HARRIET MARTINEAU.
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.
Harriet’s literary career had already begun with certain contributions to the Monthly Repository, a Unitarian magazine. In 1823 she had published, anonymously, a small volume of Devotional Exercises, and in 1826 a book of Addresses, Prayers, and Hymns. In the comparative poverty to which she was now reduced, she took up her pen with a will, but for some time with little result. She supplied anonymous short stories to a publisher named Houlston, and wrote for him a tale called Principle and Practice, and a sequel thereto. She contributed, without payment, to the Repository and wrote, on commission, a Life of Howard, for which she never received the remuneration promised.
In June, 1829, the old Norwich house, in which, after their father’s death, her brother Henry had remained a partner, became bankrupt. As Mrs. Martineau and her daughters had been dependent on the profits of the factory for the payment of their small income, they were now left utterly without support. The other sisters became teachers; Harriet worked with her needle by day, and wrote by night. She continued her contributions to the Repository, for a compensation of £15 a year; and wrote for this periodical a story called The Hope of the Hebrews, which was so highly praised among the Unitarians that Mr. W. J. Fox, the editor, advised her to publish a volume of such stories. She did so, and it was moderately successful. She took part in a competition for three prizes offered by a Unitarian association “for the best essays designed to convert Roman Catholics, Jews, and Mohammedans, respectively, to Unitarianism.” She won all three of the prizes, thus gaining twenty-five guineas, and much honor in the sect. In the same year, 1830, she wrote the long story, Five Years of Youth, and a volume called Traditions of Palestine.
All this work, done with wonderful perseverance, under great disadvantages, was presented to a limited public only, and has long since been forgotten. But in the autumn of the year 1831 she conceived the idea of presenting, in the shape of popular tales, the principles of political economy. She persisted in this idea, notwithstanding the steady refusal of the London publishers to have anything to do with the scheme; she went to London to push the matter personally; and at last succeeded in making an arrangement, on iron terms, with Mr. Charles Fox, the brother of the editor of the Repository. To the great surprise of this gentleman, and the calm satisfaction of the author, the first numbers of Illustrations of Political Economy met with immediate and immense success. The first tale was published in February, 1832, and Harriet Martineau became famous at once.
In November she came to live in London. She was received as a lion in society, but abated no jot of her labor, producing every month a number of from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pages. On the completion of her Illustrations, two years after her coming to London, she travelled for two years in America, where she displayed, by her affiliation with the Abolitionists, no little moral courage. She returned to England in August, 1836, and turned her recent experiences to account in writing, during the next six months, a three-volume work called Society in America, for the first edition of which she received £900. This was followed by her Retrospect of Western Travel, which was sold for £600. She contributed to various magazines; produced in 1838 a work called How to Observe in Morals and Manners, and also some little books ordered by the Poor-Law Commissioners for a series of ‘Guides to Service.’
She began her novel, Deerbrook, in June, 1838, and visited Scotland in August and September. Deerbrook appeared in the spring. It is generally considered her weakest work.
At this time Mrs. Martineau, who was becoming blind, Harriet’s brother, Henry, and an invalid aunt, were all dependent upon Harriet for support. Her anxiety and over-work led to a serious illness. She started for a tour of the Continent after publishing Deerbrook, but on reaching Venice, became so ill that she was obliged to return to England. She was taken, in the autumn of 1839, to Tynemouth, where she remained for the next five years under the care of her brother-in-law, a physician named Greenhow. This was a period of great suffering, but her intellectual activity was not suspended. The Hour and the Man, a historical romance, appeared in November, 1840; and early in 1841, The Playfellow, a series of children’s stories, containing the famous Crofton Boys; in 1843, Life in the Sick-Room, published anonymously, but generally recognized at once; and numerous stories and articles in aid of various causes. In 1841 she refused, on principle, Lord Melbourne’s offer of a pension of £150 per annum. In 1843 her friends presented her with a testimonial of £1,400.
In June of the following year she consented to try mesmeric treatment. In December she was so much better as to be enabled to leave Tynemouth. For the next ten years she enjoyed perfect health. With characteristic enthusiasm, she published the Athenæum, and subsequently in pamphlet form, six Letters on Mesmerism, detailing this wonderful cure. This open declaration of her faith in mesmerism led to a breach with Mr. Greenhow.
Miss Martineau now purchased land near Ambleside, and took lodgings in the village, during the winter of 1845-6, to superintend the building of a house according to her own plans. Here she wrote her Forest and Game Law Tales. In the spring she took possession of her home, called “The Knoll.” After writing a story for the young, The Billow and the Rock, she started with some friends for the East, in the autumn of 1846, returning in October, 1847. Her life at “The Knoll” was beneficent and busy. She engaged in farming, on a very small scale, and wrote on the subject a book called Health, Husbandry and Handicraft.
In Eastern Life, Past and Present, published in 1848, Miss Martineau first allowed it to be seen that an important change had taken place in her opinions on theology. This was in some measure due to the influence of Mr. Henry G. Atkinson, with whom she became acquainted during her recovery from her long illness, and who remained her dearest friend until her death. Her next work was Household Education, followed, in 1850, by her important History of the Thirty Years’ Peace. In January, 1851, appeared Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, the joint production of herself and Mr. Atkinson. In this book her new opinions were distinctly stated. The work was received with horror by the orthodox press. An article on the subject in the Prospective Review, by Dr. James Martineau, caused a breach between the brother and sister.
Miss Martineau published soon after an introductory volume to the History of the Peace. In November, 1853, appeared her translation of Comte’s ‘Positive Philosophy.’ At this time she contributed frequently to periodicals. In the autumn of 1852 she visited Ireland, writing while there a series of letters to the Daily News, which were reprinted in a volume at the end of the year. In 1854 she prepared a Complete Guide to the Lakes.
Toward the end of this year her health failed. Early in 1855 it was the verdict of her physicians that she was suffering from enlargement and enfeeblement of the heart, and that her life would probably not be long. Under this impression her Autobiography was rapidly written. She never left Ambleside again; but, contrary to expectation, lived on for twenty-one years. She continued to write leaders for the Daily News—to which she is said to have contributed in all over sixteen hundred political articles—and papers and pamphlets on various subjects of public interest. A volume of Sketches from Life was issued in 1856, and in 1859 appeared England and Her Soldiers, written in aid of the army work of Florence Nightingale.
