Margaret Fuller (Howe 1883)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
If the aspect of London society has changed greatly since Margaret's visit there in 1846, the Paris which she saw that winter may be said to exist no longer, so completely is its physiognomy transformed by the events of the last thirty-seven years. Like London, Paris had then some gems of the first water, to which nothing in the present day corresponds. Rachel was then queen of its tragic stage, George Sand supreme in its literary domain. De Balzac, Eugène Sue, Dumas pére, and Béranger then lived and moved among admiring friends. Victor Hugo was in early middle age. Guizot was in his full prestige, literary and administrative. Liszt and Chopin held the opposite poles of the musical world, and wielded, the one the most intense, the other its broadest power. The civilized world then looked to Paris for the precious traditions of good taste, and the city deserved this deference as it does not now.
The sense of security which then prevailed in the French capital was indeed illusory. The stable basis of things was already undermined by the dangerous action of theories and of thinkers. Louis Philippe was unconsciously nearing the abrupt close of his reign. A new chaos was imminent, and one out of which was to come, first a heroic uprising, and then a despotism so monstrous and mischievous as to foredoom itself, a caricature of military empire which for a time cheated Europe, and in the end died of the emptiness of its own corruption.
Into this Paris Margaret came, not unannounced. Her essay on American Literature, which had recently appeared in her volume entitled Papers on Literature and Art, had already been translated into French, and printed in the Revue Indépendante. The same periodical 8000 after published a notice of Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Margaret enjoyed the comfortable aspect of the apartment which she occupied with her travelling-companions at Hôtel Rougemont, Boulevard Poissoniére. She mentions the clock, mirror, curtained bed, and small wood-fire, which were then, and are to-day, so costly to the transient occupant.
Though at first not familiar with the sound of the French language, she soon had some pleasant acquaintances, and was not long in finding her way to the literary and social eminences who were prepared to receive her as their peer.
First among these she mentions George Sand, to whom she wrote a letter, calling afterwards at her house. Her name was not rightly reported by the peasant woman who opened the door, and Margaret, waiting for admittance, heard at first the discouraging words, “Madame says she docs not know you." She stopped to send a message regarding the letter she had written, and as she spoke, Madame Sand opened the door and stood looking at Her for a moment.
“Our eyes met. I shall never forget her look at that moment. The doorway made a frame for her figure. She is large, but well formed. She was dressed in a robe of dark violet silk, with a black mantle on her shoulders, her beautiful hair dressed with the greatest taste, her whole appearance and attitude, in its simple, and lady-like dignity, presenting an almost ludicrous contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George Sand. Her face is very little like the portraits, but much finer. The upper part of the forehead and eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, but not in the least coarse, the complexion olive, and the air of the whole head Spanish." This striking apparition was further commended in Margaret's eyes by "the expression of goodness, nobleness, and power" that characterised the countenance of the great French-woman.
Madame Sand said, “C'est vous," and offered her hand to Margaret, who, taking it, answered, "Il me fait du bien de vous voir" ("It does me good to see you"). They went into the study. Madame Sand spoke of Margaret's letter as charmante, and the two ladies then talked on for hours, as # they had always known each other, Madame Sand had at that moment a work in the press, and was hurried for copy, and beset by friends and visitors. She kept all these at a distance, saying to Margaret: "It is better to throw things aside, and seize the present moment." Margaret gives this résumé of the interview: "We did not talk at all of personal or private matters, I saw, as one sees in her writings, the want of an independent, interior life, but I did not feel it as a fault. I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ardent a genius. I liked the woman in her, too, very much; I never liked a woman better."
To complete the portrait, Margaret mentions the cigarette, which her new friend did not relinquish during the interview. The impression received as to character did not materially differ from that already made by her writings. In seeing her,, Margaret was not led to believe that all her mistakes were chargeable upon the unsettled condition of modern society. Yet she felt not the less convinced of the generosity and nobleness of her nature. “ There may have been something of the Bacchante in her life," says Mar- garet, sonje reverting to the wild ecstasies of heathen nature-worship, “but she was never coarse, never gross."
Margaret saw Madame Sand a second time, surrounded by her friends, and with her daughter, who was then on the eve of her marriage with the sculptor Clésinger. In this entourage she had “the position of an intellectual woman and good friend; the same as my own," says Margaret, “in the circle of my acquaintance as distinguished from my intimates."
Beneath the same roof Margaret found Chopin, "always ill, and as frail as a snow-drop, but an exquisite genius. He played to me, and I liked his talking scarcely less." The Polish poet, Mickiewicz, said to her, “Chopin gives us the Ariel view of the universe.”
Margaret had done her best while in London to see what the English stage had to offer. The result had greatly disappointed her. lu France she found the theatre living, and found also a public which would not have tolerated "one touch of that stage-strut and vulgar bombast of tone which the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic illusion."
