FULLER
6117
"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us
there, down on old Dearborn Place, and I thought perhaps I
could interest Lottie's mother," concluded Jane.
6117
"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us
there, down on old Dearborn Place, and I thought perhaps I
could interest Lottie's mother," concluded Jane.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
It is a little singular, I admit-my beginning as a
teacher and ending as a pupil. You know, of course, that I was
a school-teacher? Yes, I had a little class down on Wabash Ave-
nue near Hubbard Court, in a church basement. I began to be
useful as early as I could. We lived in a little bit of a house a
couple of blocks north of there; you know those old-fashioned
frame cottages
one of them. In the early days pa was a car-
penter-a boss carpenter, to do him full justice; the town was
growing, and after a while he began to do first-rate. But at the
beginning ma did her own work, and I helped her. I swept and
dusted, and wiped the dishes. She taught me to sew, too; I
trimmed all my own hats till long after I was married. "
Mrs. Bates leaned carelessly against the tortured framework
of a tapestried causeuse. The light from the lofty windows shat-
tered on the prisms of her glittering chandeliers, and diffused
itself over the paneled Loves and Graces around her.
"When I got to be eighteen I thought I was old enough to
branch out and do something for myself - I've always tried to
hold up my own end. My little school went first-rate. There
was only one drawback-another school next door, full of great
rowdy boys. They would climb the fence and make faces at my
scholars; yes, and sometimes they would throw stones. But that
wasn't the worst: the other school taught book-keeping. Now, I
never was one of the kind to lag behind, and I used to lie awake
nights wondering how I could catch up with the rival institu-
tion. Well, I hustled around, and finally I got hold of two or
three children who were old enough for accounts, and I set them
to work on single entry. I don't know whether they learned
-
## p. 6112 (#82) ############################################
6112
HENRY B. FULLER
anything, but I did - enough to keep Granger's books for the
first year after we started out. "
Jane smiled broadly; it was useless to set a stoic face against
such confidences as these.
(
"We were married at the most fashionable church in town—
right there in Court-house Square; and ma gave us a reception,
or something like it, in her little front room. We weren't so very
stylish ourselves, but we had some awfully stylish neighbors - all
those Terrace Row people, just around the corner.
'We'll get
there too, sometime,' I said to Granger. This is going to be a
big town, and we have a good show to be big people in it. Don't
let's start in life like beggars going to the back door for cold
victuals; let's march right up the front steps and ring the bell
like somebody. ' So, as I say, we were married at the best church
in town; we thought it safe enough to discount the future. "
"Good for you," said Jane, who was finding her true self in
the thick of these intimate revelations; "you guessed right. "
"Well, we worked along fairly for a year or two, and finally
I said to Granger: Now, what's the use of inventing things
and taking them to those companies and making everybody rich
but yourself? You pick out some one road, and get on the in-
side of that, and stick there, and — › The fact is," she broke off
suddenly, "you can't judge at all of this room in the daytime.
You must see it lighted and filled with people. You ought to
have been here at the bal poudré I gave last season — lots of
pretty girls in laces and brocades, and powder on their hair. It
was a lovely sight.
Come; we've had enough of this. "
Mrs. Bates turned a careless back upon all her Louis Quinze
splendor. "The next thing will be something else. "
-
Jane's guide passed swiftly into another large and imposing
apartment. "This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is
where I receive my distinguished guests. "
"Good! " cried Jane, who knew Irving's 'Alhambra' by heart.
"Only it isn't Moorish; it's Baroque- and a very good ex-
ample. "
――――
·
The room had a heavy paneled ceiling of dark wood, with a
cartouche in each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor
stood in the corners, half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries
hung on the walls, and a vast fireplace, flanked by huge Atlan-
tes and crowned by a heavy pediment, broken and curled, almost
filled one whole side. "That fireplace is Baroque all over. "
## p. 6113 (#83) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6113
<<
"See here," said Mrs. Bates, suddenly, are you the woman
who read about the 'Decadence of the Renaissance Forms' at
the last Fortnightly? "
"I'm the woman," responded Jane modestly.
But you
"I don't know why I didn't recognize you before.
sat in an awfully bad light, for one thing. Besides, I had so
much on my mind that day. Our dear little Reginald was com-
ing down with something-or so we thought. And the bonnet
I was forced to wear- well, it just made me blue. You didn't
notice it? "
"I was too flustered to notice anything. It was my first time
there. "
"Well, it was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay
attention to it; it gave me several new notions. All my decora-
tions, then-you think them corrupt and degraded? "
"Well," returned Jane, at once soothing and judicial, “all
these later forms are interesting from a historical and sociologi-
cal point of view. And lots of people find them beautiful, too,
for that matter. " Jane slid over these big words with a prac、
ticed ease.
"They impressed my notables, any way," retorted Mrs. Bates.
"We entertained a good deal during the Fair-it was expected,
of course, from people of our position. We had princes and
counts and honorables without end. I remember how delighted
I was with my first prince-a Russian. H'm later in the
season Russian princes were as plentiful as blackberries: you
stepped on one at every turn. We had some of the English too.
One of their young men visited us at Geneva during the sum-
mer. I never quite made out who invited him; I have half an
idea that he invited himself. He was a great trial. Queer about
the English, isn't it? How can people who are so clever and
capable in practical things ever be such insolent tom-fools in
social things? Well, we might just stick our noses in the pict-
ure gallery for a minute.
"We're almost beginners in this branch of industry," she
expounded, as she stood beside Jane in the centre of the room.
under the coldly diffused glare of the skylight. "In my young
days it was all Bierstadt and De Haas; there wasn't supposed to
be anything beyond. But as soon as I began to hear about the
Millet and the Barbizon crowd, I saw there was. Well, I set to
work, as usual. I studied and learned. I want to learn. I
XI-383
## p. 6114 (#84) ############################################
6114
HENRY B. FULLER
want to move; I want to keep right up with the times and the
people. I got books and photographs, and I went to all the
galleries. I read the artists' biographies and took in all the loan
collections. Now I'm loaning, too. Some of these things are
going to the Art Institute next week-that Daubigny, for one.
It's little, but it's good: there couldn't be anything more like
him, could there?
"We haven't got any Millet yet, but that morning thing over
there is a Corot- at least we think so. I was going to ask one
of the French commissioners about it last summer, but my nerve
gave out at the last minute. Mr. Bates bought it on his own
responsibility. I let him go ahead; for after all, people of our
position would naturally be expected to have a Corot. I don't
care to tell you what he paid for it. "
"There's some more high art," said Mrs. Bates, with a wave
of her hand towards the opposite wall. "Carolus Duran; fifty
thousand francs; and he wouldn't let me pick out my own cos-
tume either.
"And now," she said, "let's go up-stairs. " Jane followed her,
too dazed to speak or even to smile.
Mrs. Bates hastened forward light-footedly. "Conservatory —
that's Moorish," she indicated casually; "nothing in it but orchids
and things. Come along. " Jane followed-dumbly, humbly.
