From: The Woman and The Myth: Margaret Fuller’s Life & Writings (1994)
Author: Bell Gale Chevigny, Margaret Fuller
Published: Northeastern University Press 1976; 1994 Boston
CONTEMPORARIES ON FULLER
1. At Brook Farm, Georgiana Bruce Kirby [1887]
Whether Hawthorne modeled Zenobia of The Blithedale Romance (his Brook Farm novel of 1852) on Margaret Fuller and, if so, whether in malice or admiration, has been hotly contested for over a hundred years. And the record of Fuller at Brook Farm is also controversial. One of the residents, Amelia Russell, recalled, “When listening to her wonderful conversations, which by the way, were limited to one person—herself—and straining my mind to comprehend her meaning, I must own I have sometimes wished her English was rather plainer” (Lindsay Swift, Brook Farm, p. 212). But Georgiana Bruce, who deferentially burned pastilles to purify Fuller’s room and brought her coffee in their only china, recalled in her memoir below that she found in Fuller a candid—and possibly earthy—realism.
. . . There was no mother at the community of sufficiently large intellect, experience and courage to advise and sustain vigorous, natural young men and maidens in any important emergency. Had Mrs. Sophia Ripley been a mother, possessing the prescience and tact begotten of maternal love, it would have been better for all of us. Unfortunately, she was a sisterly rather than a wifely woman. She was gentle, refined, well informed, but narrow and, compared with the others, artificial. While you were in her mood or state of mind, she accepted you with all amiability; when you were groping in the dark, or tempest-tossed, she helplessly abandoned you to your fate, perhaps condemned you, as those always condemn who are incapable of understanding others.
Many of us did her great injustice by demanding of her that with which nature had not endowed her, viz., broad and deep human sympathy. We felt ourselves at times sadly in need of a wise, motherly friend, and because Sophia was the wife of the president, and especially because she was over forty, we insisted that years should give the required experience and looked to her for the help we could not expect from one another. But she was not equal to the position. Indeed I knew of no one but Margaret Fuller who would have been. How all-sufficient we should have found her wonderfully comprehensive judgment and tenderness. But how often should we have encountered a Margaret Fuller outside in the world when we needed her? [Years of Experience (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887), pp. 172-73]
2. Her Tribune writing and concern for prostitutes, Horace Greeley [1852]
Although Greeley complained that Fuller wrote slowly, she did meet her obligation of writing three pieces—two literary and one on a social theme—per week, and he usually gave them the lead position on page one. What apparently warmed Greeley most toward her was her honesty, her personal generosity, and her ready sympathy for social “inferiors,” whether servants or “ruined” women.
Her earlier contributions to the Tribune were not her best, and I did not at first prize her aid so highly as I afterwards learned to do. She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and intimate acquaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation: She could write only when in the vein; and this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader; but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, on any subject, and with a rapidity limited only by the physical ability to form the requisite pen-strokes, the notion of waiting for a brighter day, or a happier frame of mind, appears fantastic and absurd. He would as soon think of waiting for a change in the moon. Hence, while I realized that her contributions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They often seemed to make their appearance “a day after the fair.” . . .
Of her writings I do not purpose to speak critically. I think most of her contributions to the Tribune, while she remained with us, were characterized by a directness, terseness, and practicality, which are wanting in some of her earlier productions. Good judges have confirmed my own opinion, that, while her essays in the Dial are more elaborate and ambitious, her reviews in the Tribune are far better adapted to win the favor and sway the judgment of the great majority of readers. But, one characteristic of her writings I feel bound to commend,—their absolute truthfulness. She never asked how this would sound, nor whether that would do, nor what would be the effect of saying anything; but simply, “ls it the truth? Is it such as the public should know?” And if her judgment answered, “Yes,” she uttered it; no matter what turmoil it might excite, nor what odium it might draw down on her own head . . . .
