All present were, of course, greatly alarmed at this crisis, which was followed, on the part of Margaret, by days of hopeless and apathetic melancholy.... In the pain which she now felt, her former resentment against her schoolmates disappeared. She saw only her own offence, and saw it without hope of being able to pass beyond it.... A single friend was able to reach the seat of Margaret’s distemper, and to turn the currents of her life once more into a healthful channel. This lady, a teacher in the school, ... with the tact of true affection, drew the young girl from the contemplation of her own failure.
JULIA WARD HOWE: ‘Margaret Fuller.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: An “intolerable girl” at nineteen.]
She told me what danger she had been in from the training her father had given her, and the encouragement to pedantry and rudeness which she derived from the circumstances of her youth. She told me that she was at nineteen the most intolerable girl that ever took a seat in a drawing-room. Her admirable candor, the philosophical way in which she took herself in hand, her genuine heart, her practical insight, and, no doubt, the natural influence of her attachment to myself, endeared her to me, while her powers, and her confidence in the use of them, led me to expect great things from her.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her home at this time.]
Margaret’s home at this time was in the mansion house formerly belonging to Judge Dana, a large, old-fashioned building, since taken down, standing about a quarter of a mile from the Cambridge Colleges, on the main road to Boston. The house stood back from the road, on rising ground which overlooked an extensive landscape. It was always a pleasure to Margaret to look at the outlines of the distant hills beyond the river, and to have before her this extent of horizon and sky. In the last year of her residence in Cambridge, her father moved to the old Brattle place, a still more ancient edifice, with large, old-fashioned garden and stately rows of linden trees. Here Margaret enjoyed the garden walks, which took the place of the extensive view.
REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mr. Channing’s first impression.]
[Sidenote: Margaret too intense.]
[Sidenote: Imperiousness.]
[Sidenote: Sentimentality.]
I call to mind seeing, at the “Commencements” and “Exhibitions” of Harvard University, a girl, plain in appearance, but of dashing air, who was invariably the centre of a listening group, and kept their merry interest alive by sparkles of wit and incessant small talk.... About 1830 ... we often met in the social circles about Cambridge, and I began to observe her more nearly. At first her vivacity, decisive tone, downrightness and contempt of conventional standards, continued to repel. She appeared too _intense_ in expression, action, emphasis, to be pleasing, and wanting in that _retenue_ which we associate with delicate dignity. Occasionally, also, words flashed from her of such scathing satire, that prudence counselled the keeping at safe distance from a body so surcharged with electricity. Then again, there was an imperial--shall it be said imperious?--air, exacting deference to her judgments and loyalty to her behests, that prompted pride to retaliatory measures. She paid slight heed, moreover, to the trim palings of etiquette, but swept through the garden-beds and into the door-way of one’s confidence so cavalierly that a reserved person felt inclined to lock himself up in his sanctum. Finally, to the coolly-scanning eye, her friendship wore such a look of romantic exaggeration, that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism....
But soon I was charmed, unaware, with the sagacity of her sallies, the profound thoughts carelessly dropped by her on transient topics, the breadth and richness of culture manifested in her allusions or quotations, her easy comprehension of new views, her just discrimination, and, above all, her _truthfulness_. “Truth at all cost,” was plainly her ruling maxim. This it was that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern, her speech so naked in frankness, her gaze so searching, her whole attitude so alert.
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Emerson’s first impression.]
I still remember the first half hour of Margaret’s conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was rather under the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness--a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids--the nasal tone of her voice--all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get far. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship.... I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody’s foibles. I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked.... She had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life.
This rumor was much spread abroad, that she was sneering, scoffing, critical, disdainful of humble people, and of all but the intellectual. It was a superficial judgment. Her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent, the play of superabundant animal spirits.... Her mind presently disclosed many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each, that quite effaced this first impression, in the opulence of the following pictures.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her circle of friends.]
[Sidenote: Conversation.]
She was the centre of a group very different from each other, and whose only affinity consisted in their all being polarized by the strong attraction of her mind--all drawn toward herself. Some of her friends were young, gay, and beautiful; some old, sick, or studious. Some were children of the world, others pale scholars. Some were witty, others slightly dull. But all, in order to be Margaret’s friends, must be capable of seeking something--capable of some aspiration for the better. And how did she glorify life to all! All that was tame and common vanishing away in the picturesque light thrown over the most familiar things by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her knowledge, and the copious rhetoric which found words and images always apt and always ready. Even then she displayed almost the same marvellous gift of conversation, which afterwards dazzled all who knew her--with more, perhaps, of freedom, since she floated on the flood of our warm sympathies. Those who know Margaret only by her published writings, know her least; her notes and letters contain more of her mind; but it was only in conversation that she was perfectly free and at home.
REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her friends.]
[Sidenote: Passionate friendships.]
She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that Margaret seemed to represent them all and to know her, was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them. She was an active, inspiring companion and correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New England, seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it.... I am to add, that she gave herself to her friendships with an entireness not possible to any but a woman, with a depth possible to few women. Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with women, were not unmingled with passion, and had passages of romantic sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but could not trust my profane pen to report. There were also the ebbs and recoils from the other party--the mortal unequal to converse with an immortal--ingratitude, which was more truly incapacity, the collapse of overstrained affections and powers. At all events, it is clear that Margaret, later, grew more strict, and values herself with her friends on having the tie now “redeemed from all search after Eros.”