Margaret Fuller

“ I do not find in such works of Margaret Fuller's as I have read, any remarkable genius, nothing of which betrays that extraordinary power which distinguished her in conversation. Her talent as an author seems to me no way striking; nevertheless a large-minded, noble spirit shows itself in her writings and this caused her often to deplore, and filled her with indignation against that which she knew was not noble in her countrymen and her native land. She is rather the critic than the enthusiast. ”

“ Margaret was, to persons younger than herself, a Makaria and Natalia. She was wisdom and intellectual beauty, filling life with a charm and glory "known to neither sea nor land." To those of her own age she was sibyl and seer,—a prophetess, revealing the future, pointing the path, opening their eyes to the great aims only worthy of pursuit in life. To those older than herself she was like the Euphorion in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and Helen,—a wonderful union of exuberance and judgment, born of romantic fulness and classic limitation. ”

“ I hear from one witness, as early as 1829, that “all the girls raved about Margaret Fuller,” and the same powerful magnetism wrought, as she went on, from year to year, on all ingenuous natures. The loveliest and the highest endowed women were eager to lay their beauty, their grace, the hospitalities of sumptuous homes, and their costly gifts, at her feet. ”

“ Prominent among the women of the times who have emigrated to these shores from populous America, stands Margaret Fuller—a tall and impressive blonde—a woman of strong bias, and resolute as a lion when she has set foot upon a project. Earnest, passionate, and brilliant in conversation, she wields a powerful influence over many minds of a peculiar order ”

“ No doubt many of my dear countrymen would play just the same pranks now, if the spirit of the age would permit; the will is not wanting, witness our courts of law.
I have been reading the "Life of Margaret Fuller." What a tragedy from first to last! She must have been odious in Boston in spite of her power and her strong sense of duty, with which I always sympathize; but at New York, where she dwindled from a sibyl to a "lionne," one begins to like her better, and in England and Paris, where she was not even that, better still ”

“ But if we are disposed to rank a fragmentary greatness above a narrow perfection, to value loftiness of aim more than the complete attainment of an inferior object, we must set Margaret Fuller, despite all errors of judgment, all faults of style, very high among the “Writing Women” of America. It is time that, ceasing to discuss her personal traits, we dwelt only upon the permanent and essential, in her whose mind was fixed upon the permanent, the essential. Her place in our literature is her own ”

“ The difficulty which we all feel in describing our past intercourse and friendship with Margaret Fuller, is, that the intercourse was so intimate, and the friendship so personal, that it is like making a confession to the public of our most interior selves. For this noble person, by her keen insight and her generous interest, entered into the depth of every soul with which she stood in any real relation. To print one of her letters, is like giving an extract from our own private journal. ”

“ because the position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts by guardians, who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded by doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to got them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help. ”

“ The demand for woman's emancipation of thought, her breadth of freedom of action, met with its first great interpreter in Margaret Fuller: she fed that first hunger.
From the glimmer of twilight's solitude through which Hawthorne's shrewd and curious eye dissected the movements of the human heart, Margaret Fuller might have seemed to be like Zenobia, but I did not think it a portrait. ”

“ Margaret Fuller possessed more influence upon the thought of America, than any woman previous to her time. ”

“ But enough of the transcendentalists. I must, however, say a few words about a lady who belongs to this sect, and whose name I have frequently heard since I came to America, partly with blame, partly with praise, but always with a certain degree of distinction, namely Margaret Fuller. Although devoid of beauty, and rather disagreeable than agreeable in her manners, she seems to be gifted with singular talents, and to have an actual genius for conversation. Emerson, speaking with admiration of her powers, said, “Conviction sits upon her lips.” ”

“ But as a writer, Margaret was a little prosaic,—even her poetry inclined to be prosaic,—but she is earnest, noble, temperate, and reasonable. The reader will be convinced that there was more in the woman than popular tradition recognizes.
One is confirmed in the conviction that the legend does her less than justice when he knows the names and the quality of her friends. No woman ever had better or more loyal friends than Margaret Fuller. Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing were among them and compiled her "Memoirs," evidently as a labor of love. ”

“ At Newport, Margaret had made the acquaintance of an elegant scholar, in Mr. Calvert, of Maryland. In Providence, she had won, as by conquest, such a homage of attachment, from young and old, that her arrival there, one day, on her return from a visit to Bristol, was a kind of ovation. In Boston, she knew people of every class, — merchants, politicians, scholars, artists, women, the migratory genius, and the rooted capitalist, — and, amongst all, many excellent people, who were every day passing, by new opportunities, conversations, and kind offices, into the sacred circle of friends. ”

“ This is the impression one would gather, if he had only current oral traditions of Margaret Fuller.
If with this impression, wishing to get a first-hand knowledge of his subject, a student were to read the "Works of Margaret Fuller":—"Life Within and Without," "At Home and Abroad," "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," "Art, Literature, and Drama,"—he would be prepared to find eccentricities of style, straining [Pg 167] for effect, mystical utterances, attempts at profundity, and stilted commonplace. ”

“ Yet, though thus frank to own to herself and to her peers her errors, Margaret cherished a trust in her powers, a confidence in her destiny, and an ideal of her being, place and influence, so lofty as to be extravagant. In the morning-hour and mountain-air of aspiration, her shadow moved before her, of gigantic size, upon the snow-white vapor. ”

