That evening, in the twilight, we lingered longer than usual. We had lost much of the language with which we had begun our courtship, I noticed ruefully - we were no longer the emanations of the Divine, no longer the New Man & the New Woman - but were now only a bear & a goose. He sighed, & said something in Polish. I said, What? He said, "Does G.o.d want us in fancy clothes, all dressed up for Church? Or does He want us to come to Him naked as we were born, hair in tangles, tired & scented by the bed-clothes."
Suspecting an allegory, I remained silent. Mish said, I will not say explained, that he had left the priests but not the Church. (He often visited a small Roman church in the lieu, but only when the ma.s.s was not being said, & he would leave if a priest spoke to him.) Did you read any of my dispatches from Paris at this time, dear Sophie? Could you have guessed, amidst my ponderings on the new Europe & my critiques of the paintings, the costumes, the music, & the literature of my host country, that so monumental - & so very ordinary - a love affair was unfolding behind my words?
[blot] What ails this ink? 23 June I have borrowed an extra dram of ink from the captain"s desk, as mine seems to have got stiff from salt. We are in quiet seas, with a good wind, & all aboard are cheerful since my Nino"s recovery is a.s.sured. Today he has again been toddling about the deck, like a puppy-dog among the sailors" legs - amazed tho" I am by the speed with which he has regained his health, I nonetheless insisted he lie down for a nap & he sleeps within my sight.
My feet are propped up on a crate of fruit. If we wipe each lemon & orange daily with a dry cloth we can forestall the mould. The smell is heavenly, & I am sucking on an orange as I write.
I come to a difficult part of my story. From Paris we took the stage to Lyons, then a barge down the Rhone - tho" the accommodations were rude, they were not uncomfortable. We then waited a few days in Ma.r.s.eilles (Rebecca had a stomach trouble there) for the packet boat, which we took on its "local" stops along the coast, first to Genoa & then at last to Rome. Rome in April was a miracle of light & joy, I felt I had come home at last & I will not tell of my visit to Mazzini"s mother in Genoa except to say that she was a grand & kind creature, & that somehow I think she guessed my secret. My secret was that I was with child, & I had never felt such joy & such fear - a bear cub, to be ours! - (Tho" quickly I tell you, it was not to be.) We left Rome for the north in late April. Altho" my money was thin, & I had depended on the Springs" great generosity for many of my expenses, I persuaded them to leave me in Venice - they were to travel on to Germany as I would continue my Northern Tour of Italy. - I had written to Mish, I was so terribly anxious to see him & consult as to what we must do - in May I hurried from Milan to Geneva, & thence to Gren.o.ble (oh! the diligences! in the late spring snows!) to meet him within France"s borders, as he could not safely leave his adopted country of exile.
Was it the strain of my journey over the Alps? Was it the shock & joy of seeing him again? The new life left me that night, as if my own self were being pumped away from me, soon the hotel bed was a lake of blood, he found me a doctor -.
I mercifully have forgotten much. In two days" time I could walk again. As if I wanted to walk again - I was struck down by the loss of this precious thing - the loss of Motherhood itself it seemed, & this fruit of our love. I was wrung dry of love, of hope, indeed of all feeling. I thought G.o.d had left me, that I was a fallen woman. For the first & only time I wondered if I was being punished for my sins. (Oh, but in time I realized it was not a punishment - something more complicated - not a blessing, but perhaps a preparation?) I shall never forget the day of our parting - Mish sad, almost stupefied by his sadness, holding my hand as we sat on a cold bench in a little park, Jardin de Quelque"chose - I remember the names of nothing from Gren.o.ble, I rejoice that I will never see that horrible town again.
For some time we talked, almost idly, of the Divine. I told him how dear George Ripley had enlarged my thinking years ago when he insisted that the Revealed Truth of the Gospels does not require a belief in the miraculous & that all of the events of Christ"s life may be explained by science. Mish was indignant in defense of miracles.
Very gently, I told him of a man I had just met in Rome - a young man, Ossoli, of good family, of his republican sympathies, of his kindness. Of what the Springs & all who had met him thought of his character & his sincerity in his addresses to me.
Mish said, "It is as I imagined for you - as I hoped. Since we cannot continue - this is what I would have wished. If he is worthy, only if he is worthy."
"You give me away so easily, then?"
"Not easily but I will not lie - it is a relief, to know that you will be cared for. He has money? He will help you continue your work?"
"He admires me, but he cannot read a word of English. He - it is odd, it is perhaps the Italian way - he seems almost to worship me, as he would the Madonna or his own mother."
"Ah. Then you must never tell him."
How did I continue on my travels, & continue to work, after this parting? What tears & what dismal future I saw, all my golden dream of life with my Great Polish Bear sunk in a pit of tar.
I will never know how it is that the human body can continue, a soldier answering the winded horn of Necessity, tho" the spirit has lain down to die. & Yet within a week or two it was as Mish had predicted - travelling throughout the north of Italy without a chaperone, I spoke more to the people, my conversation improved, I was the American Lady, or more often if inaccurately, the Inglese, an oddity & nonetheless a personage, wherever I went. I made many a friend in the villages & cities, strangers eager to talk to me & feed me & offer me a room for the night with their families - laughing or solemn, as their education had prepared them, at the sight of a copy of my American newspaper. I think it was stranger to them that I was an American & a journalist than that I was a woman. The city sophisticates I met included Horace Greenough & Madame Arconati, the Storys, the painter Hicks & alia.
By October, I was ready to return to Rome, to see again my new ardent friend there, & to make a new chapter in my life.
I cannot write any more. I will see if my Nino is awake & take him up on deck for fresh air.