In 1868 a number of Biographical Sketches, originally published in the Daily News, were collected in a volume. Before this time she had been obliged, by increasing illness, to lay aside her literary work. She had suffered a severe blow, in 1864, in the death of her niece, Maria, her faithful companion and nurse. Another niece, Jane, undertook to fill the vacant place. Miss, or rather Mrs. Martineau, as she preferred to be called in her later years, was calm and cheerful to the last. She died on the 27th of June, 1876. A tumor of slow growth was found to have been the real cause of death.
Probably no one ever lived of whom more varied opinions were entertained. One saw her as harsh, dry, and egotistical; another as tender, full of humor, self-sacrificing, carried away by noble enthusiasms. Wit had its fling at this singular figure. Hartley Coleridge said of her, aptly, that she was “a monomaniac about every thing.” “After all, she is a trump!” exclaims George Eliot. It is sufficiently certain that she was Quixotic, in a noble sense, and disinterested. In need, she refused a pension; she vaunted rather than suppressed unpopular opinions; a descendant of the Huguenots, and herself without religion, she gallantly broke a lance with Charlotte Brontë for the Roman Catholics; and he must be prejudiced indeed who could refuse the tribute of admiration to her dogged, steady, soldier-like determination.
“Hail to the steadfast soul,
Which, unflinching and keen,
Wrought to erase from its depth
Mist and illusion and fear!
Hail to the spirit which dared
Trust its own thoughts, before yet
Echoed her back by the crowd!
Hail to the courage which gave
Voice to its creed, ere the creed
Won consecration from time!”[1]
Repressed and morbid childhood.
Never was poor mortal cursed with a more beggarly nervous system. The long hours of indigestion by day and nightmare terrors are mournful to think of now.... Sometimes the dim light of the windows, in the night, seemed to advance till it pressed upon my eyeballs, and then the windows would seem to recede to an infinite distance. If I laid my hand under my head on the pillow, the hand seemed to vanish almost to a point, while the head grew as big as a mountain. Sometimes I was panic-struck at the head of the stairs, and was sure I could never get down; and I could never cross the yard to the garden without flying and panting, and fearing to look behind, because a wild beast was after me. The starlight sky was the worst; it was always coming down, to stifle and crush me, and rest upon my head. I do not remember any dread of thieves or ghosts in particular; but things as I actually saw them were dreadful to me; and it now appears to me that I had scarcely any respite from the terror. My fear of persons was as great as any other.... Our house was in a narrow street; and all its windows, except two or three at the back, looked eastwards. It had no sun in the front rooms, except before breakfast in summer. One summer morning I went into the drawing-room, which was not much used in those days, and saw a sight which made me hide my face in a chair, and scream with terror. The drops of the lustres on the mantel-piece, on which the sun was shining, were somehow set in motion, and the prismatic colors danced vehemently on the walls. I thought they were alive—imps of some sort; and I never dared go into that room alone in the morning, from that time forward. I am afraid I must own that my heart has beat, all my life long, at the dancing of prismatic colors on the wall.
It is evident enough that my temper must have been very bad. It seems to me now that it was downright devilish, except for a placability which used to annoy me sadly. My temper might have been early made a thoroughly good one, by the slightest indulgence shown to my natural affections, and any rational dealing with my faults; but I was almost the youngest of a large family, and subject, not only to the rule of severity to which all were liable, but also to the rough and contemptuous treatment of the elder children, who meant no harm, but injured me irreparably. I had no self-respect, and an unbounded need of approbation and affection. My capacity for jealousy was something frightful.... I tried for a long course of years—I should think from about eight to fourteen—to pass a single day without crying. I was a persevering child; and I know I tried hard, but I failed.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877.
Spartan training.
The first words of encouragement she ever received, came to her in the guise of severity. She was suffering from a fly having got into her eye. “Harriet,” said the mother, firmly grasping her for the operation, “I know that you have resolution, and you must stand still till I get it out.” Thus conjured, the startled, nervous little creature never stirred till the obstruction was removed. And was she, the trembling little one, “with cheeks pale as clay,” “flat white forehead, over which the hair grew low,” “eyes hollow,—eyes light, large, and full, generally red with crying,—a thoroughly scared face,”—was she, then, resolute? She ran to the great gateway, near the street, and beckoned to a playmate, to tell her what her mother had said. “Is that all you have made me come to hear?” It was the first encouraging word she had ever heard, and she could find no one with whom to share the new joy. Till now she had never thought herself worth anything whatever.
Maria Weston Chapman: ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’ (‘Autobiography,’ vol. ii.)
Early religious feeling.
Intensely religious I certainly was from a very early age. The religion was of a bad sort enough, as might be expected from the urgency of my needs; but I doubt whether I could have got through without it. I pampered my vain-glorious propensities by dreams of divine favor, to make up for my utter deficiency of self-respect; and I got rid of otherwise incessant remorse by a most convenient confession and repentance, which relieved my nerves without at all, I suspect, improving my conduct.... While I was afraid of everybody I saw, I was not in the least afraid of God.... The Sundays began to be marked days, and pleasantly marked, on the whole. I do not know why crocuses were particularly associated with Sunday at that time, but probably my mother might have walked in the garden with us some early spring Sunday. My idea of heaven was of a place gay with yellow and lilac crocuses. My love of gay colors was very strong.... The Octagon Chapel at Norwich [Unitarian], has some curious windows in the roof; not skylights, but letting in light indirectly. I used to sit staring up at those windows, and looking for angels to come for me and take me to heaven, in sight of all the congregation,—the end of the world being sure to happen while we were at chapel. I was thinking of this, and of the hymns, the whole of the time, it now seems to me. It was very shocking to me that I could not pray at chapel. I believe that I never did in my life. I prayed abundantly when I was alone, but it was impossible to do it in any other way, and the hypocrisy of appearing to do so was a long and sore trouble to me.
Finds Milton at seven.
Shakespeare at thirteen.
When I was seven years old, ... I was kept from chapel one Sunday afternoon by some ailment or other. When the house door closed behind the chapel-goers I looked at the books on the table. The ugliest-looking of them was turned down open, and my turning it up was one of the leading incidents of my life. That plain, clumsy, calf-bound volume was ‘Paradise Lost,’ and the common bluish paper, with its old-fashioned type, became as a scroll out of heaven to me. The first thing I saw was “Argument,” which I took to mean a dispute, and supposed to be stupid enough, but there was something about Satan cleaving Chaos which made me turn to the poetry; and my mental destiny was fixed for the next seven years. That volume was henceforth never to be found but by asking me for it, till a young acquaintance made me a present of a little Milton of my own. In a few months, I believe, there was hardly a line in ‘Paradise Lost’ that I could not have instantly turned to. I sent myself to sleep by repeating it; and when my curtains were drawn back in the morning, descriptions of heavenly light rushed into my memory. I think this must have been my first experience of moral relief through intellectual resource. I am sure I must have been somewhat happier from that time forward.... My beloved hour of the day was when the cloth was drawn, and I stole away from the dessert and read Shakespeare by firelight, in winter, in the drawing-room. My mother was kind enough to allow this breach of good family manners; and again, at a subsequent time, when I took to newspaper reading very heartily. I have often thanked her for this forbearance since. Our newspaper was the Globe, in its best days, when, without ever mentioning Political Economy, it taught it, and viewed public affairs in its light.... I was all the while becoming a political economist without knowing it, and, at the same time, a sort of walking concordance of Milton and Shakespeare.