Mrs. Bates paused on the lower step of her great stairway.
A huge vase of Japanese bronze flanked either newel, and a
Turkish lantern depended above her head. The bright green of
a dwarf palm peeped over the balustrade, and a tempered light
strained down through the painted window on the landing-stage.
"There! " she said, "you've seen it all. " She stood there in a
kind of impassioned splendor, her jeweled fingers shut tightly,
and her fists thrown out and apart so as to show the veins and
cords of her wrists. "We did it, we two-just Granger and I.
Nothing but our own hands and hearts and hopes, and each
other. We have fought the fight-a fair field and no favor-
and we have come out ahead. And we shall stay there too;
keep up with the procession is my motto, and head it if you
can. I do head it, and I feel that I'm where I belong. When I
can't foot it with the rest, let me drop by the wayside and the
crows have me. But they'll never get me- never! There's ten
more good years in me yet; and if we were to slip to the bot-
tom to-morrow we should work back to the top again before we
## p. 6115 (#85) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6115
finish. When I led the grand march at the Charity Ball I was
accused of taking a vainglorious part in a vainglorious show.
Well, who would look better in such a rôle than I, or who has
earned a better right to play it? There, child! ain't that suc-
cess? ain't that glory? ain't that poetry? -h'm," she broke off
suddenly, "I'm glad Jimmy wasn't by to hear that! He's always
taking up his poor mother. "
"Jimmy? Is he humble-minded, do you mean? "
"Humble-minded? one of my boys humble-minded? No in-
deed; he's grammatical, that's all: he prefers 'isn't. ' Come
up. ”
Mrs. Bates hurried her guest over the stairway and through
several halls and passages, and introduced her finally into a
large and spacious room done in white and gold. In the glitter-
ing electrolier wires mingled with pipes, and bulbs with globes.
To one side stood a massive brass bedstead full-panoplied in
coverlet and pillow-cases, and the mirror of the dressing-case re-
flected a formal row of silver-backed brushes and combs.
"My bedroom," said Mrs. Bates.
"How does it strike you? »
"Why," stammered Jane, "it's all very fine, but-"
"Oh, yes; I know what they say about it - I've heard them
a dozen times: 'It's very big and handsome and all, but not a
bit home-like. I shouldn't want to sleep here. ' Is that the
idea? »
"About," said Jane.
"Sleep here! " echoed Mrs. Bates. "I don't sleep here. I'd as
soon think of sleeping out on the prairie. That bed isn't to sleep
in; it's for the women to lay their hats and cloaks on. Lay yours
there now. "
«
Jane obeyed. She worked herself out of her old blue sack,
and disposed it, neatly folded, on the brocaded coverlet. Then
she took off her mussy little turban and placed it on the sack.
"What a strange woman," she murmured to herself. " She
doesn't get any music out of her piano; she doesn't get any
reading out of her books; she doesn't even get any sleep out of
her bed. " Jane smoothed down her hair and awaited the next
stage of her adventure.
"This is the way. " Mrs. Bates led her through a narrow side
door.
"This is my office. " She traversed the "office,"
passed into a room beyond, pushed Jane ahead of her, and shut
the door.
## p. 6116 (#86) ############################################
6116
HENRY B. FULLER
The door closed with a light click, and Jane looked about her
with a great and sudden surprise. Poor stupid, stumbling child!
- she understood at last in what spirit she had been received
and on what footing she had been placed.
She found herself in a small, cramped, low-ceiled room which
was filled with worn and antiquated furniture. There was a pon-
derous old mahogany bureau, with the veneering cracked and
peeled, and a bed to correspond. There was a shabby little
writing-desk, whose let-down lid was lined with faded and blotted
green baize.
On the floor there was an old Brussels carpet, an-
tique as to pattern, and wholly threadbare as to surface. The
walls were covered with an old-time paper whose plaintive primi-
tiveness ran in slender pink stripes alternating with narrow green
vines. In one corner stood a small upright piano whose top was
littered with loose sheets of old music, and on one wall hung a
set of thin black-walnut shelves strung together with cords and
loaded with a variety of well-worn volumes. In the grate was
a coal fire.
Mrs. Bates sat down on the foot of the bed, and motioned
Jane to a small rocker that had been re-seated with a bit of old
rugging.
"And now," she said, cheerily, "let's get to business. Sue
Bates, at your service. "
Oh, no," gasped Jane, who felt, however dumbly and mistily,
that this was an epoch in her life. "Not here; not to-day. "
"Why not? Go ahead; tell me all about the charity that isn't
a charity. You'd better; this is the last room-there's nothing
beyond. " Her eyes were twinkling, but immensely kind.
"I know it," stammered Jane. "I knew it in a second. " She
felt too that not a dozen persons had ever penetrated to this little
chamber. "How good you are to me! "
Presently, under some compulsion, she was making an exposi-
tion of her small plan. Mrs. Bates was made to understand how
some of the old Dearborn Seminary girls were trying to start a
sort of club-room in some convenient down-town building for
typewriters and saleswomen and others employed in business.
There was to be a room where they could get lunch, or bring
their own to eat, if they preferred; also a parlor where they
could fill up their noon hour with talk or reading or music; it
was the expectation to have a piano and a few books and maga-
zines.
## p. 6117 (#87) ############################################
HENRY B.
FULLER
6117
"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us
there, down on old Dearborn Place, and I thought perhaps I
could interest Lottie's mother," concluded Jane.
"And so you can," said Lottie's mother, promptly. "I'll have
Miss Peters - but don't you find it a little warm here?
pass me that hair-brush. "
Just
-
――――
Mrs. Bates had stepped to her single little window. "Isn't it
a gem? " she asked. "I had it made to order; one of the old-
fashioned sort, you see - two sash, with six little panes in each.
No weights and cords, but simple catches at the side.
It opens
to just two widths; if I want anything different, I have to con-
trive it for myself. Sometimes I use a hair-brush and some-
times a paper-cutter. "
She dropped her voice.
"Did you ever have a private secretary? "
"Me? " called Jane. "I'm my own. "
«< Keep it that way," said Mrs. Bates, impressively. "Don't
ever change-no matter how many engagements and appoint-
ments and letters and dates you come to have. You'll never
spend a happy day afterwards. Tutors are bad enough—but
thank goodness, my boys are past that age. And men-servants
are bad enough—every time I want to stir in my own house I
seem to have a footman on each toe and a butler standing on
my train; however, people in our position-well, Granger insists,
you know. "
"And now business is over," she continued. "Do you like
my posies? >>
She nodded towards the window where, thanks to
the hair-brush, a row of flowers in a long narrow box blew about
in the draft.
"Asters? "
"No, no, no! But I hoped you'd guess asters. They're
chrysanthemums-you see, fashion will penetrate even here.
