CHAPTER IV.
ART STUDIES.—REMOVAL TO GROTON.—MEETING WITH HARRIET MARTINEAU.—DEATH OF MR. FULLER.—DEVOTION TO HER FAMILY.
Margaret's enthusiasm for art was in some measure the result of her study of Goethe. Yet she had in herself a love of the beautiful, and a sense of its office in life, which would naturally have led her far in the direction in which this great master gave her so strong an impulsion. In her multifarious reading she gave much time to the literature of art, and in those days had read everything that related to Michael Angelo and Raphael, Quatremère de Quincy, Condivi, Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, and others. The masters themselves she studied in the casts of the Boston Athenæum, in the Brimmer Collection of Engravings, and in the contents of certain portfolios which a much-esteemed friend placed at her service, and which contained all the designs of Michael and Raphael.
The delight which Margaret felt in these studies demanded the sympathy of her elect associates, and Emerson remembers certain months as having been "coloured with the genius of these Italians." In 1839 Washington Allston's numerous works were collected for a public exhibition which drew to Boston lovers of art from many distant places. In the same year some sculptures of Greenough and Crawford were added to the attractions of the Boston Athenæum.
In Margaret's appreciation of these works, if we may believe Emerson, a certain fanciful interpretation of her own sometimes took the place of a just estimate of artistic values. Yet he found her opinion worthy of attention, as evincing her real love of beautiful things, and her great desire to understand the high significance of art. He makes some quotations from her notes on the Athenæum Gallery of sculpture in 1810.
Here she finds marble busts of Byron and Napoleon. The first, with all its beauty, appears to her “sultry, stern, all-craving, all-commanding," and expressive of something which accounts for what she calls “the grand failure of his scheme of existence." The head of Napoleon is, she says, not only stern but ruthless. “Yet this ruthlessness excites no aversion. The artist has caught its true character, and gives us here the Attila, the instrument of fate to serve a purpose not his own." She groups the poet and the warrior together as having, “the one in letters, the other in arms, represented more fully than any other the tendency of their time; [they] more than any other gave it a chance for reaction." Near these she finds a head of the poet Ennius, and busts also of Edward. Everett, Washington Allston, and Daniel Webster. Her comment upon this juxtaposition is interesting.
“Yet even near the Ennius and Napoleon our American men look worthy to be perpetuated in marble or bronze, if it were only for their, air of calm, unpretending sagacity." Mr. Henry James, Jr., writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne, speaks of the Massachusetts of forty or more years ago as poor in its æsthetic resources. Works of art indeed were then few in number, and decorative industry, in its present extent, was not dreamed of. But in the intellectual form of appreciative criticism the Boston of that day was richer than the city of our own time. The first stage of culture is cultivation, and the art lovers of that day had sowed the seed of careful study, and were intent upon its growth and ripening. If possession is nine points of the law, as it is acknowledged to be, the knowledge of values may be said to be nine points of possession, and Margaret and her friends, with their knowledge of the import of art, and with their trained and careful observation of its outward forms, had a richer feast in the casts and engravings of that time than can be enjoyed to-day by the amateur, who, with a bric-a-brac taste and blase feeling, haunts the picture-shops of our large cities, or treads the galleries in which the majestic ghosts of earnest times rebuke his flippant frivolity.
We have lingered over these records of Margaret's brilliant youth, because their prophecies aid us greatly in the interpretation of her later life. The inspired maiden of these letters and journals is very unlike the “Miss Fuller” who in those very days was sometimes quoted as the very embodiment of all that is ungraceful and unfeminine. How little were the beauties of her mind, the graces of her character, guessed at or sought for by those who saw in her unlikeness to the popular or fashionable type of the time matter only for derisive comment!
It may not be unimportant for us here to examine a little the rationale of Margaret's position and inquire whether the trait which occasioned so much animadversion was not the concomitant of one of Margaret's most valuable qualities. This we should call a belief in her own moral and intellectual power, which impelled her to examine and decide all questions for herself, and which enabled her to accomplish many a brave work and sacrifice. This sense of her own power was answered by the common confession of weakness which then was, and still is, a part of the received creed of women on the level of good society. Did not the prone and slavish attitude of these women appear to Margaret as fatal to character as it really is ?
