Margaret Fuller Ossoli - At Home And Abroad

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AT HOME AND ABROAD;
OR,
THINGS AND THOUGHTS
IN
AMERICA AND EUROPE.

BY
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI,

Author of "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," "Art, Literature,
and the Drama," "Life without and Life Within," etc.

Edited by Her Brother,
ARTHUR B. FULLER.

NEW AND COMPLETE EDITION.

NEW YORK;
THE TRIBUNE ASSOCIATION.
134 Nassau Street
1869

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by
ARTHUR B. FULLER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

There are at least three classes of persons who travel in our own land
and abroad. The first and largest in number consists of those
who, "having eyes, see not, and ears, hear not," anything which is
profitable to be remembered. Crossing lake and ocean, passing over
the broad prairies of the New World or the classic fields of the Old,
though they look on the virgin soil sown thickly with flowers by
the hand of God, or on scenes memorable in man's history, they gaze
heedlessly, and when they return home can but tell us what they ate
and drank, and where slept,--no more; for this and matters of like
import are all for which they have cared in their wanderings.

Those composing the second class travel more intelligently. They
visit scrupulously all places which are noted either as the homes of
literature, the abodes of Art, or made classic by the pens of ancient
genius. Accurately do they mark the distance of one famed city from
another, the size and general appearance of each; they see as many as
possible of celebrated pictures and works of art, and mark carefully
dimensions, age, and all details concerning them. Men, too, whom the
world regards as great men, whether because of wisdom, poesy, warlike
achievements, or of wealth and station, they seek to take by the
hand and in some degree to know; at least to note their appearance,
demeanor, and mode of life. Writers belonging to this class of
travellers are not to be undervalued; returning home, they can give
much useful information, and tell much which all wish to hear and
know, though, as their narratives are chiefly circumstantial, and
every year circumstances change, such recitals lessen constantly in
value.

But there is a third class of those who journey, who see indeed the
outward, and observe it well. They, too, seek localities where Art and
Genius dwell, or have painted on canvas or sculptured in marble their
memorials; they become acquainted with the people, both famed and
obscure, of the lands which they visit and in which for a time they
abide; their hearts throb as they stand on places where great deeds
have been done, with whose dust perhaps is mingled the sacred ashes
of men who fell in the warfare for truth and freedom,--a warfare begun
early in the world's history, and not yet ended. But they do much
_more_ than this. There is, though in a different sense from what
ancient Pagans fancied, a genius or guardian spirit of each scene,
each stream and lake and country, and this spirit is ever speaking,
but in a tone which only the attent ear of the noble and gifted
can hear, and in a language which such minds and hearts only can
understand. With vision which needs no miracle to make it prophetic,
they see the destinies which nations are all-unconsciously shaping
for themselves, and note the deep meaning of passing events which only
make others wonder. Beneath the mask of mere externals, their eyes
discern the character of those whom they meet, and, refusing to accept
popular judgment in place of truth, they see often the real relation
which men bear to their race and age, and observe the facts by which
to determine whether such men are great only because of circumstances,
or by the irresistible power of their own minds. When such narrate
their journeyings, we have what is valuable not for a few years only,
but, because of its philosophic and suggestive spirit, what must
always be useful.

The reader of the following pages, it is believed, will decide that
Margaret Fuller deserves to rank with the latter class of travellers,
while not neglectful of those details which it is well to learn and
remember.

Twelve years ago she journeyed, in company with several friends, on
the Lakes, and through some of the Western States. Returning, she
published a volume describing this journey, which seems worthy of
republication. It seems so because it rather gives an idea of Western
scenery and character, than enters into guide-book statements which
would be all erroneous now.

Beside this, it is much a record of thoughts as well as things, and
those thoughts have lost none of their significance now. It gives us
also knowledge of Indian character, and impressions respecting that
much injured and fast vanishing race, which justice to them makes it
desirable should be remembered. The friends of Madame Ossoli will be
glad to make permanent this additional proof of her sympathy with all
the oppressed, no matter whether that oppression find embodiment in
the Indian or the African, the American or the European.

The second part of the present volume gives my sister's impressions
and observations during her European journey and residence in Italy.
This is done through letters, which originally appeared in the New
York Tribune but have never before been gathered into book form. There
may be a degree of incompleteness, sometimes perhaps inaccuracy, in
these letters, which are inseparable attendants upon letter-writing
during a journey or amid exciting and warlike scenes. None can lament
more than I that their writer lives not to revise them. Some errors,
too, were doubtless made in the original printing of these letters,
owing to her handwriting not being easily read by those who were not
familiar with it, and very probably some such errors may have escaped
my notice in the revision, especially as many emendations must be
conjectural, the original manuscript not now existing.

