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B. More Literary Ladies
1. Sarah Margaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850) was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, the daughter of a lawyer and politician who later was a congressman. She attended private schools at regular periods, but her early education was for the most part directed by her father, who, when she was six, began to assign to her strenuous exercises in Latin. In her teens her studies included Greek, French, and Italian, and later her interests led her to German literature. For two years (1836-1838) she was a teacher, first at Bronson Alcott's Temple School in Boston and later in Providence, Rhode Island. Miss Fuller became a friend of many New England intellectuals, including Emerson, whom she met in 1836, and from 1840 until 1842 she did much of the editorial work for the Dial, the organ of the transcendentalists. For five winters (1839-1844) she conducted in Boston her “Conversations,” which were attended by many of the prominent women of the city and at which ethical, social, and literary topics [page 182:] were discussed.
Coming to New York in 1844, she joined the staff of Horace Greeley's Tribune, for which she supplied book reviews and articles advocating reform of public institutions. In 1846 she went to Europe, where, in the following year in Italy, she married the Marchese Giovanni Angelo Ossoli. She had met Mazzini in London, and both she and her husband aided the unsuccessful efforts of the republicans in the Italian uprisings of 1848-1849. She, her husband, and their infant son were drowned in the summer of 1850 when the ship on which they had taken passage for America ran aground at Fire Island, near New York.
In 1839 Miss Fuller published a translation of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe. Among her original works published in volume form are Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844), written after a trip to the West, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), a plea for recognition of the rights of women, and Papers on Literature and Art (1846), a collection of essays and reviews. The manuscript of a projected history of the Italian revolution presumably destroyed in the accident that took her life.(1)
In 1845-1846 Miss Fuller was a member of the literary group in New York to which Poe also belonged, and she frequently attended the entertainments at Miss Lynch's.(2) Somewhat deficient [page 183:] in the feminine graces and bearing the reputation and the manner of a bluestocking, she did not make friends easily in her new environment; among her closest friends were Lydia Maria Child and Christopher P. Cranch, both of whom she had known in New England. One who had observed the impression she created at social functions at this period wrote that Miss Fuller “commanded respect rather than admiration” and that most of her new acquaintances “were repelled by what seemed conceit, pedantry, and a harsh spirit of criticism, while on her part, she appeared to regard those around her as frivolous, superficial, and conventional.”(3) Her habit of coloring her conversation with foreign phrases caused Fitz-Greene Halleck to remark of her to Julia Ward Howe: “That young lady does not speak the same language that I cannot understand her.”(4)
In view of Poe's distrust of reformers and his antipathy toward transcendentalists and Bostonians, his relationship with Miss Fuller, on both a personal and a professional level, got off to a surprisingly agreeable start.(5) Writing to Elizabeth Barett Browning two month after Poe's death, she gave a sympathetic [page 184:] account of her association with him four years earlier in New York:
I think he really had no friend. I did not know him. though I talked with him often, but he always seemed to me shrouded in an assumed character. Still as I did not know him and do not accept the opinions of others till my own impressions have confirmed them; as I did know he had much to try his spirit I treated him cordially. He seemed to feel that I was not prejudiced against him; he even said that he had faith in me, that he thought me not only incapable of baseness, but incapable of understanding it; that this was for him a strong expression of esteem, shows what his life had been. He said in a sketch he published of me [the “Literati” sketch] that he thought me capable of great affection. Now, seeing these bitter waters poured out even upon his tomb, I have remembered these things and regretted that I never tried whether more friendliness from me might have been useful to him, but it is only the millionth time that I have let occasions pass when suffering men might have been soothed or helped.(6)
Apparently, however, there was some friction between the two at times; one of Mrs. Whitman's correspondents wrote to her that at soirees a verbal exchange occurred between Poe and Miss Fuller concerning the merits of an unnamed author. Poe, defending the writer, argued so effectively that an onlooker observed, “The Raven has perched upon the casque of Pallas, and pulled all the feathers out of her cap.”(7)
Miss Fuller's references to Poe in the Tribune in 1845 were, as the whole, favorable, but she did not hesitate to point out that she considered to be shortcomings in his writings. She was [page 185:] pleased with Lowell's complimentary sketch of Poe in Graham's for February, and reprinted from it “The Haunted Palace” and “To Helen” with approving comments. Poe's criticism, she thought, exhibited too little of warmth and feeling.(8) In reviewing Poe's Tales in July she wrote that in contrast to the flimsy fabrications of the ordinary tale —
