"I am only a woman," was a remark often heard in that day, as in this, from women to whom that "only" was not to be permitted! Only the guardian of the beginning of life, only the sharer in all its duties and inspirations? Culture and Christianity recognized as much as this, but the doctrine still remained an abstract one, and equal rights were scarcely thought of as a corollary to equal duties. Margaret never saw, though she foresaw, the awakening and recognition of the new womanhood which is already changing the aspect of civilized society. An eccentric in her own despite, she had dared assume her full height, and to demand her proper place. Her position was as exceptional as was her genius. From the isolation of her superiority, was it wonderful that she should consider it more absolute than it really was?
This exaggerated sense of power is perhaps nothing more than the intensification of consciousness which certain exigencies will awaken in those who meet them with a special work to{49}do and a special gift to do it with. It must be remembered that Margaret's self-esteem did not really involve any disesteem of others. She honored in all their best traits, and her only ground of quarrel with humanity at large was its derogation from its own dignity, its neglect of its own best interests. Such a sense of human value as she possessed was truly a Christian gift, and it was in virtue of this that she was able to impart such exhilaration and hopefulness to those who were content to learn of her.
But here, in our chronicle, the early morning hours are already over. The inward conquest which was sealed by the sunbeam of that "sallow" November day becomes the prelude to an outward struggle with difficulties which tasked to the utmost the strength acquired by our neophyte through prayer and study.
In the spring of 1833 Margaret found herself obliged to leave the academic shades of Cambridge for the country retirement of Groton. Her father, wearied with a long practice of the law, had removed his residence to the latter place, intending to devote his later years to literary labor and the education of his younger children. To Margaret this change was unwelcome, and the result showed it, at a later day, to have been unfortunate for the family. She did not, however, take here the position of a malcontent,{50}but that of one who, finding herself removed from congenial surroundings, knows how to summon to her aid the hosts of noble minds with which study has made her familiar. Her German books go with her, and Goethe, Schiller, and Jean Paul solace her lonely hours. She reads works on architecture, and books of travel in Italy, while sympathy with her father's pursuits leads her to interest herself in American history, concerning which he had collected much information with a view to historical composition.
We find her also engaged in tuition. She has four pupils, probably the younger children of the family, and gives lessons in three languages five days in the week, besides teaching geography and history. She has much needlework to do, and the ill-health of her mother and grandmother brings additional cares. The course of study which she has marked out for herself can only be pursued, she says, on three evenings in the week, and at chance hours in the day. It includes a careful perusal of Alfieri's writings and an examination into the evidences of the Christian religion. To this she is impelled by "distressing sceptical notions" of her own, and by the doubts awakened in her mind by the arguments of infidels and of deists, some of whom are numbered among her friends.
The following letter, addressed by Margaret to{51}a much-admired friend, will give us some idea of the playful mood which relieved her days of serious application.
"Groton, 1834.
"To Mrs. Almira B.
"Are you not ashamed, O most friendshipless clergywoman! not to have enlivened my long seclusion by one line? Does the author of the 'lecture delivered with much applause before the Brooklyn Lyceum' despise and wish to cast off the author of 'essays contumeliously rejected by that respected publication, the "Christian Examiner"?' That a little success should have such power to steel the female heart to base ingratitude! O Ally! Ally! wilt thou forget that it was I (in happier hours thou hast full oft averred it) who first fanned the spark of thy ambition into flame? Think'st thou that thou owest naught to those long sweeps over the inexpressive realities of literature, when thou wast obliged to trust to my support, thy own opinions as yet scarce budding from thy heels or shoulders? Dost thou forget—but my emotions will not permit me to pursue the subject; surely I must have jogged your conscience sufficiently. I shall follow the instructions of the great Goethe, and, having in some degree vented my feelings, address you as if you were what you ought to be. Still remains enveloped in mystery{52}the reason why neither you nor my reverend friend came to bid me good-by before I left your city, according to promise. I suspected the waiter at the time of having intercepted your card; but your long venomous silence has obliged me to acquit him. I had treasured up sundry little anecdotes touching my journey homeward, which, if related with dramatic skill, might excite a smile on your face, O laughter-loving blue-stocking! I returned home under the protection of a Mr. Fullerton, fresh from London and Paris, who gave me an entirely new view of continental affairs. He assured me that the German Prince[A]was an ignorant pretender, in the face of my assurances that I had read and greatly admired his writings, and gave me a contemptuous description of Waldo Emersondining in bootsat Timothy Wiggin's,absolument à faire mourir! All his sayings were exquisite. And then asui generis motherwhom I met with on board the steamboat. All my pretty pictures are blotted out by the rude hand of Time: verily this checking of speech is dangerous. If all the matter I have been preserving for various persons is in my head, packed away, distributed among the various organs, how immensely will my head be developed when I return to the world. This is the first time in my{53}life that I have known what it is to have nobody to speak to,c'est à dire, of my own peculiar little fancies. I bear it with strange philosophy, but I do wish to be written to. I will tell you how I pass my time without society or exercise. Even till two o'clock, sometimes later, I pour ideas into the heads of the little Fullers; much runs out—indeed, I am often reminded of the chapter on home education, in the 'New Monthly.' But the few drops which remain mightily gladden the sight of my father. Then I go down-stairs and ask for my letters from the post; this is my only pleasure, according to the ideas most people entertain of pleasure. Do you write me an excellent epistle by return of mail, or I will make your head ache by a minute account of the way in which the remaining hours are spent. I have only lately read the 'Female Sovereigns' of your beloved Mrs. Jameson, and like them better than any of her works. Her opinions are clearly expressed, sufficiently discriminating, and her manner unusually simple. I was not dazzled by excess of artificial light, nor cloyed by spiced and sweetened sentiments. My love to your revered husband, and four kisses to Edward, two on your account, one for his beauty, and one abstract kiss, symbol of my love for all little children in general. Write of him, of Mr. ——'s sermons, of your likes and dislikes, of any new{54}characters, sublime or droll, you may have unearthed, and of all other things I should like.
"Affectionately your country friend, poor and humble
"Margaret."
In the summer of 1835 a great pleasure and refreshment came to Margaret in the acquaintance of Miss Martineau, whom she met while on a visit to her friend, Mrs. Farrar, in Cambridge. In speaking of this first meeting Margaret says: "I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an impression of her.... What shrewdness in detecting various shades of character! Yet what she said of Hannah More and Miss Edgeworth grated upon my feelings." In a later conversation "the barrier that separates acquaintance from friendship" was passed, and Margaret felt, beneath the sharpness of her companion's criticism, the presence of a truly human heart.
