Fluent Essays

Request in the picture yet chosen the broad way into which the multitude rushes, led by the ban- ner on which, strange to say, the royal Ea gle is blazoned, together with the word Expediency? Let him decline that road, and take the narrow, thorny path where Integrity leads, though with no prouder emblem than the dove. He may there Snd the needed remedy which, like the white root, the Moly, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus,6 shall have power to restore the herd of men, disguised by the enchantress to whom they had willingly yielded in the forms of brutes, to the stature and beauty of men. 1845 From Things and Thoughts in Eu rope1 Letter XVIII This letter will reach the United States about the 1st of January; and it may not be impertinent to offer a few New- Year’s re^ections. Every new year, indeed, conSrms the old thoughts, but also presents them under some new aspects. The American in Eu rope, if a thinking mind, can only become more American. In some respects it is a great plea sure to be here. Although we have an in de pen dent po liti cal existence, our position toward Eu rope, as to Literature and the Arts, is still that of a colony, and one feels the same joy here that is experienced by the colonist in returning to the parent home. What was but picture to us becomes reality; remote allusions and deriva- tions trouble no more: we see the pattern of the stuff, and understand the whole tapestry. There is a gradual clearing up on many points, and many baseless notions and crude fancies are dropped. Even the post- haste passage of the business American through the great cities, escorted by cheating cou- riers, and ignorant valets de place,2 unable to hold intercourse with the natives of the country, and passing all his leisure hours with his country- men, who know no more than himself, clears his mind of some mistakes— lifts some mists from his horizon. There are three species: Srst, the servile American— a being utterly shal- low, thoughtless, worthless. He comes abroad to spend his money and indulge his tastes. His object in Eu rope is to have fashionable clothes, good foreign cookery, to know some titled persons, and furnish himself with coffee- house gossip, which he wins importance at home by retailing among those less traveled, and as uninformed as himself. I look with unspeakable contempt on this class— a class which has all the thoughtlessness and partiality of the exclusive classes in Eu rope, without any of their reSnement, or the chivalric feeling which still sparkles among them here and there. However, though these willing serfs in a free age do 6. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus (Ulysses) is able to resist Circe’s efforts to turn him into a swine by eating the magical herb moly. 1. The text is from the New York Daily Tribune, January 1, 1848. Between August 23, 1846 and January 6, 1850, Fuller published thirty- seven dispatches in the Daily Tribune under the title of “Things and Thoughts in Eu rope.” She arrived in Rome in March 1847 and quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of the Italian revolutionar- ies calling for national uniScation and in de pen- dence. This letter was written in Rome in November or December 1847. 2. Local servants (French). 7 6 4 | M A R G A R E T F U L L E R T H I N G S A N D T H O U G H T S I N E U R O P E | 7 6 5 some little hurt, and cause some annoyance at present, it cannot last: our country is fated to a grand, in de pen dent existence, and, as its laws develop, these parasites of a bygone period must whither and drop away. Then there is the conceited American, instinctively bristling and proud of— he knows not what.— He does not see, not he, that the history of Humanity for many centuries is likely to have produced results it requires some training, some devotion, to appreciate and proSt by. With his great clumsy hands, only Stted to work on a steam- engine, he seizes the old Cre- mona violin,3 makes it shriek with anguish in his grasp, and then declares he thought it was all humbug before he came, and now he knows it; that there is not really any music in these old things; that the frogs in one of our swamps makes much Sner, for they are young and alive. To him the eti- quettes of courts and camps, the ritual of the Church, seem simply silly— and no wonder, profoundly ignorant as he is of their origin and meaning. Just so the legends which are the subjects of pictures, the profound myths which are represented in the antique marbles, amaze and revolt him; as, indeed, such things need to be judged of by another standard from that of the Connecticut Blue- Laws.4 He criticises severely pictures, feeling quite sure that his natural senses are better means of judgment than the rules of connoisseurs— not feeling that to see such objects mental vision as well as ^eshly eyes are needed, and that something is aimed at in Art beyond the imitation of the commonest forms of Nature. This is Jonathan5 in the sprawling state, the booby truant, not yet aspir- ing enough to be a good school- boy. Yet in his folly there is meaning; add thought and culture to his in de pen dence, and he will be a man of might: he is not a creature without hope, like the thick- skinned dandy of the class Srst speciSed. The Artistes form a class by themselves. Yet among them, though seeking special aims by special means, may also be found the lineaments of these two classes, as well as of the third, of which I am now to speak. 