The Homes of the New World/Letter IX.
LETTER IX.
Boston, Jan. 22nd.
I shall now, my sweet child, have a little chat with you, and this chat I shall send by post. I can hardly conceive that I have not written to you for all these fourteen days; but one engagement succeeded another, and people, and letter-writing, and many things occupied the time, and the days went on—I know not how.
I have also been a little out of sorts again and not able to do much. The good allopathists here—and I have had one of the first physicians in Boston—did not understand my malady, and prescribed merely for the stomach. I therefore took refuge with homœopathy.
But I must tell you how it happened. I went one day—although I felt very miserably unwell—to visit several public institutions, accompanied or rather taken there by Charles Sumner. First to the House of Correction for women, where I admired the order and arangement of everything; after that we went to the Lunatic Asylum for the poor. It was clean and well-ordered, but, ah! it was deficient in all the comfort and beauty which had distinguished the Asylum for the wealthy insane at Bloomingdale. One woman conceived a violent friendship for me, embraced and blessed me continually, and desired the others to bless me also.
“Say, bless her!” said she to Mr. Sumner. He was engaged in conversation with the superintendent and did not attend to her request. She repeated it, and said finally in a wild, threatening voice—“Say, bless her!”
“Yes, God bless her!” said Sumner, now kindly, in his deep, beautiful voice; and with this my friend laughed and was very much pleased.
Among the men were two with whom Sumner was acquainted; they were two of his college companions; men with good heads, and who had been before him in mathematics. Now their high-arched foreheads appeared not to harbour a sensible thought. One of them recognised his former comrade, but the recognition seemed to grieve and embarrass him.
From this asylum I was obliged to go out to dine, and after that to a Swedenborgian meeting at the Swedenborgian church, where I shook hands with about one hundred Swedenborgians.
It was half-past ten when at length I reached home, and for the first time in the day I experienced a feeling of comfort and satisfaction. Every feeling of annoyance had vanished, and I enjoyed half an hour of rest with a female friend who had accompanied me home. But at this moment came my physician, and would of necessity take me with him to a large party.
I prayed to be excused; I said, “Now for the first time am I enjoying rest to-day; for the first time to-day am I feeling pretty well. You are doing now what so many others do; you say I must have rest, and yet you at the same time compel me to go into company!”
It was of no use. I could not gainsay my physician; go I must, and that to a party, given by one of the most elegant ladies of Boston, at about twelve o'clock at night. It was too much! And that is the way they kill strangers in this country. They have no mercy on the poor lion, who must make a show and whisk his tail about as long as there is any life left in him. One must really be downright obstinate and stern, if one would be at peace here. And I feel as if I should become so. It is said that Spurzheim was regularly killed with kindness by the Bostonians.
But to return to my evening. That nervous depression again returned and I passed two distressing hours, and envied the Indians and all free people who lived in the open, wild woods. When again at home, I was seized by the dread of one of my sleepless nights, and of the wretched day which was certain to succeed it, when life would seem to be the heaviest of burdens although I might not be otherwise ill. When therefore I now felt my hands burning as in fever, I recollected some homœopathic globules which my friend Downing, who is himself a homœopathist, had given me when I was very much excited, and which had calmed me wonderfully. Of these I took a few, and—I slept better that night than I had done for many weeks. As early therefore as possible the following day I went out among my acquaintance in Boston, inquiring after a homœopathic physician. A kind, handsome, elderly lady, Mrs. C. (the mother of three tall sons), promised to send her physician to me. Accordingly when, about noon, having returned from a walk, I entered my sitting-room, I beheld there a tall old gentleman with a pale and strongly marked countenance, high forehead, bald temples, silver-grey hair, and a pair of deep-set, blue eyes full of feeling and fervour. He stood there silent and dressed in black, in the middle of the room, with the appearance almost of a clergyman, and with his penetrating, earnest eyes riveted upon me. I do not know how it was, but it was so, that from the first moment I saw him I felt confidence in and affection towards him. I advanced towards him, took his hand between both mine, looked up in his pale, grave countenance and said, “help me!” Thus helpless, feeble, and poor, had I now for some time felt myself to be, under the power as it were of a strange suffering, which crippled me both in soul and body, and alone too, in a strange land, without any other support than the powers of my own soul and body to sustain me through the work which I had undertaken!
He replied in a deep bass voice, speaking slowly as if with difficulty—but ah, my child, it seems like vanity in me to say what he replied; but let me seem vain for this once—he said, “Miss Bremer, no one can have read your Neighbours, and not wish to help you! And I hope to be able to help you!”
I wept; I kissed the thin, bony hands, which I held, as I would have kissed those of a fatherly benefactor; I felt myself also like a child.