24 June Always, always money! The men are arguing about their pay, who gets what share if the marble we carry is sold at such a price, who deserves what, who is working harder, what the late captain promised -! My poor husband, frightened by loud talk, by anything loud, retires to the cabin to brood. He is in the bunk behind me as I write - not asleep, but perfectly still & curled up like a mouse under the rug. Nino is with the cook, & Mrs Hasty keeps them both in hand. It appears that Celesta is growing fond of one of the Italian sailors.
A History of My Life"s Economies I am born in 1810, the eldest of nine children, in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. My ancestors are a muddle of Tories & Colonial Rebels, agitatingly always in politics as well as business & farming. My father, Timothy Fuller, was so eager never to shrink from a fight that he was known to start them with no provocation whatsoever. His marriage to my mother was a love match. It was not economically expedient, as he was a politically ambitious lawyer & she came from an altogether humbler & quieter family, the Cranes. His eventual rise to State Senator & then to Representative to the Congress of the United States cost more than these positions paid into the family coffers tho" he continued his legal practice.
My little sister Julia"s death in 1814 (she was 2 years of age) was an emotional expense. I was not aware of things in terms of cost at the time. Life has been eager to educate me in such economies since. As the number of children grew, we occupied a large house in Cambridgeport & when Father went to Washington for many months of the year we lived comfortably but also sparingly. In winter Mother set our beds around the chimney at night, explaining that even sticks of wood & coals were costly so we must warm one another.
I read everything. Father had trained me from the age of 3 to read English, Greek, & Latin. Later I acquired German, Italian, French, Hebrew. I read Schiller & understood the words long before I understood the meaning. I had head-aches from the age of 5 & occasional convulsions from the age of 13 tho" my health never impeded my studies if I remembered to take air & vigorous long walks.
At the age of 9 years I am sent to day cla.s.ses at the Port School. It costs $12 for the term. I show some improvement in penmanship under the writing master, Mr Gould. From him I learn that ink from the shop is a luxury but that we can mix our own with linseed oil, chimney soot & pine spirits.
At the age of 11 I am sent to live with a family friend in Boston & attend Dr Park"s School during the week. I take top honors & do not make friends. This costs $15 for a term. I also attend dancing school, twice a week, $1 a week.
For reasons perhaps related to the cost, Father removes me from the school at Christmas & brings me home to live with Mother. In a make-shift school-room in the back parlor, I begin to teach my brothers & my sister Ellen how to read & write. At 13, I accompany Mother to my first afternoon parties. I seem to remember that two new dresses were required for each season. I do not remember the exact numbers, but estimate each dress made by a dressmaker for hire is nearly $5. Those we make at home cost considerably less. I am clever with my hands & become the family seamstress tho" Mother is unhappy when I make myself a dress of crimson satin which she says is unsuitable for my age. When Father comes home from Washington he forbids me to wear it in company.
In 1824 I am sent to board at Groton School in the country. For some reason I never hear the cost. It is possible that Father traded my education expenses for some political or family favor once shown the owner, Miss Prescott, as this school is in the town where Father grew up & knows everyone. In 1826, Father buys a grand "palace" on Dana Street in Cambridge. The President & Mrs John Quincy Adams come to dinner.
The baby of the family, Eddie, dies in my arms from a fever in September of 1829.
By 1831, Father"s political career is unsteady but he says that his legal practice still clears him $20 a day. Nevertheless he decides to retire & become a gentleman farmer; he sells the Dana Street house for $8,000. As the family is temporarily homeless, I am sent to live with my Uncle Abraham in his Brattle House, a mansion-cage. I have a mystical vision of the All & resolve to forget the self & selfishness. It is clear that I will need to earn money to support the family now.
Father buys a 28-acre farm in Groton. It costs too much (I never know exactly how much) & will require the employment of himself, his wife, & his now 7 children to make it prosper. I do all the sewing & work in the dairy with Mother & we save school costs by my teaching Ellen & my brothers. I look for work translating in the hopes of earning extra money.
Upon Father"s death, in 1836, we learn that the estate is worth nearly $20,000 but that most of it is tied up in the land. Mother cannot continue to run the farm by herself but with the boys & with two tenants to help, she can get by. Once the Uncles sort it all out, my portion is less than $1,500, not even enough to finance a trip I had hoped to take with friends to Europe. (I was going by a calculation offered by a knowledgeable friend, that it would cost $5 a day, with an additional "cushion" of $500 for unforeseen expenses.) At the advice of Harriet Martineau, whom I have met through my Boston friends, I embark on a biography of Goethe. It is around this time that I first meet you, my little friend! & All your wonderful Peabody clan: Your fine mother & sisters & dozens of friends as well. Meanwhile, I have taken courage from the example of your sister Elizabeth, who hosts "Conversations" in Boston, lecture-cla.s.ses for ladies, for which she charges $15 a "series" or "term." By moving to Boston & living with an aunt, & with Elizabeth"s kind tutelage, I am able to do the same. With a combination of German tutoring & Conversation cla.s.ses I acquire 25 students! About half my income I send home to Mother. Through the help of Elizabeth & of Mr Emerson, I am able to sell three literary reviews to Boston magazines. ($9!) I am "launched."
At the same time, Mr Alcott opens his Temple School in the upper floors of a Masonic Temple in Boston. I teach languages there in the mornings - and my other job is to record as secretary Mr Alcott"s own "Conversations on the Gospels" with the young students. It becomes clear after the first few days that for prudence"s sake I need to stop writing down what he says & what the children reply. He is a large-minded man but he seems to have a knack for making trouble.
