Margaret Fuller

by Megan Marshall

  [>] “met as”: Margaret and Her Friends, p. 13.

  [>] “perpetual wall”: FLVI, p. 322.

  [>] “bounteous giver” and passages from this Conversation: Margaret and Her Friends, pp. 41–46.

  [>] “there were too many”: Ibid., p. 117.

  [>] “few present”: Ibid., p. 156.

  [>] “they will get free”: FLII, p. 205.

  [>] “never enjoyed” . . . “in no way”: Margaret and Her Friends, p. 13.

  [>] “I love her”: Ibid., p. 156.

  [>] “blunder” and subsequent Conversation on Psyche: Ibid., pp. 113–15.

  [>] “pilgrimage of [the] soul”: Ibid., p. 97.

  [>] “the Productive Energy”: Ibid., p. 38.

  [>] “what is dear”: Ibid., p. 41.

  [>] “bound in the belt”: JMNXI, p. 256.

  [>] “more alone”: FLIII, p. 47.

  [>] their “constellation”: FLIII, p. 154.

  [>] “the young people”: ELII, p. 384.

  [>] “game of wits”: ELII, p. 385.

  [>] “We have a great”: RWE, “Friendship,” Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983), p. 341.

  [>] “our friendship”: ELII, p. 385.

  [>] “my need”: FLII, p. 159.

  [>] “most unfriendly”: FLII, p. 171.

  [>] “masculine obligations”: FLIII, p. 213.

  [>] “this light”: FLII, p. 159.

  [>] budding “Genii”: FLII, p. 124.

  [>] Concord “sage”: FLII, p. 170.

  [>] “the much that calls”: MF, poem dated January 1, 1841, in Jeffrey Steele, ed., The Essential Margaret Fuller (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. 18.

  [>] “gipsy” freedom: JMNVIII, p. 289.

  [>] “belong[ed] to the”: FLII, p. 205.

  [>] “good letters”: FLII, p. 53.

  [>] “guests so queenly”: ELII, p. 129.

  [>] “surprised me into”: ELII, p. 143.

  [>] “the fair girl” . . . “inspires the wish”: Quoted in Kathleen Lawrence, “The ‘Dry-Lighted Soul’ Ignites: Emerson and His Soul-Mate Caroline Sturgis as Seen in Her Houghton Manuscripts,” Harvard Library Bulletin, vol. 16, no. 3, fall 2005, p. 44. I am grateful to Kathleen Lawrence for conversations about the Fuller-Sturgis-Emerson triangle, which have advanced my understanding of this crucial period in the lives of all three, and for the evidence of a lifelong “connexion” between RWE and CS that she introduces in this important essay.

  [>] “engaged my cold”: JMNVII, p. 15.

  [>] “her blasphemies”: Quoted in “The ‘Dry-Lighted Soul,’” p. 47.

  [>] “lofty” willfulness: Quoted in “The ‘Dry-Lighted Soul,’” p. 48.

  [>] “Greatly to Be”: CS, “Life,” Dial, vol. 1, no. 2, October 1840, p. 195.

  [>] “the right poetry”: JMNVII, p. 372.

  [>] “Be not afraid”: FLII, p. 103.

  [>] “good vagabond”: JMNVIII, p. 289.

  [>] “full of indirections”: JMNVIII, p. 289.

  [>] “a great genius”: JMNVIII, p. 352.

  [>] “I think”: FLII, p. 150.

  [>] taken to calling “Raphael”: FLII, p. 49.

  [>] “gone so much” . . . “a joyful song”: FLII, p. 171.

  [>] “How did you”: FLII, p. 90.

  [>] “You would not”: FLII, pp. 80–81.

  [>] “bitterness of checked”: FLII, p. 81.

  [>] “incapable of feeling”: FLII, p. 90.

  [>] “We knew”: FLII, p. 81.

  [>] would “spoil” him: FLII, p. 91.

