Chapter V: BOSTON, By R.W. Emerson (10)

'For all the tides of life that flow within me, I am dumb and
ineffectual, when it comes to casting my thought into a form.
No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the
pleasure of creation would make it possible for me to write.
What shall I do, dear friend? I want force to be either a
genius or a character. One should be either private or public.
I love best to be a woman; but womanhood is at present too
straitly-bounded to give me scope. At hours, I live truly as
a woman; at others, I should stifle; as, on the other hand, I
should palsy, when I would play the artist.'

HEROISM.

These practical problems Margaret had to entertain and to solve the best way she could. She says truly, 'there was none to take up her burden whilst she slept.' But she was formed for action, and addressed herself quite simply to her part. She was a woman, an orphan, without beauty, without money; and these negatives will suggest what difficulties were to be surmounted where the tasks dictated by her talents required the good-will of "good society," in the town where she was to teach and write. But she was even-tempered and erect, and, if her journals are sometimes mournful, her mind was made up, her countenance beamed courage and cheerfulness around her. Of personal influence, speaking strictly,--an efflux, that is, purely of mind and character, excluding all effects of power, wealth, fashion, beauty, or literary fame,--she had an extraordinary degree; I think more than any person I have known. An interview with her was a joyful event. Worthy men and women, who had conversed with her, could not forget her, but worked bravely on in the remembrance that this heroic approver had recognized their aims. She spoke so earnestly, that the depth of the sentiment prevailed, and not the accidental expression, which might chance to be common. Thus I learned, the other day, that, in a copy of Mrs. Jameson's Italian Painters, against a passage describing Correggio as a true servant of God in his art, above sordid ambition, devoted to truth, "one of those superior beings of whom there are so few;" Margaret wrote on the margin, 'And yet all might be such.' The book lay long on the table of the owner, in Florence, and chanced to be read there by a young artist of much talent. "These words," said he, months afterwards, "struck out a new strength in me. They revived resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a flint."

But Margaret's courage was thoroughly sweet in its temper. She accused herself in her youth of unamiable traits, but, in all the later years of her life, it is difficult to recall a moment of malevolence. The friends whom her strength of mind drew to her, her good heart held fast; and few persons were ever the objects of more persevering kindness. Many hundreds of her letters remain, and they are alive with proofs of generous friendship given and received.

Among her early friends, Mrs. Farrar, of Cambridge, appears to have discovered, at a critical moment in her career, the extraordinary promise of the young girl, and some false social position into which her pride and petulance, and the mistakes of others, had combined to bring her, and she set herself, with equal kindness and address, to make a second home for Margaret in her own house, and to put her on the best footing in the agreeable society of Cambridge. She busied herself, also, as she could, in removing all superficial blemishes from the gem. In a well-chosen travelling party, made up by Mrs. Farrar, and which turned out to be the beginning of much happiness by the friendships then formed, Margaret visited, in the summer of 1835, Newport, New York, and Trenton Falls; and, in the autumn, made the acquaintance, at Mrs. F.'s house, of Miss Martineau, whose friendship, at that moment, was an important stimulus to her mind.

Mrs. Farrar performed for her, thenceforward, all the offices of an almost maternal friendship. She admired her genius, and wished that all should admire it. She counselled and encouraged her, brought to her side the else unsuppliable aid of a matron and a lady, sheltered her in sickness, forwarded her plans with tenderness and constancy, to the last. I read all this in the tone of uniform gratitude and love with which this lady is mentioned in Margaret's letters. Friendships like this praise both parties; and the security with which people of a noble disposition approached Margaret, indicated the quality of her own infinite tenderness. A very intelligent woman applied to her what Stilling said of Goethe: "Her heart, which few knew, was as great as her mind, which all knew;" and added, that, "in character, Margaret was, of all she had beheld, the largest woman, and not a woman who wished, to be a man." Another lady added, "She never disappointed you. To any one whose confidence she had once drawn out, she was thereafter faithful. She could talk of persons, and never gossip; for she had a fine instinct that kept her from any reality, and from any effect of treachery." I was still more struck with the remark that followed. "Her life, since she went abroad, is wholly unknown to me; but I have an unshaken trust that what Margaret did she can defend."

She was a right brave and heroic woman. She shrunk from no duty, because of feeble nerves. Although, after her father died, the disappointment of not going to Europe with Miss Martineau and Mrs. Farrar was extreme, and her mother and sister wished her to take her portion of the estate and go; and, on her refusal, entreated the interference of friends to overcome her objections; Margaret would not hear of it, and devoted herself to the education of her brothers and sisters, and then to the making a home for the family. She was exact and punctual in money matters, and maintained herself, and made her full contribution to the support of her family, by the reward of her labors as a teacher, and in her conversation classes. I have a letter from her at Jamaica Plain, dated November, 1840, which begins,

'This day I write you from my own hired house, and am full of
the dignity of citizenship. Really, it is almost happiness.
I retain, indeed, some cares and responsibilities; but these
will sit light as feathers, for I can take my own time for
them. Can it be that this peace will be mine for five whole
months? At any rate, five days have already been enjoyed.'

