Ei‘iARfiEfi‘n. 5 E13 LLER: PER ”REAL SEE: AKD RELATiGEESHi P “ATE-é HCRACE GREELEY 3844 1859 Thesis for the D gree of 55.. A. EYsEUE‘uuHSE STrfiTE LNJEZRSU TY lama .Mm. 900' 1975 [‘0‘ .'~c|...y.. JuESIs m1; mu; “AA Lu» E g “y A m m “1 ll ”‘5‘ manna Jggg|u 33’s ‘1‘. WE ’ 93 ‘) t‘o ’ 's I.» L IE! 7:? 2') x‘ , s ‘. A. ”“3" 9% 1 ~ ’1‘, i" 1 0; ,El '1 I; 1“ ' a ‘ I R 3‘ ‘ " :3'33,’ i" ~"-.'\"-",’..‘~i\ ' '-»4 T. we V" t. =-‘ - r , ,;. o I. -. . ‘ ‘ v :t ‘1 3’ °‘- BIND! RC BY F none a. sour i 3 ABSTRACT MARGARET FULLER: HER JOURNALISM AND RELATIONSHIP WITH HORACE GREELEY 1844-1850 By Joan Marie Sudol The mark of a truly great journalist is his or her ability to stimulate social and political change. Horace Greeley is already recognized as such a journalist. Margaret Fuller also deserves this recognition. Fuller's contributions to the journalism profession have been given inadequate appraisal bijournalism scholars. 'Many have perpetuated "Margaret myths" which tend to be erroneous in bringing out certain facets of her life and personality and which shed little light on her role as a pioneer in the history of journalism. She was an intelligent woman and an innovative journalist, writing frankly in a day of literary and social ignorance and in a time when she was one of the few with enough courage to do so. Horace Greeley gave her the chance to become the first member of her sex to enter newspaper journalism and to achieve the distinction of being the first female American foreign correspondent. Joan Marie Sudol A critical assessment of Fuller's association with Greeley is an important aspect of creating a true picture of her. Fuller wrote almost two hundred articles on literary and social topics for Greeley's New York Tribune between December l844 and August 1846. She wrote thirty-three lengthy dispatches during the next two years from Europe as foreign correspondent for the Tribune. A more thorough assessment is made in this thesis of the opinions that Fuller and Greeley shared and the way in which they influenced each other in social and political ideas. Transcendentalism and Fourierism shaped their personal ideals which were reflected in their dealings with society and are given the attention that they merit. Fuller's social cause columns are given a more thorough scholarly examination and reveal a dimension of the relationship between Fuller and Greeley that has warranted more attention. A l970$ approach to their theories of women's rights Show them in many cases to foreshadow modern-day feminism, and again reveals further insights into their personal and journalistic rela-‘ tionship. Fuller's foreign correspondence during the Italian revolu- tion is revealed as the apogee of her journalistic career. A close examination is made into the intriguing comparison between her writing during this period and Ernest Hemingway's reports on the Spanish Civil War. Joan Marie Sudol New light is shed on the confusion that existed in the personal and professional relationship between Fuller and Greeley during the last two years of Fuller's life and which changes the whole complexion of that relationship. If Horace Greeley is remembered for his innovative contribu- tions to journalism, then Margaret Fuller should also be remembered and in a manner that eliminates the "Margaret myths." Accepted by the faculty of the Department of Journalism, College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Michigan State University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree. Director of Thesis MARGARET FULLER: HER JOURNALISM AND RELATIONSHIP WITH HORACE GREELEY 1844-1850 By Joan Marie Sudol A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS School of Journalism T976 Copyright by Joan Marie Sudol 1976 11' ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Much gratitude is expressed to Dr. Maurice R. Cullen, Jr., my thesis advisor, for the guidance and assistance rendered me in this endeavor. And to my parents I express warm thanks for their support without which this thesis could not have been possible. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............. . ........ . . CHAPTER I. MARGARET FULLER' S BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND AND LIFE AT THE GREELEY HOME ........ . ..... . . . . . Childhood and Education Various Employments Literary Works Acquaintance with Greeley Life at the Greeley Home “I II. HORACE GREELEY: MARGARET FULLER'S JOURNALISTIC TUTOR Greeley's Tutelage of the Talented Fuller's Early Ponderous Writing and Reasons For It Writing Style Improvement under Greeley's Tutelage Other Reasons for Fuller's Writing Change 5/ III. MARGARET FULLER'S LITERARY REVIEWS FOR HORACE GREELEY'S TRIBUNE ................... Reasons for Fuller's Employment as Critic Nature of Fuller's Reviews and Peril of Literary Reviewing Fuller's Review of Emerson's Essays_ Fuller's Method of Reviewing Greeley' 5 Early Literary Aspirations Fuller's Review of Longfellow' 5 Poems Fuller as Educator in European L1terature yg'IV. JOURNALISTIC ROLES OF MARGARET FULLER AND HORACE GREELEY IN THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT ............. Women in Journalism Revolutionary Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century Greeley's Praise and Criticism of WomanT‘ Greeley's Ideas on Women's Rights Women in Summer on the Lakes Fuller's Women Prisoners Crusade Greeley's Praise of Fuller's Crusade iv Page 13 18 3O CHAPTER V. THE PHILOSOPHIES, CAUSES AND CRUSADES OF MARGARET FULLER AND HORACE GREELEY ..... . ..... Transcendentalism and Brook Farm Fourierism Treatment of American Indians Poverty Irish Immigrants Capital Punishment Abolitionism and Slavery v/ VI. MARGARET FULLER'S ROMANTIC FULFILLMENT IN ITALY AND HER POSITION AS EUROPEAN WAR CORRESPONDENT FOR HORACE GREELEY'S TRIBUNE ................ Fuller's Development of Republican Sympathies Fuller's Contacts With Revolutionaries Building Up of Political Pressure Fuller's Ideas on the Pope and Catholicism Fuller's Italian Love Affair and Pregnancy Greeley Joins Fuller's Republican Cause Eruption of Revolution in Rome Fuller's War Journalism Compared with Hemingway's Fuller's Confused Relationship with Greeley Fuller's Death VII. CONCLUSIONS ...................... Greeley's Tributes to Fuller Emerson's Mutilation of Fuller Memoirs The "Margaret myths" and Consequences Assessment of Fuller and Greeley Relationship Assessment of Fuller's Contributions to Journalism BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................... Page 46 67 93 96 INTRODUCTION Margaret Fuller's contributions to the journalism profession have been given inadequate appraisal by journalism scholars. Many have perpetuated "Margaret myths" which tend to bring out erroneous facets of her life and personality, but which shed little light on her role as a piOneer in the history of journalism. One end of the "myths" spectrum labels her a pedantic, eccentric and ostentatious old maid. The polar opposite viewpoint places her on a pedestal as a Transcendental goddess. These "myths" are primarily a result of the censorial editing employed by Ralph Waldo Emerson when he compiled and co- authored Fuller's memoirs. He diminished her writing ability and left out important facts of her life which he couldn't sanction. The results gave a distorted impression of the real Margaret Fuller. Many biographers have blindly relied on these memoirs as absolute truth thus perpetuating the "myths." In the last thirty years, Fuller's biographers have attempted to eradicate these "myths" and have succeeded to a large degree. But, her role as a journalist still needs to be clarified and given more prominence. A critical assessment of Fuller's association with Horace Greeley is an important aspect of creating a true picture of Margaret Fuller. Horace Greeley, of undisputed renown in journalism history, admired Fuller as a journalist, woman, scholar and humanitarian. Fuller and Greeley had a close personal and profes- sional relationship that has been acknowledged, but perhaps underestimated. Many of their biographers have had a tendency to examine only Greeley's impact on Fuller, but little attention has been given to Fuller's influence on Greeley. Certainly, Greeley's guidance in developing her journalistic style was important during the period of l844-46 when she first began her career with Greeley's New York Tribune. But there has been too much emphasis given to the influ- ence exerted by Greeley on what_she wrote and her opinions on social causes. Although they did share many opinions on various topics, such as their mutual distaste for the means employed by the Abolitionists, in several instances Fuller had formulated her theories before her acquaintance with Greeley. And, in some cases, she influenced his development of viewpoints on certain issues. A classic example is how Fuller helped to develop Greeley's sympathies withthe republican cause during the Roman Revolution. All of Fuller's biographers have dealt inadequately with her social cause columns for Greeley's Tribune. These articles certainly deserve much more scholarly examination than they have received to date. And, they reveal a dimension of the Fuller and Greeley relationship which warrants more extensive study. Transcendentalism and Fourierism shaped their personal ideals which were reflected in their dealings with society and .certainly merit further attention. No one, however, has thoroughly compared their views on these philosophies in regard to their association. Only one of Fuller's biographers (her most recent one) has acknowledged her standing as the first female American foreign correspondent, a fact that should bring her due credit. Some of her biographers have mentioned a resemblance between Fuller's writing style when she was covering the Roman Revolution and Ernest Hemingway's reports on the Spanish Civil War. But, they have merely mentioned the resemblance and not looked further into this intriguing comparison. There has been much confusion in the personal and pro- fessional relationship that existed between Fuller and Greeley during the last two years of her life. Fuller's biographers have given erroneous conclusions to this confusion which change the whole complexion of their relationship. During her twenty months in New York, Fuller wrote almost twohundred articles for Greeley's Tribune. She wrote thirty-three dispatches to the Tribune as a foreign correspondent in Europe. In this thesis, the journalistic and social importance of these articles is stressed as being innovativeinithgflhistoryflofmjournalism.g Fuller's relationship with Horace Greeley is used as a framework upon which to examine and clarify her contributions to journalism. The premiseof this thesis is that if Horace Greeley is remembered for his ability to stimulate social and political changes through his journalism, then Margaret Fuller should also be remembered in this way, and in a manner that eliminates the "Margaret myths." CHAPTER I MARGARET FULLER'S BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND AND LIFE AT THE GREELEY HOME Sarah Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 23, l8l0, the eldest child of nine that would ultimately be born to Timothy and Margaret Crane Fuller. Timothy Fuller was a lawyer, an aspiring politician, a Unitarian and a Republican. He would also prove to be a domineering father. Her mother was a soft-spoken woman and a former school teacher.1 Early in his daughter's life, Timothy took charge of her education with an ambitious zeal. He taught her English and Latin grammar when she was six years old, and soon after, she was reading Virgil, Ovid and Horace. She read Shakespeare at the age pf eight, and by the time she was twelve, she had read Fielding, Moliére, Smollett, Cervantes and Balzac. She inherited her father's ambitious quest for learning. But the play aspect of her childhood was entirely missing, and she suffered from loneliness. She was 1Mason Wade, Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius (New York: The Viking Press, l94OT, pp. 3-5. (hereafter cited as Wade, Whetstone) At the age of thirteen, she dropped the "Sarah" from her name because she thought it sounded old-maidish. also plagued by headaches and nightmares because of her strenuous studies and vivid imagination.2 Timothy Fuller's political ambitions became fulfilled in his successful bid for the U.S. Congress in 1823, and Margaret was sent to the Misses Prescott's School in Groton for her continued education. Her two-year stay there, although scholastically profitable, was personally traumatic. Her earlier years had not equipped her with the capacity to make friends easily. And her snobbish pride did not appeal to the other girls. When the girls would not be taken in by her boastful and pretentious behavior, she was humiliated and miserable. But she learned from her mistakes and made a determined effort to correct the flaws in her character. When she left the school at the age of fifteen, she was a more humble person and well-liked by her classmates.3 Timothy Fuller had acted as John Quincy Adams' campaign manager in the 1824 presidential election and now had ambitions for a foreign diplomatic post. He moved the family to a wealthy section of Cambridge and devoted his energies to making proper contacts. He also increased his activities in the state legislature in hopes of furthering his worth to Adams.4 2Arthur Brown, Margaret Fuller (New York: Twayne Publish- ers, T964), pp. l9-Zl. 3 Ibid., pp. 21-2. 4Faith Chipperfield, In Quest of Love: The Life and Death of Margaret Fuller (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1957), pp. 46, 64, 75. Because of her father's position, Margaret was accepted into the elite and intellectual social circle of Cambridge. She became the friend and confidant of many of the Harvard College Class of 1829, among them William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke and Oliver Wendell Holmes. With Clarke, she began studying the German language and literature, which had become a popular scholarly pursuit at the time. Within three months, she learned to read German flawlessly. Her high intelligence and uncanny conversational abilities, which made up for her physical plainness, were soon known and admired in the intellectual climate of Cambridge.5 She was just beginning to enjoy her life and social contacts in Cambridge when Adams lost his bid for a second term as president, and the ambassadorship courted for so long by Timothy Fuller slipped from his grasp. Embittered, in debt, and .disillusioned with politics, he moved the family to a farm in Groton. Margaret was 23 years old and extremely unhappy at the prospect of living in a rustic environment after having grown used to the cultural and social benefits of Cambridge.6 On the farm, Margaret's responsibilities were many since her mother was ill much of the time. Outside of the household chores, she also was put in charge of the education of her younger sister and three younger brothers. With it all, she managed to 5Chipperfield, pp. 80, 95-7. 61bid., pp. 90, 97-8. find time for Goethe, Schiller, Alfieri and to study American history. She also began to write seriously, though it proved to be trying at the outset.7 Two years after the move to the farm, Timothy Fuller died of cholera. He left no will, and his business affairs were in shambles. Timothy's brother straightened out the financial disarray, but Margaret assumed her place as head of the family. With a strong determination that she would display many times in her life, she kept up the farm, the children's education, and her own studies.8 A year later, she made her first trip to Concord to visit Ralph Waldo Emerson to whom she had been introduced by friends. At the Emersons', she met Bronson Alcott, who ran the Temple School in Boston. He was impressed with her intelligence and offered her a teaching position. She readily accepted since family finanCes were in need of supplement and she disliked her rustic environment.9 At the school, she taught French and Latin and gave private lessons in German and Italian. For its time, the school -was radical in its philosophical approach to education, utilizing the Socratic approach, forbidding corporal punishment of students and emphasizing self-knowledge. When Alcott published his 7Wade, Whetstone, pp. 21-2. 81bid., pp. 23-4, 26. gBrown, pp. 35-6. Conversations with Children on the Gospels, he was charged with obscenity and blasphemy by the outraged Boston public. Although innocent by modern standards, Alcott's book led to the eventual failure of the school.10 So, after a year, Fuller was forced to seek new employment. She found a teaching position at the Greene Street School in Providence, Rhode Island, at a higher salary and fewer teaching hours than at the Temple School. She still made trips to Concord to see Emerson, and on one of these, she attended a meeting of what was to be called the Transcendental Club. She was the first woman "member" of this group of idealists whose main hobby was discussion. During her stay in Providence, she wrote an article on the German poet Theodor Korner for James Clarke's Western Messenger, which was published in two parts in January and February of 1838. She also began working on a translation of Eckermann's Conversations with 11 so_e_t_hs_- She soon realized that she preferred writing to teaching and resigned her post to return to Groton. There she completed the Eckermann translation, and it was published soon afterwards. After the initial period of joy and pride that she felt about her book, her head turned to the practical matter of earning money. In 1839, she started her famous "Conversations" in Boston which she would hold for the next five winters. These "Conversations" were forums EOWade, Whetstone, pp. 34-6. nBrown, pp. 38, 42, 44-5. for women to discuss the status of women, society, Greek mythology, art and a variety of other topics.12 Women of diversified interests and backgrounds attended them, and soon men were attending as well. Her superior conver— sational ability was admired, and a kind of adoration by her- "followers" developed. Her fame spread beyond the Boston area and she became known as the most scholarly woman in the country. Also, her "Conversations" were instrumental in the then-developing women's rights movement.13 In July of 1840, Fuller became co-editor with Emerson of the Dial, a literary magazine and organ of the Boston Transcenden- talists. Geared to the intellectually-minded, the 9191's circulation under Fuller's editorship rarely exceeded 100 copies per issue. But it was read with interest in Europe and proved to be a good training ground for Fuller to develop her writing skills. Also during this time, Brook Farm, the experiment in transcendental living, was started, and although Fuller never joined, she was a 14 frequent visitor. In 1842 she published her translation of the Correspondence of Fraulein GUnderode and Bettina von Arnim, her most noteworthy translation. Soon after she turned over her editorship of the Dial, which was not making money, to Emerson. After two years as editor, ,IzBrown., pp. 45, 50-2. 13 WaUe, Whetstone, pp. 71-9. 