Volume I Part 5 (1/2)
”To have found favor in thy sight Will still remain A river of thought, that full of light Divides the plain.”
MILNES.
”Cui potest vita esse vitalis, (ut ait Ennius,) quae non in amici mutata benevolentia requiescat?”--CICERO.
It was while living at Cambridge that Margaret commenced several of those friends.h.i.+ps which lasted through her life, and which were the channels for so large a part of her spiritual activity. In giving some account of her in these relations, there is only the alternative of a prudent reserve which omits whatever is liable to be misunderstood, or a frank utterance which confides in the good sense and right feeling of the reader. By the last course, we run the risk of allowing our friend to be misunderstood; but by the first we make it certain that the most important part of her character shall not be understood at all. I have, therefore, thought it best to follow, as far as I can, her own ideas on this subject, which I find in two of her letters to myself. The first is dated, Groton, Jan. 8th, 1839. I was at that time editing a theological and literary magazine, in the West, and this letter was occasioned by my asking her to allow me to publish therein certain poems, and articles of hers, which she had given me to read.
'And I wish now, as far as I can, to give my reasons for what you consider absurd squeamishness in me. You may not acquiesce in my view, but I think you will respect it _as_ mine and be willing to act upon it so far as I am concerned.
'Genius seems to me excusable in taking the public for a confidant. Genius is universal, and can appeal to the common heart of man. But even here I would not have it too direct.
I prefer to see the thought or feeling made universal. How different the confidence of Goethe, for instance, from that of Byron!
'But for us lesser people, who write verses merely as vents for the overflowings of a personal experience, which in every life of any value craves occasionally the accompaniment of the lyre, it seems to me that all the value of this utterance is destroyed by a hasty or indiscriminate publicity. The moment I lay open my heart, and tell the fresh feeling to any one who chooses to hear, I feel profaned.
'When it has pa.s.sed into experience, when the flower has gone to seed, I don't care who knows it, or whither they wander. I am no longer it,--I stand on it. I do not know whether this is peculiar to me, or not, but I am sure the moment I cease to have any reserve or delicacy about a feeling, it is on the wane.
'About putting beautiful verses in your Magazine, I have no feeling except what I should have about furnis.h.i.+ng a room. I should not put a dressing-case into a parlor, or a book-case into a dressing-room, because, however good things in their place, they were not in place there. And this, not in consideration of the public, but of my own sense of fitness and harmony.'
The next extract is from a letter written to me in 1842, after a journey which we had taken to the White Mountains, in the company of my sister, and Mr. and Mrs. Farrar. During this journey Margaret had conversed with me concerning some pa.s.sages of her private history and experience, and in this letter she asks me to be prudent in speaking of it, giving her reasons as follows:--
'_Cambridge, July 31, 1842._--... I said I was happy in having no secret. It is my nature, and has been the tendency of my life, to wish that all my thoughts and deeds might lie, as the ”open secrets” of Nature, free to all who are able to understand them. I have no reserves, except intellectual reserves; for to speak of things to those who cannot receive them is stupidity, rather than frankness. But in this case, I alone am not concerned. Therefore, dear James, give heed to the subject. You have received a key to what was before unknown of your friend; you have made use of it, now let it be buried with the past, over whose pa.s.sages profound and sad, yet touched with heaven-born beauty, ”let silence stand sentinel.”'
I shall endeavor to keep true to the spirit of these sentences in speaking of Margaret's friends.h.i.+ps. Yet not to speak of them in her biography would be omitting the most striking feature of her character. It would be worse than the play of Hamlet with Hamlet omitted. Henry the Fourth without Sully, Gustavus Adolphus without Oxenstiern, Napoleon without his marshals, Socrates without his scholars, would be more complete than Margaret without her friends.
So that, in touching on these private relations, we must be everywhere ”bold,” yet not ”too bold.” The extracts will be taken indiscriminately from letters written to many friends.
The insight which Margaret displayed in finding her friends, the magnetism by which she drew them toward herself, the catholic range of her intimacies, the influence which she exercised to develop the latent germ of every character, the constancy with which she clung to each when she had once given and received confidence, the delicate justice which kept every intimacy separate, and the process of transfiguration which took place when she met any one on this mountain of Friends.h.i.+p, giving a dazzling l.u.s.tre to the details of common life,--all these should be at least touched upon and ill.u.s.trated, to give any adequate view of her in these relations.
Such a prejudice against her had been created by her faults of manner, that the persons she might most wish to know often retired from her and avoided her. But she was ”sagacious of her quarry,” and never suffered herself to be repelled by this. She saw when any one belonged to her, and never rested till she came into possession of her property. I recollect a lady who thus fled from her for several years, yet, at last, became most nearly attached to her. This ”wise sweet”
friend, as Margaret characterized her in two words, a flower hidden in the solitude of deep woods, Margaret saw and appreciated from the first.
See how, in the following pa.s.sage, she describes to one of her friends her perception of character, and her power of attracting it, when only fifteen years old.
'_Jamaica Plains, July, 1840_.--Do you remember my telling you, at Coha.s.set, of a Mr. ---- staying with us, when I was fifteen, and all that pa.s.sed? Well, I have not seen him since, till, yesterday, he came here. I was pleased to find, that, even at so early an age, I did not overrate those I valued.
He was the same as in memory; the powerful eye dignifying an otherwise ugly face; the calm wisdom, and refined observation, the imposing _maniere d'etre_, which anywhere would give him an influence among men, without his taking any trouble, or making any sacrifice, and the great waves of feeling that seemed to rise as an attractive influence, and overspread his being. He said, nothing since his childhood had been so marked as his visit to our house; that it had dwelt in his thoughts unchanged amid all changes. I could have wished he had never returned to change the picture. He looked at me continually, and said, again and again, he should have known me anywhere; but O how changed I must be since that epoch of pride and fulness! He had with him his son, a wild boy of five years old, all brilliant with health and energy, and with the same powerful eye. He said,--You know I am not one to confound acuteness and rapidity of intellect with real genius; but he is for those an extraordinary child. He would astonish you, but I look deep enough into the prodigy to see the work of an extremely nervous temperament, and I shall make him as dull as I can. ”_Margaret_,” (p.r.o.nouncing the name in the same deliberate searching way he used to do,) ”I love him so well, I will try to teach him moderation. If I can help it, he shall not feed on bitter ashes, nor try these paths of avarice and ambition.” It made me feel very strangely to hear him talk so to my old self. What a gulf between! There is scarce a fibre left of the haughty, pa.s.sionate, ambitious child he remembered and loved. I felt affection for him still; for his character was formed then, and had not altered, except by ripening and expanding! But thus, in other worlds, we shall remember our present selves.'
Margaret's constancy to any genuine relation, once established, was surprising. If her friends' _aim_ changed, so as to take them out of her sphere, she was saddened by it, and did not let them go without a struggle. But wherever they continued ”true to the original standard,”
(as she loved to phrase it) her affectionate interest would follow them unimpaired through all the changes of life. The principle of this constancy she thus expresses in a letter to one of her brothers:--
'Great and even _fatal_ errors (so far as this life is concerned) could not destroy my friends.h.i.+p for one in whom I am sure of the kernel of n.o.bleness.'
She never formed a friends.h.i.+p until she had seen and known this germ of good; and afterwards judged conduct by this. To this germ of good, to this highest law of each individual, she held them true. But never did she act like those who so often judge of their friend from some report of his conduct, as if they had never known him, and allow the inference from a single act to alter the opinion formed by an induction from years of intercourse. From all such weakness Margaret stood wholly free.