In Paris she says that she saw, for the first time, something represented in a style 'uniformly good.” Besides this general excellence, which is still aimed at in the best theatres of the Continent, the Parisian stage had then a star of the first magnitude, whose splendour was, without an equal, and whose setting brought to successor. In the supreme domain of tragic art, Rachel then reigned, an undisputed queen. Like George Sand, her brilliant front was obscured by the cloud of doubt which rested upon her private character,—a natter of which even the most dissolute age will take note, after its fashion. And yet the charmed barrier of the foot-lights surrounded her with a flame of mystery. Whatever was known or surmised of her elsewhere, within those limits she appeared as the living impersonation of beauty, grace, and power. For Rachel had, at this time, no public sorrow. How it might fare with her and her lovers little concerned the crowds who gathered nightly, drawn by the lightnings of her eye, the melodious thunder of her voice. Ten years later, a new favourite, her rival but not her equal, came to win the heart of her Pariş from her. Thew-Rachel, grieved and angry, knew the vanity of all human dependence. She crossed the ocean, and gave the New World a new delight. But in spite of its laurels and applause, she sickened (Margaret had said she could not live long), and fled far, far eastward, to hear in ancient Egypt the death-psalms of her people. With a smile, the last change of that expressive countenance, its lovely light expired.
Of the woman, Margaret says nothing. Of the artist, she says that she found her worthy of Greece, and fit to be made immortal in its marble, She did not, it is true, find in her the most tender pathos, nor yet the sublime of sweetness:—
“Her range, even in high tragedy, is limited. Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some severe shape, and rises, simple and austere, above the mixed elements around her." Had Margaret seen her in Les Horaces? One would think so.
“On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge. I admired her more in Phèdre than in any other part in which I saw her. The guilty love inspired by the hatred of a goddess was expressed with a force and terrible naturalness that almost suffocated the beholder."
Margaret had heard much about the power which Rachel could throw into a single look, and speaks of it as indeed magnificent. Yet she admired most in her “the grandeur, truth, and depth of her conception of each part, and the sustained purity with which she represented it."
In seeing other notabilities, Margaret was indeed fortunate. She went one day to call upon Lamennais, to whom she brought a letter of introduction. To her disappointment, she found him not alone. But the "citizen-looking, vivacious, elderly man," whom she was at first sorry to see with him, turned out to be the poet Béranger, and Margaret says that she was "very happy in that little study, in presence of these two men whose influence has been so great, so real." It was indeed a very white stone that hit two such birds at one throw.
Margaret heard a lecture from Arago, and was not disappointed in him. “Clear, rapid, full, and equal was this discourse, and worthy of the master's celebrity.”
The Chamber of Deputies was in those days much occupied with the Spanish Marriage, as it was called. This was the intended betrothal of the Queen of Spain's sister to the Duc de Montpeusier, youngest son of the then reigning King of the French, Louis Philippe. Guizot and Thiers were hoth heard on this matter, but Margaret heard only M. Berryer, then considered the most eloquent speaker of the House. His oratory appeared to her, “indeed, very good; not logical, but plausible, with occasional bursts of flame and showers of sparks." While admiring him, Margaret thinks that her own country possesses public speakers of more force, and of equal polish.
At a presentation and ball at the "Tuileries Margaret was much struck with tho elegance and grace of the Parisian ladies of high society. The Qucen made the circuit of state, with the youthful Duchess, the cause of so much disturbance, hanging on her arm. Margaret found here some of her own country-women, conspicuous for their beauty. The uniforms and decorations of the gentlemen contrasted favourably, in her view, with the sombre, black-coated masses of men seen in circles at home.
“Among the crowd wandered Leverrier, in the costume of an Academician, looking as if he had lost, not found, his planet. He seemed not to find it easy to exchange the music of the spheres for the music of fiddles,"
The Italian Opera in Paris fell far short of Margaret's anticipations. So curtly does she judge it, that one wonders whether she expected to find it a true Parnassus, dedicated to the ideal expression of the most delicate and lofty sentiment. Grisi appeared to her coarse and shallow, Persiuni mechanical and meretricious, Mario devoid of power. Lablache alone satisfied her.
These judgments show something of the weakness of off-hand criticisin. In the world of art, the critic who wishes to teach, must first be taught of the artist. He must be very sure that he knows what a work of art is before he carps at what it is not. Relying on her own great intelligence, and on her love of beautiful things, Margaret expected, perhaps, to understand too easily the merits and defects of what she saw and heard.
In Paris Margaret met Alexandre Vattemare, intent upon his project of the exchange of superfluous books and documents between the public libraries of different countries. Busy as he was, he found time to be of service to her, and it was through his efforts that she was enabled to visit the Imprimerie Royale and the Mint. He also induced the Librarian of the Chamber of Deputies to show her the manuscripts of Rousseau, which she found “just as he has celebrated them, written on fine white paper, tied with ribbon. Yellow and faded, age has made them," says Margaret; "yet at their touch I seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glowing, more and more expansive, with which his soul has pervaded this century."
M. Vattemare introduced Margaret to one of the evening schools of the Frères Chrétiens, where she saw with pleasure how much can be accomplished for the working-classes by evening lessons.