He does, in spite of my discretion; students are withdrawn & the school is shut down after one year. I am offered another teaching post, in Providence, at the handsome annual salary of $1,000 but hope I need not take it. I certainly can support myself on my private pupils & am eager to make progress on my Goethe biography. Alas in the Greater World finances crumble; I see my first "economic slough," & Mother & the boys need my money if they are to be tutored & go on to College. I take the job at the Greene Street School in Providence.
Boarding with the mother of a colleague & teaching in Providence, I am in exile. Providence might as well be Borneo. Letters from Mr E, Caroline, & a few other friends are my sustenance. I teach Latin, composition, elocution, natural history, ethics & the New Testament to 60 pupils. (Twice the 30 I was originally promised.) I try to celebrate my exile by taking advantage of solitude: In the evenings I work on my life of Goethe & on a translation of Eckmann"s Conversations With Goethe, which I hope to sell to a Boston publisher.
I am privately convinced that the Uncles are preventing Mother from selling the farm - if she did she could move back to Cambridge, which she would prefer. Also the sale of the farm would free my brothers to earn their own money for their studies. The Uncles say that the economic crisis of the country forbids the sale of the farm. Meanwhile they make threats to Mother that they will take her boys away & send them to live with wealthy relatives. I write to her that I will never let this happen.
In August, when I am on vacation from teaching, I spend some days in Concord with the Emersons; on August 31, 1837, I hear his Phi Beta Kappa Address, our "intellectual Declaration of Independence," in the First Parish Church of Cambridge. I discover that, by virtue of my a.s.sociation with Mr E, Mr Alcott, & others, I along with they have been dubbed "Transcendentalists" in the journals. This term of derogation (suggesting as it does a denial of Christian principles) shocks both enemies & friends sufficiently that my dear companion Caroline, who was to have come to Providence with me for the winter term to study at the school as a special student, is prevented by her parents from so doing.
This is both a personal & an economic blow as I was to have received $28 for her tutelage.
Uncle Abraham releases some funds from the estate to allow schooling only for Arthur & Lloyd in the fall. My sister Ellen comes to me in Providence to study with me privately, & Mother visits me as well. We are only a little crowded in my one room as I spend most of my day at the school. Meanwhile I embark on teaching weekly evening cla.s.ses in German. This money is all for Mother.
29 June (or is it 30?) I have lost the thread these several days. Sea-sickness, mild for me & more p.r.o.nounced in the cases of Mrs Hasty & my husband. In the last two days the winds righted themselves & all felt better, but by then it had become imperative we address the matter of the lice. Mrs Hasty & I set up a sheep-shearing station & cut the hair of all the men who would allow it, close to the scalp, & then we greased everyone with pork fat. Poor little Nino cried at the smell - it was fierce - & Then Mrs Hasty & Celesta & I combed & greased one another"s long hair & braided the tresses & pinned them up. Two days having pa.s.sed, with the aid of the cook"s stove we set up our station again, this time to wash away the grease - along with the dead lice & their eggs - from our heads, & the bed-linens, all! Two more days for this ch.o.r.e! & An extra set of sails strung across the decks! It is to be hoped we shall not have to go through this tedious & smelly exercise again this voyage. I am not sure the men would agree to it again in any case.
30 June No longer scratching, I return to my financial reckoning: A gift of friendship & a savings of summer expenses! In 1838, the Emersons invite me to spend my three summer months with them in Concord. I cannot say enough about the recuperation I experience in these blissful months, free from immediate money troubles & solaced at all times by the friendship, instruction, & conversation of Mr E. Since Henry Th.o.r.eau is never far from their house himself (working as handy-man for the house-hold & general poetic interlocutor for Mr E) I get to know him well; he has an independent philosophy about Economy that he tested by two years of living in a cabin, scratching beans from the field & pulling fish from the pond.
Come the fall, our family finances are worsening. My brother Eugene has had to leave law school. Only Arthur, enrolled at preparatory school in Waltham, can be educated this year outside the home. Mother at last is able to sell the Groton farm. I sell two Goethe poems in translation. Total income from poems, my own & in translation, thus far: $3.50.
Things are very confusing in these months: I become exhausted by teaching, I leave the school at the end of a year & a half. I go home to Groton (where the farm is sold but the family may stay on for a few months) & work on my Eckmann translation, finally giving it to my publisher, Mr George Ripley, with a long essay on Goethe"s work & life - this is the last I ever see of my "biography," alas! - as a preface. The book is praised, my essay is lauded, but it never sells well enough to repay the publishing costs & I do not see, as they say, "one thin dime" for all my labors.
April, 1839: Mother & the family are settled into a large but modest house in Jamaica Plain, five miles or so from the center of Cambridge, where Mother plans to take in boarders. The Emersons ask me to live with them through the summer. Relief from the immediate need to earn money is a great balm; my health is again restored in the Concord woods & fields.
& It is this summer that I first try a vegetary diet, hoping at one & the same time to train my body for higher thought & to learn to save income (in the future, when I am not a guest at a sumptuous board) by not eating meat. Henry Th.o.r.eau tells me about roasting a wood-chuck & eating the meat half-raw, I think to see if I will scream but instead I solemnly quote from the Georgics, where Virgil sings of the gifts of the earth, "Munera verstra cano ..." & Henry smiles sweetly as one defeated.
Mr E thinks I am wrong-headed & mightily fulminates against my "Hindoo" practices, but Lidian joins me in the vegetary regimen for nearly a month & claims to feel freer in her mind. We both "lapse" together & laugh at our newly voracious appet.i.te for fowl, ham, &c, but I had mastered a salutary lesson in surviving on beans & corn & greens & fruit should the time come again when it would be expedient or necessary.
