Woman in the Nineteenth Century Part 30

TO MISS R.

_Chicago_, _August_ 4, 1848.

I HAVE hoped from time to time, dear ----, that I should receive a few lines from you, apprizing me how you are this summer, but a letter from Mrs. F---- lately comes to tell me that you are not better, but, at least when at Saratoga, worse.

So writing is of course fatiguing, and I must not expect letters any more. To that I could make up my mind if I could hear that you were well again. I fear, if your malady disturbs you as much as it did, it must wear on your strength very much, and it seems in itself dangerous. However, it is good to think that your composure is such that disease can only do its legitimate work, and not undermine two ways,--the body with its pains, and the body through the mind with thoughts and fears of pains.

I should have written to you long ago except that I find little to communicate this summer, and little inclination to communicate that little; so what letters I have sent, have been chiefly to beg some from my friends. I have had home-sickness sometimes here, as do children for the home where they are even little indulged, in the boarding-school where they are only tolerated. This has been in the town, where I have felt the want of companionship, because the dissipation of fatigue, or expecting soon to move again, has prevented my employing myself for myself; and yet there was nothing well worth looking at without. When in the country I have enjoyed myself highly, and my health has improved day by day. The characters of persons are brought out by the little wants and adventures of country life as you see it in this region; so that each one awakens a healthy interest; and the same persons who, if I saw them at these hotels, would not have a word to say that could fix the attention, become most pleasing companions; their topics are before them, and they take the hint. You feel so grateful, too, for the hospitality of the log-cabin; such grat.i.tude as the hospitality of the rich, however generous, cannot inspire; for these wait on you with their domestics and money, and give of their superfluity only; but here the Master gives you his bed, his horse, his lamp, his grain from the field, his all, in short; and you see that he enjoys doing so thoroughly, and takes no thought for the morrow; so that you seem in fields full of lilies perfumed with pure kindness; and feel, verily, that Solomon in all his glory could not have entertained you so much to the purpose. Travelling, too, through the wide green woods and prairies, gives a feeling both of luxury and repose that the sight of highly-cultivated country never can. There seems to be room enough for labor to pause and man to fold his arms and gaze, forgetting poverty, and care, and the thousand walls and fences that in the cultivated region must be built and daily repaired both for mind and body. Nature seems to have poured forth her riches so without calculation, merely to mark the fulness of her joy; to swell in larger strains the hymn, "the one Spirit doeth all things veil, for its life is love."

I will not ask you to write to me now, as I shall so soon be at home.

Probably, too, I shall reserve a visit to B---- for another summer; I have been so much a rover that when once on the road I shall wish to hasten home.

Ever yours, M.

TO THE SAME.

_Cambridge, January_ 21, 1644.

MY DEAR ------: I am anxious to get a letter, telling me how you fare this winter in the cottage. Your neighbors who come this way do not give very favorable accounts of your looks; and, if you are well enough, I should like to see a few of those firm, well-shaped characters from your own hand. Is there no chance of your coming to Boston all this winter? I had hoped to see you for a few hours at least.

I wrote you one letter while at the West; I know not if it was ever received; it was sent by a private opportunity, one of those "traps to catch the unwary," as they have been called. It was no great loss, if lost. I did not feel like writing letters while travelling. It took all my strength of mind to keep moving and to receive so many new impressions. Surely I never had so clear an idea before of the capacity to bless, of mere _Earth_, when fresh from the original breath of the creative spirit. To have this impression, one must see large tracts of wild country, where the traces of man's inventions are too few and slight to break the harmony of the first design. It will not be so, long, even where I have been now; in three or four years those vast flowery plains will be broken up for tillage,--those shapely groves converted into logs and boards. I wished I could have kept on now, for two or three years, while yet the first spell rested on the scene. I feel much refreshed, even by this brief intimacy with Nature in an aspect of large and unbroken lineaments.

I came home with a treasure of bright pictures and suggestions, and seemingly well. But my strength, which had been sustained by a free, careless life in the open air, has yielded to the chills of winter, and a very little work, with an ease that is not encouraging. However, I have had the influenza, and that has been about as bad as fever to everybody. _Now_ I am pretty well, but much writing does not agree with me.

* * * I wish you were near enough for me to go in and see you now and then. I know that, sick or well, you are always serene, and sufficient to yourself; but now you are so much shut up, it might animate existence agreeably to hear some things I might have to tell. * * *

TO THE SAME.

* * * 1844.

Just as I was beginning to visit the inst.i.tutions here, of a remedial and benevolent kind, I was stopped by influenza. So soon as I am quite well I shall resume the survey. I do not expect to do much, practically, for the suffering, but having such an organ of expression as the _Tribune_, any suggestions that are well grounded may be of use. I have always felt great interest for those women who are trampled in the mud to gratify the brute appet.i.tes of men, and I wished I might be brought, naturally, into contact with them. Now I am so, and I think I shall have much that is interesting to tell you when we meet.

I go on very moderately, for my strength is not great; but I am now connected with a person who is anxious I should not overtask it. I hope to do more for the paper by-and-by. At present, besides the time I spend in looking round and examining my new field, I am publishing a volume, of which you will receive a copy, called "Woman in the Nineteenth Century." A part of my available time is spent in attending to it as it goes through the press; for, really, the work seems but half done when your book is _written_. I like being here; the streams of life flow free, and I learn much. I feel so far satisfied as to have laid my plans to stay a year and a half, if not longer, and to have told Mr. G---- that I probably shall do so. That is long enough for a mortal to look forward, and not too long, as I must look forward in order to get what I want from Europe.

