last smile of a dying lover, which it will use when it has been unkind all a cold autumn day." And with this unlooked-for brightness passed into her soul "a beam from its true sun," whose radiance, she says, never departed more. This sudden illumination was not, however, an unreasoning, unaccountable one. In that moment flashed upon her the solution of the problem of self, whose perplexities had followed her from her childish days.[{38}] She comprehended at once the struggle in which she had been well-nigh overcome, and the illusion which had till then made victory impossible. "I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act under these limitations of time and space and human nature; but I saw also that it must do it. I saw there was no self, that selfishness was all folly, and the result of circumstance; that it was only because I thought self real that I suffered; that I had only to live in the idea of the all, and all was mine. This truth came to me, and I received it unhesitatingly; so that I was for that hour taken up into God.... My earthly pain at not being recognized never went deep after this hour. I had passed the extreme of passionate sorrow, and all check, all failure, all ignorance, have seemed temporary ever since."

The progress of this work already brings us to that portion of Margaret's life in which her character was most likely to be judged of by the world around her as already determined in its features and aspect. That this judgment was often a misjudgment is known to all who remember Margaret's position in Boston society in the days of her lessons and conversations. A really vulgar injustice was often done her by those who knew of her only her appearance and supposed pretensions. Those to whom she[{39}] never was a living presence may naturally ask of those who profess to have known her, whether this injustice did not originate with herself, whether she did not do herself injustice by habitually presenting herself in an attitude which was calculated to heighten the idea, already conceived, of her arrogance and overweening self-esteem.

Independently of other sources of information, the statements of one so catholic and charitable as Mr. Emerson meet us here, and oblige us to believe that the great services which Margaret was able to render to those with whom she came into relation were somewhat impaired by a self-esteem which it would have been unfortunate for her disciples to imitate. The satirists of the time saw this, and Margaret, besides encountering the small-shot of society ridicule, received now and then such a broadside as James Russell Lowell gave her in his "Fable for Critics." Of this long and somewhat bitter tirade a few lines may suffice as a specimen:—

"But here comes Miranda. Zeus! where shall I flee to?
She has such a penchant for bothering me, too!
She always keeps asking if I don't observe a
Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva.
* * * * *
She will take an old notion and make it her own,
By saying it o'er in her sibylline tone;[{40}]
Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep,
By repeating it so as to put you to sleep;
And she well may defy any mortal to see through it,
When once she has mixed up her infinite me through it.
* * * * *
Here Miranda came up and said: Phœbus, you know
That the infinite soul has its infinite woe,
As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl,
Since the day I was born, with the infinite soul."

These remarks, explanatory and apologetic, are suggested partly by Mr. Emerson's statements concerning the beginning of his acquaintance with Margaret, and partly by the writer's own recollections of the views of outsiders concerning her, which contrasted strongly with the feeling and opinion of her intimates.

Mr. Emerson first heard of Margaret from Dr. Hedge, and afterwards from Miss Martineau. Both were warm in their praise of her, and the last-named was especially desirous to introduce her to Mr. Emerson, whom she very much wished to know. After one or more chance meetings, it was arranged that Margaret should spend a fortnight with Mrs. Emerson. The date of this visit was in July, 1836.

To the description of her person already quoted from Dr. Hedge, we may add a sentence or two from Mr. Emerson's record of his first impressions of her:—

"She had a face and frame that would indicate[{41}] fulness and tenacity of life.... 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."

But Margaret greatly esteemed Mr. Emerson, and was intent upon establishing a friendly relation with him. Her reputation for satire was well known to him, and was rather justified in his eyes by the first half-hour of her conversation with him.

"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."

Passing into a happier vein, she unfolded her brilliant powers of repartee, expressed her own opinions, and sought to discover those of her companion. Soon her wit had effaced the impression of her personal unattractiveness; "and the eyes, which were so plain at first, swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life." He now saw that "her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent," and as he learned to know her[{42}] better, her plane of character rose constantly in his estimation, disclosing "many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each."

Mr. Emerson likens Margaret's relations with her friends to the wearing of a necklace of social brilliants of the first water. A dreaded waif among the merely fashionable, her relations with men and women of higher tastes were such that, as Mr. Emerson says, "All the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it."

In the houses of such friends she was always a desired guest, and in her various visitings she "seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had been referred."

Mr. Emerson gives some portraits which make evident the variety as well as the extent of Margaret's attraction. Women noted for beauty and for social talent, votaries of song, students of art and literature,—men as well as women,—vied with each other in their devotion to her. To each she assumed and sustained a special relation whose duties and offices she never neglected nor confounded. To each she became at once a source of inspiration and a court of appeal. The beneficence of her influence may be inferred from the lasting gratitude of her friends, who always[{43}] remembered her as having wisely guided and counselled them.

Any human life is liable to be modified by the supposition that its results are of great interest to some one whose concern in them is not a selfish one. Where this supposition is verified by corresponding acts, the power of the individual is greatly multiplied. This merciful, this providential interest Margaret felt for each of her many friends. There was no illusion in the sense of her value which they, all and severally, entertained.

Where, we may ask, shall we look to-day for a friendliness so wide and so availing? We can only answer that such souls are not sent into the world every day. Few of us can count upon inspiring even in those who are nearest and dearest to us this untiring concern in our highest welfare. But such a friend to so many it would be hard to find.

When we consider Margaret's love of literature, and her power of making its treasures her own, we must think of this passion of hers for availing intercourse with other minds as indeed a providential gift which no doubt lavished in passing speech much that would have been eloquent on paper, but which evidently had on society the immediate and intensified effect which distinguishes the living word above the dead letter.[{44}]

CHAPTER IV.

ART STUDIES.—REMOVAL TO GROTON.—MEETING WITH HARRIET MARTINEAU.—DEATH OF MR. FULLER.—DEVOTION TO HER FAMILY.

Margaret's enthusiasm for art was in some measure the result of her study of Goethe. Yet she had in herself a love of the beautiful, and a sense of its office in life, which would naturally have led her far in the direction in which this great master gave her so strong an impulsion. In her multifarious reading she gave much time to the literature of art, and in those days had read everything that related to Michael Angelo and Raphael, Quatremère de Quincy, Condivi, Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, and others. The masters themselves she studied in the casts of the Boston Athenæum, in the Brimmer Collection of Engravings, and in the contents of certain portfolios which a much-esteemed friend placed at her service, and which contained all the designs of Michael and Raphael.

The delight which Margaret felt in these studies demanded the sympathy of her elect associates, and Mr. Emerson remembers certain[{45}] months as having been "colored with the genius of these Italians." In 1839 Mr. Allston's numerous works were collected for a public exhibition which drew to Boston lovers of art from many distant places. In the same year some sculptures of Greenough and Crawford were added to the attractions of the Boston Athenæum.

In Margaret's appreciation of these works, if we may believe Mr. Emerson, a certain fanciful interpretation of her own sometimes took the place of a just estimate of artistic values. Yet he found her opinion worthy of attention, as evincing her real love of beautiful things, and her great desire to understand the high significance of art. He makes some quotations from her notes on the Athenæum Gallery of sculpture in 1840.

Here she finds marble busts of Byron and Napoleon. The first, with all its beauty, appears to her "sultry, stern, all-craving, all-commanding," and expressive of something which accounts for what she calls "the grand failure of his scheme of existence." The head of Napoleon is, she says, not only stern but ruthless. "Yet this ruthlessness excites no aversion. The artist has caught its true character, and given us here the Attila, the instrument of fate to serve a purpose not his own." She groups the poet and[{46}] the warrior together as having, "the one in letters, the other in arms, represented more fully than any other the tendency of their time; [they] more than any other gave it a chance for reaction." Near these she finds a head of the poet Ennius, and busts also of Edward Everett, Washington Allston, and Daniel Webster. Her comment upon this juxtaposition is interesting.

"Yet even near the Ennius and Napoleon our American men look worthy to be perpetuated in marble or bronze, if it were only for their air of calm, unpretending sagacity."

Mr. Henry James, Jr., writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne, speaks of the Massachusetts of forty or more years ago as poor in its æsthetic resources. Works of art indeed were then few in number, and decorative industry, in its present extent, was not dreamed of. But in the intellectual form of appreciative criticism the Boston of that day was richer than the city of our own time. The first stage of culture is cultivation, and the art lovers of that day had sowed the seed of careful study, and were intent upon its growth and ripening. If possession is nine points of the law, as it is acknowledged to be, the knowledge of values may be said to be nine points of possession, and Margaret and her friends, with their knowledge of the import[{47}] of art, and with their trained and careful observation of its outward forms, had a richer feast in the casts and engravings of that time than can be enjoyed to-day by the amateur, who, with a bric-a-brac taste and blasé feeling, haunts the picture-shops of our large cities, or treads the galleries in which the majestic ghosts of earnest times rebuke his flippant frivolity.

We have lingered over these records of Margaret's brilliant youth, because their prophecies aid us greatly in the interpretation of her later life. The inspired maiden of these letters and journals is very unlike the "Miss Fuller" who in those very days was sometimes quoted as the very embodiment of all that is ungraceful and unfeminine. How little were the beauties of her mind, the graces of her character, guessed at or sought for by those who saw in her unlikeness to the popular or fashionable type of the time matter only for derisive comment!