“ But the tragedy of Margaret's history was deeper yet. Behind the poet was the woman,—the fond and relying, the heroic and disinterested woman. The very glow of her poetic enthusiasm was but an outflush of trustful affection; the very restlessness of her intellect was the confession that her heart had found no home. A "book-worm," "a dilettante," "a pedant," I had heard her sneeringly called; but now it was evident that her seeming insensibility was virgin pride, and her absorption in study the natural vent of emotions, which had met no object worthy of life-long attachment. ”

“ Some were children of the world, others pale scholars. Some were witty, others slightly dull. But all, in order to be Margaret's friends, must be capable of seeking something,—capable of some aspiration for the better. And how did she glorify life to all! all that was tame and common vanishing away in the picturesque light thrown over the most familiar things by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her knowledge, and the copious rhetoric which found words and images always apt and always ready. ”

“ The young girls whom Margaret had attracted were very different from herself, and from each other. From Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Brookline, they came to her, and the little circle of companions would meet now in one house, and now in another, of these pleasant towns. There was A——, a dark-haired, black-eyed beauty, with clear olive complexion, through which the rich blood flowed. She was bright, beauteous, and cold as a gem,—with clear perceptions of character within a narrow limit,—enjoying society, and always surrounded with admirers, of whose feelings she seemed quite unconscious. ”

“ At thirteen, Margaret Fuller was so precocious in mind and appearance as to take her place in society with much older girls; she went to parties of young people, and gave such entertainments for herself. Having been a pupil at the school, then celebrated, of Dr. Park, in Boston, she once attempted to mingle her two sets of friends — Boston and Cambridge — at a party given in her own house. ”

“ Masculine women were equally distasteful; while he admired the genius of Margaret Fuller, his personal attraction toward her seldom brought him into her society. That a man constituted as he was, self-reliant to aggressiveness, inclined to be arbitrary, dogmatical, and imperious, of prodigious force of will and masterly power of conscience, entered as he did into advocacy of the rights of the African and the prerogatives of woman, is evidence of the whole-heartedness with which he adopted the transcendental philosophy. ”

“ Margaret Fuller speaks somewhere of certain habits of impure speech which she had heard attributed to ladies in a New-York hotel. What foundation that story had, we may never find; but all of us know some women before whom we keep the coldest reserve, and with whom we would never touch many a subject we should be willing to discuss with any pure-minded man. Ladies! Not all the gold of Pactolus, not all the beauty of Anadyomene, not all the wisdom of Minerva, could make such women ladies! We cannot redeem the poor denizens of Five Points till we have redeemed those of the Fifth Avenue. ”

“ It is fascinating to watch the skilled biographer reveal all sorts of facts about Margaret Fuller of which she herself had not the ghost of a notion. We can't say that the theory of the biographer is always convincing, although we must admit that her case is full and logical at every turn. To us it is just a little too logical. There is so much proof that we are rather inclined to believe that the theory is not altogether so. It is only fair to admit that Margaret seems to have been a Freudian herself long before there was a Freud. ”

“ Margaret possessed, in a greater degree than any person I ever knew, the power of so magnetizing others, when she wished, by the power of her mind, that they would lay open to her all the secrets of their nature. She had an infinite curiosity to know individuals,—not the vulgar curiosity which seeks to find out the circumstances of their outward lives, but that which longs to understand the inward springs of thought and action in their souls. This desire and power both rested on a profound conviction of her mind in the individuality of every human being. ”

“ In this year she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and the next, collected her Papers on Art and Literature in a volume.
On the 1st of August, 1846, Margaret Fuller sailed for Europe, in the company of her friends Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Spring, of Eagleswood, New Jersey. She went first to England, visited the Lake country, meeting Wordsworth and renewing her acquaintance with Harriet Martineau, travelled in Scotland, making the ascent of Ben Lomond with but one companion, and without a guide, an imprudence which cost her a night of dangerous exposure ”

“ Margaret Fuller’s personal appearance at this early period has been described by several of her biographers; but one hears very different accounts of it from different quarters, the least flattering being those given by her own sex. The inexorable memory of a certain venerable Cambridge lady recalls her graphically as she appeared at the ball given by her father to President Adams; a young girl of sixteen with a very plain face, half-shut eyes, and hair curled all over her head ”

“ In conversations like these, one saw that the richness of Margaret's genius resulted from a rare combination of opposite qualities. To her might have been well applied the words first used as describing George Sand: “Thou large-brained Woman, and large-hearted Man.” She blended in closest union and swift interplay feminine receptiveness with masculine energy. She was at once impressible and creative, impulsive and deliberate, pliant in sympathy yet firmly self-centred, confidingly responsive while commanding in originality. ”

“ Channing hall known Margaret through her intellect only. This conversation of many hours revealed her to him in a new light. It unfolded to him her manifola, 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.
In a more generous soil her genius would have borne fruit of the highest order. ”

“ The transfer of Margaret Fuller, at the beginning of December, 1844, to what she called her “business life” in New York, made a distinct epoch in her career. After this her mental maturity began; at any rate, her Wanderjahre, in the German sense, as distinct from mere apprenticeship. She had come to be the housemate and literary coadjutor of the man who, among all Americans, then stood closest to the popular heart. ”