The two ladies went to church together, and the minister prayed "for our friends." Margaret was moved by this to offer a special prayer for Miss Martineau, which so impressed itself upon her mind that she was able to write it down. We quote the part of it which most particularly refers to her new friend:—
"May her path be guarded, and blessed. May{55}her noble mind be kept firmly poised in its native truth, unsullied by prejudice or error, and strong to resist whatever outwardly or inwardly shall war against its high vocation. May each day bring to this generous seeker new riches of true philosophy and of Divine love. And, amidst all trials, give her to know and feel that thou, the All-sufficing, art with her, leading her on through eternity to likeness of thyself."
The change of base which, years after this time, transformed Miss Martineau into an enthusiastic disbeliever would certainly not have seemed to Margaret an answer to her prayer. But as the doctrine that "God reveals himself in many ways" was not new to her, and as her petition includes the Eternities, we may believe that she appreciated the sincerity of her friend's negations, and anticipated for her, as for herself, a later vision of the Celestial City, whose brightness should rise victorious above the mists of speculative doubt.
A serious illness intervened at this time, brought on, one might think, by the intense action of Margaret's brain, stimulated by her manifold and unremitting labors. For nine days and nights she suffered from fever, accompanied by agonizing pain in her head. Her beloved mother was at her bedside day and night. Her father, usually so reserved in expressions{56}of affection, was moved by the near prospect of her death to say to her: "My dear, I have been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have anyfaults. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do not know that you have a single fault." These words were intended by him as aviaticumfor her, but they were really to be a legacy of love to his favorite child.
Margaret herself anticipated death with calmness, and, in view of the struggles and disappointments of life, with willingness. But the threatened bolt was to fall upon a head dearer to her than her own. In the early autumn of the same year her father, after a two days' illness, fell a victim to cholera.
Margaret's record of the grief which this affliction brought her is very deep and tender. Her father's image was ever present to her, and seemed even to follow her to her room, and to look in upon her there. Her most poignant sorrow was in the thought, suggested to many by similar afflictions, that she might have kept herself nearer to him in sympathy and in duty. The altered circumstances of the family, indeed, soon aroused her to new activities. Mr. Fuller had left no will, and had somewhat diminished his property by unproductive investments. Margaret now found new reason to wish that she{57}belonged to the sterner sex, since, had she been eldest son instead of eldest daughter, she might have become the administrator of her father's estate and the guardian of her sister and brothers. She regretted her ignorance of such details of business as are involved in the care of property, and determined to acquaint herself with them, reflecting that "the same mind which has made other attainments can in time compass these." In this hour of trial she seeks and finds relief and support in prayer.
"May God enable me to see the way clear, and not to let down the intellectual in raising the moral tone of my mind. Difficulties and duties became distinct the very night after my father's death, and a solemn prayer was offered then that I might combine what is due to others with what is due to myself. The spirit of that prayer I shall constantly endeavor to maintain."
This death, besides the sorrow and perplexity which followed it, brought to Margaret a disappointment which seemed to her to bar the fulfilment of her highest hopes. She had for two years been contemplating a visit to Europe, with a view to the better prosecution of her studies. She had earned the right to this indulgence beforehand, by assisting in the education of the younger children of the family. An opportunity now offered itself of making this journey under{58}the most auspicious circumstances. Her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Farrar, were about to cross the ocean, and had invited her to accompany them. Miss Martineau was to be of the party, and Margaret now saw before her, not only this beloved companionship, but also the open door which would give her an easy access to literary society in England, and to the atmosphere of old-world culture which she so passionately longed to breathe.
With this brilliant vision before her, and with her whole literary future trembling, as she thought, in the scale, Margaret prayed only that she might make the right decision. This soon became clear to her, and she determined, in spite of the entreaties of her family, to remain with her careworn mother, and not to risk the possibility of encroaching upon the fund necessary for the education of her brothers and sister.
Of all the crownings of Margaret's life, shall we not most envy her that of this act of sacrifice? So near to the feast of the gods, she prefers the fast of duty, and recognizes the claims of family affection as more imperative than the gratification of any personal taste or ambition.
Margaret does not seem to have been supported in this trial by any sense of its heroism. Her decision was to her simply a following of{59}the right, in which she must be content, as she says, to forget herself and act for the sake of others.
We may all be glad to remember this example, and to refer to it those who find themselves in a maze of doubt between what they owe to the cultivation of their own gifts, what to the need and advantage of those to whom they stand in near relation. Had Margaret at this time forsaken her darkened household, the difference to its members would have been very great, and she herself would have added to the number of those doubting or mistaken souls who have been carried far from the scene of their true and appointed service by some dream of distinction never to be fulfilled. In the sequel she was not only justified, but rewarded. The sacrifice she had made secured the blessings of education to the younger members of her family. Her prayer that the lifting of her moral nature might not lower the tone of her intellect was answered, as it was sure to be, and she found near at hand a field of honor and usefulness which the brilliant capitals of Europe would not have offered her.
Margaret's remaining days in Groton were passed in assiduous reading, and her letters and journals make suggestive comments on Goethe,{60}Shelley, Sir James Mackintosh, Herschel, Wordsworth, and others. Her scheme of culture was what we should now call encyclopedic, and embraced most, if not all, departments of human knowledge. If she was at all mistaken in her scope, it was in this, that she did not sufficiently appreciate the inevitable limitations of brain power and of bodily strength. Her impatience of such considerations led her to an habitual over-use of her brilliant faculties which resulted in an impaired state of health.
In the autumn of 1836 Margaret left Groton, not without acknowledgment of "many precious lessons given there in faith, fortitude, self-command, and unselfish love.
"There, too, in solitude, the mind acquired more power of concentration, and discerned the beauty of strict method; there, too, more than all, the heart was awakened to sympathize with the ignorant, to pity the vulgar, to hope for the seemingly worthless, and to commune with the Divine Spirit of Creation."{61}
Margaret'sremoval was to Boston, where a twofold labor was before her. She was engaged to teach Latin and French in Mr. Alcott's school, then at the height of its prosperity, and intended also to form classes of young ladies who should study with her French, German, and Italian.
Mr. Alcott's educational theories did not altogether commend themselves to Margaret's judgment. They had in them, indeed, the germ of much that is to-day recognized as true and important. But Margaret considered him to be too much possessed with the idea of the unity of knowledge, too little aware of the complexities of instruction.
He, on the other hand, describes her "as a person clearly given to the boldest speculation, and of liberal and varied acquirements. Not wanting in imaginative power, she has the rarest good sense and discretion. The blending of{62}sentiment and of wisdom in her is most remarkable, and her taste is as fine as her prudence. I think her the most brilliant talker of her day."
Margaret now passed through twenty-five weeks of incessant labor, suffering the while from her head, which she calls "a bad head," but which we should consider a most abused one. Her retrospect of this period of toil is interesting, and with its severity she remembers also its value to her. Meeting with many disappointments at the outset, and feeling painfully the new circumstances which obliged her to make merchandise of her gifts and acquirements, she yet says that she rejoices over it all, "and would not have undertaken an iota less." Besides fulfilling her intention of self-support, she feels that she has gained in the power of attention, in self-command, and in the knowledge of methods of instruction, without in the least losing sight of the aims which had made hitherto the happiness and enthusiasm of her life.
