Harriet Martineau

by Florence Fenwick Miller

CHAPTER X.

IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM.

Miss Martineau's health failed towards the end of 1854; and early in 1855, symptoms of a disorganized circulation became so serious that she went up to London to consult physicians. Dr. Latham and Sir Thomas Watson both came to the conclusion that she was suffering from enlargement and enfeeblement of the heart; and, in accordance with her wish to hear a candid statement of her case, they told her that her life would probably not be much prolonged. In short they gave her to understand that she was dying; and her own sensations confirmed the impression. She had frequent sinking fits; and every night when she lay down, a struggle for breath began, which lasted sometimes for hours. She received her death sentence then, and began a course of life as trying to the nerves and as searching a test of character as could well be imagined. That trial she bore nobly for twenty-one long suffering years. She was carefully carried home, and at once occupied herself with making every preparation for the departure from earth which she supposed to be impending. The first business was to make a new will; and this was a characteristic document. After ordering that her funeral should be conducted in the plainest manner, and at the least possible cost, she continued thus:—"It is my desire, from an interest in the progress of scientific investigation, that my skull should be given to Henry George Atkinson, of Upper Gloucester Place, and also my brain, if my death take place within such distance of the said Henry George Atkinson's then present abode as to enable him to have it for purposes of scientific investigation." Her property was then ordered to bear various small charges, including one of £200 to Mrs. Chapman for writing a conclusion to the testator's autobiography, over and above a fourth share of the profits on the sale of the whole work after the first edition. "The Knoll" was bequeathed to her favorite "little sister," Ellen. The remainder of her possessions were divided amongst all her brothers and sisters, or their heirs, with as much impartiality as though she held, with Maggie Tulliver's aunt Glegg, that "in the matter of wills, personal qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood." Although mesmerism had estranged her from a sister, and theology from a brother, she made no display of bitter feelings towards them and theirs in her last will.

All her personal affairs being made as orderly as possible, she proceeded to write her Autobiography. Readers of that interesting but misleading work must bear in mind that it was a very hasty production. The two large volumes were written in a few months; the MS. was sent to the printer as it was produced, the sheets for the first edition were printed off, then the matter was stereotyped, and the sheets and plates were packed up in the office of the printer, duly insured, and held ready for immediate publication after her death. She wrote in this hot haste with "the shadow cloaked from head to foot" at her right hand. So much reason had she to believe that her very days were numbered, that she wrote the latter part of her Autobiography before the first portion. She had already given forth, in Household Education and The Crofton Boys, the results of her childish experiences of life; and she was now specially anxious not to die without leaving behind her a definite account of the later course of her intellectual history.

No one who knew her considers that she did herself justice in the Autobiography. It is hard and censorious; it displays vanity, both in its depreciation of her own work, and in its recital of the petty slights and insults which had been offered to her from time to time; it is aggressive, as though replying to enemies rather than appealing to friends; and no one of either the finer or the softer qualities of her nature is at all adequately indicated. It is, in short, the least worthy of her true self of all the writings of her life.

The reasons of this unfortunate fact was not far to seek. Her rationalism, and the abuse and moral ill-usage which she had incurred by her avowal of her anti-theological opinions, were still new to her. Her very thoughts, replacing as they did the ideas which she held without examination for some twenty years (the time which intervened between her devotional writings and her Eastern Life) were still so far new that they had not the unconsciousness and the quiet placidity which habit alone gives; for new ideas, like new clothes, sit uneasily, and are noticeable to their wearer, however carefully they may have been fitted before adoption. Again, the announcement in the press that her illness was fatal revived the discussion of her infidelity, and brought down upon her a whole avalanche of signed and anonymous letters, of little tracts, awe-inspiring hymns, and manuals of divinity. The letters were controversial, admonishing, minatory, or entreating; but whatever their character they were all agreed upon one point, viz., that her unbelief in Christianity was a frightful sin, of which she had been willfully guilty. They all agreed in supposing that it was within her own volition to resume her previous faith, and that she would not only go to eternal perdition if she did not put on again her old beliefs, but that she would richly deserve to do so for her willful wickedness.

Thus, as Miss Arnold remarked to me, the moment at which she wrote the Autobiography was the most aggressive and unpleasant of her whole life. Conscious as she was of the purity of her motives in uttering her philosophical opinions, she found herself suddenly spoken to by a multitude, whom she could not but know were mentally and morally incapable of judging her, as a sinner, worthy of their pity and reprobation. Knowing that she had long been recognized as a teacher, in advance of the mass of society in knowledge and power of thought, here was a crowd of people talking to her in the tones which they might have adopted towards some ignorant inmate of a prison. What wonder that her wounded self-esteem seemed for a little while to pass into vanity, when she had to remind the world, from which such insults were pouring in, of all that she had done for its instruction in the past? What wonder that the strength which was summed up to bear with fortitude this species of modern martyrdom, seemed to give a tone of coldness and hardness to writing of so personal a kind? Then the extreme haste with which the writing and printing were done gave no time for the subsidence of such painful impressions; and great physical suffering and weakness, together with the powerful depressing medicines which were being employed, added to the difficulty of writing with calmness, and with a full possession of the sufferer's whole nature. In short, an autobiography could not have been written under less favorable conditions. All things taken into account, it is no wonder that those who knew and loved her whole personality were shocked and amazed at the inadequate presentation given of it in those volumes. The sensitive, unselfish, loving, domestic woman, and the just, careful, disinterested, conscientious and logical author, were alike obscured rather than revealed; and the biographer whom she chose to complete the work had neither the intimate personal knowledge, the mental faculty which might have supplied its place, nor the literary skill requisite to present a truer picture.

Her Autobiography completed, the plates engraved, and all publishing arrangements made, she might, had she been an ordinary invalid, have settled down into quiet after so hard-working a life. Harriet Martineau could not do this. Her labors continued uninterruptedly, and were pursued to the utmost limit which her illness would allow. She did not cease (except during the few months that the Autobiography was in hand) writing her "leaders" for the Daily News. Every week it contained articles by her, instructing thousands of readers. Yet she was very ill. She never left her home again, after that journey to London early in 1855. Sometimes she was well enough to go out upon her terrace; and she frequently sat in her porch, which was a bower, in the summer time, of clematis, honeysuckle, and passion-flowers, intermingled with ivy; but she could do no more. She was given, as soon as she became ill, the daughterly care of her niece, Maria, the daughter of her elder brother, Robert Martineau, of Birmingham; and no mother ever received tenderer care or more valuable assistance from her own child than Harriet Martineau did from the sensible and affectionate girl whose life was thenceforth devoted to her service. Maria once tried if her aunt could be taken out of her own grounds in a bath-chair; but before they reached the gates a fainting fit came on, with such appalling symptoms of stoppage of the heart that the experiment was never repeated. Sometimes Miss Martineau would be well enough to see visitors; more frequently, however, those whom she would most have liked to talk with had to be sent away by the doctor's orders. But, through it all, her work continued.

Soon after the Autobiography was finished, she wrote a long paper upon a most important subject, and one which she felt to be a source of the gravest anxiety for the future of English politics—the true sphere of State interference with daily life. The common ignorance and carelessness upon this point she believed to be the most painful and perilous feature of our present situation.