Margaret thinks that matters were better in this respect during the first half-century of our republican existence. The country was not then "so deluged with the dingy page reprinted from Europe." Nor did Americans fail to answer sharply the question, "Who reads an American book?" But the books of that period, to which she accords much merit, seem to her so reflected from England in their thought and inspiration, that she inclines to call them English rather than American.
Having expressed these general views, Margaret proceeds to pass in review the prominent American writers of the time, beginning with the department of history. In this she accords to Prescott industry, the choice of valuable material, and the power of clear and elegant arrangement. She finds his books, however, "wonderfully tame," and characterized by "the absence of thought." In Mr. Bancroft she recognizes a writer of a higher order, possessed of "leading thoughts, by whose aid he groups his facts." Yet, by her own account, she has read him less diligently than his brother historian.
In ethics and philosophy she mentions, as[163]"likely to live and be blessed and honored in the later time," the names of Channing and Emerson. Of the first she says: "His leading idea of the dignity of human nature is one of vast results, and the peculiar form in which he advocated it had a great work to do in this new world.... On great questions he took middle ground, and sought a panoramic view.... He was not well acquainted with man on the impulsive and passionate side of his nature, so that his view of character was sometimes narrow, but always noble."
Margaret turns from the great divine to her Concord friend as one turns from shade to sunshine. "The two men are alike," she says, "in dignity of purpose, disinterest, and purity." But of the two she recognizes Mr. Emerson as the profound thinker and man of ideas, dealing "with causes rather than with effects." His influence appears to her deep, not wide, but constantly extending its circles. He is to her "a harbinger of the better day."
Irving, Cooper, Miss Sedgwick, and Mrs. Child are briefly mentioned, but with characteristic appreciation. "The style of story current in the magazines" is pronounced by her "flimsy beyond any texture that was ever spun or dreamed of by the mind of man."
Our friend now devotes herself to the poets of[164]America, at whose head she places "Mr. Bryant, alone." Genuineness appears to be his chief merit, in her eyes, for she does not find his genius either fertile or comprehensive. "But his poetry is purely the language of his inmost nature, and the simple, lovely garb in which his thoughts are arrayed, a direct gift from the Muse."
Halleck, Willis, and Dana receive each their meed of praise at her hands. Passing over what is said, and well said, of them, we come to a criticism on Mr. Longfellow, which is much at variance with his popular reputation, and which, though acute and well hit, will hardly commend itself to-day to the judgment either of the learned or unlearned. For, even if Mr. Longfellow's inspiration be allowed to be a reflected rather than an original one, the mirror of his imagination is so pure and broad, and the images it reflects are so beautiful, that the world of our time confesses itself greatly his debtor. The spirit of his life, too, has put the seal of a rare earnestness and sincerity upon his legacy to the world of letters. But let us hear Margaret's estimate of him:—
"Longfellow is artificial and imitative. He borrows incessantly, and mixes what he borrows, so that it does not appear to the best advantage.... The ethical part of his writing has[165]a hollow, second-hand sound. He has, however, elegance, a love of the beautiful, and a fancy for what is large and manly, if not a full sympathy with it. His verse breathes at times much sweetness. Though imitative, he is not mechanical."
In an article of some length, printed in connection with this, but first published in the "New York Tribune," Margaret's dispraise of this poet is in even larger proportion to her scant commendation of him. This review was called forth by the appearance of an illustrated edition of Mr. Longfellow's poems, most of which had already appeared in smaller volumes, and in the Annuals, which once figured so largely in the show-æsthetics of society. Mr. Greeley, in some published reminiscences, tells us that Margaret undertook this task with great reluctance. He, on the other hand, was too much overwhelmed with business to give the volume proper notice, and so persuaded Margaret to deal with it as she could.
After formulating a definition of poetry which she considers "large enough to include all excellence," she laments the dearth of true poetry, and asserts that "never was a time when satirists were more needed to scourge from Parnassus the magpies who are devouring the food scattered there for the singing birds." This[166]scourge she somewhat exercises upon writers who "did not write because they felt obliged to relieve themselves of the swelling thought within, but as an elegant exercise which may win them rank and reputation above the crowd. Their lamp is not lit by the sacred and inevitable lightning from above, but carefully fed by their own will to be seen of men."
These metaphors no longer express the most accepted view of poetical composition. It has been found that those who write chiefly to relieve themselves are very apt to do so at the expense of the reading public. The "inevitable lightning," with which some are stricken, does not lead to such good work as does the "lamp carefully fed" by a steadfast will, whose tenor need not be summarily judged.
These strictures are intended to apply to versifiers in England as well as in America.
"Yet," she says, "there is a middle class, composed of men of little original poetic power, but of much poetic taste and sensibility, whom we would not wish to have silenced. They do no harm, but much good (if only their minds are not confounded with those of a higher class), by educating in others the faculties dominant in themselves." In this class she places Mr. Longfellow, towards whom she confesses "a coolness, in consequence of the exaggerated[167]praises that have been bestowed upon him." Perhaps the best thing she says about him is that "nature with him, whether human or external, is always seen through the windows of literature."
Mr. Longfellow did, indeed, dwell in the beautiful house of culture, but with a heart deeply sensitive to the touch of the humanity that lay encamped around it. In the "Psalm of Life," his banner, blood-red with sympathy, was hung upon the outer wall. And all his further parley with the world was through the silver trumpet of peace.
According much praise to William Ellery Channing, and not a little to Cornelius Matthews, a now almost forgotten writer, Margaret declares Mr. Lowell to be "absolutely wanting in the true spirit and tone of poesy." She says further:—
"His interest in the moral questions of the day has supplied the want of vitality in himself. His great facility at versification has enabled him to fill the ear with a copious stream of pleasant sound. But his verse is stereotyped, his thought sounds no depth, and posterity will not remember him."
The "Biglow Papers" were not yet written, nor the "Vision of Sir Launfal." Still less was foreseen the period of the struggle whose victorious[168]close drew from Mr. Lowell a "Commemoration Ode" worthy to stand beside Mr. Emerson's "Boston Hymn."
In presenting a study of Margaret's thoughts and life, it seemed to us impossible to omit some consideration of her pronounced opinions concerning the most widely known of her American compeers in literature. Having brought these before the reader, we find it difficult to say the right word concerning them.
In accepting or rejecting a criticism, we should consider, first, its intention; secondly, its method; and, in the third place, its standard. If the first be honorable, the second legitimate, and the third substantial, we shall adopt the conclusion arrived at as a just result of analytic art.
In the judgments just quoted, we must believe the intention to have been a sincere one. But neither the method nor the standard satisfies us. The one is arbitrary, the other unreal. Our friend's appreciation of her contemporaries was influenced, at the time of her writing, by idiosyncrasies of her own which could not give the law to the general public. These were shown in her great dislike of the smooth and stereotyped in manner, and her impatience of the common level of thought and sentiment. The unusual had for her a great attraction. It promised[169]originality, which to her seemed a condition of truth itself. She has said in this very paper: "No man can be absolutely true to himself, eschewing cant, compromise, servile imitation, and complaisance, without becoming original."