14Brown, pp. 57-60, 64, 91. See Chapter v in this thesis for a discussion on Transcendentalism and Brook Farm. 10 a change in her life was much needed, so she accepted an invitation from James Clarke and his sister to travel out West with them. After a three-month excursion to Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Oregon, she wrote a book on her travels, Summer on the Lakes. She did additional research for her book at the Harvard College Library, the first woman permitted to do so in its history.15 Horace Greeley read Summer on the Lakes and was so enthused by it that he published excerpts from it on the front page of the New York Tribune. He heard about her from the Transcenden- talists on his visits to Brook Farm and was a faithful reader of the Dial. He marveled at Fuller's article in the Dial, "The Great Lawsuit: Man vs. Men, Woman vs. Women." Fuller turned this article into the book Woman in the Nineteenth Century after she completed Summer on the Lakes. Partly because of his knowledge of her writing ability and partly on the advice of his wife, who had attended Fuller's "Conversations" in Boston, Greeley offered Fuller the posi- tion of literary critic of the New York Tribune, then in its fourth l6 year of existence. At the Greeley's invitation, Fuller moved into their home at Turtle Bay. There she did most of the writing for her Tribune articles. Greeley had difficulty understanding why she was unable to write in the noisy, bustling Tribune office, which inspired him. But he accepted her decision to write where she felt most comfortable. 15Wade, Whetstone, pp. 89-124 passim. See Chapter V in this thesis for a discussion of Summer on the Lakes. 16 Ibid., PP. 125, 139. 11 She was assigned to write three columns a week, two on literary topics and one on social matters.17 Of those first few months with Fuller at Turtle Bay, Greeley wrote: I was myself barely acquainted with her when she thus came to reside with us, and I did not fully appreciate her nobler qualities for some months afterwards. . . . Personally, I regarded her rather as my wife's cherished friend than as my own, possessing many lofty qualities and some prominent weaknesses, and a good deal spoiled by the unmeasured flattery of her little circle of inordinate admirers. For myself, burning no incense on any human shrine, I half- consciously resolved to "keep my eye-beam clear," and escape the fascination which she seemed to exert over the eminent and cultivated persons, mainly women, who came to our out- of—the-way dwelling to visit her, and who seemed generally to regard her with a strangely Oriental adoration. But as time wore on, and I became inevitably better and better acquainted with her, I found myself drawn, almost irresistably into the general current. . . . I learned to know her as a most fearless and unselfish champion of Truth and Human Good at all Hazards. . . .18 Life at the Turtle Bay home, which Greeley referred to as "Castle Doleful," was peculiar, as Fuller soon realized. Mary Greeley ate no meat, held séances in her home and was often irritable. She decided that their only son at the time, Arthur "Pickie" Greeley, would be raised unspoiled by the world, so she kept him away from other children for fear of unwanted germs. By the time he was five years old, his hair, never cut, hung down to his waist and he still wore baby clothes. He often rebelled at this abnormal childhood and 17Brown, pp. 75-6. 18R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing, and J. F. Clarke, eds., Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 2 vols. (Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860), 2:153, 156-7. (hereafter cited as Fuller, Memoirs) Greeley contributed a chapter to the Memoirs. 12 she mercilessly whipped him. Greeley was intimidated by his wife, and much as he was distraught by her harsh disciplinary measures, he did nothing to stop them. Fuller adored "Pickie," as he did his "Aunty Margaret," and Greeley was pleased that a more normal person was around to influence his son. Their mutual love of "Pickie" was to be their closest bond.19 Fuller called the Greeley home "Castle Rackrent" because of its disorder. She lived there during most of her twenty-month stay in New York until she went to Europe as the Tribune's foreign correspondent. Apparently, Mary Greeley's oddities were too much for her because she moved out into apartments several times. The following incident tells about the relationship between Mary Greeley and Fuller, and also shows much about their personalities. Margaret Fuller was always a match for Mary Greeley. Meeting her one day full-gloved on the street, Mrs. Greeley, who had an antipathy to kid coverings, touched Miss Fuller's hand with a shudder and snapped out: "Skin of a beast! Skin of a beast!" "Why, what do you wear?" asked Margaret. "Silk," responded Mrs. Greeley. Miss Fuller gave a comic shudder and came back with: "Entrails of a worm!"20 ' Despite the atmosphere at ”Castle Rackrent" or "Castle Doleful," it was here that Greeley and Fuller formed a close personal and working relationship. 19Henry Luther Stoddard, Horace Greeley_(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1946), p. 108. 20Don C. Seitz, Horace Greeley (Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill Co., 1926), p. 331. CHAPTER II HORACE GREELEY: MARGARET FULLER'S JOURNALISTIC TUTOR When Margaret Fuller came to the Tribune in late 1844, she was not a journalist. When she left New York twenty months later, her journalistic style had been formed to Greeley's and her own satisfaction. Biographers of Fuller and Greeley have stressed Greeley's role as tutor to Fuller in her journalism career. Greeley had the genius to recognize talent, as evidenced by the other people he hired to write for the Tribune--Charles A. Dana, George Ripley, Bayard Taylor, Charles T. Congdon, Carl Schurz, John Hay, Whitelaw Reid, Henry J. Raymond, to name just a few. He had a major role in training them and "helping them to unfold."1 One of Greeley's biographers labels Fuller's earlier work at the Tribune "ponderous and fuzzy," which became "transformed into terse, vivid English-~somewhat like Greeley's own in fact."2 Fuller's earlier works certainly were not polished as Greeley recognized. Greeley recollected the faults in her early Tribune articles, and gave a possible reason for their lack of clarity: 1William Harlan Hale, Horace Greeley: Voice of the People (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1950), p. 84. 21pm., p. 114. 13 14 Her earlier contributions to the Tribune were not her best, and I did not at first prize her aid so highly as I afterwards learned to do. She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and intimate acquaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. Fuller did read much German, but her writing style was "ponderous“ at the beginning also because her association with the Qial_and writing for its audience had made it so. It seems logical to assume that there would be difficulties involved in making the transition from writing for the elite audience of the Qial_to the mass-audience of the Tribune. Greeley guided Fuller in this transi- tion and his guidance was effective. Her writing had been ponderous when she wrote for the Dial, as one of her friends pointed out to her. James Freeman Clarke, one of Fuller's closest friends, confidants and correspondents, analyzed the writing style of one of her Dial articles for her in 1835, and his comments resemble Greeley's complaints: ’ You ask whether you are too deep. Not so, but not distinct enough, not enough of plainness and detail in the setting forth and development of the idea. . . . Then I think the . language is too elevated throughout. A various and conversa- tional one is better. Even in conversation it has been your fault to speak in too lofty and sustained a style sometimes.4 And yet, only under Greeley's tutelage nine years later did her writing style become distinct and conversational. 3Fuller, Memoirs, 2:154. 4Letter dated May 12, 1835, in The Letters of James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller, ed. John Wesley Thomas (Hamburg, Germany: Cram de Gruyter and Co., 1957), pp. 94-5. 15 The length of time that Fuller needed to produce articles for the Tribune was intolerably slow according to Greeley's standards. He wrote that he "could easily write ten columns to her one,"5 and said of her journalistic endeavors at the Tribune: While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation. She could write only when in the vein, and this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. . . . Hence, while I realized that her contributions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They 8ften seemed to make their. appearance "a day after the fair." Fuller never approached the rapid pace of producing articles that Greeley was known for, but her stylistic progress was remarkably fast. Less than three months after she had been with the Tribune, she wrote an optimistic letter to her brother about her progress: As to the public-part, that is entirely satisfactory, I do just as I please and as much or little as I please, and the Editors express themselves perfectly satisfied, and others say that my pieces tell to a degree I could not expect. I think, too, I shall do better and better. I am truly interested in this great field which opens before me and it is pleasant to be sure of a chance at half a hundred thousand readers.7 She realized, of course, that she would continue to improve with time, practice and Greeley's continued aid. 5Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J. 8. Ford and Co., 1869), p. 177. 6Fuller, Memoirs, 2 154-5. 7Letter to Eugene Fuller dated February, 1845, in Mason Wade, ed. The Writings of Margaret Fuller (New York: The Viking Press, 1941), p. 574. (hereafter cited as Wade, Writings) 16 Her writing style was changing also because her whole life had changed since she started working in New York. Now that she was away from the idealism and mysticism of the Boston Transcendentalists, she was seeing the real and practical side of life and society more clearly than before.8 And, as she stated, it was "the first period of my life when it has been permitted me to make my pen my chief means of expressing my thoughts."9 Greeley had an influence on her personal awakening as well as her journalistic progress. Fuller wrote that her association with Greeley was enlightening her to new knowledge: Mr. Greeley is in many ways very interesting for me to know. He teaches me things, which my own influence on those, who have hitherto approached me, has prevented me from learning. In our business and friendly relatioas, we are on terms of solid good-will and mutual respect. And, again she wrote of her fondness for him, as well as his belief in her abilities: Mr. Greeley I like, nay more, love. He is, in his habits, a-- plebian; in his heart, a noble man.’ His abilities, in his own way, are great. He believes in mine to a surprising extent. We are true friends.11 So, Greeley was Fuller's journalistic tutor and personal mentor, and she developed a more distinct writing style for both of these reasons. She valued his opinion in journalistic_and social 8Wade, Whetstone, p. 155. 9Quoted in ibid., p. 144. 10 1ELetter to Eugene Fuller dated February, 1845, in Wade, Writings, p. 575.- ~ Fuller, Memoirs, 2:151. 17 matters, but much of what she wrote at the Tribune were her original ideas and not derived from Greeley, although they shared many of the same opinions. So, Greeley's major influence was on Fuller's writing style, as opposed to the content of what she wrote. Clearly, what she wrote could not have been expressed distinctly enough without Greeley's editorial guidance, so his influence is of vast importance. The originality of her ideas, though, is equally important. Although Greeley supplied her with editorial direction, "she was 12 still her own mistress" in much of what she wrote. 1ZThomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884), p. 284. CHAPTER III MARGARET FULLER'S LITERARY REVIEWS FOR HORACE GREELEY'S NEW YORK TRIBUNE Margaret Fuller's literary reviews for the Tribune are among the most memorable of.her articles or literary endeavors. They have been extensively analyzed in the past and have been found to be everything from profound to shabby efforts at criticism. Modern day scholars have been more kind to her in this respect. There are conflicting theories as to why Greeley hired Fuller as literary reviewer for the Tribune in the first place. Immediately before Fuller began her work there, Greeley had been sued for libel by James Fenimore Cooper because an unfavorable review of one of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales had appeared in the Tribune. After a lengthy court battle, Greeley lost the suit and had to pay damages to Cooper. Mason Wade, considered a reliable biographer of Fuller, stated that "it was probably something of a relief to Greeley to turn over the duties of literary critic to Margaret with the thought that a woman's gentle pen would be less likely to involve the Tribune in such difficulties."1 The evidence indicates that the opposite was true. Greeley knew that Fuller's EWade, Whetstone, p. 144. 18 19 pen was far from "gentle." He had read her articles in the Dial) especially "The Great Lawsuit," which was one of the most shocking and radical treatises on feminism at the time. Further, the assumption that Greeley was in any way upset by the Cooper libel suit is totally erroneous. Cooper's vendetta against the press in general and particularly against the Tribune "appealed so strongly to Horace Greeley's sense of the comic, that he seldom alluded to it without, apparently, falling into a paroxysm of mirth."2 Greeley's humorous accounts of the trial in the Tribune were among the best articles he ever wrote. After the trial, Greeley wrote another column, and there was such a demand by the public for copies that it was published later in pamphlet form. It received favorable reviews by more than two hundred newspapers, and angered Cooper so much that he brought another suit against the Tribune, which he later dropped.3 So then, there was nothing Greeley enjoyed more than a controversial subject that called attention to the Tribune and sold newspapers. This seems to be the logical reason that he hired Fuller as literary critic. He recognized in her writings from the Dial a sharp wit and critical stance that would raise eyebrows and create discussion. After the initial stiffness of her early writings, Fuller produced reviews for the Tribune that were insightful, 2James Parton, The Life of Horace Greeley (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1882), p. 190. 3 Ibid., Pp. 191, 203. 20 controversial and, for the most part, well-written. But, for Greeley, the important factor was that people were reading her reviews, as he noted in a memoir of her: Good judges have confirmed my opinion, that, while her essays in the Dial are more elaborate and ambitious, her reviews in the Tribune are far better adapted to win the favor and sway the judgment of the great majority of readers.4 Greeley was a true man of principles and he saw this trait in Fuller. Because of this, he admired her and felt her to be an asset that complemented the philosophy of the Tribune. He described the courage of her convictions: But, one characteristic of her writings I feel bound to commend--their absolute truthfulness. She never asked how this would sound, nor whether that would do nor what would be the effect of saying anything; but simply, "Is it the truth? Is it such as the public should know?" And if her judgment answered, "Yes," she uttered it; no matter what turmoil it might excite, nor what odium it might draw down on her own head. James Parton, a Greeley biographer, states that the years 1845, 1846 and 1847 were the "fighting years" of the Tribune, and that the nature of its reviews contributed to its opposition tendencies.6 Since Fuller wrote Tribune reviews for nineteen months during this period, it can be said that she was influential in giving the paper the spirit that it displayed. Thus, she indirectly helped to boost its circulation and certainly helped in the notoriety it received. 4Fu11er, Memoirs, 2:158. 5Ibid. 6Parton, pp. 229-30. 21 Indeed, Fuller's articles were being given front-page or top—of—the-inside—page positioning in the paper, and were almost always reprinted in the New York Weekly Tribune, which was distributed across the country. Greeley was pleased that because of her reviews, the Tribune now appealed to the-literary people as well as the masses.7 It must be noted that Fuller's frankness or outspokenness was not a new trait, nor one that was brought about because of her association with Greeley. She had been frank and critical during her editorship of the Qial_and in her articles published before joining the Tribune.8 The Cooper libel case showed that literary reviewing could be a risky career. It was an age of sensitivity, where many could not distinguish between a reviewer's literary criticisms and the reviewer's personal feelings--frequently there were no differences. It was the day when the "tomahawk theory" existed, whereby an author would get back at the too-critical reviewer by physical or printed abuse.9 In light of this, Fuller's candid reviews become more admirable and Greeley's praise of her reviews more noteworthy. ‘ In Fuller's first literary review for the Tribune, dealing with Emerson's second series of Essays, she established her candid method of reviewing, a method that included‘criticizing the works 7Hale, p. 115. 8Brown, pp. 59-61. 9Margaret Bell, Margaret Fuller, with an Introduction by Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York: C. Boni, 1930), p. 167. 22 of a dear friend if necessary, as in this case. Since Greeley's journalistic influence had not yet corrected her writing flaws completely, her review was a bit verbose and difficult to follow. While it was basically complimentary, she raised some interesting points as to Emerson's not working to his potential. She wrote: Here is undoubtedly the man of ideas, but we want the ideal man also; want the heart and genius of human life to inter- pret it, and here our satisfaction is not so perfect. We doubt this friend raised himself too early to the perpendicular and did not lie along the ground long enough to hear the secret whispers of our parent life. We could wish he might be thrown by conflicts on the lap of mother earth, to see if he would not rise again with added powers. If Emerson was hurt or angry by Fuller's review, he never showed it during her lifetime. But after she died, he chose to virtually ignore her writing ability when he co-authored the Fuller Memoirs. Of the 150 pages that he contributed, only two pages dealt with her writing, and these pages were far from complimentary. They- included such statements as: "Her pen was a non-conductor." He made no mention of the fact that she wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century, even though it was one of the leading treatises on feminism of the period.]] Many did not understand Fuller's theory of criticism. She had formulated a method of reviewing when she was editor of the Dial 12 and used this method for all of her Tribune reviews. One Fuller scholar describes her method as follows: 'Owade, Writings, p. 393. nChipperfie1d, p. 18. EzBrown, p. 77. I 23 In essence her method consisted of dividing literature into three classes: the work of genius; the work of gentlemen or scholars, who serve as audience to genius and as interpreters to the multitude; and finally the work of energetic men who have something valuable to tell their contemporaries. She reviewed the works of authors in the first class by judging them according to past standards of writing genius, for example Shakespeare. However, she did not review the last two classes, but merely brought their works to the attention of the public.14 Perhaps if Emerson had understood her critical system more, he would have been flattered to find himself in the first class of writers, those of genius. Since she devised her method of reviewing before she began working at the Tribune, Fuller was not influenced by Greeley in her method of literary criticism. Fuller had an extensive literary background in comparison to Greeley's. But Greeley had a knack for recognizing talent and had had early literary aspirations himself. In his younger years, he had admired Byron, and had taken to writing poetry, all of it mediocre. Although thirty-five of his poems were eventually published, this later caused him much embarrass- ment. He said that "they were read by few, and those few have kindly forgotten them."15 When he was editor of the New Yorker, a weekly literary journal which he put out in the mid-18305, he accepted sentimental 13Brown, p. 77. E4Ibid. 1Sparton, pp. 65, 121, 521. 