“I am only a woman," was a remark often heard in that day, as in this, from women to whom that "only" was not to be permitted! Only the guardian of the beginning of life, only the sharer in all its duties and inspirations? Culture and Christianity recognised as much as this, but the doctrine still remained an abstract one, and equal rights were scarcely thought of as a corollary to equal duties. Margaret never saw, though she foresaw, the awakening and recognition of the new womanhood which is already changing the aspect of civilised society. An eccentric in her own despite, she had dared assume her full height, and to demand her proper place. Her position was as exceptional as was her genius. From the isolation of her superiority, was it wonderful that she should consider it more absolute than it really was?
This exaggerated sense of power is perhaps nothing more than the intensification of consciousness which certain exigencies will awaken in those who meet them with a special work to do and a special gift to do it with. It must be remembered that Margaret's self-esteem did not really involve any disesteem of others. She honoured in all their best traits, and her only ground of quarrel with humanity at large was its derogation from its own dignity, its neglect of its own best interests. Such a sense of human value as she possessed was truly a Christian gift, and it was in virtue of this that she was able to impart such exhilaration and hopefulness to those who were content to learn of her.
But here, in our chronicle, the early morning hours are already, over. The inward conquest which was sealed by the sunbeam of that "sallow" November day becomes the prelude to an outward struggle with difficulties which tasked to the utmost the strength acquired by our neophyte through prayer and study.
In the spring of 1833 Margaret found herself obliged to leave the academic shades of Cambridge for the country retirement of Groton. Her father, wearied with a long practice of the law, had removed his residence to the latter place, intending to devote his later years to literary labour and the education of his younger children. To Margaret this change was unwelcome, and the result showed it, at a later day, to have been unfortunate for the family. She did not, however, take here the position of a malcontent, but that of one who, finding herself removed from congenial surroundings, knows how to summon to her aid the hosts of noble minds with which study has made her familiar. Her German books go with her, and Goethe, Schiller, and Jean Paul solace her lonely hours. She reads works on architecture, and books of travel in Italy, while sympathy with her father's pursuits leads her to interest herself in American history, concerning which he had collected much information with a view to historical composition. We find her also engaged in tuition. She has four pupils, probably the younger children of the family, and gives lessons in three languages five days in the week, besides teaching geography and history. She has much needle-work to do, and the ill-health of her mother and grandmother brings additional cares. The course of study which she has marked out for herself can only be pursued, she says, on three evenings in the week, and at chance hours in the day. It includes a careful perusal of Alfieri's writings and examination into the evidences of the Christian religion. To this she is impelled by " distressing sceptical notions" of her own, and by the doubts awakened in her mind by the arguments of infidels and deists, some of whom arc numbered among her friends.
The following letter, addressed by Margaret to a much-admired friend, will give us some idea of the playful mood which relieved her days of serious application,
“Are you not ashamed, most friendshipless clergy-woman I not to have enlivened my long seclusion by one line? Does the author of the 'lecturer delivered with much applause before the Brooklyn Lyceum' despise and wish to cast off the author of "essays contumeliously rejected by that respected publication, the “Christian Examiner"?' That a little success should have power to steel the female heart to base ingratitude! O Ally! Ally! wilt thou forget that it was I (in happier hours thou hast full oft averred it) who first fanned the spark of thy ambition into flame Think'st thou that thou owest rought to those long sweeps over the inexpressive realities of literature, when thou wast obliged to trust to my support, thy own opinions as yet scarce budding from thy heels or shoulders? Dost thou forget—but my emotions will not permit me to pursue the subject; surely I must have jogged your conscience sufficiently. I shall follow the instructions of the great Goethe, and, having in some degree vented my feelings, address you as if you were what you ought to be. Still remains enveloped in mystery the reason why neither you nor my reverend friend came to bid me good-bye before I left your city, according to promise. I suspected the waiter at the time of having intercepted your card; but your long venomous silence has obliged me to acquit him. I had treasured up sundry little anecdotes touching my journey homeward, which, if related with dramatic skill, might excite a smile on your