  [>] “You have given”: FLII, p. 91.

  [>] “star of stars”: FLII, p. 47.

  [>] “I understand”: FLII, p. 95.

  [>] “though I might”: FLII, pp. 95–96.

  [>] “strip of paper”: JMNVII, p. 259.

  [>] “A new person”: RWE, “Friendship,” p. 343.

  [>] “Cold as I am”: JMNVII, pp. 273–75.

  [>] “young man”: FLII, p. 81.

  [>] “The wind”: JMNVII, p. 260.

  [>] “chill wind”: FLII, p. 95.

  [>] “vexation” of business: Quoted in Eleanor Tilton, “The True Romance of Anna Hazard Barker and Samuel Gray Ward,” Studies in the American Renaissance, 1987 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press), p. 59. See also Carl Strauch, “Hatred’s Swift Repulsions: Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Others,” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 7, no. 2, winter 1968, pp. 65–103.

  [>] “bird has flown” . . . “ague”: Samuel Gray Ward, quoted in “The True Romance,” p. 67.

  [>] “emaciated,” by Margaret’s: FLII, p. 150.

  [>] “implied another”: ELVII, p. 404.

  [>] “eldest and divinest”: FLII, p. 93.

  [>] “soaring like”: FLII, p. 150.

  [>] “willing” to be: MF, quoted by RWE in ELII, p. 325.

  [>] “I count & weigh”: ELII, p. 325.

  [>] “a good horse”: ELII, p. 323.

  [>] “the debt”: ELVII, p. 402.

  [>] “More fleet”: RWE, “The Visit,” Dial, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1844, p. 528.

  [>] “I thought she”: ELVII, p. 404.

  [>] “angel has appeared”: ELII, p. 339.

  [>] “The duration”: RWE, “The Visit,” p. 528.

  [>] “with a certain”: ELVII, p. 404.

  [>] “If you will”: FLII, p. 69.

  [>] “Persons were”: JMNXI, p. 494. See also Jeffrey Steele, “Transcendental Friendship: Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau,” in Joel Porte and Saundra Morris, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 121–39; and Susan Belasco, “‘The Animating Influences of Discord’: Margaret Fuller in 1844,” Legacy, vol. 20, no. 1/2, 2003, pp. 76–93.

  [>] “The higher”: RWE, “Friendship,” p. 352.

  [>] “What a spendthrift”: JMNX, p. 94.

  [>] “absolute all-confiding”: JMNXI, p. 495.

  [>] “Life is” . . . “On comes”: JMNVII, p. 48.

  [>] “We are armed”: JMNVII, p. 106.

  [>] “stricken soul”: JMNVII, p. 48.

  [>] “a man wakes”: Quoted in Robert D. Richardson Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 280.

  [>] “taxed” Waldo: ELII, p. 325.

  [>] “It is even so”: JMNVII, p. 301.

  [>] “friendship of”: JMNVII, p. 315.

  [>] “see the ludicrousness” . . . “privation”: JMNVII, p. 301.

  [>] “in my heart”: JMNVII, p. 315.

  [>] “might destroy”: FLII, p. 104.

  [>] “Wise man”: Dial, untitled lines of prose, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 136.

  [>] “admire the winding up”: FLII, p. 146.

  [>] “of being often”: ELII, p. 327.

  [>] “dared” to entertain: ELII, p. 351.

  [>] “I have lived”: ELII, p. 327.

  [>] “tell you how”: FLII, p. 157.

  [>] her promise: FLII, p. 154.

  [>] “for the joy”: ELII, pp. 327–28.

  [>] “I need to”: FLII, p. 160.

  [>] “I ought never”: ELII, p. 352.

  [>] “live as”: ELII, pp. 352–53.

  [>] “I write” . . . “I have dreamed” . . . “these extraordinary”: ELII, p. 332.

  [>] “new covenant”: ELII, p. 339.

