The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory, and I, who knew her intimately from July, 1836, till August, 1846, when she sailed for Europe, never saw her without surprise at her new powers.
R. W. EMERSON: ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Margaret’s account of her Boston Conversation Class.]
My class is prosperous. I was so fortunate as to rouse, at once, the tone of simple earnestness, which can scarcely, when once awakened, cease to vibrate. All seem in a glow, and quite as receptive as I wish.... There are about twenty-five members, and every one, I believe, full of interest.... The first day’s topic was, the genealogy of heaven and earth; then the Will (Jupiter); the Understanding, (Mercury); the second day’s, the celestial inspiration of genius, perception and transmission of divine law (Apollo); the terrene of inspiration, the impassioned abandonment of genius (Bacchus).
Of the thunderbolt, the caduceus, the ray, and the grape, having disposed as well as might be, we came to the wave, and the sea-shell it moulds to Beauty, and Love her parent and her child.
I assure you, there is more Greek than Bostonian spoken at the meetings; and we may have pure honey of Hymettus to give you yet.
MARGARET FULLER: _Letter to R. W. Emerson_, November, 1839, in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: A pupil’s account.]
Margaret used to come to the conversations very well dressed, and, altogether, looked sumptuously. She began them with an exordium, in which she gave her leading views; and those exordiums were excellent, from the elevation of the tone, the ease and flow of discourse, and from the tact with which they were kept aloof from any excess; and from the gracefulness with which they were brought down, at last, to a possible level for others to follow. She made a pause, and invited the others to come in. Of course, it was not easy for every one to venture her remark, after an eloquent discourse, and in the presence of twenty superior women, who were all inspired. But whatever was said, Margaret knew how to seize the good meaning of it with hospitality, and to make the speaker feel glad, and not sorry, that she had spoken.
---- ----: _Communication quoted in_ ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Miss Martineau’s view of the Boston Class.]
While she was living and moving in an ideal world, talking in private and discoursing in public about the most fanciful and shallow conceits which the transcendentalists took for philosophy, she looked down upon persons who acted instead of talking finely, and devoted their fortunes, their peace, their repose, and their very lives to the preservation of the principles of the republic. While Margaret Fuller and her adult pupils sat “gorgeously dressed,” talking about Mars and Venus, Plato and Goethe, and fancying themselves the elect of the earth in intellect and refinement, the liberties of the republic were running out as fast as they could go, at a breach which another sort of elect persons were devoting themselves to repair: and my complaint against the “gorgeous” pedants was that they regarded their preservers as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their work as a less vital one than the pedantic orations which were spoiling a set of well-meaning women in a pitiable way.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
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[Sidenote: Margaret as a member of the Greeley household.]
Though we were members of the same household, we scarcely met save at breakfast; and my time and thoughts were absorbed in duties and cares, which left me little leisure or inclination for the amenities of social intercourse. Fortune seemed to delight in placing us two in relations of friendly antagonism, or rather, to develop all possible contrasts in our ideas and social habits. She was naturally inclined to luxury and a good appearance before the world. My pride, if I had any, delighted in bare walls and rugged fare. She was addicted to strong tea and coffee, both which I rejected and contemned, even in the most homœopathic dilutions; while, my general health being so sound, and hers sadly impaired, I could not fail to find in her dietetic habits the causes of her almost habitual illness; and once, while we were still barely acquainted, when she came to the breakfast-table with a very severe headache, I was tempted to attribute it to her strong potations of the Chinese leaf the night before. She told me quite frankly that she “declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take,” which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at her maturity of intellect and fixedness of habits. So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created a perceptible distance between us.
HORACE GREELEY: _Communication_ in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Her description of the Greeley house.]
This place is, to me, entirely charming; it is so completely in the country, and all around is so bold and free. It is two miles or more from the thickly-settled parts of New York, but omnibuses and cars give me constant access to the city, and, while I can readily see what and whom I will, I can command time and retirement. Stopping on the Harlem road, you enter a lane nearly a quarter of a mile long, and going by a small brook and pond that locks in the place, and ascending a slightly rising ground, get sight of the house, which, old-fashioned and of mellow tint, fronts on a flower-garden filled with shrubs, large vines and trim box-borders. On both sides of the house are beautiful trees.... Passing through a wide hall, you come out upon a piazza, stretching the whole length of the house, where one can walk in all weathers; and thence by a step or two, on a lawn, with picturesque masses of rocks, shrubs and trees, overlooking the East River.
MARGARET FULLER: _Letter_ in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Contributions to the “Tribune.”]
Her earlier contributions to the _Tribune_ were not her best, and I did not at first prize her aid so highly as I afterwards learned to do. She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and intimate acquaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation. She could write only when in the vein; and this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, or on any subject, and with a rapidity limited only by the physical ability to form the requisite pen-strokes, the notion of waiting for a brighter day or a happier frame of mind, appears fantastic and absurd. He would as soon think of waiting for a change in the moon. Hence, while I realized that her contributions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They often seemed to make their appearance “a day after the fair.”
HORACE GREELEY: _Communication_ in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
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[Sidenote: Carlyle’s first impression of Margaret Fuller.]
Yesternight there came a bevy of Americans from Emerson, one Margaret Fuller, the chief figure of them, a strange, lilting, lean old maid, not nearly such a bore as I expected.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter_ in ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London,’ by James Anthony Froude. New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
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[Sidenote: Free translation of the above.]
Miss Fuller came duly as you announced; was welcomed for your sake and her own. A high-soaring, clear, enthusiast soul; in whose speech there is much of all that one wants to find in speech. A sharp, subtle intellect too; and less of that shoreless Asiatic dreaminess than I have sometimes met with in her writings.... Her dialect is very vernacular,--extremely exotic in the London climate.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to R. W. Emerson_, December, 1846. ‘The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson’: Supplementary Letters. Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1886.