It may not be unimportant for us here to examine a little the rationale of Margaret's position, and inquire whether the trait which occasioned so much animadversion was not the concomitant of one of Margaret's most valuable qualities. This we should call a belief in her own moral and intellectual power, which impelled her to examine and decide all questions for herself, and which enabled her to accomplish many a brave[{48}] work and sacrifice. This sense of her own power was answered by the common confession of weakness which then was, and still is, a part of the received creed of women on the level of good society. Did not the prone and slavish attitude of these women appear to Margaret as fatal to character as it really is?

"I am only a woman," was a remark often heard in that day, as in this, from women to whom that "only" was not to be permitted! Only the guardian of the beginning of life, only the sharer in all its duties and inspirations? Culture and Christianity recognized as much as this, but the doctrine still remained an abstract one, and equal rights were scarcely thought of as a corollary to equal duties. Margaret never saw, though she foresaw, the awakening and recognition of the new womanhood which is already changing the aspect of civilized society. An eccentric in her own despite, she had dared assume her full height, and to demand her proper place. Her position was as exceptional as was her genius. From the isolation of her superiority, was it wonderful that she should consider it more absolute than it really was?

This exaggerated sense of power is perhaps nothing more than the intensification of consciousness which certain exigencies will awaken in those who meet them with a special work to[{49}] do and a special gift to do it with. It must be remembered that Margaret's self-esteem did not really involve any disesteem of others. She honored in all their best traits, and her only ground of quarrel with humanity at large was its derogation from its own dignity, its neglect of its own best interests. Such a sense of human value as she possessed was truly a Christian gift, and it was in virtue of this that she was able to impart such exhilaration and hopefulness to those who were content to learn of her.

But here, in our chronicle, the early morning hours are already over. The inward conquest which was sealed by the sunbeam of that "sallow" November day becomes the prelude to an outward struggle with difficulties which tasked to the utmost the strength acquired by our neophyte through prayer and study.

In the spring of 1833 Margaret found herself obliged to leave the academic shades of Cambridge for the country retirement of Groton. Her father, wearied with a long practice of the law, had removed his residence to the latter place, intending to devote his later years to literary labor and the education of his younger children. To Margaret this change was unwelcome, and the result showed it, at a later day, to have been unfortunate for the family. She did not, however, take here the position of a malcontent,[{50}] but that of one who, finding herself removed from congenial surroundings, knows how to summon to her aid the hosts of noble minds with which study has made her familiar. Her German books go with her, and Goethe, Schiller, and Jean Paul solace her lonely hours. She reads works on architecture, and books of travel in Italy, while sympathy with her father's pursuits leads her to interest herself in American history, concerning which he had collected much information with a view to historical composition.

We find her also engaged in tuition. She has four pupils, probably the younger children of the family, and gives lessons in three languages five days in the week, besides teaching geography and history. She has much needlework to do, and the ill-health of her mother and grandmother brings additional cares. The course of study which she has marked out for herself can only be pursued, she says, on three evenings in the week, and at chance hours in the day. It includes a careful perusal of Alfieri's writings and an examination into the evidences of the Christian religion. To this she is impelled by "distressing sceptical notions" of her own, and by the doubts awakened in her mind by the arguments of infidels and of deists, some of whom are numbered among her friends.

The following letter, addressed by Margaret to[{51}] a much-admired friend, will give us some idea of the playful mood which relieved her days of serious application.

"Groton, 1834.

"To Mrs. Almira B.

"Are you not ashamed, O most friendshipless clergywoman! not to have enlivened my long seclusion by one line? Does the author of the 'lecture delivered with much applause before the Brooklyn Lyceum' despise and wish to cast off the author of 'essays contumeliously rejected by that respected publication, the "Christian Examiner"?' That a little success should have such power to steel the female heart to base ingratitude! O Ally! Ally! wilt thou forget that it was I (in happier hours thou hast full oft averred it) who first fanned the spark of thy ambition into flame? Think'st thou that thou owest naught to those long sweeps over the inexpressive realities of literature, when thou wast obliged to trust to my support, thy own opinions as yet scarce budding from thy heels or shoulders? Dost thou forget—but my emotions will not permit me to pursue the subject; surely I must have jogged your conscience sufficiently. I shall follow the instructions of the great Goethe, and, having in some degree vented my feelings, address you as if you were what you ought to be. Still remains enveloped in mystery[{52}] the reason why neither you nor my reverend friend came to bid me good-by before I left your city, according to promise. I suspected the waiter at the time of having intercepted your card; but your long venomous silence has obliged me to acquit him. I had treasured up sundry little anecdotes touching my journey homeward, which, if related with dramatic skill, might excite a smile on your face, O laughter-loving blue-stocking! I returned home under the protection of a Mr. Fullerton, fresh from London and Paris, who gave me an entirely new view of continental affairs. He assured me that the German Prince[A] was an ignorant pretender, in the face of my assurances that I had read and greatly admired his writings, and gave me a contemptuous description of Waldo Emerson dining in boots at Timothy Wiggin's, absolument à faire mourir! All his sayings were exquisite. And then a sui generis mother whom I met with on board the steamboat. All my pretty pictures are blotted out by the rude hand of Time: verily this checking of speech is dangerous. If all the matter I have been preserving for various persons is in my head, packed away, distributed among the various organs, how immensely will my head be developed when I return to the world. This is the first time in my[{53}] life that I have known what it is to have nobody to speak to, c'est à dire, of my own peculiar little fancies. I bear it with strange philosophy, but I do wish to be written to. I will tell you how I pass my time without society or exercise. Even till two o'clock, sometimes later, I pour ideas into the heads of the little Fullers; much runs out—indeed, I am often reminded of the chapter on home education, in the 'New Monthly.' But the few drops which remain mightily gladden the sight of my father. Then I go down-stairs and ask for my letters from the post; this is my only pleasure, according to the ideas most people entertain of pleasure. Do you write me an excellent epistle by return of mail, or I will make your head ache by a minute account of the way in which the remaining hours are spent. I have only lately read the 'Female Sovereigns' of your beloved Mrs. Jameson, and like them better than any of her works. Her opinions are clearly expressed, sufficiently discriminating, and her manner unusually simple. I was not dazzled by excess of artificial light, nor cloyed by spiced and sweetened sentiments. My love to your revered husband, and four kisses to Edward, two on your account, one for his beauty, and one abstract kiss, symbol of my love for all little children in general. Write of him, of Mr. ——'s sermons, of your likes and dislikes, of any new[{54}] characters, sublime or droll, you may have unearthed, and of all other things I should like.

"Affectionately your country friend, poor and humble

"Margaret."

In the summer of 1835 a great pleasure and refreshment came to Margaret in the acquaintance of Miss Martineau, whom she met while on a visit to her friend, Mrs. Farrar, in Cambridge. In speaking of this first meeting Margaret says: "I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an impression of her.... What shrewdness in detecting various shades of character! Yet what she said of Hannah More and Miss Edgeworth grated upon my feelings." In a later conversation "the barrier that separates acquaintance from friendship" was passed, and Margaret felt, beneath the sharpness of her companion's criticism, the presence of a truly human heart.

The two ladies went to church together, and the minister prayed "for our friends." Margaret was moved by this to offer a special prayer for Miss Martineau, which so impressed itself upon her mind that she was able to write it down. We quote the part of it which most particularly refers to her new friend:—

"May her path be guarded, and blessed. May[{55}] her noble mind be kept firmly poised in its native truth, unsullied by prejudice or error, and strong to resist whatever outwardly or inwardly shall war against its high vocation. May each day bring to this generous seeker new riches of true philosophy and of Divine love. And, amidst all trials, give her to know and feel that thou, the All-sufficing, art with her, leading her on through eternity to likeness of thyself."

The change of base which, years after this time, transformed Miss Martineau into an enthusiastic disbeliever would certainly not have seemed to Margaret an answer to her prayer. But as the doctrine that "God reveals himself in many ways" was not new to her, and as her petition includes the Eternities, we may believe that she appreciated the sincerity of her friend's negations, and anticipated for her, as for herself, a later vision of the Celestial City, whose brightness should rise victorious above the mists of speculative doubt.

A serious illness intervened at this time, brought on, one might think, by the intense action of Margaret's brain, stimulated by her manifold and unremitting labors. For nine days and nights she suffered from fever, accompanied by agonizing pain in her head. Her beloved mother was at her bedside day and night. Her father, usually so reserved in expressions[{56}] of affection, was moved by the near prospect of her death to say to her: "My dear, I have been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have any faults. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do not know that you have a single fault." These words were intended by him as a viaticum for her, but they were really to be a legacy of love to his favorite child.

Margaret herself anticipated death with calmness, and, in view of the struggles and disappointments of life, with willingness. But the threatened bolt was to fall upon a head dearer to her than her own. In the early autumn of the same year her father, after a two days' illness, fell a victim to cholera.

Margaret's record of the grief which this affliction brought her is very deep and tender. Her father's image was ever present to her, and seemed even to follow her to her room, and to look in upon her there. Her most poignant sorrow was in the thought, suggested to many by similar afflictions, that she might have kept herself nearer to him in sympathy and in duty. The altered circumstances of the family, indeed, soon aroused her to new activities. Mr. Fuller had left no will, and had somewhat diminished his property by unproductive investments. Margaret now found new reason to wish that she[{57}] belonged to the sterner sex, since, had she been eldest son instead of eldest daughter, she might have become the administrator of her father's estate and the guardian of her sister and brothers. She regretted her ignorance of such details of business as are involved in the care of property, and determined to acquaint herself with them, reflecting that "the same mind which has made other attainments can in time compass these." In this hour of trial she seeks and finds relief and support in prayer.