I have known few women, and scarcely another maiden, who had the heart and the courage to speak with such frank compassion, in mixed circles, of the most degraded and outcast portion of the sex. The contemplation of their treatment, especially by the guilty authors of their ruin, moved her to a calm and mournful indignation, which she did not attempt to suppress nor control. Others were willing to pity and deplore; Margaret was more inclined to vindicate and to redeem. She did not hesitate to avow that on meeting some of these abused, unhappy sisters, she had been surprised to find them scarcely fallen morally below the ordinary standard of Womanhood,—realizing and loathing their debasement; anxious to escape it; and only repelled by the sad consciousness that for them sympathy and society remained only so long as they should persist in the ways of pollution. Those who have read her “Woman,” may remember some daring comparisons therein suggested between these Pariahs of society and large classes of their respectable sisters; and that was no fitful expression,—no sudden outbreak,—but impelled by her most deliberate convictions. I think, if she had been born to large fortune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of Virtue, would have been one of her most cherished and first realized conceptions. [Memoirs, II, 154-55, 157-60]
3. As a female journalist, “T. L.,” March 7, 1846
A response in a rival newspaper to one of Fuller’s reviews for the Tribune shows how naïve was her hope that critics might speak together “as man to man.” On March 4, 1846, Fuller had reviewed A Defence of Capital Punishment by George B. Cheever, attacking both the author’s position and his rigid presentation. Though writing that she had “neither skill nor patience” to unravel Cheever’s “sophistical reasoning,” she went on to outline its chief flaws and called for a “noble and strong opponent, putting forth all his power for conscience’s sake.” Fuller’s antagonist, “T. L.” began his assault, excerpted below, by ignoring her: “It was probably from the pen of [the Tribune’s] fair correspondent, but we shall regard it as the Editor’s own work.” Fuller replied with spirit in the March 10 Tribune: “We were not aware that the Bible, or the welfare of human beings were subjects improper for the consideration of ‘females’ whether ‘fair’ or otherwise. We had always supposed that, in the field of literature, the meeting was not between man and woman, but between mind and mind.” (Ole Bull [1810-1880] was a Norwegian violinist and composer about whom Fuller wrote three pieces during his American tour; the Harbinger, edited by George Ripley from 1845 to 1849, was a Fourierist journal which aimed to treat “the great questions in social science, politics, literature, and the arts.”)
. . . We cannot . . . help remarking, by the way, on the very chivalrous course pursued by these heroic philanthropists [of the Tribune school]. Having abandoned that field in which alone it is possible to have a satisfactory discussion of this subject, and that, too, after repeated challenges of their own which had been most promptly met, these most valiant men have the meanness and cowardice to skulk behind a female, who, however personal and abusive she might be, could not, especially on such questions as these, be treated as a proper and legitimate adversary. Of course no reply will be made to that very modest lady who has so foolishly, and with so much vanity, suffered herself to be thrust forward in an argument for which she herself admits, “she has neither skill nor patience.” Indeed, although this most admirable representative of the school of “love and philanthropy” and of the “spiritual insight” seems quite at home in such very common language as “monstrous,” “detestable,” “horrible,” “demoniac,” “diabolical,” &c., yet she should know that the proper discussion of the question so rashly ventured upon requires more than this; and that it is indeed quite a different matter from doing up the slop literature of the Tribune, or writing unmeaning rhapsodies on the unutterable ideas of Ole Bull, or repeating the cant and drivel of the Harbinger about Dante and Beethoven, or praising the chaste “creations” of that most chaste and “spiritual” creature, George Sand. . . . [Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, March 7, 1846]
4. Letter of introduction, Ralph Waldo Emerson, July 31, 1846
It is significant that so few of Fuller’s friends commented on her journalism. But James Clarke, a regular reader of the Tribune, wrote her about her articles: “They seem to me to be better written than any thing of yours I have read. There is more ease, grace, freedom & point to them. The thoughts and sentiments are such as must do good, & I am extremely glad that you have such an excellent organ through which to speak to the public” (July 26, 1845, Houghton MS). In contrast, Emerson remarked wryly, “The muses have feet, to be sure, but it is an odd arrangement that selects them for the treadmill” (Rusk, Letters, III, 268). When she was leaving New York, he visited her to give her the following introduction to his combative friend of many years, Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle’s own responses to Margaret Fuller were summed up after her death: “Such a predetermination to eat this big Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any human soul” (Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, II, 212).
I send this letter by Margaret Fuller, of whose approach, I believe I wrote you some word. There is no foretelling how you visited & crowded English will like our few educated men or women, and in your learned populace my luminaries may easily be overlooked. But of all the travellers whom you have so kindly received from me, I think of none since Alcott went to England, whom I so much desired that you should see & like, as this dear old friend of mine. For two years now, I have scarcely seen her, as she has been at New York, engaged by Horace Greeley as a literary editor of his “Tribune” newspaper. This employment was made acceptable to her by good pay, great local & personal conveniences of all kinds, and unbounded confidence and respect from Greeley himself, & all other parties connected with this influential journal (of 30 000 subscribers, I believe). And Margaret Fuller’s work as critic of all new books, critic of the drama, of music, & good arts in New York, has been honorable to her. Still this employment is not satisfactory to me. She is full of all nobleness, and with the generosity native to her mind & character, appears to me an exotic in New England, a foreigner from some more sultry & expansive climate. She is, I suppose, the earliest reader & lover of Goethe in this country, and nobody here knows him so well. Her love too of whatever is good in French, and specially in Italian genius, give her the best title to travel. In short, she is our citizen of the world by quite special diploma. And I am heartily glad that she has an opportunity of going abroad, that pleases her . . . . [The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Joseph Slater (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p . 407]
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