24 poems of poor quality, but he also accepted stories from a man who went by the name of 'Boz,' and who later became famous as Charles Dickens. Greeley always opened his columns at the Tribune to the writers and philosophers of the Dial16 and was one of the early admirers of Wordsworth and Melville.17 Greeley could recognize literary talent, but he himself wisely kept to the editing role at which he excelled. Nonetheless, Greeley respected Fuller's critical writing ability and her fearless approach to reviewing. ' Greeley told an interesting story about what happened when he assigned Fuller to write a review of Longfellow's Poems: Even the severest of her critiques,--that on Longfellow's Poems,--for which an impulse in personal pique has been alleged, I happen with certainty to know had no such origin. When I first handed her the book to review, she excused her- self, assigning the wide divergence of her views of Poetry from those of the author and his school, as her reason. She thus induced me to attempt the task of reviewing it myself. But day after day sped by, and I could find no hour that was not absolutely required for the performance of some duty that would not be put off, nor turned over to another. At length, I carried the book back to her in utter despair of ever finding an hour in which even to look it through; and, at my renewed and earnest request, she reluctantly undertook its discussion.18 And so, Fuller undertook to review the poems of Longfellow, one of the most respected poets at that time in American literature. She was harshly critical, but vividly perceptive, of Longfellow's 16Ha1e, pp. 26-7, 84. 17GlyndOn G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley: Nineteenth Century Crusader (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), p. 22. ' 18 Fuller, Memoirs, 2:158. I 25 literary faults. Despite the pressure that she was under when she wrote it, the review was one of her best in both writing style and penetrating analysis. She started the review in a sardonic tone: We must confess a coolness towards Mr. Longfellow, in con- sequence of the exaggerated praises that-have been bestowed upon him. When we see a person of moderate powers receive honors which should be reserved for the highest, we feel somewhat like assailing him and taking from him the crown which should be reserved for grander brows,1 She then uncovered his plagiaristic or imitative style which she found to be his major fault and one which kept his poetry from being refreshing. She concluded the review with a powerful and witty image comparing his work to a plant museum: Mr. Longfellow presents us not with a new product in which all the old varieties are melted into a fresh form, but rather with a tastefully arranged Museum, between whose glass cases are interspersed neatly potted rose tress, geraniums, and hyacinths, grown by himself with the aid of indoor heat.20 Fuller had been at the Tribune for exactly one year and ten days when this review appeared in print. The writing is more concise than her review of Emerson's Essays which has been already mentioned. Greeley's editorial guidance had improved her style.to a remarkable degree. Despite the fact that most modern critics have agreed with her opinions on Longfellow, what she said at the time was so controversial that letters-to-the-editor swamped the Tribune, the 19New York Weekly Tribune, December 13, 1945, p. l. 2011618. 26 great majority of them denouncing her literary judgments.2] Greeley must have been pleased at this clamor, but Longfellow, although he did not publicly display his anger, wrote in his journal about the "bilious attack" on him.22 She was not as fortunate when she criticized the works of James Russell Lowell. She wrote that he was "absolutely wanting in the true spirit and tone of poesy" and that "posterity will not 23 remember him." He got back at her two years later in his "Fable for Critics," by having her portrayed in the role of the spiteful Miranda, "the whole of whose being's a capital I."24 She had been complimentary about Edgar Allan Poe's works in her Tribune reviews, and he had declared her a "high genius." But, because of a personal misunderstanding, they became bitter foes and she excluded him entirely from her article on "American Literature." Soon after, Poe wrote to a friend that "she is grossly dishonest. . . . she is an ill-tempered and very inconsistent old maid-—avoid her."25 2‘8e11, p. 168. 22Wade, Whetstone, p. 146. 23Margaret Fuller, "American Literature," in Art, Litera- ture and the Drama, Arthur B. Fuller, ed. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1889) 2nd ed., p. 308. (hereafter cited as Fuller, Literature) Fuller's literary reviews for the Tribune are compiled in this volume. 24Quoted in Brown, p. 80. 25Ibid., pp. 87-9. 27 Literary reviewing was not a popularity contest, as Fuller quickly realized. In her article on "American Literature," she stressed that the nature of reviewing must change if the truth is to prevail. She said that most reviewers are hampered by a "fear of censure from their own public." 3 This last is always slow death to a journal; its natural and only safe position is to lead; if, instead, it bows to the will of the multitude, it will find the ostracism of democracy far more dangerous than the worst censure of a tyranny could be.26 It is clear that her approach to reviewing was far ahead of its time, and stands as a landmark in the history of American literary criticism. Fuller's controversial articles on literary issues resembled Greeley's controversial stands on politics and social crusades, and in this they had a common bond which probably brought them closer together. They also had similar ideas on the role of the newspaper as an educational tool. She said that the newspaper was "the only efficient instrument for the general education of the people."27 Greeley had long believed this, but whether Fuller was influenced by him in this respect is unclear, although quite possible. In her Tribune columns, Fuller was determined to educate Americans in European literature. She was able to keep apprised of the happenings in Europe because of the various European periodicals 26Fuller, Literature, p. 314. 27Ibid. 28 28 She said in the introduction to to which the Tribune subscribed. the collection of her Tribune reviews: It has been one great object of my life to introduce here the works of those great geniuses, the flower and fruit of a higher state of development, which might give the young who are soon to constitute the state, a higher standard in thought and action than would be demanded of them by their own time. I have hoped that, by being thus raised above their native sphere, they would become its instructors and the faiEhful stewards of its best riches, not its tools or slaves. 9 In her Tribune reviews, she quoted extensively from the works of such European literary giants as Carlyle, the Brownings, Shelley, Tennyson, Goethe, George Sand, Eugéne Sue, Wordsworth and Dickens. In Conclusion, Horace Greeley was influential and neces- sary in editing Margaret Fuller's literary reviews. This was true especially in her early reviews which needed a tightening up of the cumbersome style that she had developed at the Dial. But the actual content of her reviews was Margaret Fuller's alone. She developed her method of literary criticism before coming to the Tribune and used this method in her Tribune reviews. Her ‘extensive literary knowledge made her more than qualified to fairly and perceptively do reviews for the Tribune. Greeley recognized her literary ability and praised her truthful method of reviewing. This truthful critical stance resembled Greeley's own approach to journalism, and this was a 28Brown, p. 78. 29Fuller, Literature, p. 7. 29 major factor in the close working relationship that developed between them. Fuller's literary insights and Greeley's thorough editing complemented each other, and the results were literary reviews that are landmarks in American literary criticism. CHAPTER IV JOURNALISTIC ROLES OF MARGARET FULLER AND HORACE GREELEY IN THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT Because there has been a recent renewal of interest in women's rights, Margaret Fuller's name has arisen as one of the "forgotten women" who aided the cause in its early years.1 Outside of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of nggg_published in 1792, Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century was the earliest and one of the most controversial books written on the subject of women's rights.2 It is to Horace Greeley's credit, however, that Fuller's ideas on feminism found public expression through the columns of the Tribune. Greeley was an early champion of women's rights. While not as radical as Fuller, Greeley had some ideas on feminism which were more realistic and modern than Fuller's were and which foreshadowed feminism of the 19705. The mere fact that Greeley hired Fuller--a woman--was revolutionary in the journalistic world. Women before this time had participated in journalism only in a free-lance capacity, 1Fred C. Shapiro, "The Transcending Margaret Fuller," !§;_(November 1972): 36-9. 2Wade, Whetstone, p. 130. 30 31 whereas Fuller was hired as a full-time staff member.3 Journalism was considered an "unwomanly" occupation by the general public, and many of Fuller's friends were shocked at her boldness. Greeley was interested in gaining female readers for the Tribune and, therefore, recognized a need for reviews of literature and unsensational accounts of social questions of interest to women that they could not get from any of the other newspapers.4 In his unprecedented appointment of a female to his staff, Greeley displayed his typical quality of bringing innovations to journalism. A faithful reader of the Dial, Greeley had read Fuller's 5 with it that "The Great Lawsuit," and was so "strongly impressed" he published several lengthy excerpts from it in the Tribune. Before starting work at the Tribune, Fuller revised the article into book form and retitled it Woman in the Nineteenth Century. It was published by Greeley in New York in February, 1845. Greeley wrote to a friend that "Margaret's book is going 6 to se11. I tell you it has the real stuff in it." It gjg_sell; -..-.- - upon—- m..—~.- within a week the entire edition was sold out at fifty cents a . copy.7 Greeley quoted it again in the Tribune, and by August of 1845 an edition.of it had been printed in London.8 3Brown, pp. 73-5. 4Ibid. 5 6Letter to Rufus GriSwold dated January 15, 1845, quoted in Brown, pp. 76-7. 71bid., p. 132. 8Julia Ward Howe, Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli)_(Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884), pp.7148-9. Fuller, Memoirs, 2:152. 32 While it was both criticized and praised, the book received generally very high praise from Greeley. He stated that he was "confident that there lives no man or woman who would not profit (if he or she has not already profited) by a thoughtful perusal" of Fuller's book. He described it as follows: If not the clearest and most logical, it was the loftiest and most commanding assertion yet made of the right of Woman to be regarded and treated as an independent, intelligent, rational being, entitled to an equal voice in framing and modifying the laws she is required to obey. . . .9 While not agreeing with everything that Fuller wrote in Wamaa, Edgar Allan Poe said that her book was one "which few women in the country could have written, and no woman in the country would have published, with the exception of Miss Fuller," and that "she judges woman by the heart and intellect of Miss Fuller, and there are not more than one or two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth."10 There were also angry denunciations of Fuller and her book. The Broadway Journal exclaimed: "Her most direct writing is on a subject no virtuous woman can treat justly. No woman is a true woman Who is not wife and mother."H By modern standards Fuller's book seems timid in places; in others, well ahead of its time.‘ It lacks the concise writing style that she developed during her years at the Tribune, and 9Greeley, p. 175. 10Quoted in Brown, pp. 87-8. “1618., p. 132. 33 because of this much of it is unclear and rambling. And her extensive usage of illustrations from Greek and Roman mythology tends to get tedious after awhile. In the Preface to Woman, she indicated that the main point was that I it is the destiny of Man, in the course of the ages, to ascertain and fulfill the law of his being. . . . By Man I mean both man and woman; these are the two halves of one thought. I lay no especial stress on the welfare of either. I believe that the development of the one cannot be effected without that of the other. My highest wish is that this truth should be distinctly and rationally apprehended and the condition of life and of freedom recognized as the same for the daughters and sons of time; twin exponents of a divine thought.12 She begins the book with two epigraphs, "Frailty, thy name is Woman" and "The Earth waits for her Queen," as a lead-in to show that much of the problem stems from women's unwillingness to stand up for their rights which only fosters men's existing "feeling toward women as toward slaves. . . ." Rather, she states that she would have Woman lay aside all thought, such as she habitually cherishes, of being taught and led by men . . . I would have her free from compromise, from complaisance, from helplessness, because I would have her good enough and strong enough to love one and all beings, from the fullness, not the poverty of being. She says that freedom for women is a "right," not a "concession," but tones down her plea with the statement that "we only ask men to remove arbitrary barriers."14 12 13 14 Wade, Writings, p. 109. Ibid., p. l79. Ibid., p. 214. 34 Much of what Fuller says in advancing her point is intensely autobiographical, for example, her defense of old maids.15 She also sees the sham in how when men admire a woman's abilities, she is said to be "above her sex," a statement Fuller must have heard quite often. Also, in an obvious reference to her own genius, illness and unhappiness, she states that the women of genius, even more than men, are likely to be enslaved by an impassioned sensibility. The world repels them more rudely, and they are of weaker bodily frame . . . those with creative genius are very unhappy at present.16 Her theories of marriage, prostitution and passion were 17 shocking at the time, but are really modern in scope and perception. She dispelled the belief that a woman "must marry, if it be only to find a protector and a home of her own." She denounced as a sexual dggble_standardminsmarriage the notion that men havefstronger~ passions" and that women should willingly submit to men's desires E“' ungerzany circumstances lest they turn their attentions to prosti- tutes instead. She wrote: As to marriage, it has been inculcated on women for centuries that men have not only stronger passions than they, but of a sort that it would be shameful for them to share or even under- stand; that therefore they must "confide in their husbands," that is, submit implicitly to their will; that the least appearance of coldness or withdrawal, from whatever cause, in the wife is wicked because liable to turn her husband's thoughts to illicit indulgence; for a man is so constituted that he must indulge his passions or die!18 (Italics mine) 15Brown, p. 131. 16Wade, Writings, p. 168. 17Wade, Whetstone, p. 134. 18Wade, Writings, p. 199. 35 While she mocked the "brute passions of man," she also gave vent to her anger at the unfair double standard of extra- marital sexual conduct for men, which fosters prostitution. She said that where legislators admit that ten thousand prostitutes are a fair proportion to one city, and husbands tell their wives that it is folly to expect chastity from them, it is inevitable that there should be many monsters of vice.1 Much of what she wrote was based on two philosophies that she admired--Transcendentalism and Fourierism. She advocated the transcendental philosophy of self-reliance, although she knew that 20 And she highly for women having this attitude was frowned upon. endorsed Fourier's theory of "entire equality" between men and women as being the ideal. Although there was much that she couldn't accept of Fourier's social system, she praised his idea that women should be able to choose whatever occupation they wanted. “Let them be sea-captains, if you will," she wrote. Again, she mellows in her radicalism by stating that ’ I have no doubt, however, that a large proportion of women would give themselves to the same employments as now, because there are circumstances that must lead them.21 It is clear that she felt her ideas would only apply to certain women who had a self-reliant attitude. The important thing, she said, was that an option would exist, even if most women didn't 19Wade, Writings, p. 198. 2OBrown, pp. 128-9. See Chapter v in this thesis for discussion of Transcendentalism and Fourierism. 21Wade, Writings, p. 215. 36 take the option. "The difference," she wrote, "would be that all need not be constrained to employments for which aama_are unfit."22 Horace Greeley was perceptive enough to see where the faults existed in parts of Wamaa_and the inconsistency that Fuller displayed between what she wrote and how she acted. He was correct in stating in his Recollections that in Woman, "questions of property, personal rights, guardianship of children, &c., are but incidental, not essential,"23 which stands as one of the book's major short- comings. Although she mentioned political rights briefly, Fuller did so because her concept of women's rights was_philosophical, L,ss whereas Greeley's was more political and economic in scope.25 Furthermore, Greeley recognized the unclear tone that existed in some sections of Wamaa, He even supplied an example of what he considered, and quite rightly so, a "vague, mystical, and unmeaning" passage: 3 . . Woman, self-centred [512), would never be absorbed by any relation; it would only be an experience to her, as to Man. It is a vulgar error, that love--a love-~15 to Woman her whole existence: she is also born for Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but assume her inheritance, Mary would not be the only virgin mother.26 22Wade, writings, p. 215. 