Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“ These are good reasons for loving ye, sweet asters, but they do not go to the root of the matter. I feel a really yearning tenderness, a sense of relationship. But the golden-rod is one of the fairy, magical flowers; it grows not up to seek human love amid the light of day, but to mark to the discerning what wealth lies hid in the secret caves of earth. ... The disgust at unworthy care, the aching sense of how far deeds are transcended by our lowest aspiration, pass away, and for a while I lean on the bosom of nature, and inhale new life with her breath. ”

“ I have noticed that most of those who were nurtured under that influence have had the good fortune to grow old slowly; their world is still, poetic; the material achievements, the utilitarian philosophy of later years may come or go, leaving their ideal, their confidence, their immortal hope unchanged. And now that much which Transcendentalism sought is fulfilled, and that which was ecstasy has — as Emerson predicted — become daily bread, its reminiscences mingle with all youth’s enchantments, and belong to a period when we too “toiled, feasted, despaired, were happy.” ”

“ HEREDITARY TRAITS.
“We are never better understood,” says Margaret Fuller in her fragment of autobiographical romance, “than when we speak of ‘a Roman virtue,’ ‘a Roman outline.’” She goes on: “There is somewhat indefinite, somewhat yet unfulfilled in the thought of Greece, of Spain, of modern Italy; but Rome, it stands by itself a clear Word. The power of will, the dignity of a fixed purpose, is what it utters. Every Roman was an emperor.” Tried by this standard, she herself may be said to have had a Roman parentage. An element of strength went through all her ancestry. ”

“ Finely discriminating in all that relates to personal and intellectual character, scholarly and just in its literary criticisms, analyses, and estimates, it is besides so kindly and manly in its tone, its narrative is so spirited and enthralling, its descriptions are so quaintly graphic, so varied and cheerful in their coloring, and its pictures so teem with the bustle, the movement, and the activities of the real life of a by-gone but most interesting age, that the attention of the reader is never tempted to wander, and he lays down the book with a sigh of regret for its brevity. ”

“ If all this is true of the most commonplace novelist, it is especially true of the most ideal of all writers of fiction, Hawthorne. Even his real people, when he writes what he means for sober history, become almost ideal in the atmosphere he paints; how much more with those in his romances. That there was a certain queenliness about Margaret Fuller, that she sometimes came to Brook Farm, and that a cow which was named after her lorded it over the other cows; this was all that she really contributed to Hawthorne’s Zenobia; and much less than this would have been sufficient for his purpose. ”

“ Lowell so extravagantly lauded by the circle of his friends, that we should be hopeless of escaping the wrath of his admirers, for any terms in which our expressions of sympathy could be couched, but for the more modest and dignified tone of his own preface, which presents ground on which the world at large can meet him. With his admirers, we have often been reminded of a fervent Italian who raved at one of our country-women as ‘a heartless girl,’ because she would not go to walk with him alone at midnight. ”

“ It is a fine day for composition, were it not in Concord. But I trow the fates which gave this place Concord, took away the animating influences of Discord. Life here slumbers and steals on like the river. A very good place for a sage, but not for the lyrist or the orator.
Margaret Fuller’s verses are not commonly quite worth preserving, though no one could think so ill of them as did she herself. But these which I have just quoted have in them some of those “lyric glimpses” that Emerson praised in her; the “incalculable wave” and “mile-long strand” are terse and poetic ”

“ On February 25, 1847, she left Paris for Italy, and in early spring established herself for a time in Rome. In summer she went to the different Italian cities, then to Switzerland. In October she settled herself for the winter in Rome, whose wonderful inspiration she profoundly felt. She says of her own first experiences there, “All mean things were forgotten in the joy that rushed over me like a flood.” She felt, as so many Americans feel in Europe, an impulse to separate herself for a time from all English-speaking people and plunge into a wholly untried atmosphere. ”

“ We traveled in a way that left us perfectly free to idle as much as we pleased, to gather every flower and to traverse every wood we fancied. We were then in a strong vehicle called a lumber wagon which defied all the jolts and wrenches incident to wood paths, mud holes, and the fording of creeks; we were driven by a friend, who drove admirably, who had the true spirit which animates daily life, who knew the habits of all the fowl, and fish, and growing things, and all the war-like legends of the country, and could recite them, not in a pedantical, but in a poetical manner ”

“ Could but love, like knowledge, be its own reward; could we look upon the objects of our affection and rejoice in their existence, purely for its own sake, as we do with the ferns and asters, — but that is contrary to the nature of love; though it be true in one sense, as Schiller says, that he only loves who loves without hope, yet in another it is true that love cannot exist without desire, though it be the desire of the moth for the star. ”

“ In removing with her family to Groton, a village nearly forty miles from Boston, and then rather difficult of access, — for this was long before the building of the Fitchburg Railroad, — Margaret Fuller felt a natural depression. If even the Boston of those days afforded but a limited supply of books and intellectual companionship, what would Groton offer? She gave up Cambridge with its youthful society on one side, Boston with its books on the other; and this for a young woman of twenty-three, overflowing with energy and ambition, was quite a trial. ”

“ If I cannot be differently situated, I must leave Providence at the end of another term. My time here has been full of petty annoyances, but I regret none of them, they have so enlarged my practical knowledge. I now begin really to feel myself a citizen of the world. My plan lies clearer before my mind, and I have examined almost all my materials, but beyond this I have done nothing. I shall, however, have so soon an opportunity to tell you all that I will not now take time and paper. I attended last week, somewhat to the horror of Mr. Fuller, the Whig Caucus here, and heard Tristam Burges. ”

