R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Personal appearance.]
[Sidenote: Two prominent traits.]
Her temperament was predominantly what the physiologists would call nervous-sanguine; and the gray eye, rich brown hair, and light complexion, with the muscular and well-developed frame, bespoke delicacy balanced by vigor. Here was a sensitive, yet powerful being, fit at once for rapture or sustained effort, intensely active, prompt for adventure, firm for trial. She certainly had not beauty; yet the high arched dome of the head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole air of mingled dignity and impulse, gave her a commanding charm. Especially characteristic were two physical traits. The first was a contraction of the eyelids almost to a point--a trick caught from near-sightedness--and then a sudden dilatation, till the iris seemed to emit flashes--an effect, no doubt, dependent on her highly-magnetized condition. The second was a singular pliancy of the vertebræ and muscles of the neck, enabling her by a mere movement to denote each varying emotion; in moments of tenderness, or pensive feeling, its curves were swan-like in grace, but when she was scornful or indignant, it contracted, and made swift turns like that of a bird of prey. Finally, in the animation yet _abandon_ of Margaret’s attitude and look, were rarely blended the fiery force of northern, and the soft languor of southern races.
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Her liberality.]
With a limited income and liberal wants, she was yet generous beyond the bounds of reason. Had the gold of California been all her own, she would have disbursed nine-tenths of it in eager and well-directed efforts to stay, or at least diminish, the flood of human misery. And it is but fair to state that the liberality she evinced was fully paralleled by the liberality she experienced at the hands of others. Had she needed thousands, and made her wants known, she had friends who would have cheerfully supplied her. I think few persons, in their pecuniary dealings, have experienced and evinced more of the better qualities of human nature than Margaret Fuller. She seemed to inspire those who approached her with that generosity which was a part of her nature.
HORACE GREELEY: _Communication_ in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Self-esteem.]
Margaret at first astonished and repelled us by a complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of Scaliger. She spoke, in the quietest manner, of the girls she had formed, the young men who owed everything to her, the fine companions she had long ago exhausted. In the coolest way she said to her friends, “I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.”... I have heard that from the beginning of her life, she idealized herself as a sovereign. She told ---- she early saw herself to be intellectually superior to those around her, and that for years she dwelt upon the idea, until she believed that she was not her parents’ child, but an European princess confided to their care. She remembered that when a little girl, she was walking one day under the apple trees with such an air and step that her father pointed her out to her sister, saying, “_Incedit regina_.”
[Sidenote: A “mountainous me.”]
It is certain that Margaret occasionally let slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say, as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody, “He appreciates _me_.” There was something of hereditary organization in this, and something of unfavorable circumstance in the fact, that she had in early life no companion, and few afterwards, in her finer studies; but there was also an ebullient sense of power, which she felt to be in her, which as yet had found no right channels.
R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Humor.]
Those who think of this accomplished woman as a mere _bas bleu_, a pedant, a solemn Minerva, should have heard the peals of laughter which her profuse and racy humor drew from old and young. The Easy Chair remembers stepping into Noah Gerrish’s West Roxbury omnibus one afternoon in Cornhill, in Boston, to drive out the nine miles to Brook Farm. The only other passenger was Miss Fuller, then freshly returned from her “summer on the lakes,” and never was a long, jolting journey more lightened and shortened than by her witty and vivid sketches of life and character. Her quick and shrewd observation is shown in the book, but the book has none of the comedy of the _croquis_ of persons which her sparkling humor threw off, and which she too enjoyed with the utmost hilarity, joining heartily in the laughter, which was only increased by her sympathy with the amusement of her auditor.
GEO. WM. CURTIS, ‘Easy Chair,’ _Harper’s Magazine_, March, 1882.
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[Sidenote: Ill health.]
[Sidenote: Alleged second sight.]
She was all her life-time the victim of disease and pain. She read and wrote in bed, and believed that she could understand anything better when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle to give tension to her powers. A lady who was with her one day during a terrible attack of nervous headache, which made Margaret totally helpless, assured me that Margaret was yet in the finest vein of humor, and kept those who were assisting her in a strange, painful excitement, between laughing and crying, by perpetual brilliant sallies. There were other peculiarities of habit and power. When she turned her head on one side she alleged she had second sight, like St. Francis. These traits or predispositions made her a willing listener to all the uncertain science of mesmerism and its goblin brood, which have been rife in recent years.
It was soon evident that there was somewhat a little pagan about her; that she had some faith more or less distinct in a fate, and in a guardian genius; that her fancy or her pride, had played with her religion. She had a taste for gems, ciphers, talismans, omens, coincidences, and birth-days. She had a special love for the planet Jupiter, and a belief that the month of September was inauspicious to her. She never forgot that her name, Margarita, signified a pearl.... She chose carbuncle for her own stone, and when a dear friend was to give her a gem, this was the one selected.... She was wont to put on her carbuncle, a bracelet or some selected gem, to write letters to certain friends. One of her friends she coupled with the onyx, another in a decided way with the amethyst.... Coincidences, good and bad, _contretemps_, seals, ciphers, mottoes, omens, anniversaries, names, dreams, are all of a certain importance to her.... She soon surrounded herself with a little mythology of her own.
She had a series of anniversaries, which she kept. Her seal-ring of the flying Mercury had its legend.
R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Her love of children.]
Her love of children was one of her most prominent characteristics. The pleasure she enjoyed in their society was fully counterpoised by that she imparted. To them she was never lofty, nor reserved, nor mystical; for no one had ever a more perfect faculty for entering into their sports, their feelings, their enjoyments. She could narrate almost any story in language level to their capacities, and in a manner calculated to bring out their hearty, and often boisterously-expressed delight. She possessed marvellous powers of observation and imitation, or mimicry; and had she been attracted to the stage, would have been the first actress America has produced, whether in tragedy or comedy. Her faculty of mimicking was not needed to commend her to the hearts of children, but it had its effects in increasing the fascinations of her genial nature and heart-felt joy in their society. To amuse and instruct was an achievement for which she would readily forego any personal object; and her intuitive perception of the toys, games, stories, rhymes, etc., best adapted to arrest and enchain their attention was unsurpassed.
HORACE GREELEY: _Communication in_ ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: A welcome guest.]
She was everywhere a welcome guest. The houses of her friends in town and country were open to her, and every hospitable attention eagerly offered. Her arrival was a holiday, and so was her abode. She stayed a few days, often a week, more seldom a month, and all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to catch the favorable hour, in walking, riding, or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her, and with her broad web of relations to so many fine friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had been finally referred.