Here is, in brief, the tale of her winter's work.
To one class she gave elementary instruction in German, and that so efficiently that her pupils were able to read the language with ease at the end of three months. With another class she read, in twenty-four weeks, Schiller's "Don Carlos,"{63}"Artists," and "Song of the Bell;" Goethe's "Herman und Dorothea," "Götz von Berlichingen," "Iphigenia," first part of "Faust," and "Clavigo;" Lessing's "Nathan der Weise," "Minna," and "Emilia Galotti;" parts of Tieck's "Phantasus," and nearly all of the first volume of Richter's "Titan."
With the Italian class she read parts of Tasso, Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri, and the whole hundred cantos of Dante's "Divina Commedia." Besides these classes she had also three private pupils, one of them a boy unable to use his eyes in study. She gave this child oral instruction in Latin, and read to him the History of England and Shakespeare's plays in connection. The lessons given by her in Mr. Alcott's school were, she says, valuable to her, but also very fatiguing.
Though already so much overtasked, Margaret found time and strength to devote one evening every week to theviva vocetranslation of German authors for Dr. Channing's benefit, reading to him mostly from De Wette and Herder. Much conversation accompanied these readings, and Margaret confesses that she finds therein much food for thought, while the Doctor's judgments appear to her deliberate, and his sympathies somewhat slow. She speaks of him as entirely without any assumption of superiority{64}towards her, and as trusting "to the elevation of his thoughts to keep him in his place." She also greatly enjoyed his preaching, the force and earnestness of which seemed to her "to purge as by fire."
If Margaret was able to review her winter's work with pleasure, we must regard it with mingled wonder and dismay. The range and extent of her labors were indeed admirable, combining such extremes as enabled her to minister to the needs of the children in Mr. Alcott's school, and to assist the studies of the most eminent divine of the day. If we look only at her classes in literature, we shall find it wonderful that a woman of twenty-six should have been able to give available instruction in directions so many and various.
On the other hand, we must think that the immense extent of ground gone over involved too rapid a study of the separate works comprised in it. Here was given a synopsis of literary work which, properly performed, would fill a lifetime. It was no doubt valuable to her pupils through the vivifying influence of her enthusiastic imagination, which may have enabled some of them, in after years, to fill out the sketch of culture so boldly and broadly drawn before their eyes. Yet, considered as instruction, it must, from its very extent, have been somewhat superficial.{65}
Our dismay would regard the remorseless degree in which Margaret, at this time, must have encroached upon the reserves of her bodily strength. Some physicists of to-day ascribe to women a peculiar power of concentrating upon one short effort an amount of vital force which should carry them through long years, and which, once expended, cannot be restored. Margaret's case would certainly justify this view; for, while a mind so vigorous necessarily presupposes a body of uncommon vigor, she was after this time always a sufferer, and never enjoyed that perfect equipoise of function and of power which we call health.
In the spring of the year 1837 Margaret was invited to fill an important post in the Greene Street School, at Providence, R. I. It was proposed that she should teach the elder girls four hours daily, arranging studies and courses at her own discretion, and receiving a salary of one thousand dollars per annum.
Margaret hesitated to accept this offer, feeling inclined rather to renew her classes of the year just past, and having in mind also a life of Goethe which she greatly desired to write, and for which she was already collecting material. In the end, however, the prospect of immediate independence carried the day, and she{66}became the "Lady Superior," as she styles it, of the Providence school. Here a nearer view of the great need of her services stimulated her generous efforts, and she was rewarded by the love and reverence of her pupils, and by the knowledge that she did indeed bring them an awakening which led them from inert ignorance to earnest endeavor.
Margaret's record of her stay in Providence is enlivened by portraits of some of the men of mark who came within her ken. Among these was Tristam Burgess, already old, whose baldness, she says, "increases the fine effect of his appearance, for it seems as if the locks had retreated that the contour of his strongly marked head might be revealed." The eminent lawyer, Whipple, is not, she says, a man of the Webster class; but is, in her eyes, first among men of the class immediately below, and wears "a pervading air of ease and mastery which shows him fit to be a leader of the flock." John Neal, of Portland, speaks to her girls on the destiny and vocation of woman in America, and in private has a long talk with her concerning woman, whigism, modern English poets, Shakespeare, and particularly "Richard the Third," concerning which play the two "actually had a fight." "Mr. Neal," she says, "does not argue quite fairly, for he uses reason while it{67}lasts, and then helps himself out with wit, sentiment, and assertion." She hears a discourse and prayer from Joseph John Gurney, of England, in whose matter and manner she finds herself grievously disappointed: "Quakerism has at times looked lovely to me, and I had expected at least a spiritual exposition of its doctrines from the brother of Mrs. Fry. But his manner was as wooden as his matter. His figures were paltry, his thoughts narrowed down, and his very sincerity made corrupt by spiritual pride. The poet, Richard H. Dana, in those days gave a course of readings from the English dramatists, beginning with Shakespeare. Margaret writes:—
"The introductory was beautiful.... All this was arrayed in a garb of most delicate grace; but a man of such genuine refinement undervalues the cannon-blasts and rockets which are needed to rouse the attention of the vulgar. His naïve gestures, the rapt expression of his face, his introverted eye, and the almost childlike simplicity of his pathos carry one back into a purer atmosphere, to live over again youth's fresh emotions." Herrésuméof him ends with these words: "Mr. Dana has the charms and the defects of one whose object in life has been to preserve his individuality unprofaned."
Margaret's connection with the Greene Street{68}School in Providence lasted two years. Her success in this work was considered very great, and her brief residence in Rhode Island was crowned with public esteem and with many valued friendships.
Her parting from the pupils here was not without tears on both sides. Although engaged to teach the elder girls, Margaret's care had extended over the younger ones, and also over some of the boys. With all she exchanged an affectionate farewell, in which words of advice were mingled. To the class of girls which had been her especial charge she made a farewell address whose impressive sentences must have been long remembered. Here are some of them:—
"I reminded them of the ignorance in which some of them had been found, and showed them how all my efforts had necessarily been directed to stimulating their minds, leaving undone much which, under other circumstances, would have been deemed indispensable. I thanked them for the moral beauty of their conduct, bore witness that an appeal to conscience had never failed, and told them of my happiness in having the faith thus confirmed that young persons can be best guided by addressing their highest nature. I assured them of my true friendship, proved by my never having cajoled or caressed{69}them into good. All my influence over them was rooted in reality; I had never softened nor palliated their faults. I had appealed, not to their weakness, but to their strength. I had offered to them always the loftiest motives, and had made every other end subservient to that of spiritual growth. With a heart-felt blessing I dismissed them."