“ If I have seemed in this book to bring my heroine down from the clouds a little; it is simply because I have used the materials at my command, and have tried to paint her as she was; a being not fed on nectar and ambrosia, after all, but on human nature’s daily food.
It may be asked why, with this daily and noble self-devotion she was not universally beloved. It can be very briefly told: she wanted tact. As some essentially selfish persons go through the world winning all hearts by merely possessing that quality, so others are always underrated for want of it. ”

“ Why is it that the sight of water stirs and fills the mind so much more than that of any other thing in nature? — why? Is it that here we see the most subtle force combined with the most winning gentleness, or the most impetuous force with the most irresistible subtlety?
“I used to love, at Trenton, to go to that place where the water seemed collecting its energies so quietly, gliding on so stealthily, you could scarcely believe it was firmly resolved to display such vehemence in one more moment of time and rood of space. ”

“ There was always a theme, and a thread. One whole winter was devoted — through thirteen conversations — to the Fine Arts; another to Ethics, in different applications; another to Education, in various respects; another to the proper influence of women on family, school, church, society, and literature. On some of these subjects she had, in her circle, undoubted experts, who knew on certain particular points more than she did. Of these she availed herself, but kept the reins in her own hands. We all know that the best-planned talk is a lottery ”

“ The destinies of the vast empire of France and the partition of Europe await the nod of those same princes, who so lately trembled in their capitals. The ‘disinterested and magnanimous allies,’ the ‘deliverers of the world,’ seem very affectionate to the world they have delivered. Their ‘labor of love’ is only begun. One takes Poland under his gracious protection, another is pleased to take Norway, a third Italy; and modest England resigns to each his favorite portion of prostrate Europe, and only claims, as a small gratuity, the rest of the world! ”

“ Tried by this standard, Margaret Fuller ranks high, and, if I were to judge strictly by my own personal experience, I should say very high indeed. I shall always be grateful to the person who fixed in my memory, during early life, such sentences as these: —
“Yes, O Goethe! but the ideal is truer than the actual. This changes and that changes not.”
“Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.” ”

“ It may be proper to add that, in literature, it will strive to exercise a just and catholic criticism, and to recognize every sincere production of genius; in philosophy it will attempt the reconciliation of the universal instincts of humanity with the largest conclusions of reason; and in religion it will reverently seek to discover the presence of God in nature, in history, and in the soul of man. ”

“ With her boundless love of knowledge, and the scantiness of libraries and museums in the America of that day, she was charmed by the centralization of London; the concentration in one spot of treasures such as may by and by be found scattered through many cities in America, but will never be brought together in one. She saw the heroes of that day, some of whom are heroes still: Wordsworth, Dr. Chalmers, Andrew Combe, the Howitts, Dr. Southwood Smith, De Quincey, Joanna Baillie. Browning, just married, had gone to Italy. ”

“ Under this disadvantage she led thenceforward a life of constant checking and restriction, not as to pleasures, for which she rarely sighs in her diaries, but as to doing her appointed work in the world and employing the talents given her. Rising in the morning, as Emerson says of all of us, “with an appetite that could eat the solar system like a cake,” she soon finds herself restricted as to food and wholly wanting in digestion. With the largest views as to the aims and destiny of her nation, she was obliged to see the timid and the pessimists work on while she was fettered. ”

“ Is everything so sterile and pigmy here in New England, that we must all, writers and readers, be forever replenishing ourselves with the mighty wonders of the Old World? Is not the history of this people transcendent in the chronicles of the world for pure, homogeneous sublimity and beauty and richness? ”

“ She was one of our first and best writers for children; her “Young Lady's Friend” was almost the pioneer manual of its kind; and her “Recollections of Seventy Years” is an admirable record of a well-spent life. She was the friend of Miss Martineau and others of the ablest English women of her time; she readily saw the remarkable intellect of Margaret Fuller, and also perceived the defects of her training. She undertook to mould her externally, to make her less abrupt, less self-asserting, more comme il faut in ideas, manners, and even costume. ”

“ Three months later the family left Groton forever, having taken a house at Jamaica Plain, then and perhaps now the most rural and attractive suburb of Boston. Here their dwelling was near a little stream, called Willow Brook, and there were rocks behind it covered with cardinal flowers. Margaret Fuller had with her two pupils from Providence; she was within easy reach of friends, and could at the same time renew that love of nature which Groton had first taught her, and which city-life had only suspended. ”

“ A chapter on Brook Farm would be hardly needed, in a life of Margaret Fuller, but for one single cause, — the magic wielded by a man of genius. Zenobia in Hawthorne's “Blithedale Romance” has scarcely a trait in common with Margaret Fuller; yet will be identified with her while the literature of the English language is read. Margaret Fuller had neither the superb beauty of Zenobia, nor her physical amplitude, nor her large fortune, nor her mysterious husband, nor her inclination to suicide; nor, in fine, was she a member of the Brook Farm community at all. ”

“ As to the genius of Goethe, the statement, though so much better than others, is too imperfect to be true. He requires to be minutely painted in his own style of hard finish. As he never gave his soul in a glance, so he cannot be painted at a glance. I wish this ‘Kosmos Beauty’ was not here over again. One does not like their friend to have any way, anything peculiar; he must be too individual to be known by a cough or a phrase. ”