3d. The thinking American— a man who, recognizing the im mense advan- tage of being born to a new world and on a virgin soil, yet does not wish one seed from the Past to be lost. He is anxious to gather and carry back with him all that will bear a new climate and new culture. Some will dwindle; others will attain a bloom and stature unknown before. He wishes to gather them clean, free from noxious insects. He wishes to give them a fair trial in his new world. And that he may know the conditions under which he may best place them in that new world, he does not neglect to study their history in this. The history of our planet in some moments seems so painfully mean and little, such tri^ing baf^ings and failures to compensate some brilliant successes— such a crashing of the mass of men beneath the feet of a few, and these, too, often the least worthy— such a small drop of honey to each cup of gall, and, in many cases, so mingled, that it is never one moment in life purely tasted,— above all, so little achieved for Humanity as a whole, such tides of war and pestilence intervening to blot out the traces of each 3. Famous violin made in Cremona, Italy, by Antonio Amati (1555– 1640). 4. Such laws demanded the closing of businesses on Sundays and were aimed at curbing the sale of alcohol. 5. Typical, ordinary American. triumph, that no wonder if the strongest soul sometimes pauses aghast! No wonder if the many indolently console themselves with gross joys and frivo- lous prizes. Yes! those men are worthy of admiration who can carry this cross faithfully through Sfty years; it is a great while for all the agonies that beset a lover of good, a lover of men; it makes a soul worthy of a speedier ascent, a more productive ministry in the next sphere. Blessed are they who ever keep that portion of pure, generous love with which they began life! How blessed those who have deepened the fountains, and have enough to spare for the thirst of others! Some such there are; and, feeling that, with all the excuses for failure, still only the sight of those who triumph gives a meaning to life or makes its pangs endurable, we must arise and follow. Eigh teen hundred years of this Christian culture in these Eu ro pe an Kingdoms, a great theme never lost sight of, a mighty idea, an adorable his- tory to which the hearts of men invariably cling, yet are genuine results rare as grains of gold in the river’s sandy bed! Where is the genuine Democracy to which the rights of all men are holy? where the child- like wisdom learn- ing all through life more and more of the will of God? where the aversion to falsehood in all its myriad disguises of cant, vanity, covetousness, so clear to be read in all the history of Jesus of Nazareth? Modern Eu rope is the sequel to that history, and see this hollow En gland, with its monstrous wealth and cruel poverty, its conventional life and low, practical aims; see this poor France, so full of talent, so adroit, yet so shallow and glossy still, which could not escape from a false position with all its baptism of blood; see that lost Poland and this Italy bound down by treacherous hands in all the force of genius; see Rus sia with its brutal Czar and innumerable slaves; see Austria and its royalty that represents nothing, and its people who, as people, are and have nothing! If we consider the amount of truth that has really been spoken out in the world, and the love that has beat in private hearts— how Genius has decked each springtime with such splendid ^owers, conveying each one enough of instruction in its life of harmonious energy, and how continually, unquenchably the spark of faith has striven to burst into ̂ ame and light up the Universe— the public failure seems amazing, even monstrous. Still Eu rope toils and struggles with her idea, and, at this moment, all things bode and declare a new outbreak of the Sre, to destroy the old palaces of crime! May it fertilize also many vineyards!— Here at this moment a suc- cessor of St. Peter, after the lapse of two thousand years, is called “Utopian” by a part of this Eu rope, because he strives to get some food to the mouths of the leaner of his ^ock. A wonderful state of things, and which leaves as the best argument against despair that men do not, cannot despair amid such dark experiences— and thou, my country! will thou not be more true? does no greater success await thee? All things have so conspired to teach, to aid! A new world, a new chance, with oceans to wall in the new thought against interference from the old!