JULIA WARD HOWE: ‘Margaret Fuller.’
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[Sidenote: Miss Martineau’s view of Margaret’s career.]
[Sidenote: Her life in Boston.]
[Sidenote: “The noble last period of her life.”]
How it might have been with her, if she had come to Europe in 1836, I have often speculated. As it was, her life in Boston was little short of destructive. I need but refer to the memoir of her. In the most pedantic age of society in her own country, and in its most pedantic city, she who was just beginning to rise out of pedantic habits of thought and speech relapsed most grievously. She was not only completely spoiled in conversation and manners; she made false estimates of the objects and interests of human life. She was not content with pursuing, and inducing others to pursue, a metaphysical idealism, destructive of all genuine feeling and sound activity. She mocked at objects and efforts of a higher order than her own, and despised those who, like myself, could not adopt her scale of valuation. All this might have been spared, a world of mischief saved, and a world of good effected, if she had found her heart a dozen years sooner, and in America instead of Italy. It is the most grievous loss I have almost ever known in private history--the deferring of Margaret Fuller’s married life so long. The noble last period of her life is, happily, on record as well as the earlier. My friendship with her was in the interval between her first and second stages of pedantry and forwardness; and I saw her again under all the disadvantages of the confirmed bad manners and self-delusions which she brought from home. The ensuing period redeemed all; and I regard her American life as a reflexion more useful than agreeable, of the prevalent social spirit of her time and place; and the Italian life as the true revelation of the tender and high-souled woman, who had till then been as curiously concealed from herself as from others.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
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[Sidenote: Hawthorne’s analysis.]
[Sidenote: “A great humbug.”]
Margaret Fuller was a person anxious to try all things, and fill up her experience in all directions; she had a strong and coarse nature which she had done her utmost to refine, with infinite pains; but of course it could only be superficially changed. The solution of the riddle lies in this direction, nor does one’s conscience revolt at the idea of thus solving it, for (at least, this is my own experience) Margaret has not left in the hearts and minds of those who knew her any deep witness of her integrity and purity. She was a great humbug--of course, with much talent and much moral reality, or else she could never have been so great a humbug. But she had stuck herself full of borrowed qualities, which she chose to provide herself with, but which had no root in her.
There never was such a tragedy as her whole story. The sadder and sterner, because so much of the ridiculous was mixed up with it, and because she could bear any thing better than to be ridiculous. It was such an awful joke, that she should have resolved--in all sincerity, no doubt--to make herself the greatest, wisest, best woman of the age. And to that end she set to work on her strong, heavy, unpliable, and, in many respects, defective and evil nature, and adorned it with a mosaic of admirable qualities, such as she chose to possess, putting in here a splendid talent and there a moral excellence, and polishing each separate piece, and the whole together, till it seemed to shine afar and dazzle all who saw it. She took credit to herself for having been her own Redeemer, if not her own Creator; and indeed she is far more a work of art than any of Mozier’s statues. But she was not working on an inanimate substance, like marble or clay; there was something within her that she could not possibly come at, to re-create or refine it; and by and by this rude old potency bestirred itself, and undid all her labor in the twinkling of an eye. On the whole, I do not know but I like her the better for it; because she proved herself a very woman after all.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: _Extract from Roman Journal_, in ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife,’ a Biography, by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885.
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[Sidenote: “A strange tragedy.”]
Poor Margaret, that is a strange tragedy that history of hers; and has many traits of the heroic in it, though it is wild as the prophecy of a Sibyl. Such a pre-determination to _eat_ this big universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any human soul. Her “mountain _me_” indeed: but her courage, too, is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness indeed is great; her veracity, in its deepest sense, _à toute épreuve_.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to Emerson_, 7th May, 1852. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The quotation is from Margaret’s ‘Summer on the Lakes,’ where this story is related in the episode of ‘Mariana.’ Mrs. Howe’s condensed account has been given, though possibly inexact in one particular. Margaret does not describe the _preceptress_ as having joined in the practical joke.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË (NICHOLLS).
(CURRER BELL.)
1816-1855.
EMILY BRONTË.
(ELLIS BELL.)
1818-1848.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË (NICHOLLS.)
(CURRER BELL.)
1816-1855.
EMILY BRONTË.
(ELLIS BELL.)
1818-1848.
The story of the Brontës is essentially the story of a family; not of one member, not even of its two famous members. This has been felt by the biographers of Charlotte and Emily Brontë, who have pictured for us the whole group with a vividness which, paradoxical as it may seem, is more characteristic of fiction than of biography. These lonely lives were knit fast together; it is hard to separate an individual thread from the others. At least the story of the family must first be told.
The Reverend Patrick Brontë (formerly Prunty), and Maria Branwell, his wife, had six children: Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte (born at Thornton, in the West Riding, April 21, 1816), Patrick Branwell, Emily (born at Thornton, in 1818), and Anne. In February, 1820, the Brontës removed to the famous parsonage of Haworth. In September, 1821, Mrs. Brontë died. The strange life of the motherless children, under the care of their aunt, Miss Branwell, is described in the following extracts. In 1824, the four older girls were sent to the school for clergymen’s daughters, at Cowan’s Bridge, which Charlotte afterward raised to a bad eminence in JANE EYRE, under the name of Lowood Institution. A long account of this shamefully mismanaged school may be found in Miss Robinson’s ‘Emily Brontë.’ Maria and Elizabeth died of consumption in 1825; their deaths were doubtless hastened by exposure and want of proper nourishment. In the autumn of the same year Charlotte and Emily were taken from the Cowan’s Bridge school.
Miss Branwell taught the children at home for some time; in 1831, Charlotte was again sent to school--this time to Miss Wooler’s, at Roe Head, on the road from Leeds to Haddersfield. She remained at this school a year and a half, and on returning taught her sisters what she had learned. At Roe Head began her life-long friendship with Ellen Nussey. In 1835, Charlotte went to teach at Miss Wooler’s, and Emily also went as a pupil to Roe Head, but remained there only three months, when Anne took her place, afterward becoming a teacher in the school. All her life Emily was passionately attached to the dreary parsonage and the lonely moors, and became actually ill when forced to be absent from home. In September, 1836, she obtained a hard position as teacher in a large school near Halifax, which she was obliged to leave the following spring.
In the meantime Miss Wooler had removed to Dewsbury Moor. Anne Brontë continued teaching in her establishment until December, 1837; Charlotte, until the following summer, when her health obliged her to return to Haworth. In 1839 both obtained positions as governess, Charlotte, however, leaving hers after a short time. Her second and more agreeable experience of this kind was in 1841, when she taught in a congenial family from March until Christmas. January, 1842, found all three sisters at home. It was now determined that Charlotte and Emily should spend six months in Brussels, at the Pensionnat of Monsieur and Madame Héger, preparatory to setting up a school for themselves--a plan which had long been discussed at the parsonage. Miss Branwell advanced the money for this undertaking, and the two sisters left home in February.
Their stay in Brussels was prolonged beyond expectation, on the proposal of Mme. Héger that they should spend the next term with her as pupil-teachers, Charlotte giving instruction in English, Emily in music. In October they were recalled to England by the news of Miss Branwell’s death. Anne being now in an excellent position, Emily volunteered to remain at home as housekeeper. Charlotte, acting on the advice of M. Héger, returned to Brussels in January, 1843, to complete her studies there; paying her way as before by teaching in the school, and receiving in addition a trifling salary.