There is one fact, however, which gives this part of the volume a high
value. Madame Ossoli was in Rome during the most eventful period of
its modern history. She was almost the only American who remained
there during the Italian Revolution, and the siege of the city. Her
marriage with the Marquis Ossoli, who was Captain of the Civic Guard
and active in the republican councils and army, and her own ardent
love of freedom, and sacrifices for it, brought her into immediate
acquaintance with the leaders in the revolutionary army, and made
her cognizant of their plans, their motives, and their characters.
Unsuccessful for a time as has been that struggle for freedom, it was
yet a noble one, and its true history should be known in this country
and in all lands, that justice may be done to those who sacrificed
much, some even life, in behalf of liberty. Her peculiar fitness to
write the history of this struggle is well expressed by Mr. Greeley,
in his Introduction to one of her volumes recently published.[A] "Of
Italy's last struggle for liberty and light," he says, "she might
not merely say, with the Grattan of Ireland's kindred effort, half a
century earlier, 'I stood by its cradle; I followed its hearse.'
She might fairly claim to have been a portion of its incitement, its
animation, its informing soul. She bore more than a woman's part in
its conflicts and its perils; and the bombs of that ruthless army
which a false and traitorous government impelled against the ramparts
of Republican Rome, could have stilled no voice more eloquent in its
exposures, no heart more lofty in its defiance, of the villany which
so wantonly drowned in blood the hopes, while crushing the dearest
rights, of a people, than those of Margaret Fuller."

[Footnote A: Introduction to Papers on Literature and Art, p. 8.]

Inadequate, indeed, are these letters as a memorial and vindication of
that struggle, in comparison with the history which Madame Ossoli had
written, and which perished with her; but well do they deserve to be
preserved, as the record of a clear-minded and true-hearted eyewitness
of, and participator in, this effort to establish a new and better
Roman Republic. In one respect they have an interest higher than
would the history. They were written during the struggle, and show the
fluctuations of hope and despondency-which animated those most deeply
interested. I have thought it right to leave unchanged all expressions
of her opinion and feeling, even when it is evident from the letters
themselves that these were gradually somewhat modified by ensuing
events. Especially did this change occur in regard to the Pope, whom
she at first regarded, in common with all lovers of freedom in this
and other lands, with a hopefulness which was doomed to a cruel
disappointment. She was, however, never for a moment deceived as to
his character. His heart she believed kindly and good; his intellect,
of a low order; his views as to reform, narrow, intending only what is
partial, temporary, and alleviating, never a permanent, vital reform,
which should remove the cause of the ills on account of which his
people groaned. Really to elevate and free Italy, it was necessary to
remove the yoke of ecclesiastical and political thraldom; to do this
formed no part of his plans,--from his very nature he was incapable
of so great a purpose. The expression in her letters of this opinion,
when most people hoped better things, was at first censured, as doing
injustice to Pius IX.; but alas! events proved the impulses of his
heart to be in subjection to the prejudices of his mind, and that mind
to be weaker than even she had deemed it, with views as narrow as she
had feared.

The third part of this volume contains some letters to friends, which
were never written for the public eye, but are necessary to complete,
as far as can now be done, the narrative of her residence abroad. Some
few of these have already appeared in her "Memoirs," a work I cannot
too warmly recommend to those who would know my sister's character.
Many more of her letters may be there found, equally worthy of
perusal, but not so necessary to complete the history of events in
Italy.

The fourth part contains the details of that shipwreck which caused
mourning not only in the hearts of her kindred, but of the many
who knew and loved her. These, with some poems commemorative of her
character and eventful death, form a sad but fitting close to a book
which records her European journeyings, and her voyage to a home which
proved to be not in this land, where were waiting warm hearts to bid
her welcome, but one in a land yet freer, better than this, where she
can be no less loved by the angels, by our Saviour, and the Infinite
Father. After the copy for this volume had been sent to the press,
it was found necessary to omit some portions of the work in the
republication, as too much matter had been furnished for a volume of
reasonable size. The Editor made these omissions with much reluctance,
but the desire to bring a record of Madame Ossoli's journeyings within
the compass of one volume outweighed that reluctance. He believes the
omissions have been made in such a way as not materially to diminish
its value, especially as most which has been omitted will find place
in another volume he hopes soon to issue, containing a portion of the
miscellaneous writings of Madame Ossoli.

