Margaret Fuller

by Megan Marshall

  [>] “for the sake”: FLV, p. 249.

  [>] “fine healthy girl”: FLV, p. 249. For laws on foundling children in the Papal States, see Amalia’s Tale, pp. 11–12.

  [>] “peaceful and gay”: FLV, p. 254.

  [>] “American Circle”: FLV, p. 280.

  [>] “wander[ing] feebly”: FLV, p. 249.

  [>] “woman’s day”: Dispatches, p. 245.

  [>] “free, independent, one”: Dispatches, p. 216.

  [>] “from the married”: Joan Von Mehren, “Establishing the Facts on the Ossoli Family: An Experiment in E-Mail Research,” Margaret Fuller Society Newsletter, vol. 9, winter 2001, p. 2. I have altered Von Mehren’s translation slightly to correspond more closely to the original Latin, which is reprinted in “Margaret Fuller, the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, and the Marriage Question: Considering the Research of Dr. Roberto Colzi,” Resources for American Literary Study, vol. 30, 2005, p. 122. For a thorough discussion of theories as to the timing of the Ossolis’ wedding, including the possibility that it may have taken place long after Nino’s birth when the family lived in Florence, or not at all, see “Margaret Fuller, the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, and the Marriage Question,” pp. 104–43. Von Mehren concludes definitively that the wording of Nino’s baptismal record confirms that the couple had married in advance of the baptism.

  [>] “half killed me”: FLV, p. 304.

  [>] “your eldest child”: FLV, p. 260.

  [>] “I am a mother”: FLV, p. 248.

  [>] “Yet I shall never”: FLV, p. 248.

  [>] “more afraid of being”: Quoted in FLVI, p. 9.

  [>] “I have lived”: FLV, p. 283. Although this letter survives without identification of the recipient, a reference to “something of the violet” suggests that it was written to WHC, who initiated this shared metaphor.

  [>] “little heart”: FLV, p. 270.

  [>] “an inestimable”: FLV, pp. 291–92.

  [>] “In him” . . . “I have found”: FLV, p. 261.

  [>] “moored” themselves: FLV, p. 273.

  [>] “What a difference”: FLV, p. 280.

  [>] “kicking, throwing”: FLV, p. 302.

  [>] “not handsome”: FLV, p. 288n.

  [>] “I feel so refreshed”: FLV, p. 302.

  [>] “a dark-haired, quiet, modest”: FLV, p. 288n.

  [>] “so cheerful and busy”: FLV, p. 265.

  [>] “glorious days that expand”: FLVI, p. 66.

  [>] “the world can no longer”: Dispatches, p. 320.

  [>] “comfort, no solution”: FLV, p. 295.

  [>] “Heaven and Hell”: FLV, p. 273.

  [>] “blighted” hopes: FLV, p. 257.

  [>] “it has ploughed”: FLV, p. 301.

  [>] “angry” older brother: FLV, p. 262.

  [>] “eke out bread”: FLV, p. 285.

  [>] “I should not be sorry”: FLV, p. 284.

  [>] frequently wore: William Henry Hurlbert, quoted in Joel Myerson, ed., Fuller in Her Own Time (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008), p. 97.

  [>] “a new revolution”: FLV, p. 299.

  [>] “the restored authorities”: FLV, p. 287.

  [>] “find really a home”: FLV, p. 299.

  [>] two feet of snow: Dispatches, p. 320; FLV, p. 306.

  [>] “kind of fearful”: FLV, pp. 305–6.

  [>] “running about” . . . “blind”: FLV, p. 269.

  [>] “revolutionary” . . . “The heart”: FLV, p. 250.

  [>] “I have acted”: FLVI, p. 88.

  [>] “whatever I have done”: FLV, p. 285.

  [>] “no questions”: FLV, p. 269.

  [>] “increased warmth of interest”: FLV, p. 269.

  [>] “retiring from the Roman”: FLV, p. 280n.

  [>] “strange story”: Fuller in Her Own Time, pp. 92–93.

  [>] figure of steadfast resolve: Joseph Mozier’s portrait bust of MF is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. A photo can be seen in Robert N. Hudspeth, “A New Image of Margaret Fuller,” Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 273, winter 2011, p. 4.

  [>] “the handsomest”: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s account of Joseph Mozier’s views, in Fuller in Her Own Time, p. 176.

  [>] “to impose”: Ibid., pp. 97, 94, 98.