Here we seem to find a confusion between two conceptions of the word "original." Originality in one acceptation is vital and universal. We originate from the start, and do notbecome original. But the power to develop forms of thought which shall deserve to be called original is a rare gift, and one which even conscience cannot command at will.
The sentences here quoted and commented on show us that Margaret, almost without her own knowledge, was sometimes a partisan of the intellectual reaction of the day, which attacked, in the name of freedom, the fine, insensible tyranny of form and precedent. In its place were temporarily enthroned the spontaneous and passionate. Miracles were expected to follow this change of base, oracles from children, availing philosophies from people who were rebels against all philosophy. Margaret's passionate hopefulness at times carried her within this sphere, where, however, her fine perceptions and love of thorough culture did not allow her to remain.[170]
Thetime had now come when Margaret's darling wish was to be fulfilled. An opportunity of going abroad offered itself under circumstances which she felt able to accept. On the 1st of August, 1846, she sailed for Europe in the "Cambria," then the favorite steamer of the Cunard line, with Captain Judkins, the most popular and best known of the company's commanders. Her travelling companions were Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Spring, of Eaglewood, N. J.
She anticipated much from this journey,—delight, instruction, and the bodily view of a whole world of beauties which she knew, as yet, only ideally. Beyond and unguessed lay the[171]mysteries of fate, from whose depths she was never to emerge in her earthly form.
Margaret already possessed the spirit of all that is most valuable in European culture. She knew the writers of the Old World by study, its brave souls by sympathy, its works of art, more imperfectly, through copies and engravings. The Europe which she carried in her mind was not that which the superficial observer sees with careless eyes, nor could it altogether correspond with that which she, in her careful and thoughtful travel, would discern. But the possession of the European mind was a key destined to unlock for her the true significance of European society.
The voyage was propitious. Arriving in England, Margaret visited the Mechanics' Institute in Liverpool, and found the "Dial" quoted in an address recently given by its director. Sentences from the writings of Charles Sumner and Elihu Burritt adorned the pages of Bradshaw's "Railway Guide," and she was soon called upon to note the wide discrepancy between the views of enlightened Englishmen and the selfish policy of their government, corresponding to the more vulgar passions and ambitions of the people at large.
Passing into the Lake Country, she visited Wordsworth at Ambleside, and found "no[172]Apollo, flaming with youthful glory, but, instead, a reverend old man, clothed in black, and walking with cautious step along the level garden path." The aged poet, then numbering seventy-six years, "but of a florid, fair old age," showed the visitors his household portraits, his hollyhocks, and his fuchsias. His secluded mode of life, Margaret learned, had so separated him from the living issues of the time, that the needs of the popular heart touched him but remotely. She found him, however, less intolerant than she had feared concerning the repeal of the Corn Laws, a measure upon which public opinion was at the time strongly divided.
In this neighborhood Margaret again saw Miss Martineau, at a new home "presented to her by the gratitude of England for her course of energetic and benevolent effort." Dean Milman, historian and dramatist, was here introduced to Margaret, who describes him as "a specimen of the polished, scholarly man of the world."
Margaret now visited various places of interest in Scotland, and in Edinburgh saw Dr. Andrew Combe, Dr. Chalmers, and De Quincey. Dr. Combe, an eminent authority in various departments of medicine and physiology, was a younger brother of George Combe, the distinguished phrenologist. He had much to say[173]about his tribulations with the American publishers who had pirated one of his works, but who refused to print an emended edition of it, on the ground that the book sold well enough as it was. Margaret describes Dr. Chalmers as "half shepherd, half orator, florid, portly, yet of an intellectually luminous appearance."
De Quincey was of the same age as Wordsworth. Margaret finds his "thoughts and knowledge" of a character somewhat superseded by the progress of the age. She found him, not the less, "an admirable narrator, not rapid, but gliding along like a rivulet through a green meadow, giving and taking a thousand little beauties not required to give his story due relief, but each, in itself, a separate boon." She admires, too, "his urbanity, so opposed to the rapid, slang, Vivian-Greyish style current in the literary conversation of the day."
Among Margaret's meditations in Scotland was one which she records as "the bootless, best thoughts I had while looking at the dull bloodstain and blocked-up secret stair of Holyrood, at the ruins of Loch Leven Castle, and afterwards at Abbotsford, where the picture of Queen Mary's head, as it lay on the pillow when severed from the block, hung opposite to a fine caricature of Queen Elizabeth, dancing high and disposedly." We give here a part of this meditation:—[174]
"Surely, in all the stern pages of life's account-book there is none on which a more terrible price is exacted for every precious endowment. Her rank and reign only made her powerless to do good, and exposed her to danger. Her talents only served to irritate her foes and disappoint her friends. This most charming of women was the destruction of her lovers. Married three times, she had never any happiness as a wife, but in both the connections of her choice found that she had either never possessed or could not retain, even for a few weeks, the love of the men she had chosen.... A mother twice, and of a son and daughter, both the children were brought forth in loneliness and sorrow, and separated from her early, her son educated to hate her, her daughter at once immured in a convent. Add the eighteen years of her imprisonment, and the fact that this foolish, prodigal world, when there was in it one woman fitted by her grace and loveliness to charm all eyes and enliven all fancies, suffered her to be shut up to water with her tears her dull embroidery during the full rose-blossom of her life, and you will hardly get beyond this story for a tragedy, not noble, but pallid and forlorn."
From Edinburgh Margaret and her party made an excursion into the Highlands. The[175]stage-coach was not yet displaced by the locomotive, and Margaret enjoyed, from the top, the varying aspect of that picturesque region. Perth, Loch Leven, and Loch Katrine were visited, and Rowardennan, the place from which the ascent of Ben Lomond is usually made by travellers. Margaret attempted this feat with but one companion, and without a guide, the people at the inn not having warned her of any danger in so doing.
The ascent she found delightful. So magnificent was the prospect, that, in remembering it, she said: "Had that been, as afterwards seemed likely, the last act of my life, there could not have been a finer decoration painted on the curtain which was to drop upon it."
The proverbialfacilis descensusdid not here hold good, and therevocare gradumnearly cost Margaret her life. Beginning to descend at four in the afternoon, the indistinct path was soon lost. Margaret's companion left her for a moment in search of it, and could not find her.
