HARRIET MARTINEAU.
1802-1876.
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.