But they're the smallest and simplest I could find. What do I
care for orchids and American beauties, and all those other ex-
pensive things under glass? How much does it please me to
have two great big formal beds of gladiolus and foliage in the
front yard, one on each side of the steps? Still, in our position,
I suppose it can't be helped. No; what I want is a bed of por-
tulaca, and some cypress vines running up strings to the top of a
pole. As soon as I get poor enough to afford it I'm going to
have a lot of phlox and London-pride and bachelor's-buttons out
## p. 6118 (#88) ############################################
6118
HENRY B. FULLER
there in the back yard, and the girls can run their clothes-lines
somewhere else. "
"It's hard to keep flowers in the city," said Jane.
"I know it is. At our old house we had such a nice little
rose-bush in the front yard. I hated so to leave it behind — one
of those little yellow brier-roses. No, it wasn't yellow; it was
just'yaller. ' And it always scratched my nose when I tried
to smell it. But oh, child"- wistfully-"if I could only smell
it now! "
"Couldn't you have transplanted it? " asked Jane, sympatheti-
cally.
"I went back the very next day after we moved out, with a
peach basket and fire shovel. But my poor bush was buried
under seven feet of yellow sand. To-day there's seven stories of
brick and mortar. So all I've got from the old place is just this
furniture of ma's and the wall-paper. "
"The wall-paper? »
"Not the identical same, of course. It's like what I had in
my bedroom when I was a girl. I remembered the pattern, and
tried everywhere to match it. At first I just tried on Twenty-
second street. Then I went down-town. Then I tried all the
little places away out on the West Side. Then I had the pattern
put down on paper and I made a tour of the country. I went
to Belvidere, and to Beloit, and to Janesville, and to lots of
other places between here and Geneva. And finally-"
"Well, what- finally? "
"Finally, I sent down East and had eight or ten rolls made
to order. I chased harder than anybody ever chased for a
Raphael, and I spent more than if I had hung the room with
Gobelins; but-
>>
She stroked the narrow strips of pink and green with a fond
hand, and cast on Jane a look which pleaded indulgence. "Isn't
it just too quaintly ugly for anything? "
"It isn't any such thing," cried Jane. "It's just as sweet as
it can be! I only wish mine was like it. "
## p. 6119 (#89) ############################################
6119
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
(MARCHIONESS OSSOLI)
(1810-1850)
M
ARGARET was one of the few persons who looked upon life as
an art, and every person not merely as an artist, but as a
work of art," wrote Emerson. "She looked upon herself as
a living statue, which should always stand on a polished pedestal,
with right accessories, and under the most fitting lights. She would
have been glad to have everybody so live and act. She was annoyed
when they did not, and when they did not regard her from the point
of view which alone did justice to her.
It is certain that her
friends excused in her, because she had a
right to it, a tone which they would have
reckoned intolerable in any other. " In the
coolest way she said to her friends:-
·
.
"I take my natural position always: and the
more I see, the more I feel that it is regal.
Without throne, sceptre, or guards, still a queen.
. . . In near eight years' experience I have
learned as much as others would in eighty, from
my great talent at explanation.
But in
truth I have not much to say; for since I have
had leisure to look at myself, I find that so
far from being an original genius, I have not
yet learned to think to any depth; and that the
utmost I have done in life has been to form my
character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the
truth with a little better grace than I did at first. When I look at my papers
I feel as if I had never had a thought that was worthy the attention of any
but myself; and 'tis only when on talking with people I find I tell them what
they did not know, that my confidence at all returns. . . A woman of
tact and brilliancy, like me, has an undue advantage in conversation with men.
They are astonished at our instincts. They do not see where we got our
knowledge; and while they tramp on in their clumsy way, we wheel and fly,
and dart hither and thither, and seize with ready eye all the weak points,
like Saladin in the desert. It is quite another thing when we come to write,
and without suggestion from another mind, to declare the positive amount
of thought that is in us.
Then gentlemen are surprised that I write
MARGARET FULLER
## p. 6120 (#90) ############################################
6120
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
no better, because I talk so well. I have served a long apprenticeship to the
one, none to the other. I shall write better, but never, I think, so well as I
talk;
for then I feel inspired. . . . For all the tides of life that flow within
me, I am dumb and ineffectual when it comes to casting my thought into a
form. No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the pleas-
ure of creation would make it possible for me to write. What shall I do,
dear friend? I want force to be either a genius or a character. One should
be either private or public. I love best to be a woman; but womanhood is
at present too straitly bounded to give me scope. At hours, I live truly as
a woman; at others, I should stifle. "
All these naïve confessions were made, it must be remembered,
either in her journal, or in letters to her nearest friends, and without
fear of misinterpretation.
This complex, self-conscious, but able woman was born in Cam-
bridgeport, Massachusetts, in 1810, in the house of her father, Timothy
Fuller, a lawyer. Her mother, it is reported, was a mild, self-effacing
lover of flower-bulbs and gardens, of a character to supplement, and
never combat, a husband who exercised all the domestic dictation
which Puritan habits and the marital law encouraged.
"He thought to gain time by bringing forward the intellect as early as pos-
sible," wrote Margaret in her autobiographical sketch. "Thus I had tasks
given me, as many and as various as the hours would allow, and on subjects
beyond my age; with the additional disadvantage of reciting to him in the
evening after he returned from his office. As he was subject to many inter-
ruptions, I was often kept up till very late, and as he was a severe teacher,
both from his habits of mind and his ambition for me, my feelings were kept
on the stretch till the recitations were over. Thus, frequently, I was sent to
bed several hours too late, with nerves unnaturally stimulated. The conse-
qence was a premature development of the brain that made me a 'youthful
prodigy by day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare, and
somnambulism, which at the time prevented the harmonious development of
my bodily powers and checked my growth, while later they induced continual
headache, weakness, and nervous affections of all kinds. . . I was taught
Latin and English grammar at the same time, and began to read Latin at
six years old, after which, for some years, I read it daily.
Of the
Greek language I knew only enough to feel that the sounds told the same
story as the mythology; that the law of life in that land was beauty, as in
Rome it was stern composure.
With these books I passed my days.
The great amount of study exacted of me soon ceased to be a burden, and
reading became a habit and a passion. The force of feeling which under other
circumstances might have ripened thought, was turned to learn the thoughts
of others. "
•
By the time she entered mature womanhood, Margaret had made
herself acquainted with the masterpieces of German, French, and
Italian literatures. It was later that she became familiar with the
## p. 6121 (#91) ############################################
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
6121
great literature of her own tongue. Her father died in 1835, and in
1836 she went to Boston to teach languages.
