Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli Volume II Part 4

Woman's heaven, Where palest lights a silvery sheen diffuse.

'In tracing these correspondences, one really does take hold of a Truth, of a Divine Thought.' * *

'_October 25th, 1840._--This week I have not read any book, nor once walked in the woods and fields. I meant to give its days to setting outward things in order, and its evenings to writing. But, I know not how it is, I can never simplify my life; always so many ties, so many claims! However, soon the winter winds will chant matins and vespers, which may make my house a cell, and in a snowy veil enfold me for my prayer.

If I cannot dedicate myself this time, I will not expect it again. Surely it should be! These Carnival masks have crowded on me long enough, and Lent must be at hand. * *

'---- and ---- have been writing me letters, to answer which required all the time and thought I could give for a day or two. ----'s were of joyful recognition, and so beautiful I would give much to show them to you. ----'s have singularly affected me. They are n.o.ble, wise, of most unfriendly friendliness. I don't know why it is, I always seem to myself to have gone so much further with a friend than I really have.

Just as at Newport I thought ---- met me, when he did not, and sang a joyful song which found no echo, so here ---- asks me questions which I thought had been answered in the first days of our acquaintance, and coldly enumerates all the charming qualities which make it impossible for him to part with me!

He scolds me, though in the sweetest and solemnest way. I will not quote his words, though their beauty tempts me, for they do not apply, they do not touch ME.

'Why is it that the religion of my nature is so much hidden from my peers? why do they question me, who never question them? why persist to regard as a meteor an orb of a.s.sured hope? Can no soul know me wholly? shall I never know the deep delight of grat.i.tude to any but the All-Knowing? I shall wait for ---- very peaceably, in reverent love as ever; but I cannot see why he should not have the pleasure of knowing now a friend, who has been "so tender and true."'

'---- was here, and spent twenty-four hours in telling me a tale of deepest tragedy. Its sad changes should be written out in G.o.dwin's best manner: such are the themes he loved, as did also Rousseau. Through all the dark shadows shone a pure white ray, one high, spiritual character, a man, too, and of advanced age. I begin to respect men more,--I mean actual men.

What men may be, I know; but the men of to-day have seemed to me of such coa.r.s.e fibre, or else such poor wan shadows!

'---- had scarcely gone, when ---- came and wished to spend a few hours with me. I was totally exhausted, but I lay down, and she sat beside me, and poured out all her n.o.ble feelings and bright fancies. There was little light in the room, and she gleamed like a cloud

--"of pearl and opal,"

and reminded me more than ever of

--"the light-haired Lombardess Singing a song of her own native land,"

to the dying Correggio, beside the fountain.

'I am astonished to see how much Bettine's book is to all these people. This shows how little courage they have had to live out themselves. She really brings them a revelation. The men wish they had been loved by Bettine; the girls wish to write down the thoughts that come, and see if just such a book does not grow up. ----, however, was one of the few who do not over-estimate her; she truly thought Bettine only publishes what many burn. Would not genius be common as light, if men trusted their higher selves?'

'I heard in town that ---- is a father, and has gone to see his child. This news made me more grave even than such news usually does; I suppose because I have known the growth of his character so intimately. I called to mind a letter he had written me of what we had expected of our fathers. The ideal father, the profoundly wise, provident, divinely tender and benign, he is indeed the G.o.d of the human heart. How solemn this moment of being called to prepare the way, to _make way_ for another generation! What fulfilment does it claim in the character of a man, that he should be worthy to be a father!--what purity of motive, what dignity, what knowledge!

When I recollect how deep the anguish, how deeper still the want, with which I walked alone in hours of childish pa.s.sion, and called for a Father, often saying the word a hundred times, till stifled by sobs, how great seems the duty that name imposes! Were but the harmony preserved throughout! Could the child keep learning his earthly, as he does his heavenly Father, from all best experience of life, till at last it were the climax: "I am the Father. Have ye seen me?--ye have seen the Father." But how many sons have we to make one father?

Surely, to spirits, not only purified but perfected, this must appear the climax of earthly being,--a wise and worthy parentage. Here I always sympathize with Mr. Alcott. He views the relation truly.'

