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.