All of these omissions that are important occur in the Summer on the
Lakes, it being thought better to omit from a portion of the work
which had previously been before the public in book form. The
episodical nature of that work, too, enabled the Editor to make
omissions without in any way marring its unity. These omissions, when
other than mere verbal ones, consist of extracts from books which she
read in relation to the Indians; an account of and translation from
the Seeress of Prevorst, a German work which had not then, but has
since, been translated into English, and republished in this country;
a few extracts from letters and poems sent to her by friends while she
was in the West, one of which poems has been since published elsewhere
by its author; and the story of Marianna, (a great portion of which
may be found in my sister's "Memoirs,") and also Lines to Edith, a
short poem. Marianna and Lines to Edith will probably be republished
in another volume. From the letters of Madame Ossoli in Parts II. and
III. no omissions have been made other than verbal, or when pertaining
to trifling incidents, having only a temporary interest. Nothing in
any portion of the book recording my sister's own observations or
opinions has been omitted or changed. The reader, too, will notice
that nothing affecting the unity of the narrative is here wanting, the
volume even gaining in that respect by the omission of extracts from
other writers, and of a story and short poem not connected in any
regard with Western life.

In conclusion, the Editor would express the sincere hope that this
volume may not only be of general interest, but inspire its readers
with an increased love of republican institutions, and an earnest
purpose to seek the removal of every national wrong which hinders
our beloved country from being a perfect example and hearty helper
of other nations in their struggles for liberty. May it do something,
also, to remove misapprehension of the motives, character, and action
of those noble patriots of Italy, who strove, though for a time
vainly, to make their country free, and to deepen the sympathy which
every true American should feel with faithful men everywhere, who by
art are seeking to refine, by philanthropic exertion to elevate, by
the diffusion of truth to enlighten, or by self-sacrifice and earnest
effort to free, their fellow-men.

A.B.F.

Boston, March 1, 1856.

CONTENTS.

PART I.
SUMMER ON THE LAKES 1

PART II.
THINGS AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE 117

PART III.
LETTERS FROM ABROAD TO FRIENDS AT HOME 423

PART IV.
HOMEWARD VOYAGE, AND MEMORIALS 441

PART I

SUMMER ON THE LAKES.

Summer days of busy leisure,
Long summer days of dear-bought pleasure,
You have done your teaching well;
Had the scholar means to tell
How grew the vine of bitter-sweet,
What made the path for truant feet,
Winter nights would quickly pass,
Gazing on the magic glass
O'er which the new-world shadows pass.
But, in fault of wizard spell,
Moderns their tale can only tell
In dull words, with a poor reed
Breaking at each time of need.
Yet those to whom a hint suffices
Mottoes find for all devices,
See the knights behind their shields,
Through dried grasses, blooming fields.

* * * * *

Some dried grass-tufts from the wide flowery field,
A muscle-shell from the lone fairy shore,
Some antlers from tall woods which never more
To the wild deer a safe retreat can yield,
An eagle's feather which adorned a Brave,
Well-nigh the last of his despairing band,--
For such slight gifts wilt thou extend thy hand
When weary hours a brief refreshment crave?
I give you what I can, not what I would
If my small drinking-cup would hold a flood,
As Scandinavia sung those must contain
With which, the giants gods may entertain;
In our dwarf day we drain few drops, and soon must thirst again.

CHAPTER I.

NIAGARA.

Niagara, June 10, 1843.

Since you are to share with me such foot-notes as may be made on the
pages of my life during this summer's wanderings, I should not be
quite silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown
drama. Yet I, like others, have little to say, where the spectacle is,
for once, great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought,
giving us only its own presence. "It is good to be here," is the best,
as the simplest, expression that occurs to the mind.

We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away. So
great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with
what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again
less readily. Having "lived one day," we would depart, and become
worthy to live another.

We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much,
or too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering,
with cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much braced up by such an
atmosphere, do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound.
For here there is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation;
all other forms and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes,
the wind, at its mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but here is
really an incessant, an indefatigable motion. Awake or asleep, there
is no escape, still this rushing round you and through you. It is
in this way I have most felt the grandeur,--somewhat eternal, if not
infinite.

At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own
rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by
a double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes
to the thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a
spiritual repetition through all the spheres.

When I first came, I felt nothing but a quiet satisfaction. I found
that drawings, the panorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the
position and proportions of all objects here; I knew where to look for
everything, and everything looked as I thought it would.

Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of
the finest sunsets that ever enriched, this world. A little cowboy,
trudging along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying
about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking,
too, a moment, he said approvingly, "That sun looks well enough"; a
speech worthy of Shakespeare's Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to
everything from the cradle, as you please to take it.

Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in
a prince's palace, or "stumping," as he boasts to have done, "up the
Vatican stairs, into the Pope's presence, in my old boots," I felt
here; it looks really _well enough_, I felt, and was inclined, as you
suggested, to give my approbation as to the one object in the world
that would not disappoint.

But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so
easy as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful
observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. Daily these
proportions widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I
got, at last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before
coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After
a while it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread,
such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about
to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the
waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near,
could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I
realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters
were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the
Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came,
unsought and unwelcome, images, such as never haunted it before, of
naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks; again and
again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over,
and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking
behind me.

As picture, the falls can only be seen from the British side. There
they are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate
the magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat,
as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the
road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with
delight. But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to
the great fall. There all power of observing details, all separate
consciousness, was quite lost.

Once, just as I had seated myself there, a man came to take his first
look. He walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a
moment, with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it to
his own use, he spat into it.

This trait seemed wholly worthy of an age whose love of _utility_ is
such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of
men coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to
fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but
these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the
age or truly the America. A little leaven is leavening the whole mass
for other bread.

The whirlpool I like very much. It is seen to advantage after the
great falls; it is so sternly solemn. The river cannot look more
imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just
below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark the hidden
vortex seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice above could not
proclaim,--a meaning as untold as ever.

It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been
swallowed by the cataract is like to rise suddenly to light here,
whether uprooted tree, or body of man or bird.

The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift
that they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The
fountain beyond the Moss Islands I discovered for myself, and thought
it for some time an accidental beauty which it would not do to
leave, lest I might never see it again. After I found it permanent,
I returned many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little
waterfall beyond, Nature seems, as she often does, to have made a
study for some larger design. She delights in this,--a sketch within
a sketch, a dream within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of
the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the
waterfall copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we
are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the
scene in congenial thought with its genius.

People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see it
further deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the
spectacle is capable of swallowing up all such objects; they are not
seen in the great whole, more than an earthworm in a wide field.

The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many of the
fairest love to do homage here. The Wake-robin and May-apple are in
bloom now; the former, white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow
of the fall, and fit to make a garland for its presiding deity when he
walks the land, for they are of imperial size, and shaped like stones
for a diadem. Of the May-apple, I did not raise one green tent without
finding a flower beneath.

And now farewell. Niagara. I have seen thee, and I think all who come
here must in some sort see thee; thou art not to be got rid of as
easily as the stars. I will be here again beneath some flooding July
moon and sun. Owing to the absence of light, I have seen the rainbow
only two or three times by day; the lunar bow not at all. However, the
imperial presence needs not its crown, though illustrated by it.

General Porter and Jack Downing were not unsuitable figures here. The
former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island
and the Wake-robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with
deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sunk the
first stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining
representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege.
He told us all about the Americanisms of the spectacle; that is to
say, the battles that have been fought here. It seems strange that
men could fight in such a place; but no temple can still the personal
griefs and strifes in the breasts of its visitors.

No less strange is the fact that, in this neighborhood, an eagle
should be chained for a plaything. When a child, I used often to stand
at a window from which I could see an eagle chained in the balcony of
a museum. The people used to poke at it with sticks, and my childish
heart would swell with indignation as I saw their insults, and the
mien with which they were borne by the monarch-bird. Its eye was dull,
and its plumage soiled and shabby, yet, in its form and attitude,
all the king was visible, though sorrowful and dethroned. I never
saw another of the family till, when passing through the Notch of the
White Mountains, at that moment glowing before us in all the panoply
of sunset, the driver shouted, "Look there!" and following with our
eyes his upward-pointing finger, we saw, soaring slow in majestic
poise above the highest summit, the bird of Jove. It was a glorious
sight, yet I know not that I felt more on seeing the bird in all its
natural freedom and royalty, than when, imprisoned and insulted,
he had filled my early thoughts with the Byronic "silent rages" of
misanthropy.

Now, again, I saw him a captive, and addressed by the vulgar with the
language they seem to find most appropriate to such occasions,--that
of thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their
existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer.
Probably he listened to the voice of the cataract, and felt that
congenial powers flowed free, and was consoled, though his own wing
was broken.

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