He gave me a little white powder, which looked like nothing, and which I was to take before I went to bed. I took it; slept excellently, and the next day—ah! what feelings. All malady was gone. I felt myself as if sustained by spirit-wings; a nameless sensation of peace and health pervaded my whole being. I went out. I did not feel my body. I rejoiced in the blueness of heaven, in the leaping of the billows. I could see that the world was beautiful. I had not felt thus for a long time, and the certainty that I had now a remedy which would support my still vigorous power and will, made me unspeakably happy. I thanked God. And not merely for my own sake, but for yours, because I am convinced that nothing would suit you and your weakness so well as these airy, light, almost spiritual, and wonderfully effective medicines. These little white nothings of powders and globules, which taste like nothing, look like nothing, operate powerfully and quickly, often within half or a quarter of an hour. And, finally, I beg of you to make the trial of them, if this winter, as is generally the case with you in the winter, you find yourself out of health, both body and mind; make the trial of them, and throw all other medicine out of the window. Pay attention also to diet, and that you do not eat anything which disagrees with you. My doctor maintains that my disorder proceeds from the stomach, and is of the kind very common in this country, and which is called dyspepsia. He has prescribed for me a very exact diet; that I am not to eat fat or greasy meat, nor roast meat, nor highly seasoned, no preserves, nor many other things. I was for a long time obstinate, and insisted upon it that my stomach was the best part about me. I have, however, since then remarked, to my astonishment, that certain food operates upon my condition; that, for instance, I wake in the morning with a sensation of misery if I eat preserves in the evening; and that, on the contrary, I am quite well in the morning when I eat nothing sweet or fat in the evening. The difficulty is for me, here in this country, to adhere to any fixed regimen, but I am becoming more and more convinced that the diet here is unwholesome, and is not suited to the climate, which is hot and stimulating. They eat hot bread for breakfast, as well as many fat and heating dishes, besides roast pork, sausages, omelets, and such like. In the evening, especially at all suppers, they eat oysters stewed, or as salad, and peach-preserve or peach-ice. Oysters, cooked in every possible way, are very much eaten by all, and precisely these, and the other articles which I have mentioned, are difficult of digestion and highly injurious to weak stomachs.
And now adieu to this food, physic, and stomach chapter, but which has a great interest for me and many others, and which ought to be seriously taken into consideration here.
As to my doctor, I must tell you that his name is David Osgood, that he visits me every day, and treats me with the greatest tenderness, and that he has promised to make me quite cheerful and strong before I leave Boston. He is of an old Puritan family, and is himself a real original; he has a rough exterior, but the most gentle and the best of hearts, as may be seen by his eyes. There are certain eyes which certainly can never die. They must remain in heaven as they are on earth. That which I remember most clearly about my friends, is always their eyes, their glance. I am sure that at the resurrection I shall recognise my friends by their eyes.
I must now tell you about Concord, and the Sphinx in Concord, Waldo Emerson, because I went to Concord five days ago, attended by—“himself.” I was wretchedly unwell; I do not know what it was that I had eaten the day before, or whether it was merely the removal and the journey to a new home which had caused me to have no sleep the preceding night. Whatever the cause might be, I sate, weak with fever and dejected in mind, by the side of the strong man, silent and without being able to say a single word, merely mechanically turning my head as he pointed out to me a few remarkable places which we passed. And he perfectly understood what was amiss with me, and let me be silent. I was weak with fever, and oppressed with a feeling as if I should fall to pieces during the first four-and-twenty hours that I was in Emerson's house; but after that, whether it was the little white nothing-powder, or the pure snow-refreshed atmosphere (we had a regularly beautiful Swedish winter at Concord), or whether it was the presence of that strong and strength-giving spirit in whose home I found myself, or whether it was all these together, I cannot say, but I became quite right again, and felt myself light and well.
And during the four days that I remained in Emerson's house, I had a real enjoyment in the study of this strong, noble, eagle-like nature. Any near approximation was, as it were, imperfect, because our characters and views are fundamentally dissimilar, and that secret antagonism which exists in me towards him, spite of my admiration, would at times awake, and this easily called forth his icy-alp nature, repulsive and chilling. But this is not the original nature of the man; he does not rightly thrive in it, and he gladly throws it off, if he can, and is much happier, as one can see, in a mild and sunny atmosphere where the natural beauty of his being may breathe freely and expand into blossom, touched by that of others as by a living breeze. I enjoyed the contemplation of him, in his demeanour, his expression, his mode of talking, and his every-day life, as I enjoy contemplating the calm flow of a river bearing along, and between flowery shores, large and small vessels—as I love to see the eagle circling in the clouds, resting upon them and its pinions. In this calm elevation Emerson allows nothing to reach him, neither great nor small; neither prosperity nor adversity.
