Part 2
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.’
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[Sidenote: Discouragement in regard to Political Economy Tales.]
[Sidenote: Her singular resolution.]
When Harriet called upon Mr. W. J. Fox to show him her circular inviting subscribers for the series, she found that Mr. Charles Fox had decided to say that he would not publish more than two numbers, unless a thousand copies of No. 1 were sold in the first fortnight!... Mr. Fox lived at Dalston. When Harriet left his house, after receiving this unreasonable and discouraging ultimatum, she “set out to walk the four miles and a half to the Brewery” [_i. e._, to a house attached to Whitbread’s establishment, where she was a guest]. “I could not afford to ride, more or less; but, weary already, I now felt almost too ill to walk at all. On the road, not far from Shoreditch, I became too giddy to stand without some support, and I leaned over some dirty palings, pretending to look at a cabbage-bed, but saying to myself, as I stood with closed eyes, ‘My book will do yet.’” That very night she wrote the long, thoughtful, and collected preface to her work. After she had finished it she sat over the fire in her bedroom, in the deepest depression; she cried, with her feet on the fender, till four o’clock, and then she went to bed and cried there till six, when she fell asleep. But if any person supposes that because the feminine temperament finds a relief in tears, the fact argues weakness, they will be instructed by hearing that she was up by half-past eight, continuing her work, as firmly resolved as ever that it should be published.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Calm reception of her success.]
To the best of my recollection, I waited ten days from the day of publication, before I had another line from the publisher. My mother, judging from his ill-humor, inferred that he had good news to tell: whereas I supposed the contrary. My mother was right; and I could now be amused at his last attempts to be discouraging, in the midst of splendid success. At the end of those ten days, he sent with his letter a copy of my first number, desiring me to make, with all speed, any corrections I might wish to make, as he had scarcely any copies left. He added that the demand led him to propose that we should now print two thousand. A postscript informed me that since he wrote the above, he had found that we should want three thousand. A second postscript proposed four thousand, and a third, five thousand. The letter was worth having, now it had come. There was immense relief in this; but I remember nothing like intoxication--like any painful reaction whatever. I remember walking up and down the grass-plot in the garden (I think it was on the tenth of February), feeling that my cares were over. And so they were. I think I may date my release from pecuniary care from that tenth of February, 1832.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
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[Sidenote: Manner of life in London.]
Her course in London was as follows: She wrote in the morning, rising, and making her own coffee, at seven, and going to work immediately after breakfast, until two. From two till four she saw visitors. Having an immense acquaintance, she declined undertaking to make morning calls; but people might call upon her any afternoon. She was charged with vanity about this arrangement; but, with the work on her hands and the competition for her company, she really could not do differently. Still, Sydney Smith suggested a better plan; he told her she should “hire a carriage and engage an inferior authoress to go round in it and drop the cards!” After any visitors left, she went out for her daily “duty walk,” and returned to glance over the newspapers, and to dress for dinner. Almost invariably she dined out, her host’s or some other friend’s carriage being commonly sent to fetch her. One or two evening parties would conclude the day, unless the literary pressure was extreme, in which case she would sometimes write letters after returning home. During the whole time of writing her series, she was satisfied with from five to six hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, and though she was not a teetotaller, but drank wine at dinner, still she took no sort of stimulant to help her in her work.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Carlyle’s first impression of her.]
Two or three days ago ... there came to call on us a Miss Martineau, whom you have, perhaps, often heard of in the _Examiner_. A hideous portrait was given of her in _Fraser_ one month.[2] She is a notable literary woman of her day; has been travelling in America these two years, and is now come home to write a book about it. She pleased us far beyond expectation. She is very intelligent-looking, really of pleasant countenance; was full of talk, though, unhappily, deaf almost as a post, so that you have to speak to her through an ear-trumpet. She must be some five-and-thirty. As she professes very “favorable sentiments” towards this side of the street, I mean to cultivate her a little.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to his mother_. ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London,’ by James Anthony Froude, M. A. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
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[Sidenote: Personal appearance.]