— Treasures of all kinds, gold, silver, corn, marble, to provide for every physical need! A noble, constant, starlike soul, an Italian,6 led the way to its shores, and, in the Srst days, the strong, the pure, those too brave, too sincere for the life of the Old World hastened to 6. Christopher Columbus (1451– 1506), born in Genoa. 7 6 6 | M A R G A R E T F U L L E R people them. A generous struggle then shook off what was foreign and gave the nation a glorious start for a worthy goal. Men rocked the cradle of its hopes, great, Srm, disinterested men who saw, who wrote, as the basis of all that was to be done, a statement of the rights, the inborn rights of men, which, if fully interpreted and acted upon, leaves nothing to be desired. Yet, oh Ea gle, whose early ^ight showed this clear sight of the Sun, how often dost thou near the ground, how show the vulture in these later days! Thou wert to be the advance- guard of Humanity, the herald of all Progress; how often hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here that I may really say the Liberty of the Press works well, and that the checks and balances naturally evolve from it which sufSce to its government. I may say the minds of our people are alert, and that Talent has a free chance to rise. It is much. But dare I say that po liti cal ambition is not as darkly sullied as in other countries? Dare I say that men of most in^uence in po liti cal life are those who represent most virtue or even intellectual power? Is it easy to Snd names in that career of which I can speak with enthusiasm? Must I not confess in my country to a boundless lust of gain? Must I not confess to the weakest vanity, which bristles and blusters at each foolish taunt of the foreign press; and must I not admit that the men who make these undigniSed rejoin- ders seek and Snd popularity so? Must I not confess that there is as yet no antidote cordially adopted that will defend even that great, rich country against the evils that have grown out of the commercial system in the old world? Can I say our social laws are generally better, or show a nobler insight to the wants of man and woman? I do, indeed, say what I believe, that volun- tary association for improvement in these particulars will be the grand means for my nation to grow and give a nobler harmony to the coming age. But it is only of a small minority that I can say they as yet seriously take to heart these things; that they earnestly meditate on what is wanted for the country,— for mankind,— for our cause is, indeed, the cause of all mankind at present. Could we succeed, really succeed, combine a deep religious love with practi- cal development, the achievements of Genius with the happiness of the mul- titude, we might believe Man had now reached a commanding point in his ascent, and would stumble and faint no more. Then there is this horrible cancer of Slavery, and this wicked War,7 that has grown out of it. How dare I speak of these things here? I listen to the same arguments against the eman- cipation of Italy, that are used against the emancipation of our blacks; the same arguments in favor of the spollation8 of Poland as for the conquest of Mexico. I Snd the cause of tyranny and wrong everywhere the same— and lo! my Country the darkest offender, because with the least excuse, foresworn to the high calling with which she was called,— no champion of the rights of men, but a robber and a jailor; the scourge hid behind her banner; her eyes Sxed, not on the stars, but on the possession of other men. 7. The war with Mexico (1846– 48), which many Northerners believed was intended to expand slavery into the southwestern territories. 8. Spoliation. T H I N G S A N D T H O U G H T S I N E U R O P E | 7 6 7 How it pleases me here to think of the Abolitionists! I could never endure to be with them at home, they were so tedious, often so narrow, always so rabid and exaggerated in their tone. But, after all, they had a high motive, something eternal in their desire and life; and, if it was not the only thing worth thinking of it was really something worth living and dying for to free a great nation from such a ter- rible blot, such a threatening plague. God strengthen them and make them wise to achieve their purpose! I please myself, too, with remembering some ardent souls among the American youth who, I trust, will yet expand and help to give soul to the huge, over fed, too hastily grown- up body. May they be constant. “Were Man but constant he were perfect!”9 it has been said; and it is true that he who could be constant to those moments in which he has been truly human— not brutal, not mechanical— is on the sure path to his perfection and to effectual ser vice of the Universe. It is to the youth that Hope addresses itself, to those who yet burn with aspiration, who are not hardened in their sins. But I dare not expect too much of them. I am not very old, yet of those who, in life’s morning, I saw touched by the light of a high hope, many have seceded. Some have become voluptuaries; some mere family