  [>] Waldo wrote “gladly”: JMNVII, p. 512.

  [>] “I am yours”: ELII, p. 336.

  [>] “reconcile our”: ELII, p. 349.

  [>] “Sometimes you appeal”: ELII, p. 352.

  [>] “If Love”: RWE, “The Visit,” p. 528.

  [>] “a life more intense”: FLII, p. 66.

  [>] “O these tedious”: FLII, p. 170.

  [>] “You are intellect”: FLIII, p. 209.

  [>] “I have felt”: FLII, p. 159.

  [>] “deep living force”: FLIII, p. 120.

  [>] “Could I lead”: FLII, p. 159.

  [>] “highest
office”: FLII, p. 159.

  [>] “faithful through”: FLII, p. 214.

  [>] “I know not”: FLII, p. 160.

  [>] “Did not you”: FLII, p. 160.

  [>] “I value you”: FLII, p. 213.

  [>] “no mortal”: FLII, p. 111.

  [>] “my own priest”: OMI, p. 99.

  [>] “new alliance”: FLII, p. 183.

  [>] she was her “Priestess”: FLII, p. 187.

  [>] “the deepest privacy”: FLII, p. 173.

  [>] “I grow”: The Essential Margaret Fuller, p. 12.

  [>] an ideal “community”: FLII, pp. 179–80.

  [>] “tangled wood-walks”: FLII, p. 64.

  [>] “Waldo is”: FLII, p. 170.

  [>] “I wish”: FLVI, p. 330.

  [>] “to sail downward”: FLII, p. 163.

  [>] “a sort of”: OMI, p. 308.

  [>] “all things”: FLII, p. 160.

  [>] “To you”: ELVII, p. 402.

  [>] “Friendship,” Waldo would: RWE, “Friendship,” p. 343.

  [>] “fine war”: 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 bringing this article to my attention.

  [>] “purest ideal”: FLII, pp. 191–92.

  [>] “fledglings of Community”: FLII, p. 209.

  [>] “transcendental heifer”: Thomas L. Woodson, Neal Smith, and Norman Holmes Pearson, eds., The Letters, 1813–1843: Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. 15 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), p. 527.

  [>] “with common”: OMI, p. 99.

  [>] “I serve you not”: “Étienne de la Boéce,” The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 9, Poems (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 158.

  [>] “Now all seems”: FLII, p. 106.

  [>] “Is it not better”: JMNVII, p. 63.

  [>] “dissonance, of transition”: FLVI, p. 332.

  [>] “a total failure” . . . “I will not”: FLII, p. 194.

  [>] “one thing”: FLII, p. 180.

  [>] difference between “Living”: FLII, p. 184.

  [>] “a firmer hold”: FLII, p. 180.

  [>] “The Phalanx”: FLII, p. 163.

  [>] “who have dared”: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, “A Glimpse of Christ’s Idea of Society,” Dial, vol. 2, no. 2, October 1841, p. 222.

  [>] “limitations of human nature”: FLII, p. 109.

  [>] “At the name”: ELII, p. 364.

  [>] “University”: ELII, pp. 323–24.

  [>] “indifference” might “seem incredible”: FLII, p. 197.

  [>] “The Abolition cause”: FLII, pp. 197–98.

  [>] “women are Slaves”: JMNVII, p. 48.

  [>] “constellation, not a phalanx”: FLIII, p. 154.

  [>] “Once I was”: FLII, p. 202.

  [>] “living so long”: FLII, p. 69.

  [>] nine-thousand-word essay: MF, “Goethe,” Dial, vol. 2, no. 1, July 1841, pp. 1–41. For the epigraph, Fuller quotes Goethe in the original German. I am grateful to Yu-jin Chang for the English translation I have provided.

  [>] “do something frivolous”: FLII, p. 107.

  [>] “Love and Insight”: CS, Dial, vol. 1, no. 3, January 1841, p. 305.