Political Economy at fifteen.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Deafness.
Her deafness, which was the most commonly known of her deficiencies of sensation, was not her earliest deprivation of a sense. She was never able to smell, that she could remember; and as smell and taste are intimately joined together, and a large part of what we believe to be flavor is really odor, it naturally followed that she was also nearly destitute of the sense of taste. Thus, two of the avenues by which the mind receives impressions from the outer world were closed to her all her life, and a third was also stopped before she reached womanhood.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1885.
Lack of the sense of taste.
She had no sense of taste whatever. “Once,” she told me, when I was expressing my pity for this deprivation of hers, “I tasted a leg of mutton, and it was delicious. I was going out, as it happened, that day, to dine, and, I am ashamed to say, that I looked forward to the pleasures of the table with considerable eagerness; but nothing came of it—the gift was withdrawn as suddenly as it came.” The sense of smell was also denied her, as it was to Wordsworth; in his case, too, curiously enough, it was vouchsafed to him, she told me, upon one occasion only. “He once smelled a bean-field and thought it heaven.”
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1884.
Practical education.
“I could make shirts and puddings,” she declares, “and iron, and mend, and get my bread by my needle, if necessary—as it was necessary, for a few months, before I won a better place and occupation with my pen.” During the winter which followed the failure of the old Norwich house she spent the entire daylight hours poring over fancy work, by which alone she could with certainty earn money. But she did not lay aside the sterner implement of labor for that bright little bread-winner, the needle. After dark she began a long day’s literary labor in her own room.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
Happy result of family loss of income.
In a very short time, my two sisters at home and I began to feel the blessing of a wholly new freedom. I, who had been obliged to write before breakfast, or in some private way, had henceforth liberty to do my own work in my own way; for we had lost our gentility. Many and many a time since have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and economizing, and growing narrower every year; whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead of vegetated.
Manner of life during period immediately following.
Every night that winter, I believe, I was writing till two, or even three, in the morning, obeying always the rule of the house of being present at the breakfast table as the clock struck eight. Many a time I was in such a state of nervous exhaustion and distress that I was obliged to walk to and fro in the room before I could put on paper the last line of a page, or the last half sentence of an essay or review. Yet I was very happy. The deep-felt sense of progress and expansion was delightful; and so was the exertion of all my faculties, and, not least, that of will, to overcome my obstructions, and force my way to that power of public speech of which I believed myself more or less worthy.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Discouragement in regard to Political Economy Tales.
Her singular resolution.
When Harriet called upon Mr. W. J. Fox to show him her circular inviting subscribers for the series, she found that Mr. Charles Fox had decided to say that he would not publish more than two numbers, unless a thousand copies of No. 1 were sold in the first fortnight!... Mr. Fox lived at Dalston. When Harriet left his house, after receiving this unreasonable and discouraging ultimatum, she “set out to walk the four miles and a half to the Brewery” [i. e., to a house attached to Whitbread’s establishment, where she was a guest]. “I could not afford to ride, more or less; but, weary already, I now felt almost too ill to walk at all. On the road, not far from Shoreditch, I became too giddy to stand without some support, and I leaned over some dirty palings, pretending to look at a cabbage-bed, but saying to myself, as I stood with closed eyes, ‘My book will do yet.’” That very night she wrote the long, thoughtful, and collected preface to her work. After she had finished it she sat over the fire in her bedroom, in the deepest depression; she cried, with her feet on the fender, till four o’clock, and then she went to bed and cried there till six, when she fell asleep. But if any person supposes that because the feminine temperament finds a relief in tears, the fact argues weakness, they will be instructed by hearing that she was up by half-past eight, continuing her work, as firmly resolved as ever that it should be published.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
Calm reception of her success.
To the best of my recollection, I waited ten days from the day of publication, before I had another line from the publisher. My mother, judging from his ill-humor, inferred that he had good news to tell: whereas I supposed the contrary. My mother was right; and I could now be amused at his last attempts to be discouraging, in the midst of splendid success. At the end of those ten days, he sent with his letter a copy of my first number, desiring me to make, with all speed, any corrections I might wish to make, as he had scarcely any copies left. He added that the demand led him to propose that we should now print two thousand. A postscript informed me that since he wrote the above, he had found that we should want three thousand. A second postscript proposed four thousand, and a third, five thousand. The letter was worth having, now it had come. There was immense relief in this; but I remember nothing like intoxication—like any painful reaction whatever. I remember walking up and down the grass-plot in the garden (I think it was on the tenth of February), feeling that my cares were over. And so they were. I think I may date my release from pecuniary care from that tenth of February, 1832.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Manner of life in London.
Her course in London was as follows: She wrote in the morning, rising, and making her own coffee, at seven, and going to work immediately after breakfast, until two. From two till four she saw visitors. Having an immense acquaintance, she declined undertaking to make morning calls; but people might call upon her any afternoon. She was charged with vanity about this arrangement; but, with the work on her hands and the competition for her company, she really could not do differently. Still, Sydney Smith suggested a better plan; he told her she should “hire a carriage and engage an inferior authoress to go round in it and drop the cards!” After any visitors left, she went out for her daily “duty walk,” and returned to glance over the newspapers, and to dress for dinner. Almost invariably she dined out, her host’s or some other friend’s carriage being commonly sent to fetch her. One or two evening parties would conclude the day, unless the literary pressure was extreme, in which case she would sometimes write letters after returning home. During the whole time of writing her series, she was satisfied with from five to six hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, and though she was not a teetotaller, but drank wine at dinner, still she took no sort of stimulant to help her in her work.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
Carlyle’s first impression of her.