men, who think it is quite life enough to win bread for half a dozen people and treat them decently; others are lost through indolence and vacillation. Yet some remain constant. “I have wit- nessed many a shipwreck, yet still beat noble hearts.” I have found many among the youth of En gland, of France— of Italy also— full of high desire, but will they have courage and purity to Sght the battle through in the sacred, the immortal band? Of some of them I believe it and await the proof. If a few succeed amid the trial, we have not lived and loved in vain. To these, the heart of my country, a Happy New Year! I do not know what I have written. I have merely yielded to my feelings in thinking of America; but something of true love must be in these lines— receive them kindly, my friends; it is, by itself, some merit for printed words to be sincere. 1848 9. Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona 5.4.111– 12. 7 6 8 | M A R G A R E T F U L L E R 7 2 2 | M A R G A R E T F U L L E R we pray— that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond- man’s two hun- dred and Sfty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righ teous altogether.”3 With malice toward none; with charity for all; with Srmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to Snish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan— to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. 1865 3. Psalm 19.9. M ARGARET FULLER 1810–1850 In their six- volume History of Woman Suffrage (1881), the U.S. feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage declared that Marga- ret Fuller “possessed more in^uence upon the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time.” When she died tragically at the age of forty, she had published approximately three hundred essays and reviews— emerging as one of the best literary critics of her day— as well as a major travel narrative, an impor- tant book on women’s rights that predated the Srst women’s suffrage convention by several years, and a collection of her writings. She had also edited the Dial (the semi- ofScial journal of the Transcendentalists) and become one of the Srst female columnists and the Srst female overseas journalist for a U.S. daily newspaper, Hor- ace Greeley’s New York Tribune. She not only argued for the intellectual equality of women to men but, in her writings and personal life, presented herself as an exam- ple of women’s abilities. At a time when no institutions of higher learning were open to women, her richly allusive writings displayed a knowledge of literary tradi- tions, history, religion, and po liti cal and legal thought that one would associate with a university- educated scholar or teacher; and at a time when women were expected to remain within the domestic sphere— and never under any circum- stances to compete with men— her activist public presence and conSdent persona troubled and fascinated her male friends. In^uenced by Emerson’s philosophy of self- culture and self- reliance, which she extended to women, Fuller continually challenged herself to move in new directions. Sarah Margaret Fuller was born at Cambridgeport (now part of Cambridge), Mas- sachusetts, on May 23, 1810, the Srst of the nine children of Margarett Crane and Timothy Fuller. Her father, a lawyer and four- term congressman, supervised her edu- cation, teaching her Latin, Greek, French, and Italian in a rigorous regime involving M A R G A R E T F U L L E R | 7 2 3 long hours of study and drill. In an autobiographical account written when she was thirty years old, Fuller complained of the nightmares and headaches that accompa- nied what she termed her “unnatural” childhood; but a few years later, in “The Great Lawsuit” (1843), she praised the father of “Miranda” (Fuller’s Sctionalized self- portrait in the essay) for regarding her “as a living mind” and thus freeing her from the culture’s strictures against developing female intellect. By the time she was ten, she had read extensively in Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus, Shakespeare, and numerous other classic writers. In 1824, her parents sent her to Miss Susan Prescott’s Young Ladies’ Seminary in Groton, Massachusetts, a sort of Snishing school, which she left after a year, returning to live with her family in Cambridge. During the late 1820s she began to read such in^uential Eu ro pe an Romantics as the French novelist and po liti cal theorist Germaine de Staël and the German novelist, dramatist, and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Timothy Fuller moved the family to a farm in Groton in 1833, thus removing Margaret from the Cambridge environment she had come to Snd so stimulating. She continued with her self- education, however, translating Goethe’s drama Torquato Tasso and publishing her Srst essay, “In Defense of Brutus,” in an 1834 issue of the Boston Daily Advertiser & Patriot. Fuller wanted to become a full- time writer and translator— activities then open- ing up to women— but those plans had to be abandoned