"Soon he called to me that he had found it [the path], and I followed in the direction where he seemed to be. But I mistook, overshot it, and saw him no more. In about ten minutes I became alarmed, and called him many times. It seems he, on his side, did the same, but the brow of some hill was between us, and we neither saw nor heard one another."[176]
Margaret now made many attempts to extricate herself from her dangerous situation, and at last attained a point from which she could see the lake, and the inn from which she had started in the morning. But the mountain paths were crossed by watercourses, and hemmed in by bogs. After much climbing up and down, Margaret, already wet, very weary, and thinly clad, saw that she must pass the night on the mountain. The spot at which the light forsook her was of so precipitous a character as to leave her, in the dark, no liberty of movement. Yet she did keep in motion of some sort through the whole of that weary night; and this, she supposes, saved her life. The stars kept her company for two hours, when the mist fell and hid them. The moon rose late, and was but dimly discernible. At length morning came, and Margaret, starting homeward once more, came upon a company of shepherds, who carried her, exhausted, to the inn, where her distressed friends were waiting for news of her. Such was the extent of the mountain, that a party of twenty men, with dogs, sent in search of the missing one, were not heard by her, and did not hear her voice, which she raised from time to time, hoping to call some one to her rescue. The strength of Margaret's much-abused constitution was made evident by her speedy recovery from the[177]effects of this severe exposure. A fit vigil, this, for one who was about to witness the scenes of 1848. She speaks of the experience as "sublime indeed, a never-to-be-forgotten presentation of stern, serene realities.... I had had my grand solitude, my Ossianic visions, and the pleasure of sustaining myself." After visiting Glasgow and Stirling, Margaret and her friends returned to England by Abbotsford and Melrose.
In Birmingham Margaret heard two discourses from George Dawson, then considered a young man of much promise. In Liverpool she had already heard James Martineau, and in London she listened to William Fox. She compares these men with William Henry Channing and Theodore Parker:—
"None of them compare in the symmetrical arrangement of extempore discourse, or in pure eloquence and communication of spiritual beauty, with Channing, nor in fulness and sustained flow with Parker."
Margaret's estimate of Martineau is interesting:—
"Mr. Martineau looks like the over-intellectual, the partially developed man, and his speech confirms this impression. He is sometimes conservative, sometimes reformer, not in the sense of eclecticism, but because his powers and views[178]do not find a true harmony. On the conservative side he is scholarly, acute; on the other, pathetic, pictorial, generous. He is no prophet and no sage, yet a man full of fine affections and thoughts; always suggestive, sometimes satisfactory."
Mr. Fox appears to her "the reverse of all this. He is homogeneous in his materials, and harmonious in the results he produces. He has great persuasive power; it is the persuasive power of a mind warmly engaged in seeking truth for itself."
What a leap did our Margaret now make, from Puritanic New England, Roundhead and Cromwellian in its character, into the very heart of Old England,—into that London which, in those days, and for long years after, might have been called the metropolis of the world! Wonders of many sorts the "province in brick" still contains. Still does it most astonish those who bring to it the most knowledge. But the social wonders which it then could boast have passed away, leaving no equals to take their place.
Charles Dickens was then in full bloom,—Thackeray in full bud. Sydney Smith exercised his keen, discreet wit. Kenyon not only wrote about pink champagne, but dispensed it with many other good things. Rogers entertained[179]with exquisite taste, and showed his art-treasures without ostentation. Tom Moore, like a veteran canary, chirped, but would not sing. Lord Brougham and the Iron Duke were seen in the House of Lords. Carlyle growled and imbibed strong tea at Chelsea. The Queen was in the favor of her youth, with her handsome husband always at her side. The Duchess of Sutherland, a beautiful woman with lovely daughters, kept her state at Stafford House. Lord Houghton was known as Monckton Milnes. The Honorable Mrs. Norton wore her dark hair folded upon her classic head, beneath a circlet of diamonds. A first season in London was then a bewilderment of brilliancy in reputations, beauties, and entertainments. Margaret did not encounter the season, but hoped to do so at a later day. For the moment she consoled herself thus:—
"I am glad I did not at first see all that pomp and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast with the misery—squalid, agonizing, ruffianly—which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces a note more ominous than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and fallen from inward decay."
Margaret expresses the hope that the social[180]revolution, which to her seemed imminent in England, may be a peaceful one, "which shall destroy nothing except the shocking inhumanity of exclusiveness." She speaks with appreciation of the National and Dulwich Galleries, the British Museum, the Zoölogical Gardens. Among the various establishments of benevolence and reform, she especially mentions a school for poor Italian boys, with which Mazzini had much to do. This illustrious man was already an exile in London, as was the German poet, Freiligrath.
Margaret was an admirer of Joanna Baillie, and considered her and the French Madame Roland as "the best specimens hitherto offered of women of a Roman strength and singleness of mind, adorned by the various culture and capable of the various action opened to them by the progress of the Christian idea."
She thus chronicles her visit to Miss Baillie:
"We found her in her little, calm retreat at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline. Although no autograph hunter, I asked for theirs; and when[181]the elder gave hers as 'sister to Joanna Baillie,' it drew a tear from my eye,—a good tear, a genuine pearl, fit homage to that fairest product of the soul of man, humble, disinterested tenderness."
Margaret also visited Miss Berry, the friend of Horace Walpole, long a celebrity, and at that time more than eighty years old. In spite of this, Margaret found her still characterized by the charm, "careless nature or refined art," which had made her a social power once and always.
But of all the notable personages who might have been seen in the London of that time, no one probably interested Margaret so much as did Thomas Carlyle. Her introduction to him was from Mr. Emerson, his friend and correspondent; and it was such as to open to her, more than once, the doors of the retired and reserved house, in which neither time nor money was lavished upon the entertainment of strangers.
Mr. Carlyle's impressions of Margaret have now been given to the world in the published correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson. She had, long before, drawn her portrait of him in one of her letters descriptive of London and its worthies. The candid criticism of both is full of interest, and may here be contrasted. Margaret says:—[182]
"I approached him with more reverence after a little experience of England and Scotland had taught me to appreciate the strength and height of that wall of shams and conventions which he, more than any other man, or thousand men,—indeed, he almost alone,—has begun to throw down. He has torn off the veils from hideous facts; he has burnt away foolish illusions; he has touched the rocks, and they have given forth musical answer. Little more was wanting to begin to construct the city; but that little was wanting, and the work of construction is left to those that come after him. Nay, all attempts of the kind he is the readiest to deride, fearing new shams worse than the old, unable to trust the general action of a thought, and finding no heroic man, no natural king, to represent it and challenge his confidence."
How significant is this phrase,—"unable to trust the general action of a thought." This saving faith in the power of just thought Carlyle, the thinker, had not.
With a reverence, then, not blind, but discriminating, Margaret approached this luminous mind, and saw and heard its possessor thus:—
"Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse, only[183]harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest.... Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons.
"For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd.... He puts out his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird; and his eyes flash bright, instinctive meanings, like Jove's bird. Yet he is not calm and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not of gentle blood enough for that either.... I cannot speak more nor wiselier of him now; nor needs it. His works are true to blame and praise him,—the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil than to legislate for good."