23Greeley, p. 175. 24Katharine Anthony, Margaret Fuller: A Psycholggjcal Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), pp. 80-1. 25 Ibid., PP. 108-9. 26Greeley, p. 175. 37 But Greeley's major criticism was that Fuller didn't practice what she preached. What he said on this point in both his own Recollections and Fuller's Memoirs are perceptive and advanced thoughts for his time on women's rights and the future of the feminist movement. First, he unveiled an inconsistency on Fuller's part: She demanded from them the fullest recognition of Social and Political Equality with the rougher sex; the freest access to all stations, professions, employments, which are open to any. To this demand I heartily acceded. It seemed to me, however, that her clear perceptions of abstract right were often over- borne, in practice, by the influence of education and habit; that while she demanded absolute equality for Woman, she exacted a deference and courtesy from men to women, as women, which was entirely inconsistent with that requirement?27 He was much more realistic than Fuller was on what must happen before women can attain certain rights. He wrote: Then I had a notion that strong-minded women should be above the weakness of fearing to go anywhere, at any time, alone,-- that the sex would have to emancipate itself from thraldom to etiquette and the need of a masculine arm in crossing a street or a room, before it could expect to fight its way to the bar, the bench, the jury-box, and the polls.28 He said that as long as this weakness existed, women's rights would remain nothing "more than a logically defensible abstraction."29 But, one statement that Greeley made gets to the point of the whole feminist matter and is one that is still being echoed today: 27Fuller, Memoirs,fi2:155. 28eree1ey, p. 178. 29Fu11er, Memoirs, 2:155. 38 In my view, the equalizing theory can be enforced only by ignoring the habitual discrimination of men and women, as forming separate classes, and regarding all alike as simply persons,--as human beings. 3 Greeley had a relationship with Fuller, both personally and on women's rights, that he called "friendly antagonism." Their personal habits were distinctly opposite. Fuller was totally feminine in dressing luxuriously and wanting to have flowers decorating every room, while Greeley "delighted in bare walls and "3] In Fuller's memoir, Greeley gave-an example of rugged fare. what he called the "good—natured, but . . . sharpish sparring" between them: Whenever she said or did anything implying the usual demand of Woman on the courtesy and protection of Manhood, I was apt, before complying, to look her in the face and exclaim with marked emphasis,--quoting from her "Woman in the Nine- teenth Century,"--"LET THEM BE SEA- CAPTAINS IF YOU WILL!"32 One morning when Fuller woke up with a bad headache, Greeley attributed it to her heavy intake of tea the night before. She snapped back at him that she "declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take."33 Greeley had definite lapses into male chauvinism, as when he said of Fuller that "noble and great as she was, a good husband 30Fu11er, Memoirs, 2:155. 3lHale, p. 113. 32Fuller, Memoirs, 2:156. 33Ibid., pp. 153-4. 39 and two or three bouncing babies would have emancipated her from a deal of cant and nonsense."34 Basically, though, Greeley had come a long way in championing women's rights from when he was editor of the flaw_ Yorker and wrote such statements as: We repudiate the doctrines of Frances Wright and her co-workers . of the rightful equality of the sexes in political privileges and social conditions, not disputing the mental capacity of women, we yet insist that . . . the wife should yield a general and cordial though not servile deference to the husband.35 ,2! g In 1858, eight years after Fuller's death, he was one of the pioneers in establishing the People's College in New York,36 which employed Fuller's ideas of open education for women and a free choice of occupations for them. One thing is clear: Greeley and his Tribune were noted for their defense of women's rights, and excerpts from Fuller's book that appeared in the Tribune helped in its identification with the cause. Her book was also instrumental, according to the participants,k in giving women the courage to have the womenismrightS-contentions I 37 offlthe early 1850s. Fuller had written in Woman that "at present "38 women are the best helpers of one another. This statement proved to be true then and still has much validity. 34Greeley, p. 178. 35Quoted in Hale, p. 101. 36Parton, pp. 526-30. 37 38 Brown, p. 132., Wade, Writings, p. 213. 40 Woman in the Nineteenth Century was not the only example of Fuller's concern for the rights of women. While most of her book, Summer on the Lakes, is a travelogue which glows with reports of the West, she also touched upon the hardship and "unfitness of the women for their new lot." She said that "a city education has imparted neither the strength nor skill now demanded" of them in their frontier role.39 Fuller was not a snob in her ideals of feminism. From the Boston intellectual woman and the western pioneer woman, she now turned her thoughts to women in the lowest class of society, primarily women prisoners. Greeley suggested that she undertake a survey of the prisons and public institutions in New York. But Fuller had become interested in this particular social crusade before her acquaintance with Greeley. She was friendly with Lydia Child, a writer known for her reforming spirit, and William Henry Channing, also a friend of Greeley and one of the leading social reformers of the day. Later, they were to accompany Fuller on her visits to the public institu- tions.40 Fuller had visited Sing Sing prison before joining the Tribune staff and even included a description of her visit in her revision of Wamaa, which she was working on. The condition of the prison was one of humane treatment of its prisoners, and Fuller was very impressed by it. She wrote to a friend: 39Wade, Writings, p. 44. 40Chipperfield, p. 222. 41 These women were among the so-called worst, and all from the lowest haunts of vice. Yet nothing could have been more decorous than their conduct and a sense of propriety which would not have disgraced any society. . . . I shall go there again. . . .41 (Italics mine) And, in a letter she wrote when she first started living at the Greeley Farm, she described the Farm as being opposite Blackwell's Island and prison. She again told of her desire to learn more about these women prisoners: Seven hundred females are confined in the Penitentiary opposite this point. We can pass over in'a boat in'a few minutes. I mean to visit, talk, and read with them. I have always felt great interest in those women who are trampled in the mud to gratify the brute appetites of men, and wished that I-might be brought naturally into contact with them. Now I am. 2 Greeley probably suggested the survey to Fuller because he knew that she was interested in the topic. He was overjoyed at her courage in undertaking it and praised her generosity and willingness to help these women. He wrote: I have known few women, and scarce another maiden, who had the heart and courage to speak with such frank compassion in mixed circles of the most degraded and outcast portion of the sex. The contemplation of their treatment, especially by the guilty authors of their ruin, moved her to a calm and mournful indignation, which she did not attempt to suppress or control. Others were willing to pity and deplore; Margaret was more inclined to vindicate and redeem. She did not hesitate to avow that on meeting some of these abused, unhappy sisters, she had been surprised to find them scarcely fallen morally below the ordinary standard of Womanhood--realizing and loathing their debasement; anxious to escape from it; and only repelled by the sad consciousness that for them sympathy and society 4lQuoted in Wade, Whetstone, p. 156. 42Ibid., p. 157. 42 remained only so long as they should persist in the ways of pollution.43 (Italics mine) Her articles for the Tribune on this subject for the most part were well-written, concise and passionate exposés. They lacked the loftiness of many of her literary reviews. The tone was more conversational than her Qjal_articles and it was here that she proved herself to be a journalist for the masses. She wrote at this time that "newspaper writing is next door to conversation and should be conducted on the same principles."44 Her reporting for these articles was thorough and fear- less, and considering the fact that she was a woman, made it more commendable. She spent Christmas Day of 1844 at Sing Sing with the women prisoners, and with either Lydia Child or Channing she visited other women's prisons and the Five Points, at that time New York City's den of vice and crime. She talked with the women in their cells, offering them advice and encouragement, and hearing the stories of their downfall.45 She even refused to be scared off by a smallpox epidemic when she arrived one day at Blackwell's Island to talk to the Women. She refused to leave and talked with them to boost their spirits and offer advice. When she finally left, one woman prisoner told 43Fu11er, Memoirs, 2:159-60. 44Fuller, Literature, "American Literature," p. 316' 45Brown, pp. 75, 82. 43 her: "You are the only one that is not afraid of us: how good you are!"46 In her articles on the women prisoners, she had to dispel many misconceptions of the character of these women and show their need and want of understanding and reform. (She had to point out to her readers that they were human beings like themselves, who were in their present position because of weakness or "from inheritance of a bad organization and unfortunate circumstances of early years."47 She wrote: We have observed two deaths; one of the sinner, early cut down; one of the just, full of years and honor--both were calm; both professed their reliance on the wisdom of a heavenly Father.48 She described an incident at Sing Sing where the women were singing a hymn, in which she pointed out their religious quality and told her readers that it was their religious duty to help them: . they sang it--those suffering, degraded, children of society--with as gentle and resigned an expression as if they were sure of going to sleep in the arms of a pure mother. The good spirit that dwelt in the music made them its own. _And shall not the good spirit of religious sympathy make them its own also, and more permanently? We shall see. Should the morally insane, by wise and gentle care, be won back to health, as the wretched bedlamites have been, will not the angels them- selves give thanks? And will any man dare take the risk of opposing plans that afford even a chance of such a result?49 46Wade, Whetstone, p. 157. 47Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Life Without and Life Within, Arthur B. Fuller, ed. (Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chace, 1859), p. 210. (hereafter cited as Fuller, Life) This volume contains several of Fuller's reviews and social columns for the Tribune. 48Ibiol. 49"Thanksgiving," Fuller, Life, PP~ 248‘9° 44 Fuller appealed to her readers for the funding of a house of refuge to which the released women prisoners could turn for help and instruction in reformation. She gave reasons why everyone should help these women. It was an impassioned appeal that hit at her readers' sensibilities and shamed them into taking action. She wrote: And to all we appeal: to theapoor, who will know how to sympathize with those who are not only poor but degraded, diseased, likely to be hurried onward to a shameful, hope- less death; to the rich, to equalize the advantages to which they have received more than their share; to men, to atone for wrongs inflicted by men on that "weaker sex," who should, they say, be soft, confiding, dependent on them for protection; to women, to feel for those who have not been guarded either by social influence or inward strength from that first mistake which the opinion of the world makes irrevocable for women alone. Since their danger is so great, their fall so remedi- less, let mercies be multiplied when there is a chance of that partial restoration which society at present permits.50 (Italics mine) Greeley recognized that this effort on Fuller's part was her major goal and one which showed her charitable nature. He wrote that if she had been born to a large fortune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring a return to the ways of Virtue, would have been one of her most cherished and first realized conceptions. 51 More importantly, he considered her crusade on behalf of women prisoners unequalled in the journalistic world. Twenty years after these articles were published in the Tribune, he wrote: I doubt that our various benevolent and reformatory associa- tions had ever before, or have ever since, received such wise, 50"Asylum for Discharged Female Convicts," Fuller, Life, p. 284. 51Fuller, Memoirs, 2:160. 45 discriminating commendation to the favor of the rich, as they did from her pen during her connection with the Tribune.52 - Although Fuller might have placed too much of the blame on men for the women prisoners' downfall, her articles stand as being revolutionary in topic and perception. Greeley recognized this and expanded his own philosophy of women's rights and that of the Tribune's. Despite an occasional faltering of his convictions on women's rights, Greeley gave Fuller use of the Tribune where she: was able to have a platform to espouse her ideas. And, because of ; Le”* this, the feminist movement owes him a great deal. In many ways, ‘ Greeley's and Fuller's ideas on feminism remarkably foreshadowed feminism of the 19705. Fuller knew that the role of women was ambiguous, and this produced conflicts in her own role-formation in society. One of her biographers, Katharine Anthony, said that what Fuller wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft and George Sand applied to Fuller's own life as well. Fuller stated: 3 Such beings as these, rich in genius, of most tender sympathies, capable of high virtue and a chastened harmony, ought not to find themselves, by birth in a Elace so narrow, that in breaking bonds, they become outlaws. 3 (Italics mine) Fuller was a woman who knew that "'tis an evil lot to have 54 She was determined to prove a manis ambition and a woman's heart." that it didn't necessarily have to be that way. Through Horace Greeley and his Tribune, she found her audience to do so. 52Greeley, p. 180. 53Quoted in Anthony, p. 58. 54Quoted in Chipperfield, p. 5. CHAPTER V THE PHILOSOPHIES, CAUSES AND CRUSADES 0F MARGARET FULLER AND HORACE GREELEY Transcendentalism and Fourierism were the two radical philosophies of the day. It is not unusual that Margaret Fuller and Horace Greeley, being the people that they were, would be somehow involved in these philoSophies. Fuller's name became associated with the Transcendentalists. Orestes Brownson described "1 Still, her as "the high priestess of American Transcendentalism. she had doubts about many of their philosophies and was never really a pure Transcendentalist. And while Greeley was deeply involved in the Fourierist movement in America, he too had misgivings about some of its principles. Furthermore, Fuller was never a Fourierist, but she admired some of their philosophies, and Greeley was never a Transcendentalist, but he liked many of their theories. The con- fusion arises in a discussion of these two schools of thought because they were similar. As time wore on, they blended together in some respects to become one philosophy. But, since they had such an influence on the lives of Fuller and Greeley and especially on their relationship, a discussion of them here is necessary. 1Quoted in Wade, Whetstone, p. 126. 46 47 No one definition of Transcendentalism would be appropriate to all of its members. It started out being basically religious in scope but soon came to include philosophy, sociology, economics, literature and art. The only things that the original group of Transcendentalists had in common were an intense idealism and a love of discussion, from which evolved a new awareness of the individual "nun—p... - ..... and human nature, as well as new theories of society.2 Fuller differed from the rest of the group in certain areas but was an important force in the group's cohesion. Margaret, the critic, lacked the metaphysical background of the other leading Transcendentalists. The temper of her mind was enthusiastic rather than philosophical. But she had a confident faith in her own spiritual capacity, and, by extension, in that of others. To her, liberty was a condition of enlightenment, and enlightenment a condition of progress. She made up for her philosophical shortcomings by the extensive- ness of her literary knowledge. . . . She was a worshiper of beauty, which she derived from good and truth. And, finally, her great conversational talents made her valued in this circle of individuals, for she was better able than any of them to draw out the best in each and reconcile the differences that arose.3 Conservatives considered the liberal doctrines of the Transcendentalists dangerous to established religion, politics, and society.4 But Fuller found these doctrines admirable and worthy of note. She wrote in 1840 of the origin of the group's dissatisfaction and how the present state of society was ruining the individual. Her comments serve not only as a clue to the Transcendental philosophy, 2Wade, Whetstone, pp. 54-6, 62. 3Ibid.. pp. 60-1. 4Chipperfield, p. 160. 48 but also explain her own interest in the ills of society which she was to write about in the Tribune four years later. She wrote that individuals were superficial in their thinking because America's progress had made them more concerned with the material aspects of living, rather than with the development of their mental outlook. The small minority of Transcendentalists recognized this, she wrote, and decided that the only way to uplift the mind aag_society was to first develop the individual's thinking. She said that society's institutions could then be changed to fit man's needs more directly without robbing his individuality,“ She El, wrote: ’ Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No? institution can be good which does not tend to improve the ‘ individual.5 (Italics mine) This philosophy that-man is more important than society and that society should design itself around the uplifting of man, as well as the Transcendental individualism, appealed to Horace Greeley.6 Greeley wrote to a friend that while he didn't agree with everything about Transcendentalism, "I do like its spirit and its ennobling tendencies. Its apostles are mainly among the noblest spirits alive.‘l7 It is quite probable that he included Fuller as one of these noble "apostles.'l She had been editing and writing for the Dial--the Transcendental literary organ--for a year when this letter was written, 5Fu11er, Memoirs, 2:26-8. 6Van Deusen, p. 61. 