VII.
SUBURBAN LIFE AT JAMAICA PLAIN.
(1838-1844.)
In looking forward to leaving the scene of her school-teaching, Margaret Fuller wrote thus to Mrs. Barlow in a moment of headache and nervous exhaustion: —
“I shall go home about Christmas and stay till April, and never set foot out of doors unless to take exercise; and see no human face, divine or otherwise, out of my own family. But I am wearied out and I have gabbled and simpered and given my mind to the public view these two years back, till there seems to be no good left in me.”[1]
She wrote to Mr. Emerson of the remaining months of that winter, “ My sufferings last winter in Groton were almost constant, and I see the journal is very sickly in its tone. I have taken out some leaves. Now I am a perfect Phœnix compared with what I was then, and it all seems past to me.”[2]
During this invalid winter, however, she made a brief visit to Boston, where she had three en-