face, O laughter-loving blue-stocking! I returned home under the protection of a Mr. Fullerton, fresh from London and Paris, who gave me an entirely new view of continental affairs. He assured me that the German Prince[1] was an ignorant pretender, in the face of my assurances that I had read and greatly admired his writings, and gave me a contemptuous description of Waldo Emerson dining in boots at Timothy Wiggin's, absolument à faire mourir! All his sayings were exquisite. And then a sui generis mother whom I met with on board the steamboat. All my pretty pictures are blotted out by the rude hand of Time: verily this checking of speech is dangerous. If all the matter I have been preserving for various persons is in my head, packed away, distributed among the various organs, how immensely will my head be developed when I return to the world. This is the first time in my life that I have known what it is to have nobody to speak to, c'est à dire, of my own peculiar little fancies. I bear it with strange philosophy, but I do wish to be written to. I will tell you how I pass my time without society or exercise. Even till two o'clock, sometimes later, I pour ideas into the heads of the little Fullers; much runs out-indeed, I am often reminded of the chapter on home education, in the New Monthly. But the few drops which remain mightily gladden the sight of my father. Then I go down-stairs and ask for my letters from the post; this is my only pleasure, according to the ideas most people entertain of pleasure. Do you write me an excellent epistle by return of mail, or I will make your head ache by a minute account of the way in which the remaining hours are spent. I have only lately read the Female Sovereigns of your beloved Mrs. Jameson, and like them better than any of her works. Her opinions are clearly expressed, sufficiently discriminating, and her manner unusually simple. I was not dazzled by excess of artificial light, nor cloyed by spiced and sweetened sentiments. My love to your revered husband, and four kisses to Edward, two on your account, one for his beauty, and one abstract kiss, symbol of my love for all little children in general. Write of him, of Mr. 's sermons, of your likes and dislikes, of any new characters, sublime or droll, you may have unearthed, and of all other things I should like.
"Affectionately your country friend, poor and humble.
In the summer of 1835 a great pleasure and refreshment came to Margaret in the acquaintance of Miss Martineau, whom she met while on a visit to her friend, Mrs. Farrar, in Cambridge. In speaking of this first mceting Margaret says: "I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an impression of her.... What shrewdness in detecting various shades of character! Yet what she said of Hannah Moore and Miss Edgeworth grated upon my feelings." In a later conversation "the barrier that separates acquaintance from friendship was passed, and Margaret felt, beneath the sharpness of her companion's criticism, the presence of a truly human heart.
The two ladies went to church together, and the minister prayed "for our friends." Margaret was moved by this to offer a special prayer for Miss Martineau, which so impressed itself upon her mind that she was able to write it down. We quote the part of it which most particularly refers to her now friend:—
"May her path be guarded and blessed. May her noble mind be kept firmly poised in its native truth, unsullied by prejudice or error, and strong to resist whatever outwardly or inwardly shall war against its high vocation. May each day bring to this generous seeker new riches of true philosophy and of Divine love. And, amidst all trials, give her to know and feel that thou, the All-sufficing, art with her, leading her on through eternity to likeness of thyself."
The change of base which, years after this time, transformed Miss Martineau into an enthusiastic disbeliever would certainly not have seemed to Margaret an answer to her prayer. But as the doctrine that "God reveals himself in many ways" was not new to her, and as her petition includes the Eternities, we may believe that she appreciated the sincerity of her friend's negations, and anticipated for her, as for herself, a later vision of the Celestial City, whose brightness should rise victorious above the mists of speculative doubt.
A serious illness intervened at this time, brought on, one might think, by the intense action of Margaret's brain, stimulated by her manifold and unremitting labours. For nine days and nights she suffered from fever, accompanied by agonising pain in her head, Her beloved mother was at her båd-side day and night. Her father, usually so reserved in expressions of affection, was moved by the near prospect of her death to say to her: "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." These words were intended by him as a viaticum for her, but they were really to be a legacy of love to his favourite child.
Margaret herself anticipated death with calmness, and, in view of the struggles and disappointments of life, with willingness. But the threatened bolt was to fall upon a head dearer to her than her own. In the early autumn of the same year her father, after a two day's illness, fell a victim to cholera.