July the 1st Cont: I am quite entertained by this "autobiography in dollars & cents" tho" I will probably spare you some of these pages dear Sophia. Soon we will return to the "autobiography of the heart" on which I initially embarked.
Quickly, then: When I left Concord to live with Mother at the end of the summer, I hatched a project with Elizabeth who would sponsor my Conversations - as you well know who were in most faithful attendance. (Had you met your princely Mr Hawthorne yet? I cannot recall.) My Conversations support me for some months in the winter & spring of 1839a1840. My first series earned me $200, & I doubled the price for the second series so was now earning nearly what my Providence salary had paid. The cost to me was an invariable head-ache, enough to fell me for two days afterwards; but I kept the work going for five years & had over 200 students during that time.
Meanwhile Mr E had offered me the editor"s post at The Dial, where I began work in 1840. Subscriptions sold at $3. Contributors were paid so little that I ended up writing most of the copy myself for some issues. I was paid nothing & I never labored harder at anything, before or since. (& Some money, & my as yet only dimly seen future, arrived through this as well: I wrote "The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men, Woman versus Women," that Mr Greeley of the Tribune offered to publish as a book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century - & which, when it came out at last in 1846, went into editions world-wide with seven translations, became my calling-card everywhere I went in Europe ... & from which I earned the only money I ever made from a book thus far - $85!) The summer of 1843 I took a long trip to the Great Lakes with friends & wrote the book Summer on the Lakes, which eventually was published but from which, again, I earned no dividends.
By the end of 1844 I was finished with the Conversations & done with the Dial, which struggled along for a year after I left it & then collapsed in obedience to the market-place tho" Mr E swore he did not lose more money by it than he could afford. Mr Greeley pressed me to come to New York & write for his Tribune with an offer so tempting - as it seemed to me - to write essays on literature, the theatre, the conditions of women & the poor, reporting or thoughtful, as I liked - to write 250 articles, at $5 each, in a year - & to save much that I earned by living as a guest in his home, a "country" farm in Turtle Bay only a few miles north of the city. $1, 250 for a year"s work! A princely sum!
Oh what a year ensued. To earn my salary & write an article nearly every day, in a house-hold where I was chastised for my personal habits, including & most importantly, drinking tea! The Greeleys had long since given up eating meat - & I was glad of my ability to be abstemious in this regard - but they also, on the grounds of both health & spirit, forbade themselves a host of other foodstuffs, including fish, tea, coffee, sherry, honey, white sugar, eggs, cuc.u.mbers, & pepper & nutmeg. I rebelled to the extent of insisting on my tea & also kept a private stock of honey & eggs in my room. I was more sociable than I might otherwise have been in that year, angling by the rushing stream of society for any invitation to dine that might come my way, sometimes at James Nathan"s hotel, & was able thereby to get a substantial meal perhaps one day a week. It was during this year that Mother told me she no longer needed my reg"lar remittances, as the older boys were able to pitch in & with Ellen"s help she was able to keep boarders in the Jamaica Plain house.
One more financial note from this time: When Mr Nathan departed for Europe, he entrusted to my keeping his enormous Newfoundland dog, Josy. She promptly killed two chickens belonging to the Greeleys" neighbor (thereby interrupting my egg-supply & requiring my out-of-pocket replacement of the fowl), so I employed their boy to feed the dog. Her enormous appet.i.te required such a quant.i.ty of horse-meat & grain-mast that the whole cost me nearly $2 a week! When at last my urgent query when Mr Nathan would return to reclaim his Josy was answered by him with the suggestion that I turn her loose because animals can fend for themselves, you may imagine that what little regard I had left for Mr Nathan"s heart was crumbled into dust.
Happily Josy was soon placed with a prosperous family which boasted three romping little girls, at a country estate up the river.
Another thing I learned at this time: Discretion can be expensive tho" candor costs more. Discretion costs at most such trifles as the hire of a hansom & a slight sense of shame; candor costs the earth. The Greeleys knew nearly nothing of my friendship with Mr Nathan & moreover I felt it wise not to speak of my frequent dining with any friends, as the first such occasion resulted in a quizzing such as you cannot imagine, as to what exactly I had eaten - with such a hand-wringing about the duck, & the berry-sauce & the joint & the peppered turnips, the cakes & creams, & the claret -!
My obligation of writing copy for the Tribune cost me some friendships in that time. Caroline, & Mr E, & a dozen or more of my dearest correspondents could not understand that I no longer had the leisure to pour forth my thoughts privately on the page, as all such thoughts were now claimed by the public sphere. Well I felt from Up North the cold mutterings that I had become a frivolous city scribbler & had succ.u.mbed to the vulgar blandishments of the market-place.
Perhaps because I never felt any diminution of your regard, dear Sophie - perhaps because so much of what we felt for one another was wordless - & was simply, as the poet Herbert has written of an even deeper connexion, "something understood" - that I cherish our friendship through all that has happened in these years. I see your dear face, silently listening as Elizabeth & I talked into the early morning. I feel your hand in mine as I guided you along the river path when you were with child. & I remember how often, in those first months of your marriage, when Nathaniel would take me on one arm & you on the other, & we three would sally forth into the Concord evening - how I loved you both, & loved your love for one another!
I must not be distracted by sentimental tears; my tale of dollars is nearly done. I had told everyone I knew that I wished to go to Europe. Mr Greeley, tho" unable he said to pay my expenses, would be interested in commissioning me to write regularly for the Tribune. Marcus & Rebecca Spring proposed themselves as my saviors & companions, as they had a plan to bring their young son to be educated in England for a year while they visited the Continent. They would pay my pa.s.sage to England if I would consent to tutor their boy on the voyage to prepare him for the rigors of an English school. With what I had saved & sums from a range of friends & a small advance from Mr Greeley with a promise to pay twice the rate he had paid me before - $10 a column! - I was able to ama.s.s my supply of $2,000 & so we embarked.