Here is another, written in the same year:--

'I do not wish to talk to you of my ill-health, except that I
like you should know when it makes me do anything badly, since
I wish you to excuse and esteem me. But let me say, once for
all, in reply to your letter, that you are mistaken if you
think I ever wantonly sacrifice my health. I have learned
that we cannot injure ourselves without injuring others; and
besides, that we have no right; for ourselves are all we know
of heaven. I do not try to domineer over myself. But, unless
I were sure of dying, I cannot dispense with making some
exertion, both for the present and the future. There is no
mortal, who, if I laid down my burden, would take care of
it while I slept. Do not think me weakly disinterested, or,
indeed, disinterested at all.'

Every one of her friends knew assuredly that her sympathy and aid would not fail them when required. She went, from the most joyful of all bridals, to attend a near relative during a formidable surgical operation. She was here to help others. As one of her friends writes, 'She helped whoever knew her.' She adopted the interests of humble persons, within her circle, with heart-cheering warmth, and her ardor in the cause of suffering and degraded women, at Sing-Sing, was as irresistible as her love of books. She had, many years afterwards, scope for the exercise of all her love and devotion, in Italy, but she came to it as if it had been her habit and her natural sphere. The friends who knew her in that country, relate, with much surprise, that she, who had all her lifetime drawn people by her wit, should recommend herself so highly, in Italy, by her tenderness and large affection. Yet the tenderness was only a face of the wit; as before, the wit was raised above all other wit by the affection behind it. And, truly, there was an ocean of tears always, in her atmosphere, ready to fall.

There was, at New York, a poor adventurer, half patriot, half author, a miserable man, always in such depths of distress, with such squadrons of enemies, that no charity could relieve, and no intervention save him. He believed Europe banded for his destruction, and America corrupted to connive at it. Margaret listened to these woes with such patience and mercy, that she drew five hundred dollars, which had been invested for her in a safe place, and put them in those hapless hands, where, of course, the money was only the prey of new rapacity, to be bewailed by new reproaches. When one of her friends had occasion to allude to this, long afterwards, she replied:--

'In answer to what you say of ----, I wish, indeed, the little
effort I made for him had been wiselier applied. Yet these are
not the things one regrets. It will not do to calculate too
closely with the affectionate human impulse. We must consent
to make many mistakes, or we should move too slow to help our
brothers much. I am sure you do not regret what you spent on
Miani, and other worthless people. As things looked then, it
would have been wrong not to have risked the loss.'

TRUTH.

But Margaret crowned all her talents and virtues with a love of truth, and the power to speak it. In great and in small matters, she was a woman of her word, and gave those who conversed with her the unspeakable comfort that flows from plain dealing. Her nature was frank and transparent, and she had a right to say, as she says in her journal:--

'I have the satisfaction of knowing, that, in my counsels, I
have given myself no air of being better than I am.'

And again:--

'In the chamber of death, I prayed in very early years, "Give
me truth; cheat me by no illusion." O, the granting of this
prayer is sometimes terrible to me! I walk over the burning
ploughshares, and they sear my feet. Yet nothing but truth
will do; no love will serve that is not eternal, and as large
as the universe; no philanthropy in executing whose behests
I myself become unhealthy; no creative genius which bursts
asunder my life, to leave it a poor black chrysalid behind.
And yet this last is too true of me.'

She describes a visit made in May, 1844, at the house of some valued friends in West Roxbury, and adds: 'We had a long and deep conversation, happy in its candor. Truth, truth, thou art the great preservative! Let free air into the mind, and the pestilence cannot lurk in any corner.'

And she uses the following language in an earnest letter to another friend:--

'My own entire sincerity, in every passage of life, gives me a
right to expect that I shall be met by no unmeaning phrases or
attentions.'

* * * * *

'Reading to-day a few lines of ----, I thought with
refreshment of such lives as T.'s, and V.'s, and W.'s, so
private and so true, where each line written is really the
record of a thought or a feeling. I hate poems which are
a melancholy monument of culture for the sake of being
cultivated, not of growing.'

Even in trifles, one might find with her the advantage and the electricity of a little honesty. I have had from an eye-witness a note of a little scene that passed in Boston, at the Academy of Music. A party had gone early, and taken an excellent place to hear one of Beethoven's symphonies. Just behind them were soon seated a young lady and two gentlemen, who made an incessant buzzing, in spite of bitter looks cast on them by the whole neighborhood, and destroyed all the musical comfort. After all was over, Margaret leaned across one seat, and catching the eye of this girl, who was pretty and well-dressed, said, in her blandest, gentlest voice, "May I speak with you one moment?" "Certainly," said the young lady, with a fluttered, pleased look, bending forward. "I only wish to say," said Margaret, "that I trust, that, in the whole course of your life, you will not suffer so great a degree of annoyance as you have inflicted on a large party of lovers of music this evening." This was said with the sweetest air, as if to a little child, and it was as good as a play to see the change of countenance which the young lady exhibited, who had no replication to make to so Christian a blessing.