Two or three days ago ... there came to call on us a Miss Martineau, whom you have, perhaps, often heard of in the Examiner. A hideous portrait was given of her in Fraser one month.[2] She is a notable literary woman of her day; has been travelling in America these two years, and is now come home to write a book about it. She pleased us far beyond expectation. She is very intelligent-looking, really of pleasant countenance; was full of talk, though, unhappily, deaf almost as a post, so that you have to speak to her through an ear-trumpet. She must be some five-and-thirty. As she professes very “favorable sentiments” towards this side of the street, I mean to cultivate her a little.
Thomas Carlyle: Letter to his mother. ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London,’ by James Anthony Froude, M. A. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
Personal appearance.
How well I remember the first sight of her, so long ago! We first saw her at church—Dr. Channing’s. It was a presence one did not speedily tire of looking on—most attractive and impressive; yet the features were plain, and only saved from seeming heavily moulded by her thinness. She was rather taller and more strongly made than most American ladies. Her complexion was neither fair nor sallow, nor yet of the pale, intellectual tone that is thought to belong to authorship. It was the hue of one severely tasked, but not with literary work. She had rich, brown, abundant hair, folded away in shining waves from the middle of a forehead totally unlike the flat one described by those who knew her as a child. It was now low over the eyes, like the Greek brows, and embossed rather than graven by the workings of thought. The eyes themselves were light and full, of a grayish greenish blue, varying in color with the time of day, or with the eye of the beholder—les yeux pers of the old French romance writers. They were steadily and quietly alert, as if constantly seeing something where another would have found nothing to notice. Her habitual expression was one of serene and self-sufficing dignity—the look of perfect and benevolent repose that comes to them whose long, unselfish struggle to wring its best from life has been crowned with complete victory. You might walk the livelong day, in any city streets, and not meet such a face of simple, cheerful strength, with so much light and sweetness in its play of feature.
Maria Weston Chapman: ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
Her best portrait described.
It was while she was in the United States that the first portrait of her which I have seen was painted. She herself did not like it, calling the attitude melodramatic; but her sister Rachel, I am told, always declared that it was the only true portrait of Harriet that was ever taken. At this point, then, some idea of her person may be given. She was somewhat above the middle height, and at this time had a slender figure. The face in the portrait is oval; the forehead rather broad, as well as high, but not either to a remarkable degree. The most noticeable peculiarity of the face is found in a slight projection of the lower lip. The nose is straight, not at all turned up at the end, but yet with a definite tip to it. The eyes are a clear gray, with a calm, steadfast, yet sweet gaze; indeed, there is an appealing look in them. The hair is of so dark a brown as to appear nearly black. A tress of it (cut off twenty years later than this American visit, when it had turned snow-white), has been given to me; and I find the treasured relic to be of exceptionally fine texture—a sure sign of a delicate and sensitive nervous organization. Her hands and feet were small. She was certainly not beautiful; besides the slight projection of the lower lip, the face has the defect of the cheeks sloping in too much towards the chin. But she was not strikingly plain, either. The countenance in this picture has a look both of appealing sweetness and of strength in reserve; and one feels that with such beauty of expression, it could not fail to be attractive to those who looked upon it with sympathy.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
“A strange phenomenon.”
Miss Martineau’s Book on America is out.... I have read it for the good authoress’s sake, whom I love much. She is one of the strangest phenomena to me. A genuine little poetess, buckramed, swathed like a mummy into Socinian and Political Economy formulas; and yet verily alive in the inside of that! “God has given a Prophet to every People in its own speech,” say the Arabs. Even the English Unitarians were one day to have their poet, and the best that could be said for them, too, was to be said. I admire this good lady’s integrity, sincerity; her quick, sharp discernment to the depth it goes: her love also is great; nay, in fact it is too great: the host of illustrious obscure mortals whom she produces on you, of Preachers, Pamphleteers, Antislavers, Able Editors, and other Atlases bearing (unknown to us), the world on their shoulder, is absolutely more than enough.
Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, June, 1837. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883.
Her admiration of Carlyle.
You cannot fancy what way he (Carlyle), is making with the fair intellects here! There is Harriet Martineau presents him with her ear-trumpet, with a pretty, blushing air of coquetry, which would almost convince me out of belief in her identity!
Jane W. Carlyle: Letter to John Sterling. ‘Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh,’ edited by James Anthony Froude. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883.
Her conversation.
She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible, too; and all the while she talks she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennæ of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873.
He [Southey] was speaking of Miss Martineau patiently, but without respect, describing her as “talking more glibly than any woman he had ever seen, and with such a notion of her own infallibility.”
Henry F. Chorley: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’ London: 1873.
Pertinent anecdote of Sydney Smith.
When he was so ill that all his friends were full of anxiety about him, M—— having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, “Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay.”
Frances Ann Kemble: ‘Records of Later Life.’ New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1882.
Mr. Payn’s account of her conversation and character.
The author of the ‘Vestiges of Creation’ said to me once, in his dry, humorous way, “Your friend, Miss Martineau, has been giving me the address in town where she gets all her ear-trumpets. Why, good heavens! what does she want of them? Does she mean to say that she ever wore one ear-trumpet out in all her life in listening to what anybody had to say?”
She was, no doubt, masterful in argument (which is probably all that he meant to imply), but I always found her very ready to listen, and especially to any tale of woe or hardship which it lay in her power to remedy. Her conversation, indeed, was by no means monologue, and rarely have I known a social companion more bright and cheery; but her talk, when not engaged in argument, was, which is unusual in a woman, very anecdotal. She had known more interesting and eminent persons than most men, and certainly than any woman, of her time; the immense range of her writings—political, religious, and social—had caused her to make acquaintances with people of the most different opinions, and of all ranks, while among the large circle of her personal acquaintance her motherly qualities, her gentleness, and (on delicate domestic questions), her good judgment, made her the confidante of many persons, especially young people; which enlarged her knowledge of human life to an extraordinary degree. I never knew a woman whose nature was more essentially womanly than that of Harriet Martineau, or one who was more misunderstood in that respect by the world at large.
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
Recollections of her long illness at Tynemouth.
