Harriet Martineau

by Florence Fenwick Miller

Almost immediately after the publication of Deerbrook Harriet started for a Continental tour. She was to escort an invalid cousin to Switzerland, and afterwards to travel through Italy with two other friends. But her illness became so severe by the time that she reached Venice that the remainder of the journey had to be abandoned. Under medical advice, a couch was fitted up in the travelling carriage, and upon it, lifted in and out at every stage, she returned to England and was conveyed to her sister's at Newcastle-on-Tyne. In the autumn of that same year (1839) she took up her abode in Front street, Tynemouth, in order to remain under the medical care of her brother-in-law, Mr. Greenhow of Newcastle.

Her physical sufferings during the next five years were very severe, and almost incessant. She could not go out of the house, and alternated only between her bed in one room and her couch in another. From her sick-room window she overlooked a narrow space of down, the ruins of the priory, the harbor with its traffic, and the sea. On the farther side of the harbor she could discern through the telescope a railroad, a spreading heath, and, on the hills which bounded the view, two or three farms. To this outlook she, whose life had been hitherto spent so actively, and in the midst of such a throng of society, found herself confined for a term of five years. At the same time her pain was so great that she was compelled to take opiates daily. "I have observed, with inexpressible shame, that with the newspaper in my hand, no details of the peril of empires, or of the starving miseries of thousands, could keep my eye from the watch before me, or detain my attention one second beyond the time when I might have my opiate. For two years, too, I wished and intended to dispense with my opiate for once, to try how much there was to bear, and how I should bear it; but I never did it, strong as was the shame of always yielding. I am convinced that there is no more possibility of becoming inured to acute agony of body, than to paroxysms of remorse—the severest of moral pains. A familiar pain becomes more and more dreaded, instead of becoming more lightly esteemed in proportion to its familiarity. The pain itself becomes more odious, more oppressive, more feared in proportion to the accumulation of experience of weary hours, in proportion to the aggregate of painful associations which every visitation revives."[ [9]

Some indication of what she endured in those weary years is given in this quotation. If we had to rely upon the inferences to be drawn from the amount of work which she did in her sick-room, we should naturally suppose the suffering not to have been very great; for she produced, in the midst of her illness, as much and as noble work as we look for from the most active persons in ordinary health.

The first business of the sick-room life was to write both an article for publication, and a number of letters of personal appeal to friends, on behalf of Oberlin College, an institution which was being founded in America for the education of persons of color of both sexes, and of the students who had been turned out of Lane College for their advocacy of anti-slavery principles.

The next undertaking was another novel; or, rather, a history, imaginatively treated, of the negro revolution in San Domingo. Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader of the revolution and the president of the black Republic of Hayti, was the hero of this story. The Hour and the Man, as a mere novel, is vastly superior to Deerbrook. Harriet wrote it, however, rather as a contribution to the same anti-slavery cause for which she had written her preceding article, believing that it would be useful to that cause to show forth the capacity and the high moral character which had been displayed by a negro of the blackest shade when in possession of power. The work was begun in May, 1840, and published in November of the same year.

Lord Jeffrey, in a familiar private letter to Empson, his successor in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, wrote thus of The Hour and the Man:—

I have read Harriet's first volume, and give in my adhesion to her Black Prince with all my heart and soul. The book is really not only beautiful and touching, but noble; and I do not recollect when I have been more charmed, whether by very sweet and eloquent writing and glowing description, or by elevated as well as tender sentiments.... The book is calculated to make its readers better, and does great honor to the heart as well as the talent and fancy of the author. I would go a long way to kiss the hem of her garment, or the hand that delineated this glowing and lofty representation of purity and noble virtue. And she must not only be rescued from all debasing anxieties about her subsistence, but placed in a station of affluence and honor; though I believe she truly cares for none of these things. It is sad to think that she suffers so much, and may even be verging to dissolution.

Even the morose and ungracious Carlyle, writing to Emerson of this book, is obliged to say "It is beautiful as a child's heart; and in so shrewd a brain!" While Florence Nightingale declares that she "can scarcely refrain from thinking of it as the greatest of historical romances."

The allusion in the latter part of Lord Jeffrey's letter was to a proposal just then made to give Harriet Martineau one of the Civil List literary pensions. This idea had been mooted first during the progress of her Illustrations, and again after her return from America; but upon each occasion she had stated privately that she would not be willing to accept it. She replied from Tynemouth to the same effect to Mr. Hutton, who wrote to inquire if she would now be thus assisted. Her objection was, in the first place, one of principle; she disapproved of the money of the people being dispensed in any pensions at the sole will of the Ministry, instead of being conferred directly by the representatives of the people. Her second reason was, that after accepting she would feel herself bound to the Ministers, and would be understood by the public to be so bound, and would thus suffer a loss of both freedom and usefulness during whatever life might remain to her. Lord Melbourne, a few months later, in July, 1841, made her an explicit offer of a pension of £150 per annum, and her answer to the Minister was substantially the same as to her friend. She said that while taxation was levied so unequally, and while Parliament had no voice in the distribution of pensions, she would rather receive public aid from the parish, if necessary, than as a pensioner. She added an earnest plea that all influential persons who held themselves indebted on public grounds to any writer, would show that gratitude by endeavoring to make better copyright arrangements and foreign treaties, so as to secure to authors the full, due and independent reward of their efforts.

The rare (perhaps mistaken) generosity of this refusal can only be appreciated by bearing in mind that she had invested a large part of her earnings a few years before in a form from which she was now receiving no return. During her illness she was really in want of money, so far as to have to accept assistance from relatives. For her charities she partly provided by doing fancy-work, sending subscriptions both in this form and in the shape of articles for publication to the anti-slavery cause in America.