Pen-portraits of literary women

BY THEMSELVES AND OTHERS
EDITED BY HELEN GRAY CONE AND JEANNETTE L. GILDER
WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES BY THE FORMER .
Vol. II.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited, 739 & 741 Broadway, New York.
Copyright, 1887, By O. M. DUNHAM.
Press W. L. Mershon & Co., Rahway, N. J.
HARRIET MARTINEAU. 1802-1876.
Harriet Martineau was born at Norwich, on the 12th of June, 1802. The Martineau family were descendants of Huguenot refugees. Harriet’s father, Thomas Martineau, was a Norwich manufacturer; Elizabeth Rankin was the maiden name of her mother, who is described as “a true Northumbrian woman.” Harriet was the sixth child in a family of eight. Her childhood was sickly, repressed, and unhappy. “My life has had no spring,” she wrote long afterwards. At eleven years of age she was sent to the school of a Mr. Perry, who laid a solid foundation for her education. About two years later Mr. Perry left Norwich, and Harriet’s education was then carried on at home under visiting masters. At fourteen she was sent to a Bristol boarding school, where she stayed fifteen months. After this, her keen appetite for knowledge led her to carry on her studies at home, despite much discouragement. Like other young women of that day, she was expected to “spend a frightful amount of time in sewing,” and at one period could only steal the hours for intellectual work from her sleep.
She had begun to be deaf at eight years old, and at eighteen had almost entirely lost the sense of hearing. This was a bitter trial to her. In 1822, when she was twenty, an attachment arose between herself and a Mr. Worthington, a student for the Unitarian ministry, and the friend of her brother (afterward Dr. James Martineau). Worthington was poor, and her family refused to sanction a formal engagement. Three years of waiting and suspense followed. In June, 1826, Thomas Martineau died. The financial crisis of the winter of 1825 had left him comparatively poor, and he could only provide in his will “a bare maintenance” for his wife and daughters. By this time Mr. Worthington had completed his studies, and obtained a position; and the Martineau family, under these altered conditions, permitted Harriet to enter into an engagement with him. The unfortunate young man, however, was seized with a brain fever, which left him mentally shattered, and toward the close of the year 1826 he died.