Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli

Chapter 5: finding a friend.

He spoke with admiration of the Rev. W. Emerson, that only clergyman of all possible clergymen who eludes my acquaintance. But n'importe! I keep his image bright in my mind.

Fuller Mss. i. 17.

Again, she writes to another correspondent about the same time--

I cannot care much for preached elevation of sentiment unless I have seen it borne out by some proof, as in case of Mr. Emerson. It is so easy for a cultivated mind to excite itself with that tone!

Fuller Mss. III. 281.

More than a month later she writes to the Rev. F. H. Hedge, from Groton (November 30, 1834). [63]

With regard to Mr. Emerson, I had two reasons, if they may deserve to be so called, for wishing him to see my ‘Tasso’ [translated from Goethe]. It gratified me that a mind which had affected mine so powerfully should be dwelling on something of mine, even though 't were only some new dress for the thoughts of another. And I thought he might express something which would be useful to me. I should like very much his correction as well as yours, if it be not too much trouble.

Ms.

This clearly shows how powerfully Emerson was already influencing other minds while he was still a clergyman, and had not printed a word that is now included in his writings.

Before this, according to Mr. Emerson's own statement, he had heard Margaret Fuller praised by Dr. Hedge; and he thinks, but is not quite sure, that he first met her at Mrs. Farrar's in 1835.¹ In July, 1836, she visited him in Concord. He has left a record, in one of the most graphic passages contributed by him to her “Memoirs,” of impressions received from her at this first visit. I am glad to be able to place beside this a companion picture of her, during a subsequent visit — in a letter written by that gifted and high-minded woman, Elizabeth Hoar, of Concord, sister of the judge and the senator of that family, and one of the most intimate personal friends of Mr. Emerson. Miss Hoar had been betrothed to Charles Emerson at the time of his early death, and lived all her subsequent life in the close vicinity of his [64] more eminent brother, to whom she was as a younger sister. Being a constant visitor at his house, she was at times brought closely in contact with Margaret Fuller, o whom she thus records her judgment in a letter addressed to her friend, Miss H. L. Chappell, of Southington, Conn.

In a fragment of diary, without date, all too short, preserved among the Fuller papers, we have a glimpse at these Concord interviews; but not at the very outset; rather, after time had mellowed the companionship and made it less exciting, but more wholly unconscious. In describing [66] a long walk by Walden Pond, Margaret Fuller says of Mr. Emerson,

He is a much better companion than formerly,--for once he would talk obstinately through the walk, but now we can be silent and see things together. Fuller Mss. III. 165.

In another place she gives this striking glimpse of his personal appearance:

It was raining hard and quite cold — he had on his blue cloak, falling in large straight folds; in that he looks as if he had come to his immortality as a statue.

Fuller Mss. III. 183.

Elsewhere she describes him as reading to her passages of his poetry, and quotes some lines which I am unable to identify, while others appear in the appendix to the edition just published:--

Waldo and I have good meetings, though we stop at all our old places. But my expectations are moderate now; it is his beautiful presence that I prize, far more than our intercourse. He has been reading me his new poems and the others. At the end he asked me how I liked the ‘ little subjective twinkle all through.’ He has indeed set off the picture lively.

Lonely he sat, the men were strange,
The women all forbidden.

And,

Merge me in the brute universe
Or lift to some diviner dream.

And,

His loves were sharp, sharp pains.

And,

Content with gods or fools to live.
In the resolves of fate?] I acquiesce.
Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme.

[67]

And that he will no more plague himself with the mysteries of another sphere from his.

Fuller Mss. III. 175, 176.

Her visits to Concord not only established intimacy with Mr. Emerson, but with all the members of his family. She writes to her mother, during her first visit,

The baby here is beautiful. . . I play with him a good deal and he comes so natural after Dante and other poems. Fuller Mss. i. 83.

