Harriet Martineau

by Florence Fenwick Miller

CHAPTER IV.

GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS.

The loss of pecuniary position did something more for Harriet Martineau besides opening the way to work in literature. The knowledge that she was now poor gave her lover courage to declare himself, and to seek her for his wife. Poverty, therefore, brought her that experience which is so much in a woman's mental history, however little it, perhaps, goes for in a man's. A love in youth, fervent, powerful, and pure; a love, happy and successful in the essential point that it is reciprocated by its object, however fate may deny it outward fruition; such a love once filling a woman's soul, sweetens it and preserves it for her whole life through. Pity the shriveled and decayed old hearts which were not thus embalmed in youth! Harriet Martineau did have this precious experience; and her womanliness of nature remained fresh and true and sweet to the end of her days because of it.

There may be many married women old maids in heart—to be so is the punishment of those who marry without love; and there are many, like Harriet Martineau, who are single in life, but whose hearts have been mated, and so made alive. I do not know that she would have gained by marriage, in any way, except in the chance of motherhood, a yet greater fact than love itself to a woman. On the other hand, her work must have been hindered by the duties of married life, even if her marriage had been thoroughly happy, and her lot free from exceptional material cares. Matronage is a profession in itself. The duties of a wife and mother, as domestic life is at present arranged, absorb much time and strength, and so diminish the possibilities of intellectual labor. Moreover, the laws regulating marriage are still, and fifty years ago were far more, in a very bad state; and, leaving a woman wholly dependent for fair treatment, whether as a wife or mother, upon the mercy and goodness of the man she marries, justify Harriet Martineau's observation: "The older I have grown, the more serious have seemed to me the evils and disadvantages of married life, as it exists among us at this time." The wife who is beloved and treated as an equal partner in life, the mother whose natural rights in the guardianship of her family are respected, the mistress of a home in which she is the sunshine of husband and children, must ever be the happiest of women. But far better is it to be as Harriet Martineau was—a widow of the heart by death—than to have the affections torn through long years by neglect and cruelty, springing less from natural badness than from the evil teaching of vile laws and customs. Fifty years ago marriage was a dangerous step for a woman; and Harriet Martineau had reason for saying at last: "Thus, I am not only entirely satisfied with my lot, but think it the very best for me."

For a while, however, the happy prospect of a beloved wifehood cheered her struggling and anxious life. But it was not for long. Her actual and acknowledged engagement lasted, I believe, only a few months. Mr. Worthington had, at this time, but lately completed his course as a Divinity student; and he had been appointed to the joint charge of a very large Unitarian Church at Manchester. Conscientiousness was one of the most marked features of his character, according to his college friend; and Harriet herself declares that she "venerated his moral nature." He had thrown himself into the very heavy pastoral work committed to him with all the devotion of this high characteristic. Moreover, the long doubt and suspense of his love for her before their engagement, had, doubtless, worked unfavorably upon his nervous system. The end of it was, that he was suddenly seized with a brain fever, in which he became delirious. He was removed to his father's home in Leicestershire, to be nursed; and in process of time, the fever was subdued. But the mind did not regain its balance. He was still, as she says, "insane"; but from one of her dear and early friends, I hear that "his family did not call it insanity,"—only a feeble and unhinged state, from which recovery might have been expected hopefully.

In this state of things it was thought desirable that the woman he loved should be brought to see him. The beloved presence, his physician believed, might revive old impressions and happy anticipations, and might be the one thing needful to induce a favorable change in his condition. His mother wrote to beg Harriet Martineau to come to him; Harriet eagerly sought her mother's permission to hasten to his side; and Mrs. Martineau forbade her daughter to go. The old habit of obedience to her mother, and the early implanted ideas of filial duty, were too strong for Harriet at once to break through them; she did not defy her mother and go; and in a few more weeks—terrible weeks of doubt and mental storm they must have been, between her love and her obedience dragging her different ways—Worthington died, and left her to her life of heart-widowhood, darkened by this shadow of arbitrary separation to the last. "The calamity was aggravated to me," she says, "by the unaccountable insults I received from his family, whom I had never seen. Years after, the mystery was explained. They had been given to understand, by cautious insinuation, that I was actually engaged to another while receiving my friend's addresses." They had not appreciated how submissive she was as a daughter; and their belief that her love was insincere was not an unnatural one in the circumstances.

Had those relatives of the dead lover lived to read Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, they would not have been made to think differently of her feelings towards him; for there she goes calmly on, after the passage above quoted, to say only: "Considering what I was in those days, it was happiest for us both that our union was prevented." As we have had to look outside the Autobiography for a record of what love was to her, and what it did for her, so we must seek elsewhere for the cry of agony which tells how she felt her loss. But the record exists; it is found in an essay entitled In a Death Chamber, one of that autobiographical series published in The Monthly Repository, from which I have previously quoted.

This beautiful piece of writing—far more of a poem in essence than anything which she ever published in verse—is spoiled as a composition by mutilation in quoting. But its length leaves me no option but to select from it only a few of the more confessional passages, to aid us in our psychological study:

This weary watch! In watching by the couch of another there is no weariness; but this lonely tending of one's own sick heart is more than the worn-out spirit can bear. What an age of woe since the midnight clock gave warning that my first day of loneliness was beginning—to others a Sabbath, to me a day of expiation.

All is dull, cold and dreary before me, until I also can escape to the region where there is no bereavement, no blasting root and branch, no rending of the heart-strings. What is aught to me, in the midst of this all-pervading, thrilling torture, when all I want is to be dead? The future is loathsome, and I will not look upon it; the past, too, which it breaks my heart to think about—what has it been? It might have been happy, if there is such a thing as happiness; but I myself embittered it at the time, and for ever. What a folly has mine been! Multitudes of sins now rise up in the shape of besetting griefs. Looks of rebuke from those now in the grave; thoughts which they would have rebuked if they had known them; moments of anger, of coldness; sympathy withheld when looked for; repression of its signs through selfish pride; and worse, far worse even than this … all comes over me now. O! if there be pity, if there be pardon, let it come in the form of insensibility; for these long echoes of condemnation will make me desperate.