Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli) Part 11

The time had now come when Margaret's darling wish was to be fulfilled.

An opportunity of going abroad offered itself under circ.u.mstances which she felt able to accept. On the 1st of August, 1846, she sailed for Europe in the "Cambria," then the favorite steamer of the Cunard line, with Captain Judkins, the most popular and best known of the company's commanders. Her travelling companions were Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Spring, of Eaglewood, N. J.

She antic.i.p.ated much from this journey,--delight, instruction, and the bodily view of a whole world of beauties which she knew, as yet, only ideally. Beyond and unguessed lay the mysteries of fate, from whose depths she was never to emerge in her earthly form.

Margaret already possessed the spirit of all that is most valuable in European culture. She knew the writers of the Old World by study, its brave souls by sympathy, its works of art, more imperfectly, through copies and engravings. The Europe which she carried in her mind was not that which the superficial observer sees with careless eyes, nor could it altogether correspond with that which she, in her careful and thoughtful travel, would discern. But the possession of the European mind was a key destined to unlock for her the true significance of European society.

The voyage was propitious. Arriving in England, Margaret visited the Mechanics' Inst.i.tute in Liverpool, and found the "Dial" quoted in an address recently given by its director. Sentences from the writings of Charles Sumner and Elihu Burritt adorned the pages of Bradshaw's "Railway Guide," and she was soon called upon to note the wide discrepancy between the views of enlightened Englishmen and the selfish policy of their government, corresponding to the more vulgar pa.s.sions and ambitions of the people at large.

Pa.s.sing into the Lake Country, she visited Wordsworth at Ambleside, and found "no Apollo, flaming with youthful glory, but, instead, a reverend old man, clothed in black, and walking with cautious step along the level garden path." The aged poet, then numbering seventy-six years, "but of a florid, fair old age," showed the visitors his household portraits, his hollyhocks, and his fuchsias. His secluded mode of life, Margaret learned, had so separated him from the living issues of the time, that the needs of the popular heart touched him but remotely. She found him, however, less intolerant than she had feared concerning the repeal of the Corn Laws, a measure upon which public opinion was at the time strongly divided.

In this neighborhood Margaret again saw Miss Martineau, at a new home "presented to her by the grat.i.tude of England for her course of energetic and benevolent effort." Dean Milman, historian and dramatist, was here introduced to Margaret, who describes him as "a specimen of the polished, scholarly man of the world."

Margaret now visited various places of interest in Scotland, and in Edinburgh saw Dr. Andrew Combe, Dr. Chalmers, and De Quincey. Dr. Combe, an eminent authority in various departments of medicine and physiology, was a younger brother of George Combe, the distinguished phrenologist.

He had much to say about his tribulations with the American publishers who had pirated one of his works, but who refused to print an emended edition of it, on the ground that the book sold well enough as it was.

Margaret describes Dr. Chalmers as "half shepherd, half orator, florid, portly, yet of an intellectually luminous appearance."

De Quincey was of the same age as Wordsworth. Margaret finds his "thoughts and knowledge" of a character somewhat superseded by the progress of the age. She found him, not the less, "an admirable narrator, not rapid, but gliding along like a rivulet through a green meadow, giving and taking a thousand little beauties not required to give his story due relief, but each, in itself, a separate boon." She admires, too, "his urbanity, so opposed to the rapid, slang, Vivian-Greyish style current in the literary conversation of the day."

Among Margaret's meditations in Scotland was one which she records as "the bootless, best thoughts I had while looking at the dull bloodstain and blocked-up secret stair of Holyrood, at the ruins of Loch Leven Castle, and afterwards at Abbotsford, where the picture of Queen Mary's head, as it lay on the pillow when severed from the block, hung opposite to a fine caricature of Queen Elizabeth, dancing high and disposedly."

We give here a part of this meditation:--

"Surely, in all the stern pages of life's account-book there is none on which a more terrible price is exacted for every precious endowment. Her rank and reign only made her powerless to do good, and exposed her to danger. Her talents only served to irritate her foes and disappoint her friends. This most charming of women was the destruction of her lovers.

Married three times, she had never any happiness as a wife, but in both the connections of her choice found that she had either never possessed or could not retain, even for a few weeks, the love of the men she had chosen.... A mother twice, and of a son and daughter, both the children were brought forth in loneliness and sorrow, and separated from her early, her son educated to hate her, her daughter at once immured in a convent. Add the eighteen years of her imprisonment, and the fact that this foolish, prodigal world, when there was in it one woman fitted by her grace and loveliness to charm all eyes and enliven all fancies, suffered her to be shut up to water with her tears her dull embroidery during the full rose-blossom of her life, and you will hardly get beyond this story for a tragedy, not n.o.ble, but pallid and forlorn."

From Edinburgh Margaret and her party made an excursion into the Highlands. The stage-coach was not yet displaced by the locomotive, and Margaret enjoyed, from the top, the varying aspect of that picturesque region. Perth, Loch Leven, and Loch Katrine were visited, and Rowardennan, the place from which the ascent of Ben Lomond is usually made by travellers. Margaret attempted this feat with but one companion, and without a guide, the people at the inn not having warned her of any danger in so doing.