"May God enable me to see the way clear, and not to let down the intellectual in raising the moral tone of my mind. Difficulties and duties became distinct the very night after my father's death, and a solemn prayer was offered then that I might combine what is due to others with what is due to myself. The spirit of that prayer I shall constantly endeavor to maintain."

This death, besides the sorrow and perplexity which followed it, brought to Margaret a disappointment which seemed to her to bar the fulfilment of her highest hopes. She had for two years been contemplating a visit to Europe, with a view to the better prosecution of her studies. She had earned the right to this indulgence beforehand, by assisting in the education of the younger children of the family. An opportunity now offered itself of making this journey under[{58}] the most auspicious circumstances. Her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Farrar, were about to cross the ocean, and had invited her to accompany them. Miss Martineau was to be of the party, and Margaret now saw before her, not only this beloved companionship, but also the open door which would give her an easy access to literary society in England, and to the atmosphere of old-world culture which she so passionately longed to breathe.

With this brilliant vision before her, and with her whole literary future trembling, as she thought, in the scale, Margaret prayed only that she might make the right decision. This soon became clear to her, and she determined, in spite of the entreaties of her family, to remain with her careworn mother, and not to risk the possibility of encroaching upon the fund necessary for the education of her brothers and sister.

Of all the crownings of Margaret's life, shall we not most envy her that of this act of sacrifice? So near to the feast of the gods, she prefers the fast of duty, and recognizes the claims of family affection as more imperative than the gratification of any personal taste or ambition.

Margaret does not seem to have been supported in this trial by any sense of its heroism. Her decision was to her simply a following of[{59}] the right, in which she must be content, as she says, to forget herself and act for the sake of others.

We may all be glad to remember this example, and to refer to it those who find themselves in a maze of doubt between what they owe to the cultivation of their own gifts, what to the need and advantage of those to whom they stand in near relation. Had Margaret at this time forsaken her darkened household, the difference to its members would have been very great, and she herself would have added to the number of those doubting or mistaken souls who have been carried far from the scene of their true and appointed service by some dream of distinction never to be fulfilled. In the sequel she was not only justified, but rewarded. The sacrifice she had made secured the blessings of education to the younger members of her family. Her prayer that the lifting of her moral nature might not lower the tone of her intellect was answered, as it was sure to be, and she found near at hand a field of honor and usefulness which the brilliant capitals of Europe would not have offered her.

Margaret's remaining days in Groton were passed in assiduous reading, and her letters and journals make suggestive comments on Goethe,[{60}] Shelley, Sir James Mackintosh, Herschel, Wordsworth, and others. Her scheme of culture was what we should now call encyclopedic, and embraced most, if not all, departments of human knowledge. If she was at all mistaken in her scope, it was in this, that she did not sufficiently appreciate the inevitable limitations of brain power and of bodily strength. Her impatience of such considerations led her to an habitual over-use of her brilliant faculties which resulted in an impaired state of health.

In the autumn of 1836 Margaret left Groton, not without acknowledgment of "many precious lessons given there in faith, fortitude, self-command, and unselfish love.

"There, too, in solitude, the mind acquired more power of concentration, and discerned the beauty of strict method; there, too, more than all, the heart was awakened to sympathize with the ignorant, to pity the vulgar, to hope for the seemingly worthless, and to commune with the Divine Spirit of Creation."[{61}]

CHAPTER V.

WINTER IN BOSTON.—A SEASON OF SEVERE LABOR.—CONNECTION WITH GREENE STREET SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, R. I.—EDITORSHIP OF THE "DIAL."—MARGARET'S ESTIMATE OF ALLSTON'S PICTURES.

Margaret's removal was to Boston, where a twofold labor was before her. She was engaged to teach Latin and French in Mr. Alcott's school, then at the height of its prosperity, and intended also to form classes of young ladies who should study with her French, German, and Italian.

Mr. Alcott's educational theories did not altogether commend themselves to Margaret's judgment. They had in them, indeed, the germ of much that is to-day recognized as true and important. But Margaret considered him to be too much possessed with the idea of the unity of knowledge, too little aware of the complexities of instruction.

He, on the other hand, describes her "as a person clearly given to the boldest speculation, and of liberal and varied acquirements. Not wanting in imaginative power, she has the rarest good sense and discretion. The blending of[{62}] sentiment and of wisdom in her is most remarkable, and her taste is as fine as her prudence. I think her the most brilliant talker of her day."

Margaret now passed through twenty-five weeks of incessant labor, suffering the while from her head, which she calls "a bad head," but which we should consider a most abused one. Her retrospect of this period of toil is interesting, and with its severity she remembers also its value to her. Meeting with many disappointments at the outset, and feeling painfully the new circumstances which obliged her to make merchandise of her gifts and acquirements, she yet says that she rejoices over it all, "and would not have undertaken an iota less." Besides fulfilling her intention of self-support, she feels that she has gained in the power of attention, in self-command, and in the knowledge of methods of instruction, without in the least losing sight of the aims which had made hitherto the happiness and enthusiasm of her life.

Here is, in brief, the tale of her winter's work.

To one class she gave elementary instruction in German, and that so efficiently that her pupils were able to read the language with ease at the end of three months. With another class she read, in twenty-four weeks, Schiller's "Don Carlos,"[{63}] "Artists," and "Song of the Bell;" Goethe's "Herman und Dorothea," "Götz von Berlichingen," "Iphigenia," first part of "Faust," and "Clavigo;" Lessing's "Nathan der Weise," "Minna," and "Emilia Galotti;" parts of Tieck's "Phantasus," and nearly all of the first volume of Richter's "Titan."

With the Italian class she read parts of Tasso, Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri, and the whole hundred cantos of Dante's "Divina Commedia." Besides these classes she had also three private pupils, one of them a boy unable to use his eyes in study. She gave this child oral instruction in Latin, and read to him the History of England and Shakespeare's plays in connection. The lessons given by her in Mr. Alcott's school were, she says, valuable to her, but also very fatiguing.

Though already so much overtasked, Margaret found time and strength to devote one evening every week to the viva voce translation of German authors for Dr. Channing's benefit, reading to him mostly from De Wette and Herder. Much conversation accompanied these readings, and Margaret confesses that she finds therein much food for thought, while the Doctor's judgments appear to her deliberate, and his sympathies somewhat slow. She speaks of him as entirely without any assumption of superiority[{64}] towards her, and as trusting "to the elevation of his thoughts to keep him in his place." She also greatly enjoyed his preaching, the force and earnestness of which seemed to her "to purge as by fire."

If Margaret was able to review her winter's work with pleasure, we must regard it with mingled wonder and dismay. The range and extent of her labors were indeed admirable, combining such extremes as enabled her to minister to the needs of the children in Mr. Alcott's school, and to assist the studies of the most eminent divine of the day. If we look only at her classes in literature, we shall find it wonderful that a woman of twenty-six should have been able to give available instruction in directions so many and various.

On the other hand, we must think that the immense extent of ground gone over involved too rapid a study of the separate works comprised in it. Here was given a synopsis of literary work which, properly performed, would fill a lifetime. It was no doubt valuable to her pupils through the vivifying influence of her enthusiastic imagination, which may have enabled some of them, in after years, to fill out the sketch of culture so boldly and broadly drawn before their eyes. Yet, considered as instruction, it must, from its very extent, have been somewhat superficial.[{65}]

Our dismay would regard the remorseless degree in which Margaret, at this time, must have encroached upon the reserves of her bodily strength. Some physicists of to-day ascribe to women a peculiar power of concentrating upon one short effort an amount of vital force which should carry them through long years, and which, once expended, cannot be restored. Margaret's case would certainly justify this view; for, while a mind so vigorous necessarily presupposes a body of uncommon vigor, she was after this time always a sufferer, and never enjoyed that perfect equipoise of function and of power which we call health.

In the spring of the year 1837 Margaret was invited to fill an important post in the Greene Street School, at Providence, R. I. It was proposed that she should teach the elder girls four hours daily, arranging studies and courses at her own discretion, and receiving a salary of one thousand dollars per annum.

Margaret hesitated to accept this offer, feeling inclined rather to renew her classes of the year just past, and having in mind also a life of Goethe which she greatly desired to write, and for which she was already collecting material. In the end, however, the prospect of immediate independence carried the day, and she[{66}] became the "Lady Superior," as she styles it, of the Providence school. Here a nearer view of the great need of her services stimulated her generous efforts, and she was rewarded by the love and reverence of her pupils, and by the knowledge that she did indeed bring them an awakening which led them from inert ignorance to earnest endeavor.