Pantheistic as Emerson is in his philosophy, in the moral view, with which he regards the world and life, he is in a high degree pure, noble, and severe, demanding as much from himself as he demands from others. His words are severe, his judgment often keen and merciless, but his demeanour is alike noble and pleasing, and his voice beautiful. One may quarrel with Emerson's thoughts, with his judgment, but not with himself. That which struck me most, as distinguishing him from most other human beings, is nobility. He is a born nobleman. I have seen before two other men born with this stamp upon them. His Excellency W——r, in Sweden, and —— is the second, Emerson the third, which has it, and perhaps in a yet higher degree. And added thereto that deep intonation of voice, that expression, so mild yet so elevated at the same time. I could not but think of Maria Lowell's words, “If he merely mentions my name I feel myself ennobled.”
I enjoyed Emerson's conversation, which flowed as calmly and easily as a deep and placid river. It was animating to me both when I agreed and when I dissented; there is always a something important in what he says, and he listens well and comprehends, and replies well also. But whether it was the weariness of the spirit, or whether a feeling of esteem for his peace and freedom, I know not, but I did not invite his conversation. When it came it was good; when it did not come it was good also, especially if he were in the room. His presence was agreeable to me. He was amiable in his attention to me, and in his mode of entertaining me as a stranger and guest in his house.
He read to me one afternoon some portions of his Observations on England (in manuscript), and scraps from his conversations with Thomas Carlyle (the only man of whom I heard Emerson speak with anything like admiration), about “the young America,” as well as the narrative of his journey with him to Stonehenge. There are some of these things which I can never forget. In proportion as the critical bent of Emerson's mind is strong, and as he finds a great want in human beings, and in things generally—measuring them by his ideal standard, is his faith strong in the power of good, and its ultimate triumph in the arrangement of the world. And he understands perfectly what constitutes noble republicanism and Americanism, and what a nobly-framed community and social intercourse. But the principle, the vitalising, the strengthening source—yes, that Emerson sees merely in the pure consciousness of man himself! He helieves in the original purity and glory of this source, and will cleanse away everything which impedes or sullies it—all conventionality, untruth and paltriness.
I said to an amiable woman, a sincere friend of Emerson's, and one who, at the same time is possessed of a deeply religious mind, “How can you love him so deeply when he does not love, nor put faith in the Highest which we love?”
“He is so faultless,” replied she, “and then he is lovely!”
Lovable he is, also, as one sees him in his home and amid his domestic relations. But you shall hear more about him when we meet, and you shall see his strong beautiful head in my album, among many American acquaintance. I feel that my intercourse with him will leave a deep trace in my soul. I could desire in him warmer sympathies, larger interest in such social questions as touch upon the well-being of mankind, and more feeling for the suffering and the sorrow of earth. But what right indeed has the flower which vibrates with every breath of wind to quarrel with the granite-rock because it is differently made. In the breast of such lie strong metals. Let the brook be silent, and rejoice that it can reflect the rock, the flowers, the firmament, and the stars, and grow and be strengthened by the invisible fountains, which are nourished by the mountain-tops.
But I must give you a specimen or two of Emerson's style, and of his manner of seeing and feeling which most please me. I will make two extracts from his “Essays,” which are applicable to all mankind, to all countries, and to all times, and which are portions of, or drops from that vein of iron ore which runs through everything that Emerson says or writes, because it is the life of his life. In his lecture on self-reliance, he says:—
“To believe your own thought, to believe that which is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the last judgment. The highest merit which we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is that which every man recognises as the voice of his own soul, is that they set books and traditions at nought, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous impression with good-humoured inflexibility, then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say, with masterly good sense, precisely what we have thought and felt the whole time, and we shall be forced to take our own opinion from another.
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“Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place which the Divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves, childlike, to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and, not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay, plastic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and advance on Chaos the Dark.
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“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
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“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, and philosophers, and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. Speak out what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunderstood? It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood; and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
“I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleyah are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. We pass for what we are.
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“Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.
“One tendency unites them all.
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“Perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind, although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. My perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.
“The relations of the soul to the Divine Spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be, that when God speaketh, He should communicate not one thing, but all things, and new-create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away,—means, teachers, texts, temples fall; all things are made sacred by relation to it—one thing as much as another.
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“Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God Himself, unless He speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul.
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“If we live truly, we shall see truly. When we have new perceptions we shall gladly disburden the memory of its inward treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.
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“This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this as on every topic, the resolution of all into the Ever-blessed One. Virtue is the governor, the creator, the reality. All things real are so by so much of virtue as they contain.