Alas there has not been a moment in the last four years in which money was far from my mind. Mr Greeley paid me but not always quickly & once the Springs had left me on my own in Italy I was bereft of my accountant Marcus & his habit of advancing me funds until money from New York arrived. For the first time I needed to apply to Mother for help, & from time to time as well my brothers, Mr E, & other old friends sent a "donation" to the "cause" of my bed & board. For many weeks in Rome I kept an "economies" note-book in which I entered every purchase, as dear Henry Th.o.r.eau taught me once - & by eating only bread & fruit, & allowing friends to buy me coffee, I was able to live on less than one dollar a day, including rent. Fortunately I was often taken into the homes of people we met for dinner & during the siege itself most everyone shared what little was to be had. (Twice I used my payments from Mr Greeley just to buy hospital supplies.) My husband"s family had land & property once upon a time & while Giovanni"s father was still alive he had some small income. The Ossoli family are of the "Papal Aristocracy," so his two elder brothers, following the family tradition of Vatican service, were soldiers of the Papal Guard. Giovanni, with his much older sister (more like a mama to him since his own mother"s early death), had stayed at home to care for their long-ill & lingering father. The anger in the family when Giovanni joined the Civil Guard & spoke with revolutionary fervor! I met him when he had just done so, & his father had for a time forbidden him his presence.
Unlike many others in the Democratic, Unitary, a.s.sociationist, & Revolutionary movements (& these are only 4 of the many shades of the causes of the people & not always in accord amongst themselves), Giovanni was never fooled by the Pope"s words - he believed, as was shown to be right by later events, that the Pope would turn against our Revolution at last. But it is curious. He who has in his quiet way raged most persuasively against the betrayals of Pius IX cannot bear for others, such as Protestant Americans like myself, to criticize the Holy Father even now. I am grateful that he cannot read English because he would be angry at what I have written in my book.
Now I am well & truly done with the sordid account of My Life in Economies.
3 July Cruel irony! I write of my tea-drinking at the Greeleys & my supply of tea is stolen. My head aches & I cannot write today. I suspect a midshipman named Cole.
Later, same day The men have pooled what tea they can spare & brought me more than I lost. Once I had restored my spirits with a strong brew, I gave a speech of thanks where many of the men were gathered & there was some laughter & some tears as for all the best speeches ever given in this world tho" my eloquence was not the cause on this occasion but rather their generous & tender hearts.
4 July Mr Bangs fires a salute in honor of Independence Day & we Americans on board (I believe there are five of us all told) sing "Yankee Doodle" as the colors are flown. Nino cheers along with the pip-pip-hurrah! I have made a small flag - from a square of white canvas, red ribbons & a sc.r.a.p of blue flannel - & to Nino"s delight have sewn this badge onto the front of his jacket, over his heart.
I have also promised the men a recitation this evening & am trying out several texts to see what I remember best. Mrs Hasty would appreciate a rouser such as "Once more unto the breach" but I cannot bring myself to celebrate even so n.o.ble a king on this day. Am trying to remember the third verse of Mr E"s "Concord Hymn." On this green bank, by this soft stream / We set today a votive stone / That something something may redeem....
7 July Head-aches & small discouragements - Celesta has been weeping about her sailor & there are bruises on her arms where he has handled her roughly. Nino lost his spinning-top overboard & wept. I heard one of the sailors refer to me as the "Signora vecchia," the "old lady," so in preference to weeping I stared myself out of countenance in the looking-gla.s.s. It seems my hair is as much silver as it is golden, & l.u.s.treless. There are shadows beneath my eyes & the flesh of my jaw & neck in repose hangs like a curtain. I fear the return home, I fear old friends as well thinking me an old lady, my years of force spent by motherhood & the sufferings of the body & the pietas that were our daily lot during the siege.
Does not America chafe under the tyranny of her young? Well we might contrast the respect - nay more than that, the reverence - that is shown in Europe for the elders, male & female alike. Mme Sand is older than I nonetheless she is the axis round which an entire world spins. Grand-parents are the center of every social gathering they attend, not bundled off to a warm corner & ignored as they are in America. Is it because the country itself is so young, & so dependent on the energies & the new ideas of the young, that America begins to despise its old folks? & Even calls them "old folks," instead of "Madame," or "Signor," or "Sir"?
Well since I am coming home, will-I-nill-I, I must prepare myself to feel & act young again & so keep pace with this American necessity. Heaven knows I wish to act.
8 July Now the time has come, my dear, to tell of how I came to be the married lady you will meet in a few weeks.
As I already explained, I had met Giovanni Angelo Ossoli in Rome in early April of 1847. He escorted me home when I lost my way after vespers in St. Peter"s, & took to calling on me at the rooms we had taken on the Corso. Later in Gren.o.ble, I told Mish all about him - & then by letter Mish continued to urge me to take the step of marriage & said that he prayed I might experience the joy of motherhood at last. I was so grateful. I had lost my "beloved" but I had not lost the Poet himself; my beloved had become like my father, advising & urging me to do what would make me happy & fulfill my place in the world.
