Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli) Part 7

With the work of this winter was combined a series of evening meetings, five in number, to which gentlemen were admitted. Mr. Emerson was present at the second of these, and reports it as having been somewhat enc.u.mbered "by the headiness or incapacity of the men," who, as he observes, had not been trained in Margaret's method.

Another chronicler, for whose truth Mr. Emerson vouches, speaks of the plan of these five evenings as a very n.o.ble one. They were spoken of as Evenings of Mythology, and Margaret, in devising them, had relied upon the more thorough cla.s.sical education of the gentlemen to supplement her own knowledge, acquired in a less systematic way. In this hope she was disappointed. The new-comers did not bring with them an erudition equal to hers, nor yet any helpful suggestion of ideas. The friend whom we now quote is so much impressed by Margaret's power as to say: "I cannot conceive of any species of vanity living in her presence. She distances all who talk with her." Even Mr. Emerson served only to display her powers, his uncompromising idealism seeming narrow and hard when contrasted with her glowing realism. "She proceeds in her search after the unity of things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as Mr.

Emerson does, but by comprehension, and so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to hope and faith."

Margaret's cla.s.ses continued through six winters. The number of those present varied from twenty-five to thirty. In 1841-42 the general subject was Ethics, under which head the Family, the School, the Church, Society, and Literature were all discussed, and with a special reference to "the influences on woman." In the winter next after this, we have notes of the following topics: Is the Ideal first or last, Divination or Experience? Persons who never awake to Life in this World; Mistakes; Faith; Creeds; Woman; Demonology; Influence; Roman Catholicism; The Ideal.

In the season of 1843-44, a number of themes were considered under the general head of Education. Among these were Culture, Ignorance, Vanity, Prudence, and Patience.

These happy labors came to an end in April of the year 1844, when Margaret parted from her cla.s.s with many tokens of their love and grat.i.tude. After speaking of affectionate words, beautiful gifts, and rare flowers, she says:--

"How n.o.ble has been my experience of such relations now for six years, and with so many and so various minds! Life is worth living, is it not?"

Margaret had answered Mr. Mallock's question before it was asked.

Margaret's summer on the Lakes was the summer of 1843. Her first records of it date from Niagara, and give her impressions of the wonderful scene, in which the rapids impressed her more than the cataract itself, whether seen from the American or from the Canadian side.

"Slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a mile of tumbling, rus.h.i.+ng rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my emotions overpowered me. A choking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, my blood ran rippling to my fingers' ends. This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon me."

At Buffalo she embarked for a voyage on Lake Erie. Making a brief stop at Cleveland, the steamer pa.s.sed on to the St. Clair River. The sight of an encampment of Indians on its bank gave Margaret her first feeling of what was then "the West."

"The people in the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their fortunes. They had brought with them their cautious manners, their love of polemics. It grieved me to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow, doctrinal way on these free waters. But that will soon cease. There is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than before for its doctrine."

The following pa.s.sage will show us the spirit which Margaret carried into these new scenes:--

"I came to the West prepared for the distaste I must experience at its mushroom growth. I know that where 'Go ahead!' is the motto, the village cannot grow into the gentle proportions that successive lives and the gradations of experience involuntarily give.... The march of peaceful, is scarcely less wanton than that of war-like invention. The old landmarks are broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day. I have come prepared to see all this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness to distrust or defame. On the contrary, I trust by reverent faith to woo the mighty meaning of the scene, perhaps to foresee the law by which a new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from this chaos."

Charles d.i.c.kens's "American Notes" may have been in Margaret's mind when she penned these lines, and this faith in her may have been quickened by the perusal of the pages in which he showed mostly how _not_ to see a new country.

Reaching Chicago, she had her first glimpse of the prairie, which at first only suggested to her "the very desolation of dulness."

"After sweeping over the vast monotony of the Lakes, to come to this monotony of land, with all around a limitless horizon--to walk and walk, but never climb! How the eye greeted the approach of a sail or the smoke of a steamboat; it seemed that anything so animated must come from a better land, where mountains give religion to the scene. But after I had ridden out and seen the flowers, and observed the sun set with that calmness seen only in the prairies, and the cattle winding slowly to their homes in the 'island groves,' most peaceful of sights, I began to love, because I began to know, the scene, and shrank no longer from the encircling vastness."

