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taxed by her prolific writing about the revolution as well as by her work as a nurse to the war’s wounded. The private letters also show how, after Rome’s defeat, Fuller maintained her courage and sense of balance by grasping one last illusion: that in New England she might yet live harmoniously with her family and friends in a small, Fourierist community. These last “romantic chapters” in Fuller’s life story come to their dramatic end, as we shall see, with her ill-fated attempt to return to the States, in particular to her mother, as Romantic pilgrims often attempt to return home and to reconcile, not with the father, against whom they have rebelled, but with the mother, for whose love, throughout life, they have yearned.3 60SHarsh Reality and Apocalyptic Dreams Alone with a baby in Rieti, Fuller found that reality fast dispelled any romantic notion of the bountifulness of the female breast: because of milk fever she was unable to breastfeed her son and had to engage a wet nurse. She dismissed Giuditta, who could not breastfeed. And Chiara Fiordiponte, whom she hired to replace her, soon left when her own baby became ill. Even after Chiara’s return, Fuller still fretted about having been left alone and ignorant with a baby the first days of his life. Had she been in Boston and properly married, she would have been surrounded with women friends and kin who would have taught her how to handle a newborn baby. They would have relieved her when they found she was unable to supply her baby with milk, as Sophia Hawthorne had breastfed Greta when Ellen’s milk proved insufficient.1 Also soon dispelled was her romanticized notion of the natural goodness of “simple” mountain folk. Now the “lower” people of Rieti seemed to her, she wrote Ossoli in October, “the worst people” she had “ever seen.” She compares interacting with Giuditta and her brother Nicomedi to dealing with “a den of foxes.” She complains that her privacy is constantly invaded by Giovanni’s “detestable” and meddling sisters. As for the bishop’s chancellor, her landlord Giovanni Rossetti, Fuller is convinced he is attempting to sexually “corrupt Chiara,” Nino’s pretty wet nurse. But then Chiara, who had seemed at first “so lovely and innocent,” turned out to be no saint, either: Fuller will later accuse her of stealing money and giving Nino red wine, reserving her milk for her own baby. In a letter to a friend she will complain that Chiara had “betrayed” Nino “for the sake of a few scudi.”2 With no reliable wet nurse and unable to breastfeed Nino herself, Fuller found that he screamed constantly. Even with servants to cook, iron, and sew, during the day she was too tired and distracted to work on her book. At the time there was also a smallpox epidemic in the region. In late October Fuller had taken Nino for a stroll to the bishop’s garden, thinking it a safe place, only to learn that the week before, she wrote Ossoli, “a child died there from small pox.” After that she dared not leave her rooms until the doctor, Camillo Mogliani, came with the necessary Harsh Reality and Apocalyptic Dreams 365 vaccine to inoculate Nino. Confined to her apartment and Nino, Fuller felt “like a prisoner.” She wrote Ossoli on 20 October that she could not sleep at night and cried all day. But he could not help; he was “too far away.” When the overworked Mogliani did not arrive when he said he would to vaccinate Nino, Fuller began to think him as “detestable” and “untrustworthy” as Giovanni, Giuditta, and all the other people of Rieti. On 28 October she wrote Ossoli that if she does not continue “spying on all these people, they will take advantage of me.” She was “beginning not to trust anybody.” Fuller feels she is being “abused by everybody.”3 Having idealized for so long the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus, Fuller was shocked to find mothering so difficult. Still, Nino seemed so happy when he finally fell asleep on her breast that she felt “no one else can take care of him as well as I.” Yet she also knew that to resume her career as a journalist, she had to return to Rome. Ossoli, who had only the money he earned from his uncle, was always short of cash. Fearing his conservative brothers might disinherit him were...

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