It is no insult to the Poet to say that he like all men perforce under-estimated the cost to my physical self that becoming a mother would mean. No doubt he also imagined, as indeed I did, that having a husband would mean I would be protected & could continue in my work. But as I am now circ.u.mstanced, with a small child & a war-scarred husband to support, how am I to take "my place in the world"? This is a puzzle I am yet working out, one that I hope my friends in America will not refuse to help me solve. I hope that Mr E will not gloat that he was right, that solitude & chast.i.ty & barrenness were the requisite conditions for me to be the New Woman & raise my beacon of education & action aloft. Minerva & her chaste moon are all very well for school-girls to emulate. But what World worth its salt will deny women the creature necessities of love & motherhood as the price for partic.i.p.ation in its decisions & its future? The a.s.sociationists, I believe, have many practical solutions to offer, with their plans for community nurseries & schools....
But there are times when I long only for this: That my husband & child would venture on an excursion for a few days & leave me to my solitude. Would I write a newspaper column? A chapter? No. A letter begging for money from an old friend who is feeling less friendly with every letter he receives? No! Would I mount a platform & urge the rights of slaves not to be slaves, the rights of a free Europe, the rights of women? Not I. I would sit with Goethe"s poems, & attempt a translation. I would take a walk, a long city walk in which I could day-dream amidst the throng, their dreams & mine twining into the thick rope that is humanity ... I would stand on a dock & watch the boats, I would dream in color & music but not in words ... & then I would return to my desk, make a pot of tea, & try to make the German words come alive in English before me. This I would do for several days until I felt like myself once again.
Upon our reunion in Rome that autumn - October, 1847 - Giovanni pressed me to marry him. His father was ill, & we could marry as soon as his father was dead. (This sounds a harsh calculation - but think. I was not a suitable wife, an American & not a Catholic; his father was already furious that his youngest son was an impious revolutionary & the additional shock of marriage to such a one as I might end forever his family ties & his hopes of rightful inheritance.) Such was our case, & still his father lingered in this life, & the earthquake of the coming Revolution was beginning to rumble beneath our feet - bread riots in the countryside again in France - Vienna in an uproar for a const.i.tution - the Austrian General Radetsky building new fortifications in Milan because the people had gone on strike, refusing to buy the tobacco & pay the taxes that fed the Austrian army, & rioting in the streets. Naples was in turmoil. Rome was shaking with energy & anger & we believed the Pope would take our part.
Imagine my feelings, if you can. Giovanni, this dear man, whose presence was both a delight & a comfort to me, who showed me so many graceful yet manly courtesies - at any moment he would be fighting & he could die. We did what I believe any people of true feeling would have done: We stood, just we two, in the Lady Chapel of the Santa Maria Maggiore, before Giovanni"s favorite painting of the Virgin. (The "Virgin of the People," as she is rightly called. Can I describe adequately the tenderness of her gaze, the archaic stained gold dappling over the surface of that ikon which reminds the pet.i.tioner before her of the centuries of hopes & fears she has met & allayed?) We joined our hands, & whispered to the a.s.sembled saints, the stone floors & the rafters of that church, our vows. We were truly married then, & so my own date of marriage is November the 8th of 1847.
We found that I was with child in January. I was also so ill from my condition & from the dark Roman winter that we hardly knew if I would survive. Before any chance of reconcilement, Giovanni"s father died in February. Much as he had hoped that his sister would have say over the disposition of the estate (as their father had pledged she would) alas his eldest brother took all legal control & refused to listen to her pleas for the rights of Giovanni. The brother was if anything more angry than the father had been about Giovanni"s revolutionary ideals & immediately besought the magistrate for a writ to prevent my husband from claiming his inheritance. By April, we were confidently hopeful that the baby would live - & indeed my health began to improve with the coming of the spring, & with news of the Viennese "republic," & then of Austria"s routing from Milan, & our spirits soared. This being the case, & anxious to secure our child"s future rights, we were officially married (before a priest, & filing a paper at the local registrar) on April 4, 1848. But for the time my husband felt that maintaining secrecy was still essential. Ever hopeful that all would come right with the estate, he was anxious not to add this news as fuel to the fire of his brother"s wrath. Thus our dilemma: desirous of being above-board & honest, but doomed to secrecy - temporary so we believed! - so as to protect our love & our child"s future.
Public events soon overtook us all - tho" as the horses of change plunged forward no progress was made on the estate"s disposition. Giovanni had always expected to inherit a small farm & modestly prosperous vine-yard his family owned in the Tuscan hills north of Rome - such he had always believed would be his maintenance & support! How he agonized in fear he would lose it! How painful it was for me to keep all this a secret from friends back home! With every week that went by without telling you & all my family & friends, the difficulty of telling & the fear of not being understood grew worse. Yet was I joyful. The gestation of a new Italy & my new Child became as one in my mind in those months.
Mickiewicz was able to cross the border to come to Italy! Austria, internally in disarray & weakened at its northern Italian garrisons, could no longer enforce its standing arrest warrant against "dangerous" Polish nationals. First he gathered a group of Poles from various cities in Italy, received a blessing from the Pope, & then they marched as a battalion into Milan with a banner proclaiming the rights of all men, civil rights for Jews & for women! While his men stayed behind to hold the line against the Austrians, in May he came to Rome!
I had heard that he was near, I sent a note by guardia courier to tell him where to find "La Signora Ossoli" & for three days & more I quivered listening for his step on the stair. Then on the fourth day: It was just before dusk; Giovanni was not due home for a time. The door to the street was not locked during the day, as many tenants came & went, & whenever that door was pushed open, the wind in the vestibule rushed up the stairs to the second floor where I lived, making a little "whooshing" sound at my door, like an unearthly knock. I heard it; it was he, I knew. As in the old days, awaiting his approach I felt as one suspended in air, my head & heart floating in those seconds as his heavy tread, slightly uneven like a heartbeat, came up the narrow steps. I opened the door so he could see me whole before he spoke - he placed his hands where my child was sleeping inside me & kissed me as the tears wet his face.