On graver occasions, the same habit was only more stimulated; and I cannot remember certain passages which called it into play, without new regrets at the costly loss which our community sustains in the loss of this brave and eloquent soul.

People do not speak the truth, not for the want of not knowing and preferring it, but because they have not the organ to speak it adequately. It requires a clear sight, and, still more, a high spirit, to deal with falsehood in the decisive way. I have known several honest persons who valued truth as much as Peter and John, but, when they tried to speak it, _they_ grew red and black in the face instead of Ananias, until, after a few attempts, they decided that aggressive truth was not their vocation, and confined themselves thenceforward to silent honesty, except on rare occasions, when either an extreme outrage, or a happier inspiration, loosened their tongue. But a soul is now and then incarnated, whom indulgent nature has not afflicted with any cramp or frost, but who can speak the right word at the right moment, qualify the selfish and hypocritical act with its real name, and, without any loss of serenity, hold up the offence to the purest daylight. Such a truth-speaker is worth more than the best police, and more than the laws or governors; for these do not always know their own side, but will back the crime for want of this very truth-speaker to expose them. That is the theory of the newspaper,--to supersede official by intellectual influence. But, though the apostles establish the journal, it usually happens that, by some strange oversight, Ananias slips into the editor's chair. If, then, we could be provided with a fair proportion of truth-speakers, we could very materially and usefully contract the legislative and the executive functions. Still, the main sphere for this nobleness is private society, where so many mischiefs go unwhipped, being out of the cognizance of law, and supposed to be nobody's business. And society is, at all times, suffering for want of judges and headsmen, who will mark and lop these malefactors.

Margaret suffered no vice to insult her presence, but called the offender to instant account, when the law of right or of beauty was violated. She needed not, of course, to go out of her way to find the offender, and she never did, but she had the courage and the skill to cut heads off which were not worn with honor in her presence. Others might abet a crime by silence, if they pleased; she chose to clear herself of all complicity, by calling the act by its name.

It was curious to see the mysterious provocation which the mere presence of insight exerts in its neighborhood. Like moths about a lamp, her victims voluntarily came to judgment: conscious persons, encumbered with egotism; vain persons, bent on concealing some mean vice; arrogant reformers, with some halting of their own; the compromisers, who wished to reconcile right and wrong;--all came and held out their palms to the wise woman, to read their fortunes, and they were truly told. Many anecdotes have come to my ear, which show how useful the glare of her lamp proved in private circles, and what dramatic situations it created. But these cannot be told. The valor for dragging the accused spirits among his acquaintance to the stake is not in the heart of the present writer. The reader must be content to learn that she knew how, without loss of temper, to speak with unmistakable plainness to any party, when she felt that the truth or the right was injured. For the same reason, I omit one or two letters, most honorable both to her mind and heart, in which she felt constrained to give the frankest utterance to her displeasure. Yet I incline to quote the testimony of one witness, which is so full and so pointed, that I must give it as I find it.

"I have known her, by the severity of her truth, mow down a crop of evil, like the angel of retribution itself, and could not sufficiently admire her courage. A conversation she had with Mr. ----, just before he went to Europe, was one of these things; and there was not a particle of ill-will in it, but it was truth which she could not help seeing and uttering, nor he refuse to accept.

"My friends told me of a similar verdict, pronounced upon Mr. ----, at Paris, which they said was perfectly tremendous. They themselves sat breathless; Mr. ---- was struck dumb; his eyes fixed on her with wonder and amazement, yet gazing too with an attention which seemed like fascination. When she had done, he still looked to see if she was to say more, and when he found she had really finished, he arose, took his hat, said faintly, 'I thank you.' and left the room. He afterwards said to Mr. ----, 'I never shall speak ill of her. She has done me good.' And this was the greater triumph, for this man had no theories of impersonality, and was the most egotistical and irritable of self-lovers, and was so unveracious, that one had to hope in charity that his organ for apprehending truth was deficient."

ECSTASY.

I have alluded to the fact, that, in the summer of 1840, Margaret underwent some change in the tone and the direction of her thoughts, to which she attributed a high importance. I remember, at an earlier period, when in earnest conversation with her, she seemed to have that height and daring, that I saw she was ready to do whatever she thought; and I observed that, with her literary riches, her invention and wit, her boundless fun and drollery, her light satire, and the most entertaining conversation in America, consisted a certain pathos of sentiment, and a march of character, threatening to arrive presently at the shores and plunge into the sea of Buddhism and mystical trances. The literature of asceticism and rapturous piety was familiar to her. The conversation of certain mystics, who had appeared in Boston about this time, had interested her, but in no commanding degree. But in this year, 1840, in which events occurred which combined great happiness and pain for her affections, she remained for some time in a sort of ecstatic solitude. She made many attempts to describe her frame of mind to me, but did not inspire me with confidence that she had now come to any experiences that were profound or permanent. She was vexed at the want of sympathy on my part, and I again felt that this craving for sympathy did not prove the inspiration. There was a certain restlessness and fever, which I did not like should deceive a soul which was capable of greatness. But jets of magnanimity were always natural to her; and her aspiring mind, eager for a higher and still a higher ground, made her gradually familiar with the range of the mystics, and, though never herself laid in the chamber called Peace, never quite authentically and originally speaking from the absolute or prophetic mount, yet she borrowed from her frequent visits to its precincts an occasional enthusiasm, which gave a religious dignity to her thought.

