Two years after, at seventeen, she writes: "I am studying Madame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and the Castilian ballads, with great delight.... I am engrossed in reading the elder Italian poets, beginning with Berni, from whom I shall proceed to Pulci and Politian." How almost infinitely above "beaus and dresses" was such intellectual work as this!
It was impossible for such a girl not to influence the mind of every person she met. At nineteen she became the warm friend of Rev. James Freeman Clarke, "whose friendship," he says, "was to me a gift of the G.o.ds.... With what eagerness did she seek for knowledge! What fire, what exuberance, what reach, grasp, overflow of thought, shone in her conversation!... And what she thus was to me, she was to many others.
Inexhaustible in power of insight, and with a good will "broad as ether," she could enter into the needs, and sympathize with the various excellences, of the greatest variety of characters. One thing only she demanded of all her friends, that they should not be satisfied with the common routine of life,--that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier, than had now attained."
Witty, learned, imaginative, she was conceded to be the best conversationist in any circle. She possessed the charm that every woman may possess,--appreciation of others, and interest in their welfare. This sympathy unlocked every heart to her. She was made the confidante of thousands. All cla.s.ses loved her. Now it was a serving girl who told Margaret her troubles and her cares; now it was a distinguished man of letters. She was always an inspiration. Men never talked idle, commonplace talk with her; she could appreciate the best of their minds and hearts, and they gave it. She was fond of social life, and no party seemed complete without her.
At twenty-two she began to study German, and in three months was reading with ease Goethe"s _Faust, Ta.s.so and Iphigenia_, Korner, Richter, and Schiller. She greatly admired Goethe, desiring, like him, "always to have some engrossing object of pursuit." Besides all this study she was teaching six little children, to help bear the expenses of the household.
The family at this time moved to Groton, a great privation for Margaret, who enjoyed and needed the culture of Boston society. But she says, "As, sad or merry, I must always be learning, I laid down a course of study at the beginning of the winter." This consisted of the history and geography of modern Europe, and of America, architecture, and the works of Alfieri, Goethe, and Schiller. The teaching was continued because her brothers must be sent to Harvard College, and this required money; not the first nor the last time that sisters have worked to give brothers an education superior to their own.
At last the const.i.tution, never robust, broke down, and for nine days Margaret lay hovering between this world and the next. The tender mother called her "dear lamb," and watched her constantly, while the stern father, who never praised his children, lest it might harm them, said, "My dear, I have been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you have any _faults._ You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do not know that you have a single fault."
"While Margaret recovered, the father was taken suddenly with cholera, and died after a two days" illness. He was sadly missed, for at heart he was devoted to his family. When the estate was settled, there was little left for each; so for Margaret life would be more laborious than ever. She had expected to visit Europe with Harriet Martineau, who was just returning home from a visit to this country, but the father"s death crushed this long-cherished and ardently-prayed-for journey. She must stay at home and work for others.
Books were read now more eagerly than ever,--_Sartor Resartus_, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Heine. But money must be earned. Ah! if genius could only develop in ease and prosperity. It rarely has the chance. The tree grows best when the dirt is oftenest stirred about the roots; perhaps the best in us comes only from such stirring.
Margaret now obtained a situation as teacher of French and Latin in Bronson Alcott"s school. Here she was appreciated by both master and pupils. Mr. Alcott said, "I think her the most brilliant talker of the day. She has a quick and comprehensive wit, a firm command of her thoughts, and a speech to win the ear of the most cultivated." She taught advanced cla.s.ses in German and Italian, besides having several private pupils.
Before this time she had become a valued friend of the Emerson family.
Mr. Emerson says, "Sometimes she stayed a few days, often a week, more seldom a month, and all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to catch the favorable hour in walking, riding, or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her.... The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory, and I, who knew her intimately for ten years, never saw her without surprise at her new powers."
She was pa.s.sionately fond of music and of art, saying, "I have been very happy with four hundred and seventy designs of Raphael in my possession for a week." She loved nature like a friend, paying homage to rocks and woods and flowers. She said, "I hate not to be beautiful when all around is so."