Mr. Greeley is a man of genuine excellence, honorable, benevolent, of an uncorrupted disposition, and of great, abilities. In modes of life and manners he is the man of the people, and of the _American_ people. * * *

I rejoice to hear that your situation is improved. I hope to pa.s.s a day or two with you next summer, if you can receive me when I can come. I want to hear from you now and then, if it be only a line to let me know the state of your health. Love to Miss G----, and tell her I have the cologne-bottle on my mantle-piece now. I sent home for all the little gifts I had from friends, that my room might look more homelike. My window commands a most beautiful view, for we are quite out of the town, in a lovely place on the East River. I like this, as I can be in town when I will, and here have much retirement. You were right in supposing my signature is the star.

Ever affectionately yours.

TO HER BROTHER, R.

_Fishkill-Landing, Nov 28, 1844._

DEAR R.:

The seven weeks of proposed abode here draw to a close, and have brought what is rarest,--fruition, of the sort proposed from them. I have been here all the time, except that three weeks since I went down to New York, and with ---- visited the prison at Sing-Sing. On Sat.u.r.day we went up to Sing-Sing in a little way-boat, thus seeing that side of the river to much greater advantage than we can in the mammoth boats. We arrived in resplendent moonlight, by which we might have supposed the prisons palaces, if we had not known too well what was within.

On Sunday ---- addressed the male convicts in a strain of most n.o.ble and pathetic eloquence. They listened with earnest attention; many were moved to tears,--some, I doubt not, to a better life. I never felt such sympathy with an audience;--as I looked over that sea of faces marked with the traces of every ill, I felt that at least heavenly truth would not be kept out by self-complacency and a dependence on good appearances.

I talked with a circle of women, and they showed the natural apt.i.tude of the s.e.x for refinement. These women--some black, and all from the lowest haunts of vice--showed a sensibility and a sense of propriety which would not have disgraced any place.

Returning, we had a fine storm on the river, clearing up with strong winds.

TO HER BROTHER, A. B. F.

_Rome, Jan._ 20, 1849.

My Dear A.: Your letter and mother's gave me the first account of your illness. Some letters were lost during the summer, I do not know how.

It did seem very hard upon you to have that illness just after your settlement; but it is to be hoped we shall some time know a good reason for all that seems so strange. I trust you are now becoming fortified in your health, and if this could only be, feel as if things would go well with you in this difficult world. I trust you are on the threshold of an honorable and sometimes happy career. From many pains, many dark hours, let none of the progeny of Eve hope to escape! * * * *

Meantime, I hope to find you in your home, and make you a good visit there. Your invitation is sweet in its tone, and rouses a vision of summer woods and New England Sunday-morning bells.

It seems to me that mother is at last truly in her sphere, living with one of her children. Watch over her carefully, and don't let her do too much. Her spirit is only all too willing,--but the flesh is weak, and her life so precious to us all! * * * *

TO MAZZINI.

"Al Cittadino Reppresentante del Popolo Romano."

_Rome, March_ 8, 1849.

Dear Mazzini: Though knowing you occupied by the most important affairs, I again feel impelled to write a few lines. What emboldens me is the persuasion that the best friends, in point of sympathy and intelligence,--the only friends of a man of ideas and of marked character,--must be women. You have your mother; no doubt you have others, perhaps many. Of that I know nothing; only I like to offer also my tribute of affection.

When I think that only two years ago you thought of coming into Italy with us in disguise, it seems very glorious that you are about to enter republican Rome as a Roman citizen. It seems almost the most sublime and poetical fact of history. Yet, even in the first thrill of joy, I felt "he will think his work but beginning, now."

When I read from your hand these words, "II lungo esilio teste ricominciato, la vita non confortata, fuorche d'affetti lontani e contesi, e la speranza lungamente protrata, e il desiderio che comincia a farmi si supremo, di dormire finalmente in pace, da che non ho potuto, vivere in terra mia,"--when I read these words they made me weep bitterly, and I thought of them always with a great pang at the heart. But it is not so, dear Mazzini,--you do not return to sleep under the sod of Italy, but to see your thought springing up all over the soil. The gardeners seem to me, in point of instinctive wisdom or deep thought, mostly incompetent to the care of the garden; but on idea like this will be able to make use of any implements. The necessity, it is to be hoped, will educate the men, by making them work. It is not this, I believe, which still keeps your heart so melancholy; for I seem to read the same melancholy in your answer to the Roman a.s.sembly, You speak of "few and late years," but some full ones still remain. A century is not needed, nor should the same man, in the same form of thought, work too long on an age. He would mould and bind it too much to himself. Better for him to die and return incarnated to give the same truth on yet another side. Jesus of Nazareth died young; but had he not spoken and acted as much truth as the world could bear in his time? A frailty, a perpetual short-coming, motion in a curve-line, seems the destiny of this earth.

The excuse awaits us elsewhere; there must be one,--for it is true, as said Goethe, "care is taken that the tree grow not up into the heavens." Men like you, appointed ministers, must not be less earnest in their work; yet to the greatest, the day, the moment is all their kingdom, G.o.d takes care of the increase.

Farewell! For your sake I could wish at this moment to be an Italian and a man of action; but though I am an _American_, I am not even _a woman of action_; so the best I can do is to pray with the whole heart, "Heaven bless dear Mazzini!--cheer his heart, and give him worthy helpers to carry out his holy purposes."

TO MR. AND MRS. SPRING.