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“Let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us shun and astonish the intruding rabble of men, and books, and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid them take the shoes off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune, beside our native rulers.
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“We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary. So let us always sit. * * But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be devotion. * * The power which men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my own act. What we desire, that we have; but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.
“If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Wodin, courage and constancy, in our breast. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of those deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father! O mother! O wife! O brother! O friend! I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,—but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and my heart appoints. If you are noble I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to say? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine; and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last. But so you may give these friends pain. Yes; but I cannot sell my liberty to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.
“The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and the bold sensualist will use the same philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog, and whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect will. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any body imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment for one day.
“And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity to others.
“If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction, society, he will see the need of these ethics.”
I must remark, that if any one will seriously observe human nature, as it commonly is, he will easily see that a moral code, such as Emerson's, would produce conceited and selfish beings, and that it is merely calculated for natures as pure and beautiful as his own, and which form the exception to the general rule. That which he in all cases mistakes is the radical duality of human nature. Yet with what freshness, invigoration, does not this exclamation come to our souls, “Be true; be yourself!” " Especially when coming from a man who has given proofs that in this truth a human being may fulfil all his human duties, as son, brother, husband, father, friend, citizen. But—a true Christian does all this, and—something more.
I must give you two examples of Emerson's doctrines, as relates to the relationship of friend with friend, and on friendship; because they accord with my own feelings, and act as an impulse in the path which for some time I have chosen for myself.
“Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep by a word or a look his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine is that the not mine is mine. It turns the stomach, it blots the daylight—when I looked for a manly furtherance, or, at least, a manly resistance—to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is, ability to do without it. To be capable of that high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be my two before there can be my one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognise the deep identity which beneath their disparities unites them.
“He is only fit for this society who is magnanimous. He must be so to know its law. He must be one who is sure that greatness and goodness are always economy, He must be one who is not swift to intermeddle with his fortunes. Let him not dare to intermeddle with this. Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the births of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We must not be wilful, we must not provide. We talk of choosing our friends, but our friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. Of course, if he be a man, he has merits that are not yours, and that you cannot honour. If you must needs hold him close to your person, stand aside—give those merits room—let them mount and expand. Be not so much his friend that you can never know his peculiar energies, like fond mammas who shut up their boy in the house until he has almost grown a girl. Are you the friend of your friend's buttons or of his thought? To a great heart he will still be a stranger in a thousand particulars, that he may come near in the holiest ground. Leave it to boys and girls to regard a friend as a property, and to suck a short and all-confounding pleasure instead of the pure nectar of God.
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“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real, so equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.
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“Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, and know his mother, and brother, and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me as a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him I want; but not news nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and quiet as Nature herself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard.
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“Worship his superiorities. Wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell him all. Guard him as thy great counterpart; have a princedom to thy friend. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untameable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside.
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“What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or to say anything to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom; and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy soul shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips.
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“Vain to hope to come nearer to a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flies the faster from you, and you shall catch never a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late—very late—we perceive that no antagonism, no introduction, no consuetudes, or habits of society, should be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we desire,—but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is in them, then shall we meet as water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already they.
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“Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great. You become pronounced. You demonstrate yourself so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world—those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely.
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“It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew to carry a friendship greatly on one side, without the correspondence of the other. Why should I cumber myself with the poor fact that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean. It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. True love transcends instantly the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the Eternal; and when the poor, interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. * * * * The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify both!”
“Very magnificent and noble!” you will say, “and very one-sided at the same time!” Yes, it is so, my little Agatha, but there is something in it which is good and great, and something which I like. But it is, nevertheless, very difficult to give by extracts any correct idea of Emerson's mode of thought. His Essays are chains of brilliant aphorisms which often contradict one another. But that which permeates them—the marrow of all, the metallic vein which runs through them all—is the cry, “Be genuine—be thyself! then wilt thou become original and create that which is new and perfect!” Thus says he to the individual; thus says he to the public. And the force and beauty which he gives to this watchword is indeed his peculiar power over the American mind; his peculiarly beneficial work on the people of the New World, only too much disposed to bend themselves to mere imitation, and walk in the footsteps of the Old World.
Emerson is, however, very far from regarding himself as a model of that perfect man whom he wishes to call forth in the New World, excepting possibly in his uprightness. I said to him something about his poems and their American character; “Oh,” said he, earnestly; “you must not be too good-natured. No, we have not yet any poetry which can be said to represent the mind of our world. The poet of America is not yet come. When he comes he will sing quite differently!”
A critic who stands so high that he can look down upon himself,—yes, that is excellent! One is glad to be criticised by such an one.