"I still," wrote Emerson (1851), "remember the first half-hour of Marga-
ret's conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and
a frame that would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was rather un-
der the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair. She
was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-
possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her
extreme plainness,- a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,—
the nasal tone of her voice, all repelled; and I said to myself, 'We shall
never get far. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first im-
pression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best
friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room
with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an
overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the
prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition
to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and
the women did not like one who despised them. »
In 1839 Margaret began her famous "Conversations » in Boston,
continuing these for five winters. "Their theory was not high-flown
but eminently sensible," writes Mr. Higginson, "being based expressly
on the ground stated in her circular; that the chief disadvantage of
women in regard to study was in not being called upon, like men, to
reproduce in some way what they had learned. As a substitute for
this she proposed to try the uses of conversation, to be conducted in
a somewhat systematic way under efficient leadership. " In 1839 she
published her translation of Eckermann's 'Conversations with Goethe,'
and in 1842 of the Correspondence of Fräulein Günerode and Bet-
tine von Arnim. ' The year 1839 had seen the full growth of New
England transcendentalism, which was a reaction against Puritanism
and a declaration in vague phrases of God in man and of the indwell-
ing of the spirit in each soul,-an admixture of Platonism, Oriental
pantheism, and the latest German idealism, with a reminiscence of
the stoicism of Seneca and Epictetus. In 1840 The Dial was founded
to be the expression of these ideas, with Margaret as editor and
Emerson and George Ripley as aids. To this quarterly she gave
two years of hard work and self-sacrifice.
Another outcome of the transcendental movement, the community
of Brook Farm, was to her, says Mr. Higginson, "simply an experi-
ment which had enlisted some of her dearest friends; and later, she
found [there] a sort of cloister for occasional withdrawal from her
classes and her conversations. This was all: she was not a stock-
holder, nor a member, nor an advocate of the enterprise; and even
'Miss Fuller's cow,' which Hawthorne tried so hard to milk, was a
being as wholly imaginary as [Hawthorne's] Zenobia. »
## p. 6122 (#92) ############################################
6122
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
une.
Her 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' (1844) led Horace Greeley
to offer her a place in the literary department of the New York Trib-
It is her praise that she was able to impart a purely literary
interest to a daily journal, and to make its critical judgment author-
itative. The best of her contributions to that journal were published,
with articles from the Dial and other periodicals, under the title of
'Papers on Art and Literature' (1846).
In that year she paid the visit to Europe of which she had dreamed
and written; and her letters to her friends at home are now, perhaps,
the most readable of her remains. Taking up her residence in Italy
in 1847, and sympathizing passionately with Mazzini and his republi-
can ideas, she met and married the Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli.
Her husband was seven years her junior, but his letters written while
he was serving as a soldier at Rome, and she was absent with their
baby in the country, reveal the ardor of his love for her. During the
siege of Rome by the French, Mazzini put in her charge the hos-
pital of the Trinity of the Pilgrims. "At the very moment when
Lowell was satirizing her in his 'Fables for Critics,' says Mr. Hig-
ginson, "she was leading such a life as no American woman had led
in this century before. " Her Southern nature and her longing for
action and love had found expression. In May 1850 she sailed with
her husband and son from Leghorn for America. But the vessel was
wrecked off Fire Island within a day's sail of home and friends, and,
save the body of her child and a trunk of water-soaked papers, the
sea swallowed up all remnants of the happiness of her later life.
> >>
The position which Margaret Fuller held in the small world of
letters about her is not explained by her writings. She seems to
have possessed great personal magnetism. She was strong, she had
intellectual grasp and poise, possibly at times she had the tact she
so much admired, she had unusual knowledge, and above all a keen
self-consciousness. Her nature was too Southern in its passions, just
as it was too large in intellectual vigor, for the environment in which
she was born. She was in fact stifled until she escaped from her
egotism and self-consciousness, and from the pale New England life
and movement, to find a larger existence in her Italian lover and
husband, and their child. And then she died.
The affectionate admiration which she aroused in her friends has
found expression in three notable biographies: Memoirs of Margaret
Fuller Ossoli,' by her brother; Margaret Fuller Ossoli,' by Thomas
Wentworth Higginson (American Men of Letters Series '); and 'Mar-
garet Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli)' by Julia Ward Howe (Eminent
Women Series').
## p. 6123 (#93) ############################################
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
6123
GEORGE SAND
.
TO ELIZABETH HOAR
From Memoirs': Paris,
-, 1847
You
ou wished to hear of George Sand, or as they say in Paris,
"Madame Sand. " I find that all we had heard of her was
true in the outline; I had supposed it might be exagger-
ated.
It is the custom to go and call on those to whom you bring
letters, and push yourself upon their notice; thus you must go
quite ignorant whether they are disposed to be cordial. My name
is always murdered by the foreign servants who announce me.
I speak very bad French; only lately have I had sufficient com-
mand of it to infuse some of my natural spirit in my discourse.
This has been a great trial to me, who am eloquent and free in
my own tongue, to be forced to feel my thoughts struggling in
vain for utterance.
The door-
The servant who admitted me was in the picturesque costume
of a peasant, and as Madame Sand afterwards told me, her
goddaughter, whom she had brought from her province. She
announced me as "Madame Salère," and returned into the ante-
room to tell me, "Madame says she does not know you. " I
began to think I was doomed to rebuff among the crowd who
deserve it. However, to make assurance sure, I said, "Ask if
she has received a letter from me. " As I spoke Madame Sand
opened the door, and stood looking at me an instant.
Our eyes
met. I never shall forget her look at that moment.
way made a frame for her figure; she is large but well formed.
She was dressed in a robe of dark-violet silk, with a black man-
tle on her shoulders, her beautiful hair dressed with the greatest
taste; her whole appearance and attitude, in its simple and lady-
like dignity, presented an almost ludicrous contrast to the vulgar
caricature idea of George Sand. Her face is a very little like the
portraits, but much finer; the upper part of the forehead and
eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and masculine, expressive of
a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least.
coarse; the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head
Spanish (as indeed she was born at Madrid, and is only on one
side of French blood). All these I saw at a glance; but what
fixed my attention was the expression of goodness, nobleness, and
## p. 6124 (#94) ############################################
6124
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
power that pervaded the whole,-the truly human heart and
nature that shone in the eyes. As our eyes met, she said, "C'est
vous," and held out her hand. I took it, and went into her little
study; we sat down a moment; then I said, "Il me fait de bien
de vous voir," and I am sure I said it with my whole heart, for
it made me very happy to see such a woman, so large and so
developed in character, and everything that is good in it so
really good. I loved, shall always love her.
She looked away, and said, "Ah! vous m'avez écrit une lettre
charmante. " This was all the preliminary of our talk, which then
went on as if we had always known one another. .
Her
way of talking is just like her writing, lively, picturesque, with
an undertone of deep feeling, and the same happiness in striking.
the nail on the head every now and then with a blow.
I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a
genius. I liked the woman in her, too, very much; I never
liked a woman better.
For the rest, she holds her place
in the literary and social world of France like a man, and seems
full of energy and courage in it. I suppose she has suffered
much, but she has also enjoyed and done much.
.