How well I remember the first sight of her, so long ago! We first saw her at church--Dr. Channing’s. It was a presence one did not speedily tire of looking on--most attractive and impressive; yet the features were plain, and only saved from seeming heavily moulded by her thinness. She was rather taller and more strongly made than most American ladies. Her complexion was neither fair nor sallow, nor yet of the pale, intellectual tone that is thought to belong to authorship. It was the hue of one severely tasked, but not with literary work. She had rich, brown, abundant hair, folded away in shining waves from the middle of a forehead totally unlike the flat one described by those who knew her as a child. It was now low over the eyes, like the Greek brows, and embossed rather than graven by the workings of thought. The eyes themselves were light and full, of a grayish greenish blue, varying in color with the time of day, or with the eye of the beholder--_les yeux pers_ of the old French romance writers. They were steadily and quietly alert, as if constantly seeing something where another would have found nothing to notice. Her habitual expression was one of serene and self-sufficing dignity--the look of perfect and benevolent repose that comes to them whose long, unselfish struggle to wring its best from life has been crowned with complete victory. You might walk the livelong day, in any city streets, and not meet such a face of simple, cheerful strength, with so much light and sweetness in its play of feature.
MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN: ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Her best portrait described.]
It was while she was in the United States that the first portrait of her which I have seen was painted. She herself did not like it, calling the attitude melodramatic; but her sister Rachel, I am told, always declared that it was the only true portrait of Harriet that was ever taken. At this point, then, some idea of her person may be given. She was somewhat above the middle height, and at this time had a slender figure. The face in the portrait is oval; the forehead rather broad, as well as high, but not either to a remarkable degree. The most noticeable peculiarity of the face is found in a slight projection of the lower lip. The nose is straight, not at all turned up at the end, but yet with a definite tip to it. The eyes are a clear gray, with a calm, steadfast, yet sweet gaze; indeed, there is an appealing look in them. The hair is of so dark a brown as to appear nearly black. A tress of it (cut off twenty years later than this American visit, when it had turned snow-white), has been given to me; and I find the treasured relic to be of exceptionally fine texture--a sure sign of a delicate and sensitive nervous organization. Her hands and feet were small. She was certainly not beautiful; besides the slight projection of the lower lip, the face has the defect of the cheeks sloping in too much towards the chin. But she was not strikingly plain, either. The countenance in this picture has a look both of appealing sweetness and of strength in reserve; and one feels that with such beauty of expression, it could not fail to be attractive to those who looked upon it with sympathy.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: “A strange phenomenon.”]
Miss Martineau’s Book on America is out.... I have read it for the good authoress’s sake, whom I love much. She is one of the strangest phenomena to me. A genuine little poetess, buckramed, swathed like a mummy into Socinian and Political Economy formulas; and yet verily alive in the inside of that! “God has given a Prophet to every People in its own speech,” say the Arabs. Even the English Unitarians were one day to have their poet, and the best that could be said for them, too, was to be said. I admire this good lady’s integrity, sincerity; her quick, sharp discernment to the depth it goes: her love also is great; nay, in fact it is too great: the host of illustrious obscure mortals whom she produces on you, of Preachers, Pamphleteers, Antislavers, Able Editors, and other Atlases bearing (unknown to us), the world on their shoulder, is absolutely more than enough.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to Emerson_, June, 1837. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883.
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[Sidenote: Her admiration of Carlyle.]
You cannot fancy what way he (Carlyle), is making with the fair intellects here! There is Harriet Martineau presents him with her ear-trumpet, with a pretty, blushing air of coquetry, which would almost convince me out of belief in her identity!
JANE W. CARLYLE: _Letter to John Sterling_. ‘Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh,’ edited by James Anthony Froude. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883.
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[Sidenote: Her conversation.]
She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible, too; and all the while she talks she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennæ of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873.
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He [Southey] was speaking of Miss Martineau patiently, but without respect, describing her as “talking more glibly than any woman he had ever seen, and with such a notion of her own infallibility.”
HENRY F. CHORLEY: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’ London: 1873.
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[Sidenote: Pertinent anecdote of Sydney Smith.]