Emerson is at this moment regarded as the head of the transcendentalists in this portion of America. A kind of people are they who are found principally in the States of New England, and who seem to me like its White Mountains, or Alps; that is to say, they aim at being so. But as far as I have yet heard and seen, I recognise only one actual Alp, and that is Waldo Emerson. The others seem to me to stretch themselves out, and to powder themselves, merely to look lofty and snow-crowned: but that does not help them. They have more pretension than power. Their brows are in the clouds instead of towering above them. A—— has lived for fifteen years on bread and fruit, and has worn linen clothes, because he would not appropriate to himself the property of the sheep—the wool—and has suffered very much in acting up to his faith and love. C—— built himself a hut on the western prairies, and lived there as a hermit for two years; he has, however, returned to every-day life and every-day people. F—— went out into the wild woods and built himself a hut and lived there—I know not on what. He also has returned to common life, is employed in a handicraft trade, and writes books which have in them something of the freshness and life of the woods—but which are sold for money. Ah! I wonder not at these attempts by unusual ways to escape from the torment of common life. I have myself made my attempts by these ways, and should have carried them out still more had I not been fettered. But they, and Emerson himself, make too much of these attempts, because, in themselves, they are nothing uncommon, nor have they produced results which are so. The aim—the intention, is the best part of them.
Emerson says in his characteristics of transcendentalism:
“If there is anything grand and daring in human thought or virtue; any reliance on the vast, the unknown; any presentiment—an extravagance of faith—the spiritualist adopts it as highest in nature.
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“These youths bring us a rough but effectual aid. By their unconcealed dissatisfaction, they expose our poverty and the insignificance of man to man.
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“These exacting children advertise us of our wants. There is no compliment, no smooth speech with them; they pay you only this one compliment of insatiable expectation; they aspire, they severely exact; and if they stand fast in this watch-tower, and persist in demanding to the end, and without end, then are they terrible friends, whereof poet and priest cannot choose but stand in awe; and what if they eat clouds and drink wind, they have not been without service to the race of man.
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“When every voice is raised for a new road, or another statute; or a subscription of stock; for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry; for a new house or a large business; for a political party, or a division of an estate—will you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable? Soon these improvements and mechanical inventions will be superseded; these modes of living lost out of memory; these cities rotted, ruined by war,—by new inventions—by new seats of trade, or the geologic changes;—all gone, like the shells which sprinkle the sea-beach with a white colony to-day—for ever renewed, to be for ever destroyed. But the thoughts which these few hermits strove to proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, not only by what they did, but by what they forbore to do, shall abide in beauty and strength, to re-organize themselves in nature, to invest themselves anew in other, perhaps higher-endowed and happier-mixed clay than ours, in fuller union with the surrounding system.”
Thus says the noble idealist; and perhaps I have quoted too much from him, when I cannot at the same time show you what he is—because this is the most remarkable thing in him. I have nothing against his children—the transcendentalists; it is a refreshment both to hear and to see them, and they utter many a forgotten truth with new life. They are the element of youth in life, and always produce a renovating effect, and they behold many a beauty which older eyes are no longer clear enough to perceive. I remember to have heard that Schelling would not take as pupils young men above five-and-twenty years of age. He considered them after that age not to be so capable, not to be possessed of immediate perception and insight. But when these young pagan alp-natures say, “We have reached to the highest!” then, I say, “Nonsense! you have done nothing of the kind! You say, ‘We are gods.’ I say, ‘Descend from your elevation to the divinely made world, then will I believe you.’ You satisfy yourselves with your lofty, isolated position, believing that you do enough by showing the ideal. Ah! the ideal has never been unknown! You are poor, sinful, imperfect human creatures, like the rest, and your bravery does not come up to the heart of Christianity, which does not merely exhibit the ideal, but helps to attain it; not merely suffers all, but overcomes all; does not sit still and look grandly forth, but combats with its followers, admonishing them to overcome evil with good!”
If the transcendentalists will really create a new, a transcendental state, then they must create a something beyond that; they must, in their ideal man, present a more beautiful figure than that which has already been presented on earth and for earth—the powerful, and, at the same time, humble son of heaven and earth, uniting both in one new creation. But—they cannot even understand the beauty of this.
But enough of the transcendentalists. I must, however, say a few words about a lady who belongs to this sect, and whose name I have frequently heard since I came to America, partly with blame, partly with praise, but always with a certain degree of distinction, namely Margaret Fuller. Although devoid of beauty, and rather disagreeable than agreeable in her manners, she seems to be gifted with singular talents, and to have an actual genius for conversation. Emerson, speaking with admiration of her powers, said, “Conviction sits upon her lips.” Certain it is that I have never heard of a woman in this country possessed of such ability for awakening enthusiasm in the minds of her friends. Emerson said of her, with his usual almost alarming candour, “She has many great qualities; many great faults also.”