After teaching with Mr. Alcott, she became the princ.i.p.al teacher in a school at Providence, R.I. Here, as ever, she showed great wisdom both with children and adults. The little folks in the house were allowed to look at the gifts of many friends in her room, on condition that they would not touch them. One day a young visitor came, and insisted on taking down a microscope, and broke it. The child who belonged in the house was well-nigh heart-broken over the affair, and, though protesting her innocence, was suspected both of the deed and of falsehood. Miss Fuller took the weeping child upon her knee, saying, "Now, my dear little girl, tell me all about it; only remember that you must be careful, for I shall believe every word you say."
Investigation showed that the child thus confided in told the whole truth.
After two years in Providence she returned to Boston, and in 1839 began a series of parlor lectures, or "conversations," as they were called. This seemed a strange thing for a woman, when public speaking by her s.e.x was almost unknown. These talks were given weekly, from eleven o"clock till one, to twenty-five or thirty of the most cultivated women of the city. Now the subject of discussion was Grecian mythology; now it was fine arts, education, or the relations of woman to the family, the church, society, and literature. These meetings were continued through five winters, supplemented by evening "conversations," attended by both men and women. In these gatherings Margaret was at her best,--brilliant, eloquent, charming.
During this time a few gifted men, Emerson, Channing, and others, decided to start a literary and philosophical magazine called the _Dial_. Probably no woman in the country would have been chosen as the editor, save Margaret Fuller. She accepted the position, and for four years managed the journal ably, writing for it some valuable essays.
Some of these were published later in her book on _Literature and Art_. Her _Woman in the Nineteenth Century_, a learned and vigorous essay on woman"s place in the world, first appeared in part in the _Dial_. Of this work, she said, in closing it, "After taking a long walk, early one most exhilarating morning, I sat down to work, and did not give it the last stroke till near nine in the evening. Then I felt a delightful glow, as if I had put a good deal of my true life in it, and as if, should I go away now, the measure of my footprint would be left on the earth."
Miss Fuller had published, besides these works, two books of translations from the German, and a sketch of travel called _Summer on the Lakes_. Her experience was like that of most authors who are beginning,--some fame, but no money realized. All this time she was frail in health, overworked, struggling against odds to make a living for herself and those she loved. But there were some compensations in this life of toil. One person wrote her, "What I am I owe in large measure to the stimulus you imparted. You roused my heart with high hopes; you raised my aims from paltry and vain pursuits to those which lasted and fed the soul; you inspired me with a great ambition, and made me see the worth and the meaning of life."
William Hunt, the renowned artist, was looking in a book that lay on the table of a friend. It was Mrs. Jameson"s _Italian Painters._ In describing Correggio, she said he was "one of those superior beings of whom there are so few." Margaret had written on the margin, "And yet all might be such." Mr. Hunt said, "These words struck out a new strength in me. They revived resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a flint."
Margaret was now thirty-four. The sister was married, the brothers had finished their college course, and she was about to accept an offer from the _New York Tribune_ to become one of its constant contributors, an honor that few women would have received. Early in December, 1844, Margaret moved to New York and became a member of Mr. Greeley"s family. Her literary work here was that of, says Mr.
Higginson, "the best literary critic whom America has yet seen."
Sometimes her reviews, like those on the poetry of Longfellow and Lowell, were censured, but she was impartial and able. Society opened wide its doors to her, as it had in Boston. Mrs. Greeley became her devoted friend, and their little son "Pickie," five years old, the idol of Mr. Greeley, her restful playmate.
A year and a half later an opportunity came for Margaret to go to Europe. Now, at last, she would see the art-galleries of the old world, and places rich in history, like Rome. Still there was the trouble of scanty means, and poor health from overwork. She said, "A n.o.ble career is yet before me, if I can be unimpeded by cares. If our family affairs could now be so arranged that I might be tolerably tranquil for the next six or eight years, I should go out of life better satisfied with the page I have turned in it than I shall if I must still toil on."
After two weeks on the ocean, the party of friends arrived in London, and Miss Fuller received a cordial welcome. Wordsworth, now seventy-six, showed her the lovely scenery of Rydal Mount, pointing out as his especial pride, his avenue of hollyhocks--crimson, straw-color, and white. De Quincey showed her many courtesies. Dr.
