In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

now lies wholly with the People and that wave of Thought which has begun to pervade them.”23 Aware that Pius IX’s “final dereliction” to “the cause of Freedom, Progress, and of War” has signaled the beginning of the end of any real hope for victory through revolution, a despairing Fuller will begin to affirm even more fervently that out of the chaos of the coming war a new man and woman will emerge on an earth that is a restored paradise. “All lies in the Future,” she will write in her 7 May dispatch, “and our best hope must be that the Power which has begun so great a work will find due means” to bring “a year of true jubilee to Italy; a year . . . of recognized rights . . . founded not on compromise and the lying etiquettes of diplomacy, but on Truth and Justice.”24 Fuller tells her Tribune readers that she intends to stay in Italy to celebrate this new year, despite pleas from family and friends that she return to America. For in Europe, “amid the teachings of adversity,” Fuller sees “a nobler spirit . . . struggling ,” a spirit, she says, which is not “spoiled by prosperity” and “soiled” by slavery . In Europe she hears “earnest words of pure faith and love.” She sees “deeds of brotherhood,” as she does not in the United States where, at present, it seems to her that “the spirit of our fathers flames no more.” Noting that there are events taking place in Europe at that very time that are “worth recording,” Fuller says that she will “gladly be” their “historian.” “Meanwhile,” she adds, in the voice of a Romantic prophet-priestess, “the nightingales sing; every tree and plant is in flower, and the sun and moon shine as if Paradise were already reëstablished on earth.”25 59SA Love Higher than Law or Passion After sending off dispatch 24 in May 1848, Fuller prepared to leave for the Abruzzi Apennine mountains to wait out her pregnancy and write a history of the Italian revolution. Before leaving she wrote Emerson she was sorry that he would miss meeting Mazzini and Mickiewicz, though she doubted he would find “common ground” with either of them. On 19 May she wrote again. Responding to Emerson’s late April letter from London telling her she is imprudent to stay in Rome “with so much debility & pain” and ordering her to “come to Paris, & go home with me,” she lied only slightly. She said she “should like to return” with him but felt she had “much to do and learn in Europe yet”: “I am deeply interested in this public drama, and wish to see it played out.” She thinks she has her “part therein, either as actor or historian.”1 Returning to America with Emerson was not an option. She had crossed what most Americans would see as the line between eccentric and errant behavior. In declining Emerson’s invitation she hints there are reasons other than wanting to record history that she is not yet ready to head home. In her 19 May letter she tells him she wants “scenes of natural beauty, and, imperfect as love is, I want human A Love Higher than Law or Passion 353 354 the rising tide of revolution beings to love,” while in the earlier letter she says that she has heard his boy is fine, then adds: “Children, with all their faults, seem to me the best thing we have.”2 In letters to other friends, however, Fuller made a point of evading what Costanza Arconati Visconti in April had referred to as the “mystery” of Fuller’s increasingly elusive life. Fuller had not written her in two months, not even to acknowledge money Costanza had sent her. Caught in a net of lies because of her relationship with Ossoli, Margaret in a 20 May letter to Richard gives “the agitated state of Europe,” along with limited finances and poor health, as her reasons for retiring to the mountains, where she hopes to find uninterrupted time to write. She also wrote Eliza Farrar’s aunt Mary Rotch, strongly hinting she needs money. In her note Fuller tells Rotch that she is mistaken in her belief that Uncle Abraham has bequeathed her (Margaret) a sizable sum of money. On the contrary, she says, her “hard-hearted” Uncle Abraham, who in 1837 had refused Margarett Crane’s request for funds for Ellen’s education and “against [whose] rude tyranny” she (Margaret) “for...

Share