In those days appeared Miss Martineau's book on America, of which we may say that its sharply critical tone stirred the national consciousness, and brought freshly into consideration the question of negro slavery, the discussion of which had been by common consent banished from "good" society in the United States. Miss Martineau dared to reprobate this institution in uncompromising language, and, while showing much appreciation of the natural beauties of the country, was generally thought to have done injustice to its moral and social characteristics.
While Margaret regarded with indignation the angry abuse with which her friend's book was greeted on this side of the Atlantic, she felt obliged to express to her the disappointment which she herself had felt on reading it. She acknowledges that the work has been "garbled, misrepresented, scandalously ill-treated." Yet she speaks of herself as one of those who, seeing{70}in the book "a degree of presumptuousness, irreverence, inaccuracy, hasty generalization, and ultraism on many points which they did not expect, lament the haste in which you have written, and the injustice which you have consequently done to so important a task, and to your own powers of being and doing."
Among other grievances, Margaret especially felt the manner in which Miss Martineau had written about Mr. Alcott. This she could not pass over without comment: "A true and noble man; a philanthropist, whom a true and noble woman, also a philanthropist, should have delighted to honor; a philosopher, worthy the palmy times of ancient Greece; a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of ancient Athens did Socrates. They smile to hear their verdict confirmed from the other side of the Atlantic by their censor, Harriet Martineau."
Margaret expresses in this letter the fear lest the frankness of her strictures should deprive her of the regard of her friend, but says, "If your heart turns from me, I shall still love you, still think you noble."
In 1840 Margaret was solicited to become the editor of the "Dial," and undertook, for two years, the management of the magazine, which{71}was at this time considered as the organ of the Transcendentalists. The "Dial" was a quarterly publication, somewhat nebulous in its character, but valuable as the expression of fresh thought, stimulating to culture of a new order. Like the transcendental movement itself, it had in it the germs of influences which in the course of the last forty years have come to be widely felt and greatly prized. In the newness of its birth and origin, it needed nursing fathers and nursing mothers, but was fed mostly, so far as concerns the general public, with neglect and ridicule.
Margaret, besides laboring with great diligence in her editorship, contributed to its pages many papers on her favorite points of study, such as Goethe, Beethoven, Romantic poetry, John Stirling, etc. Of the "Dial," Mr. Emerson says: "Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labor from those who served it, and from Margaret most of all." As there were no funds behind the enterprise, contributors were not paid for their work, and Margaret's modest salary of two hundred dollars per annum was discontinued after the first year.
The magazine lived four years. In England and Scotland it achieved asuccès d'estime, and a republication of it in these days is about to make tardy amends for the general indifference which allowed its career to terminate so briefly.{72}
Copies of the original work, now a literary curiosity, can here and there be borrowed from individuals who have grown old in the service of human progress. A look into the carefully preserved volumes shows us the changes which time has wrought in the four decades of years which have elapsed (quite or nearly) since the appearance of the last number.
A melancholy touches us as we glance hither and thither among its pages. How bright are the morning hours marked on this Dial! How merged now in the evening twilight and darkness! Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, with life's meridian still before him. Here are printed some of his earliest lectures and some of the most admired of his poems. Here are the graceful verses of Christopher P. Cranch, artist and poet. Here are the Channing cousins, nephews of the great man by different brothers, one, William Henry Channing, then, as always, fervid and unrelinquishing in faith; the other, William Ellery, a questioner who, not finding himself answered to his mind, has ceased to ask. Here is Theodore Parker, a youthful critic of existing methods and traditions, already familiar with the sacred writings of many religions. A. Bronson Alcott appears in various forms, contributing "Days from a Diary," "Orphic Sayings," and so on. Here are, from various authors, papers entitled:{73}"Social Tendencies," "The Interior or Hidden Life," "The Pharisees," "Prophecy, Transcendentalism, and Progress," "Leaves from a Scholar's Journal," "Ethnic Scriptures," "The Preaching of Buddha," "Out-World and In-World,"—headings which themselves afford an insight into the direction of the speculative thought and fancy of the time. An article on the Hollis Street Council presents to us the long-forgotten controversy between Rev. John Pierpont and his congregation, to settle which a conference of the Unitarian clergy was summoned. Another, entitled "Chardon Street and Bible Conventions," records the coming together of a company of "madmen, mad women, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and Philosophers," to discuss church discipline and the authenticity of the Bible. Among those present were Dr. Channing, Father Taylor, Mr. Alcott, Mr. Garrison, Jones Very, and Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman. The chronicler says that "the assembly was characterized by the predominance of a certain plain, sylvan strength and earnestness, while many of the most intellectual and cultivated persons attended its councils. Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing and memorable part in the debate, and{74}that flea of Conventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, was but too ready with her interminable scroll." In the July number of the year 1842 many pages are devoted to a rehearsal of "the entertainments of the past winter," which treats of Fanny Elssler's dancing, Braham's singing, oratorios, symphony concerts, and various lectures. Among these last, those of Mr. Lyell (afterwards Sir Charles) are curtly dismissed as "a neat article," while those of Henry Giles are recognized as showing popular talent.
Among Margaret's own contributions to the "Dial," the article on Goethe and that entitled "The Great Lawsuit" are perhaps the most noteworthy. We shall find the second of these expanded into the well-known "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," of which mention will be made hereafter. The one first named seems to demand some notice here, the fine discrimination of its criticism showing how well qualified the writer was to teach the women of her day the true appreciation of genius, and to warn them from the idolatry which worships the faults as well as the merits of great minds.
From a lover of Goethe, such sentences as the following were scarcely to have been expected:—
"Pardon him, World, that he was too worldly. Do not wonder, Heart, that he was so heartless.{75}Believe, Soul, that one so true, as far as he went, must yet be initiated into the deeper mysteries of soul.
"Naturally of a deep mind and shallow heart, he felt the sway of the affections enough to appreciate their working in other men, but never enough to receive their inmost regenerating influence."
Margaret finds a decline of sentiment and poetic power in Goethe, dating from his relinquishment of Lili.
"After this period we find in him rather a wide and deep wisdom than the inspirations of genius. His faith that all must issue well wants the sweetness of piety; and the God he manifests to us is one of law or necessity rather than of intelligent love.
"This mastery that Goethe prizes seems to consist rather in the skilful use of means than in the clear manifestation of ends. Yet never let him be confounded with those who sell all their birthright. He became blind to the more generous virtues, the nobler impulses, but ever in self-respect was busy to develop his nature. He was kind, industrious, wise, gentlemanly, if not manly."
Margaret, with bold and steady hand, draws a parallel between Dante's "Paradiso" and the second part of Goethe's "Faust." She prefers "the{76}grandly humble reliance of old Catholicism" to "the loop-hole redemption of modern sagacity." Yet she thinks that Dante, perhaps, "had not so hard a battle to wage as this other great poet." The fiercest passions she finds less dangerous to the soul than the cold scepticism of the understanding. She sums up grandly the spiritual ordeals of different historical periods:—
"The Jewish demon assailed the man of Uz with physical ills, the Lucifer of the Middle Ages tempted his passions; but the Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century bade the finite strive to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt to solve all the problems of the soul."