when her father died of cholera in October 1835. Her mother was sickly, and the bulk of the responsibility for Snancially supporting the family fell to Fuller. Setting aside her own ambi- tions, she turned to teaching, Srst at Bronson Alcott’s progressive co- educational Temple School in Boston, and then at the prestigious Greene Street School in Providence, Rhode Island. In her little spare time, she continued her writing and translating, placing several reviews and essays in the Western Messenger, and pub- lishing a translation of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe in 1839. Realizing that she would not be able to devote herself to her literary interests while holding a full- time teaching job, she resigned from Greene Street School in 1839 and moved back to Cambridge. To support herself, she established her “Conversations”— paid seminars for elite women of the Boston and Cambridge area in which dia- logue, rather than rote learning or lecture, was the dominant pedagogy. These meetings anticipated the women’s book- club movement of later in the century and were fondly remembered for years afterward by their participants. Over the next six years the group addressed such top- ics as Greek mythology, the Sne arts, ethics, education, demonology, philo- sophical idealism, and the intellectual potential of women. A friend of Emerson’s since she Srst sought him out in 1836, Fuller edited the Dial from its founding in 1840 to 1842, while continuing to translate works by and about Goethe. In 1842 she resigned her editorship but kept on with her “Conversations” and writing. She did her Srst signiScant traveling in  1843, spending four months with friends touring the Great Lakes, Illi- nois, and the Wisconsin Territory. Upon her return, she researched the history of the old Northwest territories, wrote over thirty poems, and in 1844 brought out her Srst full- length book, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, a volume Margaret Fuller, from a daguerreotype made in July 1846. This is the only known photograph of Fuller. of historical meditations, poetry, and travel narrative, which Edgar Allan Poe hailed as “remarkable.” The New York editor Horace Greeley was so impressed with the book that he offered Fuller the position of full- time literary editor of the New York Tribune. Fuller moved to New York City in late 1844, and during the next two years pub- lished over two hundred essays in the Tribune, including in^uential reviews of Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Frederick Douglass. (She republished a number of these reviews in her 1846 Papers on Literature and Art.) She also wrote columns on public questions— what we would now call investigative reporting— addressing such matters as the condition of the female prisoners she had visited in New York’s Sing Sing Prison in late 1844. In 1845 Greeley published her Woman in the Nine- teenth Century, which expanded her 1843 Dial essay “The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women” into a full- length book. Taken together, the essay and book meditate powerfully on the ways that cultural constructions of gender limited both female and male potential. Providing examples of strong hero- ines and goddesses from history, literature, and mythology, she sought to inspire women readers to imagine greater possibilities for themselves. She also linked the situation of white domestic women to the situation of the slave, thus developing an overlapping critique of slavery and patriarchy. Lydia Maria Child declared in an 1845 review of Woman in the Nineteenth Century that Fuller raised important questions about whether under current conditions love is “a mockery, and mar- riage a sham.” By the late nineteenth century both the book and “The Great Law- suit” had emerged as landmarks in the history of feminist thought in the United States. In August 1846, Fuller sailed for Eu rope, having arranged with Greeley to send back regular dispatches at the rate of ten dollars per column. Arriving Srst in En gland, she met the writer and phi los o pher Thomas Carlyle, whom she had long admired but who disappointed her by his reactionary po liti cal views and his cold response to the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, then a po liti cal refugee in En gland. In Paris she met the French woman novelist George Sand and the exiled Polish poet and revolutionary Adam Mickiewicz. She next went to Italy, at the time not a uniSed country but a collection of states— some in de pen dent, some controlled by the pope, and some controlled by Austria. Soon after settling in Rome she became romantically involved with Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, a nobleman eleven years her ju nior who supported the revolutionary cause of Italian uniScation (Risorgimento) led by Giuseppe Garibaldi and Mazzini. Her dispatches to the Tribune recorded her increasing preoccupation with the developing Italian revolution, which she linked to American ideals of republicanism that