'_Dec. 3, 1840._ ---- bids me regard her "as a sick child;"

and the words recall some of the sweetest hours of existence.

My brother Edward was born on my birth-day, and they said he should be my child. But he sickened and died just as the bud of his existence showed its first bright hues. He was some weeks wasting away, and I took care of him always half the night. He was a beautiful child, and became very dear to me then. Still in lonely woods the upturned violets show me the pleading softness of his large blue eyes, in those hours when I would have given worlds to prevent his suffering, and could not. I used to carry him about in my arms for hours; it soothed him, and I loved to feel his gentle weight of helpless purity upon my heart, while night listened around. At last, when death came, and the soul took wing like an overtasked bird from his sweet form, I felt what I feel now. Might I free ----, as that angel freed him!

'In daily life I could never hope to be an unfailing fountain of energy and bounteous love. My health is frail; my earthly life is shrunk to a scanty rill; I am little better than an aspiration, which the ages will reward, by empowering me to incessant acts of vigorous beauty. But now it is well with me to be with those who do not suffer overmuch to have me suffer.

It is best for me to serve where I can better bear to fall short. I could visit ---- more n.o.bly than in daily life, through the soul of our souls. When she named me her Priestess, that name made me perfectly happy. Long has been my consecration; may I not meet those I hold dear at the altar?

How would I pile up the votive offerings, and crowd the fires with incense? Life might be full and fair; for, in my own way, I could live for my friends.' * *

'_Dec. 8th, 1840._--My book of amus.e.m.e.nt has been the Evenings of St. Petersburg. I do not find the praises bestowed on it at all exaggerated. Yet De Maistre is too logical for me. I only catch a thought here and there along the page. There is a grandeur even in the subtlety of his mind. He walks with a step so still, that, but for his dignity, it would be stealthy, yet with brow erect and wide, eye grave and deep. He is a man such as I have never known before.' * *

'I went to see Mrs. Wood in the Somnambula. Nothing could spoil this opera, which expresses an ecstasy, a trance of feeling, better than anything I ever heard. I have loved every melody in it for years, and it was happiness to listen to the exquisite modulations as they flowed out of one another, endless ripples on a river deep, wide and strewed with blossoms. I never have known any one more to be loved than Bellini. No wonder the Italians make pilgrimages to his grave.

In him thought and feeling flow always in one tide; he never divides himself. He is as melancholy as he is sweet; yet his melancholy is not impa.s.sioned, but purely tender.'

'_Dec. 15, 1840._--I have not time to write out as I should this sweet story of Melissa, but here is the outline:--

'More than four years ago she received an injury, which caused her great pain in the spine, and went to the next country town to get medical advice. She stopped at the house of a poor blacksmith, an acquaintance only, and has never since been able to be moved. Her mother and sister come by turns to take care of her. She cannot help herself in any way, but is as completely dependent as an infant. The blacksmith and his wife gave her the best room in their house, have ever since ministered to her as to a child of their own, and, when people pity them for having to bear such a burthen, they say, "It is none, but a blessing."

'Melissa suffers all the time, and great pain. She cannot amuse or employ herself in any way, and all these years has been as dependent on others for new thoughts, as for daily cares. Yet her mind has deepened, and her character refined, under those stern teachers, Pain and Grat.i.tude, till she has become the patron saint of the village, and the muse of the village school-mistress. She has a peculiar aversion to egotism, and could not bear to have her mother enlarge upon her sufferings.

'"Perhaps it will pain the lady to hear that," said the mild, religious sufferer, who had borne all without a complaint.

"Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." The poor are the generous: the injured, the patient and loving.

All that ---- said of this girl was in perfect harmony with what De Maistre says of the saint of St. Petersburg, who, almost devoured by cancer, when, asked, "Quelle est la premiere grace que vous demanderez a Dieu, ma chere enfant, lorsque vous serez devant lui?" she replied, "Je lui demanderai pour mes bienfaiteurs la grace de Paimer autant que je l'aime."