'I have plagues about me, but they don't touch me now. I thank
nightly the benignant Spirit, for the unaccustomed serenity in
which it enfolds me.

'---- is very wretched; and once I could not have helped
taking on me all his griefs, and through him the griefs of his
class; but now I drink only the wormwood of the minute, and
that has always equal parts,--a drop of sweet to a drop
of bitter. But I shall never be callous, never unable to
understand _home-sickness_. Am not I, too, one of the band who
know not where to lay their heads? Am I wise enough to hear
such things? Perhaps not; but happy enough, surely. For that
Power which daily makes me understand the value of the little
wheat amid the field of tares, and shows me how the kingdom of
heaven is sown in the earth like a grain of mustard-seed, is
good to me, and bids me call unhappiness happy.'

* * * * *

TO ----

'_March_, 1842.--My inward life has been more rich and deep,
and of more calm and musical flow than ever before. It seems
to me that Heaven, whose course has ever been to cross-bias
me, as Herbert said, is no niggard in its compensations. I
have indeed been forced to take up old burdens, from which I
thought I had learned what they could teach; the pen has been
snatched from my hand just as I most longed to use it; I have
been forced to dissipate, when I most wished to concentrate;
to feel the hourly presence of others' mental wants, when, it
seemed, I was just on the point of satisfying my own. But a
new page is turned, and an era begun, from which I am not yet
sufficiently remote to describe it as I would. I have lived a
life, if only in the music I have heard, and one development
seemed to follow another therein, as if bound together by
destiny, and all things were done for me. All minds, all
scenes, have ministered to me. Nature has seemed an
ever-open secret; the Divine, a sheltering love; truth, an
always-springing fountain; and my soul more alone, and less
lonely, more hopeful, patient, and, above all, more gentle and
humble in its living. New minds have come to reveal themselves
to me, though I do not wish it, for I feel myself inadequate
to the ties already formed. I have not strength or time to
meet the thoughts of those I love already. But these new have
come with gifts too fair to be refused, and which have cheered
my passive mind.'

* * * * *

'_June_, 1844.--Last night, in the boat, I could not help
thinking, each has something, none has enough. I fear to want
them all; and, through ages, if not forever, promises and
beckons the life of reception, of renunciation. Passing every
seven days from one region to the other, the maiden grows
weary of _packing the trunk_, yet blesses Thee, O rich God!'

Her letters at this period betray a pathetic alternation of feeling, between her aspiring for a rest in the absolute Centre, and her necessity of a perfect sympathy with her friends. She writes to one of them:--

'What I want, the word I crave, I do not expect to hear from
the lips of man. I do not wish to be, I do not wish to have,
a _mediator_; yet I cannot help wishing, when I am with you,
that some tones of the longed-for music could be vibrating
in the air around us. But I will not be impatient again; for,
though I am but as I am, I like not to feel the eyes I have
loved averted.'

CONVERSATION.

I have separated and distributed as I could some of the parts which blended in the rich composite energy which Margaret exerted during the ten years over which my occasional interviews with her were scattered. It remains to say, that all these powers and accomplishments found their best and only adequate channel in her conversation;--a conversation which those who have heard it, unanimously, as far as I know, pronounced to be, in elegance, in range, in flexibility, and adroit transition, in depth, in cordiality, and in moral aim, altogether admirable; surprising and cheerful as a poem, and communicating its own civility and elevation like a charm to all hearers. She was here, among our anxious citizens, and frivolous fashionists, as if sent to refine and polish her countrymen, and announce a better day. She poured a stream of amber over the endless store of private anecdotes, of bosom histories, which her wonderful persuasion drew forth, and transfigured them into fine fables. Whilst she embellished the moment, her conversation had the merit of being solid and true. She put her whole character into it, and had the power to inspire. The companion was made a thinker, and went away quite other than he came. The circle of friends who sat with her were not allowed to remain spectators or players, but she converted them into heroes, if she could. The muse woke the muses, and the day grew bright and eventful. Of course, there must be, in a person of such sincerity, much variety of aspect, according to the character of her company. Only, in Margaret's case, there is almost an agreement in the testimony to an invariable power over the minds of all. I conversed lately with a gentleman who has vivid remembrances of his interviews with her in Boston, many years ago, who described her in these terms:--"No one ever came so near. Her mood applied itself to the mood of her companion, point to point, in the most limber, sinuous, vital way, and drew out the most extraordinary narratives; yet she had a light sort of laugh, when all was said, as if she thought she could live over that revelation. And this sufficient sympathy she had for all persons indifferently,--for lovers, for artists, and beautiful maids, and ambitious young statesmen, and for old aunts, and coach-travellers. Ah! she applied herself to the mood of her companion, as the sponge applies itself to water." The description tallies well enough with my observation. I remember she found, one day, at my house, her old friend Mr. ----, sitting with me. She looked at him attentively, and hardly seemed to know him. In the afternoon, he invited her to go with him to Cambridge. The next, day she said to me, 'You fancy that you know--. It is too absurd; you have never seen him. When I found him here, sitting like a statue, I was alarmed, and thought him ill. You sit with courteous, _un_confiding smile, and suppose him to be a mere man of talent. He is so with you. But the moment I was alone with him, he was another creature; his manner, so glassy and elaborate before, was full of soul, and the tones of his voice entirely different.' And I have no doubt that she saw expressions, heard tones, and received thoughts from her companions, which no one else ever saw or heard from the same parties, and that her praise of her friends, which seemed exaggerated, was her exact impression. We were all obliged to recall Margaret's testimony, when we found we were sad blockheads to other people.