On the sofa where I stretched myself, after my drive to Tynemouth, on the sixteenth of March, 1840, I lay for nearly five years, till obedience to a newly-discovered law of nature raised me up and sent me forth into the world again, for another ten years of strenuous work, and almost undisturbed peace and enjoyment of mind and heart.... During the whole of my illness, comforts and pleasures were lavishly supplied to me. Sydney Smith said that everybody who sent me game, fruit, and flowers, was sure of heaven, provided always that they punctually paid the dues of the Church of England. If so, many of my friends are safe. Among other memorials of that time, which are still preserved and prized, are drawings sent me by the Miss Nightingales, and an envelope-case (in daily use), from the hands of the immortal Florence. I was one of the sick to whom she first ministered, and it happened through my friendship with some of her family.... I did not think I could have wished so much for anything as I wished to see foliage. I had not seen a tree for above five years, except a scrubby little affair that stood above the haven at Tynemouth. An old friend sent me charming colored sketches of old trees in Sherwood Forest, and an artist who was an entire stranger to me, Mr. McIan, stayed away from a day’s excursion, at a friend’s house in the country, to paint me a breezy tree. For months the breezy tree was pinned up on the wall before me, sending many a breeze through my mind.... During many a summer evening, while I lay on my window-couch, and my guest of the day sat beside me, overlooking the purple sea, or watching for the moon to rise up from it, like a planet growing into a sun, things were said, high and deep, which are fixed into my memory now, like stars in a dark firmament. Now a philosopher, now a poet, now a moralist, opened to me speculation, vision or conviction.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett.
I have had a great pleasure, lately, in some correspondence with Miss Martineau, the noblest female intelligence between the seas,—“as sweet as spring, as ocean deep.” She is in a hopeless anguish of body, and serene triumph of spirit, with at once no hope and all hope.
Elizabeth Barrett: Letter to R. H. Horne. ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to Richard Hengist Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877.
Prompt relief by mesmerism.
Within one minute, the twilight and phosphoric lights appeared; and, in two or three more, a delicious sensation of ease spread through me—a cool comfort, before which all pain and distress gave way, oozing out, as it were, at the soles of my feet. During that hour, and almost the whole evening, I could no more help exclaiming with pleasure than a person in torture crying out with pain. I became hungry, and ate with relish for the first time for five years. There was no heat, oppression or sickness during the seance, nor any disorder afterwards. During the whole evening, instead of the lazy, hot ease of opiates, under which pain is felt to lie in wait, I experienced something of the indescribable sensations of health, which I had quite lost and forgotten.
Harriet Martineau: Letters on Mesmerism, quoted by Mrs. Fenwick Miller in her ‘Harriet Martineau.’
Subsequent good health.
Saw a brown-faced looking woman watching for the coach—thought I knew the face—looked out of window—it was Miss Martineau.... Walked with her to her newly built, or building house, a most commodious, beautifully-situated and desirable residence in all respects. I could not but look with wonder at the brown hue of health upon her face, and see her firm and almost manly stride as she walked along with me to Fox How, Dr. Arnold’s place.
W. C. Macready: Diary, 1846. ‘Macready’s Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries and Letters,’ edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1875.
Carlyle’s later impression.
Miss Martineau was here and is gone—to Norwich, after which to Egypt—broken into utter weariness, a mind reduced to these three elements: imbecility, dogmatism, and unlimited hope. I never in my life was more heartily bored by any creature.
Thomas Carlyle: Letter in ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London.’
Change of opinions harshly stated.
On Wednesday, Mr. Henry Bright came over to dine. He visited Miss Martineau, at Ambleside, and found her very entertaining, and in a very singular state of doctrine—for she now professes to believe and declare that there is no God and no future life! He says it is wholly impossible to argue with her, because she is so opinionative and dogmatical, and has such a peculiar advantage in putting down her ear-trumpet when she does not choose to hear any reply to her assertions. She has been making some beautiful designs for the windows of her brother’s church, in Liverpool, which are accepted and to be painted thereupon; but she is at enmity with her brother, and has no intercourse with him.
Mrs. Hawthorne: Letter to her Father.
Among the drawbacks of this wretched weather is that I have not yet been able to get to Ambleside to see Miss Martineau. When she has dined with us, or been at all to Liverpool, I have always missed her by being at Cambridge; and I own myself a little curious to hear from her, viva voce, some of her experiences. Her latest “craze” (to use a word of DeQuincey’s), is the establishment of a shop in London for the sale of—in plain English—infidel literature. She complained most bitterly, the other day, to my brother-in-law, that whenever her book on ‘Man’s Nature and Development’ is inquired for, the shopman pulls it stealthily out from under the counter, as if ashamed of selling it, and fearful lest some bystander be scandalized. So that there’s to be a shop in a central situation, full of Miss Martineau and August Comte, and Froude, who wrote the ‘Nemesis of Faith’; and Frank Newman, who wrote ‘Phases of Faith,’ and (as Clough said), the world is to receive the unbiassed truth: “That there’s no God, and Harriet is his Prophet.”
Henry Bright: Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne. ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife: a Biography,’ by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885.
Stated by herself.
I have no objection to words, when, as you do, people understand things; but I am not an atheist, according to the settled meaning of the term. An atheist is “one who rests in second causes,” who supposes things that he knows to be made or occasioned by other things that he knows. This seems to me complete nonsense; and this Bacon condemns as the stupidity of atheism. I cannot conceive the absence of a First Cause; but then, I contend, that it is not a person; i. e., that it is to the last degree improbable, and that there is no evidence of its being so. Now, though the superficial, ignorant and prejudiced will not see this distinction, you will; and it will be clear to you what scope is left for awe and reverence under my faith.
Harriet Martineau: Letter to Charlotte Brontë, in ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau,’ by Maria Weston Chapman.
Florence Nightingale’s testimony to Martineau’s religious feeling.
I think, contradictory as it may seem, she had the truest and deepest religious feeling I have ever known.... To the last, her religious feeling—in the sense of good working out of evil, of a Supreme Wisdom penetrating and moulding the whole universe; the natural subordination of intellect to purposes of good, even were these merely the small purposes of social or domestic life;—all this, which supposes something without ourselves, higher, and deeper, and better than ourselves, and more permanent, that is, eternal, was so strong in her—so strong that one could scarcely explain her (apparently only) losing sight of that Supreme Wisdom and Goodness in her later years.
Florence Nightingale: Letter to Maria Weston Chapman, published in the latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
“The Lady Oracle.”
Her form and features were repellent; she was the Lady Oracle in all things, and from her throne, the sofa, pronounced verdicts from which there was no appeal. Hers was a hard nature: it had neither geniality, indulgence nor mercy. Always a physical sufferer, so deaf that a trumpet was constantly at her ear; plain of person—a drawback of which she could not have been unconscious—and awkward of form; she was entirely without the gifts that attract man to woman: even her friendships seem to have been cut out of stone; she may have excited admiration, indeed, but from the affections that render woman only a little lower than the angels she was entirely estranged.
S. C. Hall: ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’ New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1883.
Hawthorne’s account of Miss Martineau, 1854.