... the writings of Mr. Poe are a refreshment, for they are the fruit of genuine observations and experience, combined with an invention which is not “making up,” as children call their way of contriving stories, but a penetration into the causes of things which leads to original but credible results. His narrative proceeds with vigor, his colors are applied with discrimination, and where the effects are fantastic they are not unmeaningly so.(9)
To her charge in this review that he occasionally used faulty diction, Poe replied with some sarcasm in the Broadway Journal for October 4:
IN A VERY complimentary notice, by Miss Fuller, of “Tales by Edgar A. Poe,” the critic objects to the phrases “he had many books but rarely employed them” — and “his results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, had, in fact, the whole air of intuition.” We bow to the well-considered opinions of Miss Fuller, whom, of course, we very highly respect — but we have in vain endeavored to understand, in these cases, the grounds of her objections.(10) [page 186:]
In November Miss Fuller reviewed The Raven, and Other Poems sympathetically, taking favorable notice especially of “To One in paradise” and “The Sleeper.” But she thought that the work fell short of Poe's abilities, that the poems were mere “fragments — fyttes upon the lyre.” Believing that Poe could best exhibit his powers in a work of larger scope, she offered the advice — which, perhaps, he did well not to take — that he try his hand at a metaphysical romance. (11)
When Miss Fuller published her deflating estimate of Longfellow's poetical abilities, Poe was pleased to find a critic of her stature in fundamental agreement with his own views on the subject. Miss Fuller, confessing to “a coolness toward Mr. Longfellow,” characterized him as a man of cultivated taste, delicate and little poetic force. It must have been with Poe in kind that she expressed surprise that anyone would bother to bring a formal charge of plagiarism against Longfellow, since “we had supposed it so obvious that the greater part of his mental stores were derived from the works of others.”(12) Poe, without naming the author of the critique, described it in the Broadway Journal as “a very just review” and copied part of it into his as columns.(13) But earlier in the year Poe had disagreed with Miss Fuller in another matter in which Longfellow was involved [page 187:] She had contributed to the Broadway Journal a “poem,” unrhymed of irregular meter, entitled “The Whole Duty of Woman,” a satire attacking the conventional view of woman's place in society propounded by Victorian, the hero of Longfellow's The Spanish Student.(14) Unable to agree with his contributor's opinions of woman's proper sphere, Poe, in publishing the piece, appended a tactful footnote: “We give place to this jeu d’esprit, merely through our sincere respect, as well for the honesty of intention, as for the ability, of its author. We feel it our duty, nevertheless, to protest against the doctrine advanced. The opinions of our fair correspondent are by no means our own ... ”(15)
The complimentary “Literati” sketch of Miss Fuller appeared in Godey's for August, 1846, probably in time to permit its subject to see it before she sailed for Europe late in July of that year. In it Poe termed Miss Fuller an author of “high genius” and characterized her writings as “nervous, forcible, thoughtful, suggestive, brilliant, and to a certain extent scholar-like.” For criticism of Longfellow's poems, he wrote, was one of the few worthwhile American articles on the subject. Though professing to be undisturbed by the “unmitigated radicalism” of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, he expressed his disagreement with [page 188:] certain of its basic premises. Her poetry he found “tainted with the affectation of the transcendentalists” but “brimful of the poetic sentiment.” He accused her of “a number of wilful murders ... on the American of President Polk,” but had high praise for her style and for her descriptions of natural scenery.(16)
It is quite probable that between the time Poe wrote the sketch and the time of its publication his feelings toward Miss Fuller had altered considerably. At any rate, his later references to her show that he had ceased to think kindly of her, and this change of attitude can be accounted for by events of 1846. Early in the year Miss Fuller had accompanied Miss Lynch to Poe's home to demand the return of Mrs. Osgood's letters, and the visit precipitated a scandal in which Poe's honor was impeached.(17) Miss Fuller's participation in this matter may have created ill feeling on both sides. It is difficult to believe that some personal resentment was not involved in the fact that Poe was entirely ignored in Miss Fuller's essay “American Literature; Its position in the Present Time, and Prospects for the Future,”(18) which appeared a few months later in Papers on Literature and Art. Writing to George W. Eveleth on January 4, 1848, Poe attributed the omission to personal causes. Eveleth had written to Poe, praising Miss Fuller's critical ability and inquiring why [page 189:] she had not mentioned him.(19) Poe wrote in reply:
I agree with you only in part as regards Miss Fuller. She has some general but no particular critical powers. She belongs to a school of criticism- — the Gothean [sic], esthetic, eulogistic .... She is grossly dishonest. She [in the “American Literature” essay] abuses Lowell, for example, (the best of our poets, perhaps) on account of a personal quarrel with him. She has omitted all mention of me for the same reason — although, a short time before the issue of her book, she praised me highly in the Tribune. I enclose you her criticism that you may judge for yourself. She praised “Witchcraft” because [Cornelius] Mathews (who todies her) wrote it. In a word, she is an ill-tempered and very inconsistent old maid — avoid her.(20)