In a letter to Mr. Emerson, Margaret gives some account of her visits at the Carlyle mansion. The second of these was on the occasion[184]of a dinner-party, at which she met "a witty, French, flippant sort of a man, author of a History of Philosophy, and now writing a life of Goethe," presumably George Lewes. Margaret acknowledges that he told stories admirably, and that his occasional interruptions of Carlyle's persistent monologue were welcome. Of this, her summary is too interesting to be omitted here:—
"For a couple of hours he was talking about poetry, and the whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind. Tennyson wrote in verse because the schoolmasters had taught him that it was great to do so; and had thus, unfortunately, been turned from the true path for a man. Burns had, in like manner, been turned from his vocation. Shakespeare had not had the good sense to see that it would have been better to write straight on in prose; and such nonsense which, though amusing enough at first, he ran to death after a while.... The latter part of the evening, however, he paid us for this by a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of modern French literature. All were depreciating except that of Béranger. Of him he spoke with perfect justice, because with hearty sympathy."
The retirement of the ladies to the drawing[185]-room afforded Margaret an opportunity which she had not yet enjoyed.
"I had afterward some talk with Mrs. Carlyle, whom hitherto I had only seen,—for who can speak while her husband is there? I like her very much; she is full of grace, sweetness, and talent. Her eyes are sad and charming."
Margaret saw the Carlyles only once more.
"They came to pass an evening with us. Unluckily, Mazzini was with us, whose society, when he was there alone, I enjoyed more than any. He is a beauteous and pure music; also, he is a dear friend of Mrs. Carlyle. But his being there gave the conversation a turn to progress and ideal subjects, and Carlyle was fluent in invectives on all our 'rose-water imbecilities.' We all felt distant from him, and Mazzini, after some vain efforts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs. Carlyle said to me: 'These are but opinions to Carlyle; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death.'"
Clearly, Carlyle had not, in Margaret's estimation, the true gospel. She would not bow to the Titanic forces, whether met with in the romances of Sand or in his force-theory. And so, bidding him farewell with great admiration, she passes on, as she says, "more[186]lowly, more willing to be imperfect, since Fate permits such noble creatures, after all, to be only this or that. Carlyle is only a lion."
Carlyle, on his side, writes of her to Mr. Emerson:—
"Margaret is an excellent soul: in real regard with both of us here. Since she went, I have been reading some of her papers in a new Book we have got: greatly superior to all I knew before: in fact, the undeniable utterances (now first undeniable to me) of a truly heroic mind; altogether unique, so far as I know, among the writing women of this generation; rare enough, too, God knows, among the writing men. She is very narrow, sometimes, but she is truly high. Honor to Margaret, and more and more good speed to her."
At a later day he sums up his impressions of her in this wise:—
"Such a predetermination 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,'[B]indeed; but her courage, too, is high and clear, her chivalrous noblenessà toute épreuve."
Margaret's high estimate of Mazzini will be[187]justified by those who knew him or knew of him:—
"Mazzini, one of these noble refugees, is not only one of the heroic, the courageous, and the faithful,—Italy boasts many such,—but he is also one of the wise,—one of those who, disappointed in the outward results of their undertakings, can yet 'bate no jot of heart and hope,' but must 'steer right onward.' For it was no superficial enthusiasm, no impatient energies, that impelled him, but an understanding of what must be the designs of Heaven with regard to man, since God is Love, is Justice. He is one of those beings who, measuring all things by the ideal standard, have yet no time to mourn over failure or imperfection; there is too much to be done to obviate it."
She finds in his papers, published in the "People's Journal," "the purity of impulse, largeness and steadiness of view, and fineness of discrimination which must belong to a legislator for aChristiancommonwealth."
Much as Margaret admired the noble sentiments expressed in Mazzini's writings, she admired still more the love and wisdom which led the eminent patriot to found, with others, the school for poor Italian boys already spoken of. More Christ-like did she deem this labor than aught that he could have said or sung.[188]
"As among the fishermen and poor people of Judæa were picked up those who have become to modern Europe a leaven that leavens the whole mass, so may these poor Italian boys yet become more efficacious as missionaries to their people than would an Orphic poet at this period."
At the distribution of prizes to the school, in which Mazzini and Mariotti took part, some of the Polish exiles also being present, she seemed to see "a planting of the kingdom of Heaven."
Margaret saw a good deal of James Garth Wilkinson, who later became prominent as the author of the work entitled "The Human Body in its Relation to the Constitution of Man." She found in him "a sane, strong, and well-exercised mind, but in the last degree unpoetical in its structure." Dr. Wilkinson published, years after this time, a volume of verses which amply sustains this judgment.
"Browning," she writes, "has just married Miss Barrett, and gone to Italy. I may meet them there." Hoping for a much longer visit at some future time, and bewildered, as she says, both by the treasures which she had found, and those which she had not had opportunity to explore, Margaret left London for its social and æsthetic antithesis, Paris.[189]
Ifthe aspect of London society has changed greatly since Margaret's visit there in 1846, the Paris which she saw that winter may be said to exist no longer, so completely is its physiognomy transformed by the events of the last thirty-seven years. Like London, Paris had then some gems of the first water, to which nothing in the present day corresponds. Rachel was then queen of its tragic stage, George Sand supreme in its literary domain. De Balzac, Eugène Sue, Dumaspère, and Béranger then lived and moved among admiring friends. Victor Hugo was in early middle age. Guizot was in his full prestige, literary and administrative. Liszt and Chopin held the opposite poles of the musical world, and[190]wielded, the one its most intense, the other its broadest power. The civilized world then looked to Paris for the precious traditions of good taste, and the city deserved this deference as it does not now.
The sense of security which then prevailed in the French capital was indeed illusory. The stable basis of things was already undermined by the dangerous action of theories and of thinkers. Louis Philippe was unconsciously nearing the abrupt close of his reign. A new chaos was imminent, and one out of which was to come, first a heroic uprising, and then a despotism so monstrous and mischievous as to foredoom itself, a caricature of military empire which for a time cheated Europe, and in the end died of the emptiness of its own corruption.
Into this Paris Margaret came, not unannounced. Her essay on American Literature, which had recently appeared in her volume entitled "Papers on Literature and Art," had already been translated into French, and printed in the "Revue Indépendante." The same periodical soon after published a notice of "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." Margaret enjoyed the comfortable aspect of the apartment which she occupied with her travelling-companions at Hôtel Rougemont, Boulevard Poissonière. She mentions the clock, mirror, curtained bed, and[191]small wood-fire which were then, and are to-day, so costly to the transient occupant.
Though at first not familiar with the sound of the French language, she soon had some pleasant acquaintances, and was not long in finding her way to the literary and social eminences who were prepared to receive her as their peer.