Among Margaret's published papers on literature and art is one entitled "A Record of Impressions produced by the Exhibition of Mr. Allston's Pictures in the Summer of 1839." She was moved to write this, she says, partly by the general silence of the press on a matter of so much import in the history of American art, and partly by the desire to analyze her own views, and to ascertain, if possible, the reason why, at the close of the exhibition, she found herself less a gainer by it than she had expected. As Margaret gave much time and thought to art matters, and as the Allston exhibition was really an event of historic interest, some consideration{77}of this paper will not be inappropriate in this place.
Washington Allston was at that time, had long been, and long continued to be, the artist saint of Boston. A great personal prestige added its power to that of his unquestioned genius.
Beautiful in appearance, as much a poet as a painter, he really seemed to belong to an order of beings who might be called
"Too bright and goodFor human nature's daily food."
He had flown into the heart of Europe when few American artists managed to get so far. He had returned to live alone with his dreams, of which one was the nightmare of a great painting which he never could finish, and never did. He had kept the vulgar world at a distance from his life and thought, intent on coining these into a succession of pictures which claimed to have a mission to the age. The series of female heads which are the most admirable of his works appeared to be the portraits of as many ideal women who, with no existence elsewhere, had disclosed themselves to him at his dreamy fireside or in his haunted studio. The spirit of the age, in its highest extreme, was upon him, and the wave of supervital aspiration swept him, as it did{78}Channing and Emerson, beyond the region of the visible and sensible. At that day, and for ten years later, one might occasionally have seen in some street of Boston a fragile figure, and upon it a head distinguished by snowy curls and starry eyes. Here was the winter of age; here the perpetual summer of the soul. The coat and hat did not matter; but they were of some quaint, forgotten fashion, outlining the vision as belonging to the past. You felt a modesty in looking at anything so unique and delicate. I remember this vision as suddenly disclosed out of a bitter winter's day. And the street was Chestnut Street, and the figure was Washington Allston going to visit the poet Richard H. Dana. And not long afterwards the silvery snows melted, and the soul which had made those eyes so luminous shot back to its immortal sphere.
But, to leave the man and return to the artist. Mr. Allston's real merit was too great to be seriously obscured by the over-sweep of imagination to which he was subject. His best works still remain true classics of the canvas; but the spirit which, through them, seemed to pass from his mind into that of the public, has not to-day the recognition and commanding interest which it then had.
Margaret had expected, as she says, to be{79}greatly a gainer by her study of this exhibition, and had been somewhat disappointed. Possibly her expectations regarded a result too immediate and definite. Sights and experiences that enrich the mind often do so insensibly. They pass out of our consciousness; but in our later judgments we find our standard changed, and refer back to them as the source of its enlargement.
Margaret was already familiar with several of the ideal heads of which we have spoken, and which bore the names of Beatrice, Rosalie, the Valentine, etc. Of these, as previously seen and studied, she says:—
"The calm and meditative cast of these pictures, the ideal beauty that shone through rather than in them, and the harmony of coloring were as unlike anything else I saw, as the 'Vicar of Wakefield' to Cooper's novels. I seemed to recognize in painting that self-possessed elegance, that transparent depth, which I most admire in literature."
With these old favorites she classes, as most beautiful among those now shown, the Evening Hymn, the Italian Shepherd Boy, Edwin, Lorenzo and Jessica.
"The excellence of these pictures is subjective, and even feminine. They tell us the painter's ideal of character: a graceful repose, with a fitness for moderate action; a capacity{80}of emotion, with a habit of reverie. Not one of these beings is in a state ofépanchement. Not one is, or perhaps could be, thrown off its equipoise. They are, even the softest, characterized by entire though unconscious self-possession."
The head called Beatrice was sometimes spoken of in those days as representing the Beatrice of Dante. Margaret finds in it nothing to suggest the "Divina Commedia."
"How fair, indeed, and not unmeet for a poet's love. But what she is, what she can be, it needs no Dante to discover. She is not a lustrous, bewitching beauty, neither is she a high and poetic one. She is not a concentrated perfume, nor a flower, nor a star. Yet somewhat has she of every creature's best. She has the golden mean, without any touch of the mediocre."
The landscapes in the exhibition gave her "unalloyed delight." She found in them Mr. Allston's true mastery,—"a power of sympathy, which gives each landscape a perfectly individual character.... The soul of the painter," she says, "is in these landscapes, but not his character. Is not that the highest art? Nature and the soul combined; the former freed from crudities or blemishes, the latter from its merely human aspect."{81}
Allston's Miriam suggests to Margaret a different treatment of the subject:—
"This maiden had been nurtured in a fair and highly civilized country, in the midst of wrong and scorn indeed, but beneath the shadow of sublime institutions. Amid all the pains and penances of slavery, the memory of Joseph, the presence of Moses, exalt her soul to the highest pitch of national pride.
"Imagine the stately and solemn beauty with which such nurture and such a position might invest the Jewish Miriam. Imagine her at the moment when her lips were unsealed, and she was permitted to sing the song of deliverance. Realize this situation, and oh, how far will this beautiful picture fall short of your demands!"
To such a criticism Mr. Allston might have replied that a picture in words is one thing, a picture in colors quite another; and that the complex intellectual expression in which Margaret delighted is appropriate to literary, but not to pictorial art.
Much in the same way does she reason concerning one of Allston's most admired paintings, which represents Jeremiah in prison dictating to Baruch:—
"The form of the prophet is brought out in such noble relief, is in such fine contrast to the pale and feminine sweetness of the scribe at his{82}feet, that for a time you are satisfied. But by and by you begin to doubt whether this picture is not rather imposing than majestic. The dignity of the prophet's appearance seems to lie rather in the fine lines of the form and drapery than in the expression of the face. It was well observed by one who looked on him, that, if the eyes were cast down, he would become an ordinary man. This is true, and the expression of the bard must not depend on a look or gesture, but beam with mild electricity from every feature. Allston's Jeremiah is not the mournfully indignant bard, but the robust and stately Jew, angry that men will not mark his word and go his way."
The test here imagined, that of concealing the eyes, would answer as little in real as in pictured life. Although the method of these criticisms is arbitrary, the conclusion to which they bring Margaret is one in which many will agree with her:—
"The more I have looked at these pictures, the more I have been satisfied that the grand historical style did not afford the scope most proper to Mr. Allston's genius. The Prophets and Sibyls are for the Michael Angelos. The Beautiful is Mr. Allston's dominion. Here he rules as a genius, but in attempts such as I have been considering, can only show his appreciation{83}of the stern and sublime thoughts he wants force to reproduce."
Margaret is glad to go back from these more labored and unequal compositions to those lovely feminine creations which had made themselves so beloved that they seemed to belong to the spiritual family of Boston itself, and to "have floated across the painter's heaven on the golden clouds of fantasy."