7Letter to B. F. Ransom dated March 15, 1841, quoted in ibid. 49 and in his memoir of her Greeley stated that he had made his first acquaintance with her "through the pages of 'The Dial.'" But it was Brook Farm, the practical application of Tran- scendentalism, that primarily appealed to Greeley. At first, it did not appeal to Fuller at all. "Utopia," she said, ". . . is impossible to build up."8 Brook Farm was set up in West Roxbury, Massachusetts in April, 1841 as a joint stock company by George Ripley, a minister who had left his position to set up this socialistic experiment. It was started because of "the Transcendental principle of plain living and high thinking, the Yankee gospel of manual labor, a revolt against the 9 Boston way of life, and the Ripleys' pleasure in farm life." Plain living and the healthy rigors of manual labor and farm life had always appealed to Horace Greeley. Fuller did not join Brook Farm, nor did Emerson, who said that man's "solitude is more prevalent and beneficient than the "10 concert of crowds. Fuller felt that an experiment like this was “premature," for her at least. She said: My hopes might lead to Association, too,--an association, if not of efforts, yet of destinies. . . . It is a constella- tion, not a phalanx, to which I would belong. . . . Why bind oneself to a central or any doctrine? How much nobler stands a man entirely unpledged, unbound! Association may be the great experiment of the age, still it is only an 8Fu11er, Memoirs, 2:29. 9Wade, Whetstone, p. 103. 10Quoted in ibid. 50 experiment. It is not worth while to lay such stress on it; let us try it, induce others to try it,--that is enough.11 While she never joined Brook Farm, Fuller was a frequent and highly honored visitor there. She enrolled her youngest brother in the Brook Farm school, which was already becoming famous for its fine educational quality.12 She changed her original thinking on the Brook Farm experi- ment. She came to admire the way it did not smother the individual, unlike the outside society. She wrote: The tone of the society is much sweeter than when I was here a year ago. . . . The great development of mind and character observable in several instances, persuades me that this state of things affords a fine studio for the soul-sculptor.13 At the same time in Europe, a French mathematician, Charles Fourier, had been experimenting with his own ut0pias. Horace Greeley embraced Fourier's doctrines and tried to introduce them in America as a panacea to society's ills. Fourierism would eventually lead to the downfall of Brook Farm. Fourier wanted a new social order that was based on organi- zation of people into small social units, called phalanxes. Like 11Fuller, Memoirs, 2:73. 12Wade, Whetstone, pp. 106-7, 127. According to Wade, part of the "Margaret myth" that exists today stems from her association with Brook Farm, even though she was never a member. One of the buildings still standing on the Farm is known as the Margaret Fuller Cottage, even though she never once stayed there during her visits. Hawthorne supposedly named a cow after her, and mentioned this "Tran- scendental Heifer" in his journals for posterity to reflect on. And, in Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, his fictitious story of life on Brook Farm, he supposedly modeled his heroine, Zenobia, after Fuller, although her friends and several Fuller scholars have disputed this. 13 Fuller, Memoirs, 2:78. 51 Brook Farm, each phalanxe was a joint stock company. But, unlike Brook Farm, it was essentially a "small corporate state . . . under ' which the oppressiveness and monotony of industrial labor would be overcome by harmonious teamwork of all classes."14 Greeley was converted to FourieriSm by Albert Brisbane, who had read about Fourier's doctrines and was convinced that they could take root more easily in America than in Europe. In 1842, Brisbane made an arrangement with Greeley to buy one column daily of the front page of the Tribune for him to espouse the doctrines iyfFourier. At first, his readers paid little attention, but as Greeley had hoped, this propaganda had its effect and Fourierism became the subject of the day. Various phalanxes were started; the most famous and the longest to last was the "North American Phalanxe" at Red Bank, New Jersey, which became Greeley's pet project.15 At this point, Greeley had unqualifed faith in the socialism of Fourier. Fuller did not. She saw it as a mechanical scheme, and said: "Society is not a machine to be assembled and set in motion; it is a living body whose breath is divine inspiration and "‘6 She had whose growth can only be hindered by artificial forcing. praised Fourier's view of equality between the sexes in Woman, but there was little else she could praise, except for his "grand and clear" mind. And this, she said, '4Ha1e, pp. 98-100. 15Parton, pp. 167-9. 16Quoted in Chipperfield, p. 199. 52 was in some respects superficial. He was a stranger to the highest experiences. His eye was fixed on the outward more than the inward needs of Man. . . . And thou, Fourier, do not expect to change mankind at once, or even "in three generations," by arrangement of groups and series or flourish of trumpets for attractive industry. If these attempts are made by unready men, they will fail.17 Apparently, the Brook Farmers were "unready men," because soon after it became a Fourierist phalanxe, the experiment failed. Greeley had been instrumental in the Farm's change to Fourierism in 1846, and he became one of its vice presidents. However, when Fourierism was introduced, Brook Farm was in debt.18 Although Fourierist phalanxes had been forming across the country as a reaction to the national depression, Fourierism was unsuited to the nature of Brook Farm. Fourier's industrialized tenor was too much for the less serious-minded inhabitants, and many of them left.19 At the time this was happening, Greeley was participating in his famous newspaper debates on Fourierism with Henry J. Raymond 20 of the Courier and Enquirer. The debate went well for Greeley until Raymond brought up Fourier's radical ideas on marriage and family life, a subject Greeley had been avoiding because he had been shocked by them. Raymond said that Fourier's ideas of passion for passion's sake and thus sexual immorality were being introduced into 17wade, writings, pp. 181-2. 18Chipperfieid, pp. 210-11. 19Wa‘de, Whetstone, p. 105. 20 p. 173-83. For lengthy excerpts from the debates, see Parton, 53 21 society by Greeley's Tribune. At this point, Greeley was privately having second thoughts about Fourier's doctrines.22 At the time of the Fourierism debates, Fuller was a foreign correspondent in Europe for the Tribune. Ironically, she was sending stories back to America on how Fourierism was advancing in France. Although she still did not like some of his doctrines, her report from France was one of the more glowing praises of Fourier that she ever made. She wrote: The doctrines of Fourier are making considerable progress . . The more I see of the terrible ills which infest the body politic of Europe, the more indignation I feel at the selfishness or stupidity of those in my own country who oppose an examination of these subjects,--such as is animated by the hope of preven- tion. . . . [Fourier's] heart was that of a genuine lover of his kind, of‘a philanthropist in the sense of Jesus,--his views were large and noble. His life was one of devout study on these subjects, and I should pity the person who, after the briefest sojourn in Manchester and Lyons,--the most superficial acquaint- ance with the population of London and Paris,--could seek to hinder a study of his thoughts, or be wanting in reverence for his purposes. But, always, always, the unthinking mob has found stones on the highway to throw at the prophets.23 After being "stoned" by Raymond, Greeley never returned to his crusade for Fourierism either in the pages of the Tribune or in his private life. His disillusionment is most evident in his Recollections, written with the passage of time to clear his perspec- tive on the matter. 2lAnthony, p. 123. 22um. pp. 104-5. 23Margaret Fuller, At Home and Abroad, Arthur B. Fuller, ed. (Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860), p. 204. (hereafter cited as Fuller, Home and Abroad). All of Fuller's letters to the Tribune from Europe are collected in this volume. 54 I deem Fourier--though in many respects erratic, mistaken, visionary--the most suggestive and practical among [the Social Reformers]. I accept nothing on his authority; for I find many of his speculations fantastic, erroneous, and (in my view) pernicious* but on many points he commands my unreserved concurrencefi4 It was said earlier that Fuller differed from other Tran- scendentalists because she was "enthusiastic rather than philosophical." In many ways, this could describe Greeley in his ideas on Transcen- dentalism. But he was aaa_enthusiastic and not philosophical enough in his Fourierist beliefs. Fuller found the right balance of enthusiasm and philosophy to examine Fourier, and thus maintained a sense of reality when dealing with his doctrines. And this sense of reality kept her from becoming a pure Transcendentalist. But the fact remains that these two doctrines shaped the ideals and actions of Fuller and Greeley in their dealings with society at a time when society was in severe need of being dealt with in a new light. As aforementioned, Fuller became involved in the social crusade on behalf of women prisoners to Greeley's satisfaction. But this was only one of the many crusades or causes she undertook while at the Tribune, many of them causes to which Greeley was sympathetic. When Greeley edited the Jeffersonian in the late 1830s, he had criticized the Jackson administration for its lack of humanity in dealing with the Indians. "The poor Cherokees are disheartened, overawed, confounded," he wrote. "They have no earthly resources. For years they have invoked the justice and pity of our government in vain."25 24Greeley, p. 147. 25Quoted in Hale, p. 48. 55 / Evidently Greeley was impressed with Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, not only for its rich description of the West, an area that he had been urging Easterners to develop, but for its exposé of the k((//x unfair treatment of Indians. Indeed, he wrote that Fuller's book was "unequalled" and "one of the clearest and most graphic delinea- tions, ever given, of the Great Lakes, and of the Prairies. . . ."26 Fuller's book displays her forward and humane thinking on the treatment of Indians. 'On the island of Mackinaw on the Great Lakes, Fuller was able to see over 2,000 Chippewa and Ottawa Indians who had gathered there to receive their annual government payments. She talked with the Indian women in sign language and learned much about their customs and traditions. And she saw firsthand the degradation of the Indian, which moved her to anger and frustration. She wrote: I have spoke [ajaj of the hatred felt by the white man for the Indian: with the white women it seems to amount to disgust, to loathing. How I could endure the dirt, the peculiar smell, of the Indians, and their dwellings, was a great marvel in the eyes of my lady acquaintance; indeed, I wonder why they did not quite give me up, as they certainly looked on me with great distaste for it. "Get you gone, you Indian dog," was the felt, if not the breathed expressions towards the hapless owners of the soil;--all their claims, all their sorrows quite forgot, in abhorrence of their dirt their tawny skin, and the vices the whites have taught them.47 She wrote that she had not wanted to get lost in sentimen- tality when describing the Indians, but that it was inevitable. Her 26Fu11er, Memoirs, 2 152. 27Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 88. Summer on the Lakes is reprinted in full in this volume. 56 description of the Indian men may seem somewhat sentimental, but it was unfortunately true. She wrote: The men of these subjugated tribes, now accustomed to drunkenness and every way degraded, bear but a faint impress of the lost grandeur of the race. They are no longer strong, tall, or finely proportioned. Yet, as you see them stealing along a height, or striding boldly forward, they remind you of what yaa_majestic in the red man.28 She admitted that it may have already been too late to salvage the Indian, but that a chance for them did exist if only they were treated with more humanity. She wrote: Let the missionary, instead of preaching to the Indian, preach I L’/ to ' ' . . Let every legislator take the subject to heart, and, if he cannot undo the effects of past sin, try for that clear view and right sense that may save us from sinning still more deeply. And let every man and every woman, in their private dealings with the subjugated race, avoid all share in embittering, by insult or unfeeling prejudice, the captivity of Israel.29 Her experiences with the Indians made her more than qualified to review Henry R. Schoolcraft's Oneota, or Red Races in America when she was literary reviewer for the Tribune. Her article was much more than a review; it was a plea to be faithful to the remembrance of the Indian grandeur. Now that the Red Race have well nigh melted from our sight, relentings and regret arise that they had not been more prized. [They] soon will be but a memory yet we should wish that memory to be faithful for there was a grandeur . . . in itself too poetic to be misused as theme or suggestion for mere fancy pictures.36 28Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 88. 29Ibid. 30New York Weekly Tribune, February 22, 1845, p. 1. 57 She says that Schoolcraft writes of the "questionable data'' that implies the Indian mind was not capable of being civilized. She writes that she would go one step further and say that there is ag_ basis for this "vulgar notion." Rather, she says, it is a rationali- E zation for those who have plundered, exiled and intoxicated the Indian 3 i,-‘ into his present position. : Fuller's review is sensitive and insightful, but perhaps has too much of a "preaching" quality to it. 'These aspects seem to run throughout her articles for the Tribune in her various social crusades. But this perhaps was exactly what Greeley liked about them. Her articles on poverty approach a sickly sentimentality by modern standards. Oddly enough, these articles were among those that Greeley admired the most. Greeley had seen extreme poverty during the winter of 1837-38, years of financial crisis, and had been deeply affected by it. At that time, he was too poor himself to give money to help the poor. So he gave of his time instead and served on the "visiting committees" to see what could be done to aid those who were destitute.3] Fuller had never been exposed to anything like the extreme urban poverty existing in New York City at that time. Greeley was probably a major influence in enlightening her to the destitution that was widespread. It is not surprising that in his Recollections, Greeley chose to quote Fuller's article "Woman in Poverty" as an only example 3lGreeley, p. 145. 58 of her social-cause writing and generosity. In the article, she tells of a poor "apple-woman," who despite a life of abject misery, destitution and illness, still retains dignity, a fine charitable nature, and a strong faith in God's will. The article closes with hopes that her life will get better: "With God's help!" she replied, with a smile that Raphael would have delighted to transfer to his canvas; a Mozart, to strains of angelic sweetness. All her life she had seemed an outcast child; still, she leaned upon a Father's love.32 Perhaps Fuller's empathy with the poor caused her to get carried away in sentimentality, because all of her articles on poverty border on mawkishness. In her other articles on social causes, she seems to keep her emotions apart from her subject without going to extremes in either direction. They are not merely sociological in appearance but include rich description, solid examples, dialogue and the use of allegorical devices to make them more appealing to the masses. Greeley was especially pleased with her article on Irish 33 In this article, she showed that she could be unemo- immigrants. tional and fair on a controversial subject. She admitted that the Irish immigrants had faults: "their extreme ignorance, their blind devotion to a priesthood, their pliancy in the hands of demagogues . their ready and ingenious lying." But she gave a longer list of attributes and said that their bad qualities stem from a lack of 32Quoted in Greeley, p. 182. 33Higginson, p. 214. 59 education and unfamiliarity with the ways of American society. It is only fair, she wrote, that since their hard work is helping the country to grow, the people of America should educate them and sympathize with them. She asked her readers to "engage in the great work of mutual education, which must be for this country the system of mutual insurance."34 Through her articles in the Tribune, Fuller was essentially educating her readers to educate themselves and others. She wrote a friend at this time: I am pleased with your sympathy about the Tribune, for I do not find much among my old friends. They think I ought to produce something excellent, while I am satisfied to aid in the great work of popular education. . . . Feeling that many are reached and in some degree helped, the thoughts of every day seem worth noting.35 Her knowledge of social ills that she brought before the public eye was a product of this belief in ”popular education." The readers of the Tribune learned of the plight of the deaf, blind 35 She and mentally ill people in America through her columns. didn't expose them as pitiful creatures, but as human beings. She described the beauty of deaf sign language and the wonders that can 34 1845, p. l. 35 "The Irish Character,“ New York Weekly Tribune, July 19, Fuller, Memoirs, 2:164. 36See New York Weekly Tribune: "Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb," March 21, 1846; "Condition of the Blind in this Country and Abroad," April 18, 1846; "Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane by Dr. Pliny Earle," FEPVUBFY'V451846; "Thanksgiving," Decemberl4,1844; "Our City's Charities," March 22,1845. (All are on page 1.) 60 be accomplished with the mentally ill if they are treated like people instead of animals. She told of the blind who were leading produc- tive lives outside of the asylum walls. With her columns, she was helping to break down these walls, and the walls of misconception and neglect. Greeley didn't have to recollect her charitable and understanding nature for posterity--her articles speak for her. As has been shown, Fuller was interested in the plight of women prisoners. But she was also concerned with the whole penal system and was firmly against capital punishment for society's criminals. She labeled criminals as "morally insane" and suggested that their rehabilitation might come through treating them as such.37 Because of this, she had an absolute abhorrence of capital punishment. Her stance against capital punishment was not a new subject for the Tribune. Four years earlier, Greeley had run several columns on this topic, and the Tribune became known for its arguments against capital punishment.38 Fuller labeled as I'bitter intolerance, arrogance and want of spiritual perception," the two books she reviewed in favor of capital punishment:‘ George Cheever's A Defence of Capital Punishment and Tayler Lewis' Essay on the Ground and Reason of Punishment with Special Reference to the Penalty of Death.39 This article was one of 37New York Weekly Tribune: "Thanksgiving,: December 14, 1844, p. 1; "Prison Discipline," February 28,1846, p. 1. 