"I am glad!" he said.
Then Giovanni came home & as we had agreed asked Mish to be our child"s G.o.dfather.
All right; I hear your objections: Reason dictates that we must take this scene in hand. What? you exclaim: A woman with child, with her husband & her lover both at her side, & they all at supper? How can this be? Even in a French novel of the most scandalous & progressive sort, surely at the least the woman, & probably both the men as well, should fall a-wailing at this juncture, & threats of duel or suicide should be all that tongue can utter?
Reason & dramatic decorum must topple together however, when I tell you that on the contrary we laughed & toasted our friendship & that Mish was all kindness & Giovanni all goodness & I the happiest of women. For the nonce at least. Did Giovanni guess at the past that Mish & I shared? I think he believed the Poet & I had a rare friendship & I know he was, & is, too great of soul himself to be jealous of that.
So it is that the next generation forms our lives & we conform to theirs. Our sole duty, rejoicing in the lives to come, is to make the world better fit for them, on our hearthstones & in the broad world.
My husband & the Poet also had their faith to share & next day we three went to hear the ma.s.s together, Mish for once tolerating the presence of the priests. Giovanni had decided in his quiet way that as I was in my heart & soul a Roman woman, so I was for all purposes a Catholic. I never quarrelled about this as we were I believe trusting in the same Divine being. When, much later, our marriage became known & friends in Italy wondered at the "mixed" nature of our alliance, Giovanni always silenced them with a simple, "No, Margherita is also of our faith" & I think he believed that he had converted me with his love & our original marriage vows before the Virgin.
10 July, Very calm seas, pleasant on deck but sails flat Today I must take myself in hand & resolve not to become impatient with Giovanni. His nightmares have been keeping us awake & he whimpers like a baby all night. I cannot have two babies, I tell him unkindly, but I am trying to remind him of his courage & his manhood. The man who held the Pincio Hill in the midst of the siege, day following day, to fire the last cannon at the French, who led the ragged last bits of the army to fight until they dropped around him - this man weeps in my arms & moans like a second Nino every night. I am grateful he cannot fully understand the hurtful things I sometimes say to him - tho" I know my harsh tone flings barbs that catch in his heart.
I am very tired, & in danger of despair, the only mortal sin I believe in & fear.
11 July, Wind! Brisk & homewards Returning to May of 1848: After a few hectic weeks, during which I sat for my portrait - Mr Thos Hicks was very insistent that it be done & tho" I was heavily robed I was uneasy that his anatomist"s eye would guess my secret - in early June I left Rome for the mountains north & east of the city - first at Aquila, later in the Apennines at Rieti - to spend the last months before the birth in peace & privacy. What feeble explanation did I make in the Tribune for leaving Rome just as her Revolution was at hand? My health, & an interest in the customs of the peasantry, I believe. I wish that I could say all was well as I waited for the new life within me. But tho" I found servants, I was never able to pay them enough to guarantee loyalty. For a certainty they none of them believed I was as poor as I said - their experience with ladies of the Inglese variety was not vast but it had taught them to expect ample reward for service. In Aquila I found a saintly older woman who wanted to mother me & would have done so for no money at all; but I needed to be closer to the city & to Giovanni, & so moved to Rieti - where I was met with sloth & insolence by the servants Maria & Guidetta & their family of spongers.
Was ever a woman waiting for her first-born in such a state as I? I wondered aloud in self-pity, only to be answered in an instant by common sense: Yes to be sure, the world over, now & throughout history, women have had to endure worse than this as the world tumbled & rose about them. I thought often of the stoical Indian women I had met at the Lakes - how they endured poverty & childbirth without comment (or, to be accurate, any comment I could make out). I was daily anxious for news of my husband, as the streets of Rome were filled with demonstrations, some peaceful & others not - the Pope having turned to Austria for help at last in a betrayal whose immensity we could hardly credit, so the Civil Guard was in skirmish with the Papal Guard, & the Duke of Naples sent troops to disperse the crowds. I was much relieved when in July Giovanni left the city to recruit men from the countryside. The farmers, as always except in times of drought, were traditionalists & resistant to the call for change. & Yet Giovanni was a persuasive leader - something about his quiet & truly aristocratic demeanor, combined with his simple words & pa.s.sionate eyes, compelled many men from the villages & towns to follow him.
Indeed how simple - through all the turmoil of politics, the complexities of alliances, the daunting imaginary architectures of future states - remains the basic claim: That men are equal in the eyes of the Divine, that the worldly power of some individual men does not give them the right to torment, oppress & deprive their fellows; & that the powerless many, if they unite, can be powerful against the few.
Meanwhile I was experiencing an interesting & no doubt ultimately instructive loss of personal power, there in the village of Rieti. The goat I had purchased for too many lire, so as to have milk every day, was taken from me by Maria"s mother - to give milk to her loutish son who was a hulking 12 years of age & would have been better served by a switch to get him to work. Oh no, they explained when I demanded the goat"s return - I had only leased the goat - that payment was by the week! So I paid & paid again. The goat herself was white, dappled with brown, & had a large purple wen on the side of her neck. She fed on the gra.s.s & thistles & her milk was delicious. Alas, she chewed through her tether every few days or so & we all spent much time chasing her, tho" I was now not much able to scramble about the hills & sometimes despaired that the family, so misnamed Cherubimi, would never find her again.
