2823. Margaret Fuller to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 32–33.
Casa Libri
Thursday 6th Decr [1849] [1]
Dear Mrs Browning,
Thanks for sending me the names. I find I had already the same cap-pattern, but it looked so pretty on your baby’s head I did not recognize it.
I am very sorry the nurse did not come up stairs with him; if you send her again will you tell her to do so, that he may exchange a few looks with mine. I think babies seem amazed at one another, they are not in haste to make acquaintance, probably they still feel what a world lies hidden in each person, they are not yet made callous by those habits of hasty unfeeling intercourse soon formed by what is called society.
It seemed to me, when I was last at your house, as if a curtain fell down between us. A great sadness fell upon me, just after Mr Browning came in: it did not seem to come from him: he seemed cheerful and glowing after his walk, but some cause changed suddenly the temper of my soul, so that I could hardly realize what was passing & the cloud did not leave me for several hours. Did you share any such influence. I think probably it was confined to me, but have noted the day & hour in my diary, in case any interpretation should later be tendered.
These fragments expressed the almost universal feeling towards Poe: several women loved him, but it seemed more with passionate illusion which he amused himself by inducing than with sympathy; I think he really had no friend. I did not know him, though I saw and talked with him often, but he always seemed to me shrouded in an assumed character. Still as I did not know him, and do not accept the opinions of others till my own impressions have confirmed them; as I did know he had much to try his spirit I always treated him cordially. He seemed to feel that I was not prejudiced against him: he once said that he had faith in me, that he thought me not only incapable of baseness, but incapable of understanding it; that this was from him a strong expression of esteem, shows what his life had been. He said in a sketch he published of me that he thought me capable of great affection. [2] Now, seeing these bitter waters poured out even upon his tomb, I have remembered these things and regretted that I never tried whether more friendliness from me might have been useful to him; but it is only the millionth time I have let occasions pass where suffering fellow men might have been soothed or helped. Pardon that the leaf is soiled, I had not observed it,
Ever truly yours
M. Ossoli
Address: Mr & Mrs Browning / via Maggio.
Publication: The Letters of Margaret Fuller, ed. Robert N. Hudspeth (Ithaca, 1983–94), 5, 289–290.
Manuscript: Middlebury College.
1. Year determined by Margaret Fuller’s visit to Florence in 1849 when 6 December fell on a Thursday.
2. Poe ended his essay on Margaret Fuller in “The Literati of New York.—No. IV” with a physical description of her face: “the mouth when in repose indicates profound sensibility, capacity for affection, for love” (Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book, August 1846, p. 74).
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