I saw Miss Martineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, elderly woman, and plainly dressed, but withal, she has so kind, cheerful and intelligent a face that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from calling herself old.... All her talk was about herself and her affairs; but it did not seem like egotism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbidness. And this woman is an Atheist; and thinks that the principle of life will become extinct when her body is laid in the grave! I will not think so, were it only for her own sake. What! only a few weeds to spring out of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympathies flowering and fruiting forever!
Nathaniel Hawthorne: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’
Her home, “The Knoll.”
The beauty of the scenery led her to fix upon the English lakes for the locality in which to make her home, and, finding no suitable house vacant, she resolved to build one for herself. She purchased two acres of land, within half-a-mile of the village of Ambleside; borrowed some money on mortgage from a well-to-do cousin; had the plans drawn out under her own instructions, and watched the house being built so that it should suit her own tastes.
It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray stone, and stands upon a small, rocky eminence—whence its name, “The Knoll.” There is enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the formation of a terrace about twenty feet wide in front of the windows, then there comes the descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of the rock is the garden. Narrow flights of steps at either end of the terrace lead down to the greensward and the flower-beds; in the centre of these is a gray granite sun-dial, with the characteristic motto around it: “Come Light! Visit me!”
... Within, “The Knoll” is just a nice little residence for a maiden lady, with her small household, and room for an occasional guest.... The drawing-room has two large windows, one of which descends quite to the floor, and is provided with two or three stone steps outside, so that the inmates may readily step forth on to the terrace. Hunters of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not merely to walk round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to mount the steps and flatten the tips of their noses against her window. Objectionable as the liability to this friendly attention would be felt by most of us, it was doubly so to Miss Martineau because of her deafness, which precluded her from receiving warning of her admirers’ approaches by the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel, so that the first intimation she would receive of their presence would be to turn her head by chance and find the flattened nose and the peering eyes against the window-pane.
Her principles and her practice went hand-in-hand in her domestic arrangements, as in her life generally; and her kitchen was as airy, light and comfortable for her maids as her drawing-room was for herself. The kitchen, too, was provided with a bookcase for a servants’ library. There lingers no small interest about the guest-chamber, where Harriet Martineau received such guests as Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas Jerrold.... Climbing plants soon covered “The Knoll” on every side. The ivy kept it green through all the year; the porch was embowered in honeysuckle, clematis, passion-flower and Virginia creeper. Wordsworth, Macready, and other friends of note planted trees for Harriet below the terrace.
A capable housewife.
Her housekeeping was always well done. Her own hands, indeed, as well as her head, were employed in it on occasion. When in her home, she daily filled her lamp herself. She dusted her own books, too, invariably. Sometimes she did more. Soon after her establishment at the lakes ... a lady who greatly reverenced her for her writings, called upon her in her new home, accompanied by a gentleman friend. As the visitors approached the house by the carriage-drive, they saw some one perched on a set of kitchen steps, cleaning the drawing-room windows. It was the famous authoress herself! She calmly went for her trumpet, to listen to their business; and, when they had introduced themselves she asked them in, and entered into an interesting conversation on various literary topics. Before they left she explained, with evident amusement at having been caught at her housemaid’s duties, that the workmen had been long about the house; that this morning, when the dirty windows might for the first time be cleaned, one of her servants had gone off to marry a carpenter, and the other to see the ceremony; and so the mistress, tired of the dirt, had set to work to wash and polish the windows for herself.
Life at “The Knoll.”
She rose very early; not infrequently, in the winter, before daylight; and immediately set out for a good long walk. Sometimes, I am told, she would appear at a farm-house, four miles off, before the cows were milked. The old post-mistress recollects how, when she was making up her early letter-bags, in the gray of the morning mists, Miss Martineau would come down with her large bundle of correspondence, and never failed to have a pleasant nod and smile, or a few kindly inquiries. “I always go out before it is quite light,” writes Miss Martineau to Mr. Atkinson ... “and in the fine mornings I go up to the hill behind the church—the Kirkstone road.... When the little shred of moon that is left, and the morning star, hang over Wansfell, among the amber clouds of the approaching sunrise, it is delicious.”... Returning home, she breakfasted at half-past seven; filled her lamp ready for the evening, and arranged all household matters; and by half-past eight was at her desk, where she worked undisturbed till two, the early dinner-time. These business hours were sacred, whether there were visitors in the house or not. After dinner, however, she devoted herself to guests, if there were any.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
Winter evenings at Ambleside.
In winter evenings I light the lamp, and unroll my wool-work, and meditate or dream till the arrival of the newspaper tells me that the tea has stood long enough.... After tea, if there was news from the seat of war, I called in my maids, who brought down the great atlas, and studied the chances of the campaign with me. Then there was an hour or two for Montaigne or Bacon, or Shakespeare, or Tennyson, or some dear old biography, or last new book from London—historical, moral, or political. Then, when the house and neighborhood were asleep, there was the half-hour on the terrace, or if the weather was too bad for that, in the porch, whence I seldom or never came in without a clear purpose for my next morning’s work. I believe that, but for my country life, much of the benefit and enjoyment of my travels, and also of my studies, would have been lost to me. On my terrace, there were two worlds extended bright before me, even when the midnight darkness hid from my bodily eyes all but the outlines of the solemn mountains that surround our valley on three sides, and the clear opening to the lake on the south. In the one of those two worlds, I saw now the magnificent coast of Massachusetts in autumn, or the flowery swamps of Louisiana, or the forests of Georgia in spring, or the Illinois prairie in summer; or the blue Nile, or the brown Sinai, or the gorgeous Petra, or the view of Damascus from the Salahiey; or the Grand Canal under a Venetian sunset, or the Black Forest in twilight, or Malta in the glare of noon, or the broad desert, stretching away under the stars, or the Red Sea, tossing its superb shells on shore, in the pale dawn. That is one world, all comprehended within my terrace wall, and coming up into the light at my call. The other, and finer scenery, is of that world, only beginning to be explored, of Science.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Miss Martineau as a hostess.
The coach brought me to Miss Martineau’s gate at half-past six yesterday evening, and she was there, with a beaming face, to welcome me.... We have been trudging about, looking at cottages and enjoying the sight of the mountains, spite of the rain and mist.... Miss M. is charming in her own home—quite handsome from her animation and intelligence. She came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed me in the prettiest way this evening, telling me she was so glad she had got me here.
Marian Evans: Letter to the Brays, 1852.
Many of the most interesting little stories in it [her ‘Autobiography’] about herself and others she had told me, ... when I was staying with her, and almost in the very same words. But they were all the better for being told in her silvery voice. She was a charming talker, and a perfect lady in her manners as a hostess.