Here followed an excursion of three weeks in a strong wagon drawn by a stalwart pair of horses, and supplied with all that could be needed, as the journey was through Rock River valley, beyond the regions of trade and barter. Margaret speaks of "a guide equally admirable as marshal and companion." This was none other than a younger brother of James Freeman Clarke, William Hull Clarke by name, a man who then and thereafter made Chicago his home, and who lived and died an honored and respected citizen. This journey with Margaret, in which his own sister was of the party, always remained one of the poetic recollections of his early life. He had suffered much from untoward circ.u.mstances, and was beginning to lose the elasticity of youth under the burden of his discouragements. Margaret's sympathy divined the depth and delicacy of William Clarke's character, and her unconquerable spirit lifted him from the abyss of despondency into a cheerfulness and courage which nevermore forsook him.

Returning to Chicago, Margaret once more embarked for lake travel, and her next chapter describes Wisconsin, at that time "a Territory, not yet a State; still nearer the acorn than we were."

Milwaukee was then a small town, promising, as she says, "to be, some time, a fine one." The yellow brick, of which she found it mostly built, pleased her, as it has pleased the world since. No railroads with mysterious initials served, in those days, the needs of that vast region. The steamer, arriving once in twenty-four hours, brought mails and travellers, and a little stir of novelty and excitement. Going a day's journey into the adjacent country, Margaret and her companions found such accommodation as is here mentioned:--

"The little log-cabin where we slept, with its flower-garden in front, disturbed the scene no more than a lock upon a fair cheek. The hospitality of that house I may well call princely; it was the boundless hospitality of the heart, which, if it has no Aladdin's lamp to create a palace for the guest, does him still greater service by the freedom of its bounty to the very last drop of its powers."

In the Western immigration Milwaukee was already a station of importance. "Here, on the pier, I see disembarking the Germans, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows how much of old legendary lore, of modern wonder, they have already planted amid the Wisconsin forests? Soon their tales of the origin of things, and the Providence that rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian that the very oak-tree will not know them apart, will not know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid, or a Winnebago oak."

Margaret reached the island of Mackinaw late in August, and found it occupied by a large representation from the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes, who came there to receive their yearly pension from the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton. Arriving at night, the steamer fired some rockets, and Margaret heard with a sinking heart the wild cries of the excited Indians, and the pants and snorts of the departing steamer. She walked "with a stranger to a strange hotel," her late companions having gone on with the boat. She found such rest as she could in the room which served at once as sitting and as dining room. The early morning revealed to her the beauties of the spot, and with these the features of her new neighbors.

"With the first rosy streak I was out among my Indian neighbors, whose lodges honeycombed the beautiful beach. They were already on the alert, the children creeping out from beneath the blanket door of the lodge, the women pounding corn in their rude mortars, the young men playing on their pipes. I had been much amused, when the strain proper to the Winnebago courting flute was played to me on another instrument, at any one's fancying it a melody. But now, when I heard the notes in their true tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison with the sweetest bird-song; and this, like the bird-song, is only practised to allure a mate. The Indian, become a citizen and a husband, no more thinks of playing the flute than one of the _settled-down_ members of our society would of choosing the purple light of love as dyestuff for a surtout."

Of the island itself Margaret writes:--

"It was a scene of ideal loveliness, and these wild forms adorned it, as looking so at home in it."

The Indian encampment was constantly enlarged by new arrivals, which Margaret watched from the window of her boarding-house.

"I was never tired of seeing the canoes come in, and the new arrivals set up their temporary dwellings. The women ran to set up the tent-poles and spread the mats on the ground. The men brought the chests, kettles, and so on. The mats were then laid on the outside, the cedar boughs strewed on the ground, the blanket hung up for a door, and all was completed in less than twenty minutes. Then they began to prepare the night meal, and to learn of their neighbors the news of the day."

In these days, in which a spasm of conscience touches the American heart with a sense of the wrongs done to the Indian, Margaret's impressions concerning our aborigines acquire a fresh interest and value. She found them in occupation of many places from which they have since been driven by what is called the march of civilization. We may rather call it a barbarism better armed and informed than their own. She also found among their white neighbors the instinctive dislike and repulsion which are familiar to us. Here, in Mackinaw, Margaret could not consort with them without drawing upon herself the censure of her white acquaintances.

"Indeed, I wonder why they did not give me up, as they certainly looked upon me with great distaste for it. 'Get you gone, you Indian dog!' was the felt, if not the breathed, expression towards the hapless owners of the soil; all their claims, all their sorrows, quite forgot in abhorrence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the vices the whites have taught them."

Missionary zeal seems to have been at a standstill just at this time, and the hopelessness of converting those heathen to Christianity was held to excuse further effort to that end. Margaret says:--

"Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of love and intelligence, have been civilized and made a valuable ingredient in the new State, I will not say; but this we are sure of, the French Catholics did not harm them, nor disturb their minds merely to corrupt them. The French they loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle and the college, with their n.i.g.g.ard conceptions and unfeeling stare, have never tried the experiment."