AMERICANS ABROAD IN EUROPE
From At Home and Abroad'
THE
HE American in Europe, if a thinking mind, can only become
more American. In some respects it is a great pleasure to
be here.
teacher and ending as a pupil. You know, of course, that I was
a school-teacher? Yes, I had a little class down on Wabash Ave-
nue near Hubbard Court, in a church basement. I began to be
useful as early as I could. We lived in a little bit of a house a
couple of blocks north of there; you know those old-fashioned
frame cottages
one of them. In the early days pa was a car-
penter-a boss carpenter, to do him full justice; the town was
growing, and after a while he began to do first-rate. But at the
beginning ma did her own work, and I helped her. I swept and
dusted, and wiped the dishes. She taught me to sew, too; I
trimmed all my own hats till long after I was married. "
Mrs. Bates leaned carelessly against the tortured framework
of a tapestried causeuse. The light from the lofty windows shat-
tered on the prisms of her glittering chandeliers, and diffused
itself over the paneled Loves and Graces around her.
"When I got to be eighteen I thought I was old enough to
branch out and do something for myself - I've always tried to
hold up my own end. My little school went first-rate. There
was only one drawback-another school next door, full of great
rowdy boys. They would climb the fence and make faces at my
scholars; yes, and sometimes they would throw stones. But that
wasn't the worst: the other school taught book-keeping. Now, I
never was one of the kind to lag behind, and I used to lie awake
nights wondering how I could catch up with the rival institu-
tion. Well, I hustled around, and finally I got hold of two or
three children who were old enough for accounts, and I set them
to work on single entry. I don't know whether they learned
-
## p. 6112 (#82) ############################################
6112
HENRY B. FULLER
anything, but I did - enough to keep Granger's books for the
first year after we started out. "
Jane smiled broadly; it was useless to set a stoic face against
such confidences as these.
(
"We were married at the most fashionable church in town—
right there in Court-house Square; and ma gave us a reception,
or something like it, in her little front room. We weren't so very
stylish ourselves, but we had some awfully stylish neighbors - all
those Terrace Row people, just around the corner.
'We'll get
there too, sometime,' I said to Granger. This is going to be a
big town, and we have a good show to be big people in it. Don't
let's start in life like beggars going to the back door for cold
victuals; let's march right up the front steps and ring the bell
like somebody. ' So, as I say, we were married at the best church
in town; we thought it safe enough to discount the future. "
"Good for you," said Jane, who was finding her true self in
the thick of these intimate revelations; "you guessed right. "
"Well, we worked along fairly for a year or two, and finally
I said to Granger: Now, what's the use of inventing things
and taking them to those companies and making everybody rich
but yourself? You pick out some one road, and get on the in-
side of that, and stick there, and — › The fact is," she broke off
suddenly, "you can't judge at all of this room in the daytime.
You must see it lighted and filled with people. You ought to
have been here at the bal poudré I gave last season — lots of
pretty girls in laces and brocades, and powder on their hair. It
was a lovely sight.
Come; we've had enough of this. "
Mrs. Bates turned a careless back upon all her Louis Quinze
splendor. "The next thing will be something else. "
-
Jane's guide passed swiftly into another large and imposing
apartment. "This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is
where I receive my distinguished guests. "
"Good! " cried Jane, who knew Irving's 'Alhambra' by heart.
"Only it isn't Moorish; it's Baroque- and a very good ex-
ample. "
――――
·
The room had a heavy paneled ceiling of dark wood, with a
cartouche in each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor
stood in the corners, half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries
hung on the walls, and a vast fireplace, flanked by huge Atlan-
tes and crowned by a heavy pediment, broken and curled, almost
filled one whole side. "That fireplace is Baroque all over. "
## p. 6113 (#83) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6113
<<
"See here," said Mrs. Bates, suddenly, are you the woman
who read about the 'Decadence of the Renaissance Forms' at
the last Fortnightly? "
"I'm the woman," responded Jane modestly.
But you
"I don't know why I didn't recognize you before.
sat in an awfully bad light, for one thing. Besides, I had so
much on my mind that day. Our dear little Reginald was com-
ing down with something-or so we thought. And the bonnet
I was forced to wear- well, it just made me blue. You didn't
notice it? "
"I was too flustered to notice anything. It was my first time
there. "
"Well, it was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay
attention to it; it gave me several new notions. All my decora-
tions, then-you think them corrupt and degraded? "
"Well," returned Jane, at once soothing and judicial, “all
these later forms are interesting from a historical and sociologi-
cal point of view. And lots of people find them beautiful, too,
for that matter. " Jane slid over these big words with a prac、
ticed ease.
"They impressed my notables, any way," retorted Mrs. Bates.
"We entertained a good deal during the Fair-it was expected,
of course, from people of our position. We had princes and
counts and honorables without end. I remember how delighted
I was with my first prince-a Russian. H'm later in the
season Russian princes were as plentiful as blackberries: you
stepped on one at every turn. We had some of the English too.
One of their young men visited us at Geneva during the sum-
mer. I never quite made out who invited him; I have half an
idea that he invited himself. He was a great trial. Queer about
the English, isn't it? How can people who are so clever and
capable in practical things ever be such insolent tom-fools in
social things? Well, we might just stick our noses in the pict-
ure gallery for a minute.
"We're almost beginners in this branch of industry," she
expounded, as she stood beside Jane in the centre of the room.
under the coldly diffused glare of the skylight. "In my young
days it was all Bierstadt and De Haas; there wasn't supposed to
be anything beyond. But as soon as I began to hear about the
Millet and the Barbizon crowd, I saw there was. Well, I set to
work, as usual. I studied and learned. I want to learn. I
XI-383
## p. 6114 (#84) ############################################
6114
HENRY B. FULLER
want to move; I want to keep right up with the times and the
people. I got books and photographs, and I went to all the
galleries. I read the artists' biographies and took in all the loan
collections. Now I'm loaning, too. Some of these things are
going to the Art Institute next week-that Daubigny, for one.
It's little, but it's good: there couldn't be anything more like
him, could there?
"We haven't got any Millet yet, but that morning thing over
there is a Corot- at least we think so. I was going to ask one
of the French commissioners about it last summer, but my nerve
gave out at the last minute. Mr. Bates bought it on his own
responsibility. I let him go ahead; for after all, people of our
position would naturally be expected to have a Corot. I don't
care to tell you what he paid for it. "
"There's some more high art," said Mrs. Bates, with a wave
of her hand towards the opposite wall. "Carolus Duran; fifty
thousand francs; and he wouldn't let me pick out my own cos-
tume either.
"And now," she said, "let's go up-stairs. " Jane followed her,
too dazed to speak or even to smile.
Mrs. Bates hastened forward light-footedly. "Conservatory —
that's Moorish," she indicated casually; "nothing in it but orchids
and things. Come along. " Jane followed-dumbly, humbly.
Mrs. Bates paused on the lower step of her great stairway.