“ Visions arose in my mind of all that might be done in our country by associations of men and women who have received the benefits of literary culture, giving such evening lessons throughout our cities and villages." Margaret wishes, however, that such disinterested effort in our own country should not be accompanied by the priestly robe and manner which for her marred the humanity of the Christian Brotherhood of Paris.
The establishment of the Protestant Deaconesses is praised by Margaret. She visited also the School for Idiots, near Paris, where her feelings vented themselves in "a shower of sweet and bitter tears; of joy at what has been done, of grief for all that I and others possess, and cannot impart to these little ones." She was much impressed with the character of the master of the school, a man of seven or eight and twenty years, whose fine countenance she saw "looking in love on those distorted and opaque vases of humanity."
Turning her face southward, she thus takes leave of the great capital:—
“Paris! I was sad to leave thee, thou wonderful focus, where ignorance ceases to be a pain, because there we find such means daily to lessen it.”
Railroads were few in the France of forty years ago. Margaret came by diligence and boat to Lyons, to Avignon, where she waded through the snow to visit the tomb of Laura, and to Marseilles, where she embarked for Genoa. Her first sight of this city did not disappoint her, but, to her surprise, she found the weather cold and ungenial:—
“I could not realize that I had actually touched those shores to which I had looked forward all my life, where it seemed that the heart would expand, and the whole nature be turned to delight. Seen by a cutting wind, the marble palaces, the gardens, the magnificent water-view, failed to charm." Both here and in Leghorn Margaret visited Italians at their houses, and found them very attractive, "charming women, refined and eloquent men." The Mediterranean voyage was extended as far as Naples, which she characterizes as "priest-ridden, misgoverned, full of dirty, degraded men and women, yet still most lovely." And here, after a week which appeared to be “an exact copy of the miseries of a New-England spring," with a wind "villainous, horrible, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston," Margaret found at last her own Italy, and found it “beautiful, worthy to be loved and embraced, not talked about.... Baiæ had still a hid divinity for me, Vesuvius a fresh baptism of fire, and Sorrento—oh! Sorrento was beyond picture, beyond poesy."
After Naples came Margaret's first view of Rome, where she probably arrived early in May, and where she remained until late in the month of June. We do not find among her letters of this period any record of her first impressions of the Eternal City, the approach to which, before the days of railroads in Italy, was unspeakably impressive and solemn.
Seated in the midst of her seven hills, with the desolate Campagna about her, one could hardly say whether her stony countenance invited the spirit of the age, or defied it. Her mediæval armour was complete at all points. Her heathen hcart had kept Christianity far from it by using as exorcisms the very forms which, at the birth of that religion, had mediated between its spirit and the dull sense of the Pagan world. It was the nineteenth century in America, the eighteenth in England, the seventeenth in France, and the fifteenth in Rome. The aged hands of the grandam still hold fast the key of her treasures. Her haughty front still said to Ruin and Desolation,—
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.
So the writer first saw Rome in the winter of 1843. Her walls seemed those of a mighty sepulchre, in which even the new-born babe was born into death, The stagnation of thought, the prohibition of question, the denial of progress! Her ministers had a sweet Lethean draught with which to lull the first clamours of awakening life, to quiet the first promptings of individual thought. It was the draught of Circe, fragrant but fatal. And those who fed upon it became pathetic caricatures of humanity.
Not so did Margaret find Rome in 1847. The intervening years had wrought a change Within the defiant fortress of superstition a divine accident had happened. A man had been brought to the chair of St. Peter who felt his own human power too strongly to consent to the impotence of the traditional non possumus. To the timid questioning of Freedom from without he gave the bold answer of Freedom from within. The Papal crown had sometimes covered the brows of honest, heroic men. Such an one would he prove himself, and his first message was to that effect. Fortunate, fatal error! The thrones of the earth trembled at it. Crowned heads shook with the palsy of fear. The enslaved multitudes and their despised champions sent up a ringing shout to heaven, for the apocalyptic hour had come. The sixth seal was broken, nud the cannon of St. Angelo, which saluted the crowning of the new Pontiff, really saluted the installation of the new era.
Alas! many woes had to intervene before this new order could establish itself upon any permanent foundation. The Pope forsook his lofty ground. France, republican for a day only, became the ally of absolutism, and sent an army to subdue those who had believed the papal promise and her own. After a frightful interval of suffering and resistance, this was effected, and Pius was brought back, shorn of his splendours, a Jove whose thunderbolt had been stolen, a man without an idea. Then came the confusion of endless doubt and question. What had been the secret of the Pope's early liberalism? What that of his volte-face? Was it true, as was afterwards maintained, that he had been, from the first, a puppet, moved by forces quite outside his own understanding, and that the moving hands, not the puppet, had changed? Or had he gone to war with mighty Precedent, without counting the cost of the struggle, and so failed? Or had he undergone a poisoning which broke his spirit and touched his Brain?
These were the questions of that time, not ours to answer, brought to mind here only because they belong to the history of Margaret's years in Italy, years in which she learned to love that country as her own, and to regard it as the laid of her spiritual belonging.