Chalmers talked eloquently, while William and Mary Howitt seemed like old friends. Carlyle invited her to his home. "To interrupt him," she said, "is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you down."
In Paris, Margaret attended the Academy lectures, saw much of George Sand, waded through melting snow at Avignon to see Laura"s tomb, and at last was in Italy, the country she had longed to see. Here Mrs.
Jameson, Powers, and Greenough, and the Brownings and Storys, were her warm friends. Here she settled down to systematic work, trying to keep her expenses for six months within four hundred dollars. Still, when most cramped for means herself, she was always generous. Once, when living on a mere pittance, she loaned fifty dollars to a needy artist.
In New York she gave an impecunious author five hundred dollars to publish his book, and, of course, never received a dollar in return.
Yet the race for life was wearing her out. So tired was she that she said, "I should like to go to sleep, and be born again into a state where my young life should not be prematurely taxed."
Meantime the struggle for Italian unity was coming to its climax.
Mazzini and his followers were eager for a republic. Pius IX. had given promises to the Liberal party, but afterwards abandoned it, and fled to Gaeta. Then Mazzini turned for help to the President of the French Republic, Louis Napoleon, who, in his heart, had no love for republics, but sent an army to reinstate the Pope. Rome, when she found herself betrayed, fought like a tiger. Men issued from the workshops with their tools for weapons, while women from the housetops urged them on. One night over one hundred and fifty bombs were thrown into the heart of the city.
Margaret was the friend of Mazzini, and enthusiastic for Roman liberty. All those dreadful months she ministered to the wounded and dying in the hospitals, and was their "saint," as they called her.
But there was another reason why Margaret Fuller loved Italy.
Soon after her arrival in Rome, as she was attending vespers at St.
Peter"s with a party of friends, she became separated from them.
Failing to find them, seeing her anxious face, a young Italian came up to her, and politely offered to a.s.sist her. Unable to regain her friends, Angelo Ossoli walked with her to her home, though he could speak no English, and she almost no Italian. She learned afterward that he was of a n.o.ble and refined family; that his brothers were in the Papal army, and that he was highly respected.
After this he saw Margaret once or twice, when she left Rome for some months. On her return, he renewed the acquaintance, shy and quiet though he was, for her influence seemed great over him. His father, the Marquis Ossoli, had just died, and Margaret, with her large heart, sympathized with him, as she alone knew how to sympathize. He joined the Liberals, thus separating himself from his family, and was made a captain of the Civic Guard.
Finally he confessed to Margaret that he loved her, and that he "must marry her or be miserable." She refused to listen to him as a lover, said he must marry a younger woman,--she was thirty-seven, and he but thirty,--but she would be his friend. For weeks he was dejected and unhappy. She debated the matter with her own heart. Should she, who had had many admirers, now marry a man her junior, and not of surpa.s.sing intellect, like her own? If she married him, it must be kept a secret till his father"s estate was settled, for marriage with a Protestant would spoil all prospect of an equitable division.
Love conquered, and she married the young Marquis Ossoli in December, 1847. He gave to Margaret the kind of love which lasts after marriage, veneration of her ability and her goodness. "Such tender, unselfish love," writes Mrs. Story, "I have rarely before seen; it made green her days, and gave her an expression of peace and serenity which before was a stranger to her. When she was ill, he nursed and watched over her with the tenderness of a woman. No service was too trivial, no sacrifice too great for him. "How sweet it is to do little things for you," he would say."
To her mother, Margaret wrote, though she did not tell her secret, "I have not been so happy since I was a child, as during the last six weeks."
But days of anxiety soon came, with all the horrors of war. Ossoli was constantly exposed to death, in that dreadful siege of Rome. Then Rome fell, and with it the hopes of Ossoli and his wife. There would be neither fortune nor home for a Liberal now--only exile. Very sadly Margaret said goodbye to the soldiers in the hospitals, brave fellows whom she honored, who in the midst of death itself, would cry "Viva l"
Italia!"