I find among her letters many proofs of this power of disposing equally the hardest and the most sensitive people to open their hearts, on very short acquaintance. Any casual rencontré, in a walk, in a steamboat, at a concert, became the prelude to unwonted confidences.

* * * * *

1843.--'I believe I told you about one new man, a Philistine,
at Brook Farm. He reproved me, as such people are wont, for my
little faith. At the end of the first meeting in the hall, he
seemed to me perfectly hampered in his old ways and technics,
and I thought he would not open his mind to the views of
others for years, if ever. After I wrote, we had a second
meeting, by request, on personal relations; at the end of
which, he came to me, and expressed delight, and a feeling
of new light and life, in terms whose modesty might have done
honor to the wisest.'

* * * * *

'This afternoon we met Mr. ---- in his wood; and he sat down
and told us the story of his life, his courtship, and painted
the portraits of his father and mother with most amusing
naïveté. He says:--"How do you think I offered myself? I never
had told Miss ---- that I loved her; never told her she was
handsome; and I went to her, and said, 'Miss ----, I've come
to offer myself; but first I'll give you my character. I'm
very poor; you'll have to work: I'm very cross and irascible;
you'll have everything to bear: and I've liked many other
pretty girls. Now what do you say?' and she said, 'I'll have
you:' and she's been everything to me."

'"My mother was a Calvinist, very strict, but she was always
reading 'Abelard and Eloisa,' and crying over it. At sixteen
I said to her: 'Mother, you've brought me up well; you've kept
me strict. Why don't I feel that regeneration they talk of?
why an't I one of the elect?' And she talked to me about the
potter using his clay as he pleased; and I said: 'Mother, God
is not a potter: He's a perfect being; and he can't treat the
vessels he makes, anyhow, but with perfect justice, or he's no
God. So I'm no Calvinist.'"'

* * * * *

Here is a very different picture:--

'---- has infinite grace and shading in her character: a
springing and tender fancy, a Madonna depth of meditative
softness, and a purity which has been unstained, and keeps her
dignified even in the most unfavorable circumstances. She was
born for the love and ornament of life. I can scarcely
forbear weeping sometimes, when I look on her, and think what
happiness and beauty she might have conferred. She is as yet
all unconscious of herself, and she rather dreads being with
me, because I make her too conscious. She was on the point,
at ----, of telling me all she knew of herself; but I saw
she dreaded, while she wished, that I should give a local
habitation and a name to what lay undefined, floating before
her, the phantom of her destiny; or rather lead her to give
it, for she always approaches a tragical clearness when
talking with me.'

* * * * *

'---- has been to see us. But it serves not to know such
a person, who perpetually defaces the high by such strange
mingling with the low. It certainly is not pleasant to hear of
God and Miss Biddeford in a breath. To me, this hasty attempt
at skimming from the deeps of theosophy is as unpleasant as
the rude vanity of reformers. Dear Beauty! where, where, amid
these morasses and pine barrens, shall we make thee a temple?
where find a Greek to guard it,--clear-eyed, deep-thoughted,
and delicate enough to appreciate the relations and gradations
which nature always observes?'

An acute and illuminated woman, who, in this age of indifferentism, holds on with both hands to the creed of the Pilgrims, writes of Margaret, whom she saw but once:--"She looked very sensible, but as if contending with ill health and duties. She lay, all the day and evening, on the sofa, and catechized me, who told my literal traditions, like any old bobbin-woman."