38 Parton, p. 189. 39 1846, p. l. "Darkness Visible,” New York Weekly Tribune, March 7, 61 her more cutting denouncements. She called Cheever's book "one of the worst books we have ever seen . . . and utterly deficient in the spirit of Christ." She did more than partake in name-calling, however. In her usual insightful manner, she analyzed these authors' conjectures, step-by-step, to prove how wrong they were. She wrote: When these writers say that to them moral and penal are coincident terms, they display a state of mind which prefers basing virtue on the fear of punishment rather than the love of right.40 She said that their theory on capital punishment depends for its stress on appeals to passion and prejudice as to themes, where, if ever, they should be silent . . . it shows a want of power without which no argument can ever be either honorable or cogent--the power of comprehending the other side.41 She saw that the time was ripe for a new or more under— standing evaluation of capital punishment. She said these books failed miserably in attempts to achieve a more "wise and noble" interpretation. Her article caught much attention, especially after "T.L." wrote a letter-to-the-editor stating that a "fair female" was unfit to discuss a topic such as capital punishment. The tone of her reply was one of both feminist indignation and good sense. We were not aware that the Bible, or the welfare of human beings were subjects improper for the consideration of "females," whether "fair" or otherwise. We had also supposed 40 1846, p. l. 41 "Darkness Visible," New York Weekly Tribune, March 7, Ibid. 62 that, in the field of literature, the meeting was not between man and woman, but between mind and mind.42 If she saw wrong in the treatment of prisoners, she was infuriated by the treatment of black slaves. When Cassius M. Clay, publisher of The True American in Kentucky, spoke in New York on anti-slavery, Fuller covered his speech for the Tribune. Clay's newspaper office had recently been destroyed by an angry mob which disliked his anti-slavery notions. On this point, Fuller said: In vain Kentucky calls meetings, states reasons, gives names of her own to what has been done. The rest of the world knows very well what has been done, and will call it by but one name. Regardless of this ostrich mode of defence the world has laughed and scoffed at the act of a people professing to be free and defenders of freedom, and the recording Angel has written down the deed as a lawless act of violence and tyranfly, from which the man is happy who can call himself pure.43 (Italics mine) She praised Clay's humanity and lack of prejudice that he revealed in his speech. But she could not go along with his means to an end and was against the tactics employed by the abolitionists: Whether our heroes need swords, is a more doubtful point, we think, than Mr. Clay believes. Neither do we believe in some of the means he proposes to further his aims. God uses all kinds of means, but men, his priests, must keep their hands pure. Nobody that needs a bribe shall be asked to further our schemes for emancipation.44 Fuller had set down her theories of abolitionism some six years before in a letter to Maria Weston Chapman, one of the leading spirits in New England for the abolitionist cause. Fuller wrote: 42"Darkness Visible--A Reply." New York Weekly Tribune. March14, 1846, p. 1. 43 1846, p. l. 44 "Cassius M. Clay," New York Weekly Tribune, January 17, Ibid. 63 The Abolition course commands my respect, as do all efforts to relieve and raise suffering human nature. The faults of the party are such as it seems to me must always be incident to the partizan [ajaj spirit. . . . Yet my own path leads a different course . . . I have always wished that efforts originating in a grievous sympathy, or a sense of right should have fair play. . . . Yet I presume I should still feel sympathy with your aims only not with your measures.45 Fuller's arguments against the means employed by the abolitionists resemble Greeley's. He had written in 1845 that he "shunned and deplored any needless agitation against slavery."46 Although he had published hundreds of articles against slavery, the tone of them was not radical. However, he helped to build a political party that would be strong enough to have a chance of success in abolishing slavery.47 Both Fuller and Greeley eventually became more radical in their views. When she was in Italy covering the revolution for the Tribune, Fuller began to realize that her earlier thinking on the abolitionist cause had been wrong. In one of her dispatches to the Tribune, she wrote: How it pleases me here to think of the Abolitionists! I could never endure to be with them at home, they were so tedious, often so narrow, always so rabid and exaggerated in their tone. But, after all, they had a high motive, something eternal in their desire and.life;-and if it was not the only thing worth thinking of, it was really something worth living . and dying for, to free a great nation from such a terrible blot, such a threatening plague. God strengthen them, and make them wise to achieve their purpose!48 45Letter dated December 26, 1840 in Wade, Writings, p. 556. 46Quoted in Hale, p. 142. 47Parton, p. 408. 48Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 255. 64 Greeley eventually became outraged when slavery extension was brought into the picture, and as the Civil War approached he became militant in his ideas on slavery.49 But both Fuller and Greeley were not out of the ordinary in their original views on abolitionism. At the time they opposed its measures, it was in its early stage and was still a radical cause which attracted only a small minority. But the idea of slavery itself was abhorrent to both. One of Fuller's unique articles for the Tribune is on this topic. Written as a fable, it displays her humanitarian principles and capacity for abstract thinking. "What Fits a Man to be a Voter? or White Within or White Without" concerns two tree planters who are looking for nuts from which to grow trees. They can't agree which to use--the butternuts which have a black coat, or the light walnuts. Suddenly, a young dark man and woman appear who have been “spiritually" sent to settle this dispute. The young man says: "It will be needful first to ascertain which of the nuts is soundest within." And with a hammer he broke one, two, and more of the English walnuts, and they were moldy. Then he tried the other nuts, but found most of them fresh within and white, for they were fresh from the bosom of the earth, while the others had been kept in a damp cellar. And he said, "You had better plant them together, lest none, or few, of the walnuts be sound. And why are you so reluctant? Has not Heaven permitted them both to grow on the same soil? and does not that show what is intended about it?" And they said, "But they are black and ugly to look upon." He replied, "They do not seem so to me. What my Father has fashioned in such guise offends not mine eye." . . . Then they said, "But in the Holy Book our teachers tell us, we are bid to keep in exile or distress whatsoever is black and unseemly in our eyes." 49Haie. pp. 232, 253-4. 65 Then he put his hand to his brow, and cried in a voice of the most penetrating pathos, "Have I been so long among you, and ye have not known me?"50 The "spirits" disappear, and the planters carry on a discussion about what should be done. One planter is convinced that perhaps they should try doing what the young man said. At this moment arose a hubbub, and such a clamor of "dangerous innovation,ll "political capital," "low-minded demagogue," "infidel who denies the Bible," "lower link in the chain of creation," &c., that it is impossible to say what was the decision.5 Fuller's article was an interesting approach to a much- discussed subject and was one that appealed to the masses. In using a fable form, she was able to get her message across in a simple, yet enlightening, manner. More than that, it showed that Fuller's style was versatile. In fact, no matter what topic she was discussing--her crusade for international copyright, her plea for a publisher-author convention,52 her discussions of social ills--her style varied as much as her topics. Fuller had learned much about journalism and life while living in New York City. Before she left for Europe in August, 1846, she wrote in her last article f0r the Tribune that twenty months in New York "have presented me with a richer and more varied exercise 50Fuller, Life, pp. 315-6. 5'Ibici. 52New York Weekly Tribune: "Thomas Hood," July 19, 1845 p. l; "Publishers and Authors," Feerary 7, 1846, P- 1- 66 for thought and life, than twenty years in any other part of these United States."53 Some of this richness of thought can be attributed to Horace Greeley. One of Greeley's biographers described this period of American history as follows: The America of the dawning 1840's had reason to be self- critical, expectant, romantic and exuberant--all at once. Three years before, it had been seized by business paralysis; now it seemed restored to full, bursting vigor. There was a belief that in the decade now opening, the time for great actions, great changes, and great American ideas was near at hand.54 There is no doubt that both Greeley and Fuller, through the pages of the Tribune, played a major role in these great actions and helped to bring about great ideas and changes in American history, journalism and social thinking. 53"Farewell to New York City," Fuller, Life, p. 354. 54Haie, p. 94. CHAPTER VI MARGARET FULLER'S ROMANTIC FULFILLMENT IN ITALY AND HER POSITION AS EUROPEAN WAR CORRESPONDENT FOR HORACE GREELEY'S TRIBUNE Margaret Fuller's years as a foreign correspondent for the Tribune were her most important ones, personally and journalistically. During these years, she at last found love, marriage and a child, but not in that order. Since Greeley's earlier tutelage, Fuller's journalism skills had been steadily improving. The difference between her earlier writing and her European dispatches is obvious, if not startling. With these journalistic skills, she reached the apogee of her career and was the only correspondent to let America and much of the rest of the world know of the rise and fall of the Roman revolu- tion. Her work during this time has been compared to Ernest Hemingway's reports on the Spanish Civil War,1 and it will be shown that this comparison is accurate. Despite an ocean's separation, her relations with Horace Greeley remained strong for the most part, but somewhat confusing in its latter stages before her death. She added much to the 1Prefatory note in Wade, Writings, p. 407. 67 68 Tribune's reputation for being an innovative and educational journalistic enterprise. Greeley became influenced by her republican leanings, as did many others in America, and he took up her revolutionary cause. Fuller owes to Greeley the distinction of being the first female American foreign correspondent.2 When Marcus and Rebecca Spring invited Fuller to accompany them to Europe, she was overjoyed. Greeley said that she could act as a correspondent for the Tribune in Europe, which solved her financial worries. Before she left for Europe, Fuller recognized that her career was in journalism, not in the literary arts which had been her earlier professional goal.3 Her earliest dispatches to the Tribune were mostly chatty descriptions of the wonders of European art, personages and scenery. But she was doing much more than soaking up the European culture. She was meeting people who would lead her to the revolution. In October, 1846, she made the acquaintance of Joseph Mazzini in Hampstead, England. Mazzini was an Italian patriot in exile and the leader of the Italian refugee colony in England. Still politically active, he had been forced to leave Italy twelve years earlier because of his revolutionary activities and had been condemned to death "in absentia" by the Italian government.4 2Joseph Jay Deiss, The Roman Years of Margaret Fuller (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969), p. 23. 3Brown, p. 90. 4Deiss, pp. 33-5. 69 Fuller immediately became drawn to his cause, as she displayed in her ninth letter to the Tribune: The name of Joseph Mazzini is well known to those among us who take an interest in the cause of human freedom. . . . [He] is not only one of the heroic, the courageous, and the faithful. . . . [He is] an ardent friend speaking of his martyred friends with the purity of impulse, warmth of sympathy, largeness and steadiness of view. . . . Fuller had been in Europe approximately four months when this letter was written, and she had already joined in a new cause. At this time, she and the Springs had made a plan to smuggle Mazzini back into Italy. He would travel with them using a false American pasSport which they would somehow supply. The plan fell through when Mazzini foresaw that the Italian revolution was dangerously close.6 In Paris, Fuller met another revolutionary in exile, the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. An admirer of the Transcendentalists, he was actively seeking to bring about a new social and political order in Europe. Fuller and he carried on a correSpondence while she was in Europe, and he helped to form her revolutionary spirit.7 Mickiewicz had a deeper personal impact on Fuller than any of her other acquaintances in Europe. He scoffed at her Puritanism and wrote to her that: "For the first step in your deliverance . . . 8 is to know whether you are to remain a virgin." While the 5Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 181-2. 6 Deiss, pp. 35-8. \1 Brown, pp. 97-8. 8Quoted in Deiss, p. 43. 7O thirty-six-year—old Fuller might have been shocked at the time by his idea of "deliverance,” she eventually took his advice and delivered herself from her Puritan shell into the arms of an Italian lover. By the time she arrived in Rome, she still had not written any real political letters to the Tribune and was still caught up in art, sculpture and scenery. But at this time, she began fre- quenting a café that was popular with revolutionaries who strove for the unification of Italy. Her habit of going there was dangerous, but undoubtedly gave her an insight into the revolutionary doctrine of the day. A description of the cafe gives one an image of a cross between a Greenwich Village coffeehouse and a Spanish bistro that Hemingway might have frequented: All of the latest posters were on the walls, and amid the barrels of wine, speakers carried on a seemingly perpetual harangue. At the Caffé Greco, founded in the middle of the eighteenth century, an atmosphere of thick cigar smoke and theoretical revolution prevailed among the artists and writers who inhabited the place. It was small, dark, untidy, but the owners shrewdly provided excellent coffee and freedom of speech--managing somehow to avoid the stricture of the secret police, whose spying activities were notorious. Here the latest news from all countries was discussed and dissected by citizens of all countries, and so diverse were the languages that sometimes the shouting sounded like the Tower of Babel. While she was still refraining from politics in her dispatches to the Tribune, she was giving more and more hints that all was not well in Rome. She had described to her readers the procession of torchebearing Romans on their way to thank Pope Pius IX for his effort to restore a representative council to Rome. She was 9Deiss, p. 43. 71 one of the few, however, who was not optimistic about the Pope's 10 chances for success. She wrote that the Pope is a man of noble and good aspect, who, it is easy to see, has set his heart upon doing something solid for the benefit of man. But pensively, too, must one feel how hampered and inadequate are the means at his command to accomplish these ends. The Italians do not feel it, but deliver themselves, with all the vivacity of temperament, to . . . torch-light processions. . . . We may see that the liberty of Rome does not yet advance with seven-leagued boots.n In April, while touring St. Peter's, Fuller became separated from her companions, and, in an apparent mix-up, became stranded there. A young Italian man, sensing her distress, offered his assistance and guided her back safely to her hotel. His name was Giovanni Angelo Ossoli. Ten years younger than she, he came from an old and noble Italian family and would one day be Fuller's lover, husband, and the father of her child. He would also be instrumental in her sympathy for the Roman revolution, and in providing her with knowledge of the revolutionary situation. After this chance meeting, they would not meet again for another three months.12 Back in New York, Greeley was having his usual domestic problems at "Castle Doleful." The entire time that Fuller was in Europe, his letters to her consisted of complaints about his home life, his wife ahd Pickie, although he did praise her articles for the Tribune. A letter written to her about this time establishes 1ODeiss, pp. 50-2. 1lFuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 224-6. 12Deiss, pp. 53—6. 72 the tone that would be prevalent in his letters for the next three years. He wrote: You will have heard probably, of the death of our little daughter. Alas for us! Neither Pickie nor Mother realized her worth till called to part with her. Pickie regarded her as a rival and an obstacle to his enjoyments, urging that she should be given away; while Mother often said she wished her dead on account of the labor and anxiety she caused. . . . It is impossible to be stern with Pickie, yet I feel that he is running to weeds. His mother whips him often but never rules him; and I have no voice in his management and never can have without fighting for it. . . . When do you return?13 If things hadn't changed for Greeley, they were changing too fast for Fuller and Europe. Within a month, she was to come in contact with revolutionaries, tortured men, and the hated Austrian rule. In Florence, she met the Marchesa Constanza Arconati Visconti, who had just returned to Italy after a forced 26-year exile by the Austrians. She would one day be one of Fuller's closest friends and revolutionary contacts.14 Also in Florence, she witnessed the hated rule of Grand Duke Leopold and described the building-up pressure to the Tribune readers: The Grand Duke--more and more agitated by the position in which . he finds himself between the influence of the Pope and that of Austria--keeps imploring and commanding his people to keep still, and they aaa still and glum as death. This is all on the out- side; within, Tuscany burns.15 In Milan, she met men who had been tortured by the Austrians in Spielberg, the most horrible prison in all of Europe.16 13Letter dated July 19, 1847, in Stoddard, pp. 111-2. 14Deiss, p. 73. 15Fu11er, Home and Abroad, p. 231. 16 Deiss, p. 76. 73 It must have affected her deeply because in her next dispatch to the Tribune in October, 1847, she wrote a scathing and somewhat prophetic denouncement of the Austrians. Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, it never appeared in the Tribune. It was the first time her political views were given any length in her letters. "The Austrian rule," she wrote, "is equally hated, and time, instead of melting away differ- ences, only makes them more glaring." In this sama dispatch, she wrote of her meeting with Alessandro Manzoni, an old man who had been a radical leader in past years, but whose ideas no longer appealed to the new generation of Italians. Again, she displayed her usual insight into a difficult to understand political situation by stating that: "Young Italy . . . feels that the doctrine of 'Pray and wait' is not for her at this moment--that she needs a more fervent hope, a more active faith. She is right."17 At this time, she received another letter from Greeley, mostly about Pickie, but which also showed his concern and generosity toward Fuller. He wrote: "Let me stop here to say that if you want money, you may draw on us at your discretion or write us where and how to send you [it]."18 Fuller's next letter to the Tribune, written in Rome, was her first completely political dispatch. It is an important letter for several reasons. All of the news that she provided on political events looked promising on the surface, but with her uncanny insight, 17Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 237, 239. 18Letter dated September 14, 1847, in Stoddard, p. 112. 74 she knew that these actions were superficial and bound not to endure. For example, King Carlo Alberto had liberalized press censorship, but Fuller saw through this pacification and labeled him a “worthless man," who was without trust or honor, and future events would prove her right.19 ' Again in this letter, she revealed her belief that the Pope's reforms were temporary and that he lacked the political acumen and courage to get anything of consequence accomplished. Again, she 20 She was also very modern in her political thinking on was right. the subject of separation of church and state. She wrote: Rome, to resume her glory, must cease to be an ecclesiastical capital; must renounce all this gorgeous mummery, whose poetry, whose picture, charms no one more than myself, but whose meaning is all of the past, and finds no echo in the future.21 It might be construed that because of her Boston Yankee background, Fuller had a bias against the Catholic religion which slanted her journalism unfavorably against the Pope. However, revidence indicates that she disliked the overbearing symbolism of Catholicism but also admired much about the Catholic doctrines. When she was in New York, she wrote an article for the Tribune in which she stated that the rites and symbols of Catholicism were overdone: Reverence was forgotten in the multitude of genuflections; the rosary became a string of beads, rather than a series of 19Deiss, p. 89. 201bid., p. 90 21 Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 243. 75 religious meditations, and "the glorious company of saints and martyrsN were not so much regarded as the teachers of heavenly truth, as intercessors to obtain for their votaries the temporal gifts they craved.22 As was previously mentioned, she found faults with the Irish immigrants' "blind devotion to a priesthood" when she was working in New York. Fuller's concept of religion was based on her Transcendental self-reliance. In her Memoirs, she stated that she was ''without any positive form of religion" and did not feel a need for any "social 23 But she recognized that worship" but only "solitary reflection." there was a need for religion and wrote that she did "not loathe sects, persuasions, systems, though I cannot abide in them one moment, for I see that by most men they are still needed."24 So, she did not condemn organized religion for others and had no overwhelming bias against the Catholic religion or the people of the Catholic faith. Two TranscendentaliSts whom she knew well from her visits at Brook Farm, Orestes Brownson and Sophia Ripley, converted to Catholicism, and the Catholic doctrines had been a topic of discussion at Brook Farm and Fuller's "Conversations."25 Fuller actually admired some aspects of the Catholic reli- gion. Although she found the symbols of the Catholic church over- bearing, she wrote: "Yet we regret that some of these symbols had 22"Christmas," Fuller, Life, p. 251. 23Fuller, Memoirs, 2:81-2. 24Ibid., p. 91. 25Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (New York: Dutton, 1936), p. 253-5. 76 n26 not been more reverenced by Protestants. . . In one of her Tribune articles, she praised the Catholic countries' charity to 27 And in another the poor which she found lacking in America. article written in New York, she wrote of the separation of social classes in American churches as compared with the Catholic churches of Europe: Nowhere else, I believe, but in the United States . . . does this anti-Christian separation of classes prevail in the Christian Church. The beggar in his tattered vestments walks the splendid courts of St. Peter's, and kneels at its costly altar by the side of dukes and cardina1s.28 One Fuller biographer States that her articles in Europe 29 This was true reflect much sympathy with the Catholic religion. to the extent that she separated her positive feelings on the reli- gion itself and the negative feelings about the Pope's policies. She was against the Pope as a politician, but not against the Pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church. So, with no undue bias against Catholicism, She began to appeal to her readers for sympathy for the Italian cause of liberty. As will be shown later, these readers, and especially Greeley, were absorbing her words and planning action. She wrote: I earnestly hope for some expression of sympathy from my country toward Italy. . . . This cause is OURS, above all others; we ought to Show that we feel it to be so. At present 26"Christmas," Fuller, Life, p. 251. 27"Politeness Too Luxurious For the Poor," in ibid., p. 324. 28"Consecration of Grace Church," in lbld-: P- 340- 29Wade, Whetstone, p. 223. 77 there is no likelihood of war, but in case of it I trust the United States would not fail in some noble token of sympathy toward this country.30 While Fuller may have seemed partial to the revolutionaries, being a thorough journalist, she investigated all sides of the issue. Her many contacts now became useful in her acceptance into meetings of all the different parties. Her acquaintance with Mazzini helped her to gain information from the Republicans; the Marchesa Visconti was instrumental in helping Fuller to gain knowledge of liberal policies; and Ossoli, whom she was not seeing frequently, furthered her insight into the Pope's policies, his family being close to the papal machinery.3] In her letter dated December 17, 1847, she seemed much more optimistic and stated that "affairs look well." The Pope had estab- lished a council of state in the hopes that it would lead to improvement of the social conditions in Rome. She admitted that he is trying firmly to resolve conflicts, but she was still very bdoubtful of his chance for success.32 A few days after she wrote this optimistic letter, she found out that she was pregnant, and a long depression followed which obviously affected her journalism. Fuller and Ossoli were not married at the time, and for many reasons marriage was now out of the question. Ossoli had wished to marry her even prior to this 30Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 248. 3IDeiss, p. 89. 32 Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 256. 78 point, but Fuller—-the feminist—~and the practical aspects of her character inveighed against it. Besides the age and background differences, there was also the religious differencez' Fuller was Protestant and Ossoli, Catholic. The Pope would have to grant them 33 Ossoli's family would disinherit him for a dispensation to marry. this reason and because Fuller's radical political philosophy did not coincide with their ultra-conservative stance. The revolution was coming, and she was financially insecure, as was Ossoli.34 With marriage now out of the question, she poured her energies into frantically writing letters to the Tribune, which would also lessen her financial troubles once her baby was born. Her frenetic writing and state of mind were clearly evident in her letters. One of her biographers states that she reported on things "without giving sufficient explanation for Americans to understand What on earth she was talking about. No doubt her readers were puzzled at why-the usually lucid Margaret Fuller began to chatter - like a lady attending a Church supper."35 News from home, meanwhile, was sad and irritating on the one hand and delightful on the other. She had received a letter from her mother in America about a visit that Mrs. Fuller made to the Greeleys. Things hadn't changed. If anything, they were worse. Mrs. Fuller wrote: 33Deiss, pp. 95, 97. 34Ibid., p. 98. 35Ibid. 79 Pickie is as beautiful as ever, but his will grows with his strength, and his conflicts with his mother are dreadful. The day after I was there he refused to be bathed, and his mother was violent and he hit her, and his father could hardly command his voice to tell me the frightful scene. She always says when I talk with her about Pickie--"I am keeping him for Margaret, as no other person can take care of Pickie." All that I can foresee is that her management of Pickie will end in his driving her mad, for they act upon each other like wild fire. Poor Mr. Greeley, I pity him from my soul, while I blame his weak submission to her. 5 Fuller also received a letter from Greeley about his wife, in which he told her: "I have rarely known anyone but you whose influence upon her was not irritating."37 The good news was that Greeley had arranged a mass meeting in New York City to show support for the Pope's policies. Thousands attended and more than 700 people signed a letter of support to be given to the Pope.38 This meeting proved that Greeley trusted Fuller's political judgment. He jumped on her bandwagon with all of the enthusiasm that he would have if it had been his own. When Greeley did anything, it was on a big scale, and this meeting was no exception. Former President of the United States Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State James Buchanan, and the mayor of New York City wrote letters which were read at the meeting and which praised the Pope and condemned the Austrians. A week later President James K. Polk got caught up in the fervor and asked Congress to set up 36Quoted in Deiss, p. 82. 37Letter dated January 27, 1848, in Stoddard, p. 114. 38Deiss, p. 103. 80 diplomatic relations with Rome. Soon after, an ambassador was sent there.39 In Rome, news of the meeting in New York was less than enthusiastic. In her next dispatch to the Tribune, Fuller wrote that the Roman press was "timid," but that in other parts of Italy, the people were ecstatic over what the Americans had done in their behalf. In this letter, she also reprinted an address by Mazzini to the Pope calling for unification of Italy. Mazzini pleaded with the Pope to.do something, but then threatened: "Unify Italy, your country. . . . It will be fulfilled with or without you."40 The month of January brought uprisings all over Italy. Fuller told her readers in her next letter how in Milan, Sicily and Naples, the people were rioting and the soldiers were retaliating.4] It was a prophetic way to start the New Year: 1848 was to be a year of uprisings and revolution in Italy and Europe. The dark and gloomy rainy season in Rome.and Fuller's pregnancy kept her from writing again for the Tribune for two months. She had told no one in America of her pregnancy, and in Europe, she had only told Mickiewicz.42 She wrote letters to friends at home that she was ill. Greeley, whom she had apparently asked for money, 39Deiss, pp. 104,223. This ambassador died as soon as he reached Italy. Another ambassador did not replace him until six months later. 40Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 291. 4'Ibid., pp. 292-302. 4ZDeiss, p. 128. 81 did not know the real cause of her "illness." He missed her, was concerned for her, and begged her to come home. He wrote: I have since been hard at work to raise money for you to go by steamship from Boston, tomorrow. I have just accom- plished it, but it has nearly broken my back. I regularly Spend all the money I can get and as fast as I can get it; but about once in two years I get behind a long way, through endorsements, etc., and have to resort to some extraordinary course to extricate myself. . . . I obtained $100 from the office (all I could get) on your account; the other $500 is between you and myself personally. . . . Why should you linger in Europe in such miserable health? You cannot enjoy it; you cannot improve your opportunities; you can hardly be useful there to any and certainly the dis- comfort and expense of traveling must be serious. Do come home, where you can have nursing and air and compose, such as no traveler among strangers ever did have. Why should you stay?43 Going home was, of course, an impossibility. At the end of March, she again started writing letters for the Tribune and finally had good news to relate. Louis Phillipe of France had been dethroned, Naples had revolted, Prince Metterick of Austria was defeated, and Mazzini had ended his exile and was allowed to return- to Rome. It may have looked like Italy was at last free, but Fuller's skepticism was ever-present. She wrote that it was "too speedy a realization of hope."44 The Pope's next action again proved her right. Upset over the recent bloodshed, the Pope cut himself off entirely from the war movement. She wrote: The speech of the Pope declared, that he had never thought of the great results which had followed his actions; 43Letter dated Apri1 4, 1848, in Stoddard, pp. 114-5. 44Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 303-9. 82 that he had only intended local reforms, such as had previously been suggested by the potentates of Europe; that he regretted the miause which had been made in his name; and wound up by lamenting over the war. . . . The responsibility of events now gigznwhglgyrwggg Enampfigple, and that wave of thought which has And, to her friends who wished that she would return to America, she wrote: "Here things are before my eyes worth recording, and, if I cannot help this work, I would gladly be its historian."46 On this note of revolution and dedication to its cause, she stopped writing for the Tribune and didn't resume for another six months. Not wishing for her pregnancy to be known in Rome, where the news might be leaked to America, she moved to the country town of Aquila to await the arrival of her baby. Ossoli, who was in the Civic National Guard in Rome, could not go with her. The next three months were a trial to her. Ill, pregnant, unmarried, alone, and poverty-stricken, she spent most of her time writing a history of the Italian revolution and contemplating her fate.47 After a month, she was forced to flee Aquila because of its occupation by soldiers, and she went to live in the town of Rieti, a town that Hemingway would introduce to future readers of literature.48 At this point, her relationship with Greeley took a confusing turn. Fuller had written to him, telling him of her plans to discontinue writing for the Tribune. He responded: 45Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 323, 325. 46Ibid., p. 327. 47Deiss, pp. 145-51. 48Brown, p. 104. 83 . . . I regret the resolution announced in your letter not to write further for the Tribune, but I do not complain of it. . . But do exactly what seems most agreeable and don't make your life a drudgery for the sake of a few dollars. . . . Your recent letters have been far longer than we had a right to expect. . . . I want the account so adjusted that you shall be entirely satisfied. What we pay you by agreement ($10) per letter is just twice what we pay for.any other European corre— spondence,but we are very well aware that the quality justifies this. Whether you shall write to us hereafter, or not, let the past be made fully satisfactory. I trust you received the money I sent you, and that it will prove of sezyice to you. Do not borrow trouble about its repay- ment. . . . Apparently, she received neither the money nor this letter. This becomes clear in a letter to her brother Richard. Not so clear is aha actually terminated her association with the Tribune-- Greeley said it was her, and in this letter, she implies that it was Greeley. Now I do not know what will become of me if I do not in the course of September receive money either from you or Mr. G. I shall not have means to leave Italy nor even to return to Rome, if indeed I could still have food and lodging here. . . As to Mr. Greeley, he shows no disposition to further my plans. Liberality on the part of the Tribune would have made my path easy. . . . I trusted for the expenses of the summer to a remittance from Mr. Greeley, which up to now has never arrived.50 Despite this evidence, Fuller's biographers have assumed. that Greeley was the one who terminated her articles for the Tribune. They theorize that Greeley had heard rumors of her lifestyle in Europe (she and Ossoli had virtually lived together in Rome) and was 51 displeased at her scandalous behavior. A more likely theory 49Letter dated June 27, 1848, in Stoddard, pp. 115-6. 50Quoted in Deiss, p. 158. 5'Ibid. 84 regarding this confusion is that Fuller was bitter about not getting the money from Greeley. She may have even believed that he never sent it. In her bitterness, she put the blame on Greeley for the termination of her employment with the Tribune. Meanwhile, she was keeping in touch with what was happening in other parts of Italy by letters from Ossoli and Mazzini, and the revolutionary spirit of the country was high. On September 5, 1848, with Ossoli at her side, she gave birth to a son, whom they named Angelo Eugenio Ossoli. Fuller was thirty-eight years old; Ossoli, twenty-eight. They gave the baby the Ossoli name, even though they were still not married.52 About two months later she left the baby in the care of a nurse in Rieti and returned to Rome, where she began writing again for the Tribune. She gave her readers an outline of what had been taking place. The tourists had fled, she being one of the few foreigners left. The prime minister, Count Rossi, had been assas— sinated, and when the Roman people went to see the Pope, the Swiss Guard fired into the mob. They in turn killed the Pope's confessor and the Pope fled the country. Rome was now without a government and anarchy reigned.53 Her next letter to the Tribune was a bitter denunciation of the Pope. She wrote: 52Deiss, pp. 159-65. 53Fu11er, Home and Abroad, pp. 336-45. 85 He had already soiled his white robes, and defamed himself for ever [aja], by heaping benedictions on the king of Naples and the bands of mercenaries whom he employs to murder his subjects on the least sign of restlessness in their most painful position. Most cowardly had been the conduct of his making promises he never meant to keep, stealing away by night in the coach of a foreign diplomatist, protesting that what he had done was null because he had acted under fear,--as if such a protest could avail to one who boasts himself representative of Christ and his Apostles, guardians of the legacy of martyrs!54 Her comments depicting the Pope as a liar and hypocrite were not taken lightly in America. Bishop John Hughes of New York was infuriated by her letters and attempted to have them stopped. But Greeley refused to cease publishing her letters.55 He was still on her side. In fact, Greeley was writing constantly on the subject for the Tribune himself, and had also become strongly partisan to the republican cause.56 Fuller went to see her child in Rieti as often as possible, but in the next few months war came to the streets of Rome and utter confusion ensued. Garibaldi set up an Assembly in Rome and the Roman Republic was declared on February 8, 1849. Soon after, the Catholic powers tried to restore the Pope's rule. In that interest, the President of the French Republic, Louis Napoleon, sent 12,000 troops to Italy and seized a town near Rome. In the north, Austrian forces were reclaiming their lost territory. Finally the French attacked Rome itself.57 54Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 348. 