When he was so ill that all his friends were full of anxiety about him, M---- having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, “Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay.”
FRANCES ANN KEMBLE: ‘Records of Later Life.’ New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1882.
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[Sidenote: Mr. Payn’s account of her conversation and character.]
The author of the ‘Vestiges of Creation’ said to me once, in his dry, humorous way, “Your friend, Miss Martineau, has been giving me the address in town where she gets _all her ear-trumpets_. Why, good heavens! what does she want of them? Does she mean to say that she ever wore one ear-trumpet out in all her life in listening to what anybody had to say?”
She was, no doubt, masterful in argument (which is probably all that he meant to imply), but I always found her very ready to listen, and especially to any tale of woe or hardship which it lay in her power to remedy. Her conversation, indeed, was by no means monologue, and rarely have I known a social companion more bright and cheery; but her talk, when not engaged in argument, was, which is unusual in a woman, very anecdotal. She had known more interesting and eminent persons than most men, and certainly than any woman, of her time; the immense range of her writings--political, religious, and social--had caused her to make acquaintances with people of the most different opinions, and of all ranks, while among the large circle of her personal acquaintance her motherly qualities, her gentleness, and (on delicate domestic questions), her good judgment, made her the confidante of many persons, especially young people; which enlarged her knowledge of human life to an extraordinary degree. I never knew a woman whose nature was more essentially womanly than that of Harriet Martineau, or one who was more misunderstood in that respect by the world at large.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
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[Sidenote: Recollections of her long illness at Tynemouth.]
On the sofa where I stretched myself, after my drive to Tynemouth, on the sixteenth of March, 1840, I lay for nearly five years, till obedience to a newly-discovered law of nature raised me up and sent me forth into the world again, for another ten years of strenuous work, and almost undisturbed peace and enjoyment of mind and heart.... During the whole of my illness, comforts and pleasures were lavishly supplied to me. Sydney Smith said that everybody who sent me game, fruit, and flowers, was sure of heaven, provided always that they punctually paid the dues of the Church of England. If so, many of my friends are safe. Among other memorials of that time, which are still preserved and prized, are drawings sent me by the Miss Nightingales, and an envelope-case (in daily use), from the hands of the immortal Florence. I was one of the sick to whom she first ministered, and it happened through my friendship with some of her family.... I did not think I could have wished so much for anything as I wished to see foliage. I had not seen a tree for above five years, except a scrubby little affair that stood above the haven at Tynemouth. An old friend sent me charming colored sketches of old trees in Sherwood Forest, and an artist who was an entire stranger to me, Mr. McIan, stayed away from a day’s excursion, at a friend’s house in the country, to paint me a breezy tree. For months the breezy tree was pinned up on the wall before me, sending many a breeze through my mind.... During many a summer evening, while I lay on my window-couch, and my guest of the day sat beside me, overlooking the purple sea, or watching for the moon to rise up from it, like a planet growing into a sun, things were said, high and deep, which are fixed into my memory now, like stars in a dark firmament. Now a philosopher, now a poet, now a moralist, opened to me speculation, vision or conviction.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
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[Sidenote: Correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett.]
I have had a great pleasure, lately, in some correspondence with Miss Martineau, the noblest female intelligence between the seas,--“as sweet as spring, as ocean deep.” She is in a hopeless anguish of body, and serene triumph of spirit, with at once no hope and all hope.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: _Letter to R. H. Horne._ ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to Richard Hengist Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877.
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[Sidenote: Prompt relief by mesmerism.]
Within one minute, the twilight and phosphoric lights appeared; and, in two or three more, a delicious sensation of ease spread through me--a cool comfort, before which all pain and distress gave way, oozing out, as it were, at the soles of my feet. During that hour, and almost the whole evening, I could no more help exclaiming with pleasure than a person in torture crying out with pain. I became hungry, and ate with relish for the first time for five years. There was no heat, oppression or sickness during the seance, nor any disorder afterwards. During the whole evening, instead of the lazy, hot ease of opiates, under which pain is felt to lie in wait, I experienced something of the indescribable sensations of health, which I had quite lost and forgotten.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Letters on Mesmerism_, quoted by Mrs. Fenwick Miller in her ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Subsequent good health.]