From this paper our thoughts naturally revert to what Mr. Emerson has said of Margaret as an art critic:—
"Margaret's love of art, like that of most cultivated persons in this country, was not at all technical, but truly a sympathy with the artist in the protest which his work pronounced on the deformity of our daily manners; her co-perception with him of the eloquence of form; her aspiration with him to a fairer life. As soon as her conversation ran into the mysteries of manipulation and artistic effect, it was less trustworthy. I remember that in the first times when I chanced to see pictures with her, I listened reverently to her opinions, and endeavored to see what she saw. But on several occasions, finding myself unable to reach it, I came to suspect my guide, and to believe at last that her taste in works of art, though honest, was not on universal, but on idiosyncratic grounds."{84}
Itis now time for us to speak of the portrait of Margaret drawn by the hand of William Henry Channing. And first give us leave to say that Mr. Emerson's very valuable statements concerning her are to be prized rather for their critical and literary appreciation than accepted as showing the insight given by strong personal sympathy.
While bound to each other by mutual esteem and admiration, Margaret and Mr. Emerson were opposites in natural tendency, if not in character. While Mr. Emerson never appeared to be modified by any change of circumstance, never melted nor took fire, but was always and everywhere himself, the soul of Margaret was subject to a glowing passion which raised the temperature of the social atmosphere around her. Was this atmosphere heavy with human dulness? Margaret so smote the ponderous demon with her fiery wand that he was presently{85}compelled to "caper nimbly" for her amusement, or to flee from her presence. Was sorrow master of the situation? Of this tyranny Margaret was equally intolerant. The mourner must be uplifted through her to new hope and joy. Frivolity and all unworthiness had reason to fear her, for she denounced them to the face, with somnambulic unconcern. But where high joys were in the ascendant, there stood Margaret, quick with her inner interpretation, adding to human rapture itself the deep, calm lessoning of divine reason. A priestess of life-glories, she magnified her office, and in its grandeur sometimes grew grandiloquent. But with all this her sense was solid, and her meaning clear and worthy.
Mr. Emerson had also a priesthood, but of a different order. The calm, severe judgment, the unpardoning taste, the deliberation which not only preceded but also followed his utterances, carried him to a remoteness from the common life of common people, and allowed no intermingling of this life with his own. For him, too, came a time of fusion which vindicated his interest in the great issues of his time. But this was not in Margaret's day, and to her he seemed the palm-tree in the desert, graceful and admirable, bearing aloft a waving crest, but spreading no sheltering and embracing branches.{86}
William Henry Channing, whose reminiscences of Margaret stand last in order in the memoirs already published, was more nearly allied to her in character than either of his coadjutors. If Mr. Emerson's bane was a want of fusion, the ruling characteristic of Mr. Channing was a heart that melted almost too easily at the touch of human sympathy, and whose heat and glow of feeling may sometimes have overswept the calmer power of judgment.
He had heard of Margaret in her school-girl days as a prodigy of talent and attainment. During the period of his own studies in Cambridge he first made her acquaintance. He was struck, but not attracted, by her "saucy sprightliness." Her intensity of temperament, unmeasured satire, and commanding air were indeed somewhat repellent to him, and almost led him to conjecture that she had chosen for her part in life therôleof a Yankee Corinne. Her friendships, too, seemed to him extravagant. He dreaded the encounter of a personality so imperious and uncompromising in its demands, and was content to observe her at a safe and respectful distance. Soon, however, through the "shining fog" of brilliant wit and sentiment the real nobility of her nature made itself seen and felt. He found her sagacious in her judgments. Her conversation showed breadth of{87}culture and depth of thought. Above all, he was made to feel her great sincerity of purpose. "This it was," says he, "that made her criticism so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick and stern." The loftiness of her ideal explained the severity of her judgments, and the heroic mould and impulse of her character had much to do with her stately deportment. Thus the salient points which, at a distance, had seemed to him defects, were found, on a nearer view, to be the indications of qualities most rare and admirable.
James Freeman Clarke, an intimate of both parties, made them better known to each other by his cordial interpretation of each to each. But it was in the year 1839, in the days of Margaret's residence at Jamaica Plain, that the friendship between these two eminent persons, "long before rooted, grew up, and leafed, and blossomed." Mr. Channing traces the beginning of this nearer relation to a certain day on which he sought Margaret amid these new surroundings. It was a bright summer day. The windows of Margaret's parlor commanded a pleasant view of meadows, with hills beyond. She entered, bearing a vase of freshly gathered flowers, her own tribute just levied from the garden. Of these, and of their significance, was her first speech. From these she passed to the{88}engravings which adorned her walls, and to much talk of art and artists. From this theme an easy transition led the conversation to Greece and its mythology. A little later, Margaret began to speak of the friends whose care had surrounded her with these objects of her delighting contemplation. The intended marriage of two of the best beloved among these friends was much in her mind at the moment, and Mr. Channing compares the gradation of thought by which she arrived at the announcement of this piece of intelligence to the progress anddénouementof a drama, so eloquent and artistic did it appear to him.
A ramble in Bussey's woods followed this indoor interview. In his account of it Mr. Channing has given us not only a record of much that Margaret said, but also a picture of how she looked on that ever-remembered day.
"Reaching a moss-cushioned ledge near the summit, she seated herself.... As, leaning on one arm, she poured out her stream of thought, turning now and then her eyes full upon me, to see whether I caught her meaning, there was leisure to study her thoroughly. 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{89}being, fit at once for rapture or sustained effort. 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."
Mr. Channing mentions, as others do, Margaret's habit of shutting her eyes, and opening them suddenly, with a singular dilatation of the iris. He dwells still more upon the pliancy of her neck, the expression of which varied with her mood of mind. In moments of tender or pensive feeling its curves were like those of a swan; under the influence of indignation its movements were more like the swoopings of a bird of prey.
"Finally, in the animation yetabandonof Margaret's attitude and look were rarely blended the fiery force of Northern, and the soft languor of Southern races."
Until this day Mr. Channing had known Margaret through her intellect only. This conversation of many hours revealed her to him in a new light. It unfolded to him her manifold gifts and her deep experience, her great capacity for joy, and the suffering through which she had passed. She should have been an acknowledged queen among the magnates of European culture: she was hedged about by the narrow intolerance of provincial New England.{90}
In a more generous soil her genius would have borne fruit of the highest order. She felt this, felt that she failed of this highest result, and was yet so patient, so faithful to duty, so considerate of all who had claims upon her! Perceiving now the ardor of her nature and the strength of her self-sacrifice, Margaret's new friend could not but bow in reverence before her; and from that time the two always met as intimates.
Mr. Channing's reminiscences preserve for us a valuableaperçuof the Transcendental movement in New England, and of Margaret's relation to it.
