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[168] d [Anniversary Celebration of Fuller’s Sixtieth Birthday] (1870) Amos Bronson Alcott and Frederic Henry Hedge Amos Bronson Alcott [23 May 1870] p.m. At the Celebration of Marg. Fuller’s 60th Birthday held at the rooms of the Woman’s Club. The company is worthy of the occasion . [James Freeman] Clarke, [Frederic Henry] Hedge, [William Henry] Channing, [Christopher Pearse] Cranch, Mr and Mrs [Rebecca] Spring, Miss [Elizabeth Palmer] Peabody, [Thomas Wentworth] Higginson, Mrs [Ednah Dow] Cheney, Mrs [Julia Ward] Howe, bear eloquent testimony to her exalted character and genius. Emerson is unable to be present, having a lecture to give in Cambridge, and I am too hoarse and ill-conditioned to speak fitly. I know not whether I may call her friend or acquaintance. Though an assistant in my school, we were seldom there at the same hours, and saw one another less often than I wished. But my instinct served me in place of more intimate acquaintance. If I might characterize her in a word, I should say, she was a diviner, one of the Sibylline souls who read instinctively the mysteries of life and thought, and translate these in shining symbols to those competent to apprehend them. Her conversation gave a far better measure of her remarkable powers than her writings, wherein she seemed constrained and ill at ease. I saw her oftenest at the sittings of the Transcendental Club, where she was sure to say extraordinary things surprising to all who heard her: and where she was oftener the leader, while at the It was a sign of renewal of interest in Fuller that the anniversary of her sixtieth birthday would be celebrated in Boston, if only by the New England Women’s Club rather than a group with a broader membership base. Unfortunately, Alcott was ill and could not speak, though his comments on the gathering are still of interest. Hedge’s comments continue in the negative, decidedly noncelebratory vein of his section of the Memoirs. Amos Bronson Alcott and Frederic Henry Hedge [169] same time, one of the most eager listeners in that eager circle. She drew all towards her by her potent and fascinating magnetism. Her scorn was majestic , her satire consuming, her wit the subtlest of any I have known. She had the intellect of a man inspired by the heart of a woman, combining in harmonious marriage, the masculine and feminine in her genius. We have had no woman approaching so near our conception of the ideal woman as herself. It was my misfortune to have met her not always under the best circumstances , and to have fallen under a cloud after she left my school, so that I have not escaped the feeling that she never quite fathomed my secret—wise as she was, and seeking subjects for her divination. But better than most— more truly than any, unless it were Emerson and [William Ellery] Channing [the Younger], she comprehended my drift and purposes, and bore testimony to these, when many of my former friends were staggered at my course, and those who knew me not took sides against me.—It was a fate disastrous not to her alone, but to her country whose shores she so nearly touched, that she sank in sight to disappear forever. Frederic Henry Hedge . . . it seemed that nature intended her for beauty but missed the aim by giving her an undue proportion of brain, which induced premature consciousness and prevented the repose necessary for beautiful development—as when the mold is too much shaken, the statue comes out awry. In those days it was hard for Margaret to forgive nature or herself for this want of beauty. She would have given all the powers of her mind for the pink and white prettiness of some other girls. This made her bitter and sarcastic. Amos Bronson Alcott, “Journal for 1870,” 287–90, Houghton Library, Harvard University . Hedge’s comments are in an unidentified newspaper clipping pasted in Alcott’s “Autobiographical Collections, 1868–1871,” 138, Houghton Library, Harvard University. ...

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