Part 20

Yet, after all, the most important part of a woman's training is that which she obtains from her own sex, and of this Margaret Fuller had quite her share. She was one of those maidens who form passionate attachments to older women, and there were many Cambridge ladies of the college circle who in turn won her ardent loyalty.

"My elder sister," writes Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his biography of Margaret Fuller, "can well remember this studious, self-conscious, over-grown girl as sitting at my mother's feet, covering her hands with kisses, and treasuring her every word. It was the same at other times with other women, most of whom were too much absorbed in their own duties to give more than a passing solicitude to this rather odd and sometimes inconvenient adorer."

The side of Margaret Fuller to which scant attention has been paid heretofore is this ardently affectionate side, and this it is which seems to account for what has always before appeared inexplicable--her romantic marriage to the young Marchese d'Ossoli. The intellect was in truth only a small part of Margaret, and if Hawthorne had improved, as he might have done, his opportunities to study the whole nature of the woman, he would not have written even for his private diary the harsh sentences already quoted. One has only to look at the heroic fashion in which, after the death of her father, Margaret took up the task of educating her brothers and sisters to feel that there was much besides selfishness in this woman's makeup. Nor can one believe that Emerson would ever have cared to have for the friend of a lifetime a woman who was a "humbug." Of Margaret's school-teaching, conversation classes on West Street, Boston, and labours on the Dial, a transcendental paper in which Emerson was deeply interested, there is not space to speak here. But one phase of her work which cannot be ignored is that performed on the Tribune, in the days of Horace Greeley.

Greeley brought Boston's high priestess to New York for the purpose of putting the literary criticism of the Tribune on a higher plane than any American newspaper then occupied, as well as that she might discuss in a large and stimulating way all philanthropic questions. That she rose to the former opportunity her enemies would be the first to grant, but only those who, like Margaret herself, believe in the sisterhood of women could freely endorse her attitude on philanthropic subjects.

Surely, though, it could not have been a hard woman of whom Horace Greeley wrote: "If she had been born to large fortune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of virtue would have been one of her most cherished and first realised conceptions. She once attended, with other noble women, a gathering of outcasts of their sex, and, being asked how they appeared to her, replied, 'As women like myself, save that they are victims of wrong and misfortune.'"

While labouring for the Tribune, Margaret Fuller was all the time saving her money for the trip to Europe, which had her life long been her dream of felicity; and at last, on the first of August, 1846, she sailed for her Elysian Fields. There, in December, 1847, she was secretly married, and in September, 1848, her child was born. What these experiences must have meant to her we are able to guess from a glimpse into her private journal in which she had many years before recorded her profoundest feeling about marriage and motherhood.

"I have no home. No one loves me. But I love many a good deal, and see some way into their eventful beauty.... I am myself growing better, and shall by and by be a worthy object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or need forbearance.... I have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this experience that it has seemed the want of it must paralyse me...."

The circumstances under which Margaret Fuller and her husband first met are full of interest. Soon after Miss Fuller's arrival in Rome, early in 1847, she went one day to hear vespers at St. Peter's, and becoming separated from her friends after the service, she was noted as she examined the church by a young man of gentlemanly address, who, perceiving her discomfort and her lack of Italian, offered his services as a guide in her endeavour to find her companions.

Not seeing them anywhere, the young Marquis d'Ossoli, for it was he, accompanied Miss Fuller home, and they met once or twice again before she left Rome for the summer. The following season Miss Fuller had an apartment in Rome, and she often received among her guests this young patriot with whose labours in behalf of his native city she was thoroughly in sympathy.

When the young man after a few months declared his love, Margaret refused to marry him, insisting that he should choose a younger woman for his wife. "In this way it rested for some weeks," writes Mrs. Story, who knew them both, "during which we saw Ossoli pale, dejected, and unhappy. He was always with Margaret, but in a sort of hopeless, desperate manner, until at length he convinced her of his love, and she married him."

Then followed the wife's service in the hospitals while Ossoli was in the army outside the city. After the birth of their child, Angelo, the happy little family went to Florence.

The letters which passed between the young nobleman and the wife he adored are still extant, having been with the body of her beautiful baby the only things of Margaret Fuller's saved from the fatal wreck in which she and her two loved ones were lost. One of these letters will be enough to show the tenderness of the man:

"Rome, 21 October, 1848.