Among these latter appear to be her arrogance and her contemptuous manner towards others less gifted than herself. I have also heard that she could repent of and ask pardon for severe words. In haughtiness and independence of temper, in pride and honesty, and in critical asperity, she was perfectly a transcendentalist? The “Conversations” which she at one time gave in a select circle at Boston, are spoken of as of the highest interest. Mrs. Emerson cannot sufficiently praise her fervent eloquence and the extraordinary affluence of her mind, and—I believe—half reproaches me for not being like her.
Margaret Fuller went to Italy with my friends, the S——s, about two years since, and remained there when they left. A report has now reached this country that she has connected herself with a young man (she herself is no longer young, being upwards of forty); and a Fourrierist, or Socialist marriage, without the external ceremony, is spoken of; certain it is that the marriage remained secret, and that she has a child, a boy. She herself has written about it, and about her maternal joy, but not anything about her marriage, merely that she shall relate what farther concerns her when she returns to America, which will be next year. All this has furnished subject for much conversation among her friends and her enemies. They who loved neither herself nor her turn of mind believe the worst; but I shall never forget with what zeal one of her friends, Mr. W. R., defended her on one occasion in company, and that merely on the ground that her character repelled every suspicion of any action which might cast a stain upon it. Her friends at Concord—among these the Emersons, Elizabeth H., and a younger sister of Margaret Fuller, married in Concord—seemed perfectly easy with regard to her conduct, and convinced that it will justify itself in the open light of day. This is beautiful.
Margaret Fuller has in her writings asserted the right of woman to her own free development, and to liberty in many cases where, although conformable to the strictest moral code, it would yet be offensive to many even in this so-called free country. Her friends, and among these the excellent, pure-hearted S——s, wish me to become acquainted with her.
“Ah! you must see Mrs. Ripley,” said Emerson, on one occasion, with his fine smile; “she is one of the most remarkable persons in Concord.”
And I saw a handsome, elderly lady, with silver-white hair, clear, deep blue eyes, as of the freshest youth, a very womanly demeanour, from which nobody could surmise that she reads Greek and Latin, and understands mathematics, like any professor, and helps young students, who cannot pass their examination in these branches of knowledge, by her extraordinary talent as a teacher, and by her motherly influence. Many a youth blesses the work she has done in him. One of these related of her, “She examined me in Euclid whilst she shelled peas, and with one foot rocked the cradle of her little grandson.”
I spent, with the Emersons, an evening with Mrs. Ripley. Neither were there any servants kept in her house. These ladies of New England are clever ladies, true daughters of those pilgrim women who endured hardships so manfully and laboured equally with their husbands, and established with them that kingdom which now extends over a hemisphere.
An ancestor of Elizabeth H. was one of the first pilgrims which that little ship, the “Mayflower,” conveyed to the shore of Massachussetts. He related many times how, when these men were about to frame laws for the new colony, they liked to talk them over before their wives, their sisters, and daughters, and to hear their thoughts upon them. This was beautiful and sensible. Of a certainty that chivalric sentiment and love which generally prevail in America for the female sex had their origin in the dignity and the noble conduct of those early women; of a certainty, from that early equality, that equality in rule and in rights which prevails here in domestic and social life, although not as yet politically.
I liked to talk with Elizabeth H. There is something very profound and great in this young woman; and her words frequently are as brilliant as diamonds in sunshine.
Among the persons whom I saw at the Emersons, and who interested me, was Professor Sherbe, a Swiss, a man of a noble and grave exterior, with something also of ultra-idealism in his philosophy. He has fought against the Jesuits in Switzerland, and is now a teacher and lecturer in America. Lastly, I made the acquaintance of a Doctor Jackson, the discoverer of the somnific effects of ether on the human frame and consciousness, and for which he received a medal from our King Oscar, which was shown to me. He made the discovery entirely by accident, as he has described. I congratulated him on having thus become the means of an infinite blessing to millions of suffering beings.
I left Concord accompanied by this gentleman, who is brother to Mrs. Emerson. But Concord did not leave my memory; its snow-covered scenery; its blue, clear sky; its human beings; its transcendentalists:—all that I had experienced, heard and seen in Concord, and most of all, its sphinx (as Maria Lowell calls Emerson), these all form a sort of alpine region in my mind which has a power of fascination for me, and to which I shall long to return as to the scenes and sights of my native land.