First among these she mentions George Sand, to whom she wrote a letter, calling afterwards at her house. Her name was not rightly reported by the peasant woman who opened the door, and Margaret, waiting for admittance, heard at first the discouraging words, "Madame says she does not know you." She stopped to send a message regarding the letter she had written, and as she spoke, Madame Sand opened the door and stood looking at her for a moment.
"Our eyes met. I shall never forget her look at that moment. The doorway made a frame for her figure. She is large, but well formed. She was dressed in a robe of dark violet silk, with a black mantle on her shoulders, her beautiful hair dressed with the greatest taste, her whole appearance and attitude, in its simple and lady-like dignity, presenting an almost ludicrous contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George Sand. Her face is a very little like the portraits, but much finer. The upper part of the forehead[192]and eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least coarse, the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head Spanish." This striking apparition was further commended in Margaret's eyes by "the expression of goodness, nobleness, and power" that characterized the countenance of the great French-woman.
Madame Sand said, "C'est vous," and offered her hand to Margaret, who, taking it, answered, "Il me fait du bien de vous voir" ("It does me good to see you"). They went into the study. Madame Sand spoke of Margaret's letter ascharmante, and the two ladies then talked on for hours, as if they had always known each other. Madame Sand had at that moment a work in the press, and was hurried for copy, and beset by friends and visitors. She kept all these at a distance, saying to Margaret: "It is better to throw things aside, and seize the present moment." Margaret gives thisrésuméof the interview: "We did not talk at all of personal or private matters. I saw, as one sees in her writings, the want of an independent, interior life, but I did not feel it as a fault. I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a genius. I liked the woman in her, too, very much; I never liked a woman better."[193]
To complete the portrait, Margaret mentions the cigarette, which her new friend did not relinquish during the interview. The impression received as to character did not materially differ from that already made by her writings. In seeing her, Margaret was not led to believe that all her mistakes were chargeable upon the unsettled condition of modern society. Yet she felt not the less convinced of the generosity and nobleness of her nature. "There may have been something of the Bacchante in her life," says Margaret, some reverting to the wild ecstasies of heathen nature-worship, "but she was never coarse, never gross."
Margaret saw Madame Sand a second time, surrounded by her friends, and with her daughter, who was then on the eve of her marriage with the sculptor Clésinger. In thisentourageshe had "the position of an intellectual woman and good friend; the same as my own," says Margaret, "in the circle of my acquaintance as distinguished from my intimates."
Beneath the same roof Margaret found Chopin, "always ill, and as frail as a snow-drop, but an exquisite genius. He played to me, and I liked his talking scarcely less." The Polish poet, Mickiewicz, said to her, "Chopin gives us the Ariel view of the universe."[194]
Margaret had done her best while in London to see what the English stage had to offer. The result had greatly disappointed her. In France she found the theatre living, and found also a public which would not have tolerated "one touch of that stage-strut and vulgar bombast of tone which the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic illusion."
In Paris she says that she saw, for the first time, "something represented in a style uniformly good." Besides this general excellence, which is still aimed at in the best theatres of the Continent, the Parisian stage had then a star of the first magnitude, whose splendor was without an equal, and whose setting brought no successor. In the supreme domain of tragic art, Rachel then reigned, an undisputed queen. Like George Sand, her brilliant front was obscured by the cloud of doubt which rested upon her private character,—a matter of which even the most dissolute age will take note, after its fashion. And yet the charmed barrier of the footlights surrounded her with a flame of mystery. Whatever was known or surmised of her elsewhere, within those limits she appeared as the living impersonation of beauty, grace, and power. For Rachel had, at this time, no public sorrow. How it might fare with her and her lovers little concerned the crowds who gathered nightly, drawn[195]by the lightnings of her eye, the melodious thunder of her voice. Ten years later, a new favorite, her rival but not her equal, came to win the heart of her Paris from her. Then Rachel, grieved and angry, knew the vanity of all human dependence. She crossed the ocean, and gave the New World a new delight. But in spite of its laurels and applause, she sickened (Margaret had said she could not live long), and fled far, far eastward, to hear in ancient Egypt the death-psalms of her people. With a smile, the last change of that expressive countenance, its lovely light expired.
Of the woman, Margaret says nothing. Of the artist, she says that she found her worthy of Greece, and fit to be made immortal in its marble. She did not, it is true, find in her the most tender pathos, nor yet the sublime of sweetness:—
"Her range, even in high tragedy, is limited. Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some severe shape, and rises, simple and austere, above the mixed elements around her." Had Margaret seen her in "Les Horaces"? One would think so.
"On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge. I admired her more in Phèdre than in any other part in which I saw her. The guilty love inspired by the hatred of a[196]goddess was expressed with a force and terrible naturalness that almost suffocated the beholder."
Margaret had heard much about the power which Rachel could throw into a single look, and speaks of it as indeed magnificent. Yet she admired most in her "the grandeur, truth, and depth of her conception of each part, and the sustained purity with which she represented it."
In seeing other notabilities, Margaret was indeed fortunate. She went one day to call upon Lamennais, to whom she brought a letter of introduction. To her disappointment, she found him not alone. But the "citizen-looking, vivacious, elderly man," whom she was at first sorry to see with him, turned out to be the poet Béranger, and Margaret says that she was "very happy in that little study, in presence of these two men whose influence has been so great, so real." It was indeed a very white stone that hit two such birds at one throw.
Margaret heard a lecture from Arago, and was not disappointed in him. "Clear, rapid, full, and equal was this discourse, and worthy of the master's celebrity."
The Chamber of Deputies was in those days much occupied with the Spanish Marriage, as it was called. This was the intended betrothal of[197]the Queen of Spain's sister to the Duc de Montpensier, youngest son of the then reigning King of the French, Louis Philippe. Guizot and Thiers were both heard on this matter, but Margaret heard only M. Berryer, then considered the most eloquent speaker of the House. His oratory appeared to her, "indeed, very good; not logical, but plausible, with occasional bursts of flame and showers of sparks." While admiring him, Margaret thinks that her own country possesses public speakers of more force, and of equal polish.
At a presentation and ball at the Tuileries Margaret was much struck with the elegance and grace of the Parisian ladies of high society. The Queen made the circuit of state, with the youthful Duchess, the cause of so much disturbance, hanging on her arm. Margaret found here some of her own country women, conspicuous for their beauty. The uniforms and decorations of the gentlemen contrasted favorably, in her view, with the sombre, black-coated masses of men seen in circles at home.
"Among the crowd wandered Leverrier, in the costume of an Academician, looking as if he had lost, not found, his planet. He seemed not to find it easy to exchange the music of the spheres for the music of fiddles."
The Italian Opera in Paris fell far short of[198]Margaret's anticipations. So curtly does she judge it, that one wonders whether she expected to find it a true Parnassus, dedicated to the ideal expression of the most delicate and lofty sentiment. Grisi appeared to her coarse and shallow, Persiani mechanical and meretricious, Mario devoid of power. Lablache alone satisfied her.