I add the testimony of a man of letters, and most competent observer, who had, for a long time, opportunities of daily intercourse with her:--

"When I knew Margaret, I was so young, and perhaps too much disposed to meet people on my own ground, that I may not be able to do justice to her. Her nature was so large and receptive, so sympathetic with youth and genius, so aspiring, and withal so womanly in her understanding, that she made her companion think more of himself, and of a common life, than of herself. She was a companion as few others, if indeed any one, have been. Her heart was underneath her intellectualness, her mind was reverent, her spirit devout; a thinker without dryness; a scholar without pedantry. She could appreciate the finest thoughts, and knew the rich soil and large fields of beauty that made the little vase of otto. With her unusual wisdom and religious spirit, she seemed like the priestess of the youth, opening to him the fields of nature; but she was more than a priestess, a companion also. As I recall her image, I think she may have been too intellectual, and too conscious of intellectual relation, so that she was not sufficiently self-centred on her own personality; and hence something of a duality: but I may not be correct in this impression."

CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON.

BY R.W. EMERSON.

"Do not scold me; they are guests of my eyes. Do not frown,--they want no bread; they are guests of my words."

TARTAR ECLOGUES

V.

CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON.

* * * * *

In the year 1839, Margaret removed from Groton, and, with her mother and family, took a house at Jamaica Plain, five miles from Boston. In November of the next year the family removed to Cambridge, and rented a house there, near their old home. In 1841, Margaret took rooms for the winter in town, retaining still the house in Cambridge. And from the day of leaving Groton, until the autumn of 1844, when she removed to New York, she resided in Boston, or its immediate vicinity. Boston was her social centre. There were the libraries, galleries, and concerts which she loved; there were her pupils and her friends; and there were her tasks, and the openings of a new career.

I have vaguely designated some of the friends with whom she was on terms of intimacy at the time when I was first acquainted with her. But the range of her talents required an equal compass in her society; and she gradually added a multitude of names to the list. She knew already all the active minds at Cambridge; and has left a record of one good interview she had with Allston. She now became intimate with Doctor Channing, and interested him to that point in some of her studies, that, at his request, she undertook to render some selections of German philosophy into English for him. But I believe this attempt was soon abandoned. She found a valuable friend in the late Miss Mary Rotch, of New Bedford, a woman of great strength of mind, connected with the Quakers not less by temperament than by birth, and possessing the best lights of that once spiritual sect. 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. The late Miss Susan Burley had many points of attraction for her, not only in her elegant studies, but also in the deep interest which that lady took in securing the highest culture for women. She was very well read, and, avoiding abstractions, knew how to help herself with examples and facts. A friendship that proved of great importance to the next years was that established with Mr. George Ripley; an accurate scholar, a man of character, and of eminent powers of conversation, and already then deeply engaged in plans of an expansive practical bearing, of which the first fruit was the little community which nourished for a few years at Brook Farm. Margaret presently became connected with him in literary labors, and, as long as she remained in this vicinity, kept up her habits of intimacy with the colonists of Brook Farm. At West-Roxbury, too, she knew and prized the heroic heart, the learning and wit of Theodore Parker, whose literary aid was, subsequently, of the first importance to her. She had an acquaintance, for many years,--subject, no doubt, to alternations of sun and shade,--with Mr. Alcott. There was much antagonism in their habitual views, but each learned to respect the genius of the other. She had more sympathy with Mr. Alcott's English friend, Charles Lane, an ingenious mystic, and bold experimenter in practical reforms, whose dexterity and temper in debate she frankly admired, whilst his asceticism engaged her reverence. Neither could some marked difference of temperament remove her from the beneficent influences of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who, by her constitutional hospitality to excellence, whether mental or moral, has made her modest abode for so many years the inevitable resort of studious feet, and a private theatre for the exposition of every question of letters, of philosophy, of ethics, and of art.

The events in Margaret's life, up to the year 1840, were few, and not of that dramatic interest which readers love. Of the few events of her bright and blameless years, how many are private, and must remain so. In reciting the story of an affectionate and passionate woman, the voice lowers itself to a whisper, and becomes inaudible. A woman in our society finds her safety and happiness in exclusions and privacies. She congratulates herself when she is not called to the market, to the courts, to the polls, to the stage, or to the orchestra. Only the most extraordinary genius can make the career of an artist secure and agreeable to her. Prescriptions almost invincible the female lecturer or professor of any science must encounter; and, except on points where the charities which are left to women as their legitimate province interpose against the ferocity of laws, with us a female politician is unknown. Perhaps this fact, which so dangerously narrows the career of a woman, accuses the tardiness of our civility, and many signs show that a revolution is already on foot.

Margaret had no love of notoriety, or taste for eccentricity, to goad her, and no weak fear of either. Willingly she was confined to the usual circles and methods of female talent. She had no false shame. Any task that called out her powers was good and desirable. She wished to live by her strength. She could converse, and teach, and write. She took private classes of pupils at her own house. She organized, with great success, a school for young ladies at Providence, and gave four hours a day to it, during two years. She translated Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, and published in 1839. In 1841, she translated the Letters of Gunderode and Bettine, and published them as far as the sale warranted the work. In 1843, she made a tour to Lake Superior and to Michigan, and published an agreeable narrative of it, called "Summer on the Lakes."