'When they were lamenting for her, "Je ne suis pas, dit elle, aussi malheureuse que vous le croyez; Dieu me fait la grace de ne peuser, qu'a lui."' * *

'Next of Edith. Tall, gaunt, hard-favored was this candidate for the American calendar; but Bonilacia might be her name.

From her earliest years she had valued all she knew, only as she was to teach it again. Her highest ambition was to be the school-mistress; her recreation to dress the little ragged things, and take care of them out of school hours. She had some taste for nursing the grown-up, but this was quite subordinate to her care of the buds of the forest. Pure, perfectly beneficent, lived Edith, and never thought of any thing or person, but for its own sake. When she had attained midway the hill of life, she happened to be boarding in the house with a young farmer, who was lost in admiration of her lore. How he wished he, too, could read! "What, can't you read? O, let me teach you!"--"You never can; I was too thick-skulled to learn even at school. I am sure I never could now." But Edith was not to be daunted by any fancies of incapacity, and set to work with utmost zeal to teach this great grown man the primer. She succeeded, and won his heart thereby. He wished to requite the raising him from the night of ignorance, as Howard and Nicholas Poussin did the kind ones who raised them from the night of the tomb, by the gift of his hand. Edith consented, on condition that she might still keep school. So he had his sister come to "keep things straight."

Edith and he go out in the morning,--he to his field, she to her school, and meet again at eventide, to talk, and plan and, I hope, to read also.

'The first use Edith made of her accession of property through her wedded estate, was to give away all she thought superfluous to a poor family she had long pitied, and to invite a poor sick woman to her "spare chamber."

Notwithstanding a course like this, her husband has grown rich, and proves that the pattern of the widow's cruse was not lost in Jewry.

'Edith has become the Natalia of the village, as is Melissa its "Schone Seele."'

'_Dec., 22, 1840._--"Community" seems dwindling to a point, and I fancy the best use of the plan, as projected thus far, will prove the good talks it has caused here, upon principles.

I feel and find great want of wisdom in myself and the others.

We are not ripe to reconstruct society yet. O Christopher Columbus! how art thou to be admired, when we see how other men go to work with their lesser enterprises! ---- knows deepest what he wants, but not well how to get it. ---- has a better perception of means, and less insight as to principles; but this movement has done him a world of good. All should say, however, that they consider this plan as a mere experiment, and are willing to fail. I tell them that they are not ready till they can say that. ---- says he can bear to be treated unjustly by all concerned,--which is much. He is too sanguine, as it appears to me, but his aim is worthy, and, with his courage and clear intellect, his experiment will not, at least to him, be a failure.'

'_Feb. 19, 1841._--Have I never yet seen so much as _one_ of my spiritual family? The other night they sat round me, so many who have thought they loved, or who begin to love me.

I felt myself kindling the same fire in all their souls.

I looked on each, and no eye repelled me. Yet there was no warmth for me on all those altars. Their natures seemed deep, yet there was 'not one from which I could draw the living fountain. I could only cheat the hour with them, prize, admire, and pity. It was sad; yet who would have seen sadness in me? * *

'Once I was almost all intellect; now I am almost all feeling.

Nature vindicates her rights, and I feel all Italy glowing beneath the Saxon crust. This cannot last long; I shall burn to ashes if all this smoulders here much longer. I must die if I do not burst forth in genius or heroism.

'I meant to have translated the best pa.s.sages of "Die Gunderode,"--which I prefer to Bettine's correspondence with Goethe. The two girls are equal natures, and both in earnest.

Goethe made a puppet-show, for his private entertainment, of Bettine's life, and we wonder she did not feel he was not worthy of her homage. Gunderode is to me dear and admirable, Bettine only interesting. Gunderode is of religious grace, Bettine the fulness of instinctive impulse; Gunderode is the ideal, Bettine nature; Gunderode throws herself into the river because the world is all too narrow, Bettine lives and follows out every freakish fancy, till the enchanting child degenerates into an eccentric and undignified old woman. There is a medium somewhere. Philip Sidney found it; others had it found for them by fate.'