Their last spring in Florence.
I passed about six weeks in the city of Florence, during the months of March and April, 1850. During the whole of that time Madame Ossoli was residing in a house at the corner of the Via della Misericordia and the Piazza Santa Maria Novelle. This house is one of those large, well-built, modern houses that show strangely in the streets of the stately Tuscan city. But if her rooms were less characteristically Italian, they were the more comfortable, and, though small, had a quiet, home-like air.... I saw her frequently at these rooms, where, surrounded by her books and papers, she used to devote her mornings to her literary labors. Once or twice I called in the morning, and found her quite immersed in manuscripts and journals. Her evenings were passed usually in the society of her friends, at her own rooms, or at theirs.... [Ossoli] seemed quite absorbed in his wife and child. I cannot remember ever to have found Madame Ossoli alone, on those evenings when she remained at home. Her husband was always with her. The picture of their room rises clearly on my memory. A small, square room, sparingly, yet sufficiently furnished, with polished floor and frescoed ceiling, and, drawn up closely before the cheerful fire, an oval table, on which stood a monkish lamp of brass, with depending chains that support quaint classic cups for the olive oil. There, seated beside his wife, I was sure to find the Marchese, reading from some patriotic book, and dressed in the dark brown, red-corded coat of the Guardia Civica, which it was his melancholy pleasure to wear at home.
W. H. Hurlbut: Communication in ‘Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.’
The homeward voyage.
Why did she choose a merchant vessel from Leghorn? Why one which was destined to carry in its hold the heavy marble of Powers’s Greek Slave? She was warned against this, was uncertain in her own mind, and disturbed by presages of ill. But economy was very necessary to her at the moment. The vessel chosen, the barque Elizabeth, was new, strong and ably commanded. Margaret had seen and made friends with the captain, Hasty by name, and his wife. Horace Sumner [Charles Sumner’s youngest brother, of whom they had seen much in Florence during the winter], was to be their fellow-passenger, and a young Italian girl, Celeste Paolini, engaged to help in the care of the little boy. These considerations carried the day.
Margaret’s forebodings.
Just before leaving Florence, Margaret received letters, the tenor of which would have enabled her to remain longer in Italy. Ossoli remembered the warning of a fortune-teller, who in his childhood had told him to beware of the sea. Margaret wrote of omens which gave her “a dark feeling.” She had “a vague expectation of some crisis,” she knows not what.... She prays fervently that she may not lose her boy at sea, “either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief.”
These presentiments, strangely prophetic, returned upon Margaret with so much force that on the very day appointed for sailing, the 17th of May, she stood at bay before them for an hour, unable to decide whether she should go or stay. But she had appointed a general meeting with her family in July, and had positively engaged her passage in the barque. Fidelity to these engagements prevailed with her.... In spite of fears and omens, ... she went on board, and the voyage began in smooth tranquillity....
On Thursday, July 18th, the Elizabeth was off the Jersey coast, in thick weather, the wind blowing east of south. The former mate was now the captain. [Captain Hasty had died on the voyage.] Wishing to avoid the coast, he sailed east-north-east, thinking presently to take a pilot, and pass Sandy Hook by favor of the wind. At night he promised his passengers an early arrival in New York. They retired to rest in good spirits, having previously made all the usual preparations for going on shore.