The circle of the Transcendentalists was, for the moment, a new church, with the joy and pain of a new evangel in its midst. In the very heart of New England Puritanism, at that day hard, dry, and thorny, had sprung up a new growth, like the blossoming of a century-plant, beautiful and inconvenient. Boundaries had to be enlarged for it; for if society would not give it room, it was determined to go outside of society, and to assert, at all hazards, the freedom of inspiration.
While this movement was in a good degree one of simple protest and reaction, it yet drew much of its inspiration from foreign countries and periods of time remote from our own.{91}From the standpoint of the present it looked deeply into the past and into the future. Its leaders studied Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, among the classic authors, and De Wette, Hegel, Kant, and Fichte, among the prophets of modern thought. Thewelt-geistof the Germans was its ideal. Method, it could not boast. Free discussion, abstinence from participation in ordinary social life and religious worship, a restless seeking for sympathy, and a constant formulation of sentiments which, exalted in themselves, seemed to lose something of their character by the frequency with which they were presented,—these are some of the traits which Transcendentalism showed to the uninitiated.
To its Greek and Germanic elements was presently added an influence borrowed from the systematic genius of France. The works of Fourier became a gospel of hope to those who looked for a speedy regeneration of society. George Ripley, an eminent scholar and critic, determined to embody this hope in a grand experiment, and bravely organized the Brook Farm Community upon a plan as nearly in accordance with the principles laid down by Fourier as circumstances would allow. He was accompanied in this new departure by a little band of fellow-workers, of whom one or two were already well known as literary men, while others of them have since attained distinction in various walks of life.{92}
While all the Transcendentalists were not associationists, the family at Brook Farm was yet considered as an outcome of the new movement, and as such was regarded by its promoters with great sympathy and interest.
Margaret's position among the Transcendentalists may easily be imagined. In such a group of awakened thinkers her place was soon determined. At their frequent reunions she was a most welcome and honored guest. More than this. Among those who claimed a fresh outpouring of the Spirit Margaret was recognized as a bearer of the living word. She was not in haste to speak on these occasions, but seemed for a time absorbed in listening and in observation. When the moment came, she showed the results of this attention by briefly restating the points already touched upon, passing thence to the unfolding of her own views. This she seems always to have done with much force, and with a grace no less remarkable. She spoke slowly at first, with the deliberation inseparable from weight of thought. As she proceeded, images and illustrations suggested themselves to her mind in rapid succession. "The sweep of her speech became grand," says Mr. Channing. Her eloquence was direct and vigorous. Her wide range of reading supplied her with ready and copious illustrations. The commonplace became{93}original from her way of treating it. She had power to analyze, power to sum up. Her use of language had a rhythmic charm. She was sometimes grandiloquent, sometimes excessive in her denunciation of popular evils and abuses, but her sincerity of purpose, her grasp of thought and keenness of apprehension, were felt throughout.
The source of these and similar sibylline manifestations is a subtle one. Such a speaker, consciously or unconsciously, draws much of her inspiration from the minds of those around her. Each of these in a measure affects her, while she still remains mistress of herself. Her thought is upheld by the general sympathy, which she suddenly lifts to a height undreamed of before. She divines what each most purely wishes, most deeply hopes; and so her words reveal to those present not only their own unuttered thoughts, but also the higher significance and completeness which she is able to give to these thoughts under the seal of her own conviction. These fleeting utterances, alas! are lost, like the leaves swept of old from the sibyl's cave. But as souls are, after all, the most permanent facts that we know of, who shall say that one breath of them is wasted?
Young hearts to-day, separated from the time we speak of by two or three generations, may{94}still keep the generous thrill which Margaret awakened in the bosom of a grandmother, herself then in the bloom of youth. Books, indeed, are laid away and forgotten, manuscripts are lost or destroyed. The spoken word, fleeting though it be, may kindle a flame that ages shall not quench, but only brighten.
While, therefore, it may well grieve us to-day that we cannot know exactly what Margaret said nor how she said it, we may believe that the inspiration which she felt and communicated to others remains, not the less, a permanent value in the community.
Having already somewhat the position of a "come-outer," Margaret was naturally supposed to be in entire sympathy with the Transcendentalists. This supposition was strengthened by her assuming the editorship of the "Dial," and Christopher Cranch, in caricaturing it, represented her as a Minerva driving a team of the newilluminati. Margaret's journals and letters, however, show that while she welcomed the new outlook towards a possible perfection, she did not accept without reserve the enthusiasms of those about her. "The good time coming," which seemed to them so near, appeared to her very distant, and difficult of attainment. Her views at the outset are aptly expressed in the following extract from one of her letters:—{95}
"Utopia it is impossible to build up. At least, my hopes for our race on this one planet are more limited than those of most of my friends. I accept the limitations of human nature, and believe a wise acknowledgment of them one of the best conditions of progress. Yet every noble scheme, every poetic manifestation, prophesies to man his eventual destiny. And were not man ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify, he would remain torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this ground that I sympathize with what is called the 'Transcendental party,' and that I feel their aim to be the true one."
The grievance maintained against society by the new school of thought was of a nature to make the respondent say: "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept." The status of New England, social and political, was founded upon liberal traditions. Yet these friends placed themselves in opposition to the whole existing order of things. The Unitarian discipline had delivered them from the yoke of doctrines impossible to an age of critical culture. They reproached it with having taken away the mystical ideas which, in imaginative minds, had made the poetry of the old faith. Margaret, writing of these things in 1840, well says:{96}"Since the Revolution there has been little in the circumstances of this country to call out the higher sentiments. The effect of continued prosperity is the same on nations as on individuals; it leaves the nobler faculties undeveloped. The superficial diffusion of knowledge, unless attended by a deepening of its sources, is likely to vulgarize rather than to raise the thought of a nation.... The tendency of circumstances has been to make our people superficial, irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than to live mentally and morally." So much for the careless crowd. In another sentence, Margaret gives us the clew to much of the "divine discontent" felt by deeper thinkers. She says: "How much those of us who have been formed by the European mind have to unlearn and lay aside, if we would act here!"
The scholars of New England had indeed so devoted themselves to the study of foreign literatures as to be little familiar with the spirit and the needs of their own country. The England of the English classics, the Germany of the German poets and philosophers, the Italy of the Renaissance writers and artists, combined to make the continent in which their thoughts were at home. The England of the commonalty, the Germany and Italy of the peasant and artisan, were little known to them, and as little{97}the characteristic qualities and defects of their own country-people. Hence their comparison of the old society with the new was in great part founded upon what we may call "literary illusions." Moreover, the German and English methods of thought were only partially applicable to a mode of life whose conditions far transcended those of European life in their freedom and in the objects recognized as common to all.
Those of us who have numbered threescore years can remember the perpetual lamentation of the cultivated American of forty years ago. His whole talk was a cataloguing of negatives: "We have not this, we have not that." To all of which the true answer would have been: "You have a wonderful country, an exceptional race, an unparalleled opportunity. You have not yet made your five talents ten. That is what you should set about immediately."
