Miss Fuller (11 page)

Little did I know what would find me in Paris — what I most long & fear to tell —.

16 June, Leaving harbor of Tenerife, Canary Islands

A week has passed. My baby has survived. That is all I can write at present. He caught the fever, he was brave & we almost lost him but we did not. Today he is well enough to eat bread dipped in broth & to walk a few steps. His father never left our side. I am blessed by this love & thank the Divine.

17 June

I write as if from another world. The near loss of my son has made me into a new person it seems. Celesta, the girl who accompanies us & minds Nino for the price of her passage, was sick as well. I nursed her too & became truly fond of her — it is astonishing how waiting for another to breathe,
listening for the air of life, enforces a kind of love upon us. I loved every soldier I nursed in the siege — all but one, who snarled at me like a mad
cane
until his eyes went flat.

The sailor Tomaso brought me a garland of “everlasting” amaranth flowers & the leaves of that plant, from a Tenerife garden, & they hang where I have tacked them on the upper bunk, just by my head where I sit to write. I have long dreamed of such flowers, since an English lady of my childhood, one whom I idolised, gave me a bouquet to remember her by. Hers were from Madeira, an island just north of us now, that I always longed to see — how close I have come to my childhood dream, by geography’s terms! — & how far & how different the life I live from what I could have imagined.

“Madeira” once meant a magical island where I would be fully understood, a place to sail to in my dreams, where love & safety awaited me. Now I know something else — that it is my labor to understand others, & possibly even myself, that will be the accomplishment of my life — the accomplishment in the act of trying. Not to be understood, but to understand; not even, alas, to be loved, but to love.

Nino, whom I love by instinct & yet must still endeavor to love
aright
, nestles with Celesta now, both of them better but weak, sleeping in the other lower bunk across from my perch. We are so close-wedged that Nino can put his hand on my leg as I prop it across. I almost cannot force my mind to the past —

& Yet, & yet — this near-death, this presence of Death
as real as a hungry wolf in the forest, reminds me of how little time we have — and renews the pressure to tell, the imperative
desire
. I want to tell the truth, after years of decorous silence —. I repeat that I do not know if I will send this to you. I write to you as if to myself, but with the image of you, as I first saw you with your first child, you the cameo of Motherhood, all forgiveness. There has been much of my behavior that the world would not forgive; I know this. In response to the news of my marriage & child my own Mother has been all sweetness in her letter, but she hints that others will not feel so. Silence from my brothers, confused hauteur from the Greeleys, stern questions from Mr E, & a warm but worried response even from my old friend Caroline — all this has alerted me to the trouble that awaits me, the scornful words & suspicious interpretations. If this is how my friends greet my news, how will the harsher Wide World! It is “worse” than they imagine — & not worse at all as I know myself in this regard, at any rate, guiltless, standing on the axis of the Divinity as pure & true as the day I was born.

What is “worse”? I must write of Paris in the winter of 1846–47, & of the great man I met there, the Polish patriot & poet Adam Mickiewicz. I wrote about him in my columns & you no doubt have heard of him but that is not to know
the dynamic, thrilling presence of the man, his humor & liveliness, his great soul. I am using the word
great
often it seems, but as it is one of the only words I can find to fit him it must be his
great
-
coat
.

We — the Springs & I — did not meet him until our third month in the city. We spent a full December & January in the heart of Paris life, staying as we were at the Hotel Rougemont, just off the happily named Boulevard des Italiennes. My French tutor was a necessity as I endeavored to catch the
nuances
of the political landscape in the cafés & on the street-corners & in the salons. Paris enlivened my pen as London had not & I wrote at least six dispatches in that brief time. At last through a letter of introduction to Madame Sand we were invited to meet that extraordinary lady. She had returned from her country home where hunger & rioting for bread had taken hold of the local peasants during a desperate winter — I learned that Mme Sand had given much money & had fed many with her own hands.

18 June

Continuing: On our second visit to Mme Sand’s elegant apartment (the color yellow predominated, a fashionable touch), I met the Poet. He is at most times accompanied by an
entourage
of his admirers & protectors. (I have seen these grown men kiss the Poet’s right shoulder as the great man speaks, in homely homage to his sanctity.) I had heard that Mickiewicz no longer writes poems, saving all
his inventive powers for the cause of liberty, in Poland & throughout Europe. He has been inspired by the doctrine of Messianism & dreams of the coming of a new golden age, ushered in by Giants who stand tall above the ordinary run of men & women — Poland is a natural breeding-ground for such giants — ah! It can easily sound foolish but as he spoke, it sounded as sincere & simple as a child’s prayer, & every bit as truthful. You know that I have long harbored such hopes myself, but here from the Poet I felt as if my hopes had found their proper words at last. I told him of my own faith in the “resurgence,” “Risorgimento,” & we quickly agreed on the divine inspiration that has brought Mazzini to Italy’s cause. It was as if our full apprehension of one another took place in a flash of light, as if no others in the room — including his good friends — were even present. We all spoke in English, out of courtesy to the Springs, but our conversations subsequent to that one were a mixture of French & some German, as well as English, & I learned a few words of Polish — a beautiful language, even when shouted, as there are those
shhh
&
jhhhh
sounds, so everything sounds like a whisper, a secret —

I remember that in that first encounter he took my face between his hands — he is very tall, he stooped over the sopha where I sat, & his hands were so large I felt as if I had been taken into the paws of an enormous gentle Polish bear — a silver bear, as his mane is liberally streak’d with silver — & He said that I was the New Woman, a phrase I
had heard before often enough in my travels (do not think me vain, it is how the Europeans tend to speak of American things & people) — But at this moment, I believed he meant also new to
him
— I was claimed, right there in the midst of the parlor & its inhabitants & its upholsteries — claimed as
his
“new woman,” his enormous grey eyes, that look bigger than other eyes because his face is as broad & stern as a wind-swept sky, telling me — I feared I might convulse from the galvanic
shock
, I feared others might detect, yet I could not bring myself to remove his hands from my face, dear hands! —

I faintly claimed a
migraine
, asked for the windows to be opened, & the Springs assisted me home to our hotel.