"MIA CARA:--I learn by yours of the 20th that you have received the ten scudi, and it makes me more tranquil. I feel also Mogliani's indolence in not coming to inoculate our child; but, my love, I pray you not to disturb yourself so much, and not to be sad, hoping that our dear love will be guarded by God, and will be free from all misfortunes. He will keep the child for us and give us the means to sustain him."

* * * * *

In answer to this letter, or one like it, we find the woman whom Hawthorne had deemed hard and cold writing:

"Saturday Evening, 28 October, 1848.

"... It rains very hard every day, but to-day I have been more quiet, and our darling has been so good, I have taken so much pleasure in being with him. When he smiles in his sleep, how it makes my heart beat! He has grown fat and very fair, and begins to play and spring. You will have much pleasure in seeing him again. He sends you many kisses. He bends his head toward me when he asks a kiss."

* * * * *

Both Madame Ossoli and her husband were very fearful as they embarked on the fated ship which was to take them to America. He had been cautioned by one who had told his fortune when a boy to beware of the sea, and his wife had long cherished a superstition that the year 1850 would be a marked epoch in her life. It is remarkable that in writing to a friend of her fear Madame Ossoli said: "I pray that if we are lost it may be brief anguish, and Ossoli, the babe, and I go together."

They sailed none the less, May 17, 1850, on the Elizabeth, a new merchant vessel, which set out from Leghorn. Misfortune soon began. The captain sickened and died of malignant smallpox, and after his burial at sea and a week's detention at Gibraltar, little Angelo caught the dread disease and was restored with difficulty. Yet a worse fate was to follow.

At noon of July 18, while they were off the coast of New Jersey, there was a gale, followed by a hurricane, which dashed the ship on that Fire Island Beach which has engulfed so many other vessels. Margaret Fuller and her husband were drowned with their child. The bodies of the parents were never recovered, but that of little Angelo was buried in a seaman's chest among the sandhills, from which it was later disinterred and brought to our own Mount Auburn by the relatives who had never seen the baby in life.

And there to-day in a little green grave rests the child of this great woman's great love.

THE OLD MANSE AND SOME OF ITS MOSSES

"The Old Manse," writes Hawthorne, in his charming introduction to the quaint stories, "Mosses from an Old Manse", "had never been profaned by a lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men from time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambers had grown up to assume the priestly character. It is awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written here!... Here it was, too, that Emerson wrote 'Nature;' for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian dawn and Paphian sunset and moon-rise from the summit of our eastern hill."

Emerson's residence in the Old Manse is to be accounted for by the fact that his grandfather was its first inhabitant. And it was while living there with his mother and kindred, before his second marriage in 1835, that he produced "Nature."

It is to the parson, the Reverend William Emerson, that we owe one of the most valuable Revolutionary documents that have come down to us. Soon after the young minister came to the old Manse (which was then the New Manse), he had occasion to make in his almanac this stirring entry:

"This morning, between one and two o'clock, we were alarmed by the ringing of the bell, and upon examination found that the troops, to the number of eight hundred, had stole their march from Boston, in boats and barges, from the bottom of the Common over to a point in Cambridge, near to Inman's farm, and were at Lexington meeting-house half an hour before sunrise, where they fired upon a body of our men, and (as we afterward heard) had killed several. This intelligence was brought us first by Doctor Samuel Prescott, who narrowly escaped the guard that were sent before on horses, purposely to prevent all posts and messengers from giving us timely information. He, by the help of a very fleet horse, crossing several walks and fences, arrived at Concord, at the time above mentioned; when several posts were immediately dispatched that, returning, confirmed the account of the regulars' arrival at Lexington and that they were on their way to Concord. Upon this, a number of our minute-men belonging to this town, and Acton, and Lincoln, with several others that were in readiness, marched out to meet them; while the alarm company was preparing to receive them in the town. Captain Minot, who commanded them, thought it proper to take possession of the hill above the meeting-house, as the most advantageous situation. No sooner had our men gained it, than we were met by the companies that were sent out to meet the troops, who informed us that they were just upon us, and that we must retreat, as their number was more than treble ours. We then retreated from the hill near the Liberty Pole, and took a new post back of the town upon an eminence, where we formed into two battalions, and waited the arrival of the enemy.