But before leaving Rome, a day"s journey must be made to Rieta, at the foot of the Umbrian Apennines. And for what? The most precious thing of Margaret"s life was there,--her baby. The fair child, with blue eyes and light hair like her own, had already been named by the people in the house, Angelino, from his beauty. She had always been fond of children. Emerson"s Waldo, for whom _Threnody_ was written was an especial favorite; then "Pickie," Mr. Greeley"s beautiful boy, and now a new joy had come into her heart, a child of her own. She wrote to her mother: "In him I find satisfaction, for the first time, to the deep wants of my heart. Nothing but a child can take the worst bitterness out of life, and break the spell of loneliness. I shall not be alone in other worlds, whenever Eternity may call me.... I wake in the night,--I look at him. He is so beautiful and good, I could die for him!"
When Ossoli and Margaret reached Rieta, what was their horror to find their child worn to a skeleton, half starved through the falsity of a nurse. For four weeks the distressed parents coaxed him back to life, till the sweet beauty of the rounded face came again, and then they carried him to Florence, where, despite poverty and exile, they were happy.
"In the morning," she says, "as soon as dressed, he signs to come into our room; then draws our curtain with his little dimpled hand, kisses me rather violently, and pats my face.... I feel so refreshed by his young life, and Ossoli diffuses such a power and sweetness over every day, that I cannot endure to think yet of our future.... It is very sad we have no money, we could be so quietly happy a while. I rejoice in all Ossoli did; but the results, in this our earthly state, are disastrous, especially as my strength is now so impaired. This much I hope--in life or death, to be no more separated from Angelino."
Margaret"s friends now urged her return to America. She had nearly finished a history of Rome in this trying time, 1848, and could better attend to its publication in this country. Ossoli, though coming to a land of strangers, could find something to help, support the family.
To save expense, they started from Leghorn, May 17, 1850, in the _Elizabeth_, a sailing vessel, though Margaret dreaded the two months"
voyage, and had premonitions of disaster. She wrote: "I have a vague expectation of some crisis,--I know not what. But it has long seemed that, in the year 1850, I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, when I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn.... I shall embark, praying fervently that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief."
For a few days all went well on shipboard; and then the n.o.ble Captain Hasty died of small-pox, and was buried at sea. Angelino took this dread disease, and for a time his life was despaired of, but he finally recovered, and became a great pet with the sailors. Margaret was putting the last touches to her book. Ossoli and young Sumner, brother of Charles, gave each other lessons in Italian and English, and thus the weeks went by.
On Thursday, July 18, after two months, the _Elizabeth_ stood off the Jersey coast, between Cape May and Barnegat. Trunks were packed, good nights were spoken, and all were happy, for they would be in New York on the morrow. At nine that night a gale arose; at midnight it was a hurricane; at four o"clock, Friday morning, the ship struck Fire Island beach. The pa.s.sengers sprung from their berths. "We must die!"
said Sumner to Mrs. Hasty. "Let us die calmly, then!" was the response of the widow of the captain.
At first, as the billows swept over the vessel, Angelino, wet and afraid, began to cry; but his mother held him closely in her arms and sang him to sleep. n.o.ble courage on a sinking ship! The Italian girl who had come with them was in terror; but after Ossoli prayed with her, she became calm. For hours they waited anxiously for help from the sh.o.r.e. They could see the life-boat, and the people collecting the spoils which had floated thither from the ship, but no relief came.
One sailor and another sprang into the waves and saved themselves.
Then Sumner jumped overboard, but sank.
One of the sailors suggested that if each pa.s.senger sit on a plank, holding on by ropes, they would attempt to push him or her to land.
Mrs. Hasty was the first to venture, and after being twice washed off, half-drowned, reached the sh.o.r.e. Then Margaret was urged, but she hesitated, unless all three could be saved. Every moment the danger increased. The crew were finally ordered "to save themselves," but four remained with the pa.s.sengers. It was useless to look longer to the people on sh.o.r.e for help, though it was now past three o"clock,--twelve hours since the vessel struck.
Margaret had finally been induced to try the plank. The steward had taken Angelino in his arms, promising to save him or die with him, when a strong sea swept the forecastle, and all went down together.
Ossoli caught the rigging for a moment, but Margaret sank at once.
When last seen, she was seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white nightdress, with her hair fallen loose upon her shoulders. Angelino and the steward were washed upon the beach twenty minutes later, both dead, though warm. Margaret"s prayer was answered,--that they "might go together, and that the anguish might be brief."