Writing to Frederick W. Thomas on February 14, 1849, Poe referred to Miss Fuller as “that detestable old maid.”(21) A month later, in a review of Lowell's A Fable for Critics, he gave public expression to his feelings:
Every reader versed in our literary gossip, is at once put dessous des cartes as to the particular provocation which engendered the “Fable.” Miss Margaret Fuller, some time ago, in a silly and conceited piece of Transcendentalism, which she called an “Essay on American Literature,” or something of that kind, had the consummate pleasantry, after selecting from the list of American poets, Cornelius Mathews and William Ellery Channing, for especial commendation, to speak of Longfellow as a booby, and of Lowell as so wretched a poetaster “as to be disgusting even to his best friends.” All this Miss Fuller said, if not in our precise words, still in words quite as much to the purpose. Why she said it, Heaven only knows — unless it was because she was Margaret Fuller, and wished to be taken for nobody else.(22) [page 190:]
The degree to which Poe sometimes permitted his prejudices to overrule his critical judgment is shown by a comparison of his remarks in the “Literati” sketch concerning Miss Fuller's style with those on the same subject in a later essay. In the former paper he had written that, despite her errors in grammar and her “frequent unjustifiable Carlyleisms,” her style is “one of the very best with which I am acquainted. In general effect, I know no style which surpasses it. It is ... everything that a style need be.”(23) In an essay published after his death he wrote that Miss Fuller's style, imitating that of Carlyle and Emerson, “is a triple-distilled conventionality: — and by the word ‘conventionality,’ as here used, I mean very nearly what, as regards personal conduct, we style ‘affectation’ — that is, an assumption of airs or tricks which have no basis in reason or common sense.”(24)
From the tone of her remarks about Poe in her letter to Mrs. Browning,(25) one conjectures that Miss Fuller was unaware of the extent to which his feelings toward her had altered. However ay be, in the clash of personalities that succeeded the [page 191:] pleasant beginning of their acquaintance, she appears to have conducted herself with more dignity than her opponent.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 182:]
1 William H. Channing, Ralph W. Emerson, and James F. Clarke, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Boston, 1852; Thomas W. Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Boston, 1899; and Mason Wade, Margaret Fuller, Whetstone of Genius, New York, 1940.
2 Channing, Emerson, and Clarke, op. cit., II, 164-167.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 183:]
3 Ibid., II, l66.
4 Howe, op. cit., pp. 145-146.
5 I have not taken into consideration here the theory advanced by Thomas H. McNeal (“Poe's Zenobia; An Early Satire on Margaret Fuller,” Modern Language Quarterly, XI, 205-216 [June, 1950]) that Poe had Miss Fuller in mind when he wrote “The Psyche Zenobia” in 1838. The evidence adduced is extremely tenuous. It appears impossible to show that Poe was aware of Miss Fuller as early as 1838.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 184:]
6 Louis C. Jones, “A Margaret Fuller Letter to Elizabeth Barret Browning,” American Literature, IX, 71 (March, 1937).
7 Didier, The Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, p.12.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 185:]
8 Tribune, January 24, 1845.
9 Tribune, July 11, 1845.
10 II, 200. The first of the expressions to which Miss Fuller took exception occurs in “The Gold Bug”; the second is from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 186:]
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 187:]
14 Broadway Journal, II, 101 (August 23, 1845). The satire is with an asterisk, the symbol with which Miss Fuller regularly marked her; contributions to the Tribune. Further evidence of Miss Fuller's authorship of the piece is presented in James B. Reece, “A Margaret Fuller Satire on Longfellow,” Boston Public Library Quarterly, IV, 224-227 (October, 1952).
15 Broadway Journal, II, 101 (August 23, 1845).
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 188:]
16 Godey's, XXXIII, 72-75 (August, 1846); Works, XV, 73-83.
17 Above, pp. 22-25.
18 The essay is reprinted in Mason Wade, ed., The Writings of Margaret Fuller, New York, 1941, pp. 358-374.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 169:]
19 Eveleth to Poe, July 27, 1847; Mabbott, The Letters from George W. Eveleth to Edgar Allan Poe, pp.15-16.
20 Ostrom, op. cit., II, 355.
21 Ibid., II, 427.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 189, running to the bottom of page 190:]
22 Southern Literary Messenger, XV, 190 (March, 1849); Works, [page 190:] III, 169-170. After a largely condemnatory summary of Longfellow's abilities, Miss Fuller had written: “We cannot say as Lowell, who, we must declare it, though to the grief friends, and the disgust of more, is absolutely wanting true spirit of poesy” (Wade, The Writings of Margaret Fuller, p. 366).
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 190:]
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - PNYL, 1954] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe and the New York Literati (Reece)