A huge vase of Japanese bronze flanked either newel, and a
Turkish lantern depended above her head. The bright green of
a dwarf palm peeped over the balustrade, and a tempered light
strained down through the painted window on the landing-stage.
"There! " she said, "you've seen it all. " She stood there in a
kind of impassioned splendor, her jeweled fingers shut tightly,
and her fists thrown out and apart so as to show the veins and
cords of her wrists. "We did it, we two-just Granger and I.
Nothing but our own hands and hearts and hopes, and each
other. We have fought the fight-a fair field and no favor-
and we have come out ahead. And we shall stay there too;
keep up with the procession is my motto, and head it if you
can. I do head it, and I feel that I'm where I belong. When I
can't foot it with the rest, let me drop by the wayside and the
crows have me. But they'll never get me- never! There's ten
more good years in me yet; and if we were to slip to the bot-
tom to-morrow we should work back to the top again before we
## p. 6115 (#85) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6115
finish. When I led the grand march at the Charity Ball I was
accused of taking a vainglorious part in a vainglorious show.
Well, who would look better in such a rôle than I, or who has
earned a better right to play it? There, child! ain't that suc-
cess? ain't that glory? ain't that poetry? -h'm," she broke off
suddenly, "I'm glad Jimmy wasn't by to hear that! He's always
taking up his poor mother. "
"Jimmy? Is he humble-minded, do you mean? "
"Humble-minded? one of my boys humble-minded? No in-
deed; he's grammatical, that's all: he prefers 'isn't. ' Come
up. ”
Mrs. Bates hurried her guest over the stairway and through
several halls and passages, and introduced her finally into a
large and spacious room done in white and gold. In the glitter-
ing electrolier wires mingled with pipes, and bulbs with globes.
To one side stood a massive brass bedstead full-panoplied in
coverlet and pillow-cases, and the mirror of the dressing-case re-
flected a formal row of silver-backed brushes and combs.
"My bedroom," said Mrs. Bates.
"How does it strike you? »
"Why," stammered Jane, "it's all very fine, but-"
"Oh, yes; I know what they say about it - I've heard them
a dozen times: 'It's very big and handsome and all, but not a
bit home-like. I shouldn't want to sleep here. ' Is that the
idea? »
"About," said Jane.
"Sleep here! " echoed Mrs. Bates. "I don't sleep here. I'd as
soon think of sleeping out on the prairie. That bed isn't to sleep
in; it's for the women to lay their hats and cloaks on. Lay yours
there now. "
«
Jane obeyed. She worked herself out of her old blue sack,
and disposed it, neatly folded, on the brocaded coverlet. Then
she took off her mussy little turban and placed it on the sack.
"What a strange woman," she murmured to herself. " She
doesn't get any music out of her piano; she doesn't get any
reading out of her books; she doesn't even get any sleep out of
her bed. " Jane smoothed down her hair and awaited the next
stage of her adventure.
"This is the way. " Mrs. Bates led her through a narrow side
door.
"This is my office. " She traversed the "office,"
passed into a room beyond, pushed Jane ahead of her, and shut
the door.
## p. 6116 (#86) ############################################
6116
HENRY B. FULLER
The door closed with a light click, and Jane looked about her
with a great and sudden surprise. Poor stupid, stumbling child!
- she understood at last in what spirit she had been received
and on what footing she had been placed.
She found herself in a small, cramped, low-ceiled room which
was filled with worn and antiquated furniture. There was a pon-
derous old mahogany bureau, with the veneering cracked and
peeled, and a bed to correspond. There was a shabby little
writing-desk, whose let-down lid was lined with faded and blotted
green baize.
On the floor there was an old Brussels carpet, an-
tique as to pattern, and wholly threadbare as to surface. The
walls were covered with an old-time paper whose plaintive primi-
tiveness ran in slender pink stripes alternating with narrow green
vines. In one corner stood a small upright piano whose top was
littered with loose sheets of old music, and on one wall hung a
set of thin black-walnut shelves strung together with cords and
loaded with a variety of well-worn volumes. In the grate was
a coal fire.
Mrs. Bates sat down on the foot of the bed, and motioned
Jane to a small rocker that had been re-seated with a bit of old
rugging.
"And now," she said, cheerily, "let's get to business. Sue
Bates, at your service. "
Oh, no," gasped Jane, who felt, however dumbly and mistily,
that this was an epoch in her life. "Not here; not to-day. "
"Why not? Go ahead; tell me all about the charity that isn't
a charity. You'd better; this is the last room-there's nothing
beyond. " Her eyes were twinkling, but immensely kind.
"I know it," stammered Jane. "I knew it in a second. " She
felt too that not a dozen persons had ever penetrated to this little
chamber. "How good you are to me! "
Presently, under some compulsion, she was making an exposi-
tion of her small plan. Mrs. Bates was made to understand how
some of the old Dearborn Seminary girls were trying to start a
sort of club-room in some convenient down-town building for
typewriters and saleswomen and others employed in business.
There was to be a room where they could get lunch, or bring
their own to eat, if they preferred; also a parlor where they
could fill up their noon hour with talk or reading or music; it
was the expectation to have a piano and a few books and maga-
zines.
## p. 6117 (#87) ############################################
HENRY B.
FULLER
6117
"I remembered Lottie as one of the girls who went with us
there, down on old Dearborn Place, and I thought perhaps I
could interest Lottie's mother," concluded Jane.
"And so you can," said Lottie's mother, promptly. "I'll have
Miss Peters - but don't you find it a little warm here?
pass me that hair-brush. "
Just
-
――――
Mrs. Bates had stepped to her single little window. "Isn't it
a gem? " she asked. "I had it made to order; one of the old-
fashioned sort, you see - two sash, with six little panes in each.
No weights and cords, but simple catches at the side.
It opens
to just two widths; if I want anything different, I have to con-
trive it for myself. Sometimes I use a hair-brush and some-
times a paper-cutter. "
She dropped her voice.
"Did you ever have a private secretary? "
"Me? " called Jane. "I'm my own. "
«< Keep it that way," said Mrs. Bates, impressively. "Don't
ever change-no matter how many engagements and appoint-
ments and letters and dates you come to have. You'll never
spend a happy day afterwards. Tutors are bad enough—but
thank goodness, my boys are past that age. And men-servants
are bad enough—every time I want to stir in my own house I
seem to have a footman on each toe and a butler standing on
my train; however, people in our position-well, Granger insists,
you know. "
"And now business is over," she continued. "Do you like
my posies? >>
She nodded towards the window where, thanks to
the hair-brush, a row of flowers in a long narrow box blew about
in the draft.
"Asters? "
"No, no, no! But I hoped you'd guess asters. They're
chrysanthemums-you see, fashion will penetrate even here.