The ascent she found delightful. So magnificent was the prospect, that, in remembering it, she said: "Had that been, as afterwards seemed likely, the last act of my life, there could not have been a finer decoration painted on the curtain which was to drop upon it."

The proverbial _facilis descensus_ did not here hold good, and the _revocare gradum_ nearly cost Margaret her life. Beginning to descend at four in the afternoon, the indistinct path was soon lost. Margaret's companion left her for a moment in search of it, and could not find her.

"Soon he called to me that he had found it [the path], and I followed in the direction where he seemed to be. But I mistook, overshot it, and saw him no more. In about ten minutes I became alarmed, and called him many times. It seems he, on his side, did the same, but the brow of some hill was between us, and we neither saw nor heard one another."

Margaret now made many attempts to extricate herself from her dangerous situation, and at last attained a point from which she could see the lake, and the inn from which she had started in the morning. But the mountain paths were crossed by watercourses, and hemmed in by bogs.

After much climbing up and down, Margaret, already wet, very weary, and thinly clad, saw that she must pa.s.s the night on the mountain. The spot at which the light forsook her was of so precipitous a character as to leave her, in the dark, no liberty of movement. Yet she did keep in motion of some sort through the whole of that weary night; and this, she supposes, saved her life. The stars kept her company for two hours, when the mist fell and hid them. The moon rose late, and was but dimly discernible. At length morning came, and Margaret, starting homeward once more, came upon a company of shepherds, who carried her, exhausted, to the inn, where her distressed friends were waiting for news of her.

Such was the extent of the mountain, that a party of twenty men, with dogs, sent in search of the missing one, were not heard by her, and did not hear her voice, which she raised from time to time, hoping to call some one to her rescue. The strength of Margaret's much-abused const.i.tution was made evident by her speedy recovery from the effects of this severe exposure. A fit vigil, this, for one who was about to witness the scenes of 1848. She speaks of the experience as "sublime indeed, a never-to-be-forgotten presentation of stern, serene realities.... I had had my grand solitude, my Ossianic visions, and the pleasure of sustaining myself." After visiting Glasgow and Stirling, Margaret and her friends returned to England by Abbotsford and Melrose.

In Birmingham Margaret heard two discourses from George Dawson, then considered a young man of much promise. In Liverpool she had already heard James Martineau, and in London she listened to William Fox. She compares these men with William Henry Channing and Theodore Parker:--

"None of them compare in the symmetrical arrangement of extempore discourse, or in pure eloquence and communication of spiritual beauty, with Channing, nor in fulness and sustained flow with Parker."

Margaret's estimate of Martineau is interesting:--

"Mr. Martineau looks like the over-intellectual, the partially developed man, and his speech confirms this impression. He is sometimes conservative, sometimes reformer, not in the sense of eclecticism, but because his powers and views do not find a true harmony. On the conservative side he is scholarly, acute; on the other, pathetic, pictorial, generous. He is no prophet and no sage, yet a man full of fine affections and thoughts; always suggestive, sometimes satisfactory."

Mr. Fox appears to her "the reverse of all this. He is h.o.m.ogeneous in his materials, and harmonious in the results he produces. He has great persuasive power; it is the persuasive power of a mind warmly engaged in seeking truth for itself."

What a leap did our Margaret now make, from Puritanic New England, Roundhead and Cromwellian in its character, into the very heart of Old England,--into that London which, in those days, and for long years after, might have been called the metropolis of the world! Wonders of many sorts the "province in brick" still contains. Still does it most astonish those who bring to it the most knowledge. But the social wonders which it then could boast have pa.s.sed away, leaving no equals to take their place.

Charles d.i.c.kens was then in full bloom,--Thackeray in full bud. Sydney Smith exercised his keen, discreet wit. Kenyon not only wrote about pink champagne, but dispensed it with many other good things. Rogers entertained with exquisite taste, and showed his art-treasures without ostentation. Tom Moore, like a veteran canary, chirped, but would not sing. Lord Brougham and the Iron Duke were seen in the House of Lords.

Carlyle growled and imbibed strong tea at Chelsea. The Queen was in the favor of her youth, with her handsome husband always at her side. The d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, a beautiful woman with lovely daughters, kept her state at Stafford House. Lord Houghton was known as Monckton Milnes. The Honorable Mrs. Norton wore her dark hair folded upon her cla.s.sic head, beneath a circlet of diamonds. A first season in London was then a bewilderment of brilliancy in reputations, beauties, and entertainments.

Margaret did not encounter the season, but hoped to do so at a later day. For the moment she consoled herself thus:--

"I am glad I did not at first see all that pomp and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast with the misery--squalid, agonizing, ruffianly--which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces a note more ominous than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and fallen from inward decay."

Margaret expresses the hope that the social revolution, which to her seemed imminent in England, may be a peaceful one, "which shall destroy nothing except the shocking inhumanity of exclusiveness." She speaks with appreciation of the National and Dulwich Galleries, the British Museum, the Zoological Gardens. Among the various establishments of benevolence and reform, she especially mentions a school for poor Italian boys, with which Mazzini had much to do. This ill.u.s.trious man was already an exile in London, as was the German poet, Freiligrath.