Margaret naturally felt an especial interest in observing the character and condition of the Indian women. She says, truly enough, "The observations of women upon the position of woman are always more valuable than those of men."

Unhappily, this is a theme in regard to which many women make no observation of their own, and only repeat what they have heard from men.

But of Margaret's impressions a few sentences will give us some idea:--

"With the women I held much communication by signs. They are almost invariably coa.r.s.e and ugly, with the exception of their eyes, with a peculiarly awkward gait, and forms bent by burdens. This gait, so different from the steady and n.o.ble step of the men, marks the inferior position they occupy."

Margaret quotes from Mrs. Schoolcraft and from Mrs. Grant pa.s.sages which a.s.sert that this inferiority does not run through the whole life of an Indian woman, and that the drudgery and weary service imposed upon them by the men are compensated by the esteem and honor in which they are held. Still, she says:--

"Notwithstanding the homage paid to women, and the consequence allowed them in some cases, it is impossible to look upon the Indian women without feeling that they do occupy a lower place than women among the nations of European civilization.... Their decorum and delicacy are striking, and show that, where these are native to the mind, no habits of life make any difference. Their whole gesture is timid, yet self-possessed. They used to crowd round me to inspect little things I had to show them, but never press near; on the contrary, would reprove and keep off the children. Anything they took from my hand was held with care, then shut or folded, and returned with an air of lady-like precision."

And of the aspect of the Indian question in her day Margaret writes:--

"I have no hope of liberalizing the missionary, of humanizing the sharks of trade, of infusing the conscientious drop into the flinty bosom of policy, of saving the Indian from immediate degradation and speedy death.... Yet, let every man look to himself how far this blood shall be required at his hands. Let the missionary, instead of preaching to the Indian, preach to the trader who ruins him, of the dreadful account which will be demanded of the followers of Cain. Let every legislator take the subject to heart, and, if he cannot undo the effects of past sin, try for that clear view and right sense that may save us from sinning still more deeply."

Margaret's days in Mackinaw were nine in number. She went thence by steamer to the Sault Ste. Marie. On the way thither, the steamer being detained by a fog, its captain took her in a small boat to visit the island of St. Joseph, and on it, the remains of an old English fort. Her comments upon this visit, in itself of little interest, are worth quoting:--

"The captain, though he had been on this trip hundreds of times, had never seen this spot, and never would but for this fog and his desire to entertain me. He presented a striking instance how men, for the sake of getting a living, forget to live. This is a common fault among the active men, the truly living, who could tell what life is. It should not be so. Literature should not be left to the mere literati, eloquence to the mere orator. Every Caesar should be able to write his own Commentary.

We want a more equal, more thorough, more harmonious development, and there is nothing to hinder the men of this country from it, except their own supineness or sordid views."

At the Sault, Margaret found many natural beauties, and enjoyed, among other things, the descent of the rapids in a canoe. Returning to Mackinaw, she was joined by her friends, and has further chronicled only her safe return to Buffalo.

The book which preserves the record of this journey saw the light at the end of the next year's summer. Margaret ends it with a little _Envoi_ to the reader. But for us, the best _envoi_ will be her own description of the last days of its composition:--

"Every day I rose and attended to the many little calls which are always on me, and which have been more of late. Then, about eleven, I would sit down to write at my window, close to which is the apple-tree, lately full of blossoms, and now of yellow-birds.

"Opposite me was Del Sarto's Madonna; behind me, Silenus, holding in his arms the infant Pan. I felt very content with my pen, my daily bouquet, and my yellow-birds. About five I would go out and walk till dark; then would arrive my proofs, like crabbed old guardians, coming to tea every night. So pa.s.sed each day. The 23d of May, my birthday, about one o'clock, I wrote the last line of my little book. Then I went to Mount Auburn, and walked gently among the graves."

And here ends what we have to say about Margaret's New England life.

From its close shelter and intense relations she was now to pa.s.s into scenes more varied and labors of a more general scope. She had become cruelly worn by her fatigues in teaching and in writing, and in the year 1844 was induced, by liberal offers, to accept a permanent position on the staff of the "New York Tribune," then in the hands of Messrs.

Greeley and McElrath. This step involved the breaking of home ties, and the dispersion of the household which Margaret had done so much to sustain and to keep together. Margaret's brothers had now left college, and had betaken themselves to the pursuits chosen as their life work.

Her younger sister was married, and it was decided that her mother should divide her time among these members of her family, leaving Margaret free to begin a new season of work under circ.u.mstances which promised her greater freedom from care and from the necessity of unremitting exertion.