harked back to the original Roman repub- lic, long her po liti cal ideal. In December of 1847 Fuller became pregnant, but as a Protestant her marriage to the Catholic Ossoli seemed out of the question because of the opposition of his family and the difSculties of getting permission in Italy for an interfaith marriage. Through a dismal rainy season, she covered po liti cal events for the Tribune, and when cities of northern Italy revolted against the Austrians in March 1848, Fuller described to her New York readers the joyous response of the Roman citizens. Emerson wrote from En gland urging her to return home before war broke out, but she was not ready to tell her Massachusetts connections about her pregnancy, and chose instead to wait for the child’s birth in the countryside near Rome. Ossoli, who had become a member of the civic guard, was with her when their son, Angelo, was born on September 5. Leaving the baby with a wet nurse— a common practice for the era— Fuller returned to Rome late in November in time to cover the ^ight of the pope and, early in 1849, the arrival of the Italian nationalist Garibaldi, the proclamation of the Roman Republic, and Mazzini’s arrival in Rome as well. The republic lasted less than a year: French troops entered Rome on June 30, 1849, and quickly restored the pope to power. During the bloody siege, Fuller served as the 7 2 4 | M A R G A R E T F U L L E R T H E G R E A T L A W S U I T | 7 2 5 1. Reprinted from the Boston Dial (July 1843). In 1845 Fuller published a revised, expanded version of this work under the title Woman in the Nineteenth Century. director of the Hospital of the Fate Bene Fratelli, doing heroic work for the wounded revolutionaries. After the defeat of the republican forces, Fuller moved to Florence with Angelo and Ossoli and began to work on a history of the short- lived Roman Republic. She may have married Ossoli, as his sister later claimed and as she herself stated in some of her letters home. But there was doubt about this among her friends, who may have been just as alarmed by her marriage to a Catholic as by what they regarded as her pro^igate sexual behavior as an unmarried woman. Convinced that she and Ossoli would have better economic prospects in the United States, Fuller arranged passage home, and on May 17, 1850, the three sailed for the United States. On July 19, two months and two days later— sailing ships took many weeks to cross the Atlantic— the ship was wrecked within sight of land off Fire Island, New York, and all three per- ished. Angelo’s body washed ashore. A trunk containing some of Fuller’s papers was later recovered, but not her history of Rome. Thoreau traveled to the site and sought vainly for her body; at home, Emerson wrote mournfully in his journal, “I have lost in her my audience.” Hawthorne, who had been friends with Fuller during the 1840s, may have had her in mind when creating Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (1850). Wishing to memorialize her career and yet confused about how to present this uncon- ventional woman to a general audience, Fuller’s male friends brought out Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli in 1852, which emphasized her eccentricities, egotism, and aloofness. But if her refusal to stay within feminine bounds disturbed her male con- temporaries, that very nonconformity— an instance of Emerson’s own teachings, after all— had been crucial to her achievements as an intellectual and writer. The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women1 This great suit has now been carried on through many ages, with various results. The decisions have been numerous, but always followed by appeals to still higher courts. How can it be otherwise, when the law itself is the subject of frequent elucidation, constant revision? Man has, now and then, enjoyed a clear, triumphant hour, when some irresistible conviction warmed and puriSed the atmosphere of his planet. But, presently, he sought repose after his labors, when the crowd of pigmy adversaries bound him in his sleep. Long years of inglorious imprisonment followed, while his enemies reveled in his spoils, and no counsel could be found to plead his cause, in the absence of that all- promising glance, which had, at times, kindled the poetic soul to revelation of his claims, of his rights. Yet a foundation for the largest claim is now established. It is known that his inheritance consists in no partial sway, no exclusive possession, such as his adversaries desire. For they, not content that the universe is rich, would, each one for himself, appropriate trea sure; but in vain! The many- colored garment, which clothed with honor an elected son, when rent asunder for the many, is a worthless spoil. A band of robbers cannot live princely in the prince’s castle; nor would he, like them, be content with less than all, though he would not, like them, seek it as fuel for riotous enjoyment, but as his principality, to administer and guard for the use of all living things therein.