Margaret's record of her stay in Providence is enlivened by portraits of some of the men of mark who came within her ken. Among these was Tristam Burgess, already old, whose baldness, she says, "increases the fine effect of his appearance, for it seems as if the locks had retreated that the contour of his strongly marked head might be revealed." The eminent lawyer, Whipple, is not, she says, a man of the Webster class; but is, in her eyes, first among men of the class immediately below, and wears "a pervading air of ease and mastery which shows him fit to be a leader of the flock." John Neal, of Portland, speaks to her girls on the destiny and vocation of woman in America, and in private has a long talk with her concerning woman, whigism, modern English poets, Shakespeare, and particularly "Richard the Third," concerning which play the two "actually had a fight." "Mr. Neal," she says, "does not argue quite fairly, for he uses reason while it[{67}] lasts, and then helps himself out with wit, sentiment, and assertion." She hears a discourse and prayer from Joseph John Gurney, of England, in whose matter and manner she finds herself grievously disappointed: "Quakerism has at times looked lovely to me, and I had expected at least a spiritual exposition of its doctrines from the brother of Mrs. Fry. But his manner was as wooden as his matter. His figures were paltry, his thoughts narrowed down, and his very sincerity made corrupt by spiritual pride. The poet, Richard H. Dana, in those days gave a course of readings from the English dramatists, beginning with Shakespeare. Margaret writes:—

"The introductory was beautiful.... All this was arrayed in a garb of most delicate grace; but a man of such genuine refinement undervalues the cannon-blasts and rockets which are needed to rouse the attention of the vulgar. His naïve gestures, the rapt expression of his face, his introverted eye, and the almost childlike simplicity of his pathos carry one back into a purer atmosphere, to live over again youth's fresh emotions." Her résumé of him ends with these words: "Mr. Dana has the charms and the defects of one whose object in life has been to preserve his individuality unprofaned."

Margaret's connection with the Greene Street[{68}] School in Providence lasted two years. Her success in this work was considered very great, and her brief residence in Rhode Island was crowned with public esteem and with many valued friendships.

Her parting from the pupils here was not without tears on both sides. Although engaged to teach the elder girls, Margaret's care had extended over the younger ones, and also over some of the boys. With all she exchanged an affectionate farewell, in which words of advice were mingled. To the class of girls which had been her especial charge she made a farewell address whose impressive sentences must have been long remembered. Here are some of them:—

"I reminded them of the ignorance in which some of them had been found, and showed them how all my efforts had necessarily been directed to stimulating their minds, leaving undone much which, under other circumstances, would have been deemed indispensable. I thanked them for the moral beauty of their conduct, bore witness that an appeal to conscience had never failed, and told them of my happiness in having the faith thus confirmed that young persons can be best guided by addressing their highest nature. I assured them of my true friendship, proved by my never having cajoled or caressed[{69}] them into good. All my influence over them was rooted in reality; I had never softened nor palliated their faults. I had appealed, not to their weakness, but to their strength. I had offered to them always the loftiest motives, and had made every other end subservient to that of spiritual growth. With a heart-felt blessing I dismissed them."

In those days appeared Miss Martineau's book on America, of which we may say that its sharply critical tone stirred the national consciousness, and brought freshly into consideration the question of negro slavery, the discussion of which had been by common consent banished from "good" society in the United States. Miss Martineau dared to reprobate this institution in uncompromising language, and, while showing much appreciation of the natural beauties of the country, was generally thought to have done injustice to its moral and social characteristics.

While Margaret regarded with indignation the angry abuse with which her friend's book was greeted on this side of the Atlantic, she felt obliged to express to her the disappointment which she herself had felt on reading it. She acknowledges that the work has been "garbled, misrepresented, scandalously ill-treated." Yet she speaks of herself as one of those who, seeing[{70}] in the book "a degree of presumptuousness, irreverence, inaccuracy, hasty generalization, and ultraism on many points which they did not expect, lament the haste in which you have written, and the injustice which you have consequently done to so important a task, and to your own powers of being and doing."

Among other grievances, Margaret especially felt the manner in which Miss Martineau had written about Mr. Alcott. This she could not pass over without comment: "A true and noble man; a philanthropist, whom a true and noble woman, also a philanthropist, should have delighted to honor; a philosopher, worthy the palmy times of ancient Greece; a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of ancient Athens did Socrates. They smile to hear their verdict confirmed from the other side of the Atlantic by their censor, Harriet Martineau."

Margaret expresses in this letter the fear lest the frankness of her strictures should deprive her of the regard of her friend, but says, "If your heart turns from me, I shall still love you, still think you noble."

In 1840 Margaret was solicited to become the editor of the "Dial," and undertook, for two years, the management of the magazine, which[{71}] was at this time considered as the organ of the Transcendentalists. The "Dial" was a quarterly publication, somewhat nebulous in its character, but valuable as the expression of fresh thought, stimulating to culture of a new order. Like the transcendental movement itself, it had in it the germs of influences which in the course of the last forty years have come to be widely felt and greatly prized. In the newness of its birth and origin, it needed nursing fathers and nursing mothers, but was fed mostly, so far as concerns the general public, with neglect and ridicule.

Margaret, besides laboring with great diligence in her editorship, contributed to its pages many papers on her favorite points of study, such as Goethe, Beethoven, Romantic poetry, John Stirling, etc. Of the "Dial," Mr. Emerson says: "Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labor from those who served it, and from Margaret most of all." As there were no funds behind the enterprise, contributors were not paid for their work, and Margaret's modest salary of two hundred dollars per annum was discontinued after the first year.

The magazine lived four years. In England and Scotland it achieved a succès d'estime, and a republication of it in these days is about to make tardy amends for the general indifference which allowed its career to terminate so briefly.[{72}]

Copies of the original work, now a literary curiosity, can here and there be borrowed from individuals who have grown old in the service of human progress. A look into the carefully preserved volumes shows us the changes which time has wrought in the four decades of years which have elapsed (quite or nearly) since the appearance of the last number.

A melancholy touches us as we glance hither and thither among its pages. How bright are the morning hours marked on this Dial! How merged now in the evening twilight and darkness! Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, with life's meridian still before him. Here are printed some of his earliest lectures and some of the most admired of his poems. Here are the graceful verses of Christopher P. Cranch, artist and poet. Here are the Channing cousins, nephews of the great man by different brothers, one, William Henry Channing, then, as always, fervid and unrelinquishing in faith; the other, William Ellery, a questioner who, not finding himself answered to his mind, has ceased to ask. Here is Theodore Parker, a youthful critic of existing methods and traditions, already familiar with the sacred writings of many religions. A. Bronson Alcott appears in various forms, contributing "Days from a Diary," "Orphic Sayings," and so on. Here are, from various authors, papers entitled:[{73}] "Social Tendencies," "The Interior or Hidden Life," "The Pharisees," "Prophecy, Transcendentalism, and Progress," "Leaves from a Scholar's Journal," "Ethnic Scriptures," "The Preaching of Buddha," "Out-World and In-World,"—headings which themselves afford an insight into the direction of the speculative thought and fancy of the time. An article on the Hollis Street Council presents to us the long-forgotten controversy between Rev. John Pierpont and his congregation, to settle which a conference of the Unitarian clergy was summoned. Another, entitled "Chardon Street and Bible Conventions," records the coming together of a company of "madmen, mad women, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and Philosophers," to discuss church discipline and the authenticity of the Bible. Among those present were Dr. Channing, Father Taylor, Mr. Alcott, Mr. Garrison, Jones Very, and Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman. The chronicler says that "the assembly was characterized by the predominance of a certain plain, sylvan strength and earnestness, while many of the most intellectual and cultivated persons attended its councils. Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing and memorable part in the debate, and[{74}] that flea of Conventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, was but too ready with her interminable scroll." In the July number of the year 1842 many pages are devoted to a rehearsal of "the entertainments of the past winter," which treats of Fanny Elssler's dancing, Braham's singing, oratorios, symphony concerts, and various lectures. Among these last, those of Mr. Lyell (afterwards Sir Charles) are curtly dismissed as "a neat article," while those of Henry Giles are recognized as showing popular talent.

Among Margaret's own contributions to the "Dial," the article on Goethe and that entitled "The Great Lawsuit" are perhaps the most noteworthy. We shall find the second of these expanded into the well-known "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," of which mention will be made hereafter. The one first named seems to demand some notice here, the fine discrimination of its criticism showing how well qualified the writer was to teach the women of her day the true appreciation of genius, and to warn them from the idolatry which worships the faults as well as the merits of great minds.

From a lover of Goethe, such sentences as the following were scarcely to have been expected:—

"Pardon him, World, that he was too worldly. Do not wonder, Heart, that he was so heartless.[{75}] Believe, Soul, that one so true, as far as he went, must yet be initiated into the deeper mysteries of soul.

"Naturally of a deep mind and shallow heart, he felt the sway of the affections enough to appreciate their working in other men, but never enough to receive their inmost regenerating influence."

Margaret finds a decline of sentiment and poetic power in Goethe, dating from his relinquishment of Lili.

"After this period we find in him rather a wide and deep wisdom than the inspirations of genius. His faith that all must issue well wants the sweetness of piety; and the God he manifests to us is one of law or necessity rather than of intelligent love.

"This mastery that Goethe prizes seems to consist rather in the skilful use of means than in the clear manifestation of ends. Yet never let him be confounded with those who sell all their birthright. He became blind to the more generous virtues, the nobler impulses, but ever in self-respect was busy to develop his nature. He was kind, industrious, wise, gentlemanly, if not manly."