55Deiss, p. 188. 56Parton, p. 249. 57Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 255-400. 86 All of Fuller's biographers agree that her letters to the Tribune at this time were the apogee of her journalistic career and were first-rate by modern g§_1840s standards. An urgency prevails in her on-the-scene writing which can only be the product of war. Her writing resembles Hemingway's to a Surprising extent. Indeed, it is impossible to recognize that what she wrote came from the pen of a "fair and fragile" female. Her description of battles have a detached tenor to them. Yet, she sneaks a subtle emotion and analysis into her letters, again much like Hemingway. And, like Hemingway, she had definite partisan republican leanings. So, her basic detachment can only be labeled as journalistic professionalism. She watched the battles from her window, and described them as follows: The French fought with great bravery, and this time it is said with beautiful skill and order, sheltering themselves in their advance by movable barricades. The Italians fought like lions, and no inch of ground was gained by the assailants. The loss of the French is said to be very great: it could not be other- wise. Six or seven hundred Italians are dead or wounded. Among them are many officers, those of Garibaldi especially, who are much exposed by their daring bravery, and whose red tunic makes them the natural mark of the enemy. . . . Since the 3d we have only cannonade and skirmishes. The French are at their trenches, but cannot advance much; they are too much molested from the walls. The Romans have made one very successful sortie. The French availed themselves of a violent thunderstorm, when the walls were left more thinly guarded to try to scale them, but were immediately driven back. But she did more than describe; she analyzed the nature of war as well. Like Hemingway, she sought to describe the universality of war in all its aspects. The nobility, selfishness and poverty 58Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 397—8. 87 of this war that she described could apply to any and all wars. She wrote: War near at hand seems to me even more dreadful than I had fancied it. True, it tries men's souls, lays bare selfishness in undeniable deformity. Here it has produced much fruit of noble sentiment, noble act; but still it breeds vice too, drunkenness, mental dissipation, tears asunder the tenderest ties, lavishes the productions of Earth, for which her starving poor stretch out their hands in vain, in the most unprofitable manner.59 ~ Fuller was chosen to direct one of the hospitals for the wounded, and she spent much of her time there helping out. Her compassion for these men soon became known throughout Rome, and she was considered "a mild saint and a ministering angel" by those who 60 saw her attending the wounded. Her description of the wounded soldiers is grisly and starkly vivid, but also thought-provoking. She wrote: Many of these young men, students from Pisa, Pavia, Padua, and the Roman University, lie wounded in the hospitals, for naturally they rushed first to the combat. One kissed an arm which was cut off; another preserves pieces of bone which were painfully extracted from his wound, as relics of the best days of his life. The older men, many of whom have been saddened by exile and disappointment, less glowing, are not less resolved. A spirit burns noble as ever animated the most precious deeds we treasure from the heroic age. I suffer to see these temples of the soul thus broken, to see the fever-weary days and painful operations undergone by these noble men, these true priests of a higher hope; but I would not for much, have missed seeing it all, The memory of it will console amid the spectacles of meanness, selfishness, and faithlessness which life may yet have in store for the pilgrim.51 (Italics mine) 59Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 383. 60wade, Whetstone, p. 246. 61Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 407-8. 88 In this description, she again approached the style and descriptive technique of Hemingway. She also foreshadowed Santayana's philosophy that one must not forget war, but keep the memory of it intact. A Since she was the only foreign correspondent in Rome at the time, Fuller was clearly the only person whose dispatches could be construed as truth. However, a London Iima§_reporter, who was nowhere near Italy, wrote livid accounts of atrocities performed by the Roman republicans, and soon other reporters in Europe were doing 62 so also. Fuller was furious at this journalistic irresponsibility. She wrote to her Tribune readers to ignore the Times' falsehoods: I am surprised to see the air of perfect good faith with which articles from the London Times, upon the revolutionary movements, are copied into our papers. There exists not in Europe a paper more violently opposed to the cause of freedom than the Times, and neither its leaders nor its foreign corre- spondence are to be depended upon.63 In July, 1849, Fuller wrote her last dispatch to the Tribune. She described how the French had finally entered Rome on July 4, and Garibaldi's forces fled into the country. The Romans had put up a hard fight, but lost anyway. The French ordered all 64 foreigners to leave the city within twenty-four hours. Ossoli, who had courageously fought for the Republic, left Rome with Fuller. 6ZDeiss, p. 222. 63Fuller, Home and Abroad, p. 400. 64This letter, written July 6-10, 1849, was never printed in the Tribune; in Fuller, Home and Abroad, pp. 410-18. 89 They went to Rieti where their child had been living during the last few revolutionary months.65 Soon after, Fuller received a disastrous and emotional letter from Horace Greeley. He wrote: Ah, Margaret! The world grows dark with us. You grieve, for Rome has fallen; I mourn, for Pickie is dead! The one sunburst of joy that has gladdened my rugged pathway has departed. . . . He never forgot "Aunty Margaret" though his recollection of her grew fainter toward the last. Ah! had we dreamed of this loss when you left us! Even as it was, your tears were prophetic!55 The letter gave a minute description of Pickie's horrifying illness and death from cholera. Fuller was crushed by the news. She wrote to a friend: I have shed rivers of tears over the inexpressibly affecting letter. . . . One would think that I might have become familiar enough with images of death and destruction; yet somehow the image of Pickie's little dancing figure, lying stiff and stark, had made me weep more than all else. Fuller, Ossoli, and their child moved to Florence, where their marriage finally took place. Fuller started writing letters home telling her friends and family that she was married and had a child. Of course, she stated her marriage date as being well ahead of its actual occurrence. Still, her secret-made-public was scandalous to some people, while others were more sympathetic to her news. Her 65Brown, p. 107. 66Letter dated July 23, 1849, in Stoddard, pp. 119-20. 67Quoted in Deiss, p. 277. 9O mother accepted the news, but her brother Richard refused to even write back to her for many months.68 Again, confusion between Greeley and Fuller was to take hold. But, unfortunately, it would be far more disastrous than the earlier state of mix—ups. As aforementioned, Fuller was distraught over the news of Pickie's death. She wrote to a friend that she had written to Greeley about her sadness: I wrote to Mr. Greeley, my soul all opened towards him by the news of his great calamity--mine too it was-—for the lost child was infinitely dear to me. I have been sadly disappointed that he should not answer that letter, but life is full of such things, truly hard is the travel to one who has but the "brain unencompassed by nerves of steel."69 It is clear that Greeley never received the consolatory letter from Fuller and that she never received the following one from him. He wrote: Why should I write you again, when I know not that you have received any of my recent letters, and fear you will not receive this? And yet I cannot help writing just this once more about our lost angel boy. My Pickie! ,My Pickie! How sad is this world without him!70 Because of their poor financial state, it became obvious that Fuller, Ossoli and their child would have to go to America to 68Deiss, pp. 278-92. Deiss is the first biographer to establish the probable time and place of her marriage. Other biographers have erroneously said it took place much earlier than this. Deiss was the first biographer to concentrate on her Italian years, using records in Italy to do research. He was the first biographer to publish translations of the bulk of her Italian letters to and from Ossoli. 69Letter dated December 12, 1849 to Marcus and Rebecca Spring, in Wade, Writings, p. 588. 70Letter dated August 14, 1849, in Stoddard, p. 121. 91 live where Fuller could get her book on the Italian Revolution published. For unknown reasons, her connection with the Tribune had been terminated. Or, at least, that is what her biographers 71 believe. Not having heard from Greeley, Fuller "guessed" that he 72 Many of her biographers would not want her back at the Tribune. have construed this to mean that Greeley was upset by her "scandalous" marriage and cut her off from the Tribune, when no such evidence exists. Fuller herself may have believed this, but there were no actual words said on either side on the point of her leaving the Tribune. It could well be that Greeley was still emotionally distraught by Pickie's death. The postal system existing then was very unreliable, so that could have been a major factor in the con- fused relationship between Fuller and Greeley during these last months. It is difficult to imagine Greeley pouring his heart out to Fuller about Pickie's death one day, and turning around the next and firing her from the Tribune. They had shared the most important thing in Greeley's life, extreme love for Pickie. And it seems doubtful that this bond could be broken by Fuller's marital state. Fuller, Ossoli and their son left England on May 17, 1850 on the Elizabeth to come back to America. Off of Fire Island, New York, a storm forced the ship onto a sandbar. It was only a few hundred yards from shore, but in the storm getting there would 71Deiss, pp. 302—3. 72Chipperfield, p. 294. 92 be difficult. Clinging to planks of wood, some of the passengers and crew made it to shore safely. But Fuller refused to be separated from her husband and child. As the ship began to break up, a sailor tried to reach shore with Fuller's son, but they perished in the attempt. Fuller and 055011 were washed overboard. Their bodies were never found.73 Margaret Fuller had just cele- brated her fortieth birthday prior to her untimely death. 73wade. pp. 268-71. CHAPTER VII CONCLUSIONS Henry Thoreau, William Henry Channing, Bayard Taylor of the Tribune, and Fuller's brother, Arthur, rushed to the scene of the shipwreck. All that could be found were the body of Fuller's two-year-old son, Angelo, and some of her letters and diaries. Fuller's history of the Italian Revolution vanished with her.1 Greeley paid many tributes to her in the Tribune. Soon all of her friends aaa_enemies were writing letters, poems and articles on her in tribute to her memory. Immediately, plans were made by Emerson, Channing and James Clarke to collaborate on compiling her memoirs, with Greeley urging them to hurry before the interest in her death waned.2 A Fuller's Memoirs was a best seller in 1852,3 but unfor- tunately it became the basis for the "Margaret myths." The censorial editing job, done primarily by Emerson, is infuriating, especially since other biographers have blindly relied on it as absolute truth. 1Chipperfieid, p. 14. 2Wade, Whetstone, pp. 273-9. 3Chipperfield, p. 17. 93 94 One of Fuller's biographers who was not misled by Emerson's mutilation of the Memoirs, described Emerson's editing as follows: Emerson modified words from simple to complex, revised sentence structure from spontaneous to ponderous, ignored dates and time sequences, shifted paragraphs from one docu- ment to another, and sometimes changed names or misstated recipients of letters. It was a cut-and-paste job, with the scissors acting as censor's shears. Suspect material was deleted--whole sections snipped from letters, masses of pages ripped from the notebooks. A part of Margaret which Emerson did not approve was destroyed.4 In the last thirty years some of her biographers have attempted to correct some of the inaccuracies that plague the Memoirs. It wasn't until 1969, with the appearance of Deiss' Ifla_ Roman Years of Margaret Fuller, that her European years were brought to light. In the meantime, she has been ignored, criticized and underestimated in American literature and journalism. True, she was aat_a literary marvel. The writing in her five books was wordy and ponderous and sometimes awkward. But she does deserve a more esteemed place in journalism history. Her value lies in what she wrote about, the historical period involved and Fuller as a person. She was an intelligent woman and innovative journalist, writing frankly in a day of literary and social ignorance, and in a time when she was one of the few with enough courage to do so. Horace Greeley gave her the chance to become the first member of her sex to enter newspaper journalism and to achieve the 4Deiss, p. viii. 95 the distinction of being the first female American foreign correspondent. Without a doubt, she in turn helped him in his personal and professional life. If Horace Greeley is remembered for his contributions to journalism, then Margaret Fuller should be remembered also and in a way that dispels the "Margaret myths." Fuller considered her life a Greek tragedy. The tragedy of her life lies in the fact that no one remembers her, or only remembers the "myths" that have been perpetuated about her. Trying to make her into some sort of a heroine probably fosters the "freakishness" of her life, and yet she had a nobility and gen- erosity and bravery which touched on heroics. What other journalist of her day shot rapids in a canoe with two Indians, visited smallpox- infected women prisoners, and walked the streets of Rome with cannon-fire bursting around her--all for the purpose of gathering material for her writings? The mark of a truly great journalist is his or her ability to stimulate social and-political change. Horace Greeley is already recognized as such a journalist. Margaret Fuller also deserves this recognition. BIBLIOGRAPHY ~ BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Clarke, James Freeman. The Letters of James Freeman Clarke to Margaret Fuller. Edited by John Wesley Thomas. Hamburg, Germany: Cram, de Gruyter and Co., 1957. Emerson, R. W., W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. <2 vol;.;2nd_ed. Boston: BroWn, Taggard and Chase, 1860. ”"TT Fuller (Ossoli), Margaret. Art, Literature, and the Drama. 2nd ed. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: R0berts Brothers, 1889. . At Home and Abroad. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. * . Life Without and Life Within. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and’Chase, 1860. . The Writingsof Margaret Fuller. Edited by Mason Wade; New York: The Vikihg Press, 1941. ' ' ' Greeley, Horace. Recollections of a Busy Life. New York: J. B. Ford and Co., 1869. Secondary Sources Anthony, Katharine. ~Margaret Fuller, A Psycholo ical Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 20. T Bell, Margaret. Margaret Fuller. New York: C. Boni, 1930. Braun, Frederick Augustus. Margaret Fuller and Goethe. New York: Henry Holt, 1910. Brown, Arthur. Margaret Fuller. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1964. Chipperfield, Faith. In Quest of Love: The Life and Death of Margaret Fuller. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1957. 96 97 Cooke, George Willis. An Historical and Biographical Introduction to Accompany the Dial. 2 vols. Cleveland? privately published, 1902; reprint ed. New York: Russell and Russell, 1961. Deiss, Joseph Jay. The Roman Years of Margaret Fuller. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969. ' Durning, Russell E. Margaret Fuller, Citizen of the World: An Intermediary between Eurgpean and American Literatures. Heidelberg, Germany: Carl Winter-UniversitatsVElég, 1969. Hale, William Harlan. Horace Greeley: Voice of the People. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1950. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884. Howe, Julia Ward. Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli). Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884. Ingersoll, L. D. The Life of Horace Greeley. Philadelphia: John E. Potter and Company, 1874. Linn, William A. Horace Greeley. New York: 0. Appleton and Company, 1903. Parton, James. The Life of Horace Greeley. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1882. Reavis, L. U. A Representative Life of Horace Greeley. New York: G. W. Carlton and Co., PubliShers, 1872. Seitz, Don C. Horace Greeley. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill Co., 1926. Shapiro, Fred. "The Transcending Margaret Fuller." Maa, November 1972, pp. 36-9. _ Stern, Madeleine B. The Life of Margaret Fuller. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1942. Stoddard, Henry Luther. Horace Greeley. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1946. Van Deusen, Glyndon G. Horace Greeley: Nineteenth Century Crusader. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953. M. 98 Wade, Mason. Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius. New York: The Viking Press, 1940. Zabriskie, Francis N. Horace Greeley, Editor. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1890. General Sources Brooks, Van Wyck. The Flowering of New England. New York: Dutton, 1936. ' Frothingham, 0. B. Transcendentalism in New England. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1876. 7 ~ Godwin, Parke. A Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier. Philadelphia: Porcupihe Press, 1972. MacPhail, Andrew. Essays on Puritanism. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1905; reprint ed. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1969. Outland, E. R. The Effingham Libels on ngper. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,’l929. Parrington, V. L. Main Currents in American Thought. vol. 2: IDE. Romantic Rev01ution. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927. Wendell, Barrett. A Literary History of America. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1900. Typed and Printed in the U.S.A. Professional Thesis Preparation Cliff and Paula Haughey .. 144 Maplewood Drive . ' " East Lansing. Michigan 48823 ‘, Telephone (517) 337-1527 HICHIGRN STQTE UNIV. LIBRQRIES 31293102696451