When I reached home last evening I found Marcus S., who had come hither on business. It was a heart-felt joy to me, to see, once more, that excellent, good friend. After I had spent an hour in conversing with him and Mr. Sumner, I went with Marcus to Alcott's concluding “Conversation,” where several pre-arranged topics with regard to diet and its importance to humanity, were discussed. Alcott maintained that all high and holy teachers of the human race had paid great attention to diet, and in particular had abstained from flesh. Some one said that Christ had eaten flesh. Another said that that could not be proved. A third said that he, at all events, had eaten fish. I said that that stood written in the Gospels. A second agreed. “No matter,” said Alcott, “I know better than to eat fish.”
The man is incorrigible. He drinks too much water, and brings forth merely hazy and cloudy shapes. He should drink wine and eat meat, or at least, fish, so that there might be marrow and substance in his ideas. Marcus, too, was amused at the Conversation, but in his quiet way. Among the audience were some ladies with splendid, intelligent foreheads, and beautiful forms. But I did not hear them say a word: I wonder how they could sit still and listen in silence; for my part, I could not do it. And, although the company were invited to a new series of Conversations, this of a certainty will be the last at which I shall be present.
January 26th.—Alcott came to me yesterday afternoon; we conversed for two hours; he explained himself better during our dialogue than in his public Conversation, and I understood better than hitherto that there was really at the bottom of his reform-movement a true and excellent thought. This thought is the importance of an earnest and holy disposition of mind in those who enter into the bonds of wedlock, so that the union may be noble, and its offspring good and beautiful. His plans for bringing about these beautiful and holy marriages between good and beautiful people (for none other are to enter into matrimony—oh! oh! for the many!) may be right for aught I know. They are better and more accordant to human nature than those of Plato for the same purpose. But who will deny that it would be better for the world if they who cause human beings to be born into the world did it with a higher consciousness, with a deeper sentiment of responsibility. Marriage, looked at with reference to this subject, stands in general very low. A man and woman marry to be happy, selfishly happy, and beyond that the thought seldom extends; does not elevate itself to the higher thought—“we shall give life to immortal beings!” And yet, this is the highest purport of marriage. Married couples who have not offspring of their own may fulfil its duties by adopting orphan children.
“But why do you not enunciate these views fully?” inquired I from Alcott: “they are of higher importance than any I have heard during your Conversations, and are really of the highest importance to society.”
Alcott excused himself by the difficulty of treating such a subject in public conversation, and spoke of the intention he had of realising his views in the formation of a little society, in which, I presume, he would act as high-priest. Again a dream. But the dreamer has risen considerably in my estimation by the reality and the nobility of his views on this subject. I will even excuse his whim about diet, with the exception of its exclusiveness. I adhere to that system, which, without the one-sidedness of this and the continued use of wine and all other of God's good gifts, yet still cries aloud to mankind,—“Take heed ye be not overtaken by gluttony and drunkenness.”
Alcott gave me two books. They contain conversations which took place between him and various children during a period when he had a school—which was intended to be “the School,” par excellence. Alcott's main point in the education of children is to awaken their higher nature and to give them a high esteem for it, so that they may love it and always act in accordance with it. He, therefore, early places before their eyes the human-ideal, or the ideal-human being in Jesus Christ. On every occasion of the children's assembling, Alcott began his instruction by reading aloud a chapter from the Holy Scriptures. When this was ended, he asked the children; “what was in your thoughts, or in your soul, whilst you heard this?” Many of the replies were very naïve.
After this Alcott led them to consider what virtue had been exhibited in the narrative, or the incident which they had just heard, and also to name its opposite, and to think whether they discovered it in themselves, and so on. Much that was excellent and worthy of reflection was thus brought forward, and the whole was calculated for the child's development. Many a word of dewy, primeval freshness proceeded from those childish lips, but also much that was childish and unsatisfactory both from child and teacher. In any case, this is a method which, though it would not answer in schools of any extent, is one which every mother ought to reflect upon.
“What was there in your soul, in your heart?” What might not loving lips call forth in the child's consciousness, to the child's memory, by these words, spoken in the evening after the day's schooling, work, play, sorrow, and joy!
When Alcott was gone, Emerson came and remained a good hour with me. He is iron, even as the other is water. And yet, nevertheless, his world floats in an element of disintegration, and has no firm unwavering shapes. Wonderful is it how so powerful and concrete a nature as his can be satisfied with such disintegrated views. I can find fault with Emerson's mode of thought, but I must bow before his spirit and his nature. He was now on his way to New York, where he was invited to give a course of lectures. He has promised, when he returns again, to visit me. I must sometime have a more thorough conversation with him, as well on religious subjects as on the future prospects of America. I feel also a little desire for combat with him. For I never see a lion in human form without feeling my lion-heart beat. And a combat with a spirit like that is always a pleasure even if one wins no victory.