Margaret, with bold and steady hand, draws a parallel between Dante's "Paradiso" and the second part of Goethe's "Faust." She prefers "the[{76}] grandly humble reliance of old Catholicism" to "the loop-hole redemption of modern sagacity." Yet she thinks that Dante, perhaps, "had not so hard a battle to wage as this other great poet." The fiercest passions she finds less dangerous to the soul than the cold scepticism of the understanding. She sums up grandly the spiritual ordeals of different historical periods:—

"The Jewish demon assailed the man of Uz with physical ills, the Lucifer of the Middle Ages tempted his passions; but the Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century bade the finite strive to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt to solve all the problems of the soul."

Among Margaret's published papers on literature and art is one entitled "A Record of Impressions produced by the Exhibition of Mr. Allston's Pictures in the Summer of 1839." She was moved to write this, she says, partly by the general silence of the press on a matter of so much import in the history of American art, and partly by the desire to analyze her own views, and to ascertain, if possible, the reason why, at the close of the exhibition, she found herself less a gainer by it than she had expected. As Margaret gave much time and thought to art matters, and as the Allston exhibition was really an event of historic interest, some consideration[{77}] of this paper will not be inappropriate in this place.

Washington Allston was at that time, had long been, and long continued to be, the artist saint of Boston. A great personal prestige added its power to that of his unquestioned genius.

Beautiful in appearance, as much a poet as a painter, he really seemed to belong to an order of beings who might be called

"Too bright and good
For human nature's daily food."

He had flown into the heart of Europe when few American artists managed to get so far. He had returned to live alone with his dreams, of which one was the nightmare of a great painting which he never could finish, and never did. He had kept the vulgar world at a distance from his life and thought, intent on coining these into a succession of pictures which claimed to have a mission to the age. The series of female heads which are the most admirable of his works appeared to be the portraits of as many ideal women who, with no existence elsewhere, had disclosed themselves to him at his dreamy fireside or in his haunted studio. The spirit of the age, in its highest extreme, was upon him, and the wave of supervital aspiration swept him, as it did[{78}] Channing and Emerson, beyond the region of the visible and sensible. At that day, and for ten years later, one might occasionally have seen in some street of Boston a fragile figure, and upon it a head distinguished by snowy curls and starry eyes. Here was the winter of age; here the perpetual summer of the soul. The coat and hat did not matter; but they were of some quaint, forgotten fashion, outlining the vision as belonging to the past. You felt a modesty in looking at anything so unique and delicate. I remember this vision as suddenly disclosed out of a bitter winter's day. And the street was Chestnut Street, and the figure was Washington Allston going to visit the poet Richard H. Dana. And not long afterwards the silvery snows melted, and the soul which had made those eyes so luminous shot back to its immortal sphere.

But, to leave the man and return to the artist. Mr. Allston's real merit was too great to be seriously obscured by the over-sweep of imagination to which he was subject. His best works still remain true classics of the canvas; but the spirit which, through them, seemed to pass from his mind into that of the public, has not to-day the recognition and commanding interest which it then had.

Margaret had expected, as she says, to be[{79}] greatly a gainer by her study of this exhibition, and had been somewhat disappointed. Possibly her expectations regarded a result too immediate and definite. Sights and experiences that enrich the mind often do so insensibly. They pass out of our consciousness; but in our later judgments we find our standard changed, and refer back to them as the source of its enlargement.

Margaret was already familiar with several of the ideal heads of which we have spoken, and which bore the names of Beatrice, Rosalie, the Valentine, etc. Of these, as previously seen and studied, she says:—

"The calm and meditative cast of these pictures, the ideal beauty that shone through rather than in them, and the harmony of coloring were as unlike anything else I saw, as the 'Vicar of Wakefield' to Cooper's novels. I seemed to recognize in painting that self-possessed elegance, that transparent depth, which I most admire in literature."

With these old favorites she classes, as most beautiful among those now shown, the Evening Hymn, the Italian Shepherd Boy, Edwin, Lorenzo and Jessica.

"The excellence of these pictures is subjective, and even feminine. They tell us the painter's ideal of character: a graceful repose, with a fitness for moderate action; a capacity[{80}] of emotion, with a habit of reverie. Not one of these beings is in a state of épanchement. Not one is, or perhaps could be, thrown off its equipoise. They are, even the softest, characterized by entire though unconscious self-possession."

The head called Beatrice was sometimes spoken of in those days as representing the Beatrice of Dante. Margaret finds in it nothing to suggest the "Divina Commedia."

"How fair, indeed, and not unmeet for a poet's love. But what she is, what she can be, it needs no Dante to discover. She is not a lustrous, bewitching beauty, neither is she a high and poetic one. She is not a concentrated perfume, nor a flower, nor a star. Yet somewhat has she of every creature's best. She has the golden mean, without any touch of the mediocre."

The landscapes in the exhibition gave her "unalloyed delight." She found in them Mr. Allston's true mastery,—"a power of sympathy, which gives each landscape a perfectly individual character.... The soul of the painter," she says, "is in these landscapes, but not his character. Is not that the highest art? Nature and the soul combined; the former freed from crudities or blemishes, the latter from its merely human aspect."[{81}]

Allston's Miriam suggests to Margaret a different treatment of the subject:—

"This maiden had been nurtured in a fair and highly civilized country, in the midst of wrong and scorn indeed, but beneath the shadow of sublime institutions. Amid all the pains and penances of slavery, the memory of Joseph, the presence of Moses, exalt her soul to the highest pitch of national pride.

"Imagine the stately and solemn beauty with which such nurture and such a position might invest the Jewish Miriam. Imagine her at the moment when her lips were unsealed, and she was permitted to sing the song of deliverance. Realize this situation, and oh, how far will this beautiful picture fall short of your demands!"

To such a criticism Mr. Allston might have replied that a picture in words is one thing, a picture in colors quite another; and that the complex intellectual expression in which Margaret delighted is appropriate to literary, but not to pictorial art.

Much in the same way does she reason concerning one of Allston's most admired paintings, which represents Jeremiah in prison dictating to Baruch:—

"The form of the prophet is brought out in such noble relief, is in such fine contrast to the pale and feminine sweetness of the scribe at his[{82}] feet, that for a time you are satisfied. But by and by you begin to doubt whether this picture is not rather imposing than majestic. The dignity of the prophet's appearance seems to lie rather in the fine lines of the form and drapery than in the expression of the face. It was well observed by one who looked on him, that, if the eyes were cast down, he would become an ordinary man. This is true, and the expression of the bard must not depend on a look or gesture, but beam with mild electricity from every feature. Allston's Jeremiah is not the mournfully indignant bard, but the robust and stately Jew, angry that men will not mark his word and go his way."

The test here imagined, that of concealing the eyes, would answer as little in real as in pictured life. Although the method of these criticisms is arbitrary, the conclusion to which they bring Margaret is one in which many will agree with her:—

"The more I have looked at these pictures, the more I have been satisfied that the grand historical style did not afford the scope most proper to Mr. Allston's genius. The Prophets and Sibyls are for the Michael Angelos. The Beautiful is Mr. Allston's dominion. Here he rules as a genius, but in attempts such as I have been considering, can only show his appreciation[{83}] of the stern and sublime thoughts he wants force to reproduce."

Margaret is glad to go back from these more labored and unequal compositions to those lovely feminine creations which had made themselves so beloved that they seemed to belong to the spiritual family of Boston itself, and to "have floated across the painter's heaven on the golden clouds of fantasy."

From this paper our thoughts naturally revert to what Mr. Emerson has said of Margaret as an art critic:—

"Margaret's love of art, like that of most cultivated persons in this country, was not at all technical, but truly a sympathy with the artist in the protest which his work pronounced on the deformity of our daily manners; her co-perception with him of the eloquence of form; her aspiration with him to a fairer life. As soon as her conversation ran into the mysteries of manipulation and artistic effect, it was less trustworthy. I remember that in the first times when I chanced to see pictures with her, I listened reverently to her opinions, and endeavored to see what she saw. But on several occasions, finding myself unable to reach it, I came to suspect my guide, and to believe at last that her taste in works of art, though honest, was not on universal, but on idiosyncratic grounds."[{84}]

CHAPTER VI.

WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING'S PORTRAIT OF MARGARET.—TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS.—BROOK FARM.—MARGARET'S VISITS THERE.

It is now time for us to speak of the portrait of Margaret drawn by the hand of William Henry Channing. And first give us leave to say that Mr. Emerson's very valuable statements concerning her are to be prized rather for their critical and literary appreciation than accepted as showing the insight given by strong personal sympathy.

While bound to each other by mutual esteem and admiration, Margaret and Mr. Emerson were opposites in natural tendency, if not in character. While Mr. Emerson never appeared to be modified by any change of circumstance, never melted nor took fire, but was always and everywhere himself, the soul of Margaret was subject to a glowing passion which raised the temperature of the social atmosphere around her. Was this atmosphere heavy with human dulness? Margaret so smote the ponderous demon with her fiery wand that he was presently[{85}] compelled to "caper nimbly" for her amusement, or to flee from her presence. Was sorrow master of the situation? Of this tyranny Margaret was equally intolerant. The mourner must be uplifted through her to new hope and joy. Frivolity and all unworthiness had reason to fear her, for she denounced them to the face, with somnambulic unconcern. But where high joys were in the ascendant, there stood Margaret, quick with her inner interpretation, adding to human rapture itself the deep, calm lessoning of divine reason. A priestess of life-glories, she magnified her office, and in its grandeur sometimes grew grandiloquent. But with all this her sense was solid, and her meaning clear and worthy.