Apparently a more pretending, but really also a private and friendly service, she edited the "Dial," a quarterly journal, for two years from its first publication in 1840. She was eagerly solicited to undertake the charge of this work, which, when it began, concentrated a good deal of hope and affection. It had its origin in a club of speculative students, who found the air in America getting a little close and stagnant; and the agitation had perhaps the fault of being too secondary or bookish in its origin, or caught not from primary instincts, but from English, and still more from German books. The journal was commenced with much hope, and liberal promises of many coöperators. But the workmen of sufficient culture for a poetical and philosophical magazine were too few; and, as the pages were filled by unpaid contributors, each of whom had, according to the usage and necessity of this country, some paying employment, the journal did not get his best work, but his second best. Its scattered writers had not digested their theories into a distinct dogma, still less into a practical measure which the public could grasp; and the magazine was so eclectic and miscellaneous, that each of its readers and writers valued only a small portion of it. For these reasons it never had a large circulation, and it was discontinued after four years. But the Dial betrayed, through all its juvenility, timidity, and conventional rubbish, some sparks of the true love and hope, and of the piety to spiritual law, which had moved its friends and founders, and it was received by its early subscribers with almost a religious welcome. Many years after it was brought to a close, Margaret was surprised in England by very warm testimony to its merits; and, in 1848, the writer of these pages found it holding the same affectionate place in many a private bookshelf in England and Scotland, which it had secured at home. Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labor from those who served it, and from Margaret most of all. As editor, she received a compensation for the first years, which was intended to be two hundred dollars _per annum_, but which, I fear, never reached even that amount.

But it made no difference to her exertion. She put so much heart into it that she bravely undertook to open, in the Dial, the subjects which most attracted her; and she treated, in turn, Goethe, and Beethoven, the Rhine and the Romaic Ballads, the Poems of John Sterling, and several pieces of sentiment, with a spirit which spared no labor; and, when the hard conditions of journalism held her to an inevitable day, she submitted to jeopardizing a long-cherished subject, by treating it in the crude and forced article for the month. I remember, after she had been compelled by ill health to relinquish the journal into my hands, my grateful wonder at the facility with which she assumed the preparation of laborious articles, that might have daunted the most practised scribe.

But in book or journal she found a very imperfect expression of herself, and it was the more vexatious, because she was accustomed to the clearest and fullest. When, therefore, she had to choose an employment that should pay money, she consulted her own genius, as well as the wishes of a multitude of friends, in opening a class for conversation. In the autumn of 1839, she addressed the following letter, intended for circulation, to Mrs. George Ripley, in which her general design was stated:--

'My dear friend:--The advantages of a weekly meeting, for
conversation, might be great enough to repay the trouble of
attendance, if they consisted only in supplying a point of
union to well-educated and thinking women, in a city which,
with great pretensions to mental refinement, boasts, at
present, nothing of the kind, and where I have heard many, of
mature age, wish for some such means of stimulus and cheer,
and those younger, for a place where they could state their
doubts and difficulties, with a hope of gaining aid from the
experience or aspirations of others. And, if my office were
only to suggest topics, which would lead to conversation of
a better order than is usual at social meetings, and to
turn back the current when digressing into personalities or
common-places, so that what is valuable in the experience of
each might be brought to bear upon all, I should think the
object not unworthy of the effort.

'But my ambition goes much further. It is to pass in review
the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavor to
place them in due relation to one another in our minds. To
systematize thought, and give a precision and clearness in
which our sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because
they have so few inducements to test and classify what they
receive. To ascertain what pursuits are best suited to us, in
our time and state of society, and how we may make best use of
our means for building up the life of thought upon the life of
action.

'Could a circle be assembled in earnest, desirous to answer
the questions,--What were we born to do? and how shall we do
it?--which so few ever propose to themselves till their best
years are gone by, I should think the undertaking a noble one,
and, if my resources should prove sufficient to make me its
moving spring, I should be willing to give to it a large
portion of those coming years, which will, as I hope, be my
best. I look upon it with no blind enthusiasm, nor unlimited
faith, but with a confidence that I have attained a distinct
perception of means, which, if there are persons competent to
direct them, can supply a great want, and promote really high
objects. So far as I have tried them yet, they have met with
success so much beyond my hopes, that my faith will not easily
be shaken, nor my earnestness chilled. Should I, however, be
disappointed in Boston, I could hardly hope that such a plan
could be brought to bear on general society, in any other city
of the United States. But I do not fear, if a good beginning
can be made. I am confident that twenty persons cannot be
brought together from better motives than vanity or pedantry,
to talk upon such subjects as we propose, without finding
in themselves great deficiencies, which they will be very
desirous to supply.