Marian Evans [Lewes]: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1877. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
Personal appearance.
In the porch stood Miss Martineau herself. A lady of middle height, “inclined,” as the novelists say, “to embonpoint,” with a smile on her kindly face, and her trumpet at her ear. She was at that time, I suppose, about fifty years of age; her brown hair had a little gray in it, and was arranged with peculiar flatness over a low, but broad forehead. I don’t think she could ever have been pretty, but her features were not uncomely, and their expression was gentle and motherly.
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
One of her letters described.
Aunt Charles read us a clever letter from Harriet Martineau, combining the smoker, the moralist, the political economist, the gossip, and the woman.
Caroline Fox: Journal (1849). ‘Memories of Old Friends.’ Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882.
Smoking.
The degree of deafness, as I have said, varied; and she tried all sorts of remedies. No one who knew her would suspect her of anything “fast” or unfeminine, but under the advice of some scientific person, or another, she tried smoking.
Cigars.
I had the privilege of providing her privately with some very mild cigars, and many and many a summer night have we sat together for half an hour or so in her porch at “The Knoll,” smoking. If some of the good people, her neighbors, had known of that, it would, we agreed, have really given them something to talk about. She only tried this remedy, if I remember right, for a few months, but she fancied it had a beneficial effect upon her hearing. For my part, I enjoyed nothing so much as these evenings.
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
A chiboque.
Sleepless nights were a source of great suffering to her in these latest years. Under medical advice, she tried smoking as a means of procuring better rest, with some success. She smoked usually through the chiboque, which she had brought home with her from the East, and which she had there learned to use, as she relates with her customary simplicity and directness in the appendix to ‘Eastern Life’: “I found it good for my health,” she says there, “and I saw no more reason why I should not take it than why English ladies should not take their glass of sherry at home—an indulgence which I do not need. I continued the use of my chiboque for some weeks after my return, and then only left it off because of the inconvenience.” When health and comfort were to be promoted by it, she resumed it.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
Charlotte Brontë’s account of a visit to Ambleside.
I am at Miss Martineau’s for a week. Her house is very pleasant, both within and without; arranged at all points with admirable neatness and comfort. Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty; what she claims for herself, she allows them. I rise at my own hour, breakfast alone. I pass the morning in the drawing-room, she in her study. At two o’clock we meet, talk and walk till five—her dinner hour—spend the evening together, when she converses fluently and abundantly, and with the most complete frankness. I go to my own room soon after ten, and she sits up writing letters. She appears exhaustless in strength and spirits, and indefatigable in the faculty of labor. She is a great and good woman; of course not without peculiarities, but I have seen none as yet that annoy me. She is both hard and warm-hearted, abrupt and affectionate. I believe she is not at all conscious of her own absolutism. When I tell her of it, she denies the charge, warmly; then I laugh at her.
Charlotte Brontë: Letter in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’ London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857.
Her ear-trumpet.
Sense of humor.
Owing to her keen intelligence, I found it difficult to realize her extreme deafness, and used often to address her when she was not prepared for it. She never lost her sense of the absurdity of this practice, and I can see the laughter in her kind eyes now, as she snatched up her trumpet. She loved a good-natured pleasantry, even at her own expense.... A ludicrous incident happened. I had got so well accustomed to her ear-trumpet that I began to look upon it as a part of herself. It was lying on the table, a good distance away from her, and having some remark to make to her, I inadvertently addressed it to the instrument, instead of her ear. Heavens, how we laughed! She had a very keen sense of fun, of which, however, she was quite unconscious.
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
“Not to be judged by writings alone.”
Of my kind hostess, I cannot speak in terms too high. Without being able to share all her opinions—philosophical, political, or religious—I yet find a worth and greatness in herself, and a consistency, and benevolence, and perseverance in her practice, such as win the sincerest esteem and affection. She is not a person to be judged by her writings alone, but rather by her own deeds and life, than which nothing can be more exemplary or noble. The government of her household is admirably administered; all she does is well done, from the writing of a history down to the quietest feminine occupation. No sort of carelessness or neglect is allowed under her rule, and yet she is not over-strict, or too rigidly exacting; her servants and her poor neighbors love as well as respect her.
Charlotte Brontë: Letter in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
“Proud, not vain.”
Proud, I think she was, but not in the least vain; and the pride was rather the consciousness of power, and the unconscious sense, so to speak, of absolute rectitude and truthfulness.... The clear, quick apprehension of the nature and merits of a question was her strong point, and she never talked or wrote of what she did not understand, and saw at once how to make a difficult matter intelligible to others.
Henry G. Atkinson: Letter to Maria Weston Chapman, published in the latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
Her egotism.
Her conception of heaven.
Are not nearly all recent autobiographers egotists? A number of such works have appeared during the last ten years, and the position of the autobiographer has been in nearly every case the same,—namely, that God did a good thing when he made him; but that he should have made anybody else, and should have taken an interest in the other individual equal to that which he manifested in the autobiographer, is a proposition which he cannot bring himself for a moment to consider. Two books in which this view is conspicuous are the autobiographies of John Quincy Adams and Miss Harriet Martineau. Carlyle is a mild egotist beside these writers. Adams does not speak of himself as an individual, but as a cause which he has espoused. Of the two, Miss Martineau is the more naïve. She is for arranging the world entirely from her own point of view. For instance, she attacked the late Lord Lytton, because he did not carry an ear-trumpet. Lord Lytton was deaf, and preferred not to carry an ear-trumpet. Miss Martineau was deaf also, and did carry one. She did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and was very hard upon any one who was of a contrary opinion. Her heaven, had her belief permitted her to have one, would have been a place where they all sat round with ear-trumpets and derided the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
—— ——: ‘Zweibak: or, Notes of a Professional Exile,’ in The Century, February, 1886.
Her lofty stand in money matters.
It is well known that a pension was offered to her by three Prime-ministers in succession—Earl Grey, Lord John Russell, and Mr. Gladstone—which, like Cæsar, she “did thrice refuse,” it being against her principles to burden the State with any such obligation. And yet she was entirely dependent upon that reed, the pen, for subsistence.
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
Her needlework.
She had a liking for the occupation [needlework] and continued to do much of it all through her life. Many of her friends can show handsome pieces of fancy work done by her hands. Again and again she contributed to public objects by sending a piece of her own beautiful needlework to be sold for the benefit of a society’s funds. Not even in the busiest time of her literary life did she ever entirely cease to exercise her skill in this feminine occupation. In fact, she made wool-work her artistic recreation.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
An Ambleside story.