Mr. Emerson had also a priesthood, but of a different order. The calm, severe judgment, the unpardoning taste, the deliberation which not only preceded but also followed his utterances, carried him to a remoteness from the common life of common people, and allowed no intermingling of this life with his own. For him, too, came a time of fusion which vindicated his interest in the great issues of his time. But this was not in Margaret's day, and to her he seemed the palm-tree in the desert, graceful and admirable, bearing aloft a waving crest, but spreading no sheltering and embracing branches.[{86}]

William Henry Channing, whose reminiscences of Margaret stand last in order in the memoirs already published, was more nearly allied to her in character than either of his coadjutors. If Mr. Emerson's bane was a want of fusion, the ruling characteristic of Mr. Channing was a heart that melted almost too easily at the touch of human sympathy, and whose heat and glow of feeling may sometimes have overswept the calmer power of judgment.

He had heard of Margaret in her school-girl days as a prodigy of talent and attainment. During the period of his own studies in Cambridge he first made her acquaintance. He was struck, but not attracted, by her "saucy sprightliness." Her intensity of temperament, unmeasured satire, and commanding air were indeed somewhat repellent to him, and almost led him to conjecture that she had chosen for her part in life the rôle of a Yankee Corinne. Her friendships, too, seemed to him extravagant. He dreaded the encounter of a personality so imperious and uncompromising in its demands, and was content to observe her at a safe and respectful distance. Soon, however, through the "shining fog" of brilliant wit and sentiment the real nobility of her nature made itself seen and felt. He found her sagacious in her judgments. Her conversation showed breadth of[{87}] culture and depth of thought. Above all, he was made to feel her great sincerity of purpose. "This it was," says he, "that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern." The loftiness of her ideal explained the severity of her judgments, and the heroic mould and impulse of her character had much to do with her stately deportment. Thus the salient points which, at a distance, had seemed to him defects, were found, on a nearer view, to be the indications of qualities most rare and admirable.

James Freeman Clarke, an intimate of both parties, made them better known to each other by his cordial interpretation of each to each. But it was in the year 1839, in the days of Margaret's residence at Jamaica Plain, that the friendship between these two eminent persons, "long before rooted, grew up, and leafed, and blossomed." Mr. Channing traces the beginning of this nearer relation to a certain day on which he sought Margaret amid these new surroundings. It was a bright summer day. The windows of Margaret's parlor commanded a pleasant view of meadows, with hills beyond. She entered, bearing a vase of freshly gathered flowers, her own tribute just levied from the garden. Of these, and of their significance, was her first speech. From these she passed to the[{88}] engravings which adorned her walls, and to much talk of art and artists. From this theme an easy transition led the conversation to Greece and its mythology. A little later, Margaret began to speak of the friends whose care had surrounded her with these objects of her delighting contemplation. The intended marriage of two of the best beloved among these friends was much in her mind at the moment, and Mr. Channing compares the gradation of thought by which she arrived at the announcement of this piece of intelligence to the progress and dénouement of a drama, so eloquent and artistic did it appear to him.

A ramble in Bussey's woods followed this indoor interview. In his account of it Mr. Channing has given us not only a record of much that Margaret said, but also a picture of how she looked on that ever-remembered day.

"Reaching a moss-cushioned ledge near the summit, she seated herself.... 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[{89}] being, fit at once for rapture or sustained effort. 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."

Mr. Channing mentions, as others do, Margaret's habit of shutting her eyes, and opening them suddenly, with a singular dilatation of the iris. He dwells still more upon the pliancy of her neck, the expression of which varied with her mood of mind. In moments of tender or pensive feeling its curves were like those of a swan; under the influence of indignation its movements were more like the swoopings 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."

Until this day Mr. Channing had known Margaret through her intellect only. This conversation of many hours revealed her to him in a new light. It unfolded to him her manifold gifts and her deep experience, her great capacity for joy, and the suffering through which she had passed. She should have been an acknowledged queen among the magnates of European culture: she was hedged about by the narrow intolerance of provincial New England.[{90}]

In a more generous soil her genius would have borne fruit of the highest order. She felt this, felt that she failed of this highest result, and was yet so patient, so faithful to duty, so considerate of all who had claims upon her! Perceiving now the ardor of her nature and the strength of her self-sacrifice, Margaret's new friend could not but bow in reverence before her; and from that time the two always met as intimates.

Mr. Channing's reminiscences preserve for us a valuable aperçu of the Transcendental movement in New England, and of Margaret's relation to it.

The circle of the Transcendentalists was, for the moment, a new church, with the joy and pain of a new evangel in its midst. In the very heart of New England Puritanism, at that day hard, dry, and thorny, had sprung up a new growth, like the blossoming of a century-plant, beautiful and inconvenient. Boundaries had to be enlarged for it; for if society would not give it room, it was determined to go outside of society, and to assert, at all hazards, the freedom of inspiration.

While this movement was in a good degree one of simple protest and reaction, it yet drew much of its inspiration from foreign countries and periods of time remote from our own.[{91}] From the standpoint of the present it looked deeply into the past and into the future. Its leaders studied Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, among the classic authors, and De Wette, Hegel, Kant, and Fichte, among the prophets of modern thought. The welt-geist of the Germans was its ideal. Method, it could not boast. Free discussion, abstinence from participation in ordinary social life and religious worship, a restless seeking for sympathy, and a constant formulation of sentiments which, exalted in themselves, seemed to lose something of their character by the frequency with which they were presented,—these are some of the traits which Transcendentalism showed to the uninitiated.

To its Greek and Germanic elements was presently added an influence borrowed from the systematic genius of France. The works of Fourier became a gospel of hope to those who looked for a speedy regeneration of society. George Ripley, an eminent scholar and critic, determined to embody this hope in a grand experiment, and bravely organized the Brook Farm Community upon a plan as nearly in accordance with the principles laid down by Fourier as circumstances would allow. He was accompanied in this new departure by a little band of fellow-workers, of whom one or two were already well known as literary men, while others of them have since attained distinction in various walks of life.[{92}]

While all the Transcendentalists were not associationists, the family at Brook Farm was yet considered as an outcome of the new movement, and as such was regarded by its promoters with great sympathy and interest.

Margaret's position among the Transcendentalists may easily be imagined. In such a group of awakened thinkers her place was soon determined. At their frequent reunions she was a most welcome and honored guest. More than this. Among those who claimed a fresh outpouring of the Spirit Margaret was recognized as a bearer of the living word. She was not in haste to speak on these occasions, but seemed for a time absorbed in listening and in observation. When the moment came, she showed the results of this attention by briefly restating the points already touched upon, passing thence to the unfolding of her own views. This she seems always to have done with much force, and with a grace no less remarkable. She spoke slowly at first, with the deliberation inseparable from weight of thought. As she proceeded, images and illustrations suggested themselves to her mind in rapid succession. "The sweep of her speech became grand," says Mr. Channing. Her eloquence was direct and vigorous. Her wide range of reading supplied her with ready and copious illustrations. The commonplace became[{93}] original from her way of treating it. She had power to analyze, power to sum up. Her use of language had a rhythmic charm. She was sometimes grandiloquent, sometimes excessive in her denunciation of popular evils and abuses, but her sincerity of purpose, her grasp of thought and keenness of apprehension, were felt throughout.

The source of these and similar sibylline manifestations is a subtle one. Such a speaker, consciously or unconsciously, draws much of her inspiration from the minds of those around her. Each of these in a measure affects her, while she still remains mistress of herself. Her thought is upheld by the general sympathy, which she suddenly lifts to a height undreamed of before. She divines what each most purely wishes, most deeply hopes; and so her words reveal to those present not only their own unuttered thoughts, but also the higher significance and completeness which she is able to give to these thoughts under the seal of her own conviction. These fleeting utterances, alas! are lost, like the leaves swept of old from the sibyl's cave. But as souls are, after all, the most permanent facts that we know of, who shall say that one breath of them is wasted?

Young hearts to-day, separated from the time we speak of by two or three generations, may[{94}] still keep the generous thrill which Margaret awakened in the bosom of a grandmother, herself then in the bloom of youth. Books, indeed, are laid away and forgotten, manuscripts are lost or destroyed. The spoken word, fleeting though it be, may kindle a flame that ages shall not quench, but only brighten.

While, therefore, it may well grieve us to-day that we cannot know exactly what Margaret said nor how she said it, we may believe that the inspiration which she felt and communicated to others remains, not the less, a permanent value in the community.

Having already somewhat the position of a "come-outer," Margaret was naturally supposed to be in entire sympathy with the Transcendentalists. This supposition was strengthened by her assuming the editorship of the "Dial," and Christopher Cranch, in caricaturing it, represented her as a Minerva driving a team of the new illuminati. Margaret's journals and letters, however, show that while she welcomed the new outlook towards a possible perfection, she did not accept without reserve the enthusiasms of those about her. "The good time coming," which seemed to them so near, appeared to her very distant, and difficult of attainment. Her views at the outset are aptly expressed in the following extract from one of her letters:—[{95}]

"Utopia it is impossible to build up. At least, my hopes for our race on this one planet are more limited than those of most of my friends. I accept the limitations of human nature, and believe a wise acknowledgment of them one of the best conditions of progress. Yet every noble scheme, every poetic manifestation, prophesies to man his eventual destiny. And were not man ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify, he would remain torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this ground that I sympathize with what is called the 'Transcendental party,' and that I feel their aim to be the true one."