But they're the smallest and simplest I could find. What do I
care for orchids and American beauties, and all those other ex-
pensive things under glass? How much does it please me to
have two great big formal beds of gladiolus and foliage in the
front yard, one on each side of the steps? Still, in our position,
I suppose it can't be helped. No; what I want is a bed of por-
tulaca, and some cypress vines running up strings to the top of a
pole. As soon as I get poor enough to afford it I'm going to
have a lot of phlox and London-pride and bachelor's-buttons out
## p. 6118 (#88) ############################################
6118
HENRY B. FULLER
there in the back yard, and the girls can run their clothes-lines
somewhere else. "
"It's hard to keep flowers in the city," said Jane.
"I know it is. At our old house we had such a nice little
rose-bush in the front yard. I hated so to leave it behind — one
of those little yellow brier-roses. No, it wasn't yellow; it was
just'yaller. ' And it always scratched my nose when I tried
to smell it. But oh, child"- wistfully-"if I could only smell
it now! "
"Couldn't you have transplanted it? " asked Jane, sympatheti-
cally.
"I went back the very next day after we moved out, with a
peach basket and fire shovel. But my poor bush was buried
under seven feet of yellow sand. To-day there's seven stories of
brick and mortar. So all I've got from the old place is just this
furniture of ma's and the wall-paper. "
"The wall-paper? »
"Not the identical same, of course. It's like what I had in
my bedroom when I was a girl. I remembered the pattern, and
tried everywhere to match it. At first I just tried on Twenty-
second street. Then I went down-town. Then I tried all the
little places away out on the West Side. Then I had the pattern
put down on paper and I made a tour of the country. I went
to Belvidere, and to Beloit, and to Janesville, and to lots of
other places between here and Geneva. And finally-"
"Well, what- finally? "
"Finally, I sent down East and had eight or ten rolls made
to order. I chased harder than anybody ever chased for a
Raphael, and I spent more than if I had hung the room with
Gobelins; but-
>>
She stroked the narrow strips of pink and green with a fond
hand, and cast on Jane a look which pleaded indulgence. "Isn't
it just too quaintly ugly for anything? "
"It isn't any such thing," cried Jane. "It's just as sweet as
it can be! I only wish mine was like it. "
## p. 6119 (#89) ############################################
6119
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
(MARCHIONESS OSSOLI)
(1810-1850)
M
ARGARET was one of the few persons who looked upon life as
an art, and every person not merely as an artist, but as a
work of art," wrote Emerson. "She looked upon herself as
a living statue, which should always stand on a polished pedestal,
with right accessories, and under the most fitting lights. She would
have been glad to have everybody so live and act. She was annoyed
when they did not, and when they did not regard her from the point
of view which alone did justice to her.
It is certain that her
friends excused in her, because she had a
right to it, a tone which they would have
reckoned intolerable in any other. " In the
coolest way she said to her friends:-
·
.
"I take my natural position always: and the
more I see, the more I feel that it is regal.
Without throne, sceptre, or guards, still a queen.
. . . In near eight years' experience I have
learned as much as others would in eighty, from
my great talent at explanation.
But in
truth I have not much to say; for since I have
had leisure to look at myself, I find that so
far from being an original genius, I have not
yet learned to think to any depth; and that the
utmost I have done in life has been to form my
character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the
truth with a little better grace than I did at first. When I look at my papers
I feel as if I had never had a thought that was worthy the attention of any
but myself; and 'tis only when on talking with people I find I tell them what
they did not know, that my confidence at all returns. . . A woman of
tact and brilliancy, like me, has an undue advantage in conversation with men.
They are astonished at our instincts. They do not see where we got our
knowledge; and while they tramp on in their clumsy way, we wheel and fly,
and dart hither and thither, and seize with ready eye all the weak points,
like Saladin in the desert. It is quite another thing when we come to write,
and without suggestion from another mind, to declare the positive amount
of thought that is in us.
Then gentlemen are surprised that I write
MARGARET FULLER
## p. 6120 (#90) ############################################
6120
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
no better, because I talk so well. I have served a long apprenticeship to the
one, none to the other. I shall write better, but never, I think, so well as I
talk;
for then I feel inspired. . . . For all the tides of life that flow within
me, I am dumb and ineffectual when it comes to casting my thought into a
form. No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the pleas-
ure of creation would make it possible for me to write. What shall I do,
dear friend? I want force to be either a genius or a character. One should
be either private or public. I love best to be a woman; but womanhood is
at present too straitly bounded to give me scope. At hours, I live truly as
a woman; at others, I should stifle. "
All these naïve confessions were made, it must be remembered,
either in her journal, or in letters to her nearest friends, and without
fear of misinterpretation.
This complex, self-conscious, but able woman was born in Cam-
bridgeport, Massachusetts, in 1810, in the house of her father, Timothy
Fuller, a lawyer. Her mother, it is reported, was a mild, self-effacing
lover of flower-bulbs and gardens, of a character to supplement, and
never combat, a husband who exercised all the domestic dictation
which Puritan habits and the marital law encouraged.
"He thought to gain time by bringing forward the intellect as early as pos-
sible," wrote Margaret in her autobiographical sketch. "Thus I had tasks
given me, as many and as various as the hours would allow, and on subjects
beyond my age; with the additional disadvantage of reciting to him in the
evening after he returned from his office. As he was subject to many inter-
ruptions, I was often kept up till very late, and as he was a severe teacher,
both from his habits of mind and his ambition for me, my feelings were kept
on the stretch till the recitations were over. Thus, frequently, I was sent to
bed several hours too late, with nerves unnaturally stimulated. The conse-
qence was a premature development of the brain that made me a 'youthful
prodigy by day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare, and
somnambulism, which at the time prevented the harmonious development of
my bodily powers and checked my growth, while later they induced continual
headache, weakness, and nervous affections of all kinds. . . I was taught
Latin and English grammar at the same time, and began to read Latin at
six years old, after which, for some years, I read it daily.
Of the
Greek language I knew only enough to feel that the sounds told the same
story as the mythology; that the law of life in that land was beauty, as in
Rome it was stern composure.
With these books I passed my days.
The great amount of study exacted of me soon ceased to be a burden, and
reading became a habit and a passion. The force of feeling which under other
circumstances might have ripened thought, was turned to learn the thoughts
of others. "
•
By the time she entered mature womanhood, Margaret had made
herself acquainted with the masterpieces of German, French, and
Italian literatures. It was later that she became familiar with the
## p. 6121 (#91) ############################################
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
6121
great literature of her own tongue. Her father died in 1835, and in
1836 she went to Boston to teach languages.