These judgments show something of the weakness of off-hand criticism. In the world of art, the critic who wishes to teach, must first be taught of the artist. He must be very sure that he knows what a work of art is before he carps at what it is not. Relying on her own great intelligence, and on her love of beautiful things, Margaret expected, perhaps, to understand too easily the merits and defects of what she saw and heard.
In Paris Margaret met Alexandre Vattemare, intent upon his project of the exchange of superfluous books and documents between the public libraries of different countries. Busy as he was, he found time to be of service to her, and it was through his efforts that she was enabled to visit the Imprimerie Royale and the Mint. He also induced the Librarian of the Chamber of Deputies to show her the manuscripts of Rousseau, which she found "just as he has celebrated them, written on fine white paper, tied[199]with ribbon. Yellow and faded, age has made them," says Margaret; "yet at their touch I seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glowing, more and more expansive, with which his soul has pervaded this century."
M. Vattemare introduced Margaret to one of the evening schools of the Frères Chrétiens, where she saw with pleasure how much can be accomplished for the working classes by evening lessons.
"Visions arose in my mind of all that might be done in our country by associations of men and women who have received the benefits of literary culture, giving such evening lessons throughout our cities and villages." Margaret wishes, however, that such disinterested effort in our own country should not be accompanied by the priestly robe and manner which for her marred the humanity of the Christian Brotherhood of Paris.
The establishment of the Protestant Deaconesses is praised by Margaret. She visited also the School for Idiots, near Paris, where her feelings vented themselves in "a shower of sweet and bitter tears; of joy at what has been done, of grief for all that I and others possess, and cannot impart to these little ones." She was much impressed with the character of the master of the school, a man of seven or eight and twenty[200]years, whose fine countenance she saw "looking in love on those distorted and opaque vases of humanity."
Turning her face southward, she thus takes leave of the great capital:—
"Paris! I was sad to leave thee, thou wonderful focus, where ignorance ceases to be a pain, because there we find such means daily to lessen it."
Railroads were few in the France of forty years ago. Margaret came by diligence and boat to Lyons, to Avignon, where she waded through the snow to visit the tomb of Laura, and to Marseilles, where she embarked for Genoa. Her first sight of this city did not disappoint her, but to her surprise, she found the weather cold and ungenial:—
"I could not realize that I had actually touched those shores to which I had looked forward all my life, where it seemed that the heart would expand, and the whole nature be turned to delight. Seen by a cutting wind, the marble palaces, the gardens, the magnificent water-view, failed to charm." Both here and in Leghorn Margaret visited Italians at their houses, and found them very attractive, "charming women, refined and eloquent men." The Mediterranean voyage was extended as far as Naples, which she characterizes as "priest-ridden, misgoverned, full[201]of dirty, degraded men and women, yet still most lovely." And here, after a week which appeared to be "an exact copy of the miseries of a New-England spring," with a wind "villanous, horrible, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston," Margaret found at last her own Italy, and found it "beautiful, worthy to be loved and embraced, not talked about.... Baiæ had still a hid divinity for me, Vesuvius a fresh baptism of fire, and Sorrento—oh! Sorrento was beyond picture, beyond poesy."
After Naples came Margaret's first view of Rome, where she probably arrived early in May, and where she remained until late in the month of June. We do not find among her letters of this period any record of her first impressions of the Eternal City, the approach to which, before the days of railroads in Italy, was unspeakably impressive and solemn.
Seated in the midst of her seven hills, with the desolate Campagna about her, one could hardly say whether her stony countenance invited the spirit of the age, or defied it. Her mediæval armor was complete at all points. Her heathen heart had kept Christianity far from it by using as exorcisms the very forms which, at the birth of that religion, had mediated between its spirit and the dull sense of the Pagan world. It was the nineteenth century in America, the[202]eighteenth in England, the seventeenth in France, and the fifteenth in Rome. The aged hands of the grandam still held fast the key of her treasures. Her haughty front still said to Ruin and Desolation,—
"Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it."
So the writer first saw Rome in the winter of 1843. Her walls seemed those of a mighty sepulchre, in which even the new-born babe was born into death. The stagnation of thought, the prohibition of question, the denial of progress! Her ministers had a sweet Lethean draught with which to lull the first clamors of awakening life, to quiet the first promptings of individual thought. It was the draught of Circe, fragrant but fatal. And those who fed upon it became pathetic caricatures of humanity.
Not so did Margaret find Rome in 1847. The intervening years had wrought a change. Within the defiant fortress of superstition a divine accident had happened. A man had been brought to the chair of St. Peter who felt his own human power too strongly to consent to the impotence of the traditionalnon possumus. To the timid questioning of Freedom from without he gave the bold answer of Freedom from within. The Papal crown had sometimes covered the brows of honest, heroic men. Such an one would he[203]prove himself, and his first message was to that effect. Fortunate, fatal error! The thrones of the earth trembled at it. Crowned heads shook with the palsy of fear. The enslaved multitudes and their despised champions sent up a ringing shout to heaven, for the apocalyptic hour had come. The sixth seal was broken, and the cannon of St. Angelo, which saluted the crowning of the new Pontiff, really saluted the installation of the new era.
Alas! many woes had to intervene before this new order could establish itself upon any permanent foundation. The Pope forsook his lofty ground. France, republican for a day only, became the ally of absolutism, and sent an army to subdue those who had believed the papal promise and her own. After a frightful interval of suffering and resistance, this was effected, and Pius was brought back, shorn of his splendors, a Jove whose thunderbolt had been stolen, a man without an idea. Then came the confusion of endless doubt and question. What had been the secret of the Pope's early liberalism? What that of hisvolte-face? Was it true, as was afterwards maintained, that he had been, from the first, a puppet, moved by forces quite outside his own understanding, and that the moving hands, not the puppet, had changed? Or had he gone to war with mighty Precedent, without counting[204]the cost of the struggle, and so failed? Or had he undergone a poisoning which broke his spirit and touched his brain?
These were the questions of that time, not ours to answer, brought to mind here only because they belong to the history of Margaret's years in Italy, years in which she learned to love that country as her own, and to regard it as the land of her spiritual belonging.[205]
Inthis first visit to Rome, Margaret could not avoid some touch of the disenchantment which usually comes with the experience of what has been long and fondly anticipated. She had soon seen all that is preserved of "the fragments of the great time," and says: "They are many and precious; yet is there not so much of high excellence as I looked for. They will not float the heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the starry night on our Western prairies." She confesses herself more interested at this moment in the condition and prospects of the Italian people than in works of art, ancient or modern. In[206]spite of this, she seems to have been diligent in visiting the galleries and studios of Rome. Among the latter she mentions those of the sculptors Macdonald, Wolff, Tenerani, and Gott, whose groups of young people and animals were to her "very refreshing after the grander attempts of the present time." She found our own Crawford just completing a bust of his beautiful wife, which is to-day a household treasure among her relatives. Margaret preferred his designs to those of Gibson, who was then considered the first of English sculptors. Among American painters she found Terry, Cranch, and Hicks at work. She saw the German Overbeck surrounded by his pictures, looking "as if he had just stepped out of one of them,—a lay monk, with a pious eye, and habitual morality of thought which limits every gesture."