Saw a brown-faced looking woman watching for the coach--thought I knew the face--looked out of window--it was Miss Martineau.... Walked with her to her newly built, or building house, a most commodious, beautifully-situated and desirable residence in all respects. I could not but look with wonder at the brown hue of health upon her face, and see her firm and almost manly stride as she walked along with me to Fox How, Dr. Arnold’s place.
W. C. MACREADY: _Diary_, 1846. ‘Macready’s Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries and Letters,’ edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1875.
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[Sidenote: Carlyle’s later impression.]
Miss Martineau was here and is gone--to Norwich, after which to Egypt--broken into utter weariness, a mind reduced to these three elements: imbecility, dogmatism, and unlimited hope. I never in my life was more heartily bored by any creature.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter_ in ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London.’
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[Sidenote: Change of opinions harshly stated.]
On Wednesday, Mr. Henry Bright came over to dine. He visited Miss Martineau, at Ambleside, and found her very entertaining, and in a very singular state of doctrine--for she now professes to believe and declare that there is no God and no future life! He says it is wholly impossible to argue with her, because she is so opinionative and dogmatical, and has such a peculiar advantage in putting down her ear-trumpet when she does not choose to hear any reply to her assertions. She has been making some beautiful designs for the windows of her brother’s church, in Liverpool, which are accepted and to be painted thereupon; but she is at enmity with her brother, and has no intercourse with him.
MRS. HAWTHORNE: _Letter to her Father._
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Among the drawbacks of this wretched weather is that I have not yet been able to get to Ambleside to see Miss Martineau. When she has dined with us, or been at all to Liverpool, I have always missed her by being at Cambridge; and I own myself a little curious to hear from her, _viva voce_, some of her experiences. Her latest “craze” (to use a word of DeQuincey’s), is the establishment of a shop in London for the sale of--in plain English--infidel literature. She complained most bitterly, the other day, to my brother-in-law, that whenever her book on ‘Man’s Nature and Development’ is inquired for, the shopman pulls it stealthily out from under the counter, as if ashamed of selling it, and fearful lest some bystander be scandalized. So that there’s to be a shop in a central situation, full of Miss Martineau and August Comte, and Froude, who wrote the ‘Nemesis of Faith’; and Frank Newman, who wrote ‘Phases of Faith,’ and (as Clough said), the world is to receive the unbiassed truth: “That there’s no God, and Harriet is his Prophet.”
HENRY BRIGHT: _Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne_. ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife: a Biography,’ by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885.
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[Sidenote: Stated by herself.]
I have no objection to words, when, as you do, people understand things; but I am not an atheist, according to the settled meaning of the term. An atheist is “one who rests in second causes,” who supposes things that he knows to be made or occasioned by other things that he knows. This seems to me complete nonsense; and this Bacon condemns as the stupidity of atheism. I cannot conceive the absence of a First Cause; but then, I contend, that it is not a person; _i. e._, that it is to the last degree improbable, and that there is no evidence of its being so. Now, though the superficial, ignorant and prejudiced will not see this distinction, you will; and it will be clear to you what scope is left for awe and reverence under my faith.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Letter to Charlotte Brontë_, in ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau,’ by Maria Weston Chapman.
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[Sidenote: Florence Nightingale’s testimony to Martineau’s religious feeling.]
I think, contradictory as it may seem, she had the truest and deepest religious feeling I have ever known.... To the last, her religious feeling--in the sense of good working out of evil, of a Supreme Wisdom penetrating and moulding the whole universe; the natural subordination of intellect to purposes of good, even were these merely the small purposes of social or domestic life;--all this, which supposes something without ourselves, higher, and deeper, and better than ourselves, and more permanent, that is, eternal, was so strong in her--so strong that one could scarcely explain her (apparently only) losing sight of that Supreme Wisdom and Goodness in her later years.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: _Letter to Maria Weston Chapman_, published in the latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: “The Lady Oracle.”]