"I still," wrote Emerson (1851), "remember the first half-hour of Marga-
ret's conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and
a frame that would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was rather un-
der the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair. She
was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-
possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her
extreme plainness,- a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,—
the nasal tone of her voice, all repelled; and I said to myself, 'We shall
never get far. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first im-
pression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best
friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room
with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an
overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the
prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition
to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and
the women did not like one who despised them. »
In 1839 Margaret began her famous "Conversations » in Boston,
continuing these for five winters. "Their theory was not high-flown
but eminently sensible," writes Mr. Higginson, "being based expressly
on the ground stated in her circular; that the chief disadvantage of
women in regard to study was in not being called upon, like men, to
reproduce in some way what they had learned. As a substitute for
this she proposed to try the uses of conversation, to be conducted in
a somewhat systematic way under efficient leadership. " In 1839 she
published her translation of Eckermann's 'Conversations with Goethe,'
and in 1842 of the Correspondence of Fräulein Günerode and Bet-
tine von Arnim. ' The year 1839 had seen the full growth of New
England transcendentalism, which was a reaction against Puritanism
and a declaration in vague phrases of God in man and of the indwell-
ing of the spirit in each soul,-an admixture of Platonism, Oriental
pantheism, and the latest German idealism, with a reminiscence of
the stoicism of Seneca and Epictetus. In 1840 The Dial was founded
to be the expression of these ideas, with Margaret as editor and
Emerson and George Ripley as aids. To this quarterly she gave
two years of hard work and self-sacrifice.
Another outcome of the transcendental movement, the community
of Brook Farm, was to her, says Mr. Higginson, "simply an experi-
ment which had enlisted some of her dearest friends; and later, she
found [there] a sort of cloister for occasional withdrawal from her
classes and her conversations. This was all: she was not a stock-
holder, nor a member, nor an advocate of the enterprise; and even
'Miss Fuller's cow,' which Hawthorne tried so hard to milk, was a
being as wholly imaginary as [Hawthorne's] Zenobia. »
## p. 6122 (#92) ############################################
6122
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
une.
Her 'Woman in the Nineteenth Century' (1844) led Horace Greeley
to offer her a place in the literary department of the New York Trib-
It is her praise that she was able to impart a purely literary
interest to a daily journal, and to make its critical judgment author-
itative. The best of her contributions to that journal were published,
with articles from the Dial and other periodicals, under the title of
'Papers on Art and Literature' (1846).
In that year she paid the visit to Europe of which she had dreamed
and written; and her letters to her friends at home are now, perhaps,
the most readable of her remains. Taking up her residence in Italy
in 1847, and sympathizing passionately with Mazzini and his republi-
can ideas, she met and married the Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli.
Her husband was seven years her junior, but his letters written while
he was serving as a soldier at Rome, and she was absent with their
baby in the country, reveal the ardor of his love for her. During the
siege of Rome by the French, Mazzini put in her charge the hos-
pital of the Trinity of the Pilgrims. "At the very moment when
Lowell was satirizing her in his 'Fables for Critics,' says Mr. Hig-
ginson, "she was leading such a life as no American woman had led
in this century before. " Her Southern nature and her longing for
action and love had found expression. In May 1850 she sailed with
her husband and son from Leghorn for America. But the vessel was
wrecked off Fire Island within a day's sail of home and friends, and,
save the body of her child and a trunk of water-soaked papers, the
sea swallowed up all remnants of the happiness of her later life.
> >>
The position which Margaret Fuller held in the small world of
letters about her is not explained by her writings. She seems to
have possessed great personal magnetism. She was strong, she had
intellectual grasp and poise, possibly at times she had the tact she
so much admired, she had unusual knowledge, and above all a keen
self-consciousness. Her nature was too Southern in its passions, just
as it was too large in intellectual vigor, for the environment in which
she was born. She was in fact stifled until she escaped from her
egotism and self-consciousness, and from the pale New England life
and movement, to find a larger existence in her Italian lover and
husband, and their child. And then she died.
The affectionate admiration which she aroused in her friends has
found expression in three notable biographies: Memoirs of Margaret
Fuller Ossoli,' by her brother; Margaret Fuller Ossoli,' by Thomas
Wentworth Higginson (American Men of Letters Series '); and 'Mar-
garet Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli)' by Julia Ward Howe (Eminent
Women Series').
## p. 6123 (#93) ############################################
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
6123
GEORGE SAND
.
TO ELIZABETH HOAR
From Memoirs': Paris,
-, 1847
You
ou wished to hear of George Sand, or as they say in Paris,
"Madame Sand. " I find that all we had heard of her was
true in the outline; I had supposed it might be exagger-
ated.
It is the custom to go and call on those to whom you bring
letters, and push yourself upon their notice; thus you must go
quite ignorant whether they are disposed to be cordial. My name
is always murdered by the foreign servants who announce me.
I speak very bad French; only lately have I had sufficient com-
mand of it to infuse some of my natural spirit in my discourse.
This has been a great trial to me, who am eloquent and free in
my own tongue, to be forced to feel my thoughts struggling in
vain for utterance.
The door-
The servant who admitted me was in the picturesque costume
of a peasant, and as Madame Sand afterwards told me, her
goddaughter, whom she had brought from her province. She
announced me as "Madame Salère," and returned into the ante-
room to tell me, "Madame says she does not know you. " I
began to think I was doomed to rebuff among the crowd who
deserve it. However, to make assurance sure, I said, "Ask if
she has received a letter from me. " As I spoke Madame Sand
opened the door, and stood looking at me an instant.
Our eyes
met. I never shall forget her look at that moment.
way made a frame for her figure; she is large but well formed.
She was dressed in a robe of dark-violet silk, with a black man-
tle on her shoulders, her beautiful hair dressed with the greatest
taste; her whole appearance and attitude, in its simple and lady-
like dignity, presented an almost ludicrous contrast to the vulgar
caricature idea of George Sand. Her face is a very little like the
portraits, but much finer; the upper part of the forehead and
eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and masculine, expressive of
a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least.
coarse; the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head
Spanish (as indeed she was born at Madrid, and is only on one
side of French blood). All these I saw at a glance; but what
fixed my attention was the expression of goodness, nobleness, and
## p. 6124 (#94) ############################################
6124
SARAH MARGARET FULLER
power that pervaded the whole,-the truly human heart and
nature that shone in the eyes. As our eyes met, she said, "C'est
vous," and held out her hand. I took it, and went into her little
study; we sat down a moment; then I said, "Il me fait de bien
de vous voir," and I am sure I said it with my whole heart, for
it made me very happy to see such a woman, so large and so
developed in character, and everything that is good in it so
really good. I loved, shall always love her.
She looked away, and said, "Ah! vous m'avez écrit une lettre
charmante. " This was all the preliminary of our talk, which then
went on as if we had always known one another. .
Her
way of talking is just like her writing, lively, picturesque, with
an undertone of deep feeling, and the same happiness in striking.
the nail on the head every now and then with a blow.
I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a
genius. I liked the woman in her, too, very much; I never
liked a woman better.
For the rest, she holds her place
in the literary and social world of France like a man, and seems
full of energy and courage in it. I suppose she has suffered
much, but she has also enjoyed and done much.
.
AMERICANS ABROAD IN EUROPE
From At Home and Abroad'
THE
HE American in Europe, if a thinking mind, can only become
more American. In some respects it is a great pleasure to
be here.