Among the old masters, Domenichino and Titian were those whom she learned to appreciate only by the actual sight of their paintings. Other artists, she thinks, may be well understood through copies and engravings, but not these. She enjoyed the frescos of Caracci with "the purest pleasure," tired soon of Guercino, who had been one of her favorites, and could not like Leonardo da Vinci at all. His pictures, she confesses, "show a wonderful deal of study and thought. I hate to see the marks[207]of them. I want a simple and direct expression of soul." For the explanation of these remarks we must refer the reader back to what Mr. Emerson has said of Margaret's idiosyncratic mode of judgment. Raphael and Michael Angelo were already so well known to her through engravings, that their paintings and frescos made no new impression upon her. Not so was it with Michael's sculptures. Of his Moses she says: "It is the only thing in Europe so far which has entirely outgone my hopes."
But the time was not one in which an enthusiast like Margaret could be content to withdraw from living issues into the calm impersonality of art. The popular life around her was throbbing with hopes and excitements to which it had long been unaccustomed. Visions of a living Italy flashed through the crevices of a stony despair which had lasted for ages. The prospect of representative government was held out to the Roman people, and the promise was welcomed by a torchlight procession which streamed through the Corso like a river of fire, and surging up to the Quirinal, where Pius then dwelt, "made it a mound of light." The noble Greek figures were illuminated, and their calm aspect contrasted strongly with the animated faces of the Italians. "The Pope appeared on his balcony; the crowd shouted theirvivas. He[208]extended his arms; the crowd fell on their knees and received his benediction." Margaret says that she had never seen anything finer.
In this new enthusiasm the people agreed to celebrate the birthday of Rome.
"A great dinner was given at the Baths of Titus, in the open air. The company was on the grass in the area, the music at one end; boxes filled with the handsome Roman women occupied the other sides. It was a new thing here, this popular dinner, and the Romans greeted it in an intoxication of hope and pleasure." Many political exiles, amnestied by the Pope, were present. The Marquis d'Azeglio, painter, novelist, and diplomatist, was the most noted of the speakers. From this renewed, regenerated Rome Margaret went on to visit the northern cities of Italy, passing through Perugia on her way to Florence. In this neighborhood she explored the churches of Assisi, and the Etruscan tombs, then newly discovered. She was enchanted with the beauty of Perugia, its noble situation, and its treasures of early art. Florence interested her less than "cities more purely Italian. The natural character is ironed out here, and done up in a French pattern; yet there is no French vivacity, nor Italian either." The Grand Duke was at the time in an impossible position between his allegiance to the liberalizing Pope[209]and his fealty to despotic Austria. Tuscany accordingly was "glum as death" on the outside, but glowing with dangerous fire within.
Margaret, before leaving Florence, wrote: "Florence is not like Rome. At first I could not bear the change; yet, for the study of the fine arts, it is a still richer place. Worlds of thought have risen in my mind; some time you will have light from all."
Here she visited the studios of her countrymen, Horatio Greenough and Hiram Powers, and, after a month's stay, went on to Bologna, where she greatly appreciated the truly Italian physiognomy of the city, and rejoiced in the record of its women artists and professors, nobly recognized and upheld by their fellow-citizens.
Thence she went to Ravenna, prized for its curious remains, its Byronic memories, and its famous Pineta, dear to students of Dante. After this came a fortnight in Venice, which, like Angelo's Moses, surpassed her utmost expectations: "There only I began to feel in its fulness Venetian art. It can only be seen in its own atmosphere. Never had I the least idea of what is to be seen at Venice."
The city was, in those days, a place of refuge for throneless royalty. The Duchesse de Berri and her son had each a palace on the Grand[210]Canal. A queen of another sort, Taglioni, here consoled herself for the quiet of her retirement from the stage. Margaret had the pleasure of an outside view of thefêtegiven by the royal Duchess in commemoration of her son's birthday. The aged Duchesse d'Angoulème came from Vienna to be present on the occasion.
"'Twas a scene of fairy-land, the palace full of light, so that from the canal could be seen even the pictures on the walls. Landing from the gondolas, the elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen seemed to rise from the water. We also saw them glide up the great stair, rustling their plumes, and in the reception-room make and receive the customary grimaces." A fine band of music completed the attractions of the scene. Margaret, listening and looking hard by, "thought of the Stuarts, Bourbons, and Bonapartes in Italy, and offered up a prayer that other names might be added to the list, and other princes, more rich in blood than in brain, might come to enjoy a perpetualvilleggiaturain Italy."
From Venice Margaret journeyed on to Milan, stopping on the way at Vicenza, Verona, Mantua, Lago di Garda, and Brescia. These ten days of travel opened to her long vistas of historic study, delightful to contemplate, even if hopeless to explore fully. No ten days of her[211]previous life, she is sure, ever brought her so far in this direction. In approaching Milan her thoughts reverted to the "Promessi Sposi." Nearly asleep for a moment, she heard the sound of waters, and started up to ask, "Is that the Adda?" She had guessed rightly. The authorship of this classic work seemed to her to secure to its writer, Manzoni, the right of eminent domain in and around Milan. Writing to Mr. Emerson from this city, she says:—
"To-day, for the first time, I have seen Manzoni. Manzoni has spiritual efficacy in his looks; his eyes still glow with delicate tenderness. His manners are very engaging, frank, expansive; every word betokens the habitual elevation of his thoughts, and (whatyoucare for so much) he says distinct, good things. He lives in the house of his fathers, in the simplest manner."
Manzoni had, at the time, somewhat displeased his neighbors by a second marriage, scarcely considered suitable for him. Margaret, however, liked the new wife very well, "and saw why he married her."
She found less to see in Milan than in other Italian cities, and was glad to have there some days of quiet after the fatigues of her journey, which had been augmented at Brescia by a brief attack of fever. She mentions with interest[212]the bust of the celebrated mathematician, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, preserved in the Ambrosian Library. Among her new acquaintances here were some young Italian radicals, "interested in ideas."
The Italian Lakes and Switzerland came next in the order of her travels. Her Swiss tour she calls "a little romance by itself," promising to give, at a later date, a description of it, which we fail to find anywhere. Returning from it, she passed a fortnight at Como, and saw something of the Italian nobility, who pass their summers on its shores. Here she enjoyed the society of the accomplished Marchesa Arconati Visconti, whom she had already met in Florence, and who became to her a constant and valued friend.