The grievance maintained against society by the new school of thought was of a nature to make the respondent say: "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept." The status of New England, social and political, was founded upon liberal traditions. Yet these friends placed themselves in opposition to the whole existing order of things. The Unitarian discipline had delivered them from the yoke of doctrines impossible to an age of critical culture. They reproached it with having taken away the mystical ideas which, in imaginative minds, had made the poetry of the old faith. Margaret, writing of these things in 1840, well says:[{96}] "Since the Revolution there has been little in the circumstances of this country to call out the higher sentiments. The effect of continued prosperity is the same on nations as on individuals; it leaves the nobler faculties undeveloped. The superficial diffusion of knowledge, unless attended by a deepening of its sources, is likely to vulgarize rather than to raise the thought of a nation.... The tendency of circumstances has been to make our people superficial, irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than to live mentally and morally." So much for the careless crowd. In another sentence, Margaret gives us the clew to much of the "divine discontent" felt by deeper thinkers. She says: "How much those of us who have been formed by the European mind have to unlearn and lay aside, if we would act here!"

The scholars of New England had indeed so devoted themselves to the study of foreign literatures as to be little familiar with the spirit and the needs of their own country. The England of the English classics, the Germany of the German poets and philosophers, the Italy of the Renaissance writers and artists, combined to make the continent in which their thoughts were at home. The England of the commonalty, the Germany and Italy of the peasant and artisan, were little known to them, and as little[{97}] the characteristic qualities and defects of their own country-people. Hence their comparison of the old society with the new was in great part founded upon what we may call "literary illusions." Moreover, the German and English methods of thought were only partially applicable to a mode of life whose conditions far transcended those of European life in their freedom and in the objects recognized as common to all.

Those of us who have numbered threescore years can remember the perpetual lamentation of the cultivated American of forty years ago. His whole talk was a cataloguing of negatives: "We have not this, we have not that." To all of which the true answer would have been: "You have a wonderful country, an exceptional race, an unparalleled opportunity. You have not yet made your five talents ten. That is what you should set about immediately."

The Brook Farm experiment probably appeared to Margaret in the light of an Utopia. Her regard for the founders of the enterprise induced her, nevertheless, to visit the place frequently. Of the first of these visits her journal has preserved a full account.

The aspect of the new settlement at first appeared to her somewhat desolate: "You seem to belong to nobody, to have a right to speak to nobody; but very soon you learn to take care of[{98}] yourself, and then the freedom of the place is delightful."

The society of Mr. and Mrs. Ripley was most congenial to her, and the nearness of the woods afforded an opportunity for the rambles in which she delighted. But her time was not all dedicated to these calm pleasures. Soon she had won the confidence of several of the inmates of the place, who imparted to her their heart histories, seeking that aid and counsel which she was so well able to give. She mentions the holding of two conversations during this visit, in both of which she was the leader. The first was on Education, a subject concerning which her ideas differed from those adopted by the Community. The manners of some of those present were too free and easy to be agreeable to Margaret, who was accustomed to deference.

At the second conversation, some days later, the circle was smaller, and no one showed any sign of weariness or indifference. The subject was Impulse, chosen by Margaret because she observed among her new friends "a great tendency to advocate spontaneousness at the expense of reflection." Of her own part in this exercise she says:—

"I defended nature, as I always do,—the spirit ascending through, not superseding nature. But in the scale of sense, intellect, spirit, I advocated[{99}] to-night the claims of intellect, because those present were rather disposed to postpone them."

After the lapse of a year she found the tone of the society much improved. The mere freakishness of unrestraint had yielded to a recognition of the true conditions of liberty, and tolerance was combined with sincerity.[100]

CHAPTER VII.

MARGARET'S LOVE OF CHILDREN.—VISIT TO CONCORD AFTER THE DEATH OF WALDO EMERSON.—CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON.—SUMMER ON THE LAKES.

Among Margaret's life-long characteristics was a genuine love of little children, which sprang from a deep sense of the beauty and sacredness of childhood. When she visited the homes of her friends, the little ones of their households were taken into the circle of her loving attention. Three of these became so especially dear to her that she called them her children. These were Waldo Emerson, Pickie Greeley, and Herman Clarke. For each of them the span of earthly life was short, no one of them living to pass out of childhood.

Waldo was the eldest son of Mr. Emerson, the child deeply mourned and commemorated by him in the well-known threnody:—

"The hyacinthine boy for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom.
The gracious boy who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,[101]
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day's eye."

This death occurred in 1841. Margaret visited Concord soon afterward, and has left in her journals a brief record of this visit, in which she made the grief of her friends her own. We gather from its first phrase that Mr. Emerson, whom she now speaks of as "Waldo," had wished her to commit to writing some of her reminiscences of the dear one lately departed:—

"Waldo brought me at once the inkhorn and pen. I told him if he kept me so strictly to my promise I might lose my ardor; however, I began at once to write for him, but not with much success. Lidian came in to see me before dinner. She wept for the lost child, and I was tempted to do the same, which relieved much from the oppression I have felt since I came. Waldo showed me all he and others had written about the child; there is very little from Waldo's own observation, though he was with him so much. He has not much eye for the little signs in children that have such great leadings. The little there is, is good.

"'Mamma, may I have this little bell which I have been making, to stand by the side of my bed?'

"'Yes, it may stand there.'[102]

"'But, mamma, I am afraid it will alarm you. It may sound in the middle of the night, and it will be heard over the whole town. It will sound like some great glass thing which will fall down and break all to pieces; it will be louder than a thousand hawks; it will be heard across the water and in all the countries, it will be heard all over the world.'

"I like this, because it was exactly so he talked, spinning away without end and with large, beautiful, earnest eyes. But most of the stories are of short sayings.

"This is good in M. Russell's journal of him. She had been telling him a story that excited him, and then he told her this: 'How his horse went out into a long, long wood, and how he looked through a squirrel's eyes and saw a great giant, and the giant was himself.'

"Went to see the Hawthornes; it was very pleasant, the poplars whisper so suddenly their pleasant tale, and everywhere the view is so peaceful. The house within I like, all their things are so expressive of themselves and mix in so gracefully with the old furniture. H. walked home with me; we stopped some time to look at the moon. She was struggling with clouds. He said he should be much more willing to die than two months ago, for he had had some real[103] possession in life; but still he never wished to leave this earth, it was beautiful enough. He expressed, as he always does, many fine perceptions. I like to hear the lightest thing he says.

"Waldo and I have good meetings, though we stop at all our old places. But my expectations are moderate now; it is his beautiful presence that I prize far more than our intercourse. He has been reading me his new poems, and the other day at the end he asked me how I liked the 'little subjective twinkle all through.'

"Saturday. Dear Richard has been here a day or two, and his common sense and homely affection are grateful after these fine people with whom I live at sword's points, though for the present turned downwards. It is well to 'thee' and 'thou' it after talking with angels and geniuses. Richard and I spent the afternoon at Walden and got a great bunch of flowers. A fine thunder-shower gloomed gradually up and turned the lake inky black, but no rain came till sunset.

"Sunday. A heavy rain. I must stay at home. I feel sad. Mrs. Ripley was here, but I only saw her a while in the afternoon and spent the day in my room. Sunday I do not give to my duty writing, no indeed. I finished yesterday,[104] after a rest, the article on ballads. Though a patchwork thing, it has craved time to do it."

We come now to the period of the famous conversations in which, more fully than in aught else, Margaret may be said to have delivered her message to the women of her time. The novelty of such a departure in the Boston of forty years ago may be imagined, and also the division of opinion concerning it in those social circles which consider themselves as charged with the guardianship of the taste of the community.

Margaret's attitude in view of this undertaking appears to have been a modest and sensible one. She found herself, in the first place, under the necessity of earning money for her own support and in aid of her family. Her greatest gift, as she well knew, was in conversation. Her rare eloquence did not much avail her at her desk, and though all that she wrote had the value of thought and of study, it was in living speech alone that her genius made itself entirely felt and appreciated. What more natural than that she should have proposed to make this rare gift available for herself and others? The reasons which she herself gives for undertaking the experiment are so solid and sufficient as to make us blush retrospectively for the merriment in which the thoughtless world sometimes indulged concerning[105] her. Her wish was "to pass in review the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavor to place them in due relation to one another in our minds; to systematize thought, and give a precision and clearness in which our sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because they have so few inducements to test and classify what they receive." In fine, she hoped to be able to throw some light upon the momentous questions, "What were we born to do, and how shall we do it?"

In looking forward to this effort, she saw one possible obstacle in "that sort of vanity which wears the garb of modesty," and which, she thinks, may make some women fear "to lay aside the shelter of vague generalities, the art of coterie criticism," and the "delicate disdains of good society," even to obtain a nearer view of truth itself. "Yet," she says, "as without such generous courage nothing of value can be learned or done, I hope to see many capable of it."