The Brook Farm experiment probably appeared to Margaret in the light of an Utopia. Her regard for the founders of the enterprise induced her, nevertheless, to visit the place frequently. Of the first of these visits her journal has preserved a full account.
The aspect of the new settlement at first appeared to her somewhat desolate: "You seem to belong to nobody, to have a right to speak to nobody; but very soon you learn to take care of{98}yourself, and then the freedom of the place is delightful."
The society of Mr. and Mrs. Ripley was most congenial to her, and the nearness of the woods afforded an opportunity for the rambles in which she delighted. But her time was not all dedicated to these calm pleasures. Soon she had won the confidence of several of the inmates of the place, who imparted to her their heart histories, seeking that aid and counsel which she was so well able to give. She mentions the holding of two conversations during this visit, in both of which she was the leader. The first was on Education, a subject concerning which her ideas differed from those adopted by the Community. The manners of some of those present were too free and easy to be agreeable to Margaret, who was accustomed to deference.
At the second conversation, some days later, the circle was smaller, and no one showed any sign of weariness or indifference. The subject was Impulse, chosen by Margaret because she observed among her new friends "a great tendency to advocate spontaneousness at the expense of reflection." Of her own part in this exercise she says:—
"I defended nature, as I always do,—the spirit ascending through, not superseding nature. But in the scale of sense, intellect, spirit, I advocated{99}to-night the claims of intellect, because those present were rather disposed to postpone them."
After the lapse of a year she found the tone of the society much improved. The mere freakishness of unrestraint had yielded to a recognition of the true conditions of liberty, and tolerance was combined with sincerity.[100]
AmongMargaret's life-long characteristics was a genuine love of little children, which sprang from a deep sense of the beauty and sacredness of childhood. When she visited the homes of her friends, the little ones of their households were taken into the circle of her loving attention. Three of these became so especially dear to her that she called them her children. These were Waldo Emerson, Pickie Greeley, and Herman Clarke. For each of them the span of earthly life was short, no one of them living to pass out of childhood.
Waldo was the eldest son of Mr. Emerson, the child deeply mourned and commemorated by him in the well-known threnody:—
"The hyacinthine boy for whomMorn well might break and April bloom.The gracious boy who did adornThe world whereinto he was born,[101]And by his countenance repayThe favor of the loving Day,Has disappeared from the Day's eye."
This death occurred in 1841. Margaret visited Concord soon afterward, and has left in her journals a brief record of this visit, in which she made the grief of her friends her own. We gather from its first phrase that Mr. Emerson, whom she now speaks of as "Waldo," had wished her to commit to writing some of her reminiscences of the dear one lately departed:—
"Waldo brought me at once the inkhorn and pen. I told him if he kept me so strictly to my promise I might lose my ardor; however, I began at once to write for him, but not with much success. Lidian came in to see me before dinner. She wept for the lost child, and I was tempted to do the same, which relieved much from the oppression I have felt since I came. Waldo showed me all he and others had written about the child; there is very little from Waldo's own observation, though he was with him so much. He has not much eye for the little signs in children that have such great leadings. The little there is, is good.
"'Mamma, may I have this little bell which I have been making, to stand by the side of my bed?'
"'Yes, it may stand there.'[102]
"'But, mamma, I am afraid it will alarm you. It may sound in the middle of the night, and it will be heard over the whole town. It will sound like some great glass thing which will fall down and break all to pieces; it will be louder than a thousand hawks; it will be heard across the water and in all the countries, it will be heard all over the world.'
"I like this, because it was exactly so he talked, spinning away without end and with large, beautiful, earnest eyes. But most of the stories are of short sayings.
"This is good in M. Russell's journal of him. She had been telling him a story that excited him, and then he told her this: 'How his horse went out into a long, long wood, and how he looked through a squirrel's eyes and saw a great giant, and the giant was himself.'
"Went to see the Hawthornes; it was very pleasant, the poplars whisper so suddenly their pleasant tale, and everywhere the view is so peaceful. The house within I like, all their things are so expressive of themselves and mix in so gracefully with the old furniture. H. walked home with me; we stopped some time to look at the moon. She was struggling with clouds. He said he should be much more willing to die than two months ago, for he had had some real[103]possession in life; but still he never wished to leave this earth, it was beautiful enough. He expressed, as he always does, many fine perceptions. I like to hear the lightest thing he says.
"Waldo and I have good meetings, though we stop at all our old places. But my expectations are moderate now; it is his beautiful presence that I prize far more than our intercourse. He has been reading me his new poems, and the other day at the end he asked me how I liked the 'little subjective twinkle all through.'
"Saturday.Dear Richard has been here a day or two, and his common sense and homely affection are grateful after these fine people with whom I live at sword's points, though for the present turned downwards. It is well to 'thee' and 'thou' it after talking with angels and geniuses. Richard and I spent the afternoon at Walden and got a great bunch of flowers. A fine thunder-shower gloomed gradually up and turned the lake inky black, but no rain came till sunset.
"Sunday.A heavy rain. I must stay at home. I feel sad. Mrs. Ripley was here, but I only saw her a while in the afternoon and spent the day in my room. Sunday I do not give to my duty writing, no indeed. I finished yesterday,[104]after a rest, the article on ballads. Though a patchwork thing, it has craved time to do it."
We come now to the period of the famous conversations in which, more fully than in aught else, Margaret may be said to have delivered her message to the women of her time. The novelty of such a departure in the Boston of forty years ago may be imagined, and also the division of opinion concerning it in those social circles which consider themselves as charged with the guardianship of the taste of the community.
Margaret's attitude in view of this undertaking appears to have been a modest and sensible one. She found herself, in the first place, under the necessity of earning money for her own support and in aid of her family. Her greatest gift, as she well knew, was in conversation. Her rare eloquence did not much avail her at her desk, and though all that she wrote had the value of thought and of study, it was in living speech alone that her genius made itself entirely felt and appreciated. What more natural than that she should have proposed to make this rare gift available for herself and others? The reasons which she herself gives for undertaking the experiment are so solid and sufficient as to make us blush retrospectively for the merriment in which the thoughtless world sometimes indulged concerning[105]her. Her wish was "to pass in review the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavor to place them in due relation to one another in our minds; to systematize thought, and give a precision and clearness in which our sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because they have so few inducements to test and classify what they receive." In fine, she hoped to be able to throw some light upon the momentous questions, "What were we born to do, and how shall we do it?"
In looking forward to this effort, she saw one possible obstacle in "that sort of vanity which wears the garb of modesty," and which, she thinks, may make some women fear "to lay aside the shelter of vague generalities, the art of coterie criticism," and the "delicate disdains ofgood society," even to obtain a nearer view of truth itself. "Yet," she says, "as without such generous courage nothing of value can be learned or done, I hope to see many capable of it."