Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli)

by Julia Ward Howe

The story of this summer in the mountains Margaret never told, and her letters of the previous winter gave no account of matters most personal to herself. In continuing the narrative of her life, we are therefore obliged to break through the reserves of the moment, and to speak of events which, though occurring at this time, were not made known to her most intimate friends until a much later period.

Margaret had been privately married for some months when she left Rome for Aquila. Her husband was a young Italian nobleman, Ossoli[233] by name, whose exterior is thus described by one of her most valued friends[D]:—

"He appeared to be of a reserved and gentle nature, with quiet, gentlemanlike manners; and there was something melancholy in the expression of his face which made one desire to know more of him. In figure he was tall, and of slender frame, with dark hair and eyes. We judged that he was about thirty years of age, possibly younger."

Margaret had made the acquaintance of this gentleman during her first visit to Rome, in the spring of the year 1847, and under the following circumstances: She had gone with some friends to attend the vesper service at St. Peter's, and, wandering from one point of interest to another in the vast church, had lost sight of her party. All efforts to rejoin them proved useless, and Margaret was in some perplexity, when a young man of gentlemanly address accosted her, and asked leave to assist her in finding her friends. These had already left the church, and by the time that this became evident to Margaret and her unknown companion, the hour was late, and the carriages, which can usually be found in front of the church after service, had all disappeared. Margaret was therefore obliged to walk from the Vatican to her lodgings on the Corso,[234] accompanied by her new friend, with whom she was able at the time to exchange very little conversation. Familiar as she was with Italian literature, the sound of the language was new to her, and its use difficult.

The result of this chance meeting seems to have been love at first sight on the part of the Marchese Ossoli. Before Margaret left Rome he had offered her his hand, and had been refused.

Margaret returned to Rome, as we have seen, in the autumn of the same year. Her acquaintance with the Marchese was now renewed, and with the advantage that she had become sufficiently familiar with the Italian language to converse in it with comparative ease. Her intense interest in the affairs of Italy suggested to him also ideas of "liberty and better government." His education, much neglected, as she thought, had been in the traditions of the narrowest conservatism; but Margaret's influence led or enabled him to free himself from the trammels of old-time prejudice, and to espouse, with his whole heart, the cause of Roman liberty.

According to the best authority extant, the marriage of Margaret and the Marchese took place in the December following her return to Rome. The father of the Marchese had died but a short time before this, and his estate, left[235] in the hands of two other sons, was not yet settled. These gentlemen were both attached to the Papal household, and, we judge, to the reactionary party. The fear lest the Marchese's marriage with a Protestant should deprive him wholly, or in part, of his paternal inheritance, induced the newly married couple to keep to themselves the secret of their relation to each other. At the moment, ecclesiastical influence would have been very likely, under such circumstances, to affect the legal action to be taken in the division of the property. Better things were hoped for in view of a probable change of government. So the winter passed, and Margaret went to her retreat among the mountains, with her secret unguessed and probably unsuspected.

Her husband was a member—perhaps already a captain—of the Civic Guard, and was detained in Rome by military duties. Margaret was therefore much alone in the midst of "a theatre of glorious, snow-crowned mountains, whose pedestals are garlanded with the olive and mulberry, and along whose sides run bridle-paths fringed with almond groves and vineyards." The scene was to her one of "intoxicating beauty," but the distance from her husband soon became more than she could bear. After a month passed in this place, she found a nearer retreat at Rieti, also a mountain-town, but within the[236] confines of the Papal States. Here Ossoli could sometimes pass the Sunday with her, by travelling in the night. In one of her letters Margaret writes: "Do not fail to come. I shall have your coffee warm. You will arrive early, and I can see the diligence pass the bridge from my window."

In the month of August the Civic Guard were ordered to prepare for a march to Bologna; and Ossoli, writing to Margaret on the 17th, strongly expresses his unwillingness to be so far removed from her at a time in which she might have urgent need of his presence at any moment. For these were to her days of great hope and expectation. Her confinement was near at hand, and she was alone, poor and friendless, among people whose only aim was to plunder her. But Margaret could not, even in these trying circumstances, belie the heroic principles which had always guided her life. She writes to her doubting, almost despairing husband: "If honor requires it, go. I will try to sustain myself."

This dreaded trial was averted. The march to Bologna was countermanded. Margaret's boy saw the light on the 5th of September, and the joyful presence of her husband soothed for her the pangs of a first maternity.