Margaret was an admirer of Joanna Baillie, and considered her and the French Madame Roland as "the best specimens. .h.i.therto offered of women of a Roman strength and singleness of mind, adorned by the various culture and capable of the various action opened to them by the progress of the Christian idea."

She thus chronicles her visit to Miss Baillie:

"We found her in her little, calm retreat at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends.

Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline. Although no autograph hunter, I asked for theirs; and when the elder gave hers as 'sister to Joanna Baillie,' it drew a tear from my eye,--a good tear, a genuine pearl, fit homage to that fairest product of the soul of man, humble, disinterested tenderness."

Margaret also visited Miss Berry, the friend of Horace Walpole, long a celebrity, and at that time more than eighty years old. In spite of this, Margaret found her still characterized by the charm, "careless nature or refined art," which had made her a social power once and always.

But of all the notable personages who might have been seen in the London of that time, no one probably interested Margaret so much as did Thomas Carlyle. Her introduction to him was from Mr. Emerson, his friend and correspondent; and it was such as to open to her, more than once, the doors of the retired and reserved house, in which neither time nor money was lavished upon the entertainment of strangers.

Mr. Carlyle's impressions of Margaret have now been given to the world in the published correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson. She had, long before, drawn her portrait of him in one of her letters descriptive of London and its worthies. The candid criticism of both is full of interest, and may here be contrasted. Margaret says:--

"I approached him with more reverence after a little experience of England and Scotland had taught me to appreciate the strength and height of that wall of shams and conventions which he, more than any other man, or thousand men,--indeed, he almost alone,--has begun to throw down. He has torn off the veils from hideous facts; he has burnt away foolish illusions; he has touched the rocks, and they have given forth musical answer. Little more was wanting to begin to construct the city; but that little was wanting, and the work of construction is left to those that come after him. Nay, all attempts of the kind he is the readiest to deride, fearing new shams worse than the old, unable to trust the general action of a thought, and finding no heroic man, no natural king, to represent it and challenge his confidence."

How significant is this phrase,--"unable to trust the general action of a thought." This saving faith in the power of just thought Carlyle, the thinker, had not.

With a reverence, then, not blind, but discriminating, Margaret approached this luminous mind, and saw and heard its possessor thus:--

"Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings, his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such marked men that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest.... Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons.

"For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd.... He puts out his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird; and his eyes flash bright, instinctive meanings, like Jove's bird. Yet he is not calm and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not of gentle blood enough for that either.... I cannot speak more nor wiselier of him now; nor needs it. His works are true to blame and praise him,--the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil than to legislate for good."

In a letter to Mr. Emerson, Margaret gives some account of her visits at the Carlyle mansion. The second of these was on the occasion of a dinner-party, at which she met "a witty, French, flippant sort of a man, author of a History of Philosophy, and now writing a life of Goethe,"

presumably George Lewes. Margaret acknowledges that he told stories admirably, and that his occasional interruptions of Carlyle's persistent monologue were welcome. Of this, her summary is too interesting to be omitted here:--

"For a couple of hours he was talking about poetry, and the whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind.

Tennyson wrote in verse because the schoolmasters had taught him that it was great to do so; and had thus, unfortunately, been turned from the true path for a man. Burns had, in like manner, been turned from his vocation. Shakespeare had not had the good sense to see that it would have been better to write straight on in prose; and such nonsense which, though amusing enough at first, he ran to death after a while.... The latter part of the evening, however, he paid us for this by a series of sketches, in his finest style of railing and raillery, of modern French literature. All were depreciating except that of Beranger. Of him he spoke with perfect justice, because with hearty sympathy."

The retirement of the ladies to the drawing-room afforded Margaret an opportunity which she had not yet enjoyed.

"I had afterward some talk with Mrs. Carlyle, whom hitherto I had only seen,--for who can speak while her husband is there? I like her very much; she is full of grace, sweetness, and talent. Her eyes are sad and charming."

Margaret saw the Carlyles only once more.

"They came to pa.s.s an evening with us. Unluckily, Mazzini was with us, whose society, when he was there alone, I enjoyed more than any. He is a beauteous and pure music; also, he is a dear friend of Mrs. Carlyle. But his being there gave the conversation a turn to progress and ideal subjects, and Carlyle was fluent in invectives on all our 'rose-water imbecilities.' We all felt distant from him, and Mazzini, after some vain efforts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs. Carlyle said to me: 'These are but opinions to Carlyle; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death.'"

Clearly, Carlyle had not, in Margaret's estimation, the true gospel. She would not bow to the t.i.tanic forces, whether met with in the romances of Sand or in his force-theory. And so, bidding him farewell with great admiration, she pa.s.ses on, as she says, "more lowly, more willing to be imperfect, since Fate permits such n.o.ble creatures, after all, to be only this or that. Carlyle is only a lion."

Carlyle, on his side, writes of her to Mr. Emerson:--