  [>] “field[s] of outsight”: Quoted in “The ‘Dry-Lighted Soul,’” pp. 56–57.

  [>] “I have walked”: FLII, pp. 422–23. Kathleen Lawrence expands on RWE’s positive association of sea imagery with Cary Sturgis in “The ‘Dry-Lighted Soul’”; he had also described Margaret Fuller’s heart, sympathetically, as “a sea that hates an ebb.”

  [>] “modern men”: Margaret and Her Friends, p. 101.

  [>] Transcendentalist “Coterie”: FLVI, p. 332.

  [>] “If ever”: FLIII, p. 66.

  [>] “a good neighborhood”: JMNVIII, pp. 172–73.

  [>] “living in”: JMNVIII, p. 93.

  [>] “an earnest” . . . “a great deal”: FLII, p. 210.

  [>] “that seems feasible”: FLII, p. 208.

  [>] “fled out of”: ELIII, p. 7.

  [>] “Nature . . . has crushed”: ELIII, p. 9.

  [>] “how bad”: ELIII, p. 9.

  [>] “our fair boy”: ELIII, p. 9.

  [>] “every cherished”: ELIII, p. 10.

  [>] “Margaret Fuller”: JMNVIII, p. 165.

  [>] “Shall I”: ELIII, p. 8.

  [>] “Must every”: ELIII, p. 9.

  [>] Lidian was “saintly”: FLII, p. 160; “holiness”: FLI, p. 328.

  [>] “a bible”: FLII, p. 160.

  [>] “so anti-Christian”: Joel Myerson, “Margaret Fuller’s 1842 Journal: At Concord with the Emersons,” Harvard Library Bulletin, vol. 21, no. 3, July 1973, p. 338.

  [>] “Marriage should”: JMNVIII, p. 95.

  [>] “all the marriages”: Conversation reported by RWE to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and recorded in her journal, entry of November 25, 1836. In “Biography of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody” [manuscript draft] by Mary Van Wyck Church, p. 280, MHS.

  [>] “every one”: Nancy Craig Simmons, “Margaret Fuller’s Boston Conversations: The 1839–1840 Series,” Studies in the American Renaissance, 1994 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia), p. 215.

  [>] “ruined health”: FLII, p. 81.

  [>] “lack of”: FLIII, p. 164.

  [>] “mourned that I”: OMI, p. 99.

  [>] “perfect” friends: “Margaret Fuller’s Boston Conversations,” p. 218.

  [>] “We cannot”: JMNVIII, p. 95.

  [>] “Never confess”: Lidian Jackson Emerson, “Transcendental Bible,” in Joel Myerson, ed., Transcendentalism: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 381–82.

  [>] “Let there”: ELIII, p. 53.

  [>] “we shall”: ELIII, p. 81.

  [>] “our poor Dial”: ELIII, pp. 36–37.

  [>] “rotation in martyrdom”: ELIII, p. 35.

  [>] “desk & inkhorn”: ELIII, p. 75.

  [>] “red room” . . . “long word”: “Margaret Fuller’s 1842 Journal,” p. 338.

  [>] “questioning season”: MF to WHC, FLIII, p. 91.

  [>] “we go but” . . . “more at home” . . . “we do not”: “Margaret Fuller’s 1842 Journal,” p. 323; “are moderate now”: p. 326.

  [>] “burst into tears” . . . “a painful”: Ibid., p. 331.

  [>] “looked at”: Ibid.

  [>] “lurking hope”: Ibid., p. 332.

  [>] “more his companion”: Ibid., p. 331.

  [>] Lidian’s “magnanimity”: Ibid., p. 332.

  [>] “wonderful sleepless”: ELIII, p. 62.

  [>] “when my soul”: FLII, p. 160.

  [>] “You would have”: JMNVII, p. 400.

  [>] “the holy man”: FLII, p. 147.