As regards Alcott, I do not know what spirit of contradiction makes me continually excited by him, as well as to amuse myself with him. I sincerely appreciate, however, the beautiful aims of the excellent idealist, and I like, when I say anything against him, to hear Emerson's deep voice saying, reproachfully, “Amid all the noise and stir of the present day for outward and material aims, cannot you bear to hear one or two individual voices speaking for thoughts and principles which are neither saleable nor yet transitory?”
Ah, yes! If they were but a little more rational.
I was this evening at a large party of the Boston fashionables, at Mrs. B.'s. I felt quite well; the company was handsome, elegant, very polite, and the evening was agreeable to me. Another evening I was at another great fashionable party in another house. I did not feel well, and the company seemed to me rather splendid and aristocratic than agreeable. I saw here a couple of figures such as I did not look for in the drawing-rooms of the New World, and, least of all, among the women of New England, so puffed up with pride, so unlovely one read the “money-stamp,” both in glance and figure. I was told that Mrs. —— and her sister had spent a year in Paris; they ought to have brought thence a little Parisian grace and common-sense, as well as fashion. People who are arrogant on account of their wealth, are about equal in civilisation with our Laplanders, who measure a man's worth by the number of his reindeer. A man with one thousand reindeer is a very great man. The aristocracy of wealth is the lowest and commonest possible. Pity is it that it is met with in the New World more than it ought to be. One can even, in walking through the streets, hear the expression, “He is worth so many dollars!” But the best people here despise such expressions. They would never defile the lips of Marcus S., Channing, or Mr. Downing. And as regards the fashionable circles, it must be acknowledged that they are not considered the highest here. One hears people spoken of here as being “above fashion,” and by this is meant people of the highest class. It is clear to me that there is here an aristocracy forming itself by degrees which is much higher than that of birth, property, or position in society; it is really the aristocracy of merit, of amiability, and of character. But it is not yet general. It is merely as yet a little handful. But it grows, and the feeling on the subject grows also.
I have been to a charming little dinner at Professor How's, where I met Laura Bridgeman. She is now twenty; has a good, well-developed figure, and a countenance which may be called pretty. She wears a green bandage over her eyes. When she took my hand, she made a sign that she regarded me to be a child. One of the first questions which she asked me was, “How much money I got for my books?” A regular Yankee question, which greatly delighted my companions, who, nevertheless, prevented its being pressed any further. I asked Laura, through the lady who always attends her, if she were happy? She replied with vivacity, and an attempt at a sound which proved that she could not sufficiently express how happy she was. She appears indeed to be almost always gay and happy; the unceasing kindness and attention of which she is the object, prevents her from having any mistrust of mankind, and enables her to live a life of affection and confidence. Dr. How, one of those dark figures whom Alcott would regard as offspring of the night; that is to say, with dark complexion, dark eyes, black hair, and a splendid energetic countenance, but with a sallow complexion; is universally known for his ardent human love, which induced him to fight for the freedom of the Greeks and Poles, and finally to devote himself to those whose physical senses are in bonds. His acquaintance is valuable to me, for his own sake, though I shall not be able to enjoy much of his society. He appears, like me, to suffer from the climate and from the over-exciting nature of the food of the country. His wife is a most charming lady, with great natural gifts, fine education, and great freshness of character. Two lovely little girls, red and white as milk and cherries, as soft as silk, fresh and fair as dew-drops, even in their dress, came in at the end of dinner, and clung caressingly around the dark, energetic father. It was a picture that I wished Alcott could have seen.
I think of remaining here about fourteen days longer, to allow the homœopathic remedies time to effect their work in me. My good Doctor comes to me every day, and it is a joy to me merely to see him. I am indescribably thankful for the good which I experience, and have experienced, from homœopathy, and am thinking continually how good it would be for you.
Rich I certainly shall not become here, my sweet child, because I have here neither time nor inclination to write anything. But my journey, thanks to American hospitality, will not cost me nearly so much as I expected. And if some of my friends might rule, it would not cost me anything; I should live and travel at the expense of the American people—but that would be too much.
It is horrible weather to-day—pouring rain and strong wind. I was rejoicing in the hope of being left at peace in consequence of the weather, but I was not able to say no to a couple of visitors, one of whom had called with the intention of taking me to an evening-party, the other to ask me to sit for my portrait. But they both received a negative.
I have just received the most beautiful bouquet from a young lady-friend—a great number of beautiful small flowers arranged in the cup of a large snow-white Calla Ethiopica;—and but few days pass without my receiving beautiful bouquets of flowers from known or unknown friends. This is very sweet and beautiful towards a stranger: and to such I never say no, but am right thankful both for the flowers and the goodwill.
Now adieu to this long chatty epistle, and a hearty à Dieu to my little friend.