A right of way was in dispute, at one time, through certain fields (a portion, I think, of Rydal Park), in the neighborhood of Ambleside, and the owner closed them to the public. Miss Martineau, though a philanthropist on a large scale, could also (which is not so common with that class) pick up a pin for freedom’s sake, and play the part of a village Hampden. When the rest of her neighbors shrank from this contest with the Lord of the Manor, she took up the cudgels for them, and “the little tyrant of those fields withstood.” She alone, not, indeed, “with bended bow and quiver full of arrows,” but with her ear-trumpet and umbrella, took her walk through the forbidden land, as usual. Whereupon the wicked lord (so runs the story, though I never heard it from her own lips) put a young bull into the field. He attacked the trespasser, or at all events prepared to attack her, but the indomitable lady faced him and stood her ground. She was quite capable of it, for she had the courage of her opinions, ... and, at all events, whether from astonishment at her presumption, or terror of the ear-trumpet (to which, of course, he had nothing to say), the bull in the end withdrew his opposition, and suffered her to pursue her way in peace. I wish I could add that she had the good-fortune of another patriotic lady, “to take the tax away,” but I am afraid the wicked lord succeeded in his designs. More than once, however, I have had pointed out to me over the wall—for the bull was still there—the little eminence wherefrom, with no weapon but her ear-trumpet (for she had her umbrella over her head all the time to keep the sun off) this dauntless lady withstood the horrid foe.
James Payn: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
A good neighbor.
I was pleased to find that, notwithstanding her heresies, the common people in Ambleside held her in gentle and kindly remembrance. She was a good neighbor, charitable to all, considerate toward the unlettered, never cynical or ill-tempered, always cheerful and happy as the roses and ivy of “The Knoll” she so much loved.
Moncure D. Conway, in Harper’s Magazine, January, 1881.
Her manner of working.
I wrote a vulgar, cramped, untidy scrawl till I was past twenty; till authorship made me forget manner in matter, and gave freedom to my hand. After that I did very well, being praised by compositors for legibleness first, and in course of time for other qualities.... I found that it would not do to copy what I wrote, and discontinued the practice forever—thus saving an immense amount of time which, I humbly think, is wasted by other authors. There was no use in copying it. I did not alter; and if ever I did alter, I had to change back again; and I, once for all, committed myself to a single copy.... I have always used the same method in writing. I have always made sure of what I meant to say, and then written it down without care or anxiety—glancing at it again only to see if any words were omitted or repeated, and not altering a single phrase in a whole work. I mention this because I think I perceive that great mischief arises from the notion that botching in the second place will compensate for carelessness in the first.... It has always been my practice to devote my best strength to my work, and the morning hours have therefore been sacred to it, from the beginning. I never pass a day without writing, and the writing is always done in the morning. I have seldom written anything more serious than letters by candlelight. [While at work on the ‘Political Economy Tales’] on an average I wrote twelve pages a day on large letter paper (quarto, I believe it is called), the page containing thirty-three lines.
Desk, etc.
The impending war [1853] rendered desirable an article on England’s Foreign Policy, for the Westminster Review, and I agreed to do it. I went to the editor’s house for the purpose.... On taking possession of my room there, and finding a capital desk on my table, with a singularly convenient slope, and of an admirable height for writing without fatigue, it struck me that during my whole course of literary labor, of nearly five-and-thirty years, it had never once occurred to me to provide myself with a proper, business-like desk. I had always written on blotting-paper, on a flat table, except when in a lazy mood, in winter, I had written as short-sighted people do (as Mrs. Somerville and “Currer Bell” always did), on a board, or something stiff, held in the left hand. I wrote a good deal of the ‘Political Economy’ in that way, and with steel pens, ... but it was radically uncomfortable; and I have ever since written on a table, and with quill pens. Now I was to begin on a new and luxurious method—just, as it happened, at the close of my life’s work. Mr. Chapman obtained for me a first-rate Chancery-lane desk, with all manner of conveniences, and of a proper sanitary form; and, moreover, some French paper of various sizes, which has spoiled me for all other paper; ink to correspond; and a pen-maker, of French workmanship, suitable to eyes which were now feeling the effects of years and over-work.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Appearance of MS.
I have seen the original manuscript of one of the ‘Political Economy Tales.’ The writing has evidently been done as rapidly as the hand could move; every word that will admit of it is contracted, to save time. “Socy.,” “opporty.,” “agst.,” “abt.,” “independce.,” these were amongst the abbreviations submitted to the printer’s intelligence; not to mention commoner and more simple words, such as “wh.,” “wd.,” and the like. The calligraphy, though very readable, has a somewhat slipshod look. Thus, there is every token of extremely rapid composition. Yet the corrections on the MS. are few and trifling; the structure of a sentence is never altered, and there are but seldom emendations of even principal words. The manuscript is written (in defiance of law and order), on both sides of the paper.
Mrs. Fenwick Miller: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
Fluctuations of mind about work.
The fluctuations of mind which I underwent about every number of my work, were as regular as the tides. I was fired with the first conception, and believed that I had found a treasure. Then, while at work, I alternately admired and despised what I wrote. When finished, I was in absolute despair; and then, when I saw it in print, I was surprised to see how well it looked.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
George Eliot on ‘The Crofton Boys.’
What an exquisite little thing that is of Harriet Martineau’s—‘The Crofton Boys!’ I have had some delightful crying over it. There are two or three lines in it that would feed one’s soul for a month. Hugh’s mother says to him, speaking of people who have permanent sorrow, “They soon had a new and delicious pleasure, which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel—the pleasure of rousing their souls to bear pain, and of agreeing with God silently, when nobody knows what is in their hearts.”
Marian Evans: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1845. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross.
Carlyle on ‘Deerbrook’.
How do you like it [Deerbrook]? people ask. To which there are serious answers returnable, but few so good as none.
Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, 17th April, 1839.
On ‘The Hour and the Man.’
The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a very courageous heart. She lives by the shore of the beautiful blue Northumbrian Sea; “a many-sounding” solitude which I often envy her. She writes unweariedly.... You saw her Toussaint l’Ouvertour; how she has made such a beautiful “black Washington” ... of a rough-handed, hard-hearted, semi-articulate, gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that ‘Sansculottism’ can exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very beautiful. Beautiful as a child’s heart,—and in so shrewd a head as that. She is now writing express Children’s Tales, which I calculate I shall find more perfect.
Thomas Carlyle: Letter to Emerson, 21st February, 1841. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’