Margaret's record of the grief which this affliction brought her is very deep and tender. Her father's image was ever present to her, and seemed even to follow her to her room, and to look in upon her there. Her most poignant sorrow was in the thought, suggested to many by similar afflictions, that she might have kept herself nearer to him in sympathy and in duty. The altered circumstances of the family, indeed, a oused her to new activities. Mr. Fuller had left no will, and had somewhat diminished his property by unproductive investments. Margaret now found new reason to wish that she belonged to the sterner sex, since, had she been eldest son instead of eldest daughter, she might have become the administrator of her father's estate and the guardian of her sister and brothers. She regretted her ignorance of such details of business as are involved in the care of property, and derermined to acquaint herself with them, reflecting that “the same mind which has made other attainments can in time compass these.” In this hour of trial she seeks and finds relief and support in prayer.
“May God enable me to see my way clear, and not to let down the intellectual in raising the moral tone of my mind. Difficulties and duties became dis- tinct the very night after my father's death, and a solemn prayer was offered then that I might combine what is due to others with what is due to myself. The spirit of that prayer I shall constantly endeavour to maintain."
This death, besides the sorrow and perplexity which followed, it, brought to Margaret a disappointment which seemed to her to bar the fulfilment of her highest hopes. She had for two years been contemplating a visit to Europe, with a view to the better prosecution of her studies. She had earned the right to this indulgence Beforehand, by assisting in the education of the younger children of the family. An opportunity now offered itself of making this journey under the most auspicious circumstances. Her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Farrer, were about to cross the ocean, and had invited her to accompany them. Miss Martineau was to be of the party, and Margaret now saw before her, not only this beloved companionship, but also the open door which would give her an easy access to literary society in England, and to the atmosphere of old-world culture which she so passionately longed to breathe.
With this brilliant vision before her, and with her whole literary future trembling, as she thought, in the scale, Margaret prayed only that she might make the right decision. This soon became clear to her, and she determined, in spite of the entreatics of her family, to remain with her care-worn móther, and not to risk the possibility of encroaching upon the fund necessary for the education of her brothers and sister.
Of all the crownings of Margaret's life, shall we not most envy her that of this act of sacrifice? So near to the feast of the gods, she prefers the fast of duty, and recognizes the claims of family affection as more imperative than the gratification of any personal taste or ambition.
Margaret does not seem to have been supported in this trial by any sense of its heroism. Her decision was to her simply a following of the right, in which she must be content, as she says, to forget herself and act for the sake of others.
We may all be glad to remember this example, and to refer to it those who find themselves in a maze of doubt between what they owe to the cultivation of their own gifts, what to the need and advantage of those to whom they stand in near relation. Had Margaret at this time forsaken her darkened household, the difference to its members would have been very great, and she herself would have added to the number of those doubting or mistaken souls who have been carried far from the scene of their true and appointed service by some dream of distinction never to be fulfilled. In the sequel she was not only justified, but rewarded. The sacrifice she had made secured the blessings of education to the younger members of her family. Her prayer that the lifting of her moral nature might not lower the tone of her intellect was answered, as it was sure to be, and she found near at hand a field of honour and usefulness which the brilliant capitals of Europe would not have offered her.
Margaret's remaining days in Groton were passed in assiduous reading, and her letters and journals make suggestive comments on Goethe, Shelley, Sir James Mackintosh, Herschel, Wordsworth, and others. Her scheme of culture was what we should now call encyclopedic, and embraced most, if not all, departments of human knowledge. If she was at all mistaken in her scope, it was in this, that she did not sufficiently appreciate the inevitable limitations of brain power and of bodily strength. Her impatience of such considerations led her to an habitual over-use of her brilliant faculties which resulted in an impaired state of health.
In the autumn of 1836 Margaret left Groton not without acknowledgment of "many precious lessons given there in faith, fortitude, self-command, and unselfish love.
"There, too, in solitude, the mind acquired more power of concentration, and discerned the beauty of strict method; there, too, more than all, the heart was awaked to sympathize with the ignorant, to pity the vulgar, to hope for the seemingly worthless, and to commune with the Divine Spirit of Creation."
- ↑ Pückler-Muskau.