'Should the enterprise fail, it will be either from
incompetence in me, or that sort of vanity in them which wears
the garb of modesty. On the first of these points, I need not
speak. I cannot be supposed to have felt so much the wants of
others, without feeling my own still more deeply. And, from
the depth of this feeling, and the earnestness it gave, such
power as I have yet exerted has come. Of course, those who are
inclined to meet me, feel a confidence in me, and should they
be disappointed, I shall regret it not solely or most on my
own account. I have not given my gauge without measuring my
capacity to sustain defeat. For the other, I know it is very
hard to lay aside the shelter of vague generalities, the art
of coterie criticism, and the "delicate disdains" of _good
society_, and fearlessly meet the light, even though it flow
from the sun of truth. Yet, as, without such generous courage,
nothing of value can be learned or done, I hope to see many
capable of it; willing that others should think their sayings
crude, shallow, or tasteless, if, by such unpleasant means,
they may attain real health and vigor, which need no aid from
rouge or candle-light, to brave the light of the world.

'Since I saw you, I have been told of persons who are desirous
to join the class, "if only they need not talk." I am so sure
that the success of the whole depends on conversation being
general, that I do not wish any one to come, who does not
intend, if possible, to take an active part. No one will be
forced, but those who do not talk will not derive the same
advantages with those who openly state their impressions, and
can consent to have it known that they learn by blundering, as
is the destiny of man here below. And general silence, or side
talks, would paralyze me. I should feel coarse and misplaced,
were I to harangue over-much. In former instances, I have been
able to make it easy and even pleasant, to twenty-five out of
thirty, to bear their part, to question, to define, to state,
and examine opinions. If I could not do as much now, I should
consider myself as unsuccessful, and should withdraw. But I
shall expect communication to be effected by degrees, and to
do a great deal myself at the first meetings. My method has
been to open a subject,--for instance, Poetry, as expressed
in--

External Nature;
The life of man;
Literature;
The fine arts;
or, The history of a nation to be studied in--
Its religious and civil institutions;
Its literature and arts;
The characters of its great men;

and, after as good a general statement as I know how to make,
select a branch of the subject, and lead others to give their
thoughts upon it. When they have not been successful in verbal
utterance of their thoughts, I have asked them to attempt it
in writing. At the next meeting, I would read these "skarts
of pen and ink" aloud, and canvass their adequacy, without
mentioning the names of the writers. I found this less
necessary, as I proceeded, and my companions attained greater
command both of thought and language; but for a time it was
useful, and may be now. Great advantage in point of discipline
may be derived from even this limited use of the pen.

'I do not wish, at present, to pledge myself to any course
of subjects. Generally, I may say, they will be such as
literature and the arts present in endless profusion. Should a
class be brought together, I should wish, first, to ascertain
our common ground, and, in the course of a few meetings,
should see whether it be practicable to follow out the design
in my mind, which, as yet, would look too grand on paper.

'Let us see whether there will be any organ, before noting
down the music to which it may give breath.'

Accordingly, a class of ladies assembled at Miss Peabody's rooms, in West Street, on the 6th November, 1839. Twenty-five were present, and the circle comprised some of the most agreeable and intelligent women to be found in Boston and its neighborhood. The following brief report of this first day's meeting remains:--

'Miss Fuller enlarged, in her introductory conversation, on
the topics which she touched in her letter to Mrs. Ripley.

'Women are now taught, at school, all that men are; they run
over, superficially, even _more_ studies, without being really
taught anything. When they come to the business of life, they
find themselves inferior, and all their studies have not given
them that practical good sense, and mother wisdom, and wit,
which grew up with our grandmothers at the spinning-wheel.
But, with this difference; men are called on, from a very
early period, to reproduce all that they learn. Their college
exercises, their political duties, their professional studies,
the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to
put to use what they have learned. But women learn without any
attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is for purposes
of display.

'It is to supply this defect,' Miss Fuller said, 'that these
conversations have been planned. She was not here to teach;
but she had had some experience in the management of such a
conversation as was now proposed; she meant to give her view
on each subject, and provoke the thoughts of others.

'It would be best to take subjects on which we know words, and
have vague impressions, and compel ourselves to define those
words. We should have, probably, mortifications to suffer;
but we should be encouraged by the rapid gain that comes from
making a simple and earnest effort for expression.'

Miss Fuller had proposed the Grecian Mythology as the subject of the first conversations, and now gave her reasons for the choice.

'It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is
serious, without being solemn, and without excluding any mode
of intellectual action; it is playful, as well as deep. It
is sufficiently wide, for it is a complete expression of the
cultivation of a nation. It is objective and tangible. It is,
also, generally known, and associated with all our ideas of
the arts.

'It originated in the eye of the Greek. He lived out of doors:
his climate was genial, his senses were adapted to it. He was
vivacious and intellectual, and personified all he beheld. He
_saw_ the oreads, naiads, nereids. Their forms, as poets and
painters give them, are the very lines of nature humanized, as
the child's eye sees faces in the embers or in the clouds.

'Other forms of the mythology, as Jupiter, Juno, Apollo,
are great instincts, or ideas, or facts of the internal
constitution, separated and personified.'

After exhibiting their enviable mental health, and rebutting the cavils of some of the speakers,--who could not bear, in Christian times, by Christian ladies, that heathen Greeks should be envied,--Miss Fuller declared,