Margaret found no exaggeration in the enthusiasm expressed by poets and artists for the scenery of this lake region. The descriptions of it given by Goethe, Richter, and Taylor had not prepared her for what she saw. Even Turner's pictures had fallen short of the real beauty. At Lugano she met Lady Franklin, the widow of the Arctic explorer. She returned to Milan by the 8th of September, in time for the great feast of the Madonna, and finally left the city "with great regret, and hope to return." In a letter to her brother Richard she speaks of[213]her radical friends there as "a circle of aspiring youth, such as I have not known in any other city." Conspicuous among these was the young Marquis Guerrieri Gonzaga, commended to her by "a noble soul, the quietest sensibility, and a brilliant and ardent, though not a great, mind." This gentleman has to-day a recognized position in Italy as a thoroughly enlightened and intelligent liberal.
Margaret found among the Milanese, as she must have anticipated, a great hatred of the Austrian rule, aggravated, at the time of her second visit, by acts of foolish and useless repression. On the occasion of the festivals attending the entry of a new archbishop, some youths (among them possibly Margaret's radical friends) determined to sing the hymn composed at Rome in honor of Pius IX. The consequence of this was a charge of the armed Austrian police upon the defenceless crowd of people present, who, giving way, were stabbed by them in the back. Margaret's grief and indignation at this state of things made her feel keenly the general indifference of her own travelling country-people to the condition and fate of Italy.
"Persons who call themselves Americans,—miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their high birthright ... absorbed at home by the lust of gain, the love of show, abroad, they see only[214]the equipages, the fine clothes, the food. They have no heart for the idea, for the destiny of our own great nation: how can they feel the spirit that is struggling in this?"
The condition of Italy has been greatly altered for the better since Margaret wrote these words, thirty-six years ago; but the American traveller of this type is to-day, to all intents and purposes, what he was then.
Margaret left Milan before the end of this September, to return to Rome. She explored with delight the great Certosa of Pavia, and in Parma saw the Correggio pictures, of which she says: "A wonderful beauty it is that informs them,—not that which is the chosen food of my soul, yet a noble beauty, and which did its message to me also." Parma and Modena appear to her "obliged to hold their breath while their poor, ignorant sovereigns skulk in corners, hoping to hide from the coming storm."
Before reaching Rome, Margaret made a second visit to Florence. The liberty of the press had been recently established in Tuscany, under happy auspices. This freedom took effect in the establishment of two liberal papers, "Alba" ("The Dawn"), and "Patria," needless to translate. The aim of these was to educate the youth and the working classes, by promoting fearlessness in thought and temperance in action.[215]
The creation of the National Guard had given confidence to the people. Shortly before Margaret's arrival this event had been celebrated by a grand public festival, preceded by a general reconciliation of public and private differences, and culminating in a general embracing, and exchanging of banners. She speaks of this as a "new great covenant of brotherly love," in which "all was done in that beautiful poetic manner peculiar to this artist-people." In this feast of reconciliation resident Americans bore their part, Horatio Greenough taking the lead among them. Margaret's ears were refreshed by continually hearing in the streets the singing of the Roman hymn composed in honor of Pope Pius. Wishing that her own country might send some substantial token of sympathy to the land of its great discoverers, she suggests that a cannon, named for one of these, would be the most fitting gift.[C]The first letter from Rome after these days is dated Oct. 18, 1847.[216]
Theperiod in which Margaret now found herself, and its circumstances, may best be described by the adjective "billowy." Up and down, up and down, went the hearts and hopes of the liberal party. Hither and thither ran the tides of popular affection, suspicion, and resentment. The Pope was the idol of the moment. Whoever might do wrong, he could not. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, described by Margaret as dull but well meaning, yielded to pressure wherever it became most severe. The Austrian occupation was cowardly and cruel, as ever. The minor princes, who had been from[217]their birth incapable of an idea, tried as well as they could to put on some semblance of concession without really yielding anything.
The King of Sardinia was spoken of among the liberals as a worthless man, without heart or honor, only likely to be kept on the right side by the stress of circumstance. This judgment of him was reversed in after years, when, behind Casa Guidi windows, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, with steadfast hand, "Yea, verily. Charles Albert has died well."
The royalty of Naples tried to quiet its tremors with blood, and trembled still. And in the midst of all this turmoil, down comes Louis Philippe from his throne, and France is shaken to her very centre.
To follow Margaret through all the fluctuations and excitements consequent upon these events would be no easy task. She was obviously in close relations with leading Italian liberals, and probably trusted their statements and shared their hopes, fears, and resentments. Constant always in her faith in human nature, and in her zeal for the emancipation of Italy, the dissolving view before her could leave her no other fixed belief. Her favorites, her beloved Italian people, even her adored Rome, appeared to her at different times in very various lights.
Starting from the date given above, we will[218]follow, as well as we can, her progress through the constantly shifting scenes that surrounded her, from whose intense interest she could not, for one moment, isolate herself.
Of her return to Rome, Margaret says: "All mean things were forgotten in the joy that rushed over me like a flood." The difference between a sight-seeing tour and a winter's residence in such a place is indeed like that between a chance acquaintance and an intimate one. Settled in a pleasant apartment on the Corso, "in a house of loving Italians," Margaret promised herself a winter of "tranquil companionship" with what she calls "the true Rome."
She did not find the Italian autumn beautiful, as she had expected, but she enjoyed the Octoberfestasof the Trasteverini, and went with "half Rome" to see the manœuvres of the Civic Guard on the Campagna, near the tomb of Cecilia Metella.
To the music of the "Bolognese March" six thousand Romans moved in battle array, in full sight of the grandiose débris of the heroic time.
Some sight-seeing Margaret still undertook, as we learn from a letter dated November 17, in which she speaks of going about "in a coach with several people," and confesses that she dissipates her thoughts on outward beauty. Such[219]was her delight, at this time, in the "atmosphere of the European mind," that she even wished, for a time, to be delivered from the sound of the English language.
The beginning of this winter was, as it usually is in Italy, a season of fine weather. On the 17th of December Margaret rises to bask in beneficent floods of sunlight, and to find upon her table the roses and grapes which, in New England, would have been costly hot-house luxuries. Her letter of this date is full of her delight in having penetrated from the outer aspect to the heart of Rome, classic, mediæval, and modern. And here we come upon the record of those first impressions concerning which we latterly indulged in some speculation.
"Ah! how joyful to see once more this Rome, instead of the pitiful, peddling, Anglicized Rome first viewed in unutterable dismay from thecoupéof the vettura,—a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses, cheating chambermaids, vilestvalets de place, and fleas! A Niobe of nations indeed! Ah! why (secretly the heart blasphemed) did the sun omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore her crown fell beneath his ray?"
All this had now disappeared for Margaret, and a new enchantment had taken the place of the old illusion and disappointment. For she[220]was now able to disentangle the strange jumble of ancient and modern Rome. In this more understanding and familiar view, she says:—