  [>] “pale, erect, narrow”: FLV, pp. 275, 277.

  [>] “I am just the same”: FLV, p. 293.

  [>] “Margaret F. has been”: ELIV, p. 168.

  [>] “I expect that to many”: FLV, p. 291.

  [>] “he will feel very strange”: FLV, p. 286.

  [>] “He is not in any”: FLV, p. 261.

  [>] “some of my friends”: FLV, p. 291.

  [>] “La Madre”: FLV, p. 299.

  [>] “left” to “hear”: FLV, pp. 294–95.

  [>] “possessed of a great”: FLV, p. 58.

  [>] “the peace way”: FLV, p. 295.

  [>] “the much that calls”: Jeffrey Steele, ed., The Essential Margaret Fuller (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. 18.

  [>] “These are not the things”: FLV, p. 296.

  [>] “absolutely wanting”: MF, Essays on American Life and Letters, Joel Myerson, ed. (Albany, N.Y.: NCUP, 1978), p. 390.

  [>] “lived cheek by jowl”: Quoted in VM, p. 294.

  [>] “too cruel”: FLV, p. 199.

  [>] “a useless resistance”: FLV, p. 199.

  [>] “I pity those”: FLVI, p. 77.

  [>] “if my life be not”: FLVI, p. 57.

  [>] “feel anxious”: FLVI, pp. 87–88.

  [>] “I will believe”: FLVI, p. 86.

  [>] “marble and rags”: FLVI, p. 83.

  [>] the wrecks of three: FLVI, p. 81.

  [>] “Siberian winter”: FLVI, p. 85.

  [>] “his great stout Roman”: FLVI, p. 68.

  [>] “an immense stock”: FLVI, p. 75.

  [>] “full of boxes”: FLVI, p. 85.

  [>] “I have never”: FLVI, p. 67.

  [>] “I feel works of art”; A Last Supper: FLVI, p. 68; John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, vol. 4, E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds. (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), p. 40.

  [>] “sufficient number”: FLVI, p. 70.

  [>] “full of armed men”: MF, “Recollections of the Vatican,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review, vol. 27, July 1850, pp. 65, 64.

  [>] “find always” . . . “can take”: FLVI, p. 69.

  [>] “great novelty”: FLV, p. 293.

  [>] “nothing else can break”: FLVI, p. 69.

  [>] “For his sake”: FLVI, p. 70.

  [>] “I never think”: FLV, p. 284. See note following “I have lived” on page 445.

  [>] “dangerous pressure”: FLVI, p. 74.

  [>] “so sad and weary”: FLVI, p. 86.

  [>] “One would think”: FLVI, p. 70.

  [>] “I hope he will”: FLV, p. 305.

  [>] “It has long seemed”: FLV, p. 300.

  [>] “Joy to those born”: Dispatches, pp. 322–23.

  [>] “with most sad”: FLVI, p. 85.

  [>] “betrayed and exiled”: Dispatches, pp. 322–23.

  21. “NO FAVORABLE WIND”

  [>] “the flower”: FLIII, pp. 165–66.

  [>] “from the first”: FLIII, pp. 166–67.

  [>] “rich, if troubled”: FLVI, p. 85.

  [>] “to go into the market”: FLV, p. 284.

  [>] “my treasures”: FLVI, p. 86.

  [>] “what is most”: WHC, “Papers,” BPL, quoted in CFII, p. 508.

  [>] “together in confiding”: Robert D. Habich, “Margaret Fuller’s Journal for October 1842,” Harvard Library Bulletin, vol. 35, 1985, p. 290.

  [>] The seventeenth: OMII, p. 338. The italicized sentences in this chapter are quoted directly from William Henry Channing’s account of the wreck of the Elizabeth, in OMII, pp. 341–49.

  [>] “sense of fresh life”: FLVI, p. 64.

  [>] “In memory”: Quoted in CFII, p. 503.

&n
bsp; [>] “We are never”: FLV, p. 57.

  [>] “and I say it merely”: FLVI, p. 87.

  [>] “more than five hundred”: Quoted in CFII, p. 500.

  [>] Celeste Paolini: Although the nurse’s name is given variously as Celesta Pardena, Celeste Panolini, and Celeste Paolini in other accounts, I have adopted the third spelling, used by William Henry Channing, OMII, p. 338.

  [>] “Yes! it was”: FLVI, p. 90.

  [>] Nino “could see”: Catherine Hasty, quoted in CFII, p. 505.