The twofold impression which Margaret made is to be remarked in this matter of the conversations, as elsewhere. Without the fold of her admirers stood carping, unkind critics; within were enthusiastic and grateful friends.

The first meeting of Margaret's Conversation Class was held at Miss Peabody's rooms, in West Street, Boston, on the 6th of November, 1839.[106] Twenty-five ladies were present, who showed themselves to be of the elect by their own election of a noble aim. These were all ladies of superior position, gathered by a common interest from very various belongings of creed and persuasion. At this, their first coming together, Margaret prefaced her programme by some remarks on the deficiencies in the education given to women, defects which she thought that later study, aided by the stimulus of mutual endeavor and interchange of thought, might do much to remedy. Her opening remarks are as instructive to-day as they were when she uttered them:—

"Women are now taught, at school, all that men are. They run over, superficially, even more studies, without being really taught anything. But with this difference: men are called on, from a very early period, to reproduce all that they learn. Their college exercises, their political duties, their professional studies, the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to put to use what they have learned. But women learn without any attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is for purposes of display. It is to supply this defect that these conversations have been planned."

Margaret had chosen the Greek Mythology for the subject of her first conversations. Her reasons for this selection are worth remembering:—[107]

"It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is serious without being solemn, and without excluding any mode of intellectual action; it is playful as well as deep. It is sufficiently wide, for it is a complete expression of the cultivation of a nation. It is also generally known, and associated with all our ideas of the arts."

In considering this statement it is not difficult for us at this day to read, as people say, between the lines. The religious world of Margaret's youth was agitated by oppositions which rent asunder the heart of Christendom. Margaret wished to lead her pupils beyond all discord, into the high and happy unity. Her own nature was both fervent and religious, but she could not accept intolerance either in belief or in disbelief. To study with her friends the ethics of an ancient faith, too remote to become the occasion of personal excitement, seemed to her a step in the direction of freer thought and a more unbiassed criticism. The Greek mythology, instinct with the genius of a wonderful people, afforded her the desired theme. With its help she would introduce her pupils to a sphere of serenest contemplation, in which Religion and Beauty had become wedded through immortal types.

Margaret was not able to do this without[108] awakening some orthodox suspicion. This she knew how to allay; for when one of the class demurred at the supposition that a Christian nation could have anything to envy in the religion of a heathen one, Margaret said that she had no desire to go back, and believed we have the elements of a deeper civilization; yet the Christian was in its infancy, the Greek in its maturity, nor could she look on the expression of a great nation's intellect as insignificant. These fables of the gods were the result of the universal sentiments of religion, aspiration, intellectual action, of a people whose political and æsthetic life had become immortal.

Margaret's good hopes were justified by the success of her undertaking. The value of what she had to impart was felt by her class from the first. It was not received in a passive and compliant manner, but with the earnest questioning which she had wished to awaken, and which she was so well able both to promote and to satisfy.

In the first of her conversations ten of the twenty-five persons present took part, and this number continued to increase in later meetings. Some of these ladies had been bred in the ways of liberal thought, some held fast to the formal limits of the old theology. The extremes of bigotry and scepticism were probably not unrepresented[109] among them. From these differences and dissidences Margaret was able to combine the elements of a wider agreement. A common ground of interest was found in the range of topics presented by her, and in her manner of presenting them. The enlargement of a new sympathy was made to modify the intense and narrow interests in which women, as a class, are apt to abide.

Margaret's journal and letters to friends give some accounts of the first meetings. She finds her circle, from the start, devoutly thoughtful, and feels herself, not "a paid Corinne," but a teacher and a guide. The bright minds respond to her appeal, as half-kindled coals glow beneath a strong and sudden breath. The present, always arid if exclusively dwelt in, is enriched by the treasures of the past and animated by the great hopes of the future.

Reports from some of Margaret's hearers show us how she appeared to them:—

"All was said with the most captivating address and grace, and with beautiful modesty. The position in which she placed herself with respect to the rest was entirely lady-like and companionable."

Another writer finds in the séance "the charm of a Platonic dialogue," without pretension or pedantry. Margaret, in her chair of leadership,[110] appeared positively beautiful in her intelligent enthusiasm. Even her dress was glorified by this influence, and is spoken of as sumptuous, although it is known to have been characterized by no display or attempted effect.

In Margaret's plan the personages of the Greek Olympus were considered as types of various aspects of human character. Prometheus became the embodiment of pure reason. Jupiter stood for active, Juno for passive will, the one representing insistence, the other resistance. Minerva pictured the practical power of the intellect. Apollo became the symbol of genius, Bacchus that of geniality. Venus was instinctive womanhood, and also a type of the Beautiful, to the consideration of which four conversations were devoted. In a fifth, Margaret related the story of Cupid and Psyche in a manner which indelibly impressed itself upon the minds of her hearers. Other conversations presented Neptune as circumstance, Pluto as the abyss of the undeveloped, Pan as the glow and play of nature, etc. Thus in picturesque guise the great questions of life and of character were passed in review. A fresh and fearless analysis of human conditions showed, as a discovery, the grandeur and beauty of man's spiritual inheritance. All were cheered and uplifted by this new outlook, sharing for the time and perhaps[111] thenceforth what Mr. Emerson calls "the steady elevation of Margaret's aim."

These occasions, so highly prized and enjoyed, sometimes brought to Margaret their penalty in the shape of severe nervous headache. During one of these attacks a friend expressed anxiety lest she should continue to suffer in this way. Margaret replied: "I feel just now such a separation from pain and illness, such a consciousness of true life while suffering most, that pain has no effect but to steal some of my time."

In accordance with the urgent desire of the class the conversations were renewed at the beginning of the following winter, Margaret having in the mean time profited by a season of especial retirement which was not without influence upon her plan of thought and of life. From this interval of religious contemplation she returned to her labors with the feeling of a new power. In opening the first meeting of this second series, on November 22, 1840, Margaret spoke of great changes which had taken place in her way of thinking. These were of so deep and sacred a character that she could only give them a partial expression, which, however, sufficed to touch her hearers deeply. "They all, with glistening eyes, seemed melted into one love." Hearts were kindled by her utterance to[112] one enthusiasm of sympathy which set out of sight the possibility of future estrangement.

In the conversations of this winter (1840-41) the fine arts held a prominent place.

Margaret stated, at the beginning, that the poetry of life would be found in the advance "from objects to law, from the circumference of being, where we found ourselves at our birth, to the centre." This poetry was "the only path of the true soul," life's prose being the deviation from this ideal way. The fine arts she considered a compensation for this prose, which appeared to her inevitable. The beauties which life could not embody might be expressed in stone, upon canvas, or in music and verse. She did not permit the search for the beautiful to transcend the limits of our social and personal duties. The pursuit of æsthetic pleasure might lead us to fail in attaining the higher beauty. A poetic life was not the life of a dilettante.

Of sculpture and music she had much to say, placing them above all other arts. Painting appeared to her inferior to sculpture, because it represented a greater variety of objects, and thus involved more prose. Several conversations were, nevertheless, devoted to Painting, and the conclusion was reached that color was consecrate to passion and sculpture to thought; while yet in some sculptures, like the Niobe,[113] for example, feeling was recognized, but on a grand, universal scale.

The question, "What is life?" occupied one meeting, and brought out many differences of view, which Margaret at last took up into a higher ground, beginning with God as the eternally loving and creating life, and recognizing in human nature a kindred power of love and of creation, through the exercise of which we also add constantly to the total sum of existence, and, leaving behind us ignorance and sin, become godlike in the ability to give, as well as to receive, happiness.

With the work of this winter was combined a series of evening meetings, five in number, to which gentlemen were admitted. Mr. Emerson was present at the second of these, and reports it as having been somewhat encumbered "by the headiness or incapacity of the men," who, as he observes, had not been trained in Margaret's method.

Another chronicler, for whose truth Mr. Emerson vouches, speaks of the plan of these five evenings as a very noble one. They were spoken of as Evenings of Mythology, and Margaret, in devising them, had relied upon the more thorough classical education of the gentlemen to supplement her own knowledge, acquired in a less systematic way. In this hope she was disappointed.[114] The new-comers did not bring with them an erudition equal to hers, nor yet any helpful suggestion of ideas. The friend whom we now quote is so much impressed by Margaret's power as to say: "I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She distances all who talk with her." Even Mr. Emerson served only to display her powers, his uncompromising idealism seeming narrow and hard when contrasted with her glowing realism. "She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as Mr. Emerson does, but by comprehension, and so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to hope and faith."

Margaret's classes continued through six winters. The number of those present varied from twenty-five to thirty. In 1841-42 the general subject was Ethics, under which head the Family, the School, the Church, Society, and Literature were all discussed, and with a special reference to "the influences on woman." In the winter next after this, we have notes of the following topics: Is the Ideal first or last, Divination or Experience? Persons who never awake to Life in this World; Mistakes; Faith; Creeds; Woman; Demonology; Influence; Roman Catholicism; The Ideal.

In the season of 1843-44, a number of themes[115] were considered under the general head of Education. Among these were Culture, Ignorance, Vanity, Prudence, and Patience.

These happy labors came to an end in April of the year 1844, when Margaret parted from her class with many tokens of their love and gratitude. After speaking of affectionate words, beautiful gifts, and rare flowers, she says:—