Rebecca was too careful of my head to provoke me with conversation about our remarkable tea-party, but she did look sideways at me when I said the next morning that I hoped to make another visit to the Poet & his friends. We met him at a private concert that evening — forgive me that, tho’ it was M Chopin & he played his own compositions, I remember not a note! — as Mickiewicz gave me a letter, asking to meet me the following day at the home of a friend, in the afternoon. His letter also said what may shock you, Sophie — It said that I did not have the “right” to my virginity, that I needed to know love if I were to be the true New Woman. He had challenged me at first principles — You, who now know me well, know that I maintained the privilege of virginity both sincerely & also, in the depths of my
soul, as a solace for my failures with such as Mr Nathan. The Poet destroyed my argument with his words, so bold, so clear — the language with which free men & women must speak to one another, as I believe —

You must not be shocked at what transpired, my dear Sophie — He greeted me at the door, we were alone as I had hoped & perhaps feared. Our first words to one another, even as we embraced, were a solemn vow that we had met & been married in a previous life — we had the same happy notion — he said we had been peasants with a homely farm, I said no, he had been a Roman senator & I his wife — we knew that we had lived outside this time, in the past & in the future — that we were married already somewhere in the Universe —.

& What can be called “good” or “bad” after all? There is only the action that arises from one’s true character.

20 June

Cont: The next day I secured a small set of rooms in a side-street near the hotel, belonging to acquaintances who were away from town — & I told the Springs that I needed privacy to write, & nurse my head-aches, during the days. For two miraculous weeks, nearly every day he visited me in the afternoon, as early as he could get away. My rooms were on the second floor; I would slip down to the mews entrance & unlock the back door shortly before he was due — by avoiding the street door we hoped to escape detection — &
he would come to me & stay until dusk. I often called him my “bear,” because he was so like a silvery Polish bear, but I also took to calling him, in the style of American slang affection, “Mish.” He laughed & exclaimed he had not known I spoke Polish — when I vowed I did not, he explained that the Polish word for “bear” is
mis
, pronounced
mish
. & Then he told me that his word for me is ges, said with a honking noise, something like
gensch
, & that it means “goose.”

One thing — & I hope this does not offend — we would, in the calm after the storm of love, set to make one another “spit-&-polish” fine — I in my shift, he in his shirt, would clean & trim one another’s nails. I would comb his shaggy mane, clean his ears & neck, snip his stray hairs. He could spend an hour combing my hair — he said it was the color of moonlight. He has terrible scars on his leg & on his head — from when he threw himself from a window years ago, in despair when he had first knew that his wife was incurably mad.

Altho’ since he is a man, no doubt he had found ways — he hinted that for some years he kept one of his wife’s nurses — what he had longed for were these
wifely
attentions, these groomings & pettings. I had not known that I longed for them too.

As a matter of fashion as well, he made another great change in my life: No more whale bones! He actually stomped on my corsets with his boots, in a rage that tho’ feigned succeeded in “busting-up” the stays. He said it was
a garment to which no free woman should submit & urged me to consult Madame Sand about alternatives.

Much to Rebecca’s dismay, I did — & discovered that tho’ Madame never wears any form of corset herself, she was happy to introduce me to a bandage-like wrapping, with buttons, of softest linen, that resembles something I remember our grandmothers wearing. This old-new soft “corselette” necessitated a lengthy visit to the dressmaker to have all my clothes taken out — Rebecca was appalled — I cannot tell you, dear Sophie, the results! I felt free as a floating angel in my raiment! I cannot imagine that an inch or two more on the waist matters to any but the silliest young girls or the stiffest dowager. (& I will tell you, confidentially, that it matters not a whit to a real man.) Eventually, I had an Italian dressmaker show me how to fashion the loose robes that the women of intellectual & artistic circles in Europe favor, something between a reg’lar dress & a dressing gown, gathered at the bosom, & blessedly, utterly, without stays or hoops.

If Rebecca guessed at my afternoons, she said not a thing. I was so in love that nothing else seemed terribly serious, or fretsome, for a while — never before had I known that feeling of being outside of Time, that attends on two people wholly in love. & Then at last the calendar began to worry me — I received a letter from Mazzini, in which il
magnifico
urged me to see his mother in Genoa as soon as possible to deliver his letter — but not, he had decided, to try to bring
or send anything back for himself, not even through a third party. He had been warned by his friends that, once I visited his mother, my movements would be watched & my correspondence would be read by the authorities. The protection & discretion he had once thought he could secure from my prominence & my rôle as a foreign, nearly official, visitor to Italy, he no longer trusted. Mish at first did not want me even to visit Mazzini’s mother, but I reminded him that I was, as he had said himself so many times, “no ordinary woman,” & that I did not fear to do what I knew to be right.

All I feared was leaving Mish. He had said, many times, that he must & would sever ties with his wife, but we neither of us, I speak sincerely, believed he should. No matter the terrible things she had done to him & to their children, she was not to blame — only her madness was to blame — & her frailty required his protection. The children lived safely now with an aunt, just outside Paris — how could he be sure to see them often? Moreover, he could not leave France without risking arrest — & If he travelled in disguise that would prevent him from doing his public work on behalf of the great cause.