  [>] “I feel cradled”: FLVI, p. 354.

  [>] “the social inquisition”: FLV, p. 285.

  [>] “advantages of your absenteeism”: ELIV, p. 199.

  [>] “Shall we not yet”: ELIII, pp. 447–48.

  [>] “Cut away!” . . . She lay: OMII, p. 342.

  [>] “We must die”: Catherine Hasty, quoted in CFII, p. 507.

  [>] “what is most valuable”: WHC, “Papers,” BPL, quoted in CFII, p. 508.

  [>] Now came Margaret’s: OMII, p. 346.

  [>] “I am a married”: Quoted in CFII, p. 510.

  [>] “one desperate effort”: Quoted in CFII, p. 511.

  [>] When last seen: OMII, p. 349.

  [>] “could have a good deal”: FLV, p. 273.

  [>] “children splashing and shouting”: Martha L. Berg and Alice de V. Perry, eds., “‘The Impulses of Human Nature’: Margaret Fuller’s Journal from June Through October 1844,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 102, 1990, p. 89.

  EPILOGUE: “AFTER SO DEAR A STORM”

  [>] “their contents”: “Letter of Bayard Taylor,” Fire Island, July 23 [1850], first published in New-York Tribune, reprinted in MF, At Home and Abroad; or, Things and Thoughts in America and Europe, Arthur B. Fuller, ed. (New York: The Tribune Association, 1869), p. 425.

  [>] fifty yards: Citing “H. Thoreau’s Notes,” BPL, Charles Capper gives the distance of “less than three hundred yards,” CFII, p. 506, in contrast to Bayard Taylor’s location of the wreck at “not more than fifty yards from the shore,” in “Letter of Bayard Taylor,” p. 425. Perhaps the changing tide accounts for this discrepancy.

  [>] “bruised and mangled”: “Letter of Bayard Taylor,” pp. 427–28.

  [>] “inexperience” . . . “shreds”: Ibid., pp. 426, 428.

  [>] “buried under the ruins”: Ibid., pp. 427–28.

  [>] “sat like a stone”: Quoted in CFII, p. 512.

  [>] “to go, on all our”: ELIV, p. 219. See also Robert D. Richardson Jr., Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 212–13. The precise timing of the travel and arrivals of Fuller’s friends and family at the site of the wreck is difficult to determine. I have relied on the somewhat contradictory accounts in CFII, p. 513, and Walter Harding and Carl Bode, eds., The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (New York: New York University Press, 1958), p. 261.

  [>] “an essential” . . . “brave”: JMNXI, pp. 258, 256.

  [>] “one eye glass”: RWE to Hugh Maxwell, August 3, 1850, PSR.

  [>] “whether emptied”: RWE to Hugh Maxwell, August 3, 1850.

  [>] “Held up”: Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen, eds., The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, vol. 2, 1850–September 15, 1851 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), p. 43. Thoreau wrote similar lines in a letter to H.G.O. Blake, dated August 9, 1950, in Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 265. See also Walter Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography (New York: Dover Publications, 1982), pp. 278–79.

  [>] “a portion”: Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 263.

  [>] “relics” . . . “Close”: Henry D. Thoreau, Cape Cod (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1961), pp. 123–24.

  [>] “enough of anatomy”: Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 263. Charles Capper traces an intriguing report of two bodies discovered “some time after the wreck” by a Fire Island boatman. After attempting delivery of the bodies to Horace Greeley, who refused them in the belief that too much time had passed for identification to be possible, the boatman buried the pair without ceremony or marker at Coney Island. The source of the tale was the owner of a Fire Island public house, Felix Dominy, one of the men Thoreau consulted during his search. Dominy brought his story to the attention of Margaret’s family by letter four years after the drownings; with no clues as to the whereabouts of the graves, and perhaps unsure of the reliability of the source, the family chose not to undertake a search; CCII, pp. 513–14 and 622 n. 26. By this time too, claims and counterclaims on the part of both the Fuller and Ossoli families about the estates of the deceased had been resolved, partly due to an affidavit sworn by Captain Bangs “verifying that the remains of Count Ossoli and his wife had never been found” and that Margaret had “no property” and was “in debt.” Perhaps a late discovery of the couple’s remains would have revived the dispute between the families; Joan Von Mehren, “Margaret Fuller, the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, and the Marriage Question: Considering the Research of Dr. Roberto Colzi,” Resources for American Literary Study, vol. 30, 2005, p. 130.