Thus was my final month - August. I was too hot & too ill to work. I had no home for my baby, no nest for my little bird, only the make-shift of hired quarters & squabbling attendants. My feet had swollen so that only rush-weave slippers fitted me. My teeth ached, often so violently that they woke me in the night. Tho" we were well up in the hills & so should have been safe from the malaria that plagues the Roman summer, the air was heavy & the nights were clogged with the damp & with biting flies. The good Dr Carlos bled me twice which strengthened me & I believe forestalled the convulsions I had sensed coming on. He had guessed that my age was greater than I allowed - (I was 38, tho" my husband believed I was but 30, such is my vanity) - & he feared for the life of his foolish Inglese patient & her unborn child.
Perhaps my age was the reason, or that same dark fear that I would again be punished for my sins, but in my heart I did not fully believe that I would survive this ordeal. I dreamed constantly of disaster, fires & floods & walls falling on me. Perhaps the reason I had agreed to sit for Mr Hicks was that I wanted some memento to leave my friends - it did not seem possible, most of the time, that I or my baby would live.
By the middle of August the wicked Austrian Redetsky had pushed through Ferrara & headed for Rome. The first news made me scream with fear - for my husband, for Mazzini, for all the men & even for us here in Rieti - Dr Carlos gave me a sedative drink so that I could sleep a little. It was days before we received word that the battles were stalled & a stasis, a stand-off, held once more.
& It was Dr Carlos who helped me place a bench & a broad green umbrella beside a little spring that bubbled from the hill-side just below the old well. Even in the high heat of the day, & aided by the thin shade of an olive-tree, the umbrella allowed me to sit for an hour or so with my feet in the cold waters & so find some relief, & some numbing of my fears.
13 July, Strong wind The lice have returned con spirito but there is no way to address the plague in this windy weather. Poor Nino cannot stop scratching his head to runnels of blood - so I have again salved him, this time trying a mixture of lye with the pork-fat as Tomaso advised. Mrs Hasty disagrees & says it will burn & meanwhile Nino is crying so I cannot think straight.
Later. Following his third head-washing, Nino sleeps in his father"s arms. The lye did scorch his scalp & I am sick at my foolish mistake that pained him so. The smell in the cabin - it can scarcely be called a cabin, let us call it a cupboard - is ferocious. I press a lemon to my nose with my left hand as I write, holding the paper in place with my elbow.
Giovanni arrived in Rieti in time for our son"s birth on September 5th. I cannot remember all - that there was pain & that I suffered I do not deny but Nature seems intent to give us the blessing of forgetfulness. (It is the same with all the mothers I have spoken to, but one -. She claimed to remember every throe, but then - she is a friend of Mme Arconati & from time to time a soprano at La Scala.) Some day very soon I will ask for your own insights about motherhood, my darling Sophia.
Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli. Tanto belo, my little one, my Nino! Amidst all my fears for his life & mine, I did not dare think ahead to the great love that would arrive like a thunder-clap! I swear the heavens themselves broke open when I gave birth & the cooling rains came to Rieti like the blessings I suddenly knew.
A month & a little more - I had milk fever & could not nurse - the perfidious Guidetta refused to nurse my baby, a desperate day when we thought he would die from hunger. Then we found the lovely Chiara, another of the far-flung Cherubimi-Seraphimi clan, who came to us & fed him amply - strange quiet days marked by intervals of sleep & holding my baby, as the autumn rains gently fell & the gra.s.s & leaves on the hills turned first green again, then golden & then brown. I would crush a grape & drip the juice into Nino"s mouth - it was like feeding a little bird. Even in his first days he knew me & turned his face to me wherever I was in the room, & only would rest quietly when in my arms.
Into the serenity of the nursery, however, the world"s tendrils crept. One such vine was the war itself - as the rest of Europe lost her nerve, it seemed that it remained to our Italia to lead the way to a new world, as our Revolutionists gathered strength & hope. Another vine that wound about me, now that I believed I would live & Nino would as well - was the necessity of money. Again & again, money. My secrecy about my circ.u.mstances had led those at home to be mistrustful, & perhaps those who might have helped with gifts & loans were hesitant. Also - I learned that many believed I had come into an income when my Uncle Abraham had died, indeed I received two letters congratulating me on my good fortune - such congratulations being baseless, as I received nothing whatsoever from him, in punishment no doubt for my years of taking Mother"s part. A great-aunt"s promised gift on her death was likewise a disappointment - instead of her estate, some $50,000 which she willed to her church, she left me her books, all still in Boston, & $100, which went to pay for food & the doctor & Chiara & so helped save my son"s life in the moment, & for which I am grateful still, but otherwise did not rescue us. I had privately lost all hope of Giovanni"s inheritance - at least until after the war, & then who knew what the new world would offer. All our hopes must be pinned to my book, which I had begun in the spring & worked on in the summer as long as my health would permit - my "History of the Italian Revolution." Writing that would require much time & effort & moreover - moreover - I must be back in Rome to witness the unfolding of the history I was to write.
Letters having got lost & misdirected across the ocean, Mr Greeley was impatient that I had not written for him since June. When I got his late letters, in November, I saw that he offered me a raise - $12.50 a column! - if I would only write more. Obviously, I must return to Rome immediately.
Chiara had a relative she could board with in Rome & we began to plan a move in November. But Giovanni would not allow it, firm as he was in his belief that all would come right with the family inheritance & so continuing to hold to our policy of secrecy. Already we had paid Guidetta to keep quiet - she often asked for more, & we gave her what we could spare. Unlike her cousin, Chiara was no blackmailer but she was simple & a talker & our baby"s presence in Rome could never be kept discreet. Alas, alas - I left Nino with her in Rieti. My very bones ached, as Giovanni held me in his arms & the cart jostled us the 40 miles or so into the city, 40 miles between me & my darling, "neath the drizzly November sky.
14 July Mother-love, so fierce, like a magnifying-gla.s.s held over the tinder to make a forest fire!