  [>] “I see”: JMNVII, p. 400.

  [>] “my long”: ELIII, p. 62.

  [>] “interrogating, interrogating”: JMNVIII, p. 196.

  [>] “talking, as we almost”: “Margaret Fuller’s 1842 Journal,” p. 330.

  [>] “Man,” he told her: Ibid.

  [>] “claim a devotion”: Ibid., pp. 330–31.

  [>] “Great Sage”: 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. 105.

  [>] “it has not”: “Margaret Fuller’s 1842 Journal,” pp. 329, 327.

  [>] “capital” letter: Ibid., p. 333.

  [>] “some ill”: Ibid., p. 334.

  [>] “nowise convinced”: Ibid., p. 335.

  [>] “my poor”: Ibid.

  [>] “left Ellen”: Ibid.

  [>] “He reads”: Ibid., p. 336.

  [>] “took it”: Ibid., pp. 335–36.

  [>] “no tragedy”: Ibid., p. 336.

  [>] “be impossible”: Robert D. Habich, “Margaret Fuller’s Journal for October 1842,” Harvard Library
Bulletin, vol. 33, no. 3, 1985, p. 285.

  [>] “sublimo-slipshod” . . . “to the very end”: Quoted in Joel Myerson, The New England Transcendentalists and The Dial (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1980), pp. 111, 109.

  [>] “a succession”: “Margaret Fuller’s Journal for October 1842,” p. 286.

  [>] “the true”: “Margaret Fuller’s 1842 Journal,” p. 336.

  [>] “because he dont”: Ibid., p. 332.

  [>] “radiant genius”: JMNXVI, p. 22.

  [>] “woman, self-centred”: MF, “The Great Lawsuit,” p. 47.

  [>] “lumber waggon”: FLIII, p. 137.

  [>] “To Rhea”: RWE, Dial, vol. 4, no. 1, July 1843, p. 104.

  13. “THE NEWEST NEW WORLD”

  [>] “fire winged”: FLIII, p. 131.

  [>] “lost its interest” . . . “the newest”: FLIII, p. 147.

  [>] “the birth”: MF, journal passage dated July 1844, quoted in JMNXI, p. 461.

  [>] “dripping” rain: FLIII, p. 126.

  [>] “known it all”: Quoted in CFII, p. 125.

  [>] “with eyes full”: JMNIX, p. 19.

  [>] “woo the mighty” . . . “the Americanisms”: SOL, pp. 18, 6.

  [>] “continual stress” . . . “so much”: SOL, p. 3; FLIII, p. 131.

  [>] “no escape”: SOL, p. 3.

  [>] “hordes” of immigrants: MF journal, quoted in CFII, p. 125.

  [>] “life-blood rushes”: SOL, p. 19.

  [>] “for a plaything”: SOL, pp. 6–7.

  [>] “the conspiring”: SOL, p. 9.

  [>] “aboriginal population”: RWE to Martin Van Buren, April 23, 1838, published in the Daily National Intelligencer, Washington, May 14, 1838, and the Yeoman’s Gazette, Concord, May 19, 1838.

  [>] “real old”: FLIII, p. 131.

  [>] “glut the steamboat”: MF journal, quoted in VM, p. 173.

  [>] “rudeness of conquest”: SOL, p. 18.

  [>] “make amends”: MF journal, quoted in CFII, p. 125.

  [>] “for business”: MF journal, quoted in VM, p. 173.

  [>] “material realities” . . . “do not ape”: FLIII, p. 129.

  [>] “talking not”: SOL, p. 12.

  [>] “I say”: FLIII, p. 132.

  [>] “oak shaded” . . . “room enough”: MF journal, quoted in VM, p. 174.

  [>] “country [where]”: SOL, p. 25.

  [>] “one of the band”: MF letter, quoted in JMNXI, p. 485.

  [>] “pleasant or natural”: JMNXI, p. 464.