  [>] “as I stood”: Cape Cod, p. 124.

  [>] “I doubt they cannot”: MF, “Recollections of the Vatican,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review, vol. 27, July 1850, p. 71.

  [>] “I see nothing”: “Letter of Bayard Taylor,” p. 427.

  [>] “To the last” . . . “I have lost”: JMNXI, pp. 256, 258.

  [>] “We are taught”: JMNVIII, p. 368.

  [>] “Her heart” . . . “I hurry”: JMNXI, pp. 257, 258.

  [>] “pages so rich”: Quoted in CFII, p. 514.

  [>] “O still sweet summer”: C. P. Cranch, “On the Death of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,” “From the Tribune,” undated newspaper clipping c. August 1850, bMS Am 1086 (misc.) B, FMW. In later versions of the poem “dear” was amended to “drear,” and the title was changed to “Margaret Fuller Ossoli,” as in At Home and Abroad, p. 436.

  [>] “How characteristic”: Quoted in VM, p. 339.

  [>] “The waves”: Quoted in VM, p. 339.

  [>] “I must” . . . “taken”: WNC, pp. 29, 28.

  [>] “as red as the Scarlet Letter”: Quoted in James R. Mellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), p. 317.

  [>] “so unspeakably”: Sophia Peabody Hawthorne to Mrs. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, August 1, 1850, Berg.

  [>] it “is about”: JMNXVI, p. 210.

  [>] “was wholly”: Mary Peabody Mann to Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, [1850], Berg.

  [>] “she never”: Ibid.

  [>] “How infinitely”: Sophia Peabody Hawthorne to Mary Peabody Mann, September 9, 1850, Berg.

  [>] “there is a vein”: Sophia Peabody Hawthorne to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, December 29, 1850, Berg.

  [>] “It was not unpleasant”: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, “Miss Peabody’s Reminiscences of Margaret’s Married Life,” Boston Evening Transcript, June 10, 1885. I am grateful to Mary De Jong for alerting me to this letter, written in 1870 and published to mark the occasion of Margaret Fuller’s seventy-fifth birthday.

  [>] “It can never”: Paulina Wright Davis, A History of the National Woman’s Rights Movement, for Twenty Years (New York: Journeymen Printers’ Co-operative Association, 1871), p. 14.

  [>] “We were left”: Ibid., p. 14; moment of silence: VM, p. 339.

  [>] “the European”: The Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, Held at Worcester, October 23 and 24, 1850 (Boston: Prentiss & Sawyer, 1851).

  [>] “pained” by the thought: WHC to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, January 5, 1884, MF Papers, Folder 194, BPL.

  [>] “Margaret was happy”: Joel Myerson, ed., Fuller in Her Own Time (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008), p. 117.

  [>] “I have never”: FLV, p. 149.

  [>] “there must be”: FLVI, p. 57.

  [>] “having lived”: MF poetry fragment, Fuller Papers, Folder 141, BPL.

  [>] “mingle our dust”: Quoted in VM, p. 339.
/>
  [>] “yours in the distance”: FLIV, p. 274.

  Index

  Abolitionism

  and Coversations, [>]–[>]

  of Lydia Maria Child, [>]

  Emerson’s opposition to slavery, [>]

  and Fuller’s analysis of women’s status, [>]

  and Fuller as Tribune editor, [>]

  Adams, John Quincy, Timothy Fuller’s ball in honor of, [>]–[>], [>]

  Aeneid, The (Virgil), [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]

  Age of Fable, The (Bulfinch), [>]

  Alcott, Abigail (Abba), [>], [>], [>]

  Alcott, Anna, [>], [>], [>], [>]

  Alcott, Bronson, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]

  alternative university planned by, [>]

  children of, [>]

  as conversation leader for adults, [>]

  Conversations with Children on the Gospels, [>], [>]

  and The Dial, [>], [>]

  as Emerson boarder, [>]

  Emerson’s support of, [>]–[>]

  Emerson visited by, [>]

  Fuller employed by, [>]

  Fuller’s belittling of, [>]

  in Fuller’s Conversations group, [>]

  Fuller sees in New York City, [>]

  Fuller’s teaching for, [>], [>]

  and Fuller on transcendentalism, [>]

  letters to, [>]

  “Orphic Sayings” of, [>]–[>], [>], [>]

  and Elizabeth Peabody, [>]

  on teaching young children, [>]

  and Transcendental Club, [>]