It has been my privilege to examine a long series of unpublished letters that passed thenceforward from Margaret Fuller to Emerson. Franker and truer letters never went from woman to man; they were written under all circumstances and from all places; in one case from his own library, while he was away. How much Mr. Emerson valued them is plain from the fact that in some cases where a letter is missing there is substituted [68] a copy in his handwriting. All are indorsed by him in his systematic way, with date and theme, and at first with the name “Miss S. M. Fuller;” then the more familiar “Margaret Fuller” takes its place. She in turn, beginning with remote and reverential phrases, grows gradually more intimate. In the first letter I have seen (September, 1836), she writes meekly from Boston, “My dear friend,--I may venture to say so, since you have subscribed yourself my friend,” --but in a year or two it becomes “Dear Waldo,” at least. In this first letter there is a phrase which shows the honest beginning of their friendship: “While I was with you,” she says, “you very justly corrected me for using too strong expressions on some subject. But there is no exaggeration in saying — I must be allowed to say — that I detest Mr. Robinson at this time,” --he being her Groton pastor who had twice invited Mr. Emerson to preach there while she was away from home. In this same letter she speaks of i “Nature,” then just published, which he had sent her, and which she and Miss Anna Barker had also mutually presented to each other. To “show Anna to Mr. Emerson” was just then one of her strong desires.

Soon the borrowing of books becomes a constant theme. On April 11, 1837, she returns him Goethe's letters to Merck and the first two volumes of those to Zelter, and writes, “I look to Concord as my Lethe and Eunoi after this purgatory of distracting petty tasks. I am sure you will [69] purify and strengthen me to enter the Paradise of thought once more.” In addressing Mrs. Emerson she sends “dear love to the sainted Lidian,” -who becomes simply Lidian in later messages. “Mrs. Emerson does not love me,” she says in one place, “more than I love her.”

On May 30, 1837, she returns to Emerson, Coleridge's “Literary remains,” which she has “ransacked pretty thoroughly,” and “The friend,” with which she “should never have done;” also a volume of Goethe and one of Scougal, and she asks him on the outside of the note what these two worthies will be likely to say to one another “as they journey side by side.” She begs to keep for summer two volumes of Milton, two of Degerando, the seventh and eighth of Goethe's Nachgelassene Werke, besides one volume of Jonson and one of Plutarch's “Morals.” She also subscribes for two copies of Carlyle's “Miscellanies.” Later she writes (November 25, 1839) to ask him “What is the ‘ Harleyan (sic) Miscellany ’ ?--an account of a library?” and says, “I thought to send Tennyson next time, but I cannot part with him, it must be for next pacquet (sic). I have been reading Milnes; he is rich in fine thoughts but not in fine poetry.”

One of the best passages in these letters of Margaret Fuller, a passage that has in it a flavor of Browning's imaginative wealth, is a little sketch by her of the melancholy position of a queen who has borne no heir to the throne. It is only by [70] way of prelude to a playful condolence with Mr. Emerson, followed by a very frank criticism:--

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; and the suggestion that Emerson may have lost, as well as gained, by a lifelong residence among scenes so soothing,--this is something of value, and perhaps no one else ventured to speak so frankly to the great leader of thought as did this feminine disciple. Nor can 1 remember to have seen elsewhere so much as a hint that the world might have been the better had some great combination of events wrenched him for a time from that ideal chimney-corner in Concord. Here one may easily differ from her; nevertheless, her suggestion is worth preserving.

At any rate, this was the tone and temper of her intercourse with the closest and most eminent [72] of her friends. Many other friendships she had, which are commemorated in the pages of her published “Memoirs,” and which, indeed, produced the book. Moreover, she had half a dozen friendships with women for every one she maintained with men, and yet made it a matter of conscience to keep all these intimacies apart from one another. She writes once to Emerson (July 5, 1840):

Do